CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1.
The violins soared to one last high note: the bassoon uttered a final
moan: the pensive person at the end of the orchestra-pit, just under
Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim's box, whose duty it was to slam the drum at
stated intervals, gave that much-enduring instrument a concluding
wallop; and, laying aside his weapons, allowed his thoughts to stray
in the direction of cooling drinks. Mr Saltzburg lowered the baton
which he had stretched quivering towards the roof and sat down and
mopped his forehead. The curtain fell on the first act of "The Rose
of America," and simultaneously tremendous applause broke out from
all over the Gotham Theatre, which was crammed from floor to roof
with that heterogeneous collection of humanity which makes up the
audience of a New York opening performance. The applause continued
like the breaking of waves on a stony beach. The curtain rose and
fell, rose and fell, rose and fell again. An usher, stealing down the
central aisle, gave to Mr Saltzburg an enormous bouquet of American
Beauty roses, which he handed to the prima donna, who took it with a
brilliant smile and a bow nicely combining humility with joyful
surprise. The applause, which had begun to slacken, gathered strength
again. It was a superb bouquet, nearly as big as Mr Saltzburg
himself. It had cost the prima donna close on a hundred dollars that
morning at Thorley's, but it was worth every cent of the money.
The house-lights went up. The audience began to move up the aisles to
stretch its legs and discuss the piece during the intermission. There
was a general babble of conversation. Here, a composer who had not
got an interpolated number in the show was explaining to another
composer who had not got an interpolated number in the show the exact
source from which a third composer who had got an interpolated number
in the show had stolen the number which he had got interpolated.
There, two musical comedy artistes who were temporarily resting were
agreeing that the prima donna was a dear thing but that, contrary as
it was to their life-long policy to knock anybody, they must say that
she was beginning to show the passage of the years a trifle and ought
to be warned by some friend that her career as an ingenue was a thing
of the past. Dramatic critics, slinking in twos and threes into dark
corners, were telling each other that "The Rose of America" was just
another of those things but it had apparently got over. The general
public was of the opinion that it was a knock-out.
"Otie darling," said Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim, leaning her ample
shoulder on Uncle Chris' perfectly fitting sleeve and speaking across
him to young Mr Pilkington, "I do congratulate you, dear. It's
perfectly delightful! I don't know when I have enjoyed a musical
piece so much. Don't you think it's perfectly darling, Major Selby?"
"Capital!" agreed that suave man of the world, who had been bored as
near extinction as makes no matter. "Congratulate you, my boy!"
"You clever, clever thing!" said Mrs Peagrim, skittishly striking her
nephew on the knee with her fan. "I'm proud to be your aunt! Aren't
you proud to know him, Mr Rooke?"
The fourth occupant of the box awoke with a start from the species of
stupor into which he had been plunged by the spectacle of the
McWhustle of McWhustle in action. There had been other dark moments
in Freddie's life. Once, back in London, Parker had sent him out into
the heart of the West End without his spats and he had not discovered
their absence till he was half-way up Bond Street. On another
occasion, having taken on a stranger at squash for a quid a game, he
had discovered too late that the latter was an ex-public-school
champion. He had felt gloomy when he had learned of the breaking-off
of the engagement between Jill Mariner and Derek Underhill, and sad
when it had been brought to his notice that London was giving Derek
the cold shoulder in consequence. But never in his whole career had
he experienced such gloom and such sadness as had come to him that
evening while watching this unspeakable person in kilts murder the
part that should have been his. And the audience, confound them, had
roared with laughter at every damn silly thing the fellow had said!
"Eh?" he replied. "Oh, yes, rather, absolutely!"
