The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure

"There is a telephone in this room, isn't there?" he said to Joseph. "Oh, yes; there it is! Well, you can go."

"Yes, sir."

Edward Henry sat down on one of the beds by the hook on which hung the telephone. And he cogitated upon the characteristics of certain members of the party which he had just left. "I'm a 'virgin mind,' am I?" he thought. "I'm a 'clean slate'? Well! … Their notion of business is to begin by discussing the name of the theatre! And they haven't even taken up the option! Ye gods! 'Intellectual!' 'Muses!' 'The Orient Pearl.' And she's fifty-that I swear! Not a word yet of real business-not one word! He may be a poet. I dare say he is. He's a conceited ass. Why, even Bryany was better than that lot. Only Sachs turned Bryany out. I like Sachs. But he won't open his mouth… 'Capitalist!' Well, they spoilt my appetite, and I hate champagne! … The poet hates money… No, he 'hates the thought of money.' And she's changing her mind the whole blessed time! A month ago she'd have gone over to Pilgrim, and the poet too, like a house a fire! … Photographed indeed! The bally photographer will be here in a minute! … They take me for a fool! … Or don't they know any better? … Anyhow, I am a fool… I must teach 'em summat!"

He seized the telephone.

"Hello!" he said into it. "I want you to put me on to the drawing-room of Suite No. 48, please. Who? Oh, me! I'm in the bedroom of Suite No. 48. Machin, Alderman Machin. Thanks. That's all right."

He waited. Then he heard Marrier's Kensingtonian voice in the telephone, asking who he was.

"Is that Mr. Machin's room?" he continued, imitating with a broad farcical effect the acute Kensingtonianism of Mr. Marrier's tones. "Is Miss Ra-ose Euclid there? Oh! She is? Well, you tell her that Sir John Pilgrim's private secretary wishes to speak to her. Thanks. All right. I'llhold the line."

A pause. Then he heard Rose's voice in the telephone, and he resumed:

"Miss Euclid? Yes. Sir John Pilgrim. I beg pardon! Banks? Oh, Banks! No, I'm not Banks. I suppose you mean my predecessor. He's left. Left last week. No, I don't know why. Sir John instructs me to ask if you and Mr. Trent could lunch with him to-morrow at wun-thirty? What? Oh! At his house. Yes. I mean flat. Flat! I said flat. You think you could?"

Pause. He could hear her calling to Carlo Trent.

"Thanks. No, I don't know exactly," he went on again. "But I know the arrangement with Miss Pryde is broken off. And Sir John wants a play at once. He told me that. At once! Yes. 'The Orient Pearl.' That was the title. At the Royal first, and then the world's tour. Fifteen months at least, in all, so I gathered. Of course I don't speak officially. Well, many thanks. Saoo good of you. I'll tell Sir John it's arranged. One-thirty to-morrow. Good-bye!"

He hung up the telephone. The excited, eager, effusive tones of Rose Euclid remained in his ears. Aware of a strange phenomenon on his forehead, he touched it. He was perspiring.

"I'll teach 'em a thing or two," he muttered.

And again:

"Serves her right… 'Never, never appear at any other theatre, Mr. Machin!' … 'Bended knees!' … 'Utterly!' … Cheerful partners! Oh, cheerful partners!"

He returned to his supper-party. Nobody said a word about the telephoning. But Rose Euclid and Carlo Trent looked even more like conspirators than they did before; and Mr. Marrier's joy in life seemed to be just the least bit diminished.

"So sorry!" Edward Henry began hurriedly, and, without consulting the poet's wishes, subtly turned on all the lights. "Now, don't you think we'd better discuss the question of taking up the option? You know, it expires on Friday."

"No," said Rose Euclid girlishly. "It expires to-morrow. That's why it's so fortunate we got hold of you to-night."

"But Mr. Bryany told me Friday. And the date was clear enough on the copy of the option he gave me."

"A mistake of copying," beamed Mr. Marrier. "However, it's all right."

"Well," observed Edward Henry with heartiness, "I don't mind telling you that for sheer calm coolness you take the cake. However, as Mr. Marrier so ably says, it's all right. Now, I understand if I go into this affair I can count on you absolutely, and also on Mr. Trent's services." He tried to talk as if he had been diplomatising with actresses and poets all his life.

"Absolutely!" said Rose.

And Mr. Carlo Trent nodded.

"You Iscariots!" Edward Henry addressed them, in the silence of the brain, behind his smile. "You Iscariots!"

