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Page 12
"I want to get the evening papers and send off a cable or two. See
you later."
"We shall meet at Philippi."
Mac eyed George's retreating back till he had turned the corner.
"A nice pleasant gentleman, Mr. Bevan," he said. "Too bad 'e's got
the pip the way 'e 'as, just after 'avin' a big success like this
'ere. Comes of bein' a artist, I suppose."
Miss Dore dived into her vanity case and produced a puff with which
she proceeded to powder her nose.
"All composers are nuts, Mac. I was in a show once where the
manager was panning the composer because there wasn't a number in
the score that had a tune to it. The poor geek admitted they
weren't very tuney, but said the thing about his music was that it
had such a wonderful aroma. They all get that way. The jazz seems
to go to their heads. George is all right, though, and don't let
anyone tell you different."
"Have you know him long, miss?"
"About five years. I was a stenographer in the house that published
his songs when I first met him. And there's another thing you've
got to hand it to George for. He hasn't let success give him a
swelled head. The money that boy makes is sinful, Mac. He wears
thousand dollar bills next to his skin winter and summer. But he's
just the same as he was when I first knew him, when he was just
hanging around Broadway, looking out for a chance to be allowed to
slip a couple of interpolated numbers into any old show that came
along. Yes. Put it in your diary, Mac, and write it on your cuff,
George Bevan's all right. He's an ace."
Unconscious of these eulogies, which, coming from one whose
judgment he respected, might have cheered him up, George wandered
down Shaftesbury Avenue feeling more depressed than ever. The sun
had gone in for the time being, and the east wind was frolicking
round him like a playful puppy, patting him with a cold paw,
nuzzling his ankles, bounding away and bounding back again, and
behaving generally as east winds do when they discover a victim who
has come out without his spring overcoat. It was plain to George
now that the sun and the wind were a couple of confidence
tricksters working together as a team. The sun had disarmed him
with specious promises and an air of cheery goodfellowship, and had
delivered him into the hands of the wind, which was now going
through him with the swift thoroughness of the professional hold-up
artist. He quickened his steps, and began to wonder if he was so
sunk in senile decay as to have acquired a liver.
He discarded the theory as repellent. And yet there must be a
reason for his depression. Today of all days, as Mac had pointed
out, he had everything to make him happy. Popular as he was in
America, this was the first piece of his to be produced in London,
and there was no doubt that it was a success of unusual dimensions.
And yet he felt no elation.
He reached Piccadilly and turned westwards. And then, as he passed
the gates of the In and Out Club, he had a moment of clear vision
and understood everything. He was depressed because he was bored,
and he was bored because he was lonely. Mac, that solid thinker,
had been right. The solution of the problem of life was to get hold
of the right girl and have a home to go back to at night. He was
mildly surprised that he had tried in any other direction for an
explanation of his gloom. It was all the more inexplicable in that
fully 80 per cent of the lyrics which he had set in the course of
his musical comedy career had had that thought at the back of them.
George gave himself up to an orgy of sentimentality. He seemed to
be alone in the world which had paired itself off into a sort of
seething welter of happy couples. Taxicabs full of happy couples
rolled by every minute. Passing omnibuses creaked beneath the
weight of happy couples. The very policeman across the Street had
just grinned at a flitting shop girl, and she had smiled back at
him. The only female in London who did not appear to be attached
was a girl in brown who was coming along the sidewalk at a
leisurely pace, looking about her in a manner that suggested that
she found Piccadilly a new and stimulating spectacle.
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