* * * * *
I folded the paper again and handed it back. Jill Leslie was to have her chance and I was delighted, as Imogen would be when she heard the news. I was anxious, indeed, that Michael should go away so that I could telephone to Imogen. But on the other hand, if Jill made a success of it, Michael was further from his sapphire than ever. I saw again Jill Leslie clasping the jewel tight in the palm of her hand. It would only be dire want which would induce her to sell it.
“Of course,” I said — I did not think it, I did not want it; but with Crowther’s woebegone face in front of me I said what I could to comfort him— “Donald may be wrong. Jill Leslie may fail — —”
“But I don’t want her to fail,” cried Crowther, lifting up his face towards me. “That would be an evil wish.”
He was very energetic in his repulsion of the idea and very sincere. It might mean a dozen more lives in a degraded form, for all he knew, were he to let that meanness creep into his soul.
“I want her to succeed, of course,” he exclaimed. “But what am I going to do? I daren’t fail again.”
I did not like that phrase at all. Nor the look upon his face. He was living over again the three years of loneliness and defeat, his confidence and self-esteem draining from him like blood from his veins. No, he daren’t fail again — lest he should find himself face to face with a way out which he must not follow. For he must take no life, not even his own.
I thought for a little while what answer to make to that question. There was an answer, but I felt more and more certain that it must not be given now.
“I’ll tell you what I think, Michael,” I said. “You must wait. Jill Leslie won’t listen to you at the moment. She’ll be taken up with her part. She’ll probably hate you for your persistency if you approach her again. You are very likely to persuade her that she has got a talisman in that sapphire and you are trying to take it away from her. You have just got to lie low until she has made her appearance in London. I reckon that Imogen will want to go on the opening night. So we shall be back in town. We haven’t got a house yet and we shall stay at some hotel. But we’ll let you know. After all, if you remain another two months in England you’ll miss the whole of the rains in Burma.”
Michael Crowther took himself off and I rang down the curtain upon the Quest of the Sapphire for an interval of two months. At least, I thought I did. But that night there were still some words to be spoken which were to throw an unexpected but a most illuminating light upon one of the minor characters in our play.
* * * * *
Imogen and I dined in the grill-room of the Semiramis Hotel — a corner where all the tides of London met. At one table you might see the leaders of Finance bending their heads in unison like the Mandarins of a nursery. At another would be a party dining on its way to a theatre. At a third, men from the north who had backed a play, with managers, all smiles, who meant that they should never see again one farthing of the capital which — let us use the blessed word — they had invested. There would be authors with a play in their pockets, and actresses and actors on the top of the flood, and people who just enjoyed a good dinner and the to-and-fro of famous persons and infamous persons, and the vivid enjoyment of country folk up for a few nights in town. We had a table near to the entrance with a pillar at our backs, and we had hardly taken our seats before a voice which had a vague familiarity reached our ears.
“It’s just one of Donald’s stunts.”
Certainly the words could not provoke my curiosity. Donald’s stunts were a normal element in the Londoner’s life. If the lady had said: “Donald can’t think of a stunt,” then the metropolis would have held its breath until he did; and I should have looked up... as I did. But it was the sharp indignation in this faintly familiar voice which made me do it. I looked up and saw a pale, lovely, dark-haired girl standing by a table near to ours. Of course... Letty Ransome. I had heard her performance only yesterday. She was wrapped to the throat in sables and was speaking to the table’s occupants.
“It’s absurd, of course,” she went on. “Jill will never play the part in London. You can take it from me.”
Imogen had spoken of Letty Ransome as Jill Leslie’s friend when we had seen them dining together in Soho. Not much more than skin-deep, that friendship! But however frail, it did not account for the rancour in Letty’s voice.
“You finished last night, didn’t you, Letty?” asked the lady at the table who was being addressed and in a voice which, perhaps, was a trifle too sweet. So there were claws at the table, too.
“Yes. Just for the moment. I am working out a new sketch.” But the new sketch was not in her thoughts. “Yes, Jill opens in Manchester on Monday. It’s rough on her, really. What can she do, with her inexperience, except something too tragic for words?” She suddenly swept round. “Oh, darling,” she cried enthusiastically, “I was afraid that you had forgotten.”
Jill Leslie had just entered the big room.
“I couldn’t get away,” said Jill, and she saw Imogen. Her face lightened and as I stood up to greet her, I noticed with satisfaction the discomfort which showed on Letty Ransome’s face. She was probably not aware of the malevolence which had made her face ugly, and of the jealousy which had sharpened her voice till it rasped like an old saw. But she could not but know that we had heard every word that she had spoken.
Meanwhile Jill had moved forward to our table and was speaking to Imogen.
“If I can do it!” she said in a whisper.
“You will,” answered Imogen. “I’ll send you a telegram on Monday. I am really, really delighted. So is Martin.”
“You’re good friends,” said Jill Leslie. “I shall love to think that you are wishing me a little of your happiness.”
She looked from one to the other of us and shook our hands.
“Letty, I’ve had nothing to eat all day,” she said.
