“Friends,” she repeated, with a certain wistfulness in her tone“Friends,” she repeated, with a certain wistfulness in her tone
“I do not know anything of your history,” he continued gently, “nor am I asking for your confidence. Only in your story there was a personal note, which seemed to me to somehow explain the bitterness and directness with which you wrote—of certain subjects. I think that youyourself have had trouble—or perhaps a dear friend has suffered, and her grief has become yours. There was a little poison in your pen, I think. Never mind! We shall be friends, and I shall watch it pass away!”
“Friends,” she repeated with a certain wistfulness in her tone. “But have you forgotten—what you came for?”
“I do not think,” he said slowly, “that it is of much consequence.”
“But it is,” she insisted. “You asked me distinctly where I wished to be driven to from the theatre, and I told you—home! All the time I knew that I was going to have supper with Mr. Thorndyke at the Milan! Morally I lied to you!”
“Why?” he asked.
“I cannot tell you,” she answered; “it was an impulse. I thought nothing of accepting the man’s invitation. You know him, I daresay. He is a millionaire, andit is his money which supports the theatre. He has asked me several times, and although personally I dislike him, he has, of course, a certain claim upon my acquaintance. I have made excuses once or twice. Last night was the first time I have ever been out anywhere with him. I do not of course pretend to be in the least conventional—I have always permitted myself the utmost liberty of action. Yet—I had wanted so much to know you—I was afraid of prejudicing you.... After all, you see, I have no explanation. It was just an impulse. I have hated myself for it; but it is done!”
“It was,” he said, “a trifle of no importance. We will forget it.”
A gleam of gratitude shone in her dark eyes. Her head drooped a little. He fancied that her voice was not quite so steady.
“It is good,” she said, “to hear you say that.”
He looked around the room, and back into her face. Some dim foreknowledge of what was to come between them seemed to flash before his eyes. It was like a sudden glimpse into that unseen world so close at hand, in which he—that Roman noble—had at any rate implicitly believed. There was a faint smile upon his face as his eyes met hers.
“At least,” he said, “I shall be able to come and talk with you now at the railing, instead of watching you from my chair. For you were quite right in what you said just now. I have watched for you every day—for many days.”
“You will be able to come,” she said gravely, “if you care to. You mix so little with the men who love to talk scandal of a woman, that you may never have heard them—talk of me. But they do, I know! I hear all about it—it used to amuse me! You have the reputation of ultra exclusiveness!If you and I are known to be friends, you may have to risk losing it.”
His brows were slightly contracted, and he had half closed his eyes—a habit of his when anything was said which offended his taste.
“I wonder whether you would mind not talking like that,” he said.
“Why not? I would not have you hear these things from other people. It is best to be truthful, is it not? To run no risk of any misunderstandings.”
“There is no fear of anything of that sort,” he said calmly. “I do not pretend to be a magician or a diviner, yet I think I know you for what you are, and it is sufficient. Some day——”
He broke off in the middle of a sentence. The door had opened. A man stood upon the threshold. The servant announced him—Mr. Thorndyke.
Matravers rose at once to his feet. Hehad a habit—the outcome, doubtless, of his epicurean tenets, of leaving at once, and at any costs, society not wholly agreeable to him. He bowed coldly to the man who was already greeting Berenice, and who was carrying a great bunch of Parma violets.
Mr. Thorndyke was evidently astonished at his presence—and not agreeably.
“Have you come, Mr. Matravers,” he asked coldly, “to make your peace?”
“I am not aware,” Matravers answered calmly, “of any reason why I should do so.”
Mr. Thorndyke raised his eyebrows, and drew an afternoon paper from his pocket.
“This is your writing, is it not?” he asked.
Matravers glanced at the paragraph.
“Certainly!”
Mr. Thorndyke threw the paper upon the table.
“Well,” he said, “I have no doubt it is an excellent piece of literary work—a satire I suppose you would call it—and I must congratulate you upon its complete success. I don’t mind running the theatre at a financial loss, but I have a distinct objection to being made a laughing stock of. I suppose this paper appeared about two hours ago, and already I can’t move a yard without having to suffer the condolences of some sympathizing ass. I shall close the theatre next week.”
“That is naturally,” Matravers said, “a matter of complete indifference to me. In the cause of art I should say that you will do well, unless you can select a play from a very different source. What I wrote of the performance last night, I wrote according to my convictions. You,” he added, turning to Berenice, “will at least believe that, I am sure!”
“Most certainly I do,” she assured him,holding out her hand. “Must you really go? You will come and see me again—very soon?”
He bowed over her fingers, and then their eyes met for a moment. She was very pale, but she looked at him bravely. He realized suddenly that Mr. Thorndyke’s threat was a serious blow to her.
“I am very sorry,” he said. “You will not bear me any ill will?”
“None!” she answered; “you may be sure of that!”
She walked with him to the open door, outside which the servant was waiting to show him downstairs.
“You will come and see me again—very soon?” she repeated.
“Yes,” he answered simply, “if I may I shall come again! I will come as soon as you care to have me!”
