it without them, and then she will keep her hands out of the face of the audience.”
“I’ll try. But if she loses her self-complacency, away will go that smile which sends the half-price youths spooney to the Albion.”
“Eheu, eheu! Then, too, I’m afraid Brigling will make an awful mess of the Colonel..
“A joke there. Note it down. Colonel ought to be superior to a mess. Put it elegant. That’s a sparkler.”
“Worthy of Brigling.”
“Why do you abuse Brigling? You should see him on horseback. He rides like a trooper.”
“But the Colonel isn’t a trooper, and moreover can’t come into the room to the wedding breakfast on horseback. I can’t think what you gave him the part for. I thought we settled that Oysterley was to have it.
“L’homme propose—le Jew dispose—our friend Oysterley, between ourselves, finds it convenient to be out of town for a short time, for the benefit of his creditors.”
“You might pay them, and secure him for the piece.”
“Well, that’s true,” said the manager, gravely. “So I might. I’ll secure him for the next, if you will be so good as to get to work again.”
“I’m sorry for Oysterley, though,” said the author, “for I thought of him all through the part.”
“Humane man! But Brigling will do it very well. He has been on his mettle ever since his little bit in the Green Stocking. Nothing succeeds like success, and it does a good fellow a world of good to be patted on the back.”
“So I’m told. Nobody ever tried it with me in the days when I wanted patting. You, for instance, were most icily disagreeable when I brought you my first play.”
“No more of that, Hal, an’ thou lovest me. It was my keen perception of character that made me severe, because I knew that you were a nature that would improve by being kept down, like the palm-tree—crescit sub pondere virtus.”
“Where did you get that bit of learning?” said Hawkesley, laughing.
“Confound your impudence. Do you think nobody can read a book but an author? Charles the First had his head cut off before Whitehall.”
“Yes, I credited you with being aware of that fact,” said Hawkesley, “but do you suppose he talked Latin on the scaffold?”
“Who said he did? But there is a book called Icon Basiliké, whatever that means, and it is about the aforesaid king, and in its frontispiece is a picture of the aforesaid palm-tree, with that respectable Latin; and if you deny it, I will show you the book, which I bought at the corner of Craven Buildings for the sum of one and sixpence. Now then?”
“Well, I accept your eighteenpenny excuse for your conduct to a young author whom you ought to have taken by the hand. But it’s always the way. I dare say you have snubbed another, this very day, whom ten years hence you will be inviting to work for you.”
“By Jove, you may be nearer right than you think, for on your opinion, I have declined to produce that piece I gave you to read—Mr. Adair’s.”
“I should like to see that gentleman,” said Hawkesley.
“It may easily be managed for you, for I wrote very civilly, and told him that I should be happy to see him if he would call, and that though this drama did not suit my arrangements, another effort might be more acceptable, and all that one says to a gentleman.”
“You never said it to me, mind that. It was as much as I could do to get my first piece out of your hands.”
“Don’t keep harping on old times. I dare say I tried to hold it back out of love for your reputation, as it was so bad.”
“It ran a hundred and twelve nights at the Frippery, to your intense mortification and despair,” said Hawkesley. And though there were nine-tenths of banter in the speech, there might have been one-tenth of something else. For even a mother does not like to hear her firstborn lightly spoken of; how much less can an author bear depreciation of the child of his youth?
“Yes, I sent in people to hiss it, of course.”
“Anyhow, I was told that you did, and had not then heard that it was the custom with every manager to send in “enemies” on all first nights.”
“I believe that some people think it’s true,” said Aventayle. “By the way, I don’t suppose that there’s anything in this piece that will give offence to our friend, the Lord Chamberlain.”
“I hope that there is plenty,” said Hawkesley. “I want another stand-up fight with that amiable institution. Let us see. I dare say he’ll find offence in the title.”
“What—where?” said Aventayle, “Reckoning Without The Host.”
“Yes—what will you bet that he does not write and say that the Host may be construed by the Catholic world into a concealed sarcasm at their rites, and though he knows nothing can be further from the author’s meaning, the name had better be changed into Reckoning Without the Landlord.”
“I’ve had a much less likely message from the Censor than that,” said the manager. “I expect some day to be told that I must not allow turtle soup to be lightly spoken of, for fear of hurting the feelings of the Lord Mayor. But we’ll hope for the best. You have not put as much low life into the piece as I wanted, my son.’
“I hope I have not put any. I did not intend it.”
“When I say low life, my son, do not mistake. I do not mean vulgarity. But what I want, in a theatre like this, to which the Swells resort—”
“They resort to every theatre where there is anything worth seeing.”
“And there is always something worth seeing here,” replied the manager, with lofty dignity, especially when the plays of one Hawkesley of Maida Hill are enjoying their brief run. I was going to state, for your instruction, that years of