The photographer arrived with certain cases, and at once Rose Euclid and Carlo Trent began instinctively to pose.

"To think," Edward Henry pleasantly reflected, "that they are hugging themselves because Sir John Pilgrim's secretary happened to telephone just while I was out of the room!"

CHAPTER V

MR. SACHS TALKS

I

It was the sudden flash of the photographer's magnesium light, plainly felt by him through his closed lids, that somehow instantly inspired Edward Henry to a definite and ruthless line of action. He opened his eyes and beheld the triumphant group, and the photographer himself, victorious over even the triumphant, in a superb pose that suggested that all distinguished mankind in his presence was naught but food for the conquering camera. The photographer smiled indulgently, and his smile said: "Having been photographed by me, you have each of you reached the summit of your career. Be content. Retire! Die! Destiny is accomplished!"

"Mr. Machin," said Rose Euclid, "I do believe your eyes were shut!"

"So do I!" Edward Henry curtly agreed.

"But you'll spoil the group!"

"Not a bit of it!" said Edward Henry. "I always shut my eyes when I'm being photographed by flash-light. I open my mouth instead. So long as something's open, what does it matter?"

The truth was that only in the nick of time had he, by a happy miracle of ingenuity, invented a way of ruining the photograph. The absolute necessity for its ruin had presented itself to him rather late in the proceedings, when the photographer had already finished arranging the hands and shoulders of everybody in an artistic pattern. The photograph had to be spoilt for the imperative reason that his mother, though she never read a newspaper, did as a fact look at a picture newspaper, The Daily Film, which from pride she insisted on paying for out of her own purse, at the rate of one halfpenny a day. Now The Daily Film specialised in theatrical photographs, on which it said it spent large sums of money; and Edward Henry in a vision had seen the historic group in a future issue of the Film. He had also, in the same vision, seen his mother conning the said issue, and the sardonic curve of her lips as she recognised her son therein, and he had even heard her dry, cynical, contemptuous exclamation: "Bless us!" He could never have looked squarely in his mother's face again if that group had appeared in her chosen organ! Her silent and grim scorn would have crushed his self-conceit to a miserable, hopeless pulp. Hence his resolve to render the photograph impossible.

"Perhaps I'd better take another one?" the photographer suggested. "Though I think Mr. – er-Machin was all right." At the supreme crisis the man had been too busy with his fireworks to keep a watch on every separate eye and mouth of the assemblage.

"Of course I was all right!" said Edward Henry, almost with brutality. "Please take that thing away as quickly as you can. We have business to attend to."

"Yes, sir," agreed the photographer, no longer victorious.

Edward Henry rang the bell, and two gentlemen in waiting arrived.

"Clear this table immediately!"

The tone of the command startled everybody except the gentlemen in waiting and Mr. Seven Sachs. Rose Euclid gave vent to her nervous giggle. The poet and Mr. Marrier tried to appear detached and dignified, and succeeded in appearing guiltily confused-for which they contemned themselves. Despite their volition, the glances of all three of them too clearly signified: "This capitalist must be humoured. He has an unlimited supply of actual cash, and therefore he has the right to be peculiar. Moreover, we know that he is a card…" And, curiously, Edward Henry himself was deriving great force of character from the simple reflection that he had indeed a lot of money, real available money, his to do utterly as he liked with it, hidden in a secret place in that very room. "I'll show 'em what's what!" he privately mused. "Celebrities or not, I'll show 'em! If they think they can come it over me-!"

It was, I regret to say, the state of mind of a bully. Such is the noxious influence of excessive coin!

He reproached the greatest actress and the greatest dramatic poet for deceiving him, and quite ignored the nevertheless fairly obvious fact that he had first deceived them.

"Now then," he began, with something of the pomposity of a chairman at a directors' meeting, as soon as the table had been cleared and the room emptied of gentlemen in waiting and photographer and photographic apparatus, "let us see exactly where we stand."

He glanced specially at Rose Euclid, who with an air of deep business acumen returned the glance.

"Yes," she eagerly replied, as one seeking after righteousness, "do let's see."

"The option must be taken up to-morrow. Good! That's clear. It came rather casual-like, but it's now clear. £4,500 has to be paid down to buy the existing building on the land and so on… Eh?"

"Yes. Of course Mr. Bryany told you all that, didn't he?" said Rose brightly.

