I wondered what George would think and say if he heard that hare-brained young simpleton accusing me of looking like an actress.

"You give my words a wrong construction. I only meant to express my profound conviction that in your hands everything will be perfectly safe."

"I can only say, Mr Spencer, that I hope you're right, because when I think of some of the people whose names you have put upon this piece of paper I have my doubts. I see you have Mrs Lascelles to act Dora Egerton, who is supposed to be a young girl, and who has to both sing and dance. I should imagine that Mrs Lascelles never sang a note; her speaking voice is as hoa.r.s.e as a crow's. And as for dancing, why, she must weigh I don't know what, and is well past forty."

"There's nothing else Mrs Lascelles could act."

"Nothing else she could act! Act! I'm perfectly convinced that she can't act anything."

Mr Spencer winked, which was a reprehensible habit--one of several which I was meaning to tell him I objected to.

"She'll take two rows of reserved seats."

"Indeed, is that her qualification? Then am I to take it that the qualifications of all the rest of the people whom you have down on your piece of paper are of a similar kind?"

His manner immediately became confidential; he was very fond of becoming confidential. It was a fondness which I was commencing to perceive that it might become advisable to check before it went too far. There were moments when I never knew what he was going to say. I felt that he might say anything.

"You see, between ourselves, on the strict QT, it's like this; if we want to make the show the howling success it ought to be, what we've got to do is to see that everyone in the cast represents money."

"I don't understand."

I did not.

"Oh, yes, you do; only--I know!" He winked again; there was positively an impertinent twinkle in his eye. "You can see as far through a brick wall as anybody, when you like, only sometimes you don't like. What we've got to do is to fill the a.s.sembly Rooms with money, and with more money, mind you, than the room holds. And the way to do that is to get the people to act whose names I have got down on that piece of paper."

"I still don't follow you. However, since you are managing the affair I suppose it's no business of mine. You are responsible for its success, not I."

"Exactly; you've hit it! I am responsible, and you may take it from me that in a little matter of this sort I know my way about. It's going to be a success--a b.u.mper."

In spite of his confidence, when we came to actual business, things did not begin auspiciously.

By way of a commencement, he read the piece to the people who were going to act it. He said that dramatists always did do so, and that it was necessary to do everything in regular order. The reading took place at Mrs Lascelles's house, The Grange. I had not been in the house before, and from the manner in which she received me I inclined to the opinion that she would just as soon I had not come into it then. As I looked round the room I could not but feel that, for the performance of a musical comedy, Mr Spencer had gathered together a truly curious company. I began to wish that I had had no hand in the collaboration.

Before he had finished the reading that wish took a very much more definite form.

He was not a good reader; that fact forced itself upon one's attention before he had got through three lines. But had he been the finest reader in the world it would not have made a great deal of difference.

A more dreadful set of people to read a musical comedy to one could not by any possibility imagine. The jokes--especially as he read them!--did not strike even me as being very good ones, and sometimes they were a little frivolous. What does one expect in a musical comedy? Had they been the finest jokes conceivable it would not have mattered. I do not believe there was a person present who could have seen a joke at all, even with the aid of a surgical operation. Each time there was a touch of frivolity the faces of the audience grew graver. And as for the songs! Everybody knows the kind of songs one does hear in musical comedies. The words are not suggestive of either Shakespeare or the musical gla.s.ses. I had planned mine on the same lines. There was one chorus which struck me as rather catchy.

"It tickled me so I had to smile; I told the girl she was full of guile.

She said, 'What ho!'

I replied, 'Oh, no!

To put salt on my tail you must walk a mile!'"

I do not pretend that that's poetry, or anything but nonsense. You expect nonsense in a musical comedy. But when Mr Spencer had read two verses, Mrs Parker, who is the wife of the chairman of our local bench, rose from her chair with an expression of countenance calculated to sour all the milk for miles around, and observed--in such a tone of voice!--

"Excuse me, Mr Spencer. I must go. When I received your invitation I did not expect this kind of thing."

"What kind of thing?"

Mr Spencer looked up with a start. It was rapidly becoming more and more obvious to me that he was one of those young men who are incapable of seeing even as far as the tips of their own noses. He had been stammering and stumbling on in apparently sublime unconsciousness of the sort of reception which our masterpiece was receiving. The singularity of Mrs Parker's bearing seemed to take him entirely by surprise.

