Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

“Choost for a liddle plow,” admitted Gormleigh. “Dere is a cheab night drain to Stinkton-on-Sea, sdarding from de Creat Northern at dwelve dirty. I shall sleep in de gorridor gombardmend, oond breakfast at a goffee and vinkle stall on de peach to-morrow morgen. By vich I haf poot von night to pay for at de hotel.” His bearded lips parted in a childlike smile of delight. “My vife goes not vid me,” he said, and smiled again.

“Then take this!” said Mrs. Gudrun, turning Slump’s farce over. “Report on it after the show on Monday.” And she rustled from the office on billows of silk, attended by clouds of perfume, the despised Billy, and the assiduous Candelish. The stage-manager swore. De Hanna, concealing the solution in the continuity of his tweeds with a bicycle trouser-clip, grinned.

“A little solid reading will steady you down, Gummy, and if my experience of Slump goes for anything—you’ve got it there. But you’ll report on Monday, as Her Nibs ordered. If you’ve not read it, look out for squalls on Monday night!”

* * * * *

“Potstausend! Hof I read dot farce!” gasped Gormleigh on the night of Monday. “Schwerlich! I hof read him tvice. Once from de beginning to de end, oond akain from de end to de beginning.” His face assumed an expression of anguish, and the veins on his bald forehead stood out as the thick drops gathered there. “I cannot make heads or dails of him.... He is gram-jam with chokes, poot I cannot lof at dem; his situations are sgreaming, poot I cannot sgream. De tears day komm instead.... Dat vork is vonderful ... it should one day be broduced, poot in de kreat National School Theatre for authors oond actors dot de gountry hos not yet founded, to brove to bubils vot is not a farce——”

“Yet I shouldn’t be surprised if we did the piece here,” said Teddy Candelish. “Slump, the author, has been talking over Her Nibs, and as he would let _Maggs at Margate_ go for nothing down, find three hundred pounds toward the production, and merely take a nominal sixty per cent., the chances are that you’ll be rehearsing before Tuesday. Hullo!” for the stage-manager had reeled heavily against him.

“Ich bin unwohl.... It is dose undichested chokes of Slumps I haf hodd on my gonstitution since I read dot farce. Oond now you komm mit anodder,” Gormleigh groaned.

“Here’s Her Nibs with Slump,” said Candelish, with a grin; and Mrs. Gudrun, in the Renaissance robes of Juliet, swept into the green room with a little grinning, long-haired man in an imitation astrachan-collared overcoat over crumpled evening dress—a little man who gave a large hand, with mourning nails, familiarly to Candelish, and nodded cavalierly when Gormleigh was introduced. Slump was to read his play to the manageress and her staff after the performance that night.

Read his play Slump did, and Cimmerian gloom gathered upon the countenances of his listeners as the first act dragged to a close. Slump put the typescript down on the supper-table and looked round; Gormleigh’s head had sunk upon his folded arms. Heavy snores testified to the depth and genuineness of his slumbers. The countenances of De Hanna and Candelish expressed the most profound dejection, while the intellectual half of Mrs. Gudrun’s celebrated countenance had temporarily vanished behind her upper lip.

“What do you say to that?” Slump asked, quite undismayed by these signs of weariness on the part of his listeners. Mrs. Gudrun came back to answer him.

“I say that it’s the longest funeral I’ve ever been at. Open another bottle of the Boy, Teddy, and wake up, Gormleigh.”

“I hof not been asleep,” explained Gormleigh.

“I wish I had,” sighed De Hanna. “The fact is,” he continued, prompted by a glance from Mrs. Gudrun, “that your play don’t do.”

Slump maintained, in the face of this discouragement, a smiling front.

“Won’t do, eh?”

“Won’t do for nuts,” said De Hanna firmly. “Nobody could possibly laugh at it,” he continued.

“It is too tam tismal,” put in Gormleigh.

“But if I prove to you that people can laugh at it, what then?” queried the undismayed Slump. He took from a fob pocket-book a newspaper cutting and handed it across the supper-table to De Hanna. The cutting was headed

“OZONE AT THE BALL,”

and ran thus:

“‘Will you take a little refreshment?’

“‘Thank you, I have just had a sniff of ozone.’

“Question and answer at the ball given last night in aid of the —— Hospital, —— Square, at the Royal Rooms, Kensington. For, besides champagne, ozone was laid on. After every dance Dr. Blank, head of the Hospital, wheeled about the hall an appliance in which, by electrical action, pure oxygen was converted into the invigorating element of mountain or seaside air, greatly to the purifying and enlivening of the atmosphere of the ballroom.”

“My firm supplies the gas used in the treatment of the patients at that hospital,” said Slump. “It’s a turnover of ten thousand per annum. We’re ready to lay it on at the theater, and give the playgoers genuine ozone with their evening’s entertainment. As for the farce, I don’t count it A1 quality, but I’ve made up my mind to be acted and laughed at, and I’m going to bring chemistry in to help me. Think what an advertisement for the hoardings: ‘Real Ozone Wafted Over the Footlights,’ ‘Sea Air in the Stalls and Gallery!’”

“By thunder! it’s a whacking notion!” cried Candelish.

“Colossal!” exclaimed De Hanna, taking fire at last.

“Poot vill de beoble loff?” asked Gormleigh.

“Ah, yes! Will they stand your farce even with an ozone accompaniment?” doubted Mrs. Gudrun.

“I’ve a machine downstairs in the stage-door office,” said Slump calmly. “Will you try the first act over again—with gas?”

Gormleigh groaned, but the other three nodded acquiescence; and the men in charge of the electrical oxygen-generator received instructions to bring the machine upstairs.

* * * * *

“Ha, ha, ha!”

“Haw, haw, haw!”

“Ach, it is too funny for anydings!” This from Gormleigh, rocking in his chair, and mopping his streaming eyes with a red silk handkerchief. “Ach, ha, ha, ha!”

Mrs. Gudrun held up her jeweled hands for mercy. The laughing man who worked the machine stopped pumping, the laughing author ceased to read, Billy the bulldog, who had been grinning from ear to ear, wiped a wet nose on his mistress’s gown and sat down panting.

