The Old Adam Part 37

He did not know. But he knew that he had never been in a taxicab, or anywhere else, with any woman half so elegant. Her elegance flattered him enormously. Here he was, a provincial man of business, ruffling it with the best of them! ... And she was young in her worldly maturity.

Was she twenty-seven? She could not be more. She looked straight in front of her, faintly smiling.... Yes, he was fully aware that he was a married man. He had a distinct vision of the angelic Nellie, of the three children, and of his mother. But it seemed to him that his own case differed in some very subtle and yet effective manner from the similar case of any other married man. And he lived, unhara.s.sed by apprehensions, in the lively joy of the moment.

"But," she said, "I hope you won't come to see me act."

"Why?"

"Because I should prefer you not to. You would not be sympathetic to me."

"Oh, yes, I should."

"I shouldn't feel it so." And then with a swift disarrangement of all the folds of her skirt she turned and faced him. "Mr. Machin, do you know why I've let you come with me?"

"Because you're a good-natured woman," he said.

She grew even graver, shaking her head.

"No! I simply wanted to tell you that you've ruined Rose, my cousin."

"Miss Euclid? Me ruined Miss Euclid?"

"Yes. You robbed her of her theatre--her one chance."

He blushed. "Excuse me," he said, "I did no such thing. I simply bought her option from her. She was absolutely free to keep the option or let it go."

"The fact remains," said Elsie April, with humid eyes, "the fact remains that she'd set her heart on having that theatre, and you failed her at the last instant. And she has nothing, and you've got the theatre entirely in your own hands. I'm not so silly as to suppose that you can't defend yourself legally. But let me tell you that Rose went to the United States heart-broken, and she's playing to empty houses there--empty houses! Whereas she might have been here in London, interested in her theatre, and preparing for a successful season."

"I'd no idea of this," breathed Edward Henry. He was dashed. "I'm awfully sorry!"

"Yes, no doubt. But there it is!"

Silence fell. He knew not what to say. He felt himself in one way innocent, but he felt himself in another way blackly guilty. His remorse for the telephone-trick which he had practised on Rose Euclid burst forth again after a long period of quiescence simulating death, and actually troubled him.... No, he was not guilty! He insisted in his heart that he was not guilty! And yet--and yet--

No taxicab ever travelled so quickly as that taxi-cab. Before he could gather together his forces it had arrived beneath the awning of the Buckingham Palace Hotel.

His last words to her were:

"Now, I sha'nt change the day of my stone-laying. But don't worry about your conference. You know it'll be perfectly all right." He spoke archly, with a brave attempt at cajolery; but in the recesses of his soul he was not sure that she had not defeated him in this their first encounter. However, Seven Sachs might talk as he chose--she was not such a persuasive creature as all that! She had scarcely even tried to be persuasive.

At about a quarter-past six, when he saw his underling again, he said to Mr. Marrier:

"Marrier, I've got a great idea. We'll have that corner-stone-laying at night. After the theatres. Say half-past eleven. Torchlight!

Fireworks from the cranes! It'll tickle old Pilgrim to death. I shall have a marquee with match-boarding sides fixed up inside, and heat it with a few of those smokeless stoves. We can easily lay on electricity.

It will be absolutely the most sensational stone-laying that ever was.

It'll be in all the papers all over the blessed world. Think of it!

Torches! Fireworks from the cranes! ... But I won't change the day--neither for Miss April nor anybody else."

Mr. Marrier dissolved in laudations.

"Well," Edward Henry agreed with false diffidence, "it'll knock spots off some of 'em in this town!"

He felt that he had s.n.a.t.c.hed victory out of defeat. But the next moment he was capable of feeling that Elsie April had defeated him even in his victory. Anyhow, she was a most disconcerting and fancy-monopolising creature.

There was one source of unsullied gratification: he had shaved off his beard.

VI.

"Come up here, Sir John," Edward Henry called. "You'll see better, and you'll be out of the crowd. And I'll show you something."

He stood, in a fur coat, at the top of a short flight of rough-surfaced steps between two unplastered walls--a staircase which ultimately was to form part of an emergency exit from the dress-circle of the Regent Theatre. Sir John Pilgrim, also in a fur coat, stood near the bottom of the steps, with a glare of a Wells light full on him and throwing his shadow almost up to Edward Henry's feet. Around, Edward Henry could descry the vast mysterious forms of the building's skeleton--black in places, but in other places lit up by bright rays from the gaiety below, and showing glimpses of that gaiety in the occasional revelation of a woman's cloak through slits in the construction. High overhead, two gigantic cranes interlaced their arms; and even higher than the cranes, shone the stars of the clear spring night.

The hour was nearly half-past twelve. The ceremony was concluded--and successfully concluded. All London had indeed been present. Half the aristocracy of England, and far more than half the aristocracy of the London stage! The entire preciosity of the metropolis! Journalists with influence enough to plunge the whole of Europe into war! In one short hour Edward Henry's right hand (peeping out from the superb fur coat which he had had the wit to buy) had made the acquaintance of scores upon scores of the most celebrated right hands in Britain. He had the sensation that in future, whenever he walked about the best streets of the West End, he would be continually compelled to stop and chat with august and renowned acquaintances, and that he would always be taking off his hat to fine ladies who flashed by nodding from powerful motor-cars. Indeed, Edward Henry was surprised at the number of famous people who seemed to have nothing to do but attend advertising rituals at midnight or thereabouts. Sir John Pilgrim had, as Marrier predicted, attended to the advertis.e.m.e.nts. But Edward Henry had helped. And on the day itself the evening newspapers had taken the bit between their teeth and run off with the affair at a great pace. The affair was on all the contents-bills hours before it actually happened. Edward Henry had been interviewed several times, and had rather enjoyed that. Gradually he had perceived that his novel idea for a corner-stone-laying had caught the facile imagination of the London populace. For that night at least he was famous--as famous as anybody!

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. "a.s.s!" 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 s.e.xes.

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 antic.i.p.ated 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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.