“Mr. Wynne, you can have no notion what that theatre has cost Archie--what it is daily costing him. Eight hundred pounds a week wouldn’t cover the net loss of that ridiculous business--that trailing of Shakespeare in the mire, to gratify the vanity of a woman. I know what men are when they are very young. If I were to talk to Archie seriously on this subject, he would laugh at me; if he did not, he would throw something at me. The result would be _nil_.”
“Unless he was a good shot with a casual missile.”
“Mr. Wynne, he would not listen to me; but he would listen to you--I know that he would. You could talk to him with all the authority of a man of the world--a man in Society.”
“Mr. Playdell,” said Harold, shaking his head, “if there’s no fool like the old fool, there’s no ass like the young ass. Now, I can assure you, on the authority of a man of the world--you know what such an authority is worth--that to try and detach Archie from his theatre nonsense just now by means of a lecture, would be as impossible as to detach a limpet from a rock by a sermon on--let us say--the flexibility of the marriage bond.”
“The only way that Archie can be induced to throw over Mrs. Mowbray and Shakespeare and suchlike follies, is by inducing him to form a stronger attachment elsewhere.”
“The last state of that man might be worse than the first, Mr. Wynne.”
“Might--yes, it might be, but that is no reason why it should be. The young ass takes to thistles, because it has never known the enjoyment of a legitimate pasture.”
“The legitimate pasture is some distance away from the Legitimate Theatre, Mr. Wynne.”
“I agree with you. Now, the thought has just occurred to me that I might get Archie brought among decent people, for the first time in his life. My sister, Mrs. Lampson, is having a party down at her husband’s place in Brackenshire, for the pheasant-shooting. Why shouldn’t Archie be one of the party? There are a number of decent men going, and decent women also. None of the men will try to get the better of him.”
“And the women will not try to make a fool of him?”
“I won’t promise that--the world can’t cease to revolve on its axis because Archie Brown has a tendency to giddiness.”
Mr. Playdell was grave. Then he said, thoughtfully, “Whatever the women may be, they can’t be of the stamp of Mrs. Mowbray.”