Matravers passed out into the street with a curious admixture of sensations in a mind usually so free from any confusion of sentiments or ideas. The few words which he had been compelled to exchange with Thorndyke had grated very much against his sense of what was seemly; he was on the whole both repelled and fascinated by the incidents of this visit of his. Yet as he walked leisurely homewards through the bright, crowded streets, he recognized the existence of that strange personal charm in Berenice of which so many people had written and spoken. He himself had become subject to it in some slight degree, not enough, indeed, to engross his mind, yet enough to prevent anyfeeling of disappointment at the result of his visit.
She was not an ordinary woman—she was not an ordinarily clever woman. She did not belong to any type with which he was acquainted. She must for ever occupy a place of her own in his thoughts and in his estimation. It was a place very well defined, he told himself, and by no means within that inner circle of his brain and heart wherein lay the few things in life sweet and precious to him. The vague excitement of the early morning seemed to him now, as he moved calmly along the crowded, fashionable thoroughfare, a thing altogether unreal and unnatural. He had been in an emotional frame of mind, he told himself with a quiet smile, when the sight of those few lines in a handwriting then unknown had so curiously stirred him. Now that he had seen and spoken to her, her personality would recede to its properproportions, the old philosophic calm which hung around him in his studious life like a mantle would have no further disturbance.
And then he suffered a rude shock! As he passed the corner of a street, the perfume of Neapolitan violets came floating out from a florist’s shop upon the warm sunlit air. Every fibre of his being quivered with a sudden emotion! The interior of that little room was before him, and a woman’s eyes looked into his. He clenched his hands and walked swiftly on, with pale face and rigid lips, like a man oppressed by some acute physical pain.
There must be nothing of this for him! It was part of a world which was not his world—of which he must never even be a temporary denizen. The thing passed away! With studious care he fixed his mind upon trifles. There was a crease in his silk hat, clearly visible as he glanced at his reflection in a plate-glass window. He turnedinto Scott’s, and waited whilst it was ironed. Then he walked homewards and spent the remainder of the day carefully revising a bundle of proofs which he found on his table fresh from the printer.
On the following morning he lunched at his club. Somehow, although he was in no sense of the word an unpopular man, it was a rare thing for any one to seek his company uninvited. The scholarly exclusiveness of his Oxford days had not been altogether brushed off in this contact with a larger and more spontaneous social life, and he figured in a world which would gladly have known more of him, as a man of courteous but severe reserve.
To-day he occupied his usual round table set in an alcove before a tall window. For a recluse, he always found a singular pleasure in watching the faces of the people in that broad living stream, little units inthe wheeling cycle of humanity of which he too felt himself to be a part; but to-day his eyes were idle, and his sympathies obstructed. Although a pronounced epicure in both food and drink, he passed a new and delicateentrée, and not only ordered the wrong claret, but drank it without a grimace. The world of his sensations had been rudely disturbed. For the moment his sense of proportions was at fault, and before luncheon was over it received a further shock. A handsomely appointed drag rattled past the club on its way into Piccadilly. The woman who occupied the front seat turned to look at the window as they passed, with some evident curiosity—and their eyes met. Matravers set down the glass, which he had been in the act of raising to his lips, untasted.
“Berenice and her Father Confessor!” he heard some one remark lightly from the next table. “Pity some one can’t teachThorndyke how to drive! He’s a disgrace to the Four-in-hand!”
It was Berenice! The sight of her in such intimate association with a man utterly distasteful to him was one before which he winced and suffered. He was aware of a new and altogether undesired experience. To rid himself of it with all possible speed, he finished his lunch abruptly, and lighting a cigarette, started back to his rooms.
On the way he came face to face with Ellison, and the two men stood together upon the pavement for a moment or two.
“I am not quite sure,” Ellison remarked with a little grimace, “whether I want to speak to you or not! What on earth has kindled the destructive spirit in you to such an extent? Every one is talking of your attack upon the New Theatre!”
“I was sent,” Matravers answered, “with a free hand to write an honest criticism—andI did it. Istein’s work may have some merit, but it is unclean work. It is not fit for the English stage.”
“It is exceedingly unlikely,” Ellison remarked, “that the English stage will know him any more! No play could survive such an onslaught as yours. I hear that Thorndyke is going to close the theatre.”
“If it was opened,” Matravers said, “for the purpose of presenting such work as this latest production, the sooner it is closed the better.”
Ellison shrugged his shoulders.
“It is a large subject,” he said, “and I am not sure that we are of one mind. We will not discuss it. At any rate, I am very sorry for Berenice!”
“I do not think,” Matravers said in measured tones, “that you need be sorry for her. With her gifts she will scarcely remain long without an engagement. I trust that she may secure one which willnot involve the prostitution of her talent.” Ellison laughed shortly. He had an immense admiration for Matravers, but just at present he was a little out of temper with him.
“You admit her talent, then?” he remarked. “I am glad of that!”
“I am not sure,” Matravers said, “that talent is the proper word to use. One might almost call it genius.”
Ellison was considerably mollified.
“I am glad to hear you say so,” he declared. “At the same time I am afraid her position will be rather an awkward one. She will lose some money by the closing of the theatre, and I don’t exactly see what London house is open for her just at present. These actor-managers are all so clannish, and they have their own women.”
“I am sorry,” Matravers said thoughtfully; “at the same time I cannot believe that she will remain very long undiscovered!Good afternoon! I am forgetting that I have some writing to do.”
