The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure

  III.

  She was sitting down in a cosy-corner, her feet on a footstool, and sheseemed a negligible physical quantity as he stood in front of her. Thiswas she who had worsted the entire judicial and police system ofChicago, who spoke pentecostal tongues, who had circled the globe, andheld enthralled--so journalists computed--more than a quarter of amillion of the inhabitants of Marseilles, Athens, Port Said, Candy,Calcutta, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokio, Hawaii, San Francisco, Salt LakeCity, Denver, Chicago, and lastly New York! This was she!

  "I understand we're going home on the same ship!" he was saying.

  She looked up at him, almost appealingly.

  "You won't see anything of me, though," she said.

  "Why not?"

  "Tell me," said she, not answering his question. "What do they say ofme, really, in England? I don't mean the newspapers. For instance, theAzure Society. Do you know of it?"

  He nodded.

  "Tell me," she repeated.

  He related the episode of the telegram at the private first performanceof "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 themnothing to arrest me and let me go. But they wouldn't. Every man inthe force--you hear me, every man--has had strict orders to leave meunmolested. It seems they resent my dealings with the police inChicago, where I brought about the dismissal of four officers, so theysay. 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'sjust 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. Itrusted--fool!--to the chivalry of the United States. I might have beenarrested in a dozen cities, but I, on purpose, reserved my last twoarrests for Chicago and New York, for the sake of the superioradvertisement, you see! I never dreamt!--Now it's too late. I amdefeated! I shall just arrive in London on the hundredth day. I shallhave made speeches at all the meetings. But I shall be short of onearrest. And the ten thousand pounds will be lost to the cause. Themilitants here--such as they are--are as disgusted as I am. But theyscorn me. And are they not right? Are they not right? There should beno quarter for the vanquished."

  "Miss Joy," said Edward Henry, "I've come over from England specially tosee you. I want to make up the loss of that ten thousand pounds as faras I can. I'll explain at once. I'm running a poetical play of thehighest merit, called 'The Orient Pearl,' at my new theatre inPiccadilly Circus. If you will undertake a small part in it, a part ofthree words only, I'll pay you a record salary--sixty-six poundsthirteen 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 thelook of you that you would know a gentlewoman when you met one! Did youimagine 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, Isuppose. Well, even they--! I came alone in order to avoid them. Butit was hopeless. Besides, is it my duty to avoid them--after all?"

  It was while passing 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 JohnPilgrim?"

  "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 NewYork, with bits of the Bronx and Yonkers in the distance, from SevenSach's second automobile. In his third automobile he went to thetheatre 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 uponpassing the remainder of the night on the _Lithuania_. In the morningIsabel Joy came aboard early and irrevocably disappeared into her berth.And from that moment Edward Henry spent the whole secret force of hisindividuality in fervently desiring the _Lithuania_ to start. At twoo'clock, two hours late, she did start. Edward Henry's farewells to theadmirable and hospitable Mr. Sachs were somewhat absent-minded, foralready his heart was in London. But he had sufficient presence of mindto make certain final arrangements.

  "Keep him at least a week," said Edward Henry to Seven Sachs, "and Ishall 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 thingseen by the arriving, and the last thing seen by the departing, visitor,he meditated:

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

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