The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure

But her two boys!

"Mr. Marrier-he's a young manager. I don't knew whether you know him; very, very talented. And Carlo Trent."

"Same name as my dog," Edward Henry indiscreetly murmured; and his fancy flew back to the home he had quitted, and Wilkins's and everybody in it grew transiently unreal to him.

"Delighted!" he said again.

He was relieved that her two boys were not her offspring. That at least was something gained.

"You know-the dramatist," said Rose Euclid, apparently disappointed by the effect on Edward Henry of the name of Carlo Trent.

"Really!" said Edward Henry. "I hope he won't mind me being in a dressing-gown."

The gentleman in waiting, obsequiously restive, managed to choose the supper himself. Leaving, he reached the door just in time to hold it open for the entrance of Mr. Marrier and Mr. Carlo Trent, who were talking, with noticeable freedom and emphasis, in an accent which in the Five Towns is known as the "haw-haw," the "lah-di-dah," or the "Kensingtonian" accent.

II

Within ten minutes, within less than ten minutes, Alderman Edward Henry Machin's supper-party at Wilkins's was so wonderfully changed for the better that Edward Henry might have been excused for not recognising it as his own.

The service at Wilkins's, where they profoundly understood human nature, was very intelligent. Somewhere in a central bureau at Wilkins's sat a psychologist who knew, for example, that a supper commanded on the spur of the moment must be produced instantly if it is to be enjoyed. Delay in these capricious cases impairs the ecstasy, and therefore lessens the chance of other similar meals being commanded at the same establishment. Hence, no sooner had the gentleman in waiting disappeared with the order, than certain esquires appeared with the limbs and body of a table which they set up in Edward Henry's drawing-room; and they covered the board with a damask cloth and half covered the damask cloth with flowers, glasses, and plates, and laid a special private wire from the skirting-board near the hearth to a spot on the table beneath Edward Henry's left hand, so that he could summon courtiers on the slightest provocation with the minimum of exertion. Then immediately brown bread and butter and lemons and red-pepper came, followed by oysters, followed by bottles of pale wine, both still and sparkling. Thus, before the principal dishes had even begun to frizzle in the distant kitchens, the revellers were under the illusion that the entire supper was waiting just outside the door.

Yes, they were revellers now! For the advent of her young men had transformed Rose Euclid, and Rose Euclid had transformed the general situation. At the table, Edward Henry occupied one side of it, Mr. Seven Sachs occupied the side opposite, Mr. Marrier, the very, very talented young manager, occupied the side to Edward Henry's left, and Rose Euclid and Carlo Trent together occupied the side to his right.

Trent and Marrier were each about thirty years of age. Trent, with a deep voice, had extremely lustrous eyes, which eyes continually dwelt on Rose Euclid in admiration. Apparently, all she needed in this valley was oysters and admiration, and she now had both in unlimited quantities.

"Oysters are darlings," she said, as she swallowed the first.

Carlo Trent kissed her hand respectfully-for she was old enough to be his mother.

"And you are the greatest tragic actress in the world, Ra-ose!" said he in the Kensingtonian bass.

A few moments earlier Rose Euclid had whispered to Edward Henry that Carlo Trent was the greatest dramatic poet in the world. She flowered now beneath the sun of those dark lustrous eyes and the soft rain of that admiration from the greatest dramatic poet in the world. It really did seem to Edward Henry that she grew younger. Assuredly she grew more girlish, and her voice improved. And then the bottles began to pop, and it was as though the action of uncorking wine automatically uncorked hearts also. Mr. Seven Sachs, sitting square and upright, smiled gaily at Edward Henry across the gleaming table, and raised a glass. Little Marrier, who at nearly all times had a most enthusiastic smile, did the same. In the result, five glasses met over the central bed of chrysanthemums. Edward Henry was happy. Surrounded by enigmas, – for he had no conception whatever why Rose Euclid had brought any of the three men to his table, – he was nevertheless uplifted.

As he looked about him, at the rich table, and at the glittering chandelier overhead (albeit the lamps thereof were inferior to his own), and at the expanses of soft carpet, and at the silken-textured walls, and at the voluptuous curtains, and at the couple of impeccable gentlemen in waiting, and at Joseph who knew his place behind his master's chair, – he came to the justifiable conclusion that money was a marvellous thing, and the workings of commerce mysterious and beautiful. He had invented the Five Towns Thrift Club; working men and their wives in the Five Towns were paying their two-pences, and sixpences, and shillings weekly into his Club, and finding the transaction a real convenience-and lo! he was entertaining celebrities at Wilkins's.

