The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure

Mechanically Edward Henry lit a cigarette. He had no consciousness of doing so.

"Where is Trent?" people were asking.

Carlo Trent appeared up a staircase at the back of the stage.

"You've got to go on," said Marrier. "Now, pull yourself togethah. The Great Beast is calling for you. Say a few wahds."

Carlo Trent in his turn seized the hand of Edward Henry, and it was for all the world as though he were seizing the hand of an intellectual and poetic equal, and wrung it.

"Come now!" Mr. Marrier, beaming, admonished him, and then pushed.

"What must I say?" stammered Carlo.

"Whatever comes into your head."

"All right! I'll say something."

A man in a dirty white apron, drew back the heavy mass of the curtain about eighteen inches, and, Carlo Trent stepping forward, the glare of the footlights suddenly lit his white face. The applause, now multiplied fivefold and become deafening, seemed to beat him back against the curtain. His lips worked. He did not bow.

"Cam back, you fool!" whispered Marrier.

And Carlo Trent stepped back into safe shelter.

"Why didn't you say something?"

"I c-couldn't," murmured the greatest dramatic poet in the world; and began to cry.

"Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!"

"Here!" said Edward Henry gruffly. "Get out of my way! I'll settle 'em. Get out of my way!" And he riddled Carlo Trent with a fusillade of savagely scornful glances.

The man in the apron obediently drew back the curtain again, and the next second Edward Henry was facing an auditorium crowded with his patrons. Everybody was standing up, chiefly in the aisles and crowded at the entrances, and quite half the people were waving, and quite a quarter of them were shouting. He bowed several times. An age elapsed. His ears were stunned. But it seemed to him that his brain was working with marvellous perfection. He perceived that he had been utterly wrong about "The Orient Pearl." And that all his advisers had been splendidly right. He had failed to catch its charm and to feel its power. But this audience-this magnificent representative audience drawn from London in the brilliant height of the season-had not failed.

It occurred to him to raise his hand. And as he raised his hand it occurred to him that his hand held a lighted cigarette. A magic hush fell upon the magnificent audience, which owned all that endless line of automobiles outside. Edward Henry, in the hush, took a pull at his cigarette.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, pitching his voice well, for municipal politics had made him a practised public speaker, "I congratulate you. This evening you-have succeeded!"

There was a roar, confused, mirthful, humorously protesting. He distinctly heard a man in the front row of the stalls say: "Well, for sheer nerve-!" And then go off into a peal of laughter.

He smiled and retired.

Marrier took charge of him.

"You merit the entire confectioner's shop!" exclaimed Marrier, aghast, admiring, triumphant.

Now Edward Henry had had no intention of meriting cake. He had merely followed in speech the secret train of his thought. But he saw that he had treated a West End audience as a West End audience had never before been treated, and that his audacity had conquered. Hence he determined not to refuse the cake.

"Didn't I tell you I'd settle 'em?" said he.

The band played "God Save the King."

VI

One hour later, in the double-bedded chamber at the Majestic, as his wife lay in bed and he was methodically folding up a creased white tie and inspecting his chin in the mirror, he felt that he was touching again, after an immeasurable interval, the rock-bottom of reality. Nellie, even when he could see only her face, and that in a mirror, was the most real phenomenon in his existence, and she possessed the strange faculty of dispelling all unreality, round about her.

"Well," he said. "How did you get on in the box?"

"Oh!" she replied, "I got on very well with the Woldo woman. She's one of our sort. But I'm not so set up with your Elsie April."

"Dash this collar!"

Nellie continued:

"And I can tell you another thing. I don't envy Mr. Rollo Wrissel."

"What's Wrissel got to do with it?"

"She means to marry him."

"Elsie April means to marry Wrissel?"

"He was in and out of the box all night. It was as plain as a pikestaff."

"What's amiss with my Elsie April?" Edward Henry demanded.

"She's a thought too pleasant for my taste," answered Nellie.

Astonishing, how pleasantness is regarded with suspicion in the Five Towns, even by women who can at a pinch be angels!

