by Unknown
At five o’clock I gave up the struggle, and rang for tea.
While I was having tea there was a ring at the bell, and my landlady brought in a large parcel.
I recognised the writing on the label. The hand was Margaret’s. I wondered in an impersonal sort of way what Margaret could be sending to me. From the feel of it the contents were paper.
It amuses me now to think that it was a good half-hour before I took the trouble to cut the string. Fortune and happiness were waiting for me in that parcel, and I would not bother to open it. I sat in my chair, smoking and thinking, and occasionally cast a gloomy eye at the parcel. But I did not open it. Then my pipe went out, and I found that I had no matches in my pocket. There were some at the farther end of the mantelpiece. I had to get up to reach them, and, once up, I found myself filled with a sufficient amount of energy to take a knife from the table and cut the string.
Languidly I undid the brown paper. The contents were a pile of typewritten pages and a letter.
It was the letter over which my glassy eyes travelled first.
“My own dear, brave, old darling James,” it began, and its purport was that she had written a play, and wished me to put my name to it and hawk it round: to pass off as my work her own amateurish effort at playwriting. Ludicrous. And so immoral, too. I had always imagined that Margaret had a perfectly flawless sense of honesty. Yet here she was asking me deliberately to impose on the credulity of some poor, trusting theatrical manager. The dreadful disillusionment of it shocked me.
Most men would have salved their wounded susceptibilities by putting a match to the manuscript without further thought or investigation.
But I have ever been haunted by a somewhat over-strict conscience, and I sat down there and then to read the stupid stuff.
At seven o’clock I was still reading.
My dinner was brought in. I bolted it with Margaret’s play propped up against the potato dish.
I read on and on. I could not leave it. Incredible as it would appear from anyone but me, I solemnly assure you that the typewritten nonsense I read that evening was nothing else than The Girl who Waited.
CHAPTER 25
BRIGGS TO THE RESCUE (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)
I finished the last page, and I laid down the typescript reverently. The thing amazed me. Unable as I was to turn out a good acting play of my own, I was, nevertheless, sufficiently gifted with an appreciation of the dramatic to be able to recognise such a play when I saw it. There were situations in Margaret’s comedy which would grip a London audience, and force laughter and tears from it…. Well, the public side of that idiotic play is history. Everyone knows how many nights it ran, and the Press from time to time tells its readers what were the profits from it that accrued to the author.
I turned to Margaret’s letter and re-read the last page. She put the thing very well, very sensibly. As I read, my scruples began to vanish. After all, was it so very immoral, this little deception that she proposed?
“I have written down the words,” she said; “but the conception is yours. The play was inspired by you. But for you I should never have begun it.” Well, if she put it like that–-
“You alone are able to manage the business side of the production. You know the right men to go to. To approach them on behalf of a stranger’s work is far less likely to lead to success.”
(True, true.)
“I have assumed, you will see, that the play is certain to be produced. But that will only be so if you adopt it as your own,”
(There was sense in this.)
“Claim the authorship, and all will be well.”
“I will,” I said.
I packed up the play in its brown paper, and rushed from the house. At the post-office, at the bottom of the King’s Road, I stopped to send a telegram. It consisted of the words, “Accept thankfully.—Cloyster.”
Then I took a cab from the rank at Sloane Square, and told the man to drive to the stage-door of the Briggs Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue.
The cab-rank in Sloane Square is really a Home for Superannuated Horses. It is a sort of equine Athenaeum. No horse is ever seen there till it has passed well into the sere and yellow. A Sloane Square cab-horse may be distinguished by the dignity of its movements. It is happiest when walking.
The animal which had the privilege of making history by conveying me and The Girl who Waited to the Briggs Theatre was asthmatic, and, I think, sickening for the botts. I had plenty of time to cool my brain and think out a plan of campaign.
Stanley Briggs, whom I proposed to try first, was the one man I should have liked to see in the part of James, the hero of the piece. The part might have been written round him.
There was the objection, of course, that The Girl who Waited was not a musical comedy, but I knew he would consider a straight play, and put it on if it suited him. I was confident that The Girl who Waited would be just what he wanted.
The problem was how to get him to himself for a sufficient space of time. When a man is doing the work of half a dozen he is likely to get on in the world, but he has, as a rule, little leisure for conversation.
My octogenarian came to a standstill at last at the stage-door, and seemed relieved at having won safely through a strenuous bit of work.
I went through in search of my man.
His dressing-room was the first place I drew. I knew that he was not due on the stage for another ten minutes. Mr. Richard Belsey, his valet, was tidying up the room as I entered.
“Mr. Briggs anywhere about, Richard?” I asked.
“Down on the side, sir, I think. There’s a new song in tonight for Mrs. Briggs, and he’s gone to listen how it goes.”
“Which side, do you know?”
“O.P., sir, I think.”
I went downstairs and through the folding-doors into the wings. The O.P. corner was packed—standing room only—and the overflow reached nearly to the doors. The Black Hole of Calcutta was roomy compared with the wings on the night of a new song. Everybody who had the least excuse for being out of his or her dressing-room at that moment was peering through odd chinks in the scenery. Chorus-girls, show-girls, chorus-men, principals, children, scene-shifters, and other theatrical fauna waited in a solid mass for the arrival of the music-cue.
