IX
THE MAN AT THE WHEEL
Just as we are used to hearing from time to time that the lives of certain great ones of the earth are insured for many thousands of pounds in quarters which their demise will unsettle but certainly not move to grief, so there are lives dismissed at their close with scant obituary notice, the shadow of whose eclipse reaches far beyond the covenanted few who wear mourning for their sakes.
The house in Suffolk Square never really recovered the shock of poor Lady Anne's taking off. Her rooms, stripped of their household gods, repapered and repainted, stood empty for weeks before Mrs. Barbour could even be prevailed upon to notify their vacancy, and when she did move, the paying guests whom they attracted were not of a sort to efface the hard-riding lady's wholesome memory or to make her the less keenly regretted. London is changing daily, and in nothing so much as in the accommodation it offers the stranger within its gates. Cheap hotels, the diseased craving for a veneered luxury, rapid transit from outskirts to centre—all combine to render what was always a precarious living well-nigh a hopeless one. In vain do old-fashioned people, unable or unwilling to read the signs of the times, advertise the family atmosphere to a public anxious to escape from it—quiet and seclusion to a generation that droops unless it feels its spirits uplifted by the wind and whirl of life. Between the tragic end of the old dispensation and the final dispersion there was a squalid interlude which Fenella never could recall in after years without a sinking of the heart as at the memory of a ravaged sanctuary. A dreadful Anglo-Indianménage, which washed the dirty linen of ten stations with doors and windows open; a grumblingayahwhose gaudy rags clung to her, like wet cloths to a clay model, and whose depredations upon kitchen and larder on behalf of her screaming charges drove cook to revolt. A prim flaxen-tailed family who practised upon the piano all day by turns, and whose high-nosed parent did not think Miss Rigby "respectable." Was she, indeed, respectable? Mrs. Barbour had had her doubts from the first, and in spite of Lady Anne's breezy assurances, or perhaps on account of them, had long suspected a secret treaty of oblivion and protection between the two women. It had seemed, however, to include a tacit clause against direct communication, and with the new order the weaker woman appeared to see her way to break through this restriction upon her social aptitudes. She contracted a distressing habit of rapping at the doors of the first-floor rooms, to borrow, to return, to remonstrate, to apologize for remonstrating. Her friendship with little Mrs. Lovelace of Mian Meer, especially was, until its stormy close, over a disputed bargain at a "White Sale," of a suddenness and intensity calculated to revive a weakened faith in human affinities. Even the mother of the musical Miss Measons, after a glance at a skilfully disposed basket of calling-cards, called her "my dear" before she called her "that woman." In short, to express in one word a delayed and painful process, Jasmine Rigby deteriorated day by day, paid at long intervals, under pressure, and with cheques that were not her own, and finally, yielding no doubt to the instinct of flight from those whose good opinion we have forfeited, took a tearful and sentimental departure from the rooms which had been witness to fifteen futile years, and God alone knows what frenzied resolutions, what agonies of remorse and self-contempt as well. Financially, her loss was a serious matter, for she had rich and powerful connections, who might be trusted never to let her sink too deeply into debt nor beyond a certain standard of outward respectability: in other ways it would be idle to deny Mrs. Barbour