“How the deuce,” gasped De Hanna, “can oxygen make a stupid farce a funny one? I can’t understand it, for the life of me.”

“Because,” replied Slump, with brevity and clearness, “that’s my trade secret, and I don’t mean to give it away. Well, does _Maggs_ go on, or do I take it to another management?”

The general assent was flattering in its unanimity. _Maggs at Margate_ went into rehearsal at the “Sceptre” next day, and in a week was presented to the public. We refer you to the critiques published in the _Daily Tomahawk_, the _Yelper_, and other morning prints:

“It seems as though the good old days were come again.... Peals of irresistible laughter rang through the crowded theater as the side-splitting story of _Maggs_ was unfolded. The audience laughed, the orchestra laughed, the actors themselves were infected by the general merriment.”

“Mr. Slump is a public benefactor. When ‘down,’ a dose of him will be found to act like magic. The management’s happy notion of supplying the theater with real ozone adds not a little to the pleasure of the entertainment.”

And so forth, and so forth. Booking was immense, the box-office and libraries were besieged with applicants eager to breathe the genuine sea air wafted over the footlights at the “Sceptre.” The treasury boxes had to be carried to the office at night by two of the strongest commissionaires.

“Slump has a soft snap,” said De Hanna, chewing his Geyser pen rapturously as he went over the books. “Sixty per cent. of the gross receipts in author’s fees, and we’re averaging two thousand a week since we went in for daily _matinées_. Then the Transatlantic Trust is running the play in New York to phenomenal business, and we’ve planted it out for the Colonies, while France and Germany——”

“Id vas from Chairmany dat de leading itea of de blay was orichinally sdolen,” said Gormleigh, who had blossomed out in new clothes, a red necktie, and a cat’s-eye pin.

“Leading idea of the play is the Ozone,” said De Hanna; “and as Slump’s firm holds the patent for the electro-oxygen generator, and manufactures the oxygen used in the theater——”

“Dey call it bure oxygen, poot it is not dat,” said Gormleigh, laying his finger to his nose. “It is a motch cheaber gombound, I give you my vort.”

“What?” De Hanna came closer, and his Oriental eyes gleamed. “If that’s true, and we could manufacture and generate it for ourselves, we—we could buy up every rotten play we come across—there’s heaps of them to be had, Heaven knows—and run ’em for nuts. What is the stuff?”

“It is nitrous oxide,” said Gormleigh, “gommonly known as loffing kass—and I hof a friend, a Chairman chemist—dat vill——Hoosh!” He laid his finger to his nose with an air of secrecy as Mrs. Gudrun swept into the office, enveloped in her usual clouds of silk and perfume. Candelish was not with her, but Slump and Billy followed at her heels.

“Of course, it must be admitted, _Maggs_ is a phenomenal success,” she was saying, “and we’re making money hand over hand; but the part of ‘Angelina’—though Cluffer says no French comedy actress of any age or period could act it as I do—does not give me proper opportunities. Mr. Slump thinks with me.” She smiled dazzlingly upon the enamored little man. “And he has written a tragedy in blank verse—_The Poisoned Smile_—which we mean to produce as soon as the run is over.” She swept out again with her following, and De Hanna and Gormleigh exchanged a wink of partnership.

“A tragedy in blank verse by Slump.... Phew!” De Hanna whistled. “They won’t want laughing-gas for that.... As for us, we go snacks in biz. I’ll find the Syndicate and the theater.”

“Oond I de blays, de sdage-management, oond de kass. De Chairman chemist friend I dold you of, I hof vith him already a gontract made.”

“Perhaps it is a bit shady,” said De Hanna punctiliously, “to exploit an idea that really is Slump’s property....”

“De chokes in Slump’s comic baber he sdole from a Chairman orichinal,” said Gormleigh pachydermatously. “It is nodding poot tid for tad!”

AIR

“Sweet are the uses of advertisement.”
_The Professional Shakespeare._

“I believe in the value of an ad.,” said Mrs. Gudrun one night at the Paris Grand Opera, the Sceptre Theatre, London, being temporarily closed pending a new production. “Sarah believes in it, too—and that’s another of the remarkable points of resemblance between us. And for the sake of a puff, I’m willing to do all that a woman can.”

“Can’t do more,” said De Petoburgh, shaking his head owlishly. “Can’t possibly do more.”

“Shut up, De Peto. That woman’s ready to bite you for talking through her big _aria_,” commanded Mrs. Gudrun, with a slight glance of imperial indifference towards the infuriated _prima donna_. She dropped her opera-glasses into the orchestra with a crash, narrowly shaving the kettle-drums, and causing the cymbal-player to miss his cue, as she continued: “But, though I’m generally keen to see the pay-end of a big notion, this idea of Bobby Bolsover’s won’t do for macaroons. Not that I’m lacking in what the Americans call horse-grit—wasn’t I on De Brin’s automobile when he won the Paris-Rouen race with his Gohard Cup Defender in nineteen-three? That was one hairbreadth escape, from the revolver shot that started us—you remember Bobby put in ball cartridge by mistake—to the three flying kilometers at the finish, which we did on one wheel, as the brakes refused to act. And I’ve hung by one coupling over a raging American river in my own drawing-room Pullman saloon. But when it comes to dangling in a little basket that weighs next to nothing from a bag of gas that weighs nothing at all—I’m not taking any, and I don’t care who knows it. A captive balloon’s another thing. You’re cabled and sand-bagged and what not, and, unless you jump out, nothing can happen to you. But——Do see who’s knocking at the door!”

It was a uniformed and epauletted functionary conveying the polite intimation of the management that Madame and her party must positively maintain silence during the performance, or make themselves the trouble to depart!

“Tell him we’d had enough and were just going!” commanded Mrs. Gudrun. She rose, and, followed by the Duke, Bobby Bolsover, and Teddy Candelish—most active and ubiquitous of business managers, sailed out of the box, knocking over a fauteuil and carrying a footstool away upon the surging billows of her train. “Calls herself an artist!” she said, in reference to the _prima donna_, upon whose trills and roulades an enraptured audience hung breathless and enthralled; “and lets herself be put about by a little thing like that! Where’s her artistic absorption, I should like to know. Why, I’ve studied Juliet in the drawing-room where Bobby and De Petoburgh were having a rat-hunt under the tables and things, and what difference did it make to my conception of the part? Not a sou. And _she_ was a shrimp-seller at Nice! They all have that _voce squillante_ and those thick flat ankles and those rolling black eyes like treacle-balls. Let’s go and have some supper at the Café Paris.”