"We're _all_ proud of you, Otie darling," proceeded Mrs Peagrim. "The
piece is a wonderful success. You will make a fortune out of it. And
just think, Major Selby, I tried my best to argue the poor, dear boy
out of putting it on! I thought it was so rash to risk his money in a
theatrical venture. But then," said Mrs Peagrim in extenuation, "I
had only seen the piece when it was done at my house at Newport, and
of course it really was rather dreadful nonsense then! I might have
known that you would change it a great deal before you put it on in
New York. As I always say, plays are not written, they are rewritten!
Why, you have improved this piece a hundred per cent, Otie! I
wouldn't know it was the same play!"
She slapped him smartly once more with her fan, ignorant of the
gashes she was inflicting. Poor Mr Pilkington was suffering twin
torments, the torture of remorse and the agonized jealousy of the
unsuccessful artist. It would have been bad enough to have to sit and
watch a large audience rocking in its seats at the slap-stick comedy
which Wally Mason had substituted for his delicate social satire:
but, had this been all, at least he could have consoled himself with
the sordid reflection that he, as owner of the piece, was going to
make a lot of money out of it. Now, even this material balm was
denied him. He had sold out, and he was feeling like the man who
parts for a song with shares in an apparently goldless gold mine,
only to read in the papers next morning that a new reef has been
located. Into each life some rain must fall. Quite a shower was
falling now into young Mr. Pilkington's.
"Of course," went on Mrs Peagrim, "when the play was done at my
house, it was acted by amateurs. And you know what amateurs are! The
cast tonight is perfectly splendid. I do think that Scotchman is the
most killing creature! Don't you think he is wonderful, Mr. Rooke?"
We may say what we will against the upper strata of Society, but it
cannot be denied that breeding tells. Only by falling back for
support on the traditions of his class and the solid support of a
gentle upbringing was the Last of the Rookes able to crush down the
words that leaped to his lips and to substitute for them a politely
conventional agreement. If Mr Pilkington was feeling like a too
impulsive seller of gold-mines, Freddie's emotions were akin to those
of the Spartan boy with the fox under his vest. Nothing but
Winchester and Magdalen could have produced the smile which, though
twisted and confined entirely to his lips, flashed onto his face and
off again at his hostess' question.
"Oh, rather! Priceless!"
"Wasn't that part an Englishman before?" asked Mrs Peagrim. "I
thought so. Well, it was a stroke of genius changing it. This
Scotchman is too funny for words. And such an artist!"
Freddie rose shakily. One can stand just so much.
"Think," he mumbled, "I'll be pushing along and smoking a cigarette."
He groped his way to the door.
"I'll come with you, Freddie my boy," said Uncle Chris, who felt an
imperative need of five minutes' respite from Mrs Peagrim. "Let's get
out into the air for a moment. Uncommonly warm it is here."
Freddie assented. Air was what he felt he wanted most.
Left alone in the box with her nephew, Mrs Peagrim continued for some
moments in the same vein, innocently twisting the knife in the open
wound. It struck her from time to time that darling Otie was perhaps
a shade unresponsive, but she put this down to the nervous strain
inseparable from a first night of a young author's first play.
"Why," she concluded, "you will make thousands and thousands of
dollars out of this piece. I am sure it is going to be another 'Merry
Widow.'"
"You can't tell from a first night audience," said Mr Pilkington
sombrely, giving out a piece of theatrical wisdom he had picked up at
rehearsals.
"Oh, but you can. It's so easy to distinguish polite applause from
the real thing. No doubt many of the people down here have friends in
the company or other reasons for seeming to enjoy the play, but look
how the circle and the gallery were enjoying it! You can't tell me
that that was not genuine. They love it. How hard," she proceeded
commiseratingly, "you must have worked, poor boy, during the tour on
the road to improve the piece so much! I never liked to say so
before, but even you must agree with me now that that original
version of yours, which was done down at Newport, was the most
terrible nonsense! And how hard the company must have worked, too!
Otie," cried Mrs Peagrim, aglow with the magic of a brilliant idea,
"I will tell you what you must really do. You must give a supper and
dance to the whole company on the stage tomorrow night after the
performance."
