“Oh, but my wish is that it’ll be a great success.”
“You won’t get your wish,” He nodded his head mournfully, and, removing his cigarette from his made that trumpeting sound with his lips.
“Don’t you like the play, Mr. Leahurst?”
“I dunno anything about the play. It’s Greek to me. But I know this: wrong season to produce anything important—stop-gap—no names in the cast”; and he made a movement with his thumb, as of Romans at a gladiatorial arena. “Right down—unless by a fluke Beckett draws the women.”
Emmie pleaded against his dismal prognostications.
“Oh, please don’t make me down-hearted.”
“All right,” said Mr. Leahurst, suddenly smiling at her. “I don’t want to crab it. Cert’nly not—since you’re so keen on it.”
It was quite extraordinary, the effect of that first smile. Emmie, who had been afraid of him because everybody else was afraid of him, had now the weak instinctive gratification that even the best people feel when the ogre unbends to them. But it was more than that. She had a swift convincing impression of innate simplicity and good nature. Whatever the tales about him, there was something in this common illiterate man that you could not dismiss lightly. She asked herself what. Power, strength of purpose, or the concealed kindliness?
And without prelude he began to talk of himself—with a candour so astounding that Emmie was rendered breathless. He talked about himself as if there was no possible question that it was a subject of entrancing interest to all the world; also as if he had detected in Emmie complete sympathy, together with burning curiosity, and it would not be fair to keep back any detail from her. “Plays are all the same to me. The best of ’em—I mean what the critics call the best—give me an headache. I never went inside a theatre till I was thirty-seven—an’ never wanted to. It was my late wife dragged me into the business. That’s all it is to me—a business. She was an actress by profession—and a cat domestically. I gave way for peace and quiet. A lot o’ money I spent on her, giving her shows in this and that, ramming her down the public’s throat, and o’ny makin’ ’em sick, all said and done. But I was loyal. I went on with it—till they came and told me I’d lost her. I don’t want to say anything unkind about her. But that’s why you see me here. I’ve learnt it now—and I wash one hand with the other. The people bred up in the business are like a pack o’ children. Natchrally, any real business man does what he likes with ’em. Miss Verinder, tell me if you can: What is the charm of the theatre?” He did not wait for an answer. “Vanity, I suppose, at the bottom of it. Same with your friend Beckett! I dunno. I like Beckett because he’s a manly young feller; not like these long-haired—” And to indicate the class of actors to whom he objected, he used a technical term that Emmie did not understand.