The Old Adam Part 54

"Tell me," she repeated.

He related the episode of the telegram at the private first performance of "The Orient Pearl."

She burst out, in a torrent of irrelevant protest:

"The New York police have not treated me right. It would have cost them nothing to arrest me and let me go. But they wouldn't. Every man in the force--you hear me, every man--has had strict orders to leave me unmolested. It seems they resent my dealings with the police in Chicago, where I brought about the dismissal of four officers, so they say. And so I'm to be boycotted in this manner! Is that argument, Mr.

Machin? Tell me. You're a man, but honestly, is it argument? Why, it's just as mean and despicable as brute force."

"I agree with you," said Edward Henry softly.

"Do you really think it will harm the militant cause? Do they _really_ think so? No, it will only harm me. I made a mistake in tactics. I trusted--fool!--to the chivalry of the United States. I might have been arrested in a dozen cities, but I, on purpose, reserved my last two arrests for Chicago and New York, for the sake of the superior advertis.e.m.e.nt, you see! I never dreamt!--Now it's too late. I am defeated! I shall just arrive in London on the hundredth day. I shall have made speeches at all the meetings. But I shall be short of one arrest. And the ten thousand pounds will be lost to the cause. The militants here--such as they are--are as disgusted as I am. But they scorn me. And are they not right? Are they not right? There should be no quarter for the vanquished."

"Miss Joy," said Edward Henry, "I've come over from England specially to see you. I want to make up the loss of that ten thousand pounds as far as I can. I'll explain at once. I'm running a poetical play of the highest merit, called 'The Orient Pearl,' at my new theatre in Piccadilly Circus. If you will undertake a small part in it, a part of three words only, I'll pay you a record salary--sixty-six pounds thirteen and fourpence a word, two hundred pounds a week!"

Isabel Joy jumped up.

"Are you another of them, then?" she muttered. "I did think from the look of you that you would know a gentlewoman when you met one! Did you imagine for the thousandth part of one second that I would stoop--"

"Stoop!" exclaimed Edward Henry. "My theatre is not a music-hall--"

"You want to make it into one!" she stopped him.

"Good-day to you," she said. "I must face those journalists again, I suppose. Well, even they--! I came alone in order to avoid them. But it was hopeless. Besides, is it my duty to avoid them--after all?"

It was while pa.s.sing through the door that she uttered the last words.

"Where is she?" Seven Sachs enquired, entering.

"Fled!" said Edward Henry.

"Everything all right?"

"Quite!"

Mr. Rentoul Smiles came in.

"Mr. Smiles," said Edward Henry, "did you ever photograph Sir John Pilgrim?"

"I did, on his last visit to New York. Here you are!"

He pointed to his rendering of Sir John.

"What did you think of him?"

"A great actor, but a mountebank, sir."

During the remainder of the afternoon Edward Henry saw the whole of New York, with bits of the Bronx and Yonkers in the distance, from Seven Sach's second automobile. In his third automobile he went to the theatre and saw Seven Sachs act to a house of over two thousand dollars.

And lastly he attended a supper and made a speech. But he insisted upon pa.s.sing the remainder of the night on the _Lithuania_. In the morning Isabel Joy came aboard early and irrevocably disappeared into her berth.

And from that moment Edward Henry spent the whole secret force of his individuality in fervently desiring the _Lithuania_ to start. At two o'clock, two hours late, she did start. Edward Henry's farewells to the admirable and hospitable Mr. Sachs were somewhat absent-minded, for already his heart was in London. But he had sufficient presence of mind to make certain final arrangements.

"Keep him at least a week," said Edward Henry to Seven Sachs, "and I shall be your debtor for ever and ever."

He meant Carlo Trent, still bedridden.

As from the receding ship he gazed in abstraction at the gigantic, inconvenient word--common to three languages--which is the first thing seen by the arriving, and the last thing seen by the departing, visitor, he meditated:

"The dearness of living in the United States has certainly been exaggerated."

For his total expenses, beyond the confines of the quay, amounted to one cent, disbursed to buy an evening paper which had contained a brief interview with himself concerning the future of the intellectual drama in England. He had told the press-man that "The Orient Pearl" would run a hundred nights. Save for putting "The Orient Girl" instead of "The Orient Pearl," and two hundred nights instead of one hundred nights, this interview was tolerably accurate.

IV.

Two entire interminable days of the voyage elapsed before Edward Henry was clever enough to encounter Isabel Joy--the most famous and the least visible person on the ship. He remembered that she had said: "You won't see anything of me."

It was easy to ascertain the number of her stateroom--a double-berth which she shared with n.o.body. But it was less easy to find out whether she ever left it, and if so, at what time of day. He could not mount guard in the long corridor; and the stewardesses on the _Lithuania_ were mature, experienced and uncommunicative women, their sole weakness being an occasional tendency to imagine that they, and not the captain, were in supreme charge of the steamer. However, Edward Henry did at last achieve his desire. And on the third morning, at a little before six o'clock, he met a m.u.f.fled Isabel Joy on the D deck. The D deck was wet, having just been swabbed; and a boat, chosen for that dawn's boat drill, ascended past them on its way from the sea level to the busy boat deck above; on the other side of an iron barrier, large crowds of early-rising third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers were standing and talking, and staring at the oblong slit of sea which was the only prospect offered by the D deck; it was the first time that Edward Henry aboard had ever set eyes on a steerage pa.s.senger; with all the conceit natural to the occupant of a costly stateroom, he had unconsciously a.s.sumed that he and his like had sole possession of the ship.

Isabel responded to his greeting in a very natural way. The sharp freshness of the summer morning at sea had its tonic effect on both of them; and as for Edward Henry, he lunged and plunged at once into the subject which alone preoccupied and exasperated him. She did not seem to resent it.

"You'd have the satisfaction of helping on a thing that all your friends say ought to be helped," he argued. "n.o.body but you can do it. Without you, there'll be a frost. You would make a lot of money, which you could spend in helping on things of your own. And surely it isn't the publicity that you're afraid of!"

"No," she agreed. "I'm not afraid of publicity." Her pale grey-blue eyes shone as they regarded the secret dream that for her hung always unseen in the air. And she had a strange, wistful, fragile, feminine mien in her mannish costume.

"Well then--"

"But can't you see it's humiliating?" cried she, as if interested in the argument.

"It's not humiliating to do something that you can do well--I know you can do it well--and get a large salary for it, and make the success of a big enterprise by it. If you knew the play--"

"I do know the play," she said. "We'd lots of us read it in ma.n.u.script long ago."

Edward Henry was somewhat dashed by this information.

"Well, what do you think of it?"

"I think it's just splendid!" said she with enthusiasm.

"And will it be any worse a play because you act a small part in it?"

"No," she said shortly.

"I expect you think it's a play that people ought to go and see, don't you?"

"I do, Mr. Socrates," she admitted.

He wondered what she could mean, but continued: