CHAPTER VI.

The autumn session, combined with a singularly evil season as regards pheasants, had caused London to become very full again during November with the class that most needs and happily can best afford to pay for amusement, and theatres were enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity. Night after night the queue outside the theatre where "Easter Eggs" was being performed had the length attained usually only by gala performances and after a month's run Craddock had successfully accomplished the hazardous experiment of transplanting it to a much larger theatre, which, by chance, happened to be tenantless. His luck still burned as a star of the first magnitude, and he had without difficulty sublet the scene of its initial triumph, and started a couple of provincial companies on a prosperous progress. Money poured in, and with a generosity that surprised himself he presented the author (though there was no kind of claim on him) with a further munificent sum of two hundred pounds. But Armstrong's continued ingratitude though it pained him, did not surprise him nearly so much as his own generosity. He knew exactly how the young man felt.

It was but a few days before he was to start on the Egyptian expedition, when Armstrong was dining with him in his flat in Berkeley Square, intending to read to him after they had dined, the first act of "The Lane without a Turning," which, with somewhat cynical enjoyment, he was remodelling in order to suit the taste of the great Ass, as he called the patrons of the drama, though Craddock had urged and entreated him not to attempt this transformation. However thoroughly it was transformed he argued that the great Ass would detect that below lay the original play of which it had so strongly disapproved, would feel that it was being laughed at, and would, as it always was quick to do, resent ridicule. He put forward this view with much clearness as they dined.

"You have had the good fortune that comes perhaps to one per cent. of those who try to write plays," he said. "You have scored a great and signal success, and I beseech you not to imperil your reputation and prestige by so risky an experiment. I don't doubt your adroitness in remodelling and even reprincipling--if I may coin a word----"

Frank had only just filled his wine-glass. He emptied it at a gulp.

"Not exactly reprincipling," he said, "it's more turning it upside down. But I think your advice is rather premature, do you know, considering you have not at present the slightest idea what this remodelled play will be like. Had you not better wait till I read you some of it?"

"I don't think it matters what it is like," said Craddock, "because there will still be 'The Lane without a Turning' at the bottom of it. It might be Macbeth and Hamlet rolled into one----"

"That remarkable combination would certainly have a very short run," remarked Frank. "You were saying?"

"I was saying that the public, and the critics, will know that at the base of your play lies the play they so unmistakably rejected."

"There was one critic who thought it promising," said Frank. "And he is reaping a very tidy little harvest for his perspicacity."

"You are girding at everything I say this evening, my dear fellow," said Craddock placidly.

Frank looked at him with scarcely repressed malevolence.

"I think the sight of this opulent room and this good dinner and delicious wine makes me feel vicious," he said. "I can't help remembering that it is I who have really paid for all I am eating and drinking a hundred times over. And yet it is you who ask me to dinner."

"I am sorry if I burden you with my hospitality," said Craddock. "And as a matter of fact, it was you who asked yourself."

Frank Armstrong laughed.

"Quite true," he said, "and I will ask myself to have another glass of port. But really I think the situation justifies a little wailing and gnashing of teeth."

Craddock was slightly afraid of this very uncompromising young man. He liked to feel himself the master and the beneficent patron of his protégés, and it was a very imperfect sense of mastery that he enjoyed when he was with this particular beneficiary. He had tried cajolery and flattering him with the most insignificant results, and he determined to adopt more heroic methods.

"As to the gnashing of teeth," he observed, "there certainly was less gnashing of teeth on your part before I put on this play for you, for the simple reason that you often had to go without meals. But I am bound to say you didn't wail."

Frank laughed again.

"That's not bad," he said. "But I repeat that it is maddening to think of you earning in a week over my labour, as much as I earned altogether. Of course you had the capital; one can't expect labour and capital to fall into each other's arms."

"I had much more than the capital," said Craddock. "I had the sense to see that star-actors would not take, or if they did take, would ruin your works. You had not the sense to see that, if you will pardon my saying so."

"True. I like you better when you answer me back, and I'm not denying your shrewdness--God forbid when I have been the victim of it. I've been thinking, let me tell you, how I can get out of your clutches, but really I don't see my way. You may take it I suppose that you're safe. Now about this play. I don't see to begin with why it matters to you what I write. You needn't exercise your option over it, unless you please. In that case I shall get it done on my own account."

"Ah, but it does matter to me," said Craddock. "If you produce a couple of plays that fail, you may consider your present success as wiped out. You can't tamper with a reputation, and the bigger it is--yours at this moment is very big indeed--the more it is vulnerable. It is for your sake no less than mine that I am so strong about this."

"Surely for my sake a little less than yours?" suggested Frank.

"If you will have it so. And for your sake a little less than mine I advise you not to produce plays too quickly. The public are very fickle: if you flood the theatres with the dramas of Frank Armstrong they will soon laugh at you."

"I disagree with that policy altogether," said Frank. "Whatever happens they will get tired of you in five or six years. So for five or six years I propose to produce as many plays as I possibly can. I find I've got lots more twaddle-sketches and things half-finished, and scenarios that were invariably returned to me. But they shall be returned to me no longer. Actors and managers are tumbling over each other to get hold of my work. I like seeing them tumble. By the way, there is a point in our agreement I should like to discuss. Akroyd came to me to-day--good Lord, think of Akroyd coming to me, when a few months ago he wouldn't even let me come to him--he came to me with his terrible smile and his amazing clothes and offered me a thousand pounds in advance on account of royalties for a play. He wants to see and approve the bare scenario. Now supposing I accept, and you choose to exercise your option on it, do you get that?"

"Naturally. I have acquired all rights in such a play. I shall also try to make Akroyd give me a little more than that."

"Hell!" said Frank succinctly.

He poured himself out another glass of port as he spoke, and shaking the drop off the lip of the decanter broke his glass and flooded the tablecloth. His action was on the border-land between purpose and accident, and he certainly was not sorry as he looked at the swiftly-spreading stain.

"My port, my tablecloth," he observed.