VII

Often during the brief night he gazed sleepily at the vague next bed and mused upon the extraordinariness of women's consciences. His wife slept like an innocent. She always did. It was as though she gently expired every evening and returned gloriously to life every morning. The sunshiny hours between three and seven were very long to him, but it was indisputable that he did not hear the clock strike six, which was, at any rate, proof of a little sleep to the good. At five minutes past seven he thought he heard a faint rustling noise in the corridor, and he arose and tiptoed to the door and opened it. Yes, the Majestic had its good qualities! He had ordered that all the London morning daily papers should be laid at his door as early as possible, and there the pile was, somewhat damp, and as fresh as fruit, with a slight odour of ink. He took it in.

His heart was beating as he climbed back into bed with it and arranged pillows so that he could sit up, and unfolded the first paper. Nellie had not stirred.

Once again he was disappointed in the prominence given by the powerful London press to his London enterprise. In the first newspaper, a very important one, he positively could not find any criticism of the Regent's first night. There was nearly a page of the offensive Isabel Joy, who was now appealing, through the newspapers, to the President of the United States. Isabel had been christened the World-Circler, and the special correspondents of the entire earth were gathered about her carpeted cell. Hope still remained that she would reach London within the hundred days. An unknown adherent of the cause for which she suffered had promised to give ten thousand pounds to that cause if she did so. Furthermore, she was receiving over sixty proposals of marriage a day. And so on and so on! Most of this he gathered in an instant from the headlines alone. Nauseating!

Another annoying item in the paper was a column and a half given to the foundation-stone laying of the First New Thought Church, in Dean Street, Soho-about a couple of hundred yards from its original site. He hated the First New Thought Church as one always hates that to which one has done an injury.

Then he found what he was searching for: "Regent Theatre. Production of poetical drama at London's latest playhouse." After all, it was well situated in the paper, on quite an important page, and there was over a column of it. But in his nervous excitation his eyes had missed it. His eyes now read it. Over half of it was given to a discussion of the Don Juan legend and the significance of the Byronic character of Haidee-obviously written before the performance. A description of the plot occupied most of the rest, and a reference to the acting ended it. "Miss Rose Euclid in the trying and occasionally beautiful part of Haidee was all that her admirers could have wished" … "Miss Cunningham distinguished herself by her diction and bearing in the small part of the Messenger." The final words were: "The reception was quite favourable."

"Quite favourable," indeed! Edward Henry had a chill. Good heavens, was not the reception ecstatically, madly, foolishly enthusiastic? "Why!" he exclaimed within, "I never saw such a reception!" It was true; but then he had never seen any other first night. He was shocked, as well as chilled. And for this reason: For weeks past all the newspapers, in their dramatic gossip, had contained highly sympathetic references to his enterprise. According to the paragraphs, he was a wondrous man, and the theatre was a wondrous house, the best of all possible theatres, and Carlo Trent was a great writer, and Rose Euclid exactly as marvellous as she had been a quarter of a century before, and the prospects of the intellectual-poetic drama in London so favourable as to amount to a certainty of success.

In those columns of dramatic gossip there was no flaw in the theatrical world. In those columns of dramatic gossip no piece ever failed, though sometimes a piece was withdrawn, regretfully and against the wishes of the public, to make room for another piece. In those columns of dramatic gossip theatrical managers, actors, and especially actresses, and even authors, were benefactors of society, and therefore they were treated with the deference, the gentleness, the heartfelt sympathy which benefactors of society merit and ought to receive.

The tone of the criticism of the first night was different-it was subtly, not crudely, different. But different it was.

The next newspaper said the play was bad and the audience indulgent. It was very severe on Carlo Trent, and very kind to the players, whom it regarded as good men and women in adversity-with particular laudations for Miss Rose Euclid and the Messenger. The next newspaper said the play was a masterpiece, and would be so hailed in any country but England. England, however-! Unfortunately this was a newspaper whose political opinions Edward Henry despised. The next newspaper praised everything and everybody, and called the reception tumultuously enthusiastic. And Edward Henry felt as though somebody, mistaking his face for a slice of toast, had spread butter all over it. Even the paper's parting assurance that the future of the higher drama in London was now safe beyond question did not remove this delusion of butter.