"What!" cried Otis Pilkington, startled out of his lethargy by this
appalling suggestion. Was he, the man who, after planking down
thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight
cents for "props" and "frames" and "rehl," had sold out for a paltry
ten thousand, to be still further victimized?
"They do deserve it, don't they, after working so hard?"
"It's impossible," said Otis Pilkington vehemently. "Out of the
question."
"But, Otie darling, I was talking to Mr Mason, when he came down to
Newport to see the piece last summer, and he told me that the
management nearly always gives a supper to the company, especially if
they have had a lot of extra rehearsing to do."
"Well, let Goble give them a supper if he wants to."
"But you know that Mr Goble, though he has his name on the programme
as the manager, has really nothing to do with it. You own the piece,
don't you?"
For a moment Mr Pilkington felt an impulse to reveal all, but
refrained. He knew his Aunt Olive too well. If she found out that he
had parted at a heavy loss with this valuable property, her whole
attitude towards him would change,--or, rather, it would revert to
her normal attitude, which was not unlike that of a severe nurse to a
weak-minded child. Even in his agony there had been a certain faint
consolation, due to the entirely unwonted note of respect in the
voice with which she had addressed him since the fall of the curtain.
He shrank from forfeiting this respect, unentitled though he was to
it.
"Yes," he said in his precise voice. "That, of course, is so."
"Well, then!" said Mrs Peagrim.
"But it seems so unnecessary! And think what it would cost."
This was a false step. Some of the reverence left Mrs Peagrim's
voice, and she spoke a little coldly. A gay and gallant spender
herself, she had often had occasion to rebuke a tendency to
over-parsimony in her nephew.
"We must not be mean, Otie!" she said.
Mr Pilkington keenly resented her choice of pronouns. "We" indeed!
Who was going to foot the bill? Both of them, hand in hand, or he
alone, the chump, the boob, the easy mark who got this sort of thing
wished on him!
"I don't think it would be possible to get the stage for a
supper-party," he pleaded, shifting his ground. "Goble wouldn't give
it to us."
"As if Mr Goble would refuse you anything after you have written a
wonderful success for his theatre! And isn't he getting his share of
the profits? Directly after the performance, you must go round and
ask him. Of course he will be delighted to give you the stage. I will
be hostess," said Mrs. Peagrim radiantly. "And now, let me see, whom
shall we invite?"
Mr Pilkington stared gloomily at the floor, too bowed down now by his
weight of cares to resent the "we," which had plainly come to stay.
He was trying to estimate the size of the gash which this
preposterous entertainment would cleave in the Pilkington bank-roll.
He doubted if it was possible to go through with it under five
hundred dollars; and, if, as seemed only too probable, Mrs Peagrim
took the matter in hand and gave herself her head, it might get into
four figures.
"Major Selby, of course," said Mrs Peagrim musingly, with a cooing
note in her voice. Long since had that polished man of affairs made a
deep impression upon her. "Of course Major Selby, for one. And Mr
Rooke. Then there are one or two of my friends who would be hurt if
they were left out. How about Mr Mason? Isn't he a friend of yours?"
Mr Pilkington snorted. He had endured much and was prepared to endure
more, but he drew the line at squandering his money on the man who
had sneaked up behind his brain-child with a hatchet and chopped its
precious person into little bits.
"He is _not_ a friend of mine," he said stiffly, "and I do not wish
him to be invited!"
Having attained her main objective, Mrs Peagrim was prepared to yield
minor points.
"Very well, if you do not like him," she said. "But I thought he was
quite an intimate of yours. It was you who asked me to invite him to
Newport last summer."
"Much," said Mr Pilkington coldly, "has happened since last summer."
"Oh, very well," said Mrs Peagrim again. "Then we will not include Mr
Mason. Now, directly the curtain has fallen, Otie dear, pop right
round and find Mr Goble and tell him what you want."