"May I ask, Mr Spencer, what you call the--stuff you have been reading?"

"Stuff? You mean the piece? It's a musical comedy."

"Indeed. I haven't noticed any music yet, and as for comedy--there is none. It appears to me to be a mere tissue of meaningless vulgarity.

Where did you get it from?"

"Miss Wilson and I wrote it together--that is, she did the greater part of it. In fact, Miss Wilson practically wrote it all."

Which was true enough, but he need not have put it quite so emphatically just at that moment.

"Miss Wilson?" Mrs Parker put up her gla.s.ses and she looked at me. How she looked! "I have not the pleasure of Miss Wilson's acquaintance, but I cannot help thinking that she might have been better employed."

Then she went. Fancy my sensations!

Mr Spencer must have been pachydermatous. He seemed unable to feel either on his own account or on mine. Candid criticism of that ultra-candid sort was to him like water on a duck's back. Directly Mrs Parker was out of the room he turned to Mrs Lascelles.

"I don't think it's so bad, do you?--considering!"

"Considering." She said this with an accent for which I could have thrown something at her. That wretched boy only smiled. It seemed to be his _role_ in life--to smile. Mrs Lascelles was good enough to add a sort of saving clause. "I daresay it will be better on the stage than it is off."

Mr Spencer jumped at the opening.

"Of course! On the stage it will be simply ripping! It's meant to be acted, not read; no good play ever reads well. The better it is the worse it reads."

"This one doesn't read well, does it? In any case I think you made a mistake in asking Mrs Parker to take part in a piece of the kind."

"It was a mistake, wasn't it?"

That young man beamed as if he were congratulating himself on having done something exceedingly clever. In return, Mrs Lascelles observed him with an air which was not exactly beaming.

"Frankly, Mr Spencer, I don't see much of a part in the piece for me."

As a matter of fact there was no part; there was just a song and a dance and nothing else. But I, personally, was convinced that that was too much. That extraordinary young man, however, put the matter in a way which staggered me.

"You see, Mrs Lascelles, it's like this: your part at present is simply outlined--the outline has to be filled in. That's the advantage of a piece like this, you can do that so easily. What I want is your idea of what you'd like the part to be, and then I'll write it up. See what I mean?"

I did not see what he meant. Under the circ.u.mstances I think I was to be congratulated on having been able to hold my peace--till later.

The reading limped to a finish. Then came the chorus. So far as I was able to gather, not a creature thought anything of the play, and they thought still less of the parts which had been allotted them. Mr Spencer scattered promises like leaves in autumn. It made my ears burn to listen to him. I was not so pliable. For instance, Major Hardy came up to me to make some truly sensible remarks.

"Candidly, Miss Wilson"--everybody was candid, it was in the air--"my idea was that we should represent _Hamlet_. I don't know if you are aware that I am by way of being a Shakespearian scholar. I have formed my own notion of the Prince of Denmark. I fancy that I might give shape and substance to that notion if I were allowed to read the part. I should have to read it. Between ourselves, my memory is so imperfect that I could never hope to get anything off by heart. You will therefore see that it is something of a jump to the--eh--kind of thing we have just been listening to. So far as I understand it is proposed that I should play a negro minstrel. Now Mrs Hardy would never permit me to black my face--never! She'd be afraid that it wouldn't come off again. On some points she is extremely nervous. Could the part not be transformed into that of a Highland piper? I have the kilts, and I have the pipes, and I can do some remarkable things with the bagpipes when I am once fairly started. Sometimes it takes me a little time to get into my stride, apt to make two or three false starts, don't you know; wind goes wrong or something, but really, people seem to find that the most amusing part of it."

I informed him that the character could not be "transformed" into a Highland piper; that as for bagpipes, they were out of the question. I had heard of his "pipes." He was fond of playing on them in remote portions of his grounds; people had mistaken them for foghorns. In fact, I tried to convey the impression that I was not to be trifled with. From the look which came on his face I fancy that, to a great extent, I succeeded.

What does anyone suppose was the first remark which Mr Spencer addressed to me when at last we were alone together?--with all the a.s.surance in the world!