The two following newspapers were more sketchy or descriptive, and referred at some length to Edward Henry's own speech, with a kind of sub-hint that Edward Henry had better mind what he was about. Three illustrated papers had photographs of scenes and figures, but nothing important in the matter of criticism. The rest were "neither one thing nor the other," as they say in the Five Towns. On the whole, an inscrutable press, a disconcerting, a startling, an appetite-destroying, but not a hopeless press. The general impression which he gathered from his perusals was that the author was a pretentious dullard, an absolute criminal, a genius; that the actors and actresses were all splendid and worked hard, though conceivably one or two of them had been set impossible tasks-to wit, tasks unsuited to their personalities; that he himself was a Napoleon, a temerarious individual, an incomprehensible fellow; and that the future of the intellectual-poetic drama in London was not a topic of burning actuality… He remembered sadly the superlative-laden descriptions, in those same newspapers, of the theatre itself, a week or two back, the unique theatre in which the occupant of every seat had a complete and uninterrupted view of the whole of the proscenium opening. Surely that fact alone ought to have ensured proper treatment for him!

Then Nellie woke up, and saw the scattered newspapers.

"Well," she asked; "what do they say?"

"Oh!" he replied lightly, with a laugh. "Just about what you'd expect. Of course you know what a first-night audience always is. Too generous. And ours was, particularly. Miss April saw to that. She had the Azure Society behind her, and she was determined to help Rose Euclid. However, I should say it was all right-I should say it was quite all right. I told you it was a gamble, you know."

When Nellie, dressing, said that she considered she ought to go back home that day, he offered no objection. Indeed he rather wanted her to go. Not that he had a desire to spend the whole of his time at the theatre, unhampered by provincial women in London. On the contrary, he was aware of a most definite desire not to go to the theatre. He lay in bed and watched with careless curiosity the rapid processes of Nellie's toilette. He had his breakfast on the dressing-table (for he was not at Wilkins's, neither at the Grand Babylon). Then he helped her to pack, and finally he accompanied her to Euston, where she kissed him with affectionate common sense and caught the twelve five. He was relieved that nobody from the Five Towns happened to be going down by that train.

As he turned away from the moving carriage, the evening papers had just arrived at the bookstalls. He bought the four chief organs-one green, one yellowish, one white, one pink-and scanned them self-consciously on the platform. The white organ had a good heading: "Re-birth of the intellectual drama in London. What a provincial has done. Opinions of the leading men." Two columns altogether! There was, however, little in the two columns. The leading men had practised a sagacious caution. They, like the press as a whole, were obviously waiting to see which way the great elephantine public would jump. When the enormous animal had jumped, they would all exclaim: "What did I tell you?" The other critiques were colourless. At the end of the green critique occurred the following sentence: "It is only fair to state, nevertheless, that the play was favourably received by an apparently enthusiastic audience."

"Nevertheless!" … "Apparently!"

Edward Henry turned the page to the theatrical advertisements.

Unreal! Fantastic! Was this he, Edward Henry? Could it be still his mother's son?

Still-"matinées every Wednesday and Saturday." "Every Wednesday and Saturday." That word implied and necessitated a long run, anyhow a run extending over months. That word comforted him. Though he knew as well as you do that Mr. Marrier had composed the advertisement, and that he himself was paying for it, it comforted him. He was just like a child.

VIII

"I say, Cunningham's made a hit!" Mr. Marrier almost shouted at him as he entered the managerial room at the Regent.

"Cunningham? Who's Cunningham?"

Then he remembered. She was the girl who played the Messenger. She had only three words to say, and to say them over and over again; and she had made a hit!

"Seen the notices?" asked Marrier.

"Yes. What of them?"

"Oh! Well!" Marrier drawled. "What would you expect?"

"That's just what I said!" observed Edward Henry.

"You did, did you?" Mr. Marrier exclaimed, as if extremely interested by this corroboration of his views.

Carlo Trent strolled in; he remarked that he happened to be just passing. But the discussion of the situation was not carried very far.

That evening the house was nearly full, except the pit and the gallery, which were nearly empty. Applause was perfunctory.

"How much?" Edward Henry enquired of the box-office manager when figures were added together.

"Thirty-one pounds two shillings."

"Hem!"

