The Regent, Arnold Bennett [read after .txt] 📗

rid of this thing on any terms. You will be wishing that you had imitated my example and kept out of Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly Circus is sinister, my Alderman--sinister."

"Come up into the cage, Sir John," said Edward Henry. "You'll get a still better view. Rather fine, isn't it, even from here?"

He climbed up into the cage, and helped Sir John to climb.

And, standing there in the immediate silence, Sir John murmured with emotion:

"We are alone with London!"

Edward Henry thought:

"Cuckoo!"

They heard footsteps resounding on loose planks in a distant corner.

"Who's there?" Edward Henry called.

"Only me!" replied a voice. "Nobody takes any notice of me!"

"Who is it?" muttered Sir John.

"Alloyd, the architect," Edward Henry answered, and then calling loud, "Come up here, Alloyd."

The muffled and coated figure approached, hesitated, and then joined the other two in the cage.

"Let me introduce Mr. Alloyd, the architect--Sir John Pilgrim," said Edward Henry.

"Ah!" said Sir John, bending towards Alloyd. "Are you the genius who draws those amusing little lines and scrawls on transparent paper, Mr. Alloyd? Tell me, are they really necessary for a building, or do you only do them for your own fun? Quite between ourselves, you know! I've often wondered."

Said Mr. Alloyd, with a pale smile:

"Of course everyone looks on the architect as a joke!" The pause was somewhat difficult.

"You promised us rockets, Mr. Machin," said Sir John. "My mind yearns for rockets."

"Right you are!" Edward Henry complied. Close by, but somewhat above them, was the crane-engine, manned by an engineer whom Edward Henry was paying for overtime. A signal was given, and the cage containing the proprietor and the architect of the theatre and Sir John Pilgrim bounded most startlingly up into the air. Simultaneously it began to revolve rapidly on its cable, as such cages will, whether filled with bricks or with celebrities.

"Oh!" ejaculated Sir John, terror-struck, clinging hard to the side of the cage.

"Oh!" ejaculated Mr. Alloyd, also clinging hard.

"I want you to see London," said Edward Henry, who had been through the experience before.

The wind blew cold above the chimneys.

The cage came to a standstill exactly at the peak of the other crane. London lay beneath the trio. The curves of Regent Street and of Shaftesbury Avenue, the right lines of Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street and Coventry Street, were displayed at their feet as on an illuminated map, over which crawled mannikins and toy-autobuses. At their feet a long procession of automobiles were sliding off, one after another, with the guests of the evening. The Metropolis stretched away, lifting to the north, and sinking to the south into the jewelled river on whose curved bank rose messages of light concerning whisky, tea and beer. The peaceful nocturnal roar of the city, dwindling every moment now, reached them like an emanation from another world.

"You asked for a rocket, Sir John," said Edward Henry. "You shall have it."

He had taken a box of fusees from his pocket. He struck one, and his companions in the swaying cage now saw that a tremendous rocket was hung to the peak of the other crane. He lighted the fuse.... An instant of deathly suspense!... And then with a terrific and a shattering bang and splutter the rocket shot towards the kingdom of heaven and there burst into a vast dome of red blossoms which, irradiating a square mile of roofs, descended slowly and softly on the West End like a benediction.

"You always want crimson, don't you, Sir John?" said Edward Henry, and the easy cheeriness of his voice gradually tranquillized the alarm natural to two very earthly men who for the first time found themselves suspended insecurely over a gulf.

"I have seen nothing so impressive since the Russian Ballet," murmured Mr. Alloyd, recovering.

"You ought to go to Siberia, Alloyd," said Edward Henry.

Sir John Pilgrim, pretending now to be extremely brave, suddenly turned on Edward Henry and in a convulsive grasp seized his hand.

"My friend," he said hoarsely, "a thought has just occurred to me. You and I are the two most remarkable men in London!" He glanced up as the cage trembled. "How thin that steel rope seems!"

The cage slowly descended, with many twists.

Edward Henry said not a word. He was too deeply moved by his own triumph to be able to speak.

"Who else but me," he reflected, exultant, "could have managed this affair as I've managed it? Did anyone else ever take Sir John Pilgrim up into the sky like a load of bricks, and frighten his life out of him?"

As the cage approached the platforms of the first story he saw two people waiting there; one he recognized as the faithful, harmless Marrier; the other was a woman.

"Someone here wants you urgently, Mr. Machin!" cried Marrier.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Alloyd under his breath. "What a beautiful figure! No girl as attractive as that ever wanted _me_ urgently! Some folks do have luck!"

The woman had moved a little away when the cage landed. Edward Henry followed her along the planking.

It was Elsie April.

"I thought you were ill in bed," he breathed, astounded.

Her answering voice reached him, scarcely audible:

"I'm only hoarse. My Cousin Rose has arrived to-night in secret at Tilbury by the _Minnetonka_."