Over American grilled lobster and quails _Georges Sand_, Bobby Bolsover’s grand notion for an advertisement, cropped up again. One may explain that it consisted in the suggestion that Mrs. Gudrun and party should electrify Paris, and subsequently London, by traveling _per_ motor-airship from St. Cloud, rounding the Eiffel Tower in emulation of the immortal Santos, and returning to the Highfliers’ Club airship station at the Parc upon the conclusion of the feat. A friend of De Petoburgh’s, a distinguished member of the Highfliers’ Club, would undertake to lend the airship—a newly completed vessel, with basket accommodation for three. This philanthropist did not propose to share the notoriety by joining the trip, and it was to be distinctly understood that De Petoburgh was to be responsible for any expenses involved.

And Bobby Bolsover, brimming, as usual, with genuine British bravery and brandy-and-soda, was ready to assume command.

“You know the principle of a motor?” Bobby demanded, as the supper proceeded, and a collection of champagne corks, gradually amassed on the corner of the table, assumed proportions favorable to purposes of demonstration.

“Candelish knows the principle of a motor,” said De Petoburgh. “Never could learn myshelf. Too much borror!”

“One may say that there is gasoline in a receptacle,” began Teddy. “Air passing through becomes charged with gas, and comes out ready to explode. Then——”

“To explode,” agreed De Petoburgh; “absorutely correc’ dennifishion, by Ringo!”

“Don’t mind De Peto: he’s in for one of his old attacks,” said Mrs. Gudrun. “His legs have been all over the place since breakfast. Well?”

“You give a twirl to a crank,” said Bobby Bolsover.

“Down goes the piston,” continued Teddy.

“Down go her pistol,” nodded De Petoburgh.

“And the dashed thing begins working automatically,” exclaimed Bobby Bolsover. De Petoburgh balked at the six-syllabled hedge. “Now, an airship is an example of——”

“The effectiveness of an aërial propeller driven by a petrol motor,” put in Teddy.

“Jusso,” said De Petoburgh. “Jusso.”

“There is, practically speaking, no danger whatever,” pursued Bobby Bolsover, warming to the subject, “that does not attend other popular pursuits. You may be thrown from a horse, or tumble off a coach-box——”

“Did once,” said De Petoburgh, smiling in sad retrospection.

“Or you may blow up in a motor,” went on Bobby.

“But in either case,” said Mrs. Gudrun, with point, “one is on the ground, not hanging between heaven and earth, like What’s-his-name’s coffin.”

“Brarro!” exclaimed De Petoburgh. “Encore! _Bis!_”

“Permit me to put in, dear lady,” said Teddy Candelish, with his best professional manner, “that if you fall out of an airship, you eventually finish on the ground!”

“Under,” gloomily interpolated De Petoburgh. “Under.”

“And, further,” said Bobby Bolsover, “the guide-rope is in connection with the ground all the time. Seventy feet of it, trailing like——”

“Snakes!” said the irrepressible De Petoburgh, with a glassy stare.

“And,” went on Bobby, “we will have four picked men from the Highfliers’ Club Grounds to run beside the guide-rope all the way and back.”

“Thus combining personal advertisement,” said Teddy Candelish, “with physical integrity.”

Mrs. Gudrun permitted her classical features to soften. “Now you’re talking!” the lady said. She smiled through the bottom of her champagne-glass as Teddy, bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment, and the trip was arranged forthwith. Thanks to the discretion of Teddy Candelish, the preparations were kept so profoundly secret that all Paris was on the alert when the eventful morning dawned. The Highfliers’ Club Grounds were literally besieged, and the intending sky-navigators fought their way to the aërodrome containing their vessel through a surging throng of scientists, editors, journalists, dandies, actresses, photographers, pickpockets, and politicians.

“Regular scrimmage—what?” panted Bobby Bolsover, as, bare-headed and disheveled, he reached the private side-door of the balloon-house.

“We ought to have slept here,” said Mrs. Gudrun, straightening her hat-brim as the breathless men collected her hairpins.

“Nothing but perches to sleep on,” objected Bobby Bolsover, indicating the skeleton arrangements of the vast interior.

Mrs. Gudrun, whose eye soared with Bobby’s, would have changed color had the feat been possible.

“Do we really climb up that awful ladder to get on board?” she inquired. “I have more nerve than any woman I know; but I wasn’t educated as an acrobat. _J’en suis tout baba_, Bobby, that you should have let us all in for a thing like this. We’re planted, however, and must go through. What crowds of smart women! What on earth has brought _them_ out so early in the morning? It must have got about that I’m going to be killed!” She gulped and clutched Teddy. “I c-can’t go on in this scene! Make an apology—make an apology and say I’m ill. I _am_ ill—horribly!”

“I feel far from frisky,” said Bobby Bolsover candidly. “Gout all last night in the head and eyes, and—every limb, in fact, that one relies upon in steering a motor. But, of course, I am ready to undertake the helm—unless anybody else would like to volunteer?”

He looked at Teddy, whose eye was clear, whose cheek was blooming, whose golden curls encroached upon a forehead unlined with the furrows of personal apprehension.

“W-what do you say, Teddy?” gasped Mrs. Gudrun.

“I deeply regret.... It is imperatively necessary, dear lady,” said Teddy glibly, “that in your absolute interests I should be at the ‘Fritz’ at twelve. The Paris representatives of the _Daily Yelper_, the _Morning Whooper_, and the _Greenroom Rag_, have appointed that hour to receive particulars of your start; three Berlin correspondents, one from Nice, and the editors of the _Journal Rigolo_ and the _Vie Patachon_ are to hole in ten minutes later; and there will be thousands of telegrams to open and answer. You know that the Syndicate of the Escurial Palace of Varieties have actually tendered to secure the turn. Therefore, though my heart will make the voyage in your company, I—cannot.”

