The Holiday Round Part 51

Mr Levinski dismissed him, and considered the point. He had to amuse himself with something that evening, and the choice apparently lay between Oth.e.l.lo and the local Directory. He picked up the Directory.

By a lucky chance for Eustace Merrowby it was three years old. Mr Levinski put on his fur coat and went to see Oth.e.l.lo.

For some time he was as bored as he had expected to be, but half-way through the Third Act he began to wake up. There was something in the playing of the princ.i.p.al actor which moved him strangely. He looked at his programme. "Oth.e.l.lo--Mr EUSTACE MERROWBY." Mr Levinski frowned thoughtfully. "Merrowby?" he said to himself. "I don't know the name, but he's the man I want." He took out the gold pencil presented to him by the Emperor--(the station-master had had a tie-pin)--and wrote a note.

He was finishing breakfast next morning when Mr Merrowby was announced.

"Ah, good-morning," said Mr Levinski, "good-morning. You find me very busy," and here he began to turn the pages of the Directory backwards and forwards, "but I can give you a moment. What is it you want?"

"You asked me to call on you," said Eustace.

"Did I, did I?" He pa.s.sed his hand across his brow with a n.o.ble gesture. "I am so busy, I forget. Ah, now I remember. I saw you play Oth.e.l.lo last night. You are the man I want. I am producing 'Oom Baas,' the great South African drama, next April at my theatre.

Perhaps you know?"

"I have read about it in the papers," said Eustace. In all the papers (he might have added) every day, for the last six months.

"Good. Then you may have heard that one of the scenes is an ostrich farm. I want you to play 'Tommy.'"

"One of the ostriches?" asked Eustace.

"I do not offer the part of an ostrich to a man who has played Oth.e.l.lo. Tommy is the Kaffir boy who looks after the farm. It is a black part, like your present one, but not so long. In London you cannot expect to take the leading parts just yet."

"This is very kind of you," cried Eustace gratefully. "I have always longed to get to London. And to start in your theatre!--it's a wonderful chance."

"Good," said Mr Levinski. "Then that's settled." He waved Eustace away and took up the Directory again with a business-like air.

And so Eustace Merrowby came to London. It is a great thing for a young actor to come to London. As Mr Levinski had warned him, his new part was not so big as that of Oth.e.l.lo; he had to say "Hofo tsetse!"--which was alleged to be Kaffir for "Down, sir!"--to the big ostrich. But to be at the St George's Theatre at all was an honour which most men would envy him, and his a.s.sociation with a real ostrich was bound to bring him before the public in the pages of the ill.u.s.trated papers.

Eustace, curiously enough, was not very nervous on the first night.

He was fairly certain that he was word-perfect; and if only the ostrich didn't kick him in the back of the neck--as it had tried to once at rehearsal--the evening seemed likely to be a triumph for him. And so it was with a feeling of pleasurable antic.i.p.ation that, on the morning after, he gathered the papers round him at breakfast, and prepared to read what the critics had to say.

He had a remarkable Press. I give a few examples of the notices he obtained from the leading papers:

"Mr Eustace Merrowby was Tommy."--Daily Telegraph.

"The cast included Mr Eustace Merrowby."--Times.

"... Mr Eustace Merrowby..."--Daily Chronicle.

"We have no s.p.a.ce in which to mention all the other performers."--Morning Leader.

"This criticism only concerns the two actors we have mentioned, and does not apply to the rest of the cast."--Sportsman.

"Where all were so good, it would be invidious to single out anybody for special praise."--Daily Mail.

"The acting deserved a better play."--Daily News.

"... Tommy..."--Morning Post.

As Eustace read the papers, he felt that his future was secure.

True, The Era, careful never to miss a single performer, had yet to say, "Mr Eustace Merrowby was capital as Tommy," and The Stage, "Tommy was capitally played by Mr Eustace Merrowby"; but even without this he had become one of the Men who Count--one whose private life was of more interest to the public than that of any scientist, general or diplomat in the country.

Into Eustace Merrowby's subsequent career I cannot go at full length. It is perhaps as a member of the Garrick Club that he has attained his fullest development. All the good things of the Garrick which were not previously said by Sydney Smith may safely be put down to Eustace; and there is no doubt that he is the ringleader in all the subtler practical jokes which have made the club famous. It was he who pinned to the back of an unpopular member of the committee a sheet of paper bearing the words

KICK ME

--and the occasion on which he drew the chair from beneath a certain eminent author as the latter was about to sit down is still referred to hilariously by the older members.

Finally, as a convincing proof of his greatness, let it be said that everybody has at least heard the name "Eustace Merrowby"--even though some may be under the impression that it is the trade-mark of a sauce; and that half the young ladies of Wandsworth Common and Winchmore Hill are in love with him. If this be not success, what is?

THE YOUNGER SON

It is a hard thing to be the younger son of an ancient but impoverished family. The fact that your brother Thomas is taking most of the dibs restricts your inheritance to a paltry two thousand a year, while pride of blood forbids you to supplement this by following any of the common professions. Impossible for a St Verax to be a doctor, a policeman or an architect. He must find some n.o.bler means of existence.

