Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Akroyd was just expiring when he arrived, and after waiting five minutes he was shown into his dressing-room. The actor was still a little prostrate and perspiring profusely, with his efforts, and extended a languid hand.... People sometimes said that if he acted on the stage as well as he acted off...

  “Delighted to see you, my dear fellow,” he said. “Sit down while I rest for a minute. It takes too much out of me, this last act. Cruel work! I feel the whole pulse of the theatre beating in my own veins... arteries.”

  “Strong pulse for a dying man,” observed Armstrong.

  “Yes: very good. You don’t know, you authors, how we slave for you. Well, well; as long as you give us good strong parts, we have no quarrel with you. How’s ‘Easter Eggs,’ by the way?”

  “Oh, booked full over Christmas,” said Armstrong negligently. “Such rot as it is too! I don’t wonder you refused to look at it. No strong part in it. But I’ve got something fully in my head, and partly on paper, which might suit you better. I hear that this — this present strain on you isn’t likely to continue after the middle of December. So if you feel inclined you might come round to my rooms, and you can have some supper there while I read you what I’ve done, and tell you about the rest.”

  A reassuring alacrity possessed Akroyd at this, and he made a good and steady convalescence from his prostration. He always made a point of walking home after the theatre, for the sake of his health, he said. He did not walk very fast, and often he took off his hat, and held it in his hand, so as to get the refreshing breezes of the night on his brow which “much thought expands.” His tall massive form and fine tragic face often attracted a good deal of attention, and people would whisper his name as he went by. But he put up with these small penalties of publicity: it was very good for the hair to let the wind play upon it...

  Akroyd some ten years ago had sprung to the front of his profession by his masterly acting of a comedy part which verged on farce. Since then he had drifted into noble middle-aged parts, such as bachelor marquises who made marriage possible between fine young fellows and girls whom the marquis was secretly in love with, husbands of fifty with wives of twenty-five, all those parts in fact in which Tact, Nobility, Breadth of View and Unselfish Wisdom untie knots for everybody else and give everybody else a Splendid Time. But his drifting, though in part dictated by his conviction that he handled these virtues as if born to the job, was due also to the fact that during these years he had really not been given a comedy that seemed to him worth risking. He knew he could always make a success as a prime minister or a marquis without any risk at all, and his luck, as less fortunate managers called it, was proverbial, for he never had a failure. But it was not luck at all that was responsible for these successes: it was fine business capacity, and a knowledge of what his following among play goers expected of him. He always gave the public what they expected, and then never disappointed them. But in his secret heart he had a longing (provided the risk was not too great) to play a rousing comic part again, to set his stalls laughing instead of leaving them dim-eyed. He was aware that he must do it soon if he was going to do it at all... there is an age when even the most self-reliant do not feel equal to the strain of being funny.

  “It’s rather out of your line,” said Armstrong abruptly, as he sat Akroyd down to his oysters. “But you once did a part of the same kind: it was the first play I ever saw. You were marvellously good in it.”

  “Ah, ‘The Brittlegings,’” said Akroyd, considerably stimulated. “Old history, I’m afraid. Time of the Georges.”

  “Well, it’s the time of the Georges again,” remarked Armstrong. “The play is called ‘ It’s a Long Lane that has Five Turnings.’”

  Akroyd when discussing theatrical matters always criticised freely. An author once had suggested forty-two as a suitable age for the part that he was to play.

  He had considered this and replied “Forty-three. I think forty-three.”

  “That’s a very long title,” he said.

  “It was a long Lane,” said Armstrong. “Anyhow, it is the title. Dramatis personae—”

  “Tell me what you have designed to be my part,” said Akroyd.

  “I think I shall leave you to guess. There are many points, by the way, that want discussion, and I should like your advice. But I think I will read straight through the first act without interruption.”

  Akroyd, as has been stated, was a very shrewd business man, but his keen appreciation of the wit and effectiveness of this act made it difficult for him to bring his business capacity into full working order. Many times throughout it had he checked his laughter, throughout it too had he seen himself in the glorious tragico-farcical situations provided for him, (he had no difficulty in guessing his part) in a sort of parody of his own manner. It was a brilliant piece of work, he saw himself brilliantly interpreting it. But at the end he, with an effort, put the cork into his admiration.