For, mind you, they were celebrities. He knew Seven Sachs was a celebrity because he had verily seen him act-and act very well-in his own play, and because his name in letters a foot high had dominated all the hoardings of the Five Towns. As for Rose Euclid, could there be a greater celebrity? Such was the strange power of the popular legend concerning her, that even now, despite the first fearful shock of disappointment, Edward Henry could not call her by her name, without self-consciously stumbling over it, without a curious thrill. And further, he was revising his judgment of her, as well as lowering her age slightly. On coming into the room she had doubtless been almost as startled as himself, and her constrained muteness had been probably due to a guilty feeling in the matter of passing too open remarks to a friend about a perfect stranger's manner of eating artichokes. The which, supposition flattered him. (By the way, he wished she had brought the young friend who had shared her amusement over his artichoke.) With regard to the other two men, he was quite ready to believe that Carlo Trent was the world's greatest poet, and to admit the exceeding talent of Mr. Marrier as a theatrical manager… In fact, unmistakable celebrities, one and all! He himself was a celebrity. A certain quality in the attitude of each of his guests showed clearly that they considered him a celebrity, and not only a celebrity, but a card, – Bryany must have been talking, – and the conviction of this rendered him happy. His magnificent hunger rendered him still happier. And the reflection that Brindley owed him half a crown put a top on his bliss!

"I like your dressing-gown, Mr. Machin," said Carlo Trent suddenly, after his first spoonful of soup.

"Then I needn't apologise for it!" Edward Henry replied.

"It is the dressing-gown of my dreams," Carlo Trent went on.

"Well," said Edward Henry, "as we're on the subject, I like your shirt-front."

Carlo Trent was wearing a soft shirt. The other three shirts were all rigidly starched. Hitherto Edward Henry had imagined that a fashionable evening shirt should be, before aught else, bullet-proof. He now appreciated the distinction of a frilled and gently flowing breastplate, especially when a broad purple eye-glass ribbon wandered across it. Rose Euclid gazed in modest transport at Carlo's chest.

"The colour," Carlo proceeded, ignoring Edward Henry's compliment, "the colour is inspiring. So is the texture. I have a woman's delight in textures. I could certainly produce better hexameters in such a dressing-gown."

Although Edward Henry, owing to an unfortunate hiatus in his education, did not know what a hexameter might be, he was artist enough to comprehend the effect of attire on creative work, for he had noticed that he himself could make more money in one necktie than in another, and he would instinctively take particular care in the morning choice of a cravat on days when he meditated a great coup.

"Why don't you get one?" Marrier suggested.

"Do you really think I could?" asked Carlo Trent, as if the possibility were shimmering far out of his reach like a rainbow.

"Rather!" smiled Marrier. "I don't mind laying a fiver that Mr. Machin's dressing-gown came from Drook's in Old Bond Street." But instead of saying "old" he said "ehoold."

"It did," Edward Henry admitted.

Mr. Marrier beamed with satisfaction.

"Drook's, you say?" murmured Carlo Trent. "Old Bond Street?" and wrote down the information on his shirt-cuff.

Rose Euclid watched him write.

"Yes, Carlo," said she. "But don't you think we'd better begin to talk about the theatre? You haven't told me yet if you got hold of Longay on the 'phone."

"Of course we got hold of him," said Marrier. "He agrees with me that 'The Intellectual' is a better name for it."

Rose Euclid clapped her hands.

"I'm so glad!" she cried. "Now what do you think of it as a name, Mr. Machin, – 'The Intellectual Theatre?' You see it's most important we should settle on the name, isn't it?"

It is no exaggeration to say that Edward Henry felt a wave of cold in the small of his back, and also a sinking away of the nevertheless quite solid chair on which he sat. He had more than the typical Englishman's sane distrust of that morbid word "Intellectual." His attitude towards it amounted to active dislike. If ever he used it, he would on no account use it alone; he would say, "Intellectual, and all that sort of thing!" with an air of pushing violently away from him everything that the phrase implied. The notion of baptising a theatre with the fearsome word horrified him. Still he had to maintain his nerve and his repute. So he drank some champagne, and smiled nonchalantly as the imperturbable duellist smiles while the pistols are being examined.

"Well-" he murmured.

"You see," Marrier broke in, with the smile ecstatic, almost dancing on his chair. "There's no use in compromise. Compromise is and always has been the curse of this country. The unintellectual drahma is dead-dead. Naoobody can deny that. All the box-offices in the West are proclaiming it."

