"What happened to the curtain?" O'Neill asked.
"Ah, the curtain. It was absurd. I go to see about the curtain. We meet at Philippi. Eh? There will be a row. But you are all right, Naldrett. You know John O'Neill. Eh? Mr. O'Neill he tell you you are all right." He bowed with a flourish of gloved hands, and vanished through the stage door.
"John," said Roger, "the play's killed. I don't mind about the play; but I want to know what it is that they hate."
"They hate the new mind," said Roger. "They've been accustomed to folly, persiflage, that abortion the masculine hero, and justifications of their vices. They like caricatures of themselves. They like photographs. They like illuminated texts. They decorate their minds just as they do their homes. You come to them out of the desert, all locusts and wild honey, crying out about beauty. These people won't stand it. They are the people in Frith's Derby Day. Worse. They think they aren't."
"I'm sorry about Falempin," said Roger. "He's a good fellow. I shall lose him a lot of money."
"Falempin's a Frenchman. He would rather produce a work of art than pass his days, as he calls it, selling 'wash for the peegs.' What is four thousand to a theatre manager? A quarter's rent. And what is a quarter's rent to anybody?"
"Well," said Roger, "it's a good deal to me. Let's go round the house and hear what they say."
They thrust their cigarettes into ash-trays, and passed through the stalls to the foyer. The foyer of the King's was large. The decorations of mirrors, gilt, marble, and red velvet, gave it that look of the hotel which art's temples seldom lack in this country. It is a concession to the taste of the patrons; you see it in theatres and in picture galleries, wherever vulgarity has her looking-glasses. There were many people gathered there. Half a dozen minor critics stood together comparing notes, deciding, as outsiders think, what it would be safe to say. Roger noticed among them a short, burly, shaggy-haired man, who wore a turned-down collar. He did not know the man; but he knew at once, from his appearance, that he was a critic, and a person of no distinction. He was about to look elsewhere, when he saw, with a flush of anger, that the little burly man had paused in his speech, with his cigarette dropped from his mouth, to watch them narrowly, in the covert manner of the ill-bred and malignant. Roger saw him give a faint nudge with his elbow to the man nearest to him. The man turned to look; three of the others turned to look; the little man's lips moved in a muttered explanation. The group stared. Roger, who resented their impertinence, stared back so pointedly that their eyes fell. O'Neill's hands twitched. Roger became conscious that this was one of O'Neill's feuds. They walked together past the group, with indifferent faces. As they passed, the little man, still staring, remarked, "One of that school." They heard his feet move round so that he might stare after them. O'Neill turned to Roger.
"Do you know who that is?"
"No."