"And your manners," said Craddock drily.

"Yes, I deserved that. But I didn't really do it on purpose, so, as it was an accident, I'll say I am sorry. No, no more, thanks. But I feel in a better temper you may be pleased to hear. There's nothing so soothing as smashing something, if one doesn't value it oneself. I spent an hour this afternoon at one of the side-shows in the Exhibition, banging wooden balls, seven for sixpence, at a lot of crockery on a shelf. What an ironical affair the world is! When I had hardly enough money to get dinner for myself, nobody ever asked me to dinner, and now that there is no longer any difficulty in paying for my own dinner, everybody wants me to dine at his or her--chiefly her--house. People I have never seen who live in squares, write to me, giving me the choice of a couple of nights! They ask other people I have never seen to meet me. They roar with laughter, whatever I say, or if it obviously isn't funny, they look pensive and say 'How true!' What a great Ass it is!"

"Ah, make the most of that," said Craddock. "A dozen people talking about you will do more for you than a dozen newspapers shouting about you."

"Probably, but I rather like the newspaper shouting. It's so damned funny to think of a lot of grinning compositors ruining their eyesight to set up columns about me. I read your article in the 'Whitehall,' by the way; you didn't spare the adjectives did you? They send interviewers to me, too, with cameras and flash-lights, who fill my room with stinking-smoke, and ask me to tell them about my early days. Hot stuff, some of it. They are nuts on the story of my father throwing the knife at me."

"Did you tell them that?" asked Craddock, feeling rather bruised.

"Certainly. Why should I not? He came to see me this morning himself, rather tipsy, and I told him to go away and come back when he was sober, and I would give him half-a-crown to get drunk on again. There's a commandment, isn't there, about honouring your father. I should like to see a fellow trying to honour mine. It's out of my power."

Frank lit a cigar, and leaned forward with his elbows on the table.

"Success hasn't made me a snivelling sentimentalist," he observed. "Now that I'm on the road to make money--or I shall be when I've got out of your hands--I don't instantly think the world is a garden full of ripe apricots and angels. It's a hard cruel world, same as it always was, and the strong tread on the weak and the clever suck the foolish, as a spider pulls off the leg of a fly and sucks it. I've often watched that. I've been foolish, too, at least I've been hungry, and in consequence you are sucking me. But why should I go slobbering over and blessing my father, who made life hell to me? Or why should I say it's a kind, nice world just because I myself am not cold or hungry any longer? And I'm not a bit sorry for the cold and hungry any more than I was sorry for myself when I was among them. I hated being cold and hungry, it is true, but nobody cared, and I learned to expect that nobody should care unless he could get something out of me, as you have done. All your fine rich people were there while I was starving, and nobody asked me to dinner or treated me to dozens of wooden balls at the exhibition. Now I've shown that I can amuse them for an hour or two after dinner, they think I'm no end of a fine fellow. But I've not changed. I always believed in myself, even when I was hungriest, and not being hungry doesn't make me believe in anything else. No, no more wine, thanks. I'm not going to take after my father. By the way, I met a dear little female Methuselah last night, name of Lady Crowborough, who told me she knew you. I congratulated her, of course."

"Did you--did you mention your connection with me?" asked Craddock, with some little anxiety not wholly concealed.

"You wouldn't have liked that, would you? But you can make your mind easy. I didn't and I don't suppose I shall, I wouldn't vex you for the world."

"That is not so good a reason as I should expect from you."

"No? Try this one then. You made a fool of me, you see, you outwitted me. I don't want people to know that for my sake far more than yours. The rôle of the brilliant successful dramatist is more to my mind than the rôle of your dupe."

"These are offensive expressions," said Craddock.

"Certainly. But why should you care? No doubt other people have used them before to you. By the way again, there was another fellow there last night who knew you, under Lady Crowborough's slightly moulting wing. Lathom: that was his name. I congratulated him also. There was something rather taking about him: a weird sort of guilelessness and gratitude. He's coming to the play with me sometime next week. And now if you want to hear the first act of the 'Lane without a Turning,' we had better begin? I'm going to Mrs. Fortescue's party later on. Who is Mrs. Fortescue?"

"The prettiest bore in London, which is saying a good deal, both as regards looks and as regards _ennui_. But she is so convinced she is only twenty-eight, she is worth your study as showing the lengths to which credulity can go. By all means let me hear your first act."

Armstrong got up.

"I want you to tell me when you have heard it," he said, "and when I have told you how the second and third acts will go, whether you exercise your option or not. You are going to Egypt in a few days, you tell me, and I don't want this hung up till you get back."

"I have no doubt I shall be able to tell you," said Craddock.

* * * * *

In spite of this assurance, Craddock found himself an hour afterwards, in a state of bewildered indecision. The finished first act, together with a very full scenario of the other two, gave him, as he was well aware, sufficient data for his conclusions, but he was strangely embarrassed at the recital of the brilliant and farcical medley, which, as the author had said, turned the original play upside down, parodied it, and winged it with iridescent absurdity. He knew well the unaccountableness of the public, well, too, he knew the value of a reputation such as "Easter Eggs" had brought its author, and it seemed to him a frantic imperilment of that reputation to flaunt this rainbowed farce in the face of the public. Armstrong had acquired the name of an observant and kindly humorist, here he laughed at (not with) the gentle lives of ungifted people. Again, in the original play, he involved his puppets in a net of inextricable tragedy: here, as by a conjuring-trick he let them escape, with shouts of ridicule at the suppose Destiny that had entangled them. The play might easily be a failure the more stupendous because of the stupendous success of "Easter Eggs": on the other hand there was the chance, the bare chance, that its inimitable and mocking wit might be caught by the rather stolid Ass.... But he had to decide: he knew quite well that he had sufficient data for his decision, and he did not in the least desire merely to annoy Armstrong by a plea for further opportunity of consideration. But he most sincerely wished that the play had never been written. And that wish gave him an idea that for the moment seemed brilliant. He was harvesting money in sheaves, he could well afford it....

"I will exercise my option," he said at length, "and then I will destroy the play. For your convenience, my dear fellow, you needn't even put on paper the last two acts. You can take your cheque away with you to-night."

Frank Armstrong considered this munificent proposal for a moment in silence, looking very ugly.

"You didn't purchase the right to destroy my work," he said.

"I purchased the right to possess it."

For a minute more Armstrong frowned and glowered. Then suddenly his face cleared, and he gave an astonishing shout of laughter.

"All right," he said, "Draw the cheque, and here are my manuscript and notes, which you are going to destroy. To-morrow I shall begin a new play exactly like it. How's that? Gosh, what an ass I am! I ought to have got your cheque first and cashed it before I told you. But you gave yourself away so terribly by telling me you would purchase and destroy it that I was off my guard. But now----"

Once again the sense of imperfect mastery struck Craddock. There was this difference about it now that it forced itself rather as being a sense of mastery on the other side. He was thrown back on the original debate in his mind. Doubt of success prevailed.

"I take no option," he said curtly.

Frank got up.

"Thank God," he said. "Good night."

* * * * *

Craddock sat quiescent for a few minutes after Armstrong had left him, feeling rather battered and bruised, and yet conscious of having passed a stimulating evening. And he did not wonder that that section of London who spend most of their time and money in procuring tonic entertainments that shall keep their pulses racing, should pursue this flaring young man with eager hospitalities. He was liable, it is true, to behave like a young bull-calf: he might, and often did, lower his head, and, fixing a steady and vicious eye on you, charge you with the most masculine vigour, but it was quite impossible to be dull when he was there. There was a strength, a driving force about him that raised the level of vitality at social gatherings, and though it was a little disconcerting to have him suddenly attack you, he might equally well attack somebody else, which was excessively amusing. Moreover many women found a personal attack exciting and inspiriting. To be tossed and tumbled conversationally did not do one any harm, and so virile and brutal an onslaught as his had something really fascinating about it. To be sure, he had no manners, but yet he had not bad manners. He would not plan an impertinence, he only ran at a red rag, of which, apparently, the world held many for him. If he was bored, it is true that he yawned, but he didn't yawn in order to impress upon you your boring qualities, he only expressed naturally and unaffectedly, his own lack of interest in what you were saying. To be sure, also, he was ugly and clumsy, but when there were so many pretty little men about, who talked in the softest of voices and manicured their nails, a great rough young male like this, who said he hated dancing, and asked leave to smoke his pipe instead of a cigarette, brought a sense of reality into the room with him. He was not rough and uncouth on purpose: merely that big clever brain of his was too busy to bother about the frills and finishings of life. Scandal and tittle-tattle had no interest for him, but when he told you about his own early years, or even when with inimitable mimicry he showed you how Craddock felt for a whisker, and looked at his plump little hands, he was immensely entertaining. Very likely he would soon become tiresome and familiar, but it would be time to drop him then.

Craddock was not in the least surprised at this lionizing of young Armstrong. Not only had he written the play which was undeniably the bull's-eye of the year, which in itself was sufficient, but, unlike most writers and artists, the strength of whose personality is absorbed into their achievements, he had this dominating personal force. Craddock knew well the mercantile value of the social excitement over the author of "Easter Eggs" (as he had said to Armstrong a dozen people talking was worth the shouting of two dozen journals), and while it lasted there was no question that stalls and dress-circles would overflow for his plays. Apparently, too, they had the no less valuable attraction for pit and gallery: there was a sincerity about his work that appealed to those who were not warmed by the mere crackle of epigrams and neat conversation. But while he welcomed Armstrong's appearance as a lion as a remunerative asset at the box-office, he was not so sure that he entirely approved of a possible intimacy between his new artist and his new playwright. He could not have definitely accounted for his distaste, but it was there, and though he was in the rapids that preceded his departure for Egypt, he found time next morning to go round to Charles' studio, ostensibly to see the finished portrait of his mother, but with a mind alert to sound a warning note as to undesirable companionship.

* * * * *

Charles the Joyful, as Craddock had christened him, received his visitor with arms open but with palette and brush and mahl-stick. The confidence which he had so easily won from the boy, at that first meeting by their weir, burned with a more serene brightness than ever, and his gratitude towards his patron was renewed morning by morning when he came into the comfortable well-appointed studio which had been given him.

"Oh, I say, Mr. Craddock," he exclaimed, "but it is jolly of you to come round to see me. Do say that you'll stop for lunch. It will be quite beastly by the way, but I promised to cook lunch for Lady Crowborough who is coming. But there are things in tins to eke out with."

Indeed this was a very different sort of protégé from him who had spilt the port last night, so much easier to deal with, so much more conscious of benefits. Gratitude and affection were so infinitely more becoming than the envious mistrust that Frank habitually exhibited. And how handsome the boy was, with his fresh colour, his kindled eyes, and unconscious grace of pose as he stood there palette on thumb! How fit to draw after him, like a magnet, the glances of some tall English girl. And at the thought, and at the remembrance of the injury he had done Charles, Craddock felt his dislike of him stir and hiss once more.

"I can't do that my dear Charles," he said, "as I have only a quarter of an hour to spare. Besides I am far too prudent to think of incurring Lady Crowborough's enmity by spoiling her tête-à-tête with you. But on this grey morning I felt it would do me good to see your Serene Joyfulness, and also the presentment of your Joyfulness' Mother which you tell me is finished."

Charles looked deprecating.

"I'm rather frightened," he said. "You see, I've changed it a lot since you saw it. I took out the whole of the head and painted it quite fresh and quite differently."

Craddock frowned ... it was as if Armstrong had interpolated an act in "Easter Eggs" without permission.

"My dear fellow, I don't think you had any business to do that without consulting me," he said. "I had said I would buy the picture: you knew too that I immensely admired it as it was. Where is it? Let me see it."