"Mr. Bryany did tell me," Edward Henry admitted sternly. "But if Mr. Bryany can make a mistake in the day of the week he might make a mistake in a few naughts at the end of a sum of money."

Suddenly Mr. Seven Sachs startled them all by emerging from his silence with the words:

"The figure is O.K."

Instinctively Edward Henry waited for more; but no more came. Mr. Seven Sachs was one of those rare and disconcerting persons who do not keep on talking after they have finished. He resumed his tranquillity, he re-entered into his silence, with no symptom of self-consciousness, entirely cheerful and at ease. And Edward Henry was aware of his observant and steady gaze. Edward Henry said to himself: "This man is expecting me to behave in a remarkable way. Bryany has been telling him all about me, and he is waiting to see if I really am as good as my reputation. I have just got to be as good as my reputation!" He looked up at the electric chandelier, almost with regret that it was not gas. One cannot light one's cigarette by twisting a hundred-pound bank-note and sticking it into an electric chandelier. Moreover, there were some thousands of matches on the table. Still further, he had done the cigarette-lighting trick once for all. A first-class card must not repeat himself.

"This money," Edward Henry proceeded, "has to be paid to Slossons, Lord Woldo's solicitors, to-morrow, Wednesday, rain or shine?" He finished the phrase on a note of interrogation, and as nobody offered any reply, he rapped on the table, and repeated, half menacingly: "Rain or shine!"

"Yes," said Rose Euclid, leaning timidly forward, and taking a cigarette from a gold case that lay on the table. All her movements indicated an earnest desire to be thoroughly businesslike.

"So that, Miss Euclid," Edward Henry continued impressively but with a wilful touch of incredulity, "you are in a position to pay your share of this money to-morrow?"

"Certainly!" said Miss Euclid. And it was as if she had said, aggrieved: "Can you doubt my honour?"

"To-morrow morning?"

"Ye-es."

"That is to say, to-morrow morning you will have £2,250 in actual cash-coin, notes-actually in your possession?"

Miss Euclid's disengaged hand was feeling out behind her again for some surface upon which to express its emotion and hers.

"Well-" she stopped, flushing.

("These people are astounding," Edward Henry reflected, like a god. "She's not got the money. I knew it!")

"It's like this, Mr. Machin," Marrier began.

"Excuse me, Mr. Marrier," Edward Henry turned on him, determined if he could to eliminate the optimism from that beaming face. "Any friend of Miss Euclid's is welcome here, but you've already talked about this theatre as 'ours,' and I just want to know where you come in."

"Where I come in?" Marrier smiled, absolutely unperturbed. "Miss Euclid has appointed me general manajah."

"At what salary, if it isn't a rude question?"

"Oh! We haven't settled details yet. You see the theatre isn't built yet."

"True!" said Edward Henry. "I was forgetting! I was thinking for the moment that the theatre was all ready and going to be opened to-morrow night with 'The Orient Pearl.' Have you had much experience of managing theatres, Mr. Marrier? I suppose you have."

"Eho, yes!" exclaimed Mr. Marrier. "I began life as a lawyah's clerk, but-"

"So did I," Edward Henry interjected.

"How interesting!" Rose Euclid murmured with fervency, after puffing forth a long shaft of smoke.

"However, I threw it up," Marrier went on.

"I didn't," said Edward Henry. "I got thrown out!"

Strange that in that moment he was positively proud of having been dismissed from his first situation! Strange that all the company, too, thought the better of him for having been dismissed! Strange that Marrier regretted that he also had not been dismissed! But so it was. The possession of much ready money emits a peculiar effluence in both directions-back to the past, forward into the future.

"I threw it up," said Marrier, "because the stage had an irresistible attraction for me. I'd been stage-manajah for an amateur company, you knaoo. I found a shop as stage-manajah of a company touring 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I stuck to that for six years, and then I threw that up too. Then I've managed one of Miss Euclid's provincial tours. And since I met our friend Trent, I've had the chance to show what my ideas about play-producing really are. I fancy my production of Trent's one-act play won't be forgotten in a hurry… You know-'The Nymph?' You read about it, didn't you?"

"I did not," said Edward Henry. "How long did it run?"

"Oh! it didn't run. It wasn't put on for a run. It was part of one of the Sunday-night shows of the Play-Producing Society, at the Court Theatre. Most intellectual people in London, you know. No such audience anywhere else in the wahld!" His rather chubby face glistened and shimmered with enthusiasm. "You bet!" he added. "But that was only by the way. My real game is management-general management. And I think I may say I know what it is."