Matravers walked slowly back to his rooms, filled with a new and fascinating idea which Ellison’s words had suddenly suggested to him. If it was true that his pen had done her this ill turn, did he not owe her some reparation? It would be a very pleasant way to pay his debt and a very simple one. By the time he had reached his destination the idea had taken definite hold of him.
At half-past four his servant brought in a small tea-equipageAt half-past four his servant brought in a small tea-equipage
For several hours he worked at the revision of a certain manuscript, polishing and remodelling with infinite care and pains. Not even content with the correct and tasteful arrangement of his sentences, he read them over to himself aloud, lest by any chance there should have crept into them some trick of alliteration, or juxtaposition of words not entirely musical. In his work he gained, or seemed to gain, acomplete absorption. The cloudy disquiet of the last few hours appeared to have passed away,—to have been, indeed, only a fugitive and transitory thing.
At half-past four his servant brought in a small tea-equipage—a silver tray, with an old blue Worcester teapot and cup, and a quaintly cut glass cream-jug. He made his tea, and drank it with his pen still in his hand. He had scarcely turned back to his work, before the same servant re-entered carrying a frock coat, an immaculately brushed silk hat, and a fresh bunch of Neapolitan violets. For a moment Matravers hesitated; then he laid down his pen, changed his coat, and once more passed out into the streets, more brilliant than ever now with the afternoon sunshine. He joined the throng of people leisurely making their way towards the Park!
For nearly half an hour he sat in his usual place under the trees, watching with indifferent eyes the constant stream of carriages passing along the drive. It seemed to him only a few hours since he had sat there before, almost in the same spot, a solitary figure in the cold, grey twilight, yet watching then, even as he was watching now, for that small victoria with its single occupant whose soft dark eyes had met his so often with a frank curiosity which she had never troubled to conceal. Something of that same perturbation of spirit which had driven him then out into the dawn-lit streets, was upon him once more, only with a very real and tangible difference. The grey half-lights, theghostly shadows, and the faint wind sounding in the tree-tops like the rising and falling of a midnight sea upon some lonely shore, had given to his early morning dreams an indefiniteness which they could scarcely hope to possess now. He himself was a living unit of this gay and brilliant world, whose conversation and light laughter filled the sunlit air around him, whose skirts were brushing against his knees, and whose jargon fell upon his ears with a familiar and a kindly sound. There was no possibility here for such a wave of passion,—he could call it nothing else,—as had swept through him, when he had first read that brief message from the woman, who had already become something of a disturbing element in his seemly life. Yet under a calm exterior he was conscious of a distinct tremor of excitement when her carriage drew up within a few feet of him, and obeying her mute but smiling command,he rose and offered his hand as she stepped out on to the path.
“This,” she remarked, resting her daintily gloved fingers for a moment in his, “is the beginning of a new order of things. Do you realize that only the day before yesterday we passed one another here with a polite stare?”
“I remember it,” he answered, “perfectly. Long may the new order last.”
“But it is not going to last long—with me at any rate,” she said, laughing. “Don’t you know that I am almost ruined? Mr. Thorndyke is going to close the theatre. He says that we have been losing money every week. I shall have to sell my horses, and go and live in the suburbs.”
“I hope,” he said fervently, “that you will not find it so bad as that.”
“Of course,” she remarked, “you know that yours is the hand which has given us our death-blow. I have just read your notice.It is a brilliant piece of satirical writing, of course, but need you have been quite so severe? Don’t you regret your handiwork a little?”
“I cannot,” he answered deliberately. “On the contrary, I feel that I have done you a service. If you do not agree with me to-day, the time will certainly come when you will do so. You have a gift which delighted me: you are really an actress; you are one of very few.”
“That is a kind speech,” she answered; “but even if there is truth in it, I am as yet quite unrecognized. There is no other theatre open to me; you and I look upon Istein and his work from a different point of view; but even if you are right, the part of Herdrine suited me. I was beginning to get some excellent notices. If we could have kept the thing going for only a few weeks longer, I think that I might have established some sort of a reputation.”
He sighed.
“A reputation, perhaps,” he admitted; “but not of the best order. You do not wish to be known only as the portrayer of unnatural passions, the interpreter of diseased desires. It would be an ephemeral reputation. It might lead you into many strange byways, but it would never help you to rise. Art is above all things catholic, and universal. You may be a perfect Herdrine; but Herdrine herself is but a night weed—a thing of no account. Even you cannot make her natural. She is the puppet of a man’s fantasy. She is never a woman.”
“I suppose,” she said sorrowfully, “that your judgment is the true one. Yet—but we will talk of something else. How strange to be walking here with you!”
Berenice was always a much-observed woman, but to-day she seemed to attract more even than ordinary attention. Herpersonality, her toilette, which was superb, and her companion, were all alike interesting to the slowly moving throng of men and women amongst whom they were threading their way. The attitude of her sex towards Berenice was in a certain sense a paradox. She was distinctly the most talented and the most original of all the “petticoat apostles,” as the very man who was now walking by her side had scornfully described the little band of women writers who were accused of trying to launch upon society a new type of their own sex. Her last novel was flooding all the bookstalls; and if not of the day, was certainly the book of the hour. She herself, known before only as a brilliant journalist writing under a curiousnom de plume, had suddenly become one of the most marked figures in London life. Yet she had not gone so far as other writers who had dealt with the same subject. Marriage, she had daredto write, had become the whitewashing of the impure, the sanctifying of the vicious! But she had not added the almost natural corollary,—therefore let there be no marriage. On the contrary, marriage in the ideal she had written of as the most wonderful and the most beautiful thing in life,—only marriage in the ideal did not exist.
