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                              The Master Mummer

                           By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

           Author of "Anna, the Adventuress," "A Prince of Sinners,"
                             "The Betrayal," Etc.


WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

_A. L. BURT COMPANY_
_Publishers New York_

_Copyright_, 1904,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

_All rights reserved_




[Illustration: "Let the boy have his chance," said Allan.]




The Master Mummer




Book I




CHAPTER I


Sheets of virgin manuscript paper littered my desk, the smoke of much
uselessly consumed tobacco hung about the room in a little cloud. Many a
time I had dipped my pen in the ink, only to find myself a few minutes
later scrawling ridiculous little figures upon the margin of my
blotting-pad. It was not at all an auspicious start for one who sought
immortality.

There came a growl presently from the other side of the room, where
Mabane, attired in a disreputable smock, with a short black pipe in the
corner of his mouth, was industriously defacing a small canvas. Mabane
was tall and fair and lean, with a mass of refractory hair which was the
despair of his barber; a Scotchman with keen blue eyes, and humorous
mouth amply redeeming his face from the plainness which would otherwise
have been its lot. He also was in search of immortality.

"Make a start for Heaven's sake, Arnold," he implored. "To look at you
is an incitement to laziness. The world's full of things to write about.
Make a choice and have done with it. Write something, even if you have
to tear it up afterwards."

I turned round in my chair and regarded Mabane reproachfully.

"Get on with your pot-boiler, and leave me alone, Allan," I said. "You
do not understand my difficulties in the least. It is simply a matter of
selection. My brain is full of ideas--brimming over. I want to be sure
that I am choosing the best."

There came to me from across the room a grunt of contempt.

"Pot-boiler indeed! What about short stories at ten guineas a time, must
begin in the middle, scented and padded to order, Anthony Hopeish, with
the sugar of Austin Dobson and the pepper of Kipling shaken on _ad
lib._? Man alive, do you know what pot-boilers are? It's a perfect
conservatory you're living in. Got any tobacco, Arnold?"

I jerked my pouch across the room, and it was caught with a deft little
backward swing of the hand. Allan Mabane was an M.C.C. man, and a
favourite point with his captain.

"You've got me on the hip, Allan," I answered, rising suddenly from my
chair and walking restlessly up and down the large bare room. "The devil
himself might have put those words into your mouth. They are
pot-boilers, every one of them, and I am sick of it. I want to do
something altogether different. I am sure that I can, but I have got
into the way of writing those other things, and I can't get out of it.
That is why I am sitting here like an owl."

Mabane refilled his pipe and smoked contentedly.

"I know exactly how you're feeling, old chap," he said sympathetically.
"I get a dash of the same thing sometimes--generally in the springtime.
It begins with a sort of wistfulness, a sense of expansion follows, you
go about all the time with your head in the clouds. You want to collect
all the beautiful things in life and express them. Oh, I know all about
it. It generally means a girl. Where were you last night?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Where I shall be to-night, to-morrow night--where I was a year ago.
That is the trouble of it all. One is always in the same place."

He shook his head.

"It is a very bad attack," he said. "Your generalities may be all right,
but they are not convincing."

"I have not spoken a word to a woman, except to Mrs. Burdett, for a week
or more," I declared.

Mabane resumed his work. Such a discussion, his gesture seemed to
indicate, was not worth continuing. But I continued, following out my
train of thought, though I spoke as much to myself as to my friend.

"You are right about my stories," I admitted. "I have painted
rose-coloured pictures of an imaginary life, and publishers have bought
them, and the public, I suppose, have read them. I have dressed up
puppets of wood and stone, and set them moving like mechanical
dolls--over-gilded, artificial, vulgar. And all the time the real thing
knocks at our doors."

Mabane stepped back from his canvas to examine critically the effect of
an unexpected dash of colour.

"The public, my dear Greatson," he said abstractedly, "do not want the
real thing--from you. Every man to his _metier_. Yours is to sing of
blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like
revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice,
and keep your muse chained. The other worlds are for the other writers."

I was annoyed with Mabane. There was just sufficient truth in his words
to make them sound brutal. I answered him with some heat.

"Not if I starve for it, Allan? The whole cycle of life goes humming
around us, hour by hour. It is here, there, everywhere. I will bring a
little of it into my work, or I will write no more."

Mabane shook his head. He was busy again upon his canvas.

"It is always the humourist," he murmured, "who is ambitious to write a
tragedy--and _vice versa_. The only sane man is he who is conscious of
his limitations."

"On the contrary," I answered quickly, "the man who admits them is a
fool. I have made up my mind. I will dress no more dolls in fine
clothes, and set them strutting across a rose-garlanded stage. I will
create, or I will leave alone. I will write of men and women, or not at
all."

