Gossamer Part 26

It was Von Richter who broke up our party. He pleaded the necessity for early rising next morning as his excuse for going away before the hour at which the law obliges people to stop eating supper in restaurants.

I wondered whether he and Mrs. Ascher had made a satisfactory plan for running guns into Galway. According to Ascher it did not make much difference whether the Irish peasants had rifles in their hands or not. It was soothing, though humbling, to feel that, guns or no guns, Volunteers or no Volunteers, Ireland would not matter in the least.

CHAPTER XV.

Gorman's play achieved a second success. The Parthenon was crammed every night, and it was the play, not the pretty dresses or the dancing, which filled the house. Gorman made money, considerable sums of money. I know this because he called on me one morning in the middle of July and told me so. He did more. He offered me a very substantial and quite unanswerable proof that he felt rich.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I'd like to pay you whatever you've spent on this new invention of Tim's."

"I haven't spent anything," I said. "I've invested a little. I believe in Tim's new cinematograph. I expect to get back every penny I've advanced to him and more."

This did not satisfy Gorman. He got out his cheque book and a fountain pen.

"There was the hundred pounds you gave him to buy looking gla.s.ses," he said. "You didn't give him more than that, did you?"

"Not so much," I said. "The bill for those mirrors was only 98-7-6; and I made the man knock off the seven and sixpence as discount for cash.

I'm learning to be a business man by degrees."

Gorman wrote down 98 on the cover of his cheque book.

"And the hire of the hall?" he said. "What will that come to?"

I had hired a small hall for the exhibition of Tim's moving picture ghosts. I had invited about a hundred people to witness the show. Gorman himself, a brother of the inventor, had promised to preside over the gathering and to make a few introductory remarks on the progress of science or anything else that occurred to him as appropriate to such an occasion. But I could not possibly allow him to pay for the entertainment.

"My dear Gorman," I said, "it's my party. The people are my friends. At least some of them are. The invitations have gone out in my name. You might just as well propose to pay for the tea I mean to offer them to drink as for the hire of the room in which I am going to receive them."

"Will 150 cover the whole show?" said Gorman.

"If you insist on heaping insults on my head," I said, "I shall retire into a nursing home and cancel all the invitations."

"You're an obstinate man," said Gorman.

"Very. In matters of this kind."

"All the same," said Gorman, "I'll get rid of that money. I don't consider it's mine. I ought to have paid for Tim, and I would, only that I hadn't a penny at the time."

"If you like to give 150 to a charity," I said, "that's your affair."

"That," said Gorman, "would be waste. I rather think I'll give a party myself."

He slipped his cheque book back into his pocket.

"Invite me to meet the lady who acts in your play," I said.

"Miss Gibson?" said Gorman. "Right. Who else shall we have?"

"Why have anybody else?"

"There are difficulties," said Gorman, "about the rest of the party. You wouldn't care to meet my friends."

"Oh, yes, I would."

"No, you wouldn't. I know you. You don't consider Irish Nationalists fit to a.s.sociate with. We're not respectable."

That was putting it too strongly; but it is a fact that I do not know, or particularly want to know, any of Gorman's political a.s.sociates.

"And your friends," said Gorman, "wouldn't know me."

Again Gorman was guilty of over-statement; but my friends are, for the most part, of conservative and slightly military tastes. They would not get on well with Gorman.

"I'll think it over," said Gorman, "and let you know."

Two days later I got my invitation. Gorman, in the excitement of sudden great possessions, had devised an expensive kind of party. The invited guests were Mr. and Mrs. Ascher, Miss Gibson, Tim and myself. We were to voyage off from Southampton in a motor yacht, hired by Gorman, to see the Naval Review at Spithead. We were to start at ten o'clock from Waterloo station in a saloon carriage reserved for our party.

"We have to be back in time for Miss Gibson to go to the theatre,"

Gorman wrote, "so we must start early. I believe the show is to be worth seeing. British Navy at its best. King there. Royal salutes from Dreadnoughts. Rank, fas.h.i.+on and beauty in abundance."

The week was to be one of exciting festivities. Gorman had fixed his party for the day before my exhibition of Tim's new invention.

I was shaving--shortly after eight o'clock on the morning of Gorman's party--when my servant came into my room.

"I beg pardon, sir," he said, "but there's a young man waiting in the hall, says that he wants to see you."

It seemed odd that any one should want to see me at that hour.

"Who is he?" I said.

"Don't know, sir. Gives his name as Gorman. But he's not our Mr.

Gorman."

"It may be Tim," I said. "Does he look as if he had an artistic soul?"

"Couldn't say, sir. Might have, sir. Artists is very various. Doesn't seem to me, sir, as if his man looked after his clothes proper."

"Must be Tim," I said. "Show him in."

"In here, sir?"

"Yes. And have an extra kidney cooked for breakfast."

Tim came in very shyly and sat down on a chair near the door. He certainly did not look as if his clothes had been properly cared for.

He was wearing the blue suit which I suspected was the best he owned.

It was even more crumpled and worse creased than when I saw it down in Hertfords.h.i.+re.

"I hope you don't mind my coming here," he said. "I didn't like to go to Mr. Ascher, and I was afraid to go to Michael. He'd have been angry with me."

"Has anything gone wrong with your apparatus? Smashed a mirror?"