The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure

Sir John had made a wondrous picturesque figure of himself as, in a raised corner of the crowded and beflagged marquee, he had flourished a trowel and talked about the great and enlightened public, and about the highest function of the drama, and about the duty of the artist to elevate, and about the solemn responsibility of theatrical managers, and about the absence of petty jealousies in the world of the stage. Everybody had vociferously applauded, while reporters turned rapidly the pages of their note-books. "Ass!" Edward Henry had said to himself with much force and sincerity, – meaning Sir John, – but he too had vociferously applauded; for he was from the Five Towns, and in the Five Towns people are like that! Then Sir John had declared the corner-stone well and truly laid (it was on the corner which the electric sign of the future was destined to occupy), and, after being thanked, had wandered off shaking hands here and there absently, to arrive at length in the office of the clerk of the works, where Edward Henry had arranged suitably to refresh the stone-layer and a few choice friends of both sexes.

He had hoped that Elsie April would somehow reach that little office. But Elsie April was absent, indisposed. Her absence made the one blemish on the affair's perfection. Elsie April, it appeared, had been struck down by a cold which had entirely deprived her of her voice, so that the performance of the Azure Society's Dramatic Club, so eagerly anticipated by all London, had had to be postponed. Edward Henry bore the misfortune of the Azure Society with stoicism, but he had been extremely disappointed by the invisibility of Elsie April at his stone-laying. His eyes had wanted her.

Sir John, awaking apparently out of a dream when Edward Henry had summoned him twice, climbed the uneven staircase and joined his host and youngest rival on the insecure planks and gangways that covered the first floor of the Regent Theatre.

"Come higher," said Edward Henry, mounting upward to the beginnings of the second story, above which hung suspended from the larger crane the great cage that was employed to carry brick and stone from the ground.

The two fur coats almost mingled.

"Well, young man," said Sir John Pilgrim, "your troubles will soon be beginning."

Now Edward Henry hated to be addressed as "young man," especially in the patronising tone which Sir John used. Moreover, he had a suspicion that in Sir John's mind was the illusion that Sir John alone was responsible for the creation of the Regent Theatre-that without Sir John's aid as a stone-layer it could never have existed.

"You mean my troubles as a manager?" said Edward Henry grimly.

"In twelve months from now, before I come back from my world's tour, you'll be ready to get rid of this thing on any terms. You will be wishing that you had imitated my example and kept out of Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly Circus is sinister, my Alderman-sinister."

"Come up into the cage, Sir John," said Edward Henry. "You'll get a still better view. Rather fine, isn't it, even from here?"

He climbed up into the cage and helped Sir John to climb.

And, standing there in the immediate silence, Sir John murmured with emotion:

"We are alone with London!"

Edward Henry thought:

"Cuckoo!"

They heard footsteps resounding on loose planks in a distant corner.

"Who's there?" Edward Henry called.

"Only me!" replied a voice. "Nobody takes any notice of me!"

"Who is it?" muttered Sir John.

"Alloyd, the architect," Edward Henry answered, and then calling loud: "Come up here, Alloyd."

The muffled and coated figure approached, hesitated, and then joined the other two in the cage.

"Let me introduce Mr. Alloyd, the architect-Sir John Pilgrim," said Edward Henry.

"Ah!" said Sir John, bending towards Alloyd. "Are you the genius who draws those amusing little lines and scrawls on transparent paper, Mr. Alloyd? Tell me, are they really necessary for a building, or do you only do them for your own fun? Quite between ourselves, you know! I've often wondered."

Said Mr. Alloyd with a pale smile:

"Of course everyone looks on the architect as a joke!" The pause was somewhat difficult.

"You promised us rockets, Mr. Machin," said Sir John. "My mind yearns for rockets."

"Right you are!" Edward Henry complied. Close by, but somewhat above them, was the crane-engine, manned by an engineer whom Edward Henry was paying for overtime. A signal was given, and the cage containing the proprietor and the architect of the theatre and Sir John Pilgrim bounded most startlingly up into the air. Simultaneously it began to revolve rapidly on its cable, as such cages will, whether filled with bricks or with celebrities.

"Oh!" ejaculated Sir John, terror-struck, clinging hard to the side of the cage.

"Oh!" ejaculated Mr. Alloyd, also clinging hard.

"I want you to see London," said Edward Henry, who had been through the experience before.

The wind blew cold above the chimneys.

The cage came to a standstill exactly at the peak of the other crane. London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street, and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated map, over which crawled mannikins and toy autobuses. At their feet a long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with the guests of the evening. The metropolis stretched away, lifting to the north, and sinking to the south into jewelled river on whose curved bank rose messages of light concerning whisky, tea, and beer. The peaceful nocturnal roar of the city, dwindling every moment now, reached them like an emanation from another world.

"You asked for a rocket, Sir John," said Edward Henry. "You shall have it."

He had taken a box of fuses from his pocket. He struck one, and his companions in the swaying cage now saw that a tremendous rocket was hung to the peak of the other crane. He lighted the fuse… An instant of deathly suspense! … And then with a terrific and a shattering bang and splutter the rocket shot towards the kingdom of heaven, and there burst into a vast dome of red blossoms which, irradiating a square mile of roofs, descended slowly and softly on the West End like a benediction.

"You always want crimson, don't you, Sir John?" said Edward Henry, and the easy cheeriness of his voice gradually tranquillised the alarm natural to two very earthly men who for the first time found themselves suspended insecurely over a gulf.

"I have seen nothing so impressive since the Russian ballet," murmured Mr. Alloyd, recovering.

"You ought to go to Siberia, Alloyd," said Edward Henry.

Sir John Pilgrim, pretending now to be extremely brave, suddenly turned on Edward Henry and in a convulsive grasp seized his hand.

"My friend," he said hoarsely, "a thought has just occurred to me: you and I are the two most remarkable men in London!" He glanced up as the cage trembled. "How thin that steel rope seems!"

The cage slowly descended, with many twists.

Edward Henry said not a word. He was too deeply moved by his own triumph to be able to speak.

"Who else but me," he reflected, exultant, "could have managed this affair as I've managed it? Did anyone else ever take Sir John Pilgrim up into the sky like a load of bricks, and frighten his life out of him?"

As the cage approached the platforms of the first story he saw two people waiting there; one he recognised as the faithful, harmless Marrier; the other was a woman.

"Someone here wants you urgently, Mr. Machin!" cried Marrier.

"By Jove," exclaimed Alloyd under his breath, "what a beautiful figure! No girl as attractive as that ever wanted me urgently! Some folks do have luck!"

The woman had moved a little away when the cage landed. Edward Henry followed her along the planking.

It was Elsie April.

"I thought you were ill in bed," he breathed, astounded.

Her answering voice reached him, scarcely audible:

"I'm only hoarse. My cousin Rose has arrived to-night in secret at Tilbury by the Minnetonka."

"The Minnetonka!" he muttered. Staggering coincidence! Mystic heralding of misfortune!

"I was sent for," the pale ghost of a delicate voice continued. "She's broken, ruined; no courage left. Awful fiasco in Chicago! She's hiding now at a little hotel in Soho. She absolutely declined to come to my hotel. I've done what I could for the moment. As I was driving by here just now I saw the rocket, and I thought of you. I thought you ought to know it. I thought it was my duty to tell you."

She held her muff to her mouth. She seemed to be trembling.

A heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir," said a strong, rough voice. "Are you the gent that fired off the rocket? It's against the law to do that kind o' thing here, and you ought to know it. I shall have to trouble you-"

It was a policeman of the C division.

Sir John was disappearing, with his stealthy and conspiratorial air, down the staircase.

CHAPTER VIII

DEALING WITH ELSIE

I

The headquarters of the Azure Society were situate in Marloes Road, for no other reason than that it happened so. Though certain famous people inhabit Marloes Road, no street could well be less fashionable than this thoroughfare, which is very arid and very long, and a very long way off the centre of the universe.

"The Azure Society, you know!" Edward Henry added when he had given the exact address to the chauffeur of the taxi.