Blue-eyed Teddy melted into thin air. Mrs. Gudrun, looking older than a professional beauty has any right to look, surveyed her companions with a hollow gaze of despair, while outside the aërodrome Paris roared and waited. Bobby, as green as jade, in a complete suit of motor armor, goggles included, leaned limply against the ladder that led upwards to the platform of the aërodrome. De Petoburgh, in foul-weather yachting kit, his glass fixed in his bloodshot left eye by the little mechanical contrivance that keeps it from tumbling, looked back. That debilitated nobleman, though shaky, was game to the backbone.

“I can’t drive a motor, Bolsover,” he said quite distinctly, “but I can drive _you_. Will you—oblige me—by climbing up that ladder? We follow. After you, dear lady!”

And the three negotiated the giddy ascent. Upon the platform they found the owner of the airship and the four workmen who, under promise of reward and threat of punishment, were to attend the guide-rope. The airship itself, a vast sausage-shaped silk bag of hydrogen, from which depended by rubber-sheathed piano wires a framework of proven bamboo supporting three baskets—one forward, one amidships, and one aft—hovered over the heads of the three depressed adventurers like a shapeless embodiment of adverse Fate. And Paris was growing impatient.

“Tell ’em to stick to the guide-rope, De Croqueville, for their lives,” urged Bobby feverishly, squeezing the hands of the owner of the machine. “Give it ’em in their own lingo; my French isn’t fluent to-day. They’re not to trust to my steering, but just tow us to the Tower and back.”

De Croqueville squeezed back, and embraced Bobby on both cheeks. “My brave, my very dear, rely upon me. Madame”—he kissed the jeweled knuckles of Mrs. Gudrun—“all Paris is assembled to behold the most beautiful woman prove herself also to be of the most brave. M. le Duc,” he saluted De Petoburgh distantly, and then cordially shook hands, “I am as kin a sportsman as how you. I have plank my egg—my oof—a thousand francs you circulate the Tour Eiffel, in spite of the wind, which blows from the wrong quarter. Adieu!”

“Blows from the wrong quarter!” gasped Bobby Bolsover. The eyeglass of De Petoburgh turned in his direction, and he immediately climbed the forward ladder and got into the steersman’s creaking basket, and grasped the wheel with an awful sinking immediately below the heart.... The Duke helped Mrs. Gudrun to assume the central position, and got in astern. Just before the starting word was given and the great doors of the aërodrome rolled apart in their steel grooves, he leaned over to De Croqueville, addressing that gentleman in his own language:

“One supposes she”—he alluded to the vessel—“is—sea—I mean air-worthy—eh, my friend?”

De Croqueville shot up his eyebrows and spread his hands.

“One supposes.... Truly, dear friend, I know not!... The vessel is newly complete—this is what in English you call the try-trip. That is why I hedge my bet. One thousand francs you round the Tour Eiffel and return uninjure—two thousand you do not return uninjure—whether you round the Tour or no. _Adieu-dieu!_”

The electric signal rang. The colossal doors groaned apart. The four workmen scuttled down the ladders like frightened mice, seized the guide-rope, and towed the airship out of dock. Paris waved handkerchiefs, cheered. Bobby Bolsover, ghastly behind his goggles, pressed the pedal and manipulated the wheel. The engine throbbed, the tail-shaft screw revolved. The adventurers had started.

“Qui-quite nice,” gulped Mrs. Gudrun tremulously, as the keen wind toyed with her silk veil and fluttered her fur boa.

“She pitches,” said De Petoburgh briefly. “Keep her head to it, Bolsover.”

There was a sickening moment as the airship mounted obliquely upward.... Then a tug at the guide-rope brought her nose down, pointing to the sea of fluttering handkerchiefs beneath. Mrs. Gudrun groaned and clung to the sides of her padded basket. De Petoburgh swore.

“I can’t—manage her. My—my nerve has gone. Let’s put about and take her back to dock again,” gasped Bobby.

“For—for Heaven’s sake, do!” groaned Mrs. Gudrun. But again that new voice spake from the blue lips of De Petoburgh, and——

“I’ve lived like a dashed blackguard, but I’m not going to die like a cowardly cad. Curtain’s up—go through with the show. Bolsover, you bragging, white-livered idiot, you can steer an electric launch and drive a motor-car. If I’d ever learned to do either, I’d take your place. But as I can’t—go ahead, and keep on as I direct, or I’ll shoot you through your empty skull with this revolver”—the click of the weapon came stimulatingly to the ears of the scared helmsman—“and swear I went mad and wasn’t responsible. They—they’d believe me! Mabel, if you sit tight and go through with this, I’ll stand you that thousand-guinea tiara you liked at Alphonse’s, if we—when we get safe to ground. Now, Bolsover, drive on, or take the consequences!”

Perhaps the familiar terms employed restored Bobby to the use of his suspended faculties. Certain it is that the airship began to forge steadily ahead at the rate of some twenty miles an hour—but _not_ absolutely in the direction of the vast spidery erection of metal which was its destined goal. It skimmed in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne, keeping at so lofty an altitude that of the end of the guide-rope merely a length of some six feet trailed upon the ground.

“Those—those men l-look so funny running after it,” said Mrs. Gudrun, upon whom the promise of the tiara had acted as a stimulant.

“I hope they may keep up with it,” muttered De Petoburgh as the airship sailed over the humming streets of the gay city, and tiny men and women turned white specks of faces upwards to stare. “Ease her, Bolsover,” he commanded.

“Oh, we’re going right up again!” gasped Mrs. Gudrun. Then, as the airship regained the horizontal: “This isn’t half bad,” she said in a more cheerful tone, “but the housetops with their spiky chimney-pots look dreadfully dangerous. The guide-rope has knocked a row of potted geraniums off a third-floor balcony, and the old man who was reading the paper in the cane chair must be swearing awfully. But where are the men? I don’t see them; do you?”

