"However," Mr. Sachs swept smoothly along, "that piece was a failure. And Archibald arranged to take a company to Europe with "Forty-Niners." And I was left out! This rattled me, specially after the way he liked my mandolin-playing. So I went to see him about it in his dressing-room one night, and I charged around a bit. He did rattle me! Then I rattled him. I would get an answer out of him. He said:
""I"m not in the habit of being cross-examined in my own dressing-room."
"I didn"t care what happened then, so I said:
""And I"m not in the habit of being treated as you"re treating me."
"All of a sudden he became quite quiet, and patted me on the shoulder.
"You"re getting on very well, Sachs," he said. "You"ve only been at it one year. It"s taken me twenty-five years to get where I am."
"However, I was too angry to stand for that sort of talk. I said to him:
""I daresay you"re a very great and enviable man, Mr. Florance, but I propose to save fifteen years on your twenty-five. I"ll equal or better your position in ten years."
"He shoved me out--just shoved me out of the room.... It was that that made me turn to play-writing. Florance wrote his own plays sometimes, but it was only his acting and his face that saved them. And they were too American. He never did really well outside America except in one play, and that wasn"t his own. Now I was out after money. And I still am. I wanted to please the largest possible public. So I guessed there was nothing for it but the universal appeal. I never write a play that won"t appeal to England, Germany, France just as well as to America.
America"s big, but it isn"t big enough for me.... Well, as I was saying, soon after that I got a one-act play produced at Hannibal, Missouri. And the same week there was a company at another theatre there playing the old man"s "Forty-Niners." And the next morning the theatrical critic"s article in the Hannibal _Courier-Post_ was headed: "Rival attractions. Archibald Florance"s "Forty-Niners" and new play by Seven Sachs." I cut that heading out and sent it to the old man in London, and I wrote under it, "See how far I"ve got in six months."
When he came back he took me into his company again.... What price that, eh?"
Edward Henry could only nod his head. The customarily silent Seven Sachs had little by little subdued him to an admiration as mute as it was profound.
"Nearly five years after that I got a Christmas card from old Florance. It had the usual printed wishes--"Merriest possible Christmas and so on"--but, underneath that, Archibald had written in pencil, "You"ve still five years to go." That made me roll my sleeves up, as you may say. Well, a long time after that I was standing at the corner of Broadway and Forty-fourth Street, and looking at my own name in electric letters on the Criterion Theatre. First time I"d ever seen it in electric letters on Broadway. It was the first night of "Overheard." Florance was playing at the Hudson Theatre, which is a bit higher up Forty-fourth Street, and _his_ name was in electric letters too, but further off Broadway than mine. I strolled up, just out of idle curiosity, and there the old man was standing in the porch of the theatre, all alone! "Hullo, Sachs," he said, "I"m glad I"ve seen you. It"s saved me twenty-five cents." I asked how. He said, "I was just going to send you a telegram of congratulations." He liked me, old Archibald did. He still does. But I hadn"t done with him.
I went to stay with him at his house on Long Island in the spring.
"Excuse me, Mr. Florance," I says to him. "How many companies have you got on the road?" He said, "Oh! I haven"t got many now. Five, I think." "Well," I says, "I"ve got six here in the United States, two in England, three in Austria, and one in Italy." He said, "Have a cigar, Sachs; you"ve got the goods on me!" He was living in that magnificent house all alone, with a whole regiment of servants!"
V
"Well," said Edward Henry, "you"re a great man!"
"No, I"m not," said Mr. Seven Sachs. "But my income is four hundred thousand dollars a year, and rising. I"m out after the stuff, that"s all."
"I say you are a great man!" Edward Henry repeated. Mr. Sachs"s recital had inspired him. He kept saying to himself: "And I"m a great man, too. And I"ll show "em."
Mr. Sachs, having delivered himself of his load, had now lapsed comfortably back into his original silence, and was prepared to listen. But Edward Henry, somehow, had lost the desire to enlarge on his own variegated past. He was absorbed in the greater future.
At length he said very distinctly:
"You honestly think I could run a theatre?"
"You were born to run a theatre," said Seven Sachs.