"Should you call your play intellectual, Mr. Sachs?" Edward Henry inquired across the table.

"I scarcely know," said Mr. Seven Sachs calmly. "I know I've played it myself fifteen hundred and two times, and that's saying nothing of my three subsidiary companies on the road."

"What is Mr. Sach's play?" asked Carlo Trent fretfully.

"Don't you know, Carlo?" Rose Euclid patted him. "'Overheard.'"

"Oh! I've never seen it."

"But it was on all the hoardings!"

"I never read the hoardings," said Carlo. "Is it in verse?"

"No, it isn't," Mr. Seven Sachs briefly responded. "But I've made over six hundred thousand dollars out of it."

"Then of course it's intellectual!" asserted Mr. Marrier positively. "That proves it. I'm very sorry I've not seen it either; but it must be intellectual. The day of the unintellectual drama is over. The people won't have it. We must have faith in the people, and we can't show our faith better than by calling our theatre by its proper name-'The Intellectual Theatre!'"

("His theatre!" thought Edward Henry. "What's he got to do with it?")

"I don't know that I'm so much in love with your 'Intellectual,'" muttered Carlo Trent.

"Aren't you?" protested Rose Euclid, shocked.

"Of course I'm not," said Carlo. "I told you before, and I tell you now, that there's only one name for the theatre-'The Muses' Theatre!'"

"Perhaps you're right!" Rose agreed, as if a swift revelation had come to her. "Yes, you're right."

("She'll make a cheerful sort of partner for a fellow," thought Edward Henry, "if she's in the habit of changing her mind like that every thirty seconds." His appetite had gone. He could only drink.)

"Naturally, I'm right! Aren't we going to open with my play, and isn't my play in verse? … I'm sure you'll agree with me, Mr. Machin, that there is no real drama except the poetical drama."

Edward Henry was entirely at a loss. Indeed, he was drowning in his dressing-gown, so favourable to the composition of hexameters.

"Poetry…" he vaguely breathed.

"Yes, sir," said Carlo Trent. "Poetry."

"I've never read any poetry in my life," said Edward Henry, like a desperate criminal. "Not a line."

Whereupon Carlo Trent rose up from his seat, and his eye-glasses dangled in front of him.

"Mr. Machin," said he with the utmost benevolence. "This is the most interesting thing I've ever come across. Do you know, you're precisely the man I've always been wanting to meet? … The virgin mind. The clean slate… Do you know, you're precisely the man that it's my ambition to write for?"

"It's very kind of you," said Edward Henry feebly, beaten, and consciously beaten.

(He thought miserably: "What would Nellie think if she saw me in this gang?")

Carlo Trent went on, turning to Rose Euclid:

"Rose, will you recite those lines of Nashe?"

Rose Euclid began to blush.

"That bit you taught me the day before yesterday?"

"Only the three lines! No more! They are the very essence of poetry-poetry at its purest. We'll see the effect of them on Mr. Machin. We'll just see. It's the ideal opportunity to test my theory. Now, there's a good girl!"

"Oh! I can't. I'm too nervous," stammered Rose.

"You can, and you must," said Carlo, gazing at her in homage. "Nobody in the world can say them as well as you can. Now!"

Rose Euclid stood up.

"One moment," Carlo stopped her. "There's too much light. We can't do with all this light. Mr. Machin-do you mind?"

A wave of the hand, and all the lights were extinguished, save a lamp on the mantelpiece, and in the disconcertingly darkened room Rose Euclid turned her face towards the ray from this solitary silk-shaded globe.

Her hand groped out behind her, found the table-cloth and began to scratch it agitatedly. She lifted her head. She was the actress, impressive and subjugating, and Edward Henry felt her power. Then she intoned:

"Brightness falls from the air;Queens have died young and fair;Dust hath closed Helen's eye."

And she ceased and sat down. There was a silence.

"Bravo!" murmured Carlo Trent.

"Bravo!" murmured Mr. Marrier.

Edward Henry in the gloom caught Mr. Seven Sachs's unalterable observant smile across the table.

"Well, Mr. Machin?" said Carlo Trent.

Edward Henry had felt a tremor at the vibrations of Rose Euclid's voice. But the words she uttered had set up no clear image in his mind, unless it might be of some solid body falling from the air, or of a young woman named Helen walking along Trafalgar Road, Bursley, on a dusty day, and getting the dust in her eyes. He knew not what to answer.

