at the Throne Theatre to see Orlando Lightfoot's comedy. Entering the buffet, in the first interval, I met Orlando Lightfoot.
"Hallo, old man!" I said. "Congratulations in large quantities."
"Thanks," said the new dramatist. "Have you seen it before?"
"No; but I saw in the papers that it was an 'emphatic success.' How beautiful Elsie Millar is in the part!"
We induced one of the personages behind the bar to notice that we were present, and removed our glasses to a table. Orlando sighed heavily.
"What's your trouble?" I inquired.
"My 'emphatic success,’" he said. "But it's too long a tale to tell you now—I suppose you want to see the second act?"
The vindictiveness with which he pronounced the last two words was startling. I stared at him. "My dear Orlando" I began, but he cut me short.
"Call me 'Frankenstein'!" he groaned. "Like Frankenstein, I've constructed a monster that's destroying me. Before I created this accursed comedy I was a happy man."
"It must have been a very long while before," I said. "When I had the misfortune to share your rooms, you used to remark casually at breakfast that you wished you were dead."
"Anyone is liable to express dissatisfaction in moments; but on the whole I was cheerful and buoyant, especially when you were out," he insisted. "I frequently had as much as five pounds at the time. I'm not boasting; you know it's true. Five pounds at the time is prosperity, if a fellow hasn't got a monster to support. Since I wrote the comedy, a five-pound note has been as ephemeral as a postage stamp. I pinched and pawned to start the monster in life. What it cost me in typewriting alone would have kept me for a month. It has gorged gold. It has devoured my All. And now, by a culminating stroke of diabolical malice, it's breaking my heart."
"There's nearly a quarter of an hour before the act," I said. "Give me a cigarette and the story—I want one badly; an appreciative editor is eager to send a cheque."
"Halves?" asked the author of the "emphatic success."
"Halves," I agreed.
"Well," said Orlando, "the devil tempted me in the pit of the Vaudeville one night. Elsie Millar was in the cast; she had very little to do, but, as usual, she did it exquisitely. I had always admired her, wished I knew her, and that night I thought, 'By Jove, wouldn't I like to write a big part for her! Wouldn't she make a hit if she only got the chance!' I came out after the performance imagining her in the sort of part she's playing in the monster. A plot was beginning to put its head round the corner, and I wandered out of the Strand on to the Embankment trying to get hold of it. The Embankment was deserted, and the river"
"Yes," I said. "Cut that kind of thing—I can put it in when I do the writing. I don't want to miss any of the second act."
"Well, I went to bed about three o'clock with a plot that enraptured me. When I woke up and saw it in the daylight, it didn't look quite so fetching—as is the way of plots et cetera; still, it had good features, if it wasn't a Venus, and I curled its hair, and it generally, till it was fascinating again. The dialogue was the most interesting work—especially the love scene; I enjoyed that. It was like making love to a nice girl myself, and saying the right things at the time instead of thinking of 'em afterwards. I ought to have been turning out stuff for the papers, but I let them slide, and at last the play was finished. It sounds as rapid as filling your pipe, told like this; when you do the story you should stress the alternate ups and downs of the business: the nights when I wrote epigrams and felt like Pinero, and the mornings when I read 'em and felt like cutting my throat. Don't forget that. It's real."
"I'll remember," I said. "I'll have a paragraph on it."
"Well, I had two copies of the thing typewritten at Miss Beck's, in Rupert Street; and pretty they were, tied up with pink bows—till I put in all the improvements I had thought of after I posted to her. The improvements I had thought of after I posted to her made such a mess of the copies that I had to have two more typewritten. However, I couldn't pretend she was dear, and I paid and looked pleasant. Guilelessly, I imagined my expenses were over.