  “Yes, yes: very clever, very sparkling,” he said, “but hardly in my line, do you think? Hardly in yours, perhaps either. It would be taking a great risk: I should not expect there to be much money in it. Appreciative stalls perhaps: it is hard to say. However, read the scenario of the rest.”

  Frank Armstrong felt he knew quite well what this meant It was the usual decrying of work by the intending purchaser, in order to get it cheaper, and it roused in him all the resentment that as producer he had so often felt for Craddock as capitalist. He threw the manuscript onto the table, resolved to play the same game.

  “Hardly worth while,” he said. “Obviously the play doesn’t appeal to you, though I think it might have ten years ago, before you took to the heavy work business. I was thinking of you as I saw you first. Jove, it’s thirsty work reading, and now I shall have to read it all over again to somebody else to-morrow.”

  “Ah, you rush at conclusions altogether too much,” said Akroyd slightly alarmed. “Much necessarily depends on the working out of the play. It is admirably laid down: the scenes are full of wit and interest. I — I insist on hearing the rest.”

  “Shan’t bother you,” said Armstrong, taking whisky and soda, and enjoying himself keenly.

  “Then let me take it away and read it,” said Akroyd. “Really, my dear fellow, it is hardly fair to ask me here to listen to an act and the scenario of the rest, and then refuse.”

  “But I feel now I read it how much more suitable it would be for Tranby,” said Armstrong. “I will telephone to him and read it to him to-morrow. He has been asking me if I hadn’t got anything for him. I hope the oysters are good.”

  “Let me read it myself then, now,” said Akroyd, holding out a hand that almost trembled with anxiety.

  Frank gave up his obstinacy with an indifferent yawn.

  “O, well: I’ll tell you the rest of it,” he said.

  ‘But having begun, his indifference vanished, while Akroyd’s anxiety increased. To think of Tranby, his esteemed and gifted colleague, having this marvel of dexterous fooling submitted to him to-morrow, was to picture himself on, the edge of a precipice. He felt giddy, his head swam at the propinquity of that catastrophic gulf. Fortunately he could crawl away now, for Armstrong was continuing.

  Intentionally he did the utmost he could for the reading, giving drama and significance to the bare sketch. Here and there he had written upwards of a page of dialogue in his wonderful neat hand, and once, when he found a dozen lines of a speech by Akroyd, he passed them over to him, asking him to read them aloud (which he did, moving about the room with excellent gesticulations). Then as one of the ludicrous “turnings” approached Armstrong would drop his voice, speak slowly and huskily—” Surely he can’t be fooling us this time,” thought Akroyd — as the tragic moment approached. Then came another ludicrous legitimate situation of the impasse, another thwarting of ridiculous Destiny. Life became a series of brilliant conjuring tricks, all carefully explained, and the gorgeous conjuror was Akroyd.

  He felt there must be no further mention of Tranby, for
his nerves could not stand it. At the end he got up, and shook hands with Armstrong.

  “I am much obliged to you for offering me the most brilliant piece of work I have seen for years,” he said. “I will certainly accept it, and put it on when we open after Christmas. I will send you a contract to sign to-morrow—”

  Frank Armstrong lit a cigarette.

  “We might talk over the lines of it to-night,” he said. “Else perhaps I might not sign it.”

  Akroyd, as was his custom, became so great an artist and so magnificent a gentleman when any question of money was brought forward that it was almost impossible to proceed.

  “I am sure you will find my proposals framed on the most generous lines,” he said.

  Armstrong allowed the faintest shadow of a grin to hover about his mouth.

  “No doubt,” he said, “but there is no reason that you should not tell me what they are. Advance, for instance, on account of royalties. What do you propose?”

  Akroyd put a hand to his fine brow, frowning a little.

  “I think I suggested some sum to you,” he said. “Eight hundred pounds advance, was it? Something like that.”

  Again Armstrong boiled within himself.... Yet after all this was business. Akroyd wanted to pay as little as he could: he himself wanted to obtain the most possible. But it was mean, when he knew quite well that he had himself proposed a thousand pounds. It was great fun, too... the thought of Craddock now on the bosom of the treacherous Mediterranean, perhaps being sea-sick....