"Of course," said Mr. Marrier. "In the height of the London season, with so many counter-attractions-! Besides, they've got to get used to the idea of it."

Edward Henry did not turn pale. Still, he was aware that it cost him a trifle over sixty pounds "to ring the curtain up" at every performance, and this sum took no account of expenses of production nor of author's fees. The sum would have been higher, but he was calculating as rent of the theatre only the ground-rent plus six per cent. on the total price of the building.

What disgusted him was the duplicity of the first-night audience, and he said to himself violently: "I was right all the time, and I knew I was right! Idiots! Chumps! Of course I was right!"

On the third night the house held twenty-seven pounds and sixpence.

"Naturally," said Mr. Marrier. "In this hot weathah-! I never knew such a hot June! It's the open-air places that are doing us in the eye. In fact I heard to-day that the White City is packed. They simply can't bank their money quick enough."

It was on that day that Edward Henry paid salaries. It appeared to him that he was providing half London with a livelihood: acting managers, stage managers, assistant ditto, property men, stage hands, electricians, prompters, call boys, box-office staff, general staff, dressers, commissionaires, programme girls, cleaners, actors, actresses, understudies, to say nothing of Rose Euclid at a purely nominal salary of one hundred pounds a week. The tenants of the bars were grumbling, but happily he was getting money from them.

The following day was Saturday. It rained-a succession of thunderstorms. The morning and the evening performances produced together sixty-eight pounds.

"Well," said Mr. Marrier. "In this kind of weathah you can't expect people to come out, can you? Besides, this cursed week-ending habit-"

Which conclusions did not materially modify the harsh fact that Edward Henry was losing over thirty pounds a day-or at the rate of over ten thousand pounds a year.

He spent Sunday between his hotel and his club, chiefly in reiterating to himself that Monday began a new week and that something would have to occur on Monday.

Something did occur.

Carlo Trent lounged into the office early. The man was forever being drawn to the theatre as by an invisible but powerful elastic cord. The papers had a worse attack than ever of Isabel Joy, for she had been convicted of transgression in a Chicago court of law, but a tremendous lawyer from St. Louis had loomed over Chicago and, having examined the documents in the case, was hopeful of getting the conviction quashed. He had discovered that in one and the same document "Isabel" had been spelt "Isobel," and, worse, Illinois had been deprived by a careless clerk of one of its "l's." He was sure that by proving these grave irregularities in American justice he could win on appeal.

Edward Henry glanced up suddenly from the newspaper. He had been inspired.

"I say, Trent," he remarked, without any warning or preparation, "you're not looking at all well. I want a change myself. I've a good mind to take you for a sea voyage."

"Oh!" grumbled Trent. "I can't afford sea voyages."

"I can!" said Edward Henry. "And I shouldn't dream of letting it cost you a penny. I'm not a philanthropist. But I know as well as anybody that it will pay us theatrical managers to keep you in health."

"You're not going to take the play off?" Trent demanded suspiciously.

"Certainly not!" said Edward Henry.

"What sort of a sea voyage?"

"Well-what price the Atlantic? Been to New York? … Neither have I! Let's go. Just for the trip. It'll do us good."

"You don't mean it!" murmured the greatest dramatic poet, who had never voyaged farther than the Isle of Wight. His eyeglass swung to and fro.

Edward Henry feigned to resent this remark.

"Of course I mean it. Do you take me for a blooming gas-bag?" He rose. "Marrier!" Then more loudly: "Marrier!" Mr. Marrier entered. "Do you know anything about the sailings to New York?"

"Rather!" said Mr. Marrier, beaming. After all he was a most precious aid.

"We may be able to arrange for a production in New York," said Edward Henry to Carlo, mysteriously.

Mr. Marrier gazed at one and then at the other, puzzled.

CHAPTER X

ISABEL

I

Throughout the voyage of the Lithuaniafrom Liverpool to New York, Edward Henry, in common with some two thousand other people on board, had the sensation of being hurried. He who in a cab rides late to an important appointment arrives with muscles fatigued by mentally aiding the horse to move the vehicle along. Thus were Edward Henry's muscles fatigued, and the muscles of many others; but just as much more so as the Lithuania was bigger than a cab.