We heard Letty Ransome answer: “Poor darling, you must be starved!” and as they moved away: “Miaow!” said Imogen.
* * * * *
A few days afterwards we were married. We went to Paris, Fontainebleau, Munich, Venice. I am not to be blamed. Imogen must carry all the reproaches. She was definite.
“Forests, tigers and panthers are for bachelors,” she declared. “If they are clawed it’s their affair and serves them right. Adam’s Peak is for matrimonial possibles. But for honeymoons luxuries are required and luxuries are conventional.”
So we travelled on Blue Trains and occupied royal suites in Grand Hotels, and bathed in tepid seas from fashionable beaches, and knew ourselves to be incredibly blessed. But all the more we were visited with twinges of remorse on account of the two troubled ones we left behind — Michael Crowther obsessed by his idea, Jill Leslie with the ordeal of her debut in front of her. We returned to London, indeed, before our time in order to be present at the first performance of Dido.
There are many who will remember that first night. It was a riot — a riot of colour, of melodies, of dancing and broad comedy. From the opening chorus which began, so far as I can remember, thus:
Pious Æneas took his Daddy on his back —
Bless my soul what a lad!
He groaned: “It’s too bad
My infernal old Dad
He swears that he’s Troy
But he’s avoirdupoy
And I’d dump him on the sand for a drach —
Ma! Ma! Ma!”
to the finale of the fireworks at the Carthaginian Crystal Palace, it was a tumult and it ended in a tumult of an audience wild with enthusiasm. As Imogen and I made our slow way from the auditorium to the street, on all sides we heard:
“It’ll run for a year.”
“Sure thing.”
“Wasn’t that little girl good?”
And indeed from all the riot Jill Leslie had stood out daintily demure and exquisite, a Queen Dido without majesty, an Offenbach Dido, a Dido in high-heeled shoes. Whatever her faults she could sing, she appealed and she came r
ight over the footlights with something oddly virginal about her which took her audience by storm.
“Did you see?” said Imogen as we sidled this way and that through the crowd which had gathered about the doors. I had seen very distinctly. All through the performance Jill Leslie had worn, shining darkly against the satin of her breast, the blue tablet of the sapphire.
“She’ll never sell it to him,” said Imogen.
“Not after to-night,” I agreed.
There rose in front of me a picture of Michael Crowther’s tortured face. I heard him saying: “I daren’t fail again.” Absurd? Yes. One particular dark sapphire. Whether it hung round the hti of a pagoda in Burma, or round the throat of a charming, vivacious little prima donna of Comic Opera in London — what in the world did it matter? But it did matter and enormously. It mattered to Michael, for it was an expiation. It mattered to Jill, for it was the token of her passion and the epitome of her happiest days.
“I remember what you once said about it, Imogen,” I observed.
“That Michael’s only chance was to ask for it as a gift?”
“Yes.”
“But I am a great deal less confident that Jill would give it to him now,” said Imogen thoughtfully. “You see, Martin, now it’s an idea to her, too.”
I did see — and I was afraid. For if Michael did not repossess himself of it, he was as likely as not to destroy himself. Yes, I faced that contingency honestly for the first tune. There was no adequate reason, to be sure. But is there ever an adequate reason? Adequate, that is, to you and me who stand apart and look on. I had once asked Michael what he did with himself during these months of waiting.
“I take long walks in the City late at night, when the City’s empty and the streets are as hollow as a cavern,” he had answered.
I could see him tramping restlessly along those narrow corridors so thronged by day, so silent by night that every footfall would reverberate and deride; trying to tire brain and muscle; trying to numb the dreadful temptation to draw a razor across his throat and have done with it.
“Yes, Michael might kill himself,” I reflected, but I reflected aloud and Imogen turned to me with horror in her eyes.
“You don’t mean that!”
“I do.”
“Martin!” she whispered; and she stood in the side street whither we had gone in search of our car, jostled by the passers-by and unaware that she was jostled. That tragic possibility had not occurred to her till this moment, but now that it did it frightened her almost as much as it did me.
I say almost. For I was haunted by an odd sort of conjecture. Suppose that each man’s creed were true for him, if he really believed in it! Suppose that belief actually created truth instead of coming out of it! Suppose, for instance — we had found our car now — that just at this junction where Whitehall and the Strand, the Mall and Northumberland Avenue flung their traffic into Charing Cross, some huge machine bore down on us and I believed, as I did believe, that we should still be together — why, it would make very little difference. The finding of a path in a new world. The work of adapting ourselves to new surroundings. But if for Michael his creed were the truth, and he killed himself — there would be ten thousand degraded lives to be lived through as an expiation.
“We have got to stop that,” I said with a shiver, and the next morning I sent for Michael.
“You have got to tell your story and ask for that sapphire as a gift,” I said to him. “It’s your only chance.”
Michael Crowther looked at me gloomily. He was so worn with sleeplessness and anxiety that his skin had something of that transparent look which the dying wear.
“Imogen once told me that you might very likely succeed. She thought Jill had just that generosity which would give when it wouldn’t sell.”
I did not tell him that since last night her confidence had diminished. Michael’s face lightened wonderfully.
“She thinks that?”
“She thought that, when she spoke to me,” I said correcting him; and hurried on to add: “But you must wait for the right moment. You can only ask once.”
Michael drew in a deep breath.
“Yes, I can only ask once. I understand that.” He stood in a thoughtful silence with his eyes upon the floor. “Yes, I’ll choose my time. Will you thank her from me?”
Chapter 21 A Summary
I NEED ONLY summarise now the weeks which elapsed before a swift succession of events brought the history of this sapphire to a remarkable conclusion. After the resounding success of Dido, Robin Calhoun slowly emerged from his hiding-place. At the first he was rather like a turtle which pokes its head out from its shell, watching on this side and that for an enemy. But he took courage in the end and sat sleek and debonair by the side of Jill Leslie in public places. She was the bread-winner now and in the more honest way. There was a small group of people amongst whom Jill Leslie, Letty Ransome and Robin Calhoun were, if not all the most prominent, the most frequent. Letty Ransome had made a success with her new sketch, and seemed to have quite reconciled herself to the idea that her friend might have a success, too. They made their headquarters at the grill-room of the Semiramis Hotel, and more to my amusement than my astonishment, I saw Michael Crowther enrolled in their group. They were obviously not difficult. It was a society of gay spirits and light hearts rather than of brilliant wits. If you were noisy, that helped a little, but you might sit quiet if you chose. You must do your share of the entertaining — no great matter, anyway — you must not put on any airs and above all you must not be mordant at the expense of your companions. They hated sarcasm like a British soldier. Amongst them Crowther sat, kindly and gentle. He became something of a pet.
I remember that one day in early October, when Imogen and I were taking our luncheon in the grill-room, Jill Leslie drifted across the room to us. Imogen asked her how Michael got along with them and her face dimpled into smiles.
“He’s a lonesome old dear, isn’t he?” she said. “Whoever of us makes him laugh counts one.”
“And the play?” I asked.
“Fine,” said she, and she went off to her matinée.
Michael was very wisely taking his time. He had made friends and in that sort of company, generous and accustomed to incomes with lengthy intermezzos, friendship had the predominant claim. Michael was at that moment paying the bill. He was sitting against the glass screen in the inner part of the grill-room and he had as his guests Letty Ransome, Robin Calhoun, Jill Leslie who had run off to the theatre and a young author who this year had risen out of the waters.
“I wonder,” I said as I looked at Michael.
“So do I,” said Imogen. “I have been wondering some time.”
“That settles it, then,” said I, and I scribbled a line on the card which had reserved our table and sent it across the restaurant. Michael looked towards us and nodded, and when the little party had broken up he came over and sat down with us.
“We are both a trifle worried,” I said.
“Yes?”
“You’ve been in England some time now?”
“Five months.”
“Longer than you expected?”
Michael saw now the drift of these questions. He smiled at us with a sweetness of expression — I can find no other phrase, though I gladly would — which wiped away as though with a sponge the customary gravity of his face.
“Not longer than I was prepared for,” he said.
“You are quite sure of that?” Imogen asked — I think that I should say pleaded. “You see, we can help in that way.”
Michael raised his eyebrows and wrinkled his forehead and said with a whimsical air:
“If I stay in this country much longer — I shall fall into the gross error of thanking you. That would be altogether wrong. You are acquiring so much merit that you may be a king and a queen in your next life.”
“Or we may even never marry at all,” I cried enthusiastically.
“Or, if we did, we may by this tim
e have got our divorce,” cried Imogen with an even greater fervour. “Any of these great blessings may be ours, Michael. Therefore, if your bowl is empty, you need only hold it out behind you.”
“But it isn’t empty, Imogen,” said he.
“Thank you, Michael,” said she very prettily.
It was the first time he had called her by her Christian name, and she was very pleased.
“It is still just full enough,” he continued, “to last me out and carry me back to Pagan. For now I think that I shall not be long.” He drew in his breath with a gasp as he pictured to himself the moment when he must put all to the test of a girl’s generosity and whim. “One way or another, I shall know very soon.”
He spoke with so much certainty that I cried out to him:
“I believe that you have fixed a date.”
“I have,” he answered. “I could hope for no more likely moment for my petition to succeed.”
There was a confidence in his manner and a tiny note of boastfulness in his speech. I must suppose that such trifles soothed my vanity, as indicating that we poor humans lived on a plane not so noticeably lower than Michael’s. For indications that Michael was really one of us always amused and delighted me. Imogen, however, was of the more practical mind. She leaned across the table very earnestly.
“Take care, Michael! There’s one amongst your new friends who won’t let you get away with that sapphire as a present, if she can help it.”
“Letty Ransome,” said Michael, pressing his thin lips together.
“Yes, Letty Ransome,” Imogen agreed. “She’s not quite the type to let a sapphire as good as Jill’s go out of the family without making a fight for it. I don’t fancy that you could persuade her that Jill was acquiring merit by letting it hang round the top of a spire two hundred feet from the ground.”
“I have not mentioned the stone to her,” Michael answered, “although she has spoken of it to me.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 655