She had never posed as a woman with a mission! She formulated nowhere any scheme for the re-organization of those social conditions whose bases she had very eloquently and very trenchantly held to be rotten and impure. She had written as a prophet of woe! She had preached only destruction, and from the first she had left her readers curious as to what sexual system could possibly replace the old. The thing which happened was inevitable. The amazing demand for her book was exactly in inverse proportion to its popularity amongst her sex. The crusade against menwas well! Admittedly they were a bad lot, and needed to be told of it. A little self-assertion on behalf of his superior was a thing to be encouraged and applauded. But a crusade against marriage! Berenice must be a most abandoned, as well as a most immoral, woman! No one who even hinted at the doctrine of love without marriage could be altogether respectable. Not that Berenice had ever done that. Still, she had written of marriage,—the usual run of marriages,—from a woman’s point of view, as a very hateful thing. What did she require, then, of her sex? To live and die old maids, whilst men became regenerated? It was too absurd. There were a good many curious things said, and it was certainly true, that since she had gone upon the stage her toilette and equipage were unrivalled. Berenice looked into the eyes of the women whom she met day by day, and she read their verdict. But if she suffered,she said not a word to any of it.
They passed out from the glancing shadows of the trees towards the Piccadilly entrance. Here they paused for a moment and stood together looking down the drive. The sunlight seemed to touch with quivering fire the brilliant phantasmagoria. Berenice was serious. Her dark eyes swept down the broad path and her under-lip quivered.
“It is this,” she exclaimed, with a slight forward movement of her parasol, “which makes me long for an earthquake. Can one do anything for women like that? They are not the creations of a God; they are the parasitical images of type. Only it is a very small type and a very large reproduction. Why do I say these things to you, I wonder? You are against me, too! But then you are not a woman!”
“I am not against you in your detestation of type,” he answered. “The wholeworld of our sex as well as yours is full of worn-out and effete reproductions of an unworthy model. It is this intolerable sameness which suffocates all thought. One meets it everywhere; the deep melancholy of our days is its fruit. But the children of this generation will never feel it. The taste of life between their teeth will be neither like ashes nor green figs. They are numbed.”
She flashed a look almost of anger upon him.
“Yet you have ranged yourself upon their side. When my story first appeared, its fate hung for days in the balance. Women had not made up their minds how to take it. It came into your hands for review. Well! you did not spare it, did you? It was you who turned the scale. Your denunciation became the keynote of popular opinion concerning me. The women for whose sake I had written it,that they might at least strike one blow for freedom, took it with a virtuous shudder from the hands of their daughters. I was pronounced unwholesome and depraved; even my personal character was torn into shreds. How odd it all seems!” she added, with a light, mirthless laugh. “It was you who put into their hands the weapon with which to scourge me. Their trim, self-satisfied little sentences of condemnation are emasculated versions of your judgment. It is you whom I have to thank for the closing of the theatre and the failure of Herdrine,—you who are responsible for the fact that these women look at me with insolence and the men as though I were a courtesan. How strange it must seem to them to see us together—the wolf and the lamb! Well, never mind. Take me somewhere and give me some tea; you owe me that, at least.”
They turned and left the park. For a few minutes conversation was impossible,but as soon as they had emerged from the crowd he answered her.
“If I have ever helped any one to believe ill of you,” he said slowly, “I am only too happy that they should have the opportunity of seeing us together. You are rather severe on me. I thought then, as I think now, that it is—to put it mildly—impolitic to enter upon a passionate denunciation of such an institution as marriage when any substitute for it must necessarily be another step upon the downward grade. The decadence of self-respect amongst young men, any contrast between their lives and the lives of the women who are brought up to be their wives, is too terribly painful a subject for us to discuss here. Forgive me if I think now, as I have always thought, that it is not a fitting subject for a novelist—certainly not for a woman. I may be prejudiced; yet it was my duty to write as I thought. You must not forgetthat! So far as your story went, I had nothing but praise for it. There were many chapters which only an artist could have written.”
She raised her eyebrows. They had turned into Bond Street now, and were close to their destination.
“You men of letters are so odd,” she exclaimed. “What is Art but Truth? and if my book be not true, how can it know anything of art? But never mind! We are talking shop, and I am a little tired of taking life seriously. Here we are! Order me some tea, please, and a chocolateéclair.”
He followed her to a tiny round table, and sat down by her side upon the cushioned seat. As he gave his order and looked around the little room, he smiled gravely to himself. It was the first time in his life,—at any rate since his boyhood,—that he had taken a woman into a public room. Decidedly it was a new era for him.