"Is that all there is of it?" he asked at length.

Carlo Trent said:

"It's from Thomas Nashe's 'Song in Time of Pestilence.' The closing lines of the verse are:

"I am sick, I must die-Lord, have mercy on me!"

"Well," said Edward Henry, recovering, "I rather like the end. I think the end's very appropriate."

Mr. Seven Sachs choked over his wine, and kept on choking.

III

Mr. Marrier was the first to recover from this blow to the prestige of poetry. Or perhaps it would be more honest to say that Mr. Marrier had suffered no inconvenience from the contretemps. His apparent gleeful zest in life had not been impaired. He was a born optimist, of an extreme type unknown beyond the circumferences of theatrical circles.

"I say," he emphasised, "I've got an ideah. We ought to be photographed like that. Do you no end of good." He glanced encouragingly at Rose Euclid. "Don't you see it in the illustrated papers? 'A prayvate supper-party at Wilkins's Hotel. Miss Ra-ose Euclid reciting verse at a discussion of the plans for her new theatre in Piccadilly Circus. The figures reading from left to right are: Mr. Seven Sachs, the famous actor-author; Miss Rose Euclid; Mr. Carlo Trent, the celebrated dramatic poet; Mr. Alderman Machin, the well-known Midlands capitalist,' and so on!" Mr. Marrier repeated, "and so on."

"It's a notion," said Rose Euclid dreamily.

"But how can we be photographed?" Carlo Trent demanded with irritation.

"Perfectly easy."

"Now?"

"In ten minutes. I know a photographer in Brook Street."

"Would he come at once?" Carlo Trent frowned at his watch.

"Rather!" Mr. Marrier gaily soothed him, as he went over to the telephone. And Mr. Marrier's bright boyish face radiated forth the assurance that nothing in all his existence had more completely filled him with sincere joy than this enterprise of procuring a photograph of the party. Even in giving the photographer's number, – he was one of those prodigies who remember infallibly all telephone numbers, – his voice seemed to gloat upon his project.

(And while Mr. Marrier, having obtained communication with the photographer, was saying gloriously into the telephone: "Yes, Wilkins's. No. Quite private. I've got Miss Rose Euclid here, and Mr. Seven Sachs-" while Mr. Marrier was thus proceeding with his list of star attractions, Edward Henry was thinking: "'Her new theatre,'-now! It was 'his' a few minutes back!..

"The well-known Midland capitalist, eh? Oh! Ah!")

He drank again. He said to himself: "I've had all I can digest of this beastly balloony stuff." (He meant the champagne.) "If I finish this glass, I'm bound to have a bad night." And he finished the glass, and planked it down firmly on the table.

"Well," he remarked aloud cheerfully, "if we're to be photographed, I suppose we shall want a bit more light on the subject."

Joseph sprang to the switches.

"Please!" Carlo Trent raised a protesting hand.

The switches were not turned. In the beautiful dimness the greatest tragic actress in the world and the greatest dramatic poet in the world gazed at each other, seeking and finding solace in mutual esteem.

"I suppose it wouldn't do to call it the Euclid Theater?" Rose questioned casually, without moving her eyes.

"Splendid!" cried Mr. Marrier from the telephone.

"It all depends whether there are enough mathematical students in London to fill the theater for a run," said Edward Henry.

"Oh! D'you think so?" murmured Rose, surprised and vaguely puzzled.

At that instant Edward Henry might have rushed from the room and taken the night mail back to the Five Towns, and never any more have ventured into the perils of London, if Carlo Trent had not turned his head and signified by a curt reluctant laugh that he saw the joke. For Edward Henry could no longer depend on Mr. Seven Sachs. Mr. Seven Sachs had to take the greatest pains to keep the muscles of his face in strict order. The slightest laxity with them-and he would have been involved in another and more serious suffocation.

"No," said Carlo Trent, "'The Muses' Theatre' is the only possible title. There is money in the poetical drama." He looked hard at Edward Henry, as though to stare down the memory of the failure of Nashe's verse. "I don't want money. I hate the thought of money. But money is the only proof of democratic appreciation, and that is what I need, and what every artist needs… Don't you think there's money in the poetical drama, Mr. Sachs?"

"Not in America," said Mr. Sachs. "London is a queer place."

"Look at the runs of Stephen Phillips's plays!"

"Yes… I only reckon to know America."

"Look at what Pilgrim's made out of Shakespeare."

"I thought you were talking about poetry," said Edward Henry too hastily.

