Roger thought fleetingly of excusing himself. This was going to be a miserable affair. Bridgetower was afraid of his mother, and Cobbler was playing the fool. Why had he ever allowed himself to be mixed up with such a pack?
The Bridgetower house was in darkness and the front door was locked. Solly was suddenly angry. She knew that he was bringing friends home. This was intolerable. As he rattled his key in the lock Cobbler gave another conspiratorial Ssh! Why, Solly demanded of himself, does she expose me to this kind of thing? To be shushed entering my own home! Angry, he made a good deal of noise in the hall, and led the procession upstairs. At the first landing, as he had expected, was the ray of light from his mother’s door.
“Is that you lovey?”
“Yes, Mother. I’ve brought some friends home.”
“Oh, I did not think that you would, now that it’s so late.”
“It’s just a little after midnight, Mother.”
“You won’t be too late, will you lovey?”
“I can’t possibly tell, Mother. Did you leave some sandwiches?”
“When you didn’t come home by ten I told Violet to put them away.”
“I’ll find them. Good-night, Mother.”
“Good-night, lovey.”
Half an hour later they had eaten a good many sandwiches and drunk some of Solly’s rye, which for the occasion he had diluted with soda water instead of the lukewarm drizzle from the tap. Humphrey Cobbler had established himself as the leader of the conversation and was holding forth on music.
“If there is one gang of nincompoops that I despise more than another,” said he, champing on a chicken sandwich, “it is the gang which insists that you cannot reach any useful or interesting conclusion by discussing one art in terms of another. Now there is nothing I enjoy more than talking about music in terms of painting. It’s nonsense, of course, and at worst it’s dull nonsense. But if you get somebody who knows a lot about music and a lot about painting, it is just possible that he will have an intuition, or a stroke of superlative common sense which will put you on a good scent. If you ask me, we’re too solemn about the arts nowadays. Too solemn, and not half serious enough. And who’s at the root of most of the phoney solemnity? The critics. Leeches, every last one of them. Hateful parasites, feeding upon the blood of artists! Do I bore you?”
“You don’t bore me,” said Hector. “Not that I know anything about the arts. Though I have had some musical experience.” He smiled shyly. “I used to pump the organ in my father’s church.”
“Did you now?” said Cobbler. “Do you know, that’s the first really interesting thing I’ve heard you say. It humanizes you, somehow. Can you sing?”
“Very little. I’ve never had much of a chance.”
“You ought to try it. You’ve got quite a nice speaking voice. You ought to join the singers in the play. Now there’s music that you can get your teeth into. Purcell! What a genius! And lucky, too. Nobody has ever thought to blow him up into a God-like Genius, like poor old Bach, or a Misunderstood Genius, like poor old Mozart, or a Wicked and Immoral Genius, like poor old Wagner. Purcell is just a nice, simple Genius, rollicking happily through Eternity. The boobs and the gramophone salesmen and the music hucksters haven’t discovered him yet and please God they never will. Kids don’t peck and mess at little scraps of Purcell for examinations. Arthritic organists don’t torture Purcell in chapels and tin Bethels all over the country on Sundays, while the middle classes are pretending to be holy. Purcell is still left for people who really like music.”
“I like the music you have chosen for the play,” said Hector; “what we heard tonight was very pretty.”
“Thank you,” said Cobbler. “Pretty isn’t just the word I would have chosen myself for Purcell’s elegant numbers, but I discern that your heart is in the right place.”
“A pretty girl is like a melody,” hummed Roger.
“Excuse me,” said Cobbler, turning toward him, “but I must contradict you. A pretty girl is nothing of the kind. A melody, if it is any good, has a discernible logic; a pretty girl can exist without the frailest vestige of sense. Do you know that that great cow of a girl they call The Torso—a pretty girl if ever there was one—came to me the other day and told me that she was musical, indeed surpassingly musical, because she often heard melodies in her head. Her proposal was that she should hum these gifts of God to me, and that I should write them down. She then hummed the scrambled fragments of two or three nugacities from last year’s movies. There were two courses open to me: as a musician I could have struck her; as a man I could have dragged her into the shrubbery and worked my wicked will upon her.”
“As a matter of curiosity, which did you do?” asked Solly.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” said Hector, who was a little embarrassed by the turn the conversation had taken; nevertheless, he wanted to show himself a man’s man, and something witty seemed called for.
“I deny that,” said Cobbler; “the cat probably died a happy martyr to research. In this case I was spared the necessity for decision; Mrs Forrester called me away at the critical moment to ask if it would be necessary for the musicians to have any light, or whether they could get along with the few rays which might spill from the stage. When Nellie is in one of her efficient moods all passions are stilled in her presence.”
“She’s a damned efficient woman,” said Roger. There wouldn’t be any show without her.”
“I’d like her better if she hadn’t such an insufferably cosy mind,” said Solly.
“What do you mean by that?” said Roger.
“Oh, you know; she makes everything seem so snug and homey; she wants to be a dear little Wendy-mother to us all. Not being a Peter Pan myself, I don’t like it.”
“Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up,” said Hector, to show that he was following the conversation, and also that he was as keen in his appreciation of a literary reference as anybody.
“Funny, I would have thought that Peter Pan was a pretty good name for you,” said Roger.
“Would you,” said Solly; “and just why would you think that?”
“Take my advice and don’t answer that question,” said Cobbler. “You two are bound to quarrel eventually, but if you take my advice you won’t do it here.”
“And why are we bound to quarrel, may I ask?” said Roger, very much on his dignity.
“Because, as everybody knows, you are both after the Impatient Griselda. It’s the talk of the company. At the moment, Tasset, you are well in the lead, but Solly may leave you behind at any moment. Your fascination—I speak merely as an impartial but keen observer, mind you, and mean nothing personal—is beginning to wane. At any moment Griselda may weary of your second-rate man-of-the-world manner, and turn toward our host’s particular brand of devitalized charm.”
This was sheer mischief-making, but Cobbler liked mischief and had had enough to drink to make him indulgent toward his weakness.
“I had not realized that we were so closely watched,” said Solly. He and Roger were both caught off their guard by Cobbler’s words. But they were not so startled as Hector. So intensely had he concentrated on his own passion that he had not observed anything unusual in the attentions which Roger had been paying to Griselda; nor was he acute enough to have noticed anything significant about the way in which Solly avoided her. And here he was, confronted with two unsuspected rivals, both younger and more attractive than he, whose presence had been unknown to him! He had not drunk much, but his stomach heaved, and he felt cold within. He had no time to consider his plight, however, for Roger turned to him.
“That’s a lie, isn’t it, Mackintosh?” said he.
“What? What’s a lie?” said Hector, startled.