Part 26 (1/2)
It was Von Richter who broke up our party. He pleaded the necessity for early rising next morning as his excuse for going away before the hour at which the law obliges people to stop eating supper in restaurants.
I wondered whether he and Mrs. Ascher had made a satisfactory plan for running guns into Galway. According to Ascher it did not make much difference whether the Irish peasants had rifles in their hands or not. It was soothing, though humbling, to feel that, guns or no guns, Volunteers or no Volunteers, Ireland would not matter in the least.
CHAPTER XV.
Gorman's play achieved a second success. The Parthenon was crammed every night, and it was the play, not the pretty dresses or the dancing, which filled the house. Gorman made money, considerable sums of money. I know this because he called on me one morning in the middle of July and told me so. He did more. He offered me a very substantial and quite unanswerable proof that he felt rich.
”If you don't mind,” he said, ”I'd like to pay you whatever you've spent on this new invention of Tim's.”
”I haven't spent anything,” I said. ”I've invested a little. I believe in Tim's new cinematograph. I expect to get back every penny I've advanced to him and more.”
This did not satisfy Gorman. He got out his cheque book and a fountain pen.
”There was the hundred pounds you gave him to buy looking gla.s.ses,” he said. ”You didn't give him more than that, did you?”
”Not so much,” I said. ”The bill for those mirrors was only 98-7-6; and I made the man knock off the seven and sixpence as discount for cash.
I'm learning to be a business man by degrees.”
Gorman wrote down 98 on the cover of his cheque book.
”And the hire of the hall?” he said. ”What will that come to?”
I had hired a small hall for the exhibition of Tim's moving picture ghosts. I had invited about a hundred people to witness the show. Gorman himself, a brother of the inventor, had promised to preside over the gathering and to make a few introductory remarks on the progress of science or anything else that occurred to him as appropriate to such an occasion. But I could not possibly allow him to pay for the entertainment.
”My dear Gorman,” I said, ”it's my party. The people are my friends. At least some of them are. The invitations have gone out in my name. You might just as well propose to pay for the tea I mean to offer them to drink as for the hire of the room in which I am going to receive them.”
”Will 150 cover the whole show?” said Gorman.
”If you insist on heaping insults on my head,” I said, ”I shall retire into a nursing home and cancel all the invitations.”
”You're an obstinate man,” said Gorman.
”Very. In matters of this kind.”
”All the same,” said Gorman, ”I'll get rid of that money. I don't consider it's mine. I ought to have paid for Tim, and I would, only that I hadn't a penny at the time.”
”If you like to give 150 to a charity,” I said, ”that's your affair.”
”That,” said Gorman, ”would be waste. I rather think I'll give a party myself.”
He slipped his cheque book back into his pocket.
”Invite me to meet the lady who acts in your play,” I said.
”Miss Gibson?” said Gorman. ”Right. Who else shall we have?”
”Why have anybody else?”
”There are difficulties,” said Gorman, ”about the rest of the party. You wouldn't care to meet my friends.”
”Oh, yes, I would.”