Charles seemed to resent this somewhat hectoring and school-master-like tone. Below the Serene Joyfulness there was something rather more firm and masculine than Craddock had expected.

"Oh, I can't concede to you the right to tell me how I shall paint," he said. "Just after you saw the picture the other day I suddenly saw I could do better than that. I must do my best. And as a matter of fact I don't think you will mind when you see it. Here it is, anyhow."

He wheeled the picture which was on an easel, face to the wall into position, and stood rather stiff and high-headed.

"I shall be sorry if you don't like it," he said, "but I can't help it."

Somehow it struck Craddock that Charles had grown tremendously in self-reliance and manliness since he had first seen that shy incredulous boy at the weir. He was disposed to take credit to himself for this: these weeks of happy expansion, of freedom from the dragging sense of dependence had made a man of him. And then still blameful he looked at the picture. Long he looked at it and silently, and quickly in his mind the conviction grew that he must climb quite completely down from his hectoring attitude. But, after all, it was not so difficult: there were compensations, for the lower he had to go, the higher the picture soared, soared like some sunlit ship-in-air.

"You were perfectly right," he said at length. "It was the rashest presumption in me to suppose that I knew better than you. That will make you famous. I was an utter fool, my dear Charles, to have imagined that you could have spoiled it."

"Oh, that's all right," said Charles, tall amid his certainties.

Again Craddock looked long at it.

"Is it finished now?" he asked humbly.

"I think so. It seems to be what I see, and a picture is finished when that's the case. I daresay I shall see more sometime: then I shall do another."

Craddock felt no call on his superlatives.

"I must say I shall be seriously anxious if I thought you were going to scrape it out again," he said, "though this time I shouldn't dream of interfering. Now what other work have you got on hand? I am off to Egypt in two days, and I should like to know I leave you busy. Did Mrs. Fortescue come to your studio? I recommended her to."

"I know: it was awfully good of you, and I am going to paint her. You told me to charge two hundred guineas, which seemed a tremendous lot."

"Not in the least. You won't remain at that figure long."

Charles made a face of comic distaste.

"I--I don't quite know how to paint her," he said. "I can't make her as young as it is clear she thinks herself, and I can't make her such a bore as I think her."

"How could your portrait show you think her a bore?" asked Craddock.

"How it shall not is my difficulty. I must try not to get a weary brush. Then Lady Crowborough says she will sit to me when she comes back in the spring. I shall love doing that. By the way----"

Charles hesitated a moment.

"You've been so extraordinarily kind to me," he said, "that perhaps you don't mind my consulting you. She told me to propose myself to go down and see my copy of the Reynolds picture when it was framed and in its place, and for the last month I've been ready to do so any day. But Mr. Wroughton wrote me rather a queer letter. He suggested that I should go down after they left for Egypt. It read to me rather as if he didn't want to see me. And I was so friendly with them all. What can have happened?"

Craddock assumed his most reassuring manner.

"Happened?" he said. "What on earth could have happened? You know our respected host down at the Mill House. I assure you when I was there three weeks ago for one night he could think about nothing but his underclothing for Egypt, and the price of pith-helmets. He had already, I believe, begun to pack his steamer-trunks and his medicine-chests. Do not give it another thought."

Charles gave a sigh of relief.

"I'm so glad you think that is the reason," he said. "All the same I should have liked to go down and say goodbye to--to them."

"To her, don't you mean?" said Craddock.

Charles flushed and laughed.

"Well, yes, to her," he said. "Why not?"

"Why not indeed? Every sensible young man likes to say some goodbye to a charming girl, if he can do no more than that. My dear fellow, if only I was your age, I should take a leaping heart to Egypt. And now that we've pricked that little troublesome bubble, tell me a little more about yourself and your life. I meant to have seen much more of you this last week or two, but I have been distractedly busy, and have seen no one but people on business. Apart from your work, have you been going about much?"

"Hardly at all. I don't know so many people you see. I dined with Lady Crowborough, though, a couple of nights ago, and she took me to a big party. Oh, and I met there such a strange queer fellow, name of Armstrong, who said he knew you. He wrote "Easter Eggs": such a ripping play. Have you seen it? He is going to take me to it next week."

Craddock puffed the smoked-out end of his cigarette from its amber tube into the grate.

"Yes, I know him," he said. "I should not have thought there was much in common between you."

"I'm not sure. I should like to find out. And, heavens, how I should like to paint his portrait. Where's the charcoal?"

Charles seized a stick and spread a loose sheet of paper on the table.

"Eye like that," he said, "with the eyebrow like a pent-house over it. Face, did you ever see such a jaw, square like that and hungry. That's the sort of face it pays to paint. There's something to catch hold of. And his ears are pointed, like a Satyr's. I think I must ask him to sit to me. I'll give him the portrait if he will."

Craddock took up this six-line sketch.

"Yes, very like, indeed," he said, "and a terrible face. And now I must go. But I wonder if you will resent a word of advice."

"Try," said Charles encouragingly.

"Well, I will. Now, my dear Charles, you are a young man just beginning your career, and it is immensely important you should get among the right people. The Latin quarter in Paris is one thing: Bohemianism in London is quite another. For the next forty years your work will be to paint these charming mothers and daughters of England. They have got to come and sit to you in your studio. They won't if they find that it savours of the Bohemian. You can't be too careful as to your friends, for the strongest and most self-sufficient people take their colour from their friends: they can't help it."

He laid his plump white hand, which he had been observing, on Charles' shoulder.

"You must pardon me," he said, "but I have got to the time of life when an unmarried man wishes he had a son growing up. But I have none,--I have to expend my unfruitful potentiality of parentage elsewhere. If you were my son, I should choose your friends for you so carefully."

There was something pathetic and unexpected about this, which could not but touch Charles. But somehow he felt as if he ought to have been more touched....

"_À propos_ of Armstrong?" he suggested.

"_À propos_ of intimacy with Mr. Armstrong in general," said Craddock, feeling somehow that he had missed fire, and that it was as well to get behind a hedge again.