Thrilled, Edward Henry responded:
"Then I"ll write to those lawyer people, Slossons, and tell "em I"ll be around with the bra.s.s about eleven to-morrow."
Mr. Sachs rose. A clock had delicately chimed two.
"If ever you come to New York, and I can do anything for you--" said Mr. Sachs, heartily.
"Thanks," said Edward Henry. They were shaking hands. "I say," Edward Henry went on. "There"s one thing I want to ask you. Why _did_ you promise to back Rose Euclid and her friends? You must surely have known--" He threw up his hands.
Mr. Sachs answered:
"I"ll be frank with you. It was her cousin that persuaded me into it--Elsie April."
"Elsie April? Who"s she?"
"Oh! You must have seen them about together--her and Rose Euclid!
They"re nearly always together."
"I saw her in the restaurant here to-day with a rather jolly girl--blue hat."
"That"s the one. As soon as you"ve made her acquaintance you"ll understand what I mean," said Mr. Seven Sachs.
"Ah! But I"m not a bachelor like you," Edward Henry smiled archly.
"Well, you"ll see when you meet her," said Mr. Sachs. Upon which enigmatic warning he departed, and was lost in the immense glittering nocturnal silence of Wilkins"s.
Edward Henry sat down to write to Slossons by the 3 A.M. post. But as he wrote he kept saying to himself: "So Elsie April"s her name, is it?
And she actually persuaded Sachs--Sachs--to make a fool of himself!"
CHAPTER VI
LORD WOLDO AND LADY WOLDO
I
The next morning, Joseph, having opened wide the window, informed his master that the weather was bright and sunny, and Edward Henry arose with just that pleasant degree of fatigue which persuades one that one is if anything rather more highly vitalized than usual. He sent for Mr. Bryany, as for a domestic animal, and Mr. Bryany, ceremoniously attired, was received by a sort of jolly king who happened to be tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his beard in the royal bathroom but who was too good-natured to keep Mr. Bryany waiting. It is remarkable how the habit of royalty, having once taken root, will flourish in the minds of quite unmonarchical persons. Edward Henry first inquired after the health of Mr. Seven Sachs, and then obtained from Mr. Bryany all remaining papers and trifles of information concerning the affair of the option.
Whereupon Mr. Bryany, apparently much elated by the honour of an informal reception, effusively retired. And Edward Henry too was so elated, and his faith in life so renewed and invigorated, that he said to himself:
"It might be worth while to shave my beard off, after all!"
As in his electric brougham he drove along muddy and shining Piccadilly, he admitted that Joseph"s account of the weather had been very accurate. The weather was magnificent; it presented the best features of summer combined with the salutary pungency of autumn. And flags were flying over the establishments of tobacconists, soothsayers and insurance companies in Piccadilly. And the sense of Empire was in the very air, like an intoxication. And there was no place like London. When, however, having run through Piccadilly into streets less superb, he reached the Majestic, it seemed to him that the Majestic was not a part of London, but a bit of the provinces surrounded by London. He was very disappointed with the Majestic, and took his letters from the clerk with careless condescension. In a few days the Majestic had sunk from being one of "London"s huge caravanserais" to the level of a swollen Turk"s Head. So fragile are reputations!
From the Majestic Edward Henry drove back into the regions of Empire, between Piccadilly and Regent Street, and deigned to call upon his tailors. A morning-suit which he had commanded being miraculously finished, he put it on, and was at once not only spectacularly but morally regenerated. The old suit, though it had cost five guineas in its time, looked a paltry and a dowdy thing as it lay, flung down anyhow, on one of Messrs Quayther & Cuthering"s cane chairs in the mirrored cubicle where baronets and even peers showed their braces to the benign Mr. Cuthering.
"I want to go to Piccadilly Circus now. Stop at the fountain," said Edward Henry to his chauffeur. He gave the order somewhat defiantly, because he was a little self-conscious in the new and gleaming suit, and because he had an absurd idea that the chauffeur might guess that he, a provincial from the Five Towns, was about to venture into West End theatrical enterprise and sneer at him accordingly.
But the chauffeur merely touched his cap with an indifferent and lofty gesture, as if to say:
"Be at ease. I have driven persons more moon-struck even than you.