An incident, which Matravers had found once or twice uppermost in his mind during the last few days, was recalled to him with sudden vividness as he took his seat in an ill-lit, shabbily upholstered box in the second tier of the New Theatre. He seemed almost to hear again the echoes of that despairing cry which had rung out so plaintively across the desert of empty benches from somewhere amongst the shadows of the auditorium. Several times during the performance he had glanced up in the same direction; once he had almost fancied he could see a solitary, bent figure sitting rigid and motionless in the first row of the amphitheatre. No man was possessed of a smaller share of curiosity in theordinary sense of the word than Matravers; but the thought that this might be the same man come again to witness a play which had appealed to him before with such peculiar potency, interested him curiously. At the close of the second act he left his seat, and, after several times losing his way, found himself in the little narrow space behind the amphitheatre. Leaning over the partition, and looking downwards, he had a good view of the man who sat there quite alone, his head resting upon his hand, his eyes fixed steadily upon a soiled and crumpled programme, which was spread out carefully before him. Matravers wondered whether there was not in the clumsy figure and awkward pose something vaguely familiar to him.
An attendant of the place standing by his side addressed him respectfully.
“Not much of a house for the last night, sir,” he remarked.
Matravers agreed, and moved his head downwards towards the solitary figure.
“There is one man, at least,” he said, “who finds the play interesting.”
The attendant smiled.
“I am afraid that the gentleman is a little bit ‘hoff,’ sir. He seems half silly to talk to. He’s a queer sort, anyway. Comes here every blessed night, and in the same place. Never misses. Once he came sixpence short, and there was a rare fuss. They wouldn’t let him in, and he wouldn’t go away. I lent it him at last.”
“Did he pay you back?” Matravers asked.
“The very next night; never had to ask him, either. There goes the bell, sir. Curtain up in two minutes.”
The subject of their conversation had not once turned his head or moved towards them. Matravers, conscious that he was not likely to do so, returned to his seat justas the curtain rose upon the last act. The play, grim, pessimistic, yet lifted every now and then to a higher level by strange flashes of genius on the part of the woman, dragged wearily along to an end. The echoes of her last speech died away; she looked at him across the footlights, her dark eyes soft with many regrets, which, consciously or not, spoke to him also of reproach. The curtain descended, and her hands fell to her side. It was the end, and it was failure!
Matravers, making his way more hurriedly than usual from the house, hoped to gain another glimpse of the man who had remained the solitary tenant of the round of empty seats. But he was too late. The man and the audience had melted away in a thin little stream. Matravers stood on the kerbstone hesitating. He had not meant to go behind to-night. He had a feeling that she must be regarding him at that moment as the executioner of her ambitions.Besides, she was going on to a reception; she would only be in a hurry. Nevertheless, he made his way round to the stage door. He would at least have a glimpse of her. But as he turned the corner, she was already stepping into her carriage. He paused, and simultaneously with her disappearance he realized that he was not the only one who had found his way to the narrow street to see the last of Berenice. A man was standing upon the opposite pavement a little way from the carriage, yet at such an angle that a faint, yellow light shone upon what was visible of his pale face. He had watched her come out, and was gazing now fixedly at the window of her brougham. Matravers knew in a moment that this was the man whom he had seen sitting alone in the amphitheatre; and almost without any definite idea as to his purpose, he crossed the street towards him. The man, hearing his footstep,looked up with a sudden start; then, without a second’s hesitation, he turned and hurried off. Matravers still followed him. The man heard his footsteps, and turned round, then, with a little moan, he started running, his shoulders bent, his head forward. Matravers halted at once. The man plunged into the shadows, and was lost amongst the stream of people pouring forth from the doors of the Strand theatres.
At her door an hour later Berenice saw the outline of a figure now become very familiar to her, and Matravers, who had been leaving a box of roses, whose creamy pink-and-white blossoms, mingled together in a neighbouring flower-shop, had pleased his fancy, heard his name called softly across the pavement. He turned, and saw Berenice stepping from her carriage. With an old-fashioned courtesy, which always sat well upon him, he offered her his arm.
With an old-fashioned courtesy ... he offered her his armWith an old-fashioned courtesy ... he offered her his arm
“I thought that you were to be late,” he said, looking down at her with a shade of anxiety in his clear, grave face. “Was not this Lady Truton’s night?”
She nodded.
“Yes; don’t talk to me—just yet. I am upset! Come in and sit with me!”
He hesitated. With a scrupulous delicacy, which sometimes almost irritated her, he had invariably refrained from paying her visits so late as this. But to-night was different! Her fingers were clasping his arm,—and she was in trouble. He suffered himself to be led up the stairs into her little room.
“Some coffee for two,” she told her woman. “You can go to bed then! I shall not want you again!”
She threw herself into an empty chair, and loosened the silk ribbons of her opera cloak.
“Do you mind opening the window?”she asked. “It is stifling in here. I can scarcely breathe!”
He threw it wide open, and wheeled her chair up to it. The glare from the West End lit up the dark sky. The silence of the little room and the empty street below, seemed deepened by that faint, far-away roar from the pandemonium of pleasure. A light from the opposite side of the way,—or was it the rising moon behind the dark houses?—gleamed upon her white throat, and in her soft, dim eyes. She lay quite still, looking into vacancy. Her hand hung over the side of the chair nearest to him. Half unconsciously he took it up and stroked it soothingly. The tears gushed from her eyes. At his kindly touch her over-wrought feelings gave way. Her fingers closed spasmodically upon his.
He said nothing. The time had passed when words were necessary between them. They were near enough to one another nowto understand the value of silence. But those few moments seemed to him for ever like a landmark in his life. A new relation was born between them in the passionate intensity of that deep quietness.
