“Round on the prompt side, I think. He was here a second ago, but he dashed off.”
At this moment the music-cue was given, and a considerable section of the multitude passed on to the stage.
Locomotion being rendered easier, I hurried round to the prompt side.
But when I arrived there were no signs of the missing man.
“Seen Mr. Briggs anywhere?” I asked.
“Here a moment ago,” said one of the carpenters. “He went out after Miss Lewin’s song began. I think he’s gone round the other side.”
I dashed round to the O.P. corner again. He had just left.
Taking up the trail, I went to his dressing-room once more.
“You’re just too late, sir,” said Richard; “he was here a moment ago.”
I decided to wait.
“I wonder it he’ll be back soon.”
“He’s probably downstairs. His call is in another two minutes.”
I went downstairs, and waited on the prompt side. Sir Boyle Roche’s bird was sedentary compared with this elusive man.
Presently he appeared.
“Hullo, dear old boy,” he said. “Welcome to Elsmore. Come and see me before you go, will you? I’ve got an idea for a song.”
“I say,” I said, as he flitted past, “can I–-“
“Tell me later on.”
And he sprang on to the stage.
By the time I had worked my way, at the end of the performance, through the crowd of visitors who were waiting to see him in his dressing-room, I found that he had just three minutes in which to get to the Savoy to keep an urgent appointment. He explained that he was just dashing off. “I shall be at the theatre all tomorrow morning, though,” he said. “Come round about twelve, will you?”
There was a rehearsal at half-past eleven next morning. When I got to the theatre I found him on the stage. He was superintending the chorus, talking to one man about a song and to two others about motors, and dictating letters to his secretary. Taking advantage of this spell of comparative idleness, I advanced (l.c.) with the typescript.
“Hullo, old boy,” he said, “just a minute! Sit down, won’t you? Have a cigar.”
I sat down on the Act One sofa, and he resumed his conversations.
“You see, laddie,” he said, “what you want in a song like this is tune. It’s no good doing stuff that your wife and family and your aunts say is better than Wagner. They don’t want that sort of thing here—Dears, we simply can’t get on if you won’t do what you’re told. Begin going off while you’re singing the last line of the refrain, not after you’ve finished. All back. I’ve told you a hundred times. Do try and get it right—I simply daren’t look at a motor bill. These fellers at the garage cram it on—I mean, what can you do? You’re up against it—Miss Hinckel, I’ve got seventy-five letters I want you to take down. Ready? ‘Mrs. Robert Boodle, Sandringham, Mafeking Road, Balham. Dear Madam: Mr. Briggs desires me to say that he fears that he has no part to offer to your son. He is glad that he made such a success at his school theatricals.’ ‘James Winterbotham, Pleasant Cottage, Rhodesia Terrace, Stockwell. Dear Sir: Mr. Briggs desires me to say that he remembers meeting your wife’s cousin at the public dinner you mention, but that he fears he has no part at present to offer to your daughter.’ ‘Arnold H. Bodgett, Wistaria Lodge….’”
My attention wandered.
At the end of a quarter of an hour he was ready for me.
“I wish you’d have a shot at it, old boy,” he said, as he finished sketching out the idea for the lyric, “and let me have it as soon as you can. I want it to go in at the beginning of the second act. Hullo, what’s that you’re nursing?”
“It’s a play. I was wondering if you would mind glancing at it if you have time?”
“Yours?”
“Yes. There’s a part in it that would just suit you.”
“What is it? Musical comedy?”
“No. Ordinary comedy.”
“I shouldn’t mind putting on a comedy soon. I must have a look at it. Come and have a bit of lunch.”
One of the firemen came up, carrying a card.
“Hullo, what’s this? Oh, confound the feller! He’s always coming here. Look here: tell him that I’m just gone out to lunch, but can see him at three. Come along, old boy.”
He began to read the play over the coffee and cigars.
He read it straight through, as I had done.
“What rot!” he said, as he turned the last page.
“Isn’t it!” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “But won’t it go?”
“Go?” he shouted, with such energy that several lunchers spun round in their chairs, and a Rand magnate, who was eating peas at the next table, started and cut his mouth. “Go? It’s the limit! This is just the sort of thing to get right at them. It’ll hit them where they live. What made you think of that drivel at the end of Act Two?”
“Genius, I suppose. What do you think of James as a part for you?”
“Top hole. Good Lord, I haven’t congratulated you! Consider it done.”
“Thanks.”
We drained our liqueur glasses to The Girl who Waited and to ourselves.
Briggs, after a lifetime spent in doing three things at once, is not a man who lets a great deal of grass grow under his feet. Before I left him that night the “ideal cast” of the play had been jotted down, and much of the actual cast settled. Rehearsals were in full swing within a week, and the play was produced within ten days of the demise of its predecessor.
Meanwhile, the satisfactory sum which I received in advance of royalties was sufficient to remove any regrets as to the loss of the Orb holiday work. With The Girl who Waited in active rehearsal, “On Your Way” lost in importance.
CHAPTER 26
MY TRIUMPH (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)
On the morning of the day for which the production had been fixed, it dawned upon me that I had to meet Mrs. Goodwin and Margaret at Waterloo. All through the busy days of rehearsal, even on those awful days when everything went wrong and actresses, breaking down, sobbed in the wings and refused to be comforted, I had dimly recognised the fact that when I met Margaret I should have to be honest with her. Plans for evasion had been half-matured by my inventive faculties, only to be discarded, unpolished, on account of the insistent claims of the endless rehearsals. To have concocted a story with which to persuade Margaret that I stood to lose money if the play succeeded would have been a clear day’s work. And I had no clear days.
But this was not all. There was another reason. Somehow my sentiments with regard to her were changing again. It was as if I were awaking from some dream. I felt as if my eyes had been blindfolded to prevent me seeing Margaret as she really was, and that now the bandage had been removed. As the day of production drew nearer, and the play began to take shape, I caught myself sincerely admiring the girl who could hit off, first shot, the exact shade of drivel which the London stage required. What culture, what excessive brain-power she must have. How absurdly naďve, how impossibly melodramatic, how maudlinly sentimental, how improbable—in fact, how altogether womanly she must have grown.
Womanly! That did it. I felt that she was womanly. And it came about that it was my Margaret of the Cobo shrimping journeys that I was prepared to welcome as I drove that morning to Waterloo Station.
And so, when the train rolled in, and the Goodwins alighted, and Margaret kissed me, by an extraordinarily lucky chance I found that I loved her more dearly than ever.
That premičre is still fresh in my memory.
Mrs. Goodwin, Margaret, and myself occupied the stage box, and in various parts of the house I could see the familiar faces of those whom I had invited as my guests.