Changing Winds Part 52

"What are you going to do about it, Gilbert?" Henry asked at last.

"I'm going away from London. I've chucked my job on the _Daily Echo_...."

"Good Lord, man, what for?"

"Well, I'm fed-up with the English theatre to begin with, and I'm fed-up with journalism too ... and it's the only way I can get free of Cecily.

I must finish the new comedy and I can't finish it if I stay in town and see Cecily. She won't let me finish it. She'll make me go here and go there with her. Sh.e.l.l keep me making love to her when I ought to be working. G.o.d d.a.m.n women, Quinny!"

"You're excited, Gilbert!"

"Yes, I know I am. When I'm with Cecily, I'm like a jelly-fish. She sucks the brains out of me. She doesn't care whether I finish my comedy or not. She doesn't care what happens to my work so long as I hang around and love her and kiss her whenever she wants me to. My brains go to bits when I'm with her. I'm all emotion and sensation ... just like those a.s.ses Lensley and Boltt. Quinny, fancy spending your life turning out the sort of stuff those two men write. They've written about a dozen books each, and I suppose they're good for twenty or thirty more. I'd rather be a scavenger!"

They walked along the Embankment towards Waterloo Bridge.

"I'm going to Anglesey," Gilbert said. "I shall go and stay there until the end of the summer!"

"I shall miss you, Gilbert. So will Ninian and Roger!"

"I shall miss you three, but it can't be helped. I'm the sort of man who succ.u.mbs to women ... I can't help it. If they're beautiful and soft and full of love ... like Cecily ... they down me. Their femininity topples me over, and there's no work to be got out of me while I'm like that.

But my work's of more consequence to me than loving and kissing, Quinny, and if I can't do it while I'm Cecily's lover, then I'll go away from her and do it!"

"What makes you think you could do it if she were to go away with you?"

"I don't know. Hope, I suppose."

They walked up Villiers Street into the Strand, and made their way towards Bloomsbury.

"I suppose," said Gilbert, "you wouldn't like to come to Anglesey too?"

Henry hesitated for a few moments. He had a vision of Lady Cecily's beautiful face leaning against the padded side of the car, and he remembered that she had smiled and waved her hand to him....

"No," he replied, "I don't think so ... not at present at any rate!" and then, added in explanation, "If I go, too, the house will be broken up.

That would be a pity!"

"I forgot that," Gilbert answered. "Yes, of course!"

THE SIXTH CHAPTER

1

Gilbert did not leave London, as he had intended, for Sir Geoffrey Mundane definitely decided to produce "The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt" in succession to the play which was then being performed at his theatre. He had already discussed the caste with Gilbert, and on the morning after the scene on the Embankment, he telephoned to Gilbert, telling him that he had made engagements for the play, and would like to fix a date on which he should read the ma.n.u.script to the company. "Any day'll suit me,"

Gilbert had informed him, and Sir Geoffrey thereupon settled that the reading should take place two days later. "I suppose," he said, "you'd like to attend the rehearsals?" and Gilbert, forgetting his resolution to fly from Lady Cecily, said that he would. He thought that the experience would be very valuable to him. He became so excited at the prospect of seeing a play of his performed at a West End theatre that he was unable to sit still, and his language, always extravagant, became absurd. He broke every rule that Roger had invented. "It'll take all the royalties you'll receive to pay off this score!" Roger said, thrusting the fine-book before him.

"Poo!" said Gilbert. "I'll buy up the Ten Commandments with one night's royalty! Oh, it's going to be a success, I tell you. It'll run for a year ... more than that ... two years!..." He began to estimate the number of performances the play would receive. "Six evening performances and two matinees every week for fifty-two weeks! Eight times fifty-two, Roger ... you were a Second Wrangler, you ought to know that! Four hundred and sixteen! Lordy G.o.d, what a lot! And if I get ten pounds every time it's done ... Oh-h-h! Four thousand, one hundred and sixty pounds! And then there'll be American rights and provincial rights....

I'll tell you what I'll do, coves! I'll buy you all a stick of barley-sugar each, or a penn'orth of acid-drops ... which 'ud you like?..."

It was during the rehearsals of "The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt" that "Broken Spears" was published.

"It isn't as good as 'Drusilla,'" they said to Henry, when they had read it, "but it'll be more popular!"