  “Oh, no,” he said quite good naturedly. “A thousand was the sum you proposed. But I don’t accept it.”

  The interview did not last long after this: a mere mention of Tranby’s name was enough, and a quarter of an hour afterwards Akroyd went home in a taxi (as the streets were now empty) having yielded on every point, but well pleased with his acquisition. Fifteen hundred pounds down and royalties on a high scale was a good deal to give. But it seemed to him that there was a good deal to be got Frank sat up for another half-hour alone, in a big arm-chair, hugging his knees, and occasionally bursting out into loud unaccountable laughter. What an excellent ten-minutes scene the last half-hour would make in a play called, say “The Actor Manager” or “The Middleman.” How mean people were! And how delightful fifteen hundred pounds was! But what work, what work to bring his play up to the level of the first act! But he would do it: he was not going to be content with anything but his best.

  Then he laughed again.

  “‘The Middleman... The Sweater Thwarted.’ Good play for Tranby.”

  He put down his expired pipe, and rose to open the window. The room was full of tobacco-smoke, the table hideous with remains of supper: it was all rather stale and sordid. Stale and sordid, too, now it was over, was his encounter with Akroyd, and his complete victory. He had scored, oh, yes, he had scored.

  He leaned out for a moment into the cool freshness of the night-air, that smelt of frost, finding with distaste that his coat-sleeve on which he leaned his face reeked of tobacco. It reeked of Akroyd, too, somehow, of meanness and cunning and his own superior cunning. It was much healthier out of the window....

  “Gosh, I wish I hadn’t been such a pig to that jolly fellow at the play,” he said to himself.

  CHAPTER VII

  PHILIP WROUGHTON was sitting (not on the steps, for that would have been risky, but on a cushion on the steps of the Mena Hotel) occasionally looking at his paper, occasionally looking at the Pyramids, in a state of high content To relieve the reader’s mind at once, it may be stated that Egypt thoroughly suited him, he had not sneezed nor ached nor mourned since he got here nearly a month ago. The voyage from Marseilles, it is true, had been detestably rough, but he blamed nobody for that since he had come under the benediction of the Egyptian sun, not the captain, nor Messrs. Thomas Cook & Sons, nor Joyce — nobody. This was the sun’s doing: there never was such a sun: it seemed regulated for him as a man can order the regulation of the temperature of his bath-water. It was always warm enough; it was never too hot. If you had your white umbrella you put it up; if you had forgotten it, it didn’t matter: several times he had assured Joyce that it didn’t matter. In every way he felt stronger and better than he had done for years, and to-day, greatly daring, he was going to mount himself, with assistance, on an Egyptian ass, and ride to see the Sphinx and make the tour of the great pyramid, in company with Craddock. It may be added that his reason for sitting on the hotel steps was largely in order to make a minute survey of the donkeys on hire just beyond.

  He wanted one that was not too spirited, or looked as if it wanted to canter. There was a pinkish one there that might do, but it flapped its ears in rather an ominous manner.... Perhaps Craddock would choose one for him. And glancing again at his paper he observed with singular glee that there were floods in the Thames valley.

  Lady Crowborough and Joyce had gone into Cairo that morning to do some shopping and lunch with friends. This happened with considerable frequency. Not infrequently also they went to a dinner or a dance in that gay city, and stopped the night there. These dinners and dances had at first been supposed to be for Joyce’s sake; they were actually, and now avowedly, for Lady Crowborough’s sake, though Joyce, for more reasons than one, was delighted to accompany her. On such days as the two did not go into town, it was pretty certain that small relays of British officers and others would ride out to have lunch or tea with them at Ulena, and Lady Crowborough had several new flirts. Altogether she was amazing, prodigious. She rode her donkey every morning, as beveiled as the Temple, in a blue cotton habit and with a fly-whisk, accompanied by a handsome young donkey-boy with milk white teeth, and an engaging smile. He called her “Princess,” being a shrewd young man, and it is to be feared that he was to be numbered also among the new flirts. Also, as he ran behind her donkey he used to call out in Arabic “Make way for the bride O-ah!” which used to evoke shouts of laughter from his fellows. Then Lady Crowborough would ask what he was saying that made them all laugh, and with an ingenuous smile he explained that he told the dogs to get out of the way of the Princess. “And they laugh,” he added “‘cause they very glad to see you.” This was perfectly satisfactory and she said “None of your nonsense.”