For three years Roger St Verax had lived precariously by betting. To be a St Verax was always to be a sportsman. Roger's father had created a record in the sporting world by winning the Derby and the Waterloo Cup with the same animal--though, in each case, it narrowly escaped disqualification. Roger himself almost created another record by making betting pay. His book, showing how to do it, was actually in the press when disaster overtook him.

He began by dropping (in sporting parlance) a cool thousand on the Jack Joel Selling Plate at Newmarket. On the next race he dropped a cool five hundred, and later on in the afternoon a cool seventy- five pounds ten. The following day found him at Lingfield, where he dropped a cool monkey (to persevere with the language of the racing stable) on the Solly Joel Cup, picked it up on the next race, dropped a cool pony, dropped another cool monkey, dropped a cool wallaby, picked up a cool hippopotamus, and finally, in the last race of the day, dropped a couple of lukewarm ferrets. In short, he was (as they say at Tattersall's Corner) entirely cleaned out.

When a younger son is cleaned out there is only one thing for him to do. Roger St Verax knew instinctively what it was. He bought a new silk hat and a short black coat, and went into the City.

What a wonderful place, dear reader, is the City! You, madam, who read this in your daintily upholstered boudoir, can know but little of the great heart of the City, even though you have driven through its arteries on your way to Liverpool Street Station, and have noted the bare and smoothly brushed polls of the younger natives. You, sir, in your country vicarage, are no less innocent, even though on sultry afternoons you have covered your head with the Financial Supplement of The Times in mistake for the Literary Supplement, and have thus had thrust upon you the stirring news that Bango-Bangos were going up. And I, dear friends, am equally ignorant of the secrets of the Stock Exchange. I know that its members frequently walk to Brighton, and still more frequently stay there; that while finding a home for all the good stories which have been going the rounds for years, they sometimes invent entirely new ones for themselves about the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and that they sing the National Anthem very sternly in unison when occasion demands it.

But there must be something more in it than this, or why are Bango-Bangos still going up?

I don't know. And I am sorry to say that even Roger St Verax, a Director of the Bango-Bango Development Company, is not very clear about it all.

It was as a Director of the Bango-Bango Exploration Company that he took up his life in the City. As its name implies, the Company was originally formed to explore Bango-Bango, an impenetrable district in North Australia; but when it came to the point it was found much more profitable to explore Hampstead, Clapham Common, Blackheath, Ealing and other rich and fashionable suburbs. A number of hopeful ladies and gentlemen having been located in these parts, the Company went ahead rapidly, and in 1907 a new prospector was sent out to replace the one who was a.s.sumed to have been eaten.

In 1908, Roger first heard the magic word "reconstruction," and to his surprise found himself in possession of twenty thousand pounds and a Directorship of the new Bango-Bango Mining Company.

In 1909 a piece of real gold was identified, and the shares went up like a rocket.

In 1910 the Stock Exchange suddenly woke to the fact that rubber tyres were made of rubber, and in a moment the Great Boom was sprung upon an amazed City. The Bango-Bango Development Company was immediately formed to take over the Bango-Bango Mining Company (together with its prospector, if alive, its plant, shafts and other property, not forgetting the piece of gold) and more particularly to develop the vegetable resources of the district with the view of planting rubber trees in the immediate future. A neatly compiled prospectus put matters very clearly before the stay-at-home Englishman. It explained quite concisely that, supposing the trees were planted so many feet apart throughout the whole property of five thousand square miles, and allowing a certain period for the growth of a tree to maturity, and putting the average yield of rubber per tree at, in round figures, so much, and a.s.suming for the sake of convenience that rubber would remain at its present price, and estimating the cost of working the plantation at say, roughly, 100,000 pounds, why, then it was obvious that the profits would be anything you liked up to two billion a year--while (this was important) more land could doubtless be acquired if the share- holders thought fit. And even if you were certain that a rubber-tree couldn't possibly grow in the Bango-Bango district (as in confidence it couldn't), still it was worth taking shares purely as an investment, seeing how rapidly rubber was going up; not to mention the fact that Roger St Verax, the well-known financier, was a Director ... and so on.

In short the Bango-Bango Development Company was, in the language of the City, a safe thing.

Let me hasten to the end of this story. At the end of 1910 Roger was a millionaire; and for quite a week afterwards he used to wonder where all the money had come from. In the old days, when he won a cool thousand by betting, he knew that somebody else had lost a cool thousand by betting, but it did not seem to be so in this case. He had met hundreds of men who had made fortunes through rubber; he had met hundreds who bitterly regretted that they had missed making a fortune; but he had never met any one who had lost a fortune. This made him think the City an even more wonderful place than before.

But before he could be happy there remained one thing for him to do; he must find somebody to share his happiness. He called on his old friend, Mary Brown, one Sunday.

"Mary," he said, with the brisk confidence of the City man, "I find I'm disengaged next Tuesday. Will you meet me at St George's Church at two? I should like to show you the curate and the vestry, and one or two things like that."

"Why, what's happened?"

"I am a millionaire," said Roger calmly. "So long as I only had my beggarly pittance, I could not ask you to marry me. There was nothing for it but to wait in patience. It has been a long weary wait, dear, but the sun has broken through the clouds at last. I am now in a position to support a wife. Tuesday at two," he went on, consulting his pocket diary; "or I could give you half an hour on Monday morning."