Charles nodded. Then suddenly he felt his own lack of responsiveness: he felt also, though without touch of priggishness, that here was a man who had been wonderfully good to him, and who felt the burden of the years that were not lightened by the tie of fatherhood with youth. It struck him suddenly, vaguely but convincingly.

"You have been as kind as a father to me," he said quickly. "I hope I don't pay you with a son's proverbial ingratitude. You have been like a father to me--I--I've often wanted to tell you that."

He looked up a moment at Craddock, and then seized with a fit of misgiving at his blurted outspokenness, shied away from the subject, like some young colt.

"But I should like to paint Armstrong's portrait," he said. "I promise you that you would not think I had wasted my time."

Craddock appeared to accept this sudden switching off of sentiment.

"I will leave you free from any option of mine regarding it," he said. "To have it on the wall opposite me would certainly cause me indigestion, if it was as like as your charcoal sketch. The truth is he has not behaved very nicely to me. I tried to befriend him, as I have tried to befriend you, but with less success in amicable relationship. It is a mere nothing, but I felt I might do worse than give you a word of warning. It is of course for your private ear alone. Goodbye, my dear Charles. I shall let you know when I get back from the land of bondage. And accept my long experience to make your mind easy over the matter of going down to see your admirable copy of that Reynolds picture. I should not for instance, confide in Lady Crowborough. God bless you!"

* * * * *

Craddock took the unusual step of walking back to Berkeley Square after he had left Charles, and as he pursued his portly way up the Brompton Road, he thought rather intently over what he had said, and again, as on the evening when he had let drop a few lying words to Philip Wroughton, he felt he had not spoken amiss. He could not possibly prevent an acquaintance between his two protégés, nor could he certainly prevent it ripening into an intimacy, but he felt he had spoken well when he hinted that Armstrong had not behaved very nicely to him. As a rule, he did not much believe in the stability of such an emotion as gratitude, but he believed very strongly in the child-like simplicity of Charles. In this his conclusions were firmly founded, for in the course of his life he had never come across, as a matter of fact, so guileless and unsuspicious a nature. He almost regretted the necessity of deceiving him, for the feat was so inconspicuous a one. Charles was a child, a child with a divine gift, of which he himself was in the position to take secure advantage. After all nurses and kind mothers habitually deceived children: they told them that if they squinted and the wind changed, their squint would be permanent: they told them that many poor beggars would be glad of the food they rejected, in order to induce them to swallow it, and thus, incidentally, to extinguish altogether the outside chance of a poor beggar getting it: they told them that God would be angry with them if they disobeyed orders and got their feet wet.... Charles was just a child. Though certainly he had grown a good deal lately. But his soul was a child's.

It was not until he had walked as far as Hyde Park corner that he knew he was waging a war instead of merely conducting a child's education. He was at war, he with his obese person and half-century of years, with the generation that had sprung up after him, and was now realising the zenith of its youthful vigour. Already it trod on his heels, already he seemed to hear in his ears its intolerant laughter at his portly progress, and his first acute attack of middle-age stabbed him like the lumbago from which he occasionally suffered. It seemed to him a devilish complaint, not to be acquiesced in, but to be ostentatiously disregarded and denied. Even since last June, when he had first felt the charm and the need of girlhood, he had suspected this foe, and the fact that Charles admitted the attraction which was his magnet also, stiffened his resistance. He hated the young generation, chiefly because his own youth had been a bloodless affair, but he did not feel himself old, except when he met the guileless eyes of Charles, or the vindictive glance of young Armstrong. Both of these, in their widely different fashions, illumined the truth, and thus for them, these young and vigorous males, he cherished an enmity that rivalled Armstrong's. But he was not shelved and done with yet. As far as the attainment of love went, he entered the lists against Charles, as far as hard business capacity went, he was willing to meet Armstrong. But he had suffered an initial defeat on either hand. On the one side Armstrong had taken this remodelled play into his own control, on the other--this was more subtle--Charles had been able to paint that rough sketch of Joyce among the forget-me-nots. Yet he had weapons against these attacks. He could and would write feebly appreciative notices of the play, more damning than any slash of onslaught, he could and would go southwards with Joyce, and her approving father, the day after to-morrow.

And then with a spasm of satisfaction he thought of Lady Crowborough. With one if not both feet in the grave, she was kissing her hands as vigorously and contentedly as ever. Her conviction of perennial youth overrode the disabilities of years: age was a mere question of conviction: he had only to convince himself. Even at this moment she, who had attained middle-age before he was born, was lunching with a boy whose father he himself might be, and tasting all the delights of flirtation and unspeakable decoctions over a gas-stove.... "The new flirt...." He could hear her say it with unctuous serenity. And the "new flirt" was that child Charles, he who was so much younger than anyone Craddock had ever known. Of course Lady Crowborough was a freak, but if a woman did not feel old at ninety (according to her own account) what excuse was there for a man feeling middle-aged at fifty, or a little less? He determined to have no lunch whatever, but have a Turkish bath and a swim at the Bath Club instead.

* * * * *

Just as Craddock might have made a certain sinister suggestion to Philip Wroughton about Charles, had he known that after she left them she read and re-read two common-place little letters and regarded something that had once been a straw hat, so to-day he might not have foregone lunch and sat in the agreeable tropics underneath the Bath Club (as a matter of fact these processes made him so hungry that he indulged in a sandwich or two afterwards) in the heroic hue-and-cry after his vanished youth, if he had been aware of Charles' immediate occupation after he had left him. There was another canvas, a big one, leaning with averted face in the corner of his studio. It represented a girl kneeling among forget-me-nots at the edge of a stream. Behind was a spouting-weir. He had half a dozen sketches of the weir to help him, some very carefully finished, which he had made in preparation for that picture of the bathing-boy, and he had so many sketches, more vivid than these, more brilliantly lit by the steadfast lamp within his brain, to help him.

But he had felt he could not show this to Craddock: he did not know if he could ever show it to anybody, it was his own, or hers, if ever she cared for it or for him.... But it was not Craddock's. Eagerly now he pulled it into the light.