It was. The critics who had praised "Drusilla" were not impressed by "Broken Spears," but the critics who had been indifferent to "Drusilla"

praised "Broken Spears" so extravagantly that six thousand copies of it were sold in six months, apart from the copies which were sold to the lending libraries, and the sale of "Drusilla," in consequence of the success of "Broken Spears," increased from three hundred and seventy-five copies to one thousand five hundred and eighty. Mr. Quinn, in thanking Henry for a copy of it, merely said, in direct reference to the book, "_I see you've been tickling the English. Don't go on doing it!_" and the effect of this criticism was so stimulating that Henry destroyed the three chapters of "Turbulence" which were in ma.n.u.script and started to re-write the book. Literary agents now began to write to him, telling him how charmed they were with his work and how certain they were of their ability to increase his income considerably; and a publisher of some enterprise and resource wrote to him and said that he would like to see his third book.

"You look as if you were established, Quinny!" said Roger, and Henry blushed and murmured deprecatingly about himself.

"How's the Bar?" he said.

"Oh, it's not bad. I got a fellow off to-day who ought to have had six months hard," Roger answered. "And a new solicitor has given me a brief. We ought to ask him to dinner and feed him well. F. E. Robinson always tells his butler to bring out the second-quality wine for solicitors. Sn.o.b!"

"We seem to be getting on, don't we, coves?" Gilbert interjected. "Look at all these press-cuttings!..."

He held out a fistful of slips which had come that evening from a Press-Cutting Agency. "All about me," he said, "and the play. Mundane knows more about the preliminary puff than any one else in England. He calls me 'this talented young author from whom much may be expected.' I never thought I should get pleasure out of a trade advertis.e.m.e.nt, but I do. I'm lapping up this stuff like billy-o. I saw a poster on the side of a 'bus this afternoon, advertising 'The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt.' Mundane's name was in big letters, and you could just see mine with the naked eye.

I hopped on to the 'bus and went for a fourpenny ride on it, so's I could touch the d.a.m.n thing ... and I very nearly told the conductor who I was. It's no good pretending I'm not conceited. I am, and I don't care. Where's Ninian?"

"Not come in yet. How'd the rehearsals go to-day?" Roger answered.

"Better than any other day. They're beginning to feel their parts. It's about time, too. I felt sick with fright yesterday, they were so wooden.

Mundane might have been the village idiot, instead of the fine actor he is ... but they're better now. Ninian's late!"

"Is he? He'll be here presently. By the way, my Cousin Rachel's coming to town to-morrow. She's been investigating something or other ...

factory life, I think. I thought I'd bring her here to dinner. She may be interesting."

"Do," said Gilbert, and then, as he heard the noise of the street-door being closed, he added, "There's Ninian now!"

Ninian, on his way to his room, stopped for a moment or two, to shout at them, "I say, the mater and Mary've come up from Devon. I got a wire this afternoon. I'm not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a theatre, and I've got to climb into gaudy garments and go with them...."

He closed the door and ran up the stairs, but before he reached the first landing, Gilbert called after him, "I say, Ninian!"

"Yes," he answered, pausing on the stairs.

"Bring them to dinner to-morrow night. Roger's Cousin Rachel is coming, and we may as well make a party of it. Gaudy garments and liqueurs. Do you think they'll stay for the first night of my play?"

"That's one of the reasons why they've come up," Ninian answered.

2

Rachel Wynne and Mrs. Graham and Mary dined with them on the following evening, and it seemed to Henry when he saw Mary entering Ninian's sitting-room that she was a stranger to him. He had known her as a child and as a young, self-conscious girl, but this Mary was a woman. He felt shy in her presence, and when, for a few moments, he was left alone with her, he hardly knew what to say to her. They had been "Quinny" and "Mary" to each other before, but now they avoided names.... He spoke tritely about her journey to London, reminding her of the slowness of the train between Whitcombe and Salisbury, and wondered whether she liked London better than Boveyhayne. His old disability to say the things that were in his mind prevented him from re-establis.h.i.+ng his intimacy with her. He tried to say, "Hilloa, Mary!" but could not do so, and his shyness affected her so that she stood before him, fingering her fan nervously, and answering "Yes" and "Oh, yes!" and "No" and "Oh, no!"

to all that he said. He liked the sweep of her hair across her brow and the soft flush in her cheeks and the slender lines of her neck and the gleam of a gold chain that held a pendant suspended about her throat. He thought, too, that her eyes shone like l.u.s.tres in the light, and suddenly, as he thought this, he felt that he could speak to her with his old freedom. He moved towards her, shaping his lips to say, "Oh, Mary, I ..." but the door opened before he could speak, and Rachel Wynne entered the room with Roger and Mrs. Graham.

"Yes, Quinny?" Mary said, saying his name quite easily now.

He laughed nervously and looked at the others. "I've forgotten what I was going to say," he said, and went forward to greet Mrs. Graham.