"Evidently!" Edward Henry concurred. "But shall you have to give up any other engagement in order to take charge of the Muses' Theatre? Because if so-"

Mr. Marrier replied:

"No."

Edward Henry observed:

"Oh!"

"But," said Marrier reassuringly, "if necessary I would throw up any engagement-you understand me, any-in favour of the Intellectual Theatah as I prefer to call it. You see, as I own part of the option-"

By these last words Edward Henry was confounded, even to muteness.

"I forgot to mention, Mr. Machin," said Rose Euclid very quickly. "I've disposed of a quarter of my half of the option to Mr. Marrier. He fully agreed with me it was better that he should have a proper interest in the theatre."

"Why of course!" cried Mr. Marrier, uplifted.

"Let me see," said Edward Henry, after a long breath, "a quarter-that makes it that you have to find £562 10s, to-morrow, Mr. Marrier."

"Yes."

"To-morrow morning-you'll be all right?"

"Well, I won't swear for the morning, but I shall turn up with the stuff in the afternoon anyhow. I've two men in tow, and one of them's a certainty."

"Which?"

"I don't know which," said Mr. Marrier. "Howevah, you may count on yours sincerely, Mr. Machin."

There was a pause.

"Perhaps I ought to tell you," Rose Euclid smiled, "perhaps I ought to tell you that Mr. Trent is also one of our partners. He has taken another quarter of my half."

Edward Henry controlled himself.

"Excellent!" said he with glee. "Mr. Trent's money all ready too?"

"I am providing most of it-temporarily," said Rose Euclid.

"I see. Then I understand you have your three quarters of £2,250 all ready in hand."

She glanced at Mr. Seven Sachs.

"Have I, Mr. Sachs?"

And Mr. Sachs, after an instant's hesitation, bowed in assent.

"Mr. Sachs is not exactly going into the speculation, but he is lending us money on the security of our interests. That's the way to put it, isn't it, Mr. Sachs?"

Mr. Sachs once more bowed.

And Edward Henry exclaimed:

"Now I really do see!"

He gave one glance across the table at Mr. Seven Sachs, as who should say: "And have you too allowed yourself to be dragged into this affair? I really thought you were cleverer. Don't you agree with me that we're both fools of the most arrant description?" And under the brief glance Mr. Seven Sachs's calm deserted him as it had never deserted him on the stage, where for over fifteen hundred nights he had withstood the menace of revolvers, poison, and female treachery through three hours and four acts without a single moment of agitation.

Apparently Miss Rose Euclid could exercise a siren's charm upon nearly all sorts of men. But Edward Henry knew one sort of men upon whom she could not exercise it; namely, the sort of men who are born and bred in the Five Towns. His instinctive belief in the Five Towns as the sole cradle of hard practical common sense was never stronger than just now. You might by wiles get the better of London and America, but not of the Five Towns. If Rose Euclid were to go around and about the Five Towns trying to do the siren business, she would pretty soon discover that she was up against something rather special in the way of human nature!

Why, the probability was that these three-Rose Euclid (only a few hours since a glorious name and legend to him), Carlo Trent, and Mr. Marrier-could not at that moment produce even ten pounds between them! … And Marrier offering to lay fivers! … He scornfully pitied them. And he was not altogether without pity for Seven Sachs, who had doubtless succeeded in life by sheer accident and knew no more than an infant what to do with his too easily earned money.

II

"Well," said Edward Henry, "shall I tell you what I've decided?"

"Please do!" Rose Euclid entreated him.

"I've decided to make you a present of my half of the option."

"But aren't you going in with us?" exclaimed Rose, horror-struck.

"No, madam."

"But Mr. Bryany told us positively you were! He said it was all arranged!"

"Mr. Bryany ought to be more careful," said Edward Henry. "If he doesn't mind, he'll be telling a downright lie some day."

"But you bought half the option!"

"Well," said Edward Henry, reasoning. "What is an option? What does it mean? It means you are free to take something or leave it. I'm leaving it."

"But why?" demanded Mr. Marrier, gloomier.

Carlo Trent played with his eye-glasses and said not a word.

"Why?" Edward Henry replied. "Simply because I feel I'm not fitted for the job. I don't know enough. I don't understand. I shouldn't go the right way about the affair. For instance, I should never have guessed by myself that it was the proper thing to settle the name of the theatre before you'd got the lease of the land you're going to build it on. Then I'm old-fashioned. I hate leaving things to the last moment; but seemingly there's only one proper moment in these theatrical affairs, and that's the very last. I'm afraid there'd be too much trusting in Providence for my taste. I believe in trusting in Providence, but I can't bear to see Providence overworked. And I've never even tried to be intellectual, and I'm a bit frightened of poetry plays-"

"But you've not read my play!" Carlo Trent mutteringly protested.

"That is so," admitted Edward Henry.

"Will you read it?"

"Mr. Trent," said Edward Henry. "I'm not so young as I was."

"We're ruined!" sighed Rose Euclid with a tragic gesture.

"Ruined?" Edward Henry took her up, smiling. "Nobody is ruined who knows where he can get a square meal. Do you mean to tell me you don't know where you're going to lunch to-morrow?" And he looked hard at her.

It was a blow. She blenched under it.

"Oh, yes," she said, with her giggle, "I know that."

("Well you just don't!" he answered her in his heart. "You think you're going to lunch with John Pilgrim. And you aren't. And it serves you right!")

"Besides," he continued aloud, "how can you say you're ruined when I'm making you a present of something that I paid £100 for?"

"But where am I to find the other half of the money-£2,250?" she burst out. "We were depending absolutely on you for it. If I don't get it, the option will be lost, and the option's very valuable."

"All the easier to find the money then!"

"What? In less than twenty-four hours? It can't be done. I couldn't get it in all London."

"Mr. Marrier will get it for you … one of his certainties!" Edward Henry smiled in the Five Towns' manner.

"I might, you knaoo!" said Marrier, brightening to full hope in the fraction of a second.

But Rose Euclid only shook her head.

"Mr. Seven Sachs, then?" Edward Henry suggested.

"I should have been delighted," said Mr. Sachs with the most perfect gracious tranquillity. "But I cannot find another £2,250 to-morrow."

"I shall just speak to that Mr. Bryany!" said Rose Euclid, in the accents of homicide.

"I think you ought to," Edward Henry concurred. "But that won't help things. I feel a little responsible, especially to a lady. You have a quarter of the whole option left in your hands, Miss Euclid. I'll pay you at the same rate as Bryany sold to me. I gave £100 for half. Your quarter is therefore worth £50. Well, I'll pay you £50."

"And then what?"

"Then let the whole affair slide."

"But that won't help me to my theatre!" Rose Euclid said, pouting. She was now decidedly less unhappy than her face pretended, because Edward Henry had reminded her of Sir John Pilgrim, and she had dreams of world triumphs for herself and for Carlo Trent's play. She was almost glad to be rid of all the worry of the horrid little prospective theatre.

"I have bank-notes," cooed Edward Henry softly.

Her head sank.

Edward Henry rose in the incomparable yellow dressing-gown and walked to and fro a little, and then from his secret store he produced a bundle of notes, and counted out five tens and, coming behind Rose, stretched out his arm and laid the treasure on the table in front of her under the brilliant chandelier.

"I don't want you to feel you have anything against me," he cooed still more softly.

Silence reigned. Edward Henry resumed his chair and gazed at Rose Euclid. She was quite a dozen years older than his wife, and she looked more than a dozen years older. She had no fixed home, no husband, no children, no regular situation. She accepted the homage of young men, who were cleverer than herself save in one important respect. She was always in and out of restaurants and hotels and express trains. She was always committing hygienic indiscretions. She could not refrain from a certain girlishness which, having regard to her years, her waist, and her complexion, was ridiculous. His wife would have been afraid of her, and would have despised her, simultaneously. She was coarsened by the continual gaze of the gaping public. No two women could possibly be more utterly dissimilar than Rose Euclid and the cloistered Nellie… And yet, as Rose Euclid's hesitant fingers closed on the bank-notes with a gesture of relief, Edward Henry had an agreeable and kindly sensation that all women were alike, after all, in the need of a shield, a protection, a strong and generous male hand. He was touched by the spectacle of Rose Euclid, as naïve as any young lass when confronted by actual bank-notes; and he was touched also by the thought of Nellie and the children afar off, existing in comfort and peace, but utterly, wistfully, dependent on himself.

"And what about me?" growled Carlo Trent.

"You?"

The fellow was only a poet. He negligently dropped him five fivers, his share of the option's value.

Mr. Marrier said nothing, but his eye met Edward Henry's, and in silence five fivers were meted out to Mr. Marrier also… It was so easy to delight these persons who apparently seldom set eyes on real ready money.