"It will affect your income," Mabane said. "It will cost you money in
postage stamps, and your manuscripts will be declined with thanks."

His gentle cynicism left me unmoved. I had almost forgotten his
presence. I was standing over by the window, looking out across a
wilderness of housetops. My own thoughts for the moment were sufficient.
I spoke, it is true, but I spoke to myself.

"A beginning," I murmured. "That is all one wants. It seems so hard, and
yet--it ought to be so easy. If one could but lift the roofs--could but
see for a moment underneath."

"I can save you the trouble," Mabane remarked cheerfully, strolling over
to my side. "Where are you looking? Chertsey Street, eh? Well, in all
probability mamma is cooking the dinner, Mary is scrubbing the floor,
Miss Flora is dusting the drawing-room, and Miss Louisa is practising
her scales. You have got a maggot in your brain, Greatson. Life such as
you are thinking of is the most commonplace thing in the world. The
middle-classes haven't the capacity for passion--even the tragedy of
existence never troubles them. Don't try to stir up the muddy waters,
Arnold. Write a pretty story about a Princess and her lovers, and draw
your cheque."

"There are times, Allan," I remarked thoughtfully, "when you are an
intolerable nuisance."

Mabane shrugged his shoulders and returned to his work. Apparently he
had reached a point in it which required his undivided attention, for he
relapsed almost at once into silence. Following his example, I too
returned to my desk and took up my pen. As a rule my work came to me
easily. Even now there were shadowy ideas, well within my mental
grasp--ideas, however, which I was in the humour to repel rather than to
invite. For I knew very well whither they would lead me--back to the
creation of those lighter and more fanciful figures flitting always
across the canvas of a painted world. A certain facility for this sort
of thing had brought me a reputation which I was already growing to
hate. More than ever I was determined not to yield. Mabane's words had
come to me with a subtle note of mockery underlying their undoubted
common-sense. I thrust the memory of them on one side. Certain gifts I
knew that I possessed. I had a ready pen and a facile invention.
Something had stirred in me a late-awakened but irresistible desire to
apply them to a different purpose than ever before. As I sat there the
creations of my fancy flitted before me one by one--delicate, perhaps,
and graceful, thoughtfully conceived, adequately completed. Yet I knew
very well that they were like ripples upon the water, creatures without
lasting forms or shape, images passing as easily as they had come into
the mists of oblivion. The human touch, the transforming fire of life
was wholly wanting. These April creations of my brain--carnival figures,
laughing and weeping with equal facility, lacked always and altogether
the blood and muscle of human creatures. The mishaps of their lives
struck never a tragic note; always the thrill and stir of actual
existence were wanting. I would have no more of them. I felt myself
capable of other things. I would wait until other things came.

The door was pushed open, and Arthur smiled in upon us. This third
member of our bachelor household was younger than either Mabane or
myself--a smooth-faced, handsome boy, resplendent to-day in frock-coat
and silk hat.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "Hard at work, both of you!"

Mabane laid down his brush and surveyed the newcomer critically.

"Arthur," he declared with slow emphasis, "you do us credit--you do
indeed. I hope that you will show yourself to our worthy landlady, and
that you will linger upon the doorstep as long as possible. This sort of
thing is good for our waning credit. I am no judge, for I never
possessed such a garment, but there is something about the skirts of
your frock-coat which appeals to me. There is indeed, Arthur. And then
your tie--the cunning arrangement of it----"

"Oh, rats!" the boy exclaimed, laughing. "Give me a couple of
cigarettes, there's a good chap, and do we feed at home to-night?"

Mabane produced the cigarettes and turned back to his work.

"We do!" he admitted with a sigh. "Always on Tuesdays, you know.
By-the-bye, are you going to the works in that costume?"

"Not likely! It's my day at the depot, worse luck," Arthur answered,
pausing to strike a match. "What's up with Arnold?"

"Got the blues, because his muse won't work," Mabane said. "He wants to
strike out in a new line--something blood-curdling, you
know--Tolstoi-like, or Hall Caineish--he doesn't care which. He wants to
do what nobody else ever will--take himself seriously. I put it down in
charity to dyspepsia."

"Mabane is an ass!" I grunted. "Be off, Arthur, there's a good chap, and
don't listen to him. He hasn't the least idea what he is talking about."

Arthur, however, happened to be in no hurry. He tilted his hat on the
back of his head, and leaned upon the table.

"I have always noticed," he remarked affably, "that under Allan's most
asinine speeches there usually lurks a substratum of truth. Are you
really going to write a serious novel, Arnold?"

I lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair resignedly. Arthur was a
most impenetrable person, and if he meant to stay, I knew very well that
it was hopeless to attempt to hurry him.