The atmosphere behind the scenes has always had the effect of making me feel as if my boots were number fourteens and my hands, if anything, larger. Directly I have passed the swing-doors I shuffle like one oppressed with a guilty conscience. Outside I may have been composed, even jaunty. Inside I am hangdog. Beads of perspiration form on my brow. My collar tightens. My boots begin to squeak. I smile vacuously.
I shuffled, smiling vacuously and clutching the typescript of The Girl who Waited, to the O.P. corner. I caught the eye of a tall lady in salmon-pink, and said “Good evening” huskily—my voice is always husky behind the scenes: elsewhere it is like some beautiful bell. A piercing whisper of “Sh-h-h-!” came from somewhere close at hand. This sort of thing does not help bright and sparkling conversation. I sh-h-hed, and passed on.
At the back of the O.P. corner Timothy Prince, the comedian, was filling in the time before the next entrance by waltzing with one of the stage-carpenters. He suspended the operation to greet me.
“Hullo, dear heart,” he said, “how goes it?”
“Seen Briggs anywhere?” I asked.
“Round on the prompt side, I think. He was here a second ago, but he dashed off.”
At this moment the music-cue was given, and a considerable section of the multitude passed on to the stage.
Locomotion being rendered easier, I hurried round to the prompt side.
But when I arrived there were no signs of the missing man.
“Seen Mr. Briggs anywhere?” I asked.
“Here a moment ago,” said one of the carpenters. “He went out after Miss Lewin’s song began. I think he’s gone round the other side.”
I dashed round to the O.P. corner a
gain. He had just left.
Taking up the trail, I went to his dressing-room once more.
“You’re just too late, sir,” said Richard; “he was here a moment ago.”
I decided to wait.
“I wonder it he’ll be back soon.”
“He’s probably downstairs. His call is in another two minutes.”
I went downstairs, and waited on the prompt side. Sir Boyle Roche’s bird was sedentary compared with this elusive man.
Presently he appeared.
“Hullo, dear old boy,” he said. “Welcome to Elsmore. Come and see me before you go, will you? I’ve got an idea for a song.”
“I say,” I said, as he flitted past, “can I–-“
“Tell me later on.”
And he sprang on to the stage.
By the time I had worked my way, at the end of the performance, through the crowd of visitors who were waiting to see him in his dressing-room, I found that he had just three minutes in which to get to the Savoy to keep an urgent appointment. He explained that he was just dashing off. “I shall be at the theatre all tomorrow morning, though,” he said. “Come round about twelve, will you?”
There was a rehearsal at half-past eleven next morning. When I got to the theatre I found him on the stage. He was superintending the chorus, talking to one man about a song and to two others about motors, and dictating letters to his secretary. Taking advantage of this spell of comparative idleness, I advanced (l.c.) with the typescript.
“Hullo, old boy,” he said, “just a minute! Sit down, won’t you? Have a cigar.”
I sat down on the Act One sofa, and he resumed his conversations.
“You see, laddie,” he said, “what you want in a song like this is tune. It’s no good doing stuff that your wife and family and your aunts say is better than Wagner. They don’t want that sort of thing here—Dears, we simply can’t get on if you won’t do what you’re told. Begin going off while you’re singing the last line of the refrain, not after you’ve finished. All back. I’ve told you a hundred times. Do try and get it right—I simply daren’t look at a motor bill. These fellers at the garage cram it on—I mean, what can you do? You’re up against it—Miss Hinckel, I’ve got seventy-five letters I want you to take down. Ready? ‘Mrs. Robert Boodle, Sandringham, Mafeking Road, Balham. Dear Madam: Mr. Briggs desires me to say that he fears that he has no part to offer to your son. He is glad that he made such a success at his school theatricals.’ ‘James Winterbotham, Pleasant Cottage, Rhodesia Terrace, Stockwell. Dear Sir: Mr. Briggs desires me to say that he remembers meeting your wife’s cousin at the public dinner you mention, but that he fears he has no part at present to offer to your daughter.’ ‘Arnold H. Bodgett, Wistaria Lodge….’”
My attention wandered.
At the end of a quarter of an hour he was ready for me.
“I wish you’d have a shot at it, old boy,” he said, as he finished sketching out the idea for the lyric, “and let me have it as soon as you can. I want it to go in at the beginning of the second act. Hullo, what’s that you’re nursing?”
“It’s a play. I was wondering if you would mind glancing at it if you have time?”
“Yours?”
“Yes. There’s a part in it that would just suit you.”
“What is it? Musical comedy?”
“No. Ordinary comedy.”
“I shouldn’t mind putting on a comedy soon. I must have a look at it. Come and have a bit of lunch.”
One of the firemen came up, carrying a card.
“Hullo, what’s this? Oh, confound the feller! He’s always coming here. Look here: tell him that I’m just gone out to lunch, but can see him at three. Come along, old boy.”
He began to read the play over the coffee and cigars.