The chauffeur, however, did not know, and did not seem to be ashamed of his ignorance. His attitude indicated that he despised Marloes Road, and was not particularly anxious for his vehicle to be seen therein, especially on a wet night, but that nevertheless he would endeavour to reach it. When he did reach it, and observed the large concourse of shining automobiles that struggled together in the rain in front of the illuminated number named by Edward Henry, the chauffeur admitted to himself that for once he had been mistaken, and his manner of receiving money from Edward Henry was generously respectful.

Originally the headquarters of the Azure Society had been a seminary and schoolmistress' house. The thoroughness with which the buildings had been transformed showed that money was not among the things which the society had to search for. It had rich resources, and it had also high social standing; and the deferential commissionaires at the doors and the fluffy-aproned, appealing girls who gave away programmes in the foyer were a proof that the society, while doubtless anxious about such subjects as the persistence of individuality after death, had no desire to reconstitute the community on a democratic basis. It was above such transient trifles of reform, and its high endeavours were confined to questions of immortality, of the infinite, of sex, and of art: which questions it discussed in fine raiment and with all the punctilio of courtly politeness.

Edward Henry was late, in common with some two hundred other people of whom the majority were elegant women wearing Paris or almost Paris gowns with a difference. As on the current of the variegated throng he drifted through corridors into the bijou theatre of the society, he could not help feeling proud of his own presence there; and yet at the same time he was scorning, in his Five Towns way, the preciosity and the simperings of these his fellow creatures. Seated in the auditorium, at the end of a row, he was aware of an even keener satisfaction as people bowed and smiled at him; for the theatre was so tiny and the reunion so choice that it was obviously an honour and a distinction to have been invited to such an exclusive affair. To the evening first fixed for the dramatic soirée of the Azure Society he had received no invitation. But shortly after the postponement due to Elsie April's indisposition an envelope addressed by Marrier himself, and containing the sacred card, had arrived for him in Bursley. His instinct had been to ignore it, and for two days he had ignored it, and then he noticed in one corner the initials "E.A." Strange that it did not occur to him immediately that E.A. stood, or might stand, for Elsie April!

Reflection brings wisdom and knowledge. In the end he was absolutely convinced that E.A. stood for Elsie April; and at the last moment, deciding that it would be the act of a fool and a coward to decline what was practically a personal request from a young and enchanting woman, he had come to London-short of sleep, it is true, owing to local convivialities, but he had come. And, curiously, he had not communicated with Marrier. Marrier had been extremely taken up with the dramatic soirée of the Azure Society, which Edward Henry justifiably but quite privately resented. Was he not paying three pounds a week to Marrier?

And now, there he sat, known, watched, a notoriety, the card who had raised Pilgrim to the skies, probably the only theatrical proprietor in the crowded and silent audience; and he was expecting anxiously to see Elsie April again-across the footlights! He had not seen her since the night of the stone-laying, over a week earlier. He had not sought to see her. He had listened then to the delicate tones of her weak, whispering, thrilling voice, and had expressed regret for Rose Euclid's plight. But he had done no more. What could he have done? Clearly he could not have offered money to relieve the plight of Rose Euclid, who was the cousin of a girl as wealthy and as sympathetic as Elsie April. To do so would have been to insult Elsie. Yet he felt guilty none the less. An odd situation! The delicate tones of Elsie's weak, whispering, thrilling voice on the scaffolding haunted his memory, and came back with strange clearness as he sat waiting for the curtain to ascend.

There was an outburst of sedate applause, and a turning of heads to the right. Edward Henry looked in that direction. Rose Euclid herself was bowing from one of the two boxes on the first tier. Instantly she had been recognised and acknowledged, and the clapping had in nowise disturbed her. Evidently she accepted it as a matter of course. How famous, after all, she must be, if such an audience would pay her such a meed! She was pale, and dressed glitteringly in white. She seemed younger, more graceful, much more handsome, more in accordance with her renown. She was at home and at ease up there in the brightness of publicity. The imposing legend of her long career had survived the eclipse in the United States. Who could have guessed that some ten days before she had landed heart-broken and ruined at Tilbury from the Minnetonka?

Edward Henry was impressed.

"She's none so dusty!" he said to himself in the incomprehensible slang of the Five Towns. The phrase was a high compliment to Rose Euclid, aged fifty and looking anything you like over thirty. It measured the extent to which he was impressed.