"And isn't Shakespeare poetry?" Carlo Trent challenged.

"Well, I suppose if you put it in that way, he is!" Edward Henry cautiously admitted, humbled. He was under the disadvantage of never having seen or read "Shakespeare." His sure instinct had always warned him against being drawn into "Shakespeare."

"And has Miss Euclid ever done anything finer than Constance?"

"I don't know," Edward Henry pleaded. "Why-Miss Euclid in 'King John'-"

"I never saw 'King John,'" said Edward Henry.

"Do you mean to say," expostulated Carlo Trent in italics, "that you never saw Rose Euclid as Constance?"

And Edward Henry, shaking his abashed head, perceived that his life had been wasted.

Carlo, for a few moments, grew reflective and softer.

"It's one of my earliest and most precious boyish memories," he murmured, as he examined the ceiling. "It must have been in eighteen-"

Rose Euclid abandoned the ice with which she had just been served, and by a single gesture drew Carlo's attention away from the ceiling and towards the fact that it would be clumsy on his part to indulge further in the chronology of her career. She began to blush again.

Mr. Marrier, now back at the table after a successful expedition, beamed over his ice:

"It was your 'Constance' that led to your friendship with the Countess of Chell, wasn't it, Ra-ose? You know," he turned to Edward Henry, "Miss Euclid and the countess are virry intimate."

"Yes, I know," said Edward Henry.

Rose Euclid continued to blush. Her agitated hand scratched the back of the chair behind her.

"Even Sir John Pilgrim admits I can act Shakespeare," she said in a thick, mournful voice, looking at the cloth as she pronounced the august name of the head of the dramatic profession. "It may surprise you to know, Mr. Machin, that about a month ago, after he'd quarrelled with Selina Gregory, Sir John asked me if I'd care to star with him on his Shakespearean tour round the world next spring, and I said I would if he'd include Carlo's poetical play, 'The Orient Pearl,' and he wouldn't! No, he wouldn't! And now he's got little Cora Pryde! She isn't twenty-two, and she's going to play Juliet! Can you imagine such a thing? As if a mere girl could play Juliet!"

Carlo observed the mature actress with deep satisfaction, proud of her, and proud also of himself.

"I wouldn't go with Pilgrim now," exclaimed Rose passionately, "not if he went down on his knees tome!"

"And nothing on earth would induce me to let him have 'The Orient Pearl'!" Carlo Trent asseverated with equal passion. "He's lost that forever," he added grimly. "It won't be he who'll collar the profits out of that! It'll just be ourselves!"

"Not if he went down on his knees to me!" Rose was repeating to herself with fervency.

The calm of despair took possession of Edward Henry. He felt that he must act immediately-he knew his own mood, by long experience. Exploring the pockets of the dressing-gown which had aroused the longing of the greatest dramatic poet in the world, he discovered in one of them precisely the piece of apparatus he required; namely, a slip of paper suitable for writing. It was a carbon duplicate of the bill for the dressing-gown, and showed the word "Drook" in massive printed black, and the figures £4-4-0 in faint blue. He drew a pencil from his waistcoat and inscribed on the paper:

"Go out, and then come back in a couple of minutes and tell me someone wants to speak to me urgently in the next room."

With a minimum of ostentation he gave the document to Joseph, who, evidently well trained under Sir Nicholas, vanished into the next room before attempting to read it.

"I hope," said Edward Henry to Carlo Trent, "that this money-making play is reserved for the new theatre."

"Utterly," said Carlo Trent.

"With Miss Euclid in the principal part?"

"Rather!" sang Mr. Marrier. "Rather!"

"I shall never, never appear at any other theatre, Mr. Machin!" said Rose with tragic emotion, once more feeling with her fingers along the back of her chair. "So I hope the building will begin at once. In less than six months we ought to open."

"Easily!" sang the optimist.

Joseph returned to the room, and sought his master's attention in a whisper.

"What is it?" Edward Henry asked irritably. "Speak up!"

"A gentleman wishes to know if he can speak to you in the next room, sir."

"Well, he can't."

"He said it was urgent, sir."

Scowling, Edward Henry rose. "Excuse me," he said. "I won't be a moment. Help yourselves to the liqueurs. You chaps can go, I fancy." The last remark was addressed to the gentlemen in waiting.

The next room was the vast bedroom with two beds in it. Edward Henry closed the door carefully, and drew the portiére across it. Then he listened. No sound penetrated from the scene of the supper.