LITMIR.BIZ

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two chairs, upon which the two waiters were trying to climb in order to deposit their plates on the top-most shelf of the sideboard. The waiters successfully mounted the chairs, and successfully lifted their towers of plates to within half an inch of the desired shelf, and then the chairs began to show signs of insecurity. By this time the audience was stimulated to an ecstasy of expectation, whose painfulness was only equalled by its extreme delectability. The sole unmoved persons in the building were the customers awaiting attention at the restaurant table.

      One tower was safely lodged on the shelf. But was it? It was not! Yes? No! It curved; it straightened; it curved again. The excitement was as keen as that of watching a drowning man attempt to reach the shore. It was simply excruciating. It could not be borne any longer, and when it could not be borne any longer, the tower sprawled irrevocably, and seven dozen plates fell in a cascade on the violet hat, and so, with an inconceivable clatter, to the floor. Almost at the same moment the being in the dress suit and the eye-glass-becoming aware of the phenomena-slightly unusual even in a restaurant, dropped his eye-glass, turned round to the sideboard, and received the other waiter's seven dozen plates in the face and on the crown of his head.

      No such effect had ever been seen in the Five Towns, and the felicity of the audience exceeded all previous felicities. The audience yelled, roared, shrieked, gasped, trembled, and punched itself in a furious passion of pleasure. They make plates in the Five Towns. They live by making plates. They understand plates. In the Five Towns a man will carry not seven but twenty-seven dozen plates on a swaying plank for eight hours a day, up steps and down steps, and in doorways and out of doorways, and not break one plate in seven years! Judge, therefore, the simple but terrific satisfaction of a Five Towns' audience in the hugeness of the calamity. Moreover, every plate smashed means a demand for a new plate and increased prosperity for the Five Towns. The grateful crowd in the auditorium of the Empire would have covered the stage with wreaths if it had known that wreaths were used for other occasions than funerals; which it did not know.

      Fresh complications instantly ensued which cruelly cut short the agreeable exercise of uncontrolled laughter. It was obvious that one of the waiters was about to fall. And in the enforced tranquillity of a new dread, every dyspeptic person in the house was deliciously conscious of a sudden freedom from indigestion, due to the agreeable exercise of uncontrolled laughter, and wished fervently that he could laugh like that after every meal. The waiter fell; he fell through the large violet hat and disappeared beneath the surface of a sea of crockery. The other waiter fell too, but the sea was not deep enough to drown a couple of them. Then the customers, recovering themselves, decided that they must not be outclassed in this competition of havoc, and they overthrew the table and everything on it, and all the other tables, and everything on all the other tables. The audience was now a field of artillery which nothing could silence. The waiters arose, and, opening the sideboard, disclosed many hundreds of unsuspected plates of all kinds, ripe for smashing. Niagaras of plates surged on to the stage. All four performers revelled and wallowed in smashed plates. New supplies of plates were constantly being produced from strange concealments, and finally the tables and chairs were broken to pieces, and each object on the walls was torn down and flung in bits on to the gorgeous general debris, to the top of which clambered the violet hat, necklace, and yellow petticoat, brandishing one single little plate, whose life had been miraculously spared. Shrieks of joy in that little plate played over the din like lightning in a thunder-storm. And the curtain fell.

      It was rung up fifteen times, and fifteen times the quartette of artists, breathless, bowed in acknowledgment of the frenzied and boisterous testimony to their unique talents. No singer, no tragedian, no comedian, no wit, could have had such a triumph, could have given such intense pleasure. And yet none of the four had spoken a word. Such is genius!

      At the end of the fifteenth call the stage-manager came before the curtain and guaranteed that two thousand four hundred plates had been broken.

      The lights went up. Strong men were seen to be wiping tears from their eyes. Complete strangers were seen addressing each other in the manner of old friends. Such is art!

      "Well, that was worth a bob, that was!" muttered Edward Henry to himself. And it was. Edward Henry had not escaped the general fate. Nobody, being present, could have escaped it. He was enchanted. He had utterly forgotten every care.

      "Good evening, Mr. Machin," said a voice at his side. Not only he turned, but nearly every one in the vicinity turned. The voice was the voice of the stout and splendid managing director of the Empire, and it sounded with the ring of authority above the rising tinkle of the bar behind the Grand Circle.

      "Oh! How d'ye do, Mr. Dakins?" Edward Henry held out a cordial hand, for even the greatest men are pleased to be greeted in a place of entertainment by the managing director thereof. Further, his identity was now recognised.

      "Haven't you seen those gentlemen in that box beckoning to you?" said Mr. Dakins, proudly deprecating complimentary remarks on the show.

      "Which box?"

      Mr. Dakins' hand indicated the stage-box. And Henry, looking, saw three men, one unknown to him; the second, Robert Brindley, the architect, of Bursley; and the third, Dr. Stirling.

      Instantly his conscience leapt up within him. He thought of rabies. Yes, sobered in the fraction of a second, he thought of rabies. Supposing that, after all, in spite of Mr. Long's muzzling order, as cited by his infant son, an odd case of rabies should have lingered in the British Isles, and supposing that Carlo had been infected! Not impossible! Was it providential that Dr. Stirling was in the auditorium?

      "You know two of them?" said Mr. Dakins.

      "Yes."

      "Well, the third's a Mr. Bryany. He's manager to Mr. Seven Sachs." Mr. Dakins' tone was respectful.

      "And who's Mr. Seven Sachs?" asked Edward Henry absently. It was a stupid question.

      He was impressively informed that Mr. Seven Sachs was the arch-famous American actor-playwright, now nearing the end of a provincial tour which had surpassed all records of provincial tours, and that he would be at the Theatre Royal, Hanbridge, next week. Edward Henry then remembered that the hoardings had been full of Mr. Seven Sachs for some time past.

      "They keep on making signs to you," said Mr. Dakins, referring to the occupants of the stage-box.

      Edward Henry waved a reply to the box.

      "Here! I'll take you there the shortest way," said Mr. Dakins.

II

      "Welcome to Stirling's box, Machin!" Robert Brindley greeted the alderman with an almost imperceptible wink. Edward Henry had encountered this wink once or twice before; he could not decide precisely what it meant; it was apt to make him reflective. He did not dislike Robert Brindley, his habit was not to dislike people; he admitted Brindley to be a clever architect, though he objected to the "modern" style of the fronts of his houses and schools. But he did take exception to the man's attitude towards the Five Towns, of which, by the way, Brindley was just as much a native as himself. Brindley seemed to live in the Five Towns like a highly cultured stranger in a savage land, and to derive rather too much sardonic amusement from the spectacle of existence therein. Brindley was a very special crony of Stirling's, and had influenced Stirling. But Stirling was too clever to submit unduly to the influence. Besides, Stirling was not a native; he was only a Scotchman, and Edward Henry considered that what Stirling thought of the district did not matter. Other details about Brindley which Edward Henry deprecated were his necktie, which, for Edward Henry's taste, was too flowing, his scorn of the "Pianisto" (despite the man's tremendous interest in music), and his incipient madness on the subject of books-a madness shared by Stirling. Brindley and the doctor were forever chattering about books, and buying them.

      So that, on the whole, Dr. Stirling's box was not a place where Edward Henry felt entirely at home. Nevertheless, the two men, having presented Mr. Bryany, did their best, each in his own way, to make him feel at home.

      "Take this chair, Machin," said Stirling, indicating a chair at the front.

      "Oh, I can't take the front chair!" Edward Henry protested.

      "Of course you can, my dear Machin," said Brindley sharply. "The front chair in a stage-box is the one proper seat in the house for you. Do as your doctor prescribes."

      And

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