He read it straight through, as I had done.
“What rot!” he said, as he turned the last page.
“Isn’t it!” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “But won’t it go?”
“Go?” he shouted, with such energy that several lunchers spun round in their chairs, and a Rand magnate, who was eating peas at the next table, started and cut his mouth. “Go? It’s the limit! This is just the sort of thing to get right at them. It’ll hit them where they live. What made you think of that drivel at the end of Act Two?”
“Genius, I suppose. What do you think of James as a part for you?”
“Top hole. Good Lord, I haven’t congratulated you! Consider it done.”
“Thanks.”
We drained our liqueur glasses to The Girl who Waited and to ourselves.
Briggs, after a lifetime spent in doing three things at once, is not a man who lets a great deal of grass grow under his feet. Before I left him that night the “ideal cast” of the play had been jotted down, and much of the actual cast settled. Rehearsals were in full swing within a week, and the play was produced within ten days of the demise of its predecessor.
Meanwhile, the satisfactory sum which I received in advance of royalties was sufficient to remove any regrets as to the loss of the Orb holiday work. With The Girl who Waited in active rehearsal, “On Your Way” lost in importance.
CHAPTER 26
MY TRIUMPH (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)
On the morning of the day for which the production had been fixed, it dawned upon me that I had to meet Mrs. Goodwin and Margaret at Waterloo. All through the busy days of rehearsal, even on those awful days when everything went wrong and actresses, breaking down, sobbed in the wings and refused to be comforted, I had dimly recognised the fact that when I met Margaret I should have to be honest with her. Plans for evasion had been half-matured by my inventive faculties, only to be discarded, unpolished, on account of the insistent claims of the endless rehearsals. To have concocted a story with which to persuade Margaret that I stood to lose money if the play succeeded would have been a clear day’s work. And I had no clear days.
But this was not all. There was another reason. Somehow my sentiments with regard to her were changing again. It was as if I were awaking from some dream. I felt as if my eyes had been blindfolded to prevent me seeing Margaret as she really was, and that now the bandage had been removed. As the day of production drew nearer, and the play began to take shape, I caught myself sincerely admiring the girl who could hit off, first shot, the exact shade of drivel which the London stage required. What culture, what excessive brain-power she must have. How absurdly naďve, how impossibly melodramatic, how maudlinly sentimental, how improbable—in fact, how altogether womanly she must have grown.
Womanly! That did it. I felt that she was womanly. And it came about that it was my Margaret of the Cobo shrimping journeys that I was prepared to welcome as I drove that morning to Waterloo Station.
And so, when the train rolled in, and the Goodwins alighted, and Margaret kissed me, by an extraordinarily lucky chance I found that I loved her more dearly than ever.
That premičre is still fresh in my memory.
Mrs. Goodwin, Margaret, and myself occupied the stage box, and in various parts of the house I could see the familiar faces of those whom I had invited as my guests.
I felt it was the supreme event of my life. It was the moment. And surely I should have spoilt it all unless my old-time friends had been sitting near me.
Eva and Julian were with Mr. and Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell in the box opposite us. To the Barrel Club I had sent the first row of the dress circle. It was expensive, but worth it. Hatton and Sidney Price were in the stalls. Tom Blake had preferred a free pass to the gallery. Kit and Malim were at the back of the upper circle (this was, Malim told me, Kit’s own choice).
One by one the members of the orchestra took their places for the overture, and it was to the appropriate strains of “Land of Hope and Glory” that the curtain rose on the first act of my play.
The first act, I should mention (though it is no doubt superfluous to do so) is bright and suggestive, but ends on a clear, firm note of pathos. That is why, as soon as
the lights went up, I levelled my glasses at the eyes of the critics. Certainly in two cases, and, I think, in a third, I caught the glint of tear-drops. One critic was blowing his nose, another sobbed like a child, and I had a hurried vision of a third staggering out to the foyer with his hand to his eyes. Margaret was removing her own tears with a handkerchief. Mrs. Goodwin’s unmoved face may have hidden a lacerated soul, but she did not betray herself. Hers may have been the thoughts that lie too deep for tears. At any rate, she did not weep. Instead, she drew from her reticule the fragmentary writings of an early Portuguese author. These she perused during the present and succeeding entr’actes.
Pressing Margaret’s hand, I walked round to the Gunton-Cresswells’s box to see what effect the act had had on them. One glance at their faces was enough. They were long and hard. “This is a real compliment,” I said to myself, for the whole party cut me dead. I withdrew, delighted. They had come, of course, to assist at my failure. I had often observed to Julian how curiously lacking I was in dramatic instinct, and Julian had predicted to Eva and her aunt and uncle a glorious fiasco. They were furious at their hopes being so egregiously disappointed. Had they dreamt of a success they would have declined to be present. Indeed, half-way through Act Two, I saw them creeping away into the night.
The Barrel Club I discovered in the bar. As I approached, I heard Michael declare that “there’d not been such an act produced since his show was put on at–-” He was interrupted by old Maundrell asserting that “the business arranged for valet reminded him of a story about Leopold Lewis.”