It mattered not what he worked on, in this picture, so long as he worked at it The figure that knelt there, dressed in stained blue, had suffused the whole, so that the grey camp sheltering below the weir, the loosestrife and meadow-sweet, the rope of hurrying water, woven by the force of the stream, were all part of her. Unsuspicious and trustful by nature, relying on Craddock's experience and knowledge of the world, on his brief assurance that there was nothing below the curt note which had given Charles leave to see his Reynolds' copy after the family had gone, he wiped off his mind, almost without an effort, the vague doubts that had for the last week or two tarnished and dimmed it. Craddock, who had been so uniformly kind to him, who had almost lapsed into parental sentiment to-day, had not thought his doubts worth a moment's debate. Besides, what could have occurred to change the friendliness of the family into this cold acidity? What, also, could be more reasonable than the explanation which Craddock threw off, over his shoulder, so to speak, of Philip's amazing solicitude for the complete provision of his own comfort.

"Blue! Blue! What a world of blues! Sky, dress, eyes, forget-me-nots, reflection of sky, reflection of dress, and eyes that looked straight into his." These reflections came not into his picture ... he caught and kept these....

* * * * *

Craddock's prophecy (the wish perhaps being father to it) that the two young men whom he had benefited would not find much in common, seemed at their first meeting to be likely of fulfilment. They met at the theatre, and Charles' enthusiastic appreciation of the piece, at the second time of witnessing it, seemed to rouse Armstrong's contempt.

"I wish you had told me you had seen it before," he said as they lounged and smoked between the acts, "and we could have gone to something else."

"But there's nothing else I should have liked so much," said Charles eagerly. "I think that scene between Violet and the curate is simply priceless. Do tell me about it? Did you know people like that?"

Frank beckoned to the man in the box-office.

"Just show me the returns for this week," he said. Then he answered Charles.

"Yes: I used to think they were like that," he said. "I expect they were far harder and meaner and fouler really. People can't be as gutless as I've made them all out to be."

"Oh, but they're not gutless, do you think? They are kind and jolly, and slightly ridiculous.... Isn't that it? Like most people in fact, but you've seen the funny side of them."

The man from the box-office had returned, and handed Armstrong a strip of paper.

"Fuller than ever, Mr. Armstrong, you see," he said with a sort of proprietorship, like the head-waiter at a restaurant when guests find a dish to their taste. "And advance bookings go well on to the other side of Christmas."

Unaccountably, the dish was not to Armstrong's taste.

"Blasted fools people are," he remarked, and nodded curtly to the man.

"I'm one of them, you know," said Charles.

"Yes: I forgot that. But don't you ever despise your pictures--anyhow distrust them--just because they are popular?"

Charles laughed.

"I haven't yet been in the position to find out what effect popularity would have on my own estimate," he said. "Oh, but wait a minute--I went to a gallery the other day, where there was a picture of mine, and there happened to be some people round it, so I went among them and listened to what they said. They were rather complimentary, and--and I think I liked them for it. Anyhow it didn't affect my own estimate."

Frank Armstrong glared at the well-dressed, well-fed loungers in the entrance.

"Somehow, I think fellows like these must be all wrong in their taste," he said.

"Then would you like unpopularity? Would you be better pleased if the theatre was empty, and there was no advance booking?"

Frank Armstrong grinned.

"No: I should curse like mad," he said. "It happened to me once, and I had no use for it."

Then his surliness broke down.

"I don't mind telling you," he said. "The fact is that I sold my play inside out from Iceland to Peru and Madagascar, and I don't get a penny more or less whether it runs to Doomsday or only New Year's Day. I feel all these people are defrauding me."

"Oh, what a pity!" said Charles. "I am sorry. But they'll come flocking to your next play."

The thought that there were three more plays of his to be pouched by Craddock sealed Armstrong's good humour up again. It had put in a very inconspicuous appearance, and now popped back like a lizard into its hole. He shrugged his shoulders.

"There's the bell," he said, "if you want to hear the third act."

"Don't want to miss a word," said Charles cordially.

Through the first half of the act Armstrong so yawned and fidgetted in the stall next him, that about the middle of it Charles felt that good manners prompted him to suggest that they should not remain till the end. Yet another way round, good manners were horrified at such a course. It would appear that the play bored him.... But he decided to risk it, Armstrong was so obviously tired of it all.

"Shall we go?" he suggested.

Armstrong slid from his seat into the gangway.

"I thought the third act would be too much for you," he observed.

They went quickly and quietly up through the swing-doors, and Charles, rather troubled, laid a hand on the other's arm.

"It wasn't that a bit, indeed it wasn't," he said. "But you were yawning and grunting, you know--I thought you wanted to get out. I--I was enjoying it."

Armstrong knew he was behaving rudely to his guest, but to-night the thronged theatre, also, in part, the buoyancy of the Serene Joyfulness, had got on his nerves.

"Then go back and enjoy the rest of it," he said.

Charles' good humour was quite unimpaired: it was as fresh as paint.

"I think I will," he said. "Thanks awfully for bringing me. I'm enjoying myself tremendously. Good night."

Somehow for the moment that annoyed Armstrong even more, and there is no doubt that he would have found a pungently-flavoured reply. But there was no reply possible: on the word Charles had turned and gone back through the swing-doors once more. Then it dawned on Armstrong that his annoyance with Charles was really annoyance with himself at his own ill-mannered behaviour. For half-a-minute he hesitated, more than half disposed to follow him, to say a whispered word of regret if necessary.... Then again the balance wavered, and he went out into the street. People with such infernally good tempers as his new acquaintance, he thought, should not be allowed at large. They did not fit in with his own ideas of the world, where everyone sought and grasped and snarled, unless he had some specific reason for making himself pleasant.