He watched her bosom cease to heave, and the dimness pass from her eyes. Then he took up the box which he had been carrying, and emptied the pink-and-white blossoms into her lap. She stooped down and buried her face in them. Their faint, delicate perfume seemed to fill the room.
“You are very good,” she said abruptly. “Thank God that there is some one who is good to me!”
The coffee was in the room, and Berenice threw off her cloak and brought it to him. A fit of restlessness seemed to have followed upon her moment of weakness. She began walking with quick, uneven steps up and down the room. Matravers forgot to drink his coffee. He was watchingher with a curious sense of emotional excitement. The little chamber was full of half lights and shadows, and there seemed to him something almost unearthly about this woman with her soft grey gown and marble face. He was stirred by her presence in a new way. The rustle of her silken skirts as she swept in and out of the dim light, the delicate whiteness of her arms and throat, the flashing of a single diamond in her dark coiled hair,—these seemed trivial things enough, yet they were yielding him a new and mysterious pleasure. For the first time his sense of her beauty was fully aroused. Every now and then he caught faint glimpses of her face. It was like the face of a new woman to him. There was some tender and wonderful change there, which he could not understand, and yet which seemed to strike some responsive chord in his own emotions. Instinctively he felt that she was passing into a new phase of life. Surely, he, too, was walking hand and hand with her through the shadows! The touch of her interlaced fingers had burned his flesh.
There seemed to him something almost unearthly about this woman with her soft grey gown and marble faceThere seemed to him something almost unearthly about this woman with her soft grey gown and marble face
Presently she came and sat down beside him.
“Forgive me!” she murmured. “It does me so much good to have you here. I am very foolish!”
“Tell me about it!”
She frowned very slightly, and looked away at a star.
“It is nothing! It is beginning to seem less than nothing! I have written a book for women, for the sake of women, because my heart ached for their sufferings, and because I too have felt the fire. I wonder whether it was really an evil book,” she added, still looking away from him at that single star in the dark sky. “People say so! The newspapers say so! Yet it was a true book! I wrote it from my soul,—Iwrote it with my own blood. I have not been a good woman, but I have been a pure woman! When I wrote it, I was lonely; I have always been lonely. But I thought, now I shall know what it is like to have friends. Many women will understand that I have suffered in doing this thing for their sakes! For it was my own life which I lay bare, my own life, my own sufferings, my own agony! I thought, they will come to me and they will thank me for it! I shall have sympathy and I shall have friends.... And now my book is written, and I am wiser. I know now that woman does not want her freedom! Though they drag her down into hell, the chains of her slavery have grown around her heart and have become precious to her! Tell me, are those pure women who willingly give their souls and their bodies in marriage to men who have sinned and who will sin again? They do it without disguise,without shame, for position, or for freedom, or for money! yet there are other women whom they call courtesans, and from whose touch they snatch away the hem of their skirts in horror! Oh, it is terrible! There can be no corruption worse than this in hell!”
“Yours has been the common disappointment of all reformers,” he said gravely. “Gratitude is the rarest tribute the world ever offers to those who have laboured to cleanse it. When you are a little older you will have learnt your lesson. But it is always very hard to learn.... Tell me about to-night!”
She raised her head a little. A faint spot of colour stained her cheek.
“There was one woman who praised me, who came to see me, and sent me cards to go to her house. To-night I went. Foolishly I had hoped a good deal from it! I did not like Lady Truton herself, but Ihoped that I should meet other women there who would be different! It was a new experience to me to be going amongst my own sex. I was like a child going to her first party. I was quite excited, almost nervous. I had a little dream,—there would be some women there—one would be enough—with whom I might be friends, and it would make life very different to me to have even one woman friend. But they were all horrid. They were vulgar, and one woman, she took me on one side and praised my book. She agreed, she said, with every word in it! She had found out that her husband had a mistress,—some chorus-girl,—and she was repaying him in his own coin. She too had a lover—and for every infidelity of his she was repaying him in this manner. She dared to assume that I—I should approve of her conduct; she asked me to go and see her! My God! it was hideous.”
Matravers laid his hand upon hers, and leaned forward in his chair.
“Lady Truton’s was the very worst house you could have gone to,” he said gently. “You must not be too discouraged all at once. The women of her set, thank God, are not in the least typical Englishwomen. They are fast and silly,—a few, I am afraid, worse. They make use of the free discussions in these days of the relations between our sexes, to excuse grotesque extravagances in dress and habits which society ought never to pardon. Do not let their judgments or their misinterpretations trouble you! You are as far above them, Berenice, as that little star is from us.”
“I do not pretend to be anything but a woman,” she said, bending her head, “and to stand alone always is very hard.”
“It is very hard for a man! It must be very much harder for a woman. But,Berenice, you would not call yourself absolutely friendless!”
She raised her head for a moment. Her dark eyes were wonderfully soft.
“Who is there that cares?” she murmured.
He touched the tips of her fingers. Her soft, warm hand yielded itself readily, and slid into his.
“Do I count for no one?” he whispered.
