"Mr. Machin," said Rose Euclid, "you are not a gentleman."
"You'd hardly think so, would you?" mused Edward Henry, as if mildly interested in this new discovery of Miss Euclid's.
"Maria," said the star to her maid, "go and tell Mr. Marrier I'm coming."
"And I'll go back to the gallery," said Edward Henry. "It's the place for people like me, isn't it? I daresay I'll tear up this paper later, Miss Euclid—we'll see."
IV
On the next night a male figure in evening dress and a pale overcoat might have been seen standing at the corner of Piccadilly Circus and Lower Regent Street, staring at an electric sign in the shape of a shield which said, in its glittering, throbbing speech of incandescence:
The figure crossed the Circus, and stared at the sign from a new point of view. Then it passed along Coventry Street, and stared at the sign from yet another point of view. Then it reached Shaftesbury Avenue and stared again. Then it returned to its original station. It was the figure of Edward Henry Machin, savouring the glorious electric sign of which he had dreamed. He lit a cigarette, and thought of Seven Sachs gazing at the name of Seven Sachs in fire on the façade of a Broadway Theatre in New York. Was not this London phenomenon at least as fine? He considered it was. The Regent Theatre existed—there it stood! (What a name for a theatre!) Its windows were all illuminated. Its entrance-lamps bathed the pavement in light, and in this radiance stood the commissionaires in their military pride and their new uniforms. A line of waiting automobiles began a couple of yards to the north of the main doors and continued round all sorts of dark corners and up all manner of back streets towards Golden Square itself. Marrier had had the automobiles counted and had told him the number, but such was Edward Henry's condition that he had forgotten. A row of boards reared on the pavement against the walls of the façade said: "Stalls Full," "Private Boxes Full," "Dress Circle Full," "Upper Circle Full," "Pit Full," "Gallery Full." And attached to the ironwork of the glazed entrance canopy was a long board which gave the same information in terser form: "House Full." The Regent had indeed been obliged to refuse quite a lot of money on its opening night. After all, the inauguration of a new theatre was something, even in London! Important personages had actually begged the privilege of buying seats at normal prices, and had been refused. Unimportant personages—such as those whose boast in the universe was that they had never missed a first night in the West End for twenty, thirty, or even fifty years—had tried to buy seats at abnormal prices, and had failed: [269] which was in itself a tragedy. Edward Henry at the final moment had yielded his wife's stall to the instances of a Minister of the Crown, and at Lady Woldo's urgent request had put her into Lady Woldo's private landowner's-box, where also was Miss Elsie April, who "had already had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Machin." Edward Henry's first night was an event of magnitude. And he alone was responsible for it. His volition alone had brought into being that grand edifice whose light yellow walls now gleamed in nocturnal mystery under the shimmer of countless electric bulbs.
"There goes pretty nigh forty thousand pounds of my money!" he reflected excitedly.
And he reflected:
"After all, I'm somebody."