He looked aimlessly up and down Shaftesbury Avenue as he stood on the steps of the theatre, uncertain what to do with himself. There was a party he was bidden to, but he felt no inclination to stand and fire off the cheap neat gibes that he knew were considered his contribution to such gatherings, his payment for a supper and a cigarette, nor, as on some nights, did the illuminated street with the flaring sky-signs up above, and the flaring gaiety of the pavements below, allure him in the least. Sometimes he wandered up and down Piccadilly for an hour at a time in absorbed yet incurious observation of it all. It all bore out his theory of life: the spoiler and the spoiled, the barterer and bartered, everybody wanted something, everybody had to pay for it. But to-night the street seemed a mere galaxy of coloured shifting glass.... Should he then go home, and work for an hour on his remodelled "Lane without a Turning"?... He thought with a little spasm of inward amusement at the title that had occurred to him to-day, namely, "It's a Long Lane that has Five Turnings." They were all there in the play, five distinct turnings, parodies of passion; five separate times would the stalls make a fixed face so as not to show they were shocked, five separate times would they be utterly fooled and have fixed their faces for nothing. Those who happened to remember the original play--there would not be many of them--would laugh a little first because they would guess what was _not_ going to happen: those who had never seen that sombre and serious work would merely find here the most entrancingly unexpected farcical situations developing on legitimate lines out of tragical data.

Strolling, he found himself underneath the brilliantly lit doors of Mr. Akroyd's theatre, where within at this hour, as Armstrong well knew, Mr. Fred Akroyd was being nobler than anybody who had ever yet worn a frock-coat and patent-leather shoes, with a pith helmet to indicate India. The third act would only just have begun: Akroyd was even now probably beginning to dawn like a harvest moon on the blackness of night and the plentiful crop. The moon would reach the zenith in about twenty minutes. Then it died in the garden of the Viceroy at Simla (blue incredible Himalayas behind) ... and, if he sent his card in, he felt sure that Mr. Akroyd (after death in the garden) would be charmed to talk to him for ten minutes. It would be well to make some sort of contract without delay in case Craddock changed his mind about an option on this bewildering topsy-turvy of a Lane. For the moment he even felt grateful to Craddock for the hint he had given him as to the possibility of getting a larger advance on royalties out of Akroyd than the thousand pounds which that eminent actor-manager had offered. He would certainly act on the suggestion.

* * * * *

Akroyd was just expiring when he arrived, and after waiting five minutes he was shown into his dressing-room. The actor was still a little prostrate and perspiring profusely, with his efforts, and extended a languid hand.... People sometimes said that if he acted on the stage as well as he acted off....

"Delighted to see you, my dear fellow," he said. "Sit down while I rest for a minute. It takes too much out of me, this last act. Cruel work! I feel the whole pulse of the theatre beating in my own veins ... arteries."

"Strong pulse for a dying man," observed Armstrong.

"Yes: very good. You don't know, you authors, how we slave for you. Well, well; as long as you give us good strong parts, we have no quarrel with you. How's 'Easter Eggs,' by the way?"

"Oh, booked full over Christmas," said Armstrong negligently. "Such rot as it is too! I don't wonder you refused to look at it. No strong part in it. But I've got something fully in my head, and partly on paper, which might suit you better. I hear that this--this present strain on you isn't likely to continue after the middle of December. So if you feel inclined you might come round to my rooms, and you can have some supper there while I read you what I've done, and tell you about the rest."

A reassuring alacrity possessed Akroyd at this, and he made a good and steady convalescence from his prostration. He always made a point of walking home after the theatre, for the sake of his health, he said. He did not walk very fast, and often he took off his hat, and held it in his hand, so as to get the refreshing breezes of the night on his brow which "much thought expands." His tall massive form and fine tragic face often attracted a good deal of attention, and people would whisper his name as he went by. But he put up with these small penalties of publicity: it was very good for the hair to let the wind play upon it....

Akroyd some ten years ago had sprung to the front of his profession by his masterly acting of a comedy part which verged on farce. Since then he had drifted into noble middle-aged parts, such as bachelor marquises who made marriage possible between fine young fellows and girls whom the marquis was secretly in love with, husbands of fifty with wives of twenty-five, all those parts in fact in which Tact, Nobility, Breadth of View and Unselfish Wisdom untie knots for everybody else and give everybody else a Splendid Time. But his drifting, though in part dictated by his conviction that he handled these virtues as if born to the job, was due also to the fact that during these years he had really not been given a comedy that seemed to him worth risking. He knew he could always make a success as a prime minister or a marquis without any risk at all, and his luck, as less fortunate managers called it, was proverbial, for he never had a failure. But it was not luck at all that was responsible for these successes: it was fine business capacity, and a knowledge of what his following among play goers expected of him. He always gave the public what they expected, and then never disappointed them. But in his secret heart he had a longing (provided the risk was not too great) to play a rousing comic part again, to set his stalls laughing instead of leaving them dim-eyed. He was aware that he must do it soon if he was going to do it at all ... there is an age when even the most self-reliant do not feel equal to the strain of being funny.

"It's rather out of your line," said Armstrong abruptly, as he sat Akroyd down to his oysters. "But you once did a part of the same kind: it was the first play I ever saw. You were marvellously good in it."

"Ah, 'The Brittlegings,'" said Akroyd, considerably stimulated. "Old history, I'm afraid. Time of the Georges."

"Well, it's the time of the Georges again," remarked Armstrong. "The play is called 'It's a Long Lane that has Five Turnings.'"

Akroyd when discussing theatrical matters always criticised freely. An author once had suggested forty-two as a suitable age for the part that he was to play. He had considered this and replied "Forty-three. I think forty-three."

"That's a very long title," he said.

"It was a long Lane," said Armstrong. "Anyhow, it is the title. Dramatis personae----"

"Tell me what you have designed to be my part," said Akroyd.

"I think I shall leave you to guess. There are many points, by the way, that want discussion, and I should like your advice. But I think I will read straight through the first act without interruption."

