"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 gla.s.ses 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 gra.s.s 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 _nave_, 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 _premiere_ 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 pa.s.s 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 gla.s.ses 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.serting that "the business arranged for valet reminded him of a story about Leopold Lewis."
They, too, added their quota to my cup of pleasure by being distinctly frigid.
Ascending to the gallery I found another compliment awaiting me. Tom Blake was fast asleep. The quality of Blake"s intellect was in inverse ratio to that of Mrs. Goodwin. Neither of them appreciated the stuff that suited so well the tastes of the million; and it was consequently quite consistent that while Mrs. Goodwin dozed in spirit Tom Blake should snore in reality.
With Hatton and Price I did not come into contact. I noticed, however, that they wore an expression of relief at the enthusiastic reception my play had received.
But an encounter with Kit and Malim was altogether charming. They had had some slight quarrel on the way to the theatre, and had found a means of reconciliation in their mutual emotion at the pathos of the first act"s finale. They were now sitting hand in hand telling each other how sorry they were. They congratulated me warmly.
A couple of hours more, and the curtain had fallen.
The roar, the frenzied scene, the picture of a vast audience, half-mad with excitement--how it all comes back to me.
And now, as I sit in this quiet smoking-room of a St. Peter"s Port hotel, I hear again the shout of "Author!" I see myself again stepping forward from the wings. That short appearance of mine, that brief speech behind the footlights fixed my future....
"James Orlebar Cloyster, the plutocratic playwright, to Margaret, only daughter of the late Eugene Grandison Goodwin, LL.D."