  Joyce beyond any doubt whatever was enjoying it all very much. The sun, the colour, the glories of the antique civilization, the kaleidoscopic novelties of the Oriental world, the gaiety and hospitality so lavishly welcoming her grandmother and herself, all these made to a girl accustomed to the restrictions and bondage of her dutiful filialness to a thoroughly selfish father, a perpetual festa and spectacle. But though she was in no way beginning to weary of it, or even get accustomed to it, she found as the full days went by that two questions, one retrospective, the other anticipatory, were beginning to occupy and trouble her. With regard to the future she was aware that Craddock was exercising his utmost power to please her and gratify her, and felt no doubt whatever as to what this accumulation of little benefits was leading up to. Before long she knew well he would ask her again to give him the right to think for her always, to see after her welfare in things great and small. In a hundred ways, too, she knew that her father wished him all success in his desire. Often he made dreadfully disconcerting remarks that were designed to be understood in the way Joyce understood them. “Ah, Joyce,” he would say, “Mr. Craddock as usual has seen to that for you.... I declare Mr. Craddock guesses your inclination before you know it yourself. He has ordered your donkey for half-past ten.”... She felt that assuredly Mr. Craddock was going to send his bill in—” account rendered” this time — and ask for payment. But not possibly, not conceivably could she imagine herself paying it.

  The retrospective affair occupied her more secretly, but more engrossingly. Behind all the splendour and gaiety and interest and sunlight there hung a background which concerned her more intimately than any of those things: compared with it, nothing else had colour or brightness. And her father had told her that this background was stained
and daubed with dirt, with commonness, with things not to be associated with.... Never had the subject been ever so remotely alluded to again between them: Charles’ name had not crossed her lips or his. She had never asked him who his informant was, but she felt that any such question was superfluous. She knew; her whole heart and mind told her that she knew. Whether she had ever actually believed the tale she scarcely remembered: anyhow she had accepted it as far as action went. But now, without further evidence on the subject, she utterly and passionately disbelieved it By communing with herself she had arrived at the unshakeable conviction that it not only was not, but could not be true. Through quietly thinking of Charles, through telling over, like rosary beads, the hours of their intercourse together, she had seen that. It was as clear as the simplest logical proposition.

  But she saw also that when Craddock repeated the question he had asked her last June, he would ask it far more urgently and authentically. There had been no fire behind it then: now, she saw that he was kindled. Before, he used to look at her with unconcealed glances of direct admiration, make her great speeches of open compliment, comparing her to a Greek Victory, a Bacchante. Now he looked at her more shyly, more surreptitiously, and he paid her compliments no longer, just because they no longer expressed all he had to say about her: they had become worn, like defaced coins out of currency.

  But this acquired seriousness and sincerity of feeling on his part, which before would have earned at any rate her sympathy, now, in the conviction she held that it was he who had spoken of Charles to her father, made him the more detestable as a wooer, even as in ordinary converse he now excited her disgustful antipathy. He was as pleasant, as agreeable, as clever and adaptable as before, but her conjectured knowledge had spread through his whole personality staining and poisoning it. He had thought — so she now supposed — to put a rival out of the field by this treacherous stab in the back, to unhorse him and ride over him. In that he had bitterly erred, and though still thinking he had succeeded, deep in her heart was his disgraceful failure blazoned. And daily she felt the nightmare of his renewed proposal was coming nearer. Very possibly, she thought, he was delaying speech until they should go up the Nile, and should be leading a more leisurely, and, she was afraid, a more intimate life in the comparative quietude of Luxor, where they proposed to make a long stay. For that reason, largely, she gladly joined her grandmother in her amazing activities in Cairo and gave the kindliest welcome to those pleasant young English soldiers who were so ready to come out to them.