The four workmen were at that moment heatedly cursing the Municipal Council of Paris at the bottom of a very long, very deep trench which had been excavated across a certain street for the accommodation of a new drain. The guide-rope pursued its course without them, now sweeping a peaceful citizen off his legs, now covering the occupants of a smart victoria with mud, now trailing over a roof or coiling serpent-wise around the base of a block of chimneys. In the distance loomed the Eiffel Tower, but in answer to De Petoburgh’s repeated requests that he should steer thither, Bobby Bolsover only groaned. And the airship, after navigating gracefully over the green ocean of the Bois de Boulogne, continued her trip over the Longchamps racecourse, veered to the south at the pleasure of a shifting current of air, and, having leaked much, began plainly to buckle and bend.

De Petoburgh, uncomfortably conscious of a misspent existence and wasted opportunities, looked at the back of Mrs. Gudrun’s head, and wondered whether she knew any prayers.

“The trees are coming awfully close, aren’t they?” said the unconscious beauty.

“Awfully!” said the Duke, as the capricious motor stopped.

Then Mrs. Gudrun screamed, and Bobby Bolsover, casting his goggles to the winds, huddled in the bottom of his basket, and the debilitated but plucky nobleman shut his eyes and thought of his long-dead mother as the airship hurtled downwards ... crash into the top of the tallest of the giant oaks in the magnificent park of H.S.H. Prince Gogonof Babouine.

The Prince has the reputation of being excessively hospitable. When the three passengers recovered from the shaking, the top of a long ladder pierced the thick foliage beneath the wrecked vessel, and the Prince’s major-domo, a stout personage in black with a gold chain, came climbing up with a courteous message from the Prince. Would Madame and M. le Duc and the other gentleman descend and partake of the second _déjeuner_, which was on the point of being served, or would they prefer to remain on board their vessel?

“Stop up here? Does the man take us for angels?” snorted Mrs. Gudrun indignantly.

The descent was not without danger, but with the aid of De Petoburgh and the major-domo, she braved and completed it without injury either to her long celebrated limbs or her famous features. Bobby followed.

The Prince entertained the shipwrecked castaways in princely fashion, and drove the party back to Paris on his drag, the wonderful yellow coach with the team of curly Orloffs. And he consented to dine; and that night Mrs. Gudrun held a reception behind the illuminated balconies of the Hotel Fritz, while the London newsboys were yelling her familiar name, and the evening papers containing the most ornamental particulars of her adventure went off like hot cakes.

According to the most reliable account garnered by our special correspondent from the lovely lips of the exquisite aëronaut, she had never quailed in the moment of peril, and, indeed, upon the distinguished authority of the Hon. R. Bolsover: “One is never frightened while one can rely upon one’s own pluck!” Nobody interviewed De Petoburgh, leaning vacuously smiling against the wall. Indeed, he had developed another of his attacks, and could not have responded with any coherence.

“Wonderful fellow, Bolsover,” Teddy Candelish gushed, Teddy, all smile and sparkle, “so brainy and resourceful!”

“Rath’ ...” assented De Petoburgh fragmentarily.

“And Her Nibs—a heroine—positively a heroine!”

“Ra’!” assented De Petoburgh, as the heroine swept by, making magnificent eyes at the palpably enamored Prince, while Paris murmured indiscreet admiration.

“And you, Duke, eh? Found it trying to your nerves, they tell me?” Teddy continued, twirling his golden mustache. “Such trips too costly, eh, to indulge in often?”

“Ra’!” agreed De Petoburgh, with a glance at the thousand-guinea diamond fender surmounting the most frequently photographed features in the world.

SIDE!

Upon the conclusion of the phenomenally brief run of _The Poisoned Kiss_ at the Sceptre Theatre, Mrs. Gudrun, who had sustained the heroic rôle of Aldapora “with abounding verve and true histrionic inwardness” (to cull a quotation from the enthusiastic notice which appeared in the _Theatrical Piffer_), and whose sculpturesque temples throbbed no less with the weight of the dramatic laurels heaped upon them than with the heady quality of the champagne with which those laurels had been liberally drowned—Mrs. Gudrun left the author and the Syndicate, _per_ their Business Representative, exchanging poignant personalities over a non-existent percentage, and hied her to the Gallic capital for recreation and repose; bearing in her train the leading man, Mr. Leo De Boo, a young actor who had chipped the egg of obscurity in the recent production. De Boo was “a splendid specimen of virile beauty,” according to the _Greenroom Rag_—all shoulders, legs, nose, and curls, without any perceptible forehead; and Teddy Candelish, most ubiquitous of acting-managers, came within an appreciable distance of being epigrammatic when he termed him “a chronic cad in beautiful boots.” For more exquisite foot-gloves than those De Boo sported were never seen, whoever made and gave credit for them; and De Boo was said to have a different pair for every day in the month and every imaginable change in the weather.

“Nearly threw up his part in _The Poisoned Kiss_,” said Teddy afterwards, at the club, “when he discovered that it was to be a sixteenth-century production; took me aside, and told me in confidence afterwards, that if he’d been allowed to play Hermango in gray suède tops with black pearl buttons and patent leather uppers, the piece would have been a colossal monetary, as well as artistic, success.”

“Schwerlich! Who konn bretend to follow de workings of a mind like dot jung man’s,” said Oscar Gormleigh, “vidout de assisdance of de migroscope? Und hof I not known a brima donna degline to go on for Siebel begause she hodd been kifen brown insdead of violet tights? It vas a tam gonsbiracy, she svore py all her kodds! In prown legs she vould groak like von frog mit kvinsy—mit violet she always varble like de nachtigall. De choke of it vas”—the talented stage-director laid a hairy finger archly against his Teutonic nose—“dat voman always groak—not never varble—tights or no tights!”

“De Boo is a rank bounder,” said Candelish decidedly.

“He has pounded from de ranks,” pronounced Gormleigh, “und he vill go on pounding—each pound so motch higher dan de last von, oontil he drop splosh into de kutter akain. He who now oggupies a svell mansion-flat in Biccadilly, _ach ja!_—he vill end vere he bekan—in de liddle krubby sit-bedding-room over de shabby shop vere dey let out segond hond boogs on hire mit segond hond furnidure.”