Yes, he felt guilty. He had to drop his eyes, lest hers should catch them. He examined guiltily the programme, which announced "The New Don Juan," a play "in three acts and in verse" – author unnamed. The curtain went up.

II

And with the rising of the curtain began Edward Henry's torture and bewilderment. The scene disclosed a cloth upon which was painted, to the right, a vast writhing purple cuttlefish whose finer tentacles were lost above the proscenium-arch, and to the left an enormous crimson oblong patch with a hole in it. He referred to the programme, which said: "Act. I. A castle in the forest," and also "Scenery and costumes designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A." The cuttlefish, then, was the purple forest, or perhaps one tree in the forest, and the oblong patch was the crimson castle. The stage remained empty, and Edward Henry had time to perceive that the footlights were unlit, and that rays came only from the flies and from the wings.

He glanced round. Nobody had blenched. Quite confused, he referred again to the programme and deciphered in the increasing gloom, "Lighting by Cosmo Clark," in very large letters.

Two yellow-clad figures of no particular sex glided into view, and at the first words which they uttered Edward Henry's heart seemed in apprehension to cease to beat. A fear seized him. A few more words, and the fear became a positive assurance and realisation of evil. "The New Don Juan" was simply a pseudonym for Carlo Trent's "Orient Pearl"! … He had always known that it would be. Ever since deciding to accept the invitation he had lived under just that menace. "The Orient Pearl" seemed to be pursuing him like a sinister destiny.

Weakly he consulted yet again the programme. Only one character bore a name familiar to the Don Juan story; to wit, "Haidee"; and opposite that name was the name of Elsie April. He waited for her, – he had no other interest in the evening, – and he waited in resignation. A young female troubadour (styled in the programme "the messenger") emerged from the unseen depths of the forest in the wings and ejaculated to the hero and his friend: "The woman appears." But it was not Elsie that appeared. Six times that troubadour messenger emerged and ejaculated, "The woman appears," and each time Edward Henry was disappointed. But at the seventh heralding-the heralding of the seventh and highest heroine of this drama in hexameters-Elsie did at length appear.

And Edward Henry became happy. He understood little more of the play than at the historic breakfast-party of Sir John Pilgrim; he was well confirmed in his belief that the play was exactly as preposterous as a play in verse must necessarily be; his manly contempt for verse was more firmly established than ever-but Elsie April made an exquisite figure between the castle and the forest; her voice did really set up physical vibrations in his spine. He was deliciously convinced that if she remained on the stage from everlasting to everlasting, just so long could he gaze thereat without surfeit and without other desire. The mischief was that she did not remain on the stage. With despair he saw her depart; and the close of the act was ashes in his mouth.

The applause was tremendous. It was not as tremendous as that which had greeted the plate-smashing comedy at the Hanbridge Empire, but it was far more than sufficiently enthusiastic to startle and shock Edward Henry. In fact, his cold indifference was so conspicuous amid that fever, that in order to save his face he had to clap and to smile.

And the dreadful thought crossed his mind, traversing it like the shudder of a distant earthquake that presages complete destruction:

"Are the ideas of the Five Towns all wrong? Am I a provincial after all?"

For hitherto, though he had often admitted to himself that he was a provincial, he had never done so with sincerity; but always in a manner of playful and rather condescending badinage.

III

"Did you ever see such scenery and costumes?" some one addressed him suddenly when the applause had died down. It was Mr. Alloyd, who had advanced up the aisle from the back row of the stalls.

"No, I never did!" Edward Henry agreed.

"It's wonderful how Givington has managed to get away from the childish realism of the modern theatre," said Mr. Alloyd, "without being ridiculous."

"You think so!" said Edward Henry judicially. "The question is, Has he?"

"Do you mean it's too realistic for you?" cried Mr. Alloyd. "Well, you are advanced! I didn't know you were as anti-representational as all that!"

"Neither did I!" said Edward Henry. "What do you think of the play?"

"Well," answered Mr. Alloyd low and cautiously, with a somewhat shamed grin, "between you and me, I think the play's bosh."