"The _Minnetonka_!" he muttered. Staggering coincidence! Mystic heralding of misfortune!

"I was sent for," the pale ghost of a delicate voice continued. "She's broken, ruined; no courage left. Awful fiasco in Chicago! She's hiding now at a little hotel in Soho. She absolutely declined to come to my hotel. I've done what I could for the moment. As I was driving by here just now I saw the rocket and I thought of you. I thought you ought to know it. I thought it was my duty to tell you."

She held her muff to her mouth. She seemed to be trembling.

A heavy hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir," said a strong, rough voice, "are you the gent that fired off the rocket? It's against the law to do that kind o' thing here, and you ought to know it. I shall have to trouble you--"

It was a policeman of the C Division.

Sir John was disappearing, with his stealthy and conspiratorial air, down the staircase.


CHAPTER VIII


DEALING WITH ELSIE

I


The headquarters of the Azure Society were situate in Marloes Road--for no other reason than that it happened so. Though certain famous people inhabit Marloes Road, no street could well be less fashionable than this thoroughfare, which is very arid and very long, and a very long way off the centre of the universe.

"The Azure Society, you know!" Edward Henry added, when he had given the exact address to the chauffeur of the taxi.

The chauffeur, however, did not know, and did not seem to be ashamed of his ignorance. His attitude indicated that he despised Marloes Road and was not particularly anxious for his vehicle to be seen therein--especially on a wet night--but that nevertheless he would endeavour to reach it. When he did reach it, and observed the large concourse of shining automobiles that struggled together in the rain in front of the illuminated number named by Edward Henry, the chauffeur admitted to himself that for once he had been mistaken, and his manner of receiving money from Edward Henry was generously respectful.

Originally, the headquarters of the Azure Society had been a seminary and schoolmistress's house. The thoroughness with which the buildings had been transformed showed that money was not among the things which the Society had to search for. It had rich resources, and it had also high social standing; and the deferential commissionaires at the doors and the fluffy-aproned, appealing girls who gave away programmes in the _foyer_ were a proof that the Society, while doubtless anxious about such subjects as the persistence of individuality after death, had no desire to reconstitute the community on a democratic basis. It was above such transient trifles of reform, and its high endeavours were confined to questions of immortality, of the infinite, of sex, and of art: which questions it discussed in fine raiment and with all the punctilio of courtly politeness.

Edward Henry was late, in common with some two hundred other people, of whom the majority were elegant women wearing Paris or almost-Paris gowns with a difference. As on the current of the variegated throng he drifted through corridors into the bijou theatre of the Society, he could not help feeling proud of his own presence there--and yet at the same time he was scorning, in his Five Towns way, the preciosity and the simperings of those his fellow-creatures. Seated in the auditorium, at the end of a row, he was aware of an even keener satisfaction, as people bowed and smiled to him; for the theatre was so tiny and the reunion so choice that it was obviously an honour and a distinction to have been invited to such an exclusive affair. To the evening first fixed for the dramatic soiree of the Azure Society he had received no invitation. But shortly after the postponement due to Elsie April's indisposition an envelope addressed by Marrier himself, and containing the sacred card, had arrived for him in Bursley. His instinct had been to ignore it, and for two days he had ignored it, and then he noticed in one corner the initials, "E.A." Strange that it did not occur to him immediately that E.A. stood, or might stand, for Elsie April!

Reflection brings wisdom and knowledge. In the end he was absolutely convinced that E.A. stood for Elsie April; and at the last moment, deciding that it would be the act of a fool and a coward to decline what was practically a personal request from a young and enchanting woman, he had come to London--short of sleep, it is true, owing to local convivialities, but he had come! And, curiously, he had not communicated with Marrier. Marrier had been extremely taken up with the dramatic soiree of the Azure Society--which Edward Henry justifiably but quite privately resented. Was he not paying three pounds a week to Marrier?

And now, there he sat, known, watched, a notoriety, the card who had raised Pilgrim to the skies, probably the only theatrical proprietor in the crowded and silent audience; and he was expecting anxiously to see Elsie April again--across the footlights! He had not seen her since the night of the stone-laying, over a week earlier. He had not sought to see her. He had listened then to the delicate tones of her weak, whispering, thrilling voice, and had expressed regret for Rose Euclid's plight. But he had done no more. What could he have done? Clearly he could not have offered money to relieve the plight of Rose Euclid, who was the cousin of a girl as wealthy and as sympathetic as Elsie April. To do so would have been to insult Elsie. Yet he felt guilty, none the less. An odd situation! The delicate tones of Elsie's weak, whispering, thrilling voice on the scaffolding haunted his memory, and came back with strange clearness as he sat waiting for the curtain to ascend.

There was an outburst of sedate applause, and a turning of heads to the right. Edward Henry looked in that direction. Rose Euclid herself was bowing from one of the two boxes on the first tier. Instantly she had been recognized and