Mrs. Gudrun would have been deeply incensed had she heard this unlicensed expression of opinion from one whom she had always kept in his place as a paid underling. For six nights and a matinée she had, in the character of Aldapora, elected to poison herself in the most painful manner rather than incur the loss of De Boo’s affections, and, with the “true histrionic inwardness” so belauded by the _Theatrical Piffer_, she had identified herself with the part. So she took a blazing comet flight to Paris with the actor in her train, and paragraphs announcing their arrival at the Hotel Spitz appeared in the London papers.

“Listen to this, Jane Ann,” said the paternal De Boo, whose name was Boodie—and when I add that for twenty years the worthy father had been employed as one of the principal cutters at Toecaps and Heels, that celebrated firm of West-End bootmakers, it will be understood whence the son obtained his boots. “To think,” Mr. Boodie continued, “that Alfred—our Alfred, who sp’iled every particle of leather he set his knife to, and couldn’t stitch a welt or strap a seam to save his life—should ever have lived to be called a rising genius!”

“The ways of Providence are wonderful, father!” returned the said Alfred’s mother dutifully. Mrs. Boodie was an experienced finisher herself, and had always lamented Alfred’s lack of “turn” in the family direction. “An’, if I was you, I wouldn’t mention that bit in the paper to Aphasia Cutts. She’s dreadful jealous over our Alfred, even now, though he hasn’t bin to see ‘er or wrote for two years. As good as a break off, I should a-regarded it, ’ad I bin in her place. But she’s different to what I was.”

“So are all the gals,” said Mr. Boodie with conviction, bestowing upon his wife a salute flavored with Russia leather and calf.

“Well, I’m sure. Go along, father, do!” said Mrs. Boodie, with a delighted shove.

But of course Aphasia—so christened by an ambitious mother in defiance of the expostulations of a timid curate—had already seen and cried over the paragraph. She had loved Alfred and stood up for him when he was a plain, stupid boy with an unconquerable aversion to work. She had been his champion when he grew up, no longer plain, but as pronounced a loafer as ever. She had given up, in exchange for his loutish affections, the love of an honest and hard-working man.

“I can’t ’elp it!” she had said; “you can get on without me, and Alfred can’t, pore chap. His Par calls ’im a waster—I believe ’e’d give ’im the strap if ’e wasn’t six foot ’igh. But I’ve got ’im an opening in the theatrical line, through a friend of mine as does fancy braiding at Buskin’s, the stage shoemaker’s in Covent Garden. It’s only to walk on as one of the Giant’s boy-babies in the Drury Lane panto.—eighteen pence a night _and matinées_—but his Mar will be thankful. If only ’is legs are long enough for the part——”

They were, and from that hour Alfred had embarked on a career. When entrusted with a line to speak, it was Aphasia who held the grimy slip of paper on which it was written and aided the would-be actor with counsel and advice.

“And ’old up your ’ead, do, as if you was proud of yourself, and don’t bend at the knees; and whether you remember your words or not, throw ’em out from your chest as if you was proud of ’em. An’ move your arms from the shoulder like as if you was swimmin’—don’t crook your elbers like a wooden doll. And throw a bit o’ meanin’ into your eye. You took me to see that Frenchman, Cocklin ’e calls ’imself; as played the chap with the boko ’e wouldn’t let the other chaps make game of.... French or Japanese, they’re both Dutch to me, but I watched Cocklin’s eye, and I watched ’is ’ands, an’ I could foller the story as if it was print, an’ plainer. I’ve went to see an actor since what folks said was a great artis’, and if ’e did talk English, ’is eye was as dumb as a boiled fresh ’addock’s an’ ’s ’ands was like slices of skate. Now say your bit over again.”

And Alfred said it, this time to the satisfaction of his instructress. When he got a real part Aphasia coached him, and rode down from Hammersmith with him on the bus, and was waiting for him at the stage-door when he came out, the tears of joy undried on her pale cheeks. And that was the night upon which she first noticed a coldness in the manner of her betrothed.

“An’ now I’m not good enough for him to wipe his boots on,” she sobbed, sitting on her bed in the single room lodging off the roaring, clanging Broadway—“the boots ’is Par cut an’ welted, an’ ’is Mar stitched, an’ I finished. But I won’t stand in ’is light. I’ve my pride, if I am a boot-finisher. I’ll see that Mrs. What’s-her-name face to face, an’ ’ave it out as woman to woman, an’ tell ’er she’s welcome to marry ’im for me.”

And Aphasia dried her poor red eyes and took off Alfred’s betrothal ring—a fifteen-carat gold circlet with three real garnets, bought in the Broadway one blushful, blissful Saturday night—and evicted his photographs from their gorgeous cheap frames, and made a brown-paper parcel of these things, with a yellow leather purse with a blue enamel “A” on it, and tied it up with string.

Perhaps something of her fateful mood was telepathically conveyed to Mr. Leo De Boo at that moment, for he shivered as he sat at the feet of Mrs. Gudrun upon the balcony of a private suite at the Hotel Spitz, and turned up eyes that were large and lustrous at that imperishable image of Beauty, exhaling clouds of fashionable perfume and upborne on billows of chiffon and lace. Mrs. Gudrun, who naturally mistook the spasms of a genuine plebeian British conscience for the pangs of love, lent him her hand—dazzlingly white, astonishingly manicured, jeweled to the knuckles, and polished by the devout kisses of generations of worshipers—and De Boo mumbled it, and tried to be grateful and talk beautifully about his acting. But this bored Mrs. Gudrun, who preferred to talk about her own.

“I have often felt that myself,” she said—“the conviction that a crowded audience hung upon my lips and saw only with my eyes, and that I swayed them as with a magic thingumbob, by the power of a magnetic personality.”

“It is a mystery,” said De Boo, passing his long fingers through his clustering curls, “that once in a century or so a man should be born——”

“Or a woman. Marvelous!” agreed Mrs. Gudrun. “Marvelous! the man who runs the _Daily Tomahawk_ said that when I made my first appearance on the stage.”

