The Regent eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 328 pages of information about The Regent.

The Regent eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 328 pages of information about The Regent.

“You really do think it’s a good thing?” Edward Henry ventured, for he had not yet been convinced of the entire goodness of theatrical enterprise near Piccadilly Circus.

Mr. Seven Sachs convinced him—­not by argument but by the sincerity of his gestures and tones.  For it was impossible to question that Mr. Seven Sachs knew what he was talking about.  The shape of Mr. Seven Sachs’s chin was alone enough to prove that Mr. Sachs was incapable of a mere ignorant effervescence.  Everything about Mr. Sachs was persuasive and confidence-inspiring.  His long silences had the easy vigour of oratory, and they served also to make his speech peculiarly impressive.  Moreover, he was a handsome and a dark man, and probably half a dozen years younger than Edward Henry.  And the discipline of lime-light had taught him the skill to be forever graceful.  And his smile, rare enough, was that of a boy.

“Of course,” said he, “if Miss Euclid and the others had had any sense they might have done very well for themselves.  If you ask me, the option alone is worth ten thousand dollars.  But then they haven’t any sense!  And that’s all there is to it.”

“So you’d advise me to go ahead with the affair on my own?”

Mr. Seven Sachs, his black eyes twinkling, leaned forward and became rather intimately humorous: 

“You look as if you wanted advice, don’t you?” said he.

“I suppose I do—­now I come to think of it!” agreed Edward Henry, with a most admirable quizzicalness; in spite of the fact that he had not really meant to “go ahead with the affair,” being in truth a little doubtful of his capacity to handle it.

But Mr. Seven Sachs was, all unconsciously, forcing Edward Henry to believe in his own capacities; and the two as it were suddenly developed a more cordial friendliness.  Each felt the quick lifting of the plane of their relations, and was aware of a pleasurable emotion.

“I’m moving onwards—­gently onwards,” crooned Edward Henry to himself.  “What price Brindley and his half-crown now?” Londoners might call him a provincial, and undoubtedly would call him a provincial; he admitted, even, that he felt like a provincial in the streets of London.  And yet here he was, “doing Londoners in the eye all over the place,” and receiving the open homage of Mr. Seven Sachs, whose name was the basis of a cosmopolitan legend.

And now he made the cardinal discovery, which marks an epoch in the life of every man who arrives at it, that world-celebrated persons are very like other persons.  And he was happy and rather proud in this discovery, and began to feel a certain vague desire to tell Mr. Seven Sachs the history of his career—­or at any rate the picturesque portions of it.  For he too was famous in his own sphere; and in the drawing-room of Wilkins’s one celebrity was hob-nobbing with another!  ("Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Brindley!”) Yes, he was happy, both in what he had already accomplished, and in the contemplation of romantic adventures to come.

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Project Gutenberg
The Regent from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.