"I had some idea of it," I admitted. "By-the-bye, Arthur, you are a
person with a deep insight into life. Can't you give me a few hints? I
haven't even made a start."

Arthur considered the matter in all seriousness.

"It is a bit difficult for you, I daresay," he remarked. "You stop
indoors so much, and when you do go out you mope off into the country by
yourself. You want to knock about the restaurants and places to get
ideas. That's what Gorman always does. You see you get all your
characters from life in them, and they seem so much more natural."

"And who," I asked, "is Mr. Gorman? I do not recognize the name."

"Pal of mine," Arthur answered easily. "I don't bring him here because
he's a bit loud for you chaps. Writes stories for no end of papers.
_Illustrated Bits_ and the _Cigarette Journal_ print anything he cares
to send. I thought perhaps you'd know the name."

Mabane went off into a peal of laughter behind his canvas. The boy
remained imperturbable.

"Of course, I'm not comparing his work with Arnold's," he declared.
"Arnold's stuff is no end better, of course. But, after all, the chap's
got common-sense. If they want me to draw a motor I go and sit down in
front of it. If Arnold wants to write of real things, real men and
women, you know, he ought to go out and look for them. If he sits here
and just imagines them, how can he be sure that they are the real thing?
See what I mean?"

There was a short silence. Arthur was swinging his long legs backwards
and forwards, and whistling softly to himself. I looked at him for a
moment curiously. The words of an ancient proverb flitted through my
brain.

"Arthur," I declared solemnly, laying down my pen, "you are a prophet in
disguise, the prophet sent to lift the curtain which is before my eyes.
Which way shall I go to find these real men and real women, to look upon
these tragic happenings? For Heaven's sake direct me. Where, for
instance, does Mr. Gorman go?"

Arthur swung himself off, laughing.

"Gorman goes everywhere," he answered. "If I were you I should try one
of the big railway stations. So long!"

I rose to my feet, and taking down my hat commenced to brush it. Mabane
looked up from his work.

"Where are you off to, Arnold?" he asked.

Some curious instinct or power of divination might indeed have given me
a passing glimpse of the things which lay beyond, through the portals of
that day, for I answered him seriously enough--even gravely.

"The prophet has spoken," I said. "I must obey! I shall start with
Charing Cross."




CHAPTER II


Why the man should have spoken to me at all I could not tell. Yet it is
certain that I heard his simple and courteous inquiry with a thrill of
pleasure, not unmixed with excitement. From the first moment of my
arrival upon the platform I had singled him out, the only interesting
figure in a crowd of nonentities. Perhaps I had lingered a little too
closely by his side, had manifested more curiosity in him than was
altogether seemly. At any rate, he spoke to me.

"Do you know if the Continental train is punctual?" he asked.

"I have no idea," I answered. "This guard would tell us, perhaps."

"Signalled in, sir," the man declared. "Two minutes late only."

My new acquaintance thanked me and lit a cigarette. He seemed in no
hurry to depart, and I was equally anxious to engage him in
conversation. For although he was dressed with the trim and quiet
precision of the foreigner or man of affairs, there was something about
his beardless face, his broadly humorous mouth, and easy, nonchalant
bearing which suggested the person who juggled always with the ball of
life.

"Marvellous!" he murmured, looking after the guard. "Two minutes late
from Paris--and perhaps beyond. It is a wonderful service. Now, if I had
come to meet any one, and had a pressing appointment immediately
afterwards, this train would have been an hour late. As it is--ah, well,
one is foolish to grumble," he added, with a little shrug of the
shoulders.

"You, like me, then," I remarked, "are a loiterer."

He flashed a keen glance upon me.

"I see that I have met," he said slowly, "with someone of similar tastes
to my own. I will confess at once that you are right. For myself I feel
that there is nothing more interesting in this great city of yours than
to watch the people coming and going from it. All your railway stations
fascinate me, especially those which are the connecting links with other
countries. Perhaps it is because I am an idle man, and must needs find
amusement somewhere."

"Yet," I objected, "for a single face or personality which is
suggestive, one sees a thousand of the type which only irritates--the
great rank and file of the commonplace. I wonder, after all, whether the
game is worth the candle."

"One in a thousand," he repeated thoughtfully. "Yet think what that one
may mean--a walking drama, a tragedy, a comedy, an epitome of life or
death. There is more to be read in the face of that one than in the
three hundred pages of the novel over which we yawn ourselves to sleep.
Here is the train! Now let us watch the people together--that is, if you
really mean that you have no friends to look out for."

"I really mean it," I assured him. "I am here out of the idlest
curiosity. I am by profession a scribbler, and I am in search of an
idea."

Once more he regarded me curiously.

"Your name is