“Genius is a crown of fire,” said De Boo, who had read this somewhere. “It illuminates the world, yet scorches the wearer to the bone. He——”

“She suffers,” said Mrs. Gudrun, neatly stopping the ball and playing it on her side. “You may bet she suffers. Hasn’t she got the artistic temperament? The amount of worry mine has given me you would never believe. Cluffer, of the _Morning Whooper_, calls me a ‘consolidated bundle of screaming nerves.’ When I’ve sat down to dinner on the eve of a first night, De Petoburgh—you’ve met the Duke?—has had to hold me in my chair while Bobby Bolsover gave me champagne and Angostura out of the soup-ladle. And I believe I bit a piece out of that. And afterwards—ask ’em both if I wasn’t fairly _esquinte_.”

“But the possessor of an artistic temperament—such as mine—even though the fairy gift entails the keenest susceptibility to anguish,” quickly continued De Boo, “enjoys unspeakable compensation in the revelation to him alone of a kingdom which others may not enter. Looking upon the high mountains in the blush of dawn, I have shouted aloud with glee——”

“The first time I ever went into a southern Italian orange-grove in full bloom,” acquiesced Mrs. Gudrun, “the Prince of Kursaal Carle Monto, who was with me, simply sat down flat. He said Titian ought to have been alive to paint my face and form against that background.... By the way, the first act of that new play, the title of which I’ve forgotten, and which I’ve leased from a scribbling idiot whose name don’t signify, takes place in a blooming orange-grove. I’ve cast you for the leading man’s part, Leo, and I hope you will be properly grateful for the chance, and conquer that nasty habit you have of standing leering at the audience in all my great moments.”

“Dearest lady,” De Boo argued glibly, “does it not increase the dramatic poignancy of such moments if the spectators are enabled to read in the varying expressions pictured on _my_ face the feelings your art inspires?”

But Mrs. Gudrun was inexorable. “They can read ’em in the back of your head if they’re anxious,” said she, “or they can take the direct tip from me. I hope that’s good enough. I don’t see the cherry-bun of running a theater to be scored off by other people, and so you know! And now that’s settled, let us go and have stuffed oysters and roast ices at Noel Peter’s, and see Sarah afterwards in her new tragedy _rôle_. I’m the only woman she’s really afraid of, you know, and I feel I’m bound to romp in in front of her before long. She says herself that acting like mine cannot be taught in a conservatoire, and that I constitute a complete school in myself. Have you ever seen me play Lady Teazle?”

“Unhappily I have not. It is a loss,” said De Boo, “a distinct loss. By the way, when I scored so tremendously as Charles Surface at Mudderpool——”

“Hell is full of men who have scored as Charles Surface at Mudderpool,” said Mrs. Gudrun crushingly. “That sounds like a quotation, doesn’t it? Only it must be mine, because I never read. You’re a charming fellow, and a clever boy, Leo, but, as a friend, let me tell you that you talk too much about yourself. It’s bad form; and the truly great are invariably the truly modest. I must save up that epigram for my next interview, I think. There’s the auto-brougham.”

And De Boo enfolded the renowned form of his manageress in a point lace and sable wrap, and they went off to Noel Peter’s, and saw La Gr-r-ande perform.

Rehearsals of the new play, _Pride of Race_, at the Sceptre had scarcely commenced when in upon Teddy Candelish, laboriously smoking in his sanctum and opening the morning’s mail, swept Mrs. Gudrun.

“I haven’t a moment to breathe,” she said imperially, accepting the chair Teddy acrobatically vacated. “Come in, De Petoburgh—come in, Bobby; you are in the way, but I’m used to it. No, De Petoburgh, that cellaret’s tabooed; remember what Sir Henry said to you about liqueurs before lunch. Are there any letters of importance, Teddy, to my cheek?”

“Several bundles of press-cuttings from different firms, thirty or forty bills, a few tenders from photographers, and—and some love-letters,” replied Candelish, pointing to some neat piles of correspondence arranged on the American roll-top desk. “Usual thing—declarations, proposals, and so forth.”

“Always plenty of those—hey?” chuckled De Petoburgh, sucking a perfunctory peptoid lozenge in lieu of the stimulant denied.

“Plenty, b’Jove!” echoed Bobby Bolsover.

“Not so many as there used to be,” responded Candelish with tactless truthfulness, rewarded by the lady with a magnificent glare. “By the way, there’s one odd letter, from a girl or a woman who _isn’t_ quite a lady, asking for an interview on private business. Signs herself by the rummiest name—Aphasia Cutts.” He presented the letter.

“Aphasia?” said Mrs. Gudrun, extending heavily jeweled fingers for the missive. “Isn’t that what De Petoburgh has when he can only order drinks in one syllable and his legs take him where he doesn’t want to go? Eh, Bobby?”

“Yes; but remindin’ the Duke of that always brings on an attack,” said Bobby solicitously. “Look at him twitchin’ now.... Steady, Peto! Woa-a, old mannums!”

“Take him for a tatta while I finish the rehearsal,” commanded Mrs. Gudrun, rising from Teddy’s chair in an upsurge of expensive draperies. “Write to this Aphasia girl, Teddy, and say I’ll see her to-morrow, between three and four p. m. After all, the whole-souled adoration of one’s own sex is worth having,” the lady said, as, heralded by the rustling of silken robes, the barbaric clash of jeweled ornaments, and wafts of fashionable perfume, she sailed back to the boards.

When Aphasia got her reply, p.p. Teddy, some hours later, there was very little of whole-souled adoration in her reception of the missive.

“I s’pose she looks on me as the dirt under her feet, like Alfred. But I won’t let that put me off makin’ the sacrifice that’s for his good—the ungrateful thing! I ’ope she’ll make ’im a nice wife, that’s all,” she sobbed, as she took from her collar-and-cuff drawer the flat brown-paper parcel containing the garnet ring, the photographs, and the letters. And she dressed herself in her best, with a large lace collar over a cloth jacket, and the once fashionable low-necked pneumonia-blouse, to which the girls of her class so fondly cling, and went to meet the lady whom, in terms borrowed from the latest penny romance, she called her “haughty rival.”

Mrs. Gudrun received her with excessive graciousness. A costume rehearsal was in progress, and the lady was in the hands of her maids and dressers. “I suppose this is the first time you have ever been behind the scenes?” she inquired. “Look about you as much as you like, and then you will be able to say to your friends: ‘I have been in Mrs. Gudrun’s dressing-room.’ You see, I am in the gown I wear in the first act. It is by Babin; and if you write for a ladies’ paper, you will remember to say so, please.”