For the Lithuania, having been seriously delayed in Liverpool by men who were most ridiculously striking for the fantastic remuneration of one pound a week, was engaged on the business of making new records. And every passenger was personally determined that she should therein succeed. And, despite very bad June weather toward the end, she did sail past the Battery on a grand Monday morning with a new record to her credit.

So far, Edward Henry's plan was not miscarrying. But he had a very great deal to do and very little time in which to do it, and whereas the muscles of the other passengers were relaxed as the ship drew to her berth Edward Henry's muscles were only more tensely tightened. He had expected to see Mr. Seven Sachs on the quay, for in response to his telegram from Queenstown, the illustrious actor-author had sent him an agreeable wireless message in full Atlantic; the which had inspired Edward Henry to obtain news by Marconi both from London and New York, at much expense; from the east he had had daily information of the dwindling receipts at the Regent Theatre, and from the west daily information concerning Isabel Joy. He had not, however, expected Mr. Seven Sachs to walk into the Lithuania's music-saloon an hour before the ship touched the quay. Nevertheless this was what Mr. Seven Sachs did, by the exercise of those mysterious powers wielded by the influential in democratic communities.

"And what are you doing here?" Mr. Seven Sachs greeted Edward Henry with geniality.

Edward Henry lowered his voice.

"I'm throwing good money after bad," said he.

The friendly grip of Mr. Seven Sach's hand did him good, reassured him, and gave him courage. He was utterly tired of the voyage, and also of the poetical society of Carlo Trent, whose passage had cost him thirty pounds, considerable boredom, and some sick-nursing during the final days and nights. A dramatic poet with an appetite was a full dose for Edward Henry; but a dramatic poet who lay on his back and moaned for naught but soda water and dry land amounted to more than Edward Henry could conveniently swallow.

He directed Mr. Sachs's attention to the anguished and debile organism which had once been Carlo Trent, and Mr. Sachs was so sympathetic that Carlo Trent began to adore him, and Edward Henry to be somewhat disturbed in his previous estimate of Mr. Sachs's common sense. But at a favourable moment Mr. Sachs breathed humorously into Edward Henry's ear the question:

"What have you brought him out for?"

"I've brought him out to lose him."

As they pushed through the bustle of the enormous ship, and descended from the dizzy eminence of her boat deck by lifts and ladders down to the level of the windy, sun-steeped rock of New York, Edward Henry said:

"Now I want you to understand, Mr. Sachs, that I haven't a minute to spare. I've just looked in for lunch."

"Going on to Chicago?"

"She isn't in Chicago, is she?" demanded Edward Henry, aghast. "I thought she'd reached New York!"

"Who?"

"Isabel Joy."

"Oh! Isabel's in New York, sure enough. She's right here. They say she'll have to catch the Lithuania if she's going to get away with it."

"Get away with what?"

"Well-the goods."

The precious words reminded Edward Henry of an evening at Wilkins's, and raised his spirits even higher. It was a word he loved.

"And I've got to catch the Lithuania, too!" said he. "But Trent doesn't know! … And, let me tell you, she's going to do the quickest turn round that any ship ever did. The purser assured me she'll leave at noon to-morrow unless the world comes to an end in the meantime. Now what about a hotel?"

"You'll stay with me-naturally."

"But-" Edward Henry protested.

"Oh, yes, you will. I shall be delighted."

"But I must look after Trent."

"He'll stay with me too-naturally. I live at the Stuyvesant Hotel, you know, on Fifth. I've a pretty good private suite there. I shall arrange a little supper for to-night. My automobile is here."

"Is it possible that I once saved your life and have forgotten all about it?" Edward Henry exclaimed. "Or do you treat everybody like this?"

"We like to look after our friends," said Mr. Sachs simply.

In the terrific confusion of the quay, where groups of passengers were mounted like watch dogs over hillocks of baggage, Mr. Sachs stood continually between the travellers and the administrative rigours and official incredulity of a proud republic. And in the minimum of time the fine trunk of Edward Henry and the modest packages of the poet were on the roof of Mr. Sachs's vast car, the three men were inside, and the car was leaping, somewhat in the manner of a motor boat at full speed, over the cobbles of a wide, medieval street.