There was a silence in the little room. The yellow glare had faded from the sky, and a night wind was blowing softly in. A clock in the distance struck one. Together they sat and gazed out upon the darkness. Looking more than once into her pale face, Matravers realized again that wonderful change. His own emotions were curiously disturbed. He, himself, so remarkable through all his life for a changeless serenity of purpose, and a fixed masterly control over his whole environment,felt himself suddenly like a rudderless ship at the mercy of a great unknown sea. A sense of drifting was upon him. They were both drifting. Surely this little room, with its dim light and shadows and its faint odour of roses, had become a hotbed of tragedy. He had imagined that death itself was something like this,—a dissolution of all fixed purposes. And with it all, this remnant of life, if it were but a remnant, seemed suddenly to be flowing through his veins with all the rich, surpassing sweetness of some exquisite symphony!
“You count for a great deal,” she said. “If you had not come to me, I think that I must have died.... If I were to lose you ... I think that I should die.”
She threw herself back in her chair with a gesture of complete abandonment. Her arms hung loosely down over its sides. The moonlight, which had been gradually gathering strength, shone softly upon her paleface and on the soft, lustrous pearls at her throat. Her dark, wet eyes seemed touched with smouldering fire. She looked at him. He sprang to his feet and walked restlessly up and down the room. His forehead was hot and dry, and his hands were trembling.
“There is not any reason,” he said, halting suddenly in front of her, “why we should lose one another. I was coming to-morrow morning to make a proposition to you. If you accept it, we shall be forced to see a great deal of one another.”
“Yes?”
“You perhaps did not know that I had any ambitions as a dramatic author. Yet my first serious work after I left Oxford was a play; I took it up yesterday.”
“You have really written a play,” she murmured, “and you never told me.”
“At least I am telling you now,” he reminded her; “I am telling you before any one, because I want your help.”
“You want what?”
“I want you to help me by taking the part of my heroine. I read it yesterday by appointment to Fergusson. He accepted it at once on the most liberal terms. I told him there was one condition—that the part of my heroine must be offered to you, if you would accept it. There was a little difficulty, as, of course, Miss Robinson is a fixture at the Pall Mall. However, Fergusson saw you last night from the back of the dress circle, and this morning he has agreed. It only remains for you to read, or allow me to read to you the play.”
“Do you mean to say that you are offering me the principal part in a play of yours—at the Pall Mall—with Fergusson?”
“Well, I think that is about what it comes to,” he assented.
She rose to her feet and took his hands in hers.
“You are too good—much too good tome,” she said softly. “I dare not take it; I am not strong enough.”
“It will be you, or no one,” he said decidedly. “But first I am going to read you the play. If I may, I shall bring it to you to-morrow.”
“I want to ask you something,” she said abruptly. “You must answer me faithfully. You are doing this, you are making me this offer because you think that you owe me something. It is a sort of reparation for your attack upon Herdrine. I want to know if it is that.”
“I can assure you,” he said earnestly, “that I am not nearly so conscientious. I wrote the play solely as a literary work. I had no thought of having it produced, of offering it to anybody. Then I saw you at the New Theatre; I think that you inspired me with a sort of dramatic excitement. I went home and read my play. Bathilde seemed to me then to speak withyour tongue, to look at me with your eyes, to be clothed from her soul outwards with your personality. In the morning I wrote to Fergusson.”
“I want to believe you,” she said softly; “but it seems so strange. I am no actress like Adelaide Robinson; I am afraid that if I accept your offer, I may hurt the play. She is popular, and I am unknown.”
“She has talent,” he said, “and experience; you have genius, which is far above either. I am not leaving you any choice at all. To-morrow I shall bring the play.”
“You may at least do that,” she answered. “It will be a pleasure to hear it read. Come to luncheon, and we will have a long afternoon.”
Matravers took his leave with a sense of relief. Their farewell had been cordial enough, but unemotional. Yet even he, ignorant of women and their ways as he was, was conscious that they had enteredtogether upon a new phase of their knowledge of each other. The touch of their fingers, the few conventional words which passed between them, as she leaned over the staircase watching him descend, seemed to him to savour somehow of mockery. He passed out from her presence into the cool, soft night, dazed, not a little bewildered at this new strong sense of living, which had set his pulses beating to music and sent his blood rushing through his body with a new sweetness. Yet with it all he was distressed and unhappy. He was confronted with the one great influence of life against which he had deliberately set his face.
Matravers began to find himself, for the first time in his life, seriously attracted by a woman. He realized it in some measure as he walked homeward in the early morning, after this last interview with Berenice; he knew it for an absolute fact on the following evening as he walked through the crowded streets back to his rooms with the manuscript of the play which he had been reading to her in his pocket. He felt himself moving in what was to some extent an unreal atmosphere. His senses were tingling with the excitement of the last few hours—for the first time he knew the full fascination of a woman’s intellectual sympathy. He had gone to his task wholly devoid of any pleasurableanticipation. It spoke much for the woman’s tact that before he had read half a dozen pages he was not only completely at his ease, but was experiencing a new and very pleasurable sensation. The memory of it was with him now—he had no mind to disturb it by any vague alarm as to the future of their relationship.
In Piccadilly he met Fergusson, who turned and walked with him.
“I have been to your rooms, Matravers,” the actor said. “I want to know whether you have arranged with your friend?”
“I have just left her,” Matravers replied. “She appears to like the play, and has consented to play Bathilde.”
