Volume Ii Part 16 (1/2)

Charmington then sat down and wrote a polite note, in which he informed Mr. Breitmann that he desired a short interview with him on a matter of vital importance to them both. A second half-crown was administered to the page boy, and in a few moments the door of the strangers' room was violently flung open, and Mr. Breitmann himself suddenly burst in.

Breitmann never entered a room, he always burst in. The suddenness of his entry startled Charmington considerably; he was still more astonished at the tone in which Breitmann addressed him. That gentleman carried poor Jack's note in his hand.

”What is your vital business, sir? I have no vital business with you.”

”My wife wrote to you, Mr. Breitmann, yesterday, asking you to call on her.”

This only seemed to exasperate Mr. Breitmann still more.

”I have no business with your wife. I am not a ladies' man. Why should I call on your wife when I have no business? What do you mean by coming here and bullying me because I won't call on your wife?”

”My wife is a very prominent person, Mr. Breitmann.”

”I have seen your wife, sir, and if you wish, I will tell you what I think of her.”

He hardly gave poor little Charmington time to a.s.sent to this proposition, when he continued, his voice changing from a shout to a scream:

”Sir, your wife is a fool!” Then he proceeded to crack his fingers violently, one after another. ”Now, sir,” he continued, ”I wish you good-morning; my time is fully occupied in my businesses and in protecting my copyrights.”

He was about to rush from the room.

”It's about that I wanted to see you,” said Jack.

”Have you been infringing my copyrights then?” replied the other in a terrible voice.

”No, I want to buy one,” said Charmington.

”Ah,” replied Breitmann, in a calmer tone, ”then you _have_ business.

Sit down. What do you want to buy?”

”Well, I don't exactly know,” replied Charmington.

”Well, tell me how much you want to spend, five thousand--ten thousand?”

And then they went to business. It was explained to Mr. Breitmann that Mrs. Charmington was anxious to purchase one of his new and original dramas, one of those extraordinary combinations of melodramatic impossibility, which however appeal, and not in vain, to the eye and to the heart, which never fail to fill the pockets of their fortunate purchasers, and which have rendered the name of Breitmann a household word.

For thirty years it had been Mr. Breitmann's misfortune to fight incompetency in some shape or other. It had fallen to his lot to manipulate vast armies of theatrical supernumeraries and to teach them to perform the apparently impossible feat of being in two places at once. Mr. Breitmann's struggles with the British super had taught him one great secret: the British super, like the British donkey, never does what he is told until the person in authority over him loses his temper.

So Breitmann, to avoid loss of time, used to begin by losing his temper at once; so terrible were his ebullitions of wrath, that n.o.body ever attempted to argue with him, and he always carried his point. Finding his tactics invariably successful within the walls of the theatre, he adopted them with similar success in ordinary life, and the time he saved was enormous.

His negotiations with Mrs. Charmington, her husband and her solicitor, were over in forty-eight hours; a satisfactory bargain was concluded between them for the purchase of ”Ethel's Sacrifice,” a melodrama of thrilling interest, originally written as a novel by Robinson. Robinson had submitted the ma.n.u.script to Breitmann, and then for a fortnight the pair had ”collaborated.” What took place during that dreadful fortnight is only known to the two collaborators. Robinson at its commencement was a bright-eyed young fellow, full of enthusiasm, poetry and romance; at the end of the fortnight all the enthusiasm, poetry and romance had been knocked out of him. ”Ethel's Sacrifice” had been altered, tinkered, transposed, cut and filled with comic incidents of the most every-day description, incidents from which the poetic soul of the unhappy Robinson revolted. Then ”Ethel's Sacrifice” was gabbled through one summer's evening at a remote provincial theatre, and ”Ethel's Sacrifice,” by Messrs. Robinson and Breitmann, became a marketable security, duly protected by act of parliament. A nervous invalid left London for prolonged mental rest and change of scene--that was Robinson; his collaborator calmly returned to his multifarious business engagements and the onerous duties of the protection of his innumerable copyrights.

Now Mr. Breitmann not only sold ”Ethel's Sacrifice” to the Charmingtons, but he sold them the benefits of his own personal skill in its production. When the bills said that ”Ethel's Sacrifice” was produced under the personal supervision of Mr. William Breitmann, the knowing ones jumped at once to the correct conclusion that ”Ethel's Sacrifice”

would be a success. Mr. Breitmann had stipulated with Mrs. Charmington that he should not deliver to her the complete drama until she herself was letter-perfect in the t.i.tle _role_.

”You're never perfect, you know,” he had said to her, ”and you won't be till you've played the thing in the provinces for six months; that's the curse of amateurs, they never are perfect.”

”But I'm not an amateur, Mr. Breitmann,” the lady had retorted indignantly.

”Pardon me, dear lady,” he said, ”but you are nothing else. You have played four original parts, specially written for you mind, in the whole of your stage experience; of course you're an amateur, but you are a big success. And,” and here he cracked his fingers very slowly, ”you are a fine woman, yes, a fine stage presence of a woman,” said he appreciatively, as he looked her all over, much as a dealer might look over a horse--a dealer who was selling a horse, not a dealer who was buying one.