* * * * *

Akroyd, as has been stated, was a very shrewd business man, but his keen appreciation of the wit and effectiveness of this act made it difficult for him to bring his business capacity into full working order. Many times throughout it had he checked his laughter, throughout it too had he _seen_ himself in the glorious tragico-farcical situations provided for him, (he had no difficulty in guessing his part) in a sort of parody of his own manner. It was a brilliant piece of work, he saw himself brilliantly interpreting it. But at the end he, with an effort, put the cork into his admiration.

"Yes, yes: very clever, very sparkling," he said, "but hardly in my line, do you think? Hardly in yours, perhaps either. It would be taking a great risk: I should not expect there to be much money in it. Appreciative stalls perhaps: it is hard to say. However, read the scenario of the rest."

Frank Armstrong felt he knew quite well what this meant. It was the usual decrying of work by the intending purchaser, in order to get it cheaper, and it roused in him all the resentment that as producer he had so often felt for Craddock as capitalist. He threw the manuscript onto the table, resolved to play the same game.

"Hardly worth while," he said. "Obviously the play doesn't appeal to you, though I think it might have ten years ago, before you took to the heavy work business. I was thinking of you as I saw you first. Jove, it's thirsty work reading, and now I shall have to read it all over again to somebody else to-morrow."

"Ah, you rush at conclusions altogether too much," said Akroyd slightly alarmed. "Much necessarily depends on the working out of the play. It is admirably laid down: the scenes are full of wit and interest. I--I insist on hearing the rest."

"Shan't bother you," said Armstrong, taking whisky and soda, and enjoying himself keenly.

"Then let me take it away and read it," said Akroyd. "Really, my dear fellow, it is hardly fair to ask me here to listen to an act and the scenario of the rest, and then refuse."

"But I feel now I read it how much more suitable it would be for Tranby," said Armstrong. "I will telephone to him and read it to him to-morrow. He has been asking me if I hadn't got anything for him. I hope the oysters are good."

"Let me read it myself then, now," said Akroyd, holding out a hand that almost trembled with anxiety.

Frank gave up his obstinacy with an indifferent yawn.

"O, well: I'll tell you the rest of it," he said.

But having begun, his indifference vanished, while Akroyd's anxiety increased. To think of Tranby, his esteemed and gifted colleague, having this marvel of dexterous fooling submitted to him to-morrow, was to picture himself on the edge of a precipice. He felt giddy, his head swam at the propinquity of that catastrophic gulf. Fortunately he could crawl away now, for Armstrong was continuing.

Intentionally he did the utmost he could for the reading, giving drama and significance to the bare sketch. Here and there he had written upwards of a page of dialogue in his wonderful neat hand, and once, when he found a dozen lines of a speech by Akroyd, he passed them over to him, asking him to read them aloud (which he did, moving about the room with excellent gesticulations). Then as one of the ludicrous "turnings" approached Armstrong would drop his voice, speak slowly and huskily--"Surely he can't be fooling us this time," thought Akroyd--as the tragic moment approached. Then came another ludicrous legitimate situation of the impasse, another thwarting of ridiculous Destiny. Life became a series of brilliant conjuring tricks, all carefully explained, and the gorgeous conjuror was Akroyd.

He felt there must be no further mention of Tranby, for his nerves could not stand it. At the end he got up, and shook hands with Armstrong.

"I am much obliged to you for offering me the most brilliant piece of work I have seen for years," he said. "I will certainly accept it, and put it on when we open after Christmas. I will send you a contract to sign to-morrow----"

Frank Armstrong lit a cigarette.

"We might talk over the lines of it to-night," he said. "Else perhaps I might not sign it."

Akroyd, as was his custom, became so great an artist and so magnificent a gentleman when any question of money was brought forward that it was almost impossible to proceed.

"I am sure you will find my proposals framed on the most generous lines," he said.

Armstrong allowed the faintest shadow of a grin to hover about his mouth.

"No doubt," he said, "but there is no reason that you should not tell me what they are. Advance, for instance, on account of royalties. What do you propose?"

Akroyd put a hand to his fine brow, frowning a little.

"I think I suggested some sum to you," he said. "Eight hundred pounds advance, was it? Something like that."

Again Armstrong boiled within himself.... Yet after all this was business. Akroyd wanted to pay as little as he could: he himself wanted to obtain the most possible. But it was mean, when he knew quite well that he had himself proposed a thousand pounds. It was great fun, too ... the thought of Craddock now on the bosom of the treacherous Mediterranean, perhaps being sea-sick....

"Oh, no," he said quite good naturedly. "A thousand was the sum you proposed. But I don't accept it."

The interview did not last long after this: a mere mention of Tranby's name was enough, and a quarter of an hour afterwards Akroyd went home in a taxi (as the streets were now empty) having yielded on every point, but well pleased with his acquisition. Fifteen hundred pounds down and royalties on a high scale was a good deal to give. But it seemed to him that there was a good deal to be got.

* * * * *

Frank sat up for another half-hour alone, in a big arm-chair, hugging his knees, and occasionally bursting out into loud unaccountable laughter. What an excellent ten-minutes scene the last half-hour would make in a play called, say "The Actor Manager" or "The Middleman." How mean people were! And how delightful fifteen hundred pounds was! But what work, what work to bring his play up to the level of the first act! But he would do it: he was not going to be content with anything but his best.

Then he laughed again.

"'The Middleman ... The Sweater Thwarted.' Good play for Tranby."

He put down his expired pipe, and rose to open the window. The room was full of tobacco-smoke, the table hideous with remains of supper: it was all rather stale and sordid. Stale and sordid, too, now it was over, was his encounter with Akroyd, and his complete victory. He had scored, oh, yes, he had scored.

He leaned out for a moment into the cool freshness of the night-air, that smelt of frost, finding with distaste that his coat-sleeve on which he leaned his face reeked of tobacco. It reeked of Akroyd, too, somehow, of meanness and cunning and his own superior cunning. It was much healthier out of the window....

"Gosh, I wish I hadn't been such a pig to that jolly fellow at the play," he said to himself.