"Come, come!" Edward Henry murmured as if in protest.

The word "bosh" was almost the first word of the discussion which he had comprehended, and the honest familiar sound of it did him good. Nevertheless, keeping his presence of mind, he had forborne to welcome it openly. He wondered what on earth "anti-representational" could mean. Similar conversations were proceeding around him, and each could be very closely heard, for the reason that, the audience being frankly intellectual and anxious to exchange ideas, the management had wisely avoided the expense and noise of an orchestra. The entr'acte was like a conversazione of all the cultures.

"I wish you'd give us some scenery and costumes like this in your theatre," said Alloyd as he strolled away.

The remark stabbed him like a needle; the pain was gone in an instant, but it left a vague fear behind it, as of the menace of a mortal injury. It is a fact that Edward Henry blushed and grew gloomy, and he scarcely knew why. He looked about him timidly, half defiantly. A magnificently arrayed woman in the row in front, somewhat to the right, leaned back and towards him, and behind her fan said:

"You're the only manager here, Mr. Machin! How alive and alert you are!" Her voice seemed to be charged with a hidden meaning.

"D'you think so?" said Edward Henry. He had no idea who she might be. He had probably shaken hands with her at his stone-laying, but if so he had forgotten her face. He was fast becoming one of the oligarchical few who are recognised by far more people than they recognise.

"A beautiful play!" said the woman. "Not merely poetic, but intellectual. And an extraordinarily acute criticism of modern conditions!"

He nodded. "What do you think of the scenery?" he asked.

"Well, of course candidly," said the woman, "I think it's silly. I dare say I'm old-fashioned."

"I dare say," murmured Edward Henry.

"They told me you were very ironic," said she, flushing but meek.

"They!" Who? Who in the world of London had been labelling him as ironic? He was rather proud.

"I hope if you do do this kind of play, – and we're all looking to you, Mr. Machin," said the lady making a new start, – "I hope you won't go in for these costumes and scenery. That would never do!"

Again the stab of the needle!

"It wouldn't," he said.

"I'm delighted you think so," said she.

An orange telegram came travelling from hand to hand along that row of stalls, and ultimately, after skipping a few persons, reached the magnificently arrayed woman, who read it and then passed it to Edward Henry.

"Splendid!" she exclaimed. "Splendid!"

Edward Henry read: "Released. Isabel."

"What does it mean?"

"It's from Isabel Joy-at Marseilles."

"Really!"

Edward Henry's ignorance of affairs round about the centre of the universe was occasionally distressing-to himself in particular. And just now he gravely blamed Mr. Marrier, who had neglected to post him about Isabel Joy. But how could Marrier honestly earn his three pounds a week if he was occupied night and day with the organising and management of these precious dramatic soirées? Edward Henry decided that he must give Mr. Marrier a piece of his mind at the first opportunity.

"Don't you know?" questioned the dame.

"How should I?" he parried. "I'm only a provincial."

"But surely," pursued the dame, "you knew we'd sent her round the world. She started on the Kandahar, the ship that you stopped Sir John Pilgrim from taking. She almost atoned for his absence at Tilbury. Twenty-five reporters, anyway!"

Edward Henry sharply slapped his thigh, which in the Five Towns signifies, "I shall forget my own name next."

Of course! Isabel Joy was the advertising emissary of the Militant Suffragette Society, sent forth to hold a public meeting and make a speech in the principal ports of the world. She had guaranteed to circuit the globe and to be back in London within a hundred days, to speak in at least five languages, and to get herself arrested at least three times en route. Of course! Isabel Joy had possessed a very fair share of the newspapers on the day before the stone-laying, but Edward Henry had naturally had too many preoccupations to follow her exploits. After all, his momentary forgetfulness was rather excusable.

"She's made a superb beginning!" said the resplendent dame, taking the telegram from Edward Henry and inducting it into another row. "And before three months are out she'll be the talk of the entire earth. You'll see!"

"Is everybody a suffragette here?" asked Edward Henry simply, as his eyes witnessed the satisfaction spread by the voyaging telegram.

"Practically," said the dame. "These things always go hand in hand," she added in a deep tone.