“I don’t write for any ladies’ paper,” said Aphasia. “I couldn’t spell well enough—not if they ast me ever so. But it’s a lovely gownd, and I suppose all that stuff on your face is what makes you look so young an’ ’andsome—from a long way off.”

Mrs. Gudrun’s famous features assumed a look of cold displeasure. She assumed the majestic air that suited her so eminently well, and asked the young person’s business.

“It’s quite private, and I’ll thank you to send away your maids, if you’ve no objection,” said the dauntless Aphasia. “The fact is,” she continued, when the indignant menials had been waved from the apartment, “as I’ve come to make you a present—a present of a young man——”

“Look here, my good young woman,” began the incensed manageress.

Aphasia suddenly handed her the brown-paper parcel, and the wrath of Mrs. Gudrun was turned to trembling. She was sure this was an escaped lunatic. Aphasia profited by the lull in the storm to explain. She had come to hand over her Alfred—stock, goodwill, and fixtures. He had forgotten to be off with the old love before he went on with the new, but the old love bore no malice. All was now over.

“And you may marry ’im whenever you like,” sobbed Aphasia.

“I never heard anything so indecent in the whole course of my life,” said Mrs. Gudrun, rising in offended majesty. “Marry Mr. De Boo, indeed! If I had married every leading man I’ve played love-scenes with since I adopted this profession, I should be a female Brigham Young! ‘In love with me!’ Perhaps he is; it’s rather a common complaint among the men I know. As for Mr. De Boo, if he has low connections and vulgar entanglements, they are nothing to me. Good-day! Stop! You had better take this parcel of rubbish with you. Dawkins—the stage-door!”

And Aphasia found herself being ushered along the passage. Bewildered and dazzled by the glaring lights, the excitement and the strangeness, she ran almost into the arms of De Boo himself as he emerged from his dressing-room next the manageress’s. Had he overheard? There had been a curtained-over door on that side. Under his paint his handsome features were black with rage; he caught the girl’s shoulders in a furious grip, and spluttered in her ear:

“Damn you! Damn you, you sneaking creature! You have made a pretty mess of things for me—haven’t you?—with your blab about my father and the boot-business, and my letters and the ring I gave you. To my dying day I’ll never speak to you again!”

He threw her from him savagely and strode away.

Aphasia stood outside the theater and shook with sobs. It chanced—or did not chance, so queer are the vagaries of Destiny—that Ulick Snowle, the president of the New Stage-Door Club, happened to be passing; he had just called in at the box-office to privately book the first three rows of the upper circle on behalf of the club, the Old Stage-Doorers having secured the gallery. Both clubs were originally one, the Old Stage-Doorers having thrown off the younger club as the cuttlefish gets rid of the supernumerary limb which in time becomes another cuttlefish. And the unwritten compact between both clubs is that if one applauds a new production, the other shall execrate the same—an arrangement which contributes hugely to the liveliness of first-nights.

No uninitiated person beholding Ulick, with his shaggy beard, aged felt-basin hat of Continental make, short nautical coat, and tight-fitting sporting trousers, would suppose him to be the great personage he really is. He came up to Aphasia, and bluntly asked her what was the matter, and if he couldn’t do something? In her overwhelming woe and desolation, she was like the soda-water bottle of the glass-ball-stoppered description—once push in the stopper, there is no arresting the escape of the aërated fluid. She told the sympathizing Ulick all before he put her into the Hammersmith bus, and when he would have handed in the fateful brown-paper parcel—“Keep it,” she said, with a gesture of aversion. “Burn it—chuck the thing in the dustbin. They’re no manner o’ use to me!” And away she rattled, leaving Ulick Snowle upon the pavement, in his hands an engine of destruction meet to be used in the extermination of the unfittest.

For the New Stage-Door Club did not love Mr. Leo De Boo, whose manner to old friends—whom he had often led around street corners and relieved of half-crowns—did not improve with his worldly prospects. And Ulick stood and meditated while the double torrent of the London traffic went roaring east and west; and as a charitable old lady was about to press a penny into his hand, Tom Glauber, the dandy president of the Old Stage-Doorers, came along, and the men greeted cordially. Von Glauber seemed interested in something that Ulick had to tell, and the two went off very confidentially, arm-in-arm.

“It would be a sensation if, for once, the O.S.D.’s and the N.S.D.’s acted in unison,” agreed Tom Glauber.

And on the night when _Pride of Race_ was produced at the Sceptre, both clubs attended in full strength, every man with a crook-handled walking-stick, and a parcel buttoned under his coat. The piece had just concluded a run of three hundred nights, and every reader is acquainted with the plot, which is of modern Italy and Rome of to-day, to quote the programme. We all know how the young Marchese di Monte Polverino, in whose veins ran the bluest blood of the Latin race, secretly wedded Aquella Guazetta, the tripe-seller, who had won his lofty affections in the guise of a Bulgarian Princess, and how the dread secret of Aquella’s origin was revealed at the very moment when the loftiest and most exclusive of the Roman nobility were about to welcome the newly made Marchesa into their ranks.... Aquella, her brain turned by the acuteness of her mental suffering, greets the revelation with a peal of frenzied laughter. Now this laughter was a continual obstacle, during rehearsals, in the path of Mrs. Gudrun. Said she:

“The peculiarity and originality of my genius, as Cluffer says, consists in the fact that I can’t do the things that might be expected of me—not for filberts; while I _can_ do the things that mightn’t. If I can’t really hit off that laugh, I’ll have a woman in the wings to do it for me. But my impression is that I shall be all right at night. Don’t forget, Gormleigh, that you’re not to tub the chandelier altogether; I hate to play to a dark house.”

“Py vich innovation,” said Gormleigh afterwards, “de gonsbirators vas enapled to garry out their blan. Himmel!” he cried, dabbing his overflowing eyes with an antediluvian silk pocket-handkerchief, “shall I effer forget—no, not vile I lif—de face of dot jung man!”