The actor smiled. Was Matravers really so simple, or did he imagine that an actress whose name was as yet unknown would hesitate to play with him at the Pall Mall Theatre. Yet he himself had been hoping that there might be some difficulty,—hehad a “Bathilde” of his own who would take a great deal of pacifying. The thing was settled now however.
“I should like,” he said, “to make her acquaintance at once.”
“I have thought of that,” Matravers said. “Will you lunch with me at my rooms on Sunday and meet her? that is, of course, if she is able to come.”
“I shall be delighted,” Fergusson answered. “About two, I suppose?”
Matravers assented, and the two men parted. The actor, with a little shrug of his shoulders and the air of a man who has an unpleasant task before him, turned southwards to interview the lady who certainly had the first claim to play “Bathilde.” He found her at home and anxiously expecting him.
“If you had not come to-day,” she remarked, “I should have sent for you. I want you to contradict that rubbish.”
She threw the theatrical paper across at him, and watched him, whilst he read the paragraph to which she had pointed. He laid the paper down.
“I cannot altogether contradict it,” he said. “There is some truth in what the man writes.”
The lady was getting angry. She came over to Fergusson and stood by his side.
“You mean to tell me,” she exclaimed, “that you have accepted a play for immediate production which I have not even seen, and in which the principal part is to be given to one of those crackpots down at the New Theatre, an amateur, an outsider—a woman no one ever heard of before.”
“You can’t exactly say that,” he interposed calmly. “I see you have her novel on your table there, and she is a woman who has been talked about a good deal lately. But the facts of the case are these. Matravers brought me a play a few daysago which almost took my breath away. It is by far the best thing of the sort I ever read. It is bound to be a great success. I can’t tell you any more now,—you shall read it yourself in a day or two. He was very easy to deal with as to terms, but he made one condition: that a certain part in it,—the principal one, I admit,—should be offered to this woman. I tried all I could to talk him out of it, but absolutely without effect. I was forced to consent. There is not a manager in London who would not jump at the play on any conditions. You know our position. ‘Her Majesty’ is a failure, and I haven’t a single decent thing to put on. I simply dared not let such a chance as this go by.”
“I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life,” the lady exclaimed. “No, I’m not blaming you, Reggie! I don’t suppose you could have done anything else. But this woman, what a nerve she must haveto imagine that she can do it! I see her horrid Norwegian play has come to utter grief at the New Theatre.”
“She is a clever woman,” Fergusson remarked. “One can only hope for the best.”
She flashed a quiet glance at him.
“You know her, then,—you have been to see her.”
“Not yet,” Fergusson answered. “I am going to meet her to-morrow. Matravers has asked me to lunch.”
“Tell me about Matravers,” she said.
“I am afraid I do not know much. He is a very distinguished literary man, but his work has generally been critical or philosophical,—every one will be surprised to hear that he has written a play. You will find that there will be quite a stir about it. The reason why we have no plays nowadays which can possibly be classed as literature, is because the wrong class of man is writing for the stage. Smith and Francisand all these men have fine dramatic instincts, but they are not scholars. Their dialogue is mostly beneath contempt; there is a dash of conventionality in their best work. Now, Matravers is a writer of an altogether different type.”
“Thanks,” she interrupted, “but I don’t want a homily. I am only curious about the man himself.”
Fergusson pulled himself up a little annoyed. He had begun to talk about a subject of peculiar interest to him.
“Oh, the man himself is rather an interesting personality,” he declared. “He is a recluse, a dilettante, and a very brilliant man of letters.”
“I want to know,” the lady said impatiently, “whether he is married.”
“Married! certainly not,” Fergusson assured her.
“Very well, then, I am going there to luncheon with you to-morrow.”
Fergusson looked blank.
“But, my dear girl,” he protested, “how on earth——”
“Don’t be foolish, Reggie,” she said calmly. “It is perfectly natural for me to go! I have been your principal actress for several seasons. I suppose if there is a second woman’s part in the piece, it will be mine, if I choose to take it. You must write and ask Matravers for permission to bring me. You can mention my desire to meet the new actress if you like.”
Fergusson took up his hat.
“Matravers is not the sort of man one feels like taking a liberty with,” he said. “But I’ll try him.”
“You can let me know to-night at the theatre,” she directed.
Nothing short of a miracle could have made Matravers’ luncheon party a complete success; yet, so far as Berenice was concerned, it could scarcely be looked upon in any other light. Her demeanour towards Adelaide Robinson and Fergusson was such as to give absolutely no opportunity for anything disagreeable! She frankly admitted both her inexperience and her ignorance. Yet, before they left, both Fergusson and his companion began to understand Matravers’ confidence in her. There was something almost magnetically attractive about her personality.
The luncheon was very much what one who knew him would have expected from Matravers—simple, yet served with exceedingelegance. The fruit, the flowers, and the wine had been his own care; and the table had very much the appearance of having been bodily transported from the palace of a noble of some southern land. After the meal was over, they sat out upon the shaded balcony and sipped their coffee and liqueurs,—Fergusson and Berenice wrapt in the discussion of many details of the work which lay before them, whilst Matravers, with an effort which he carefully concealed, talked continually with Adelaide Robinson.
“Is it true,” she asked him, “that you did not intend your play for the stage—that you wrote it from a literary point of view only?”
“In a sense, that is quite true,” he admitted. “I wrote it without any definite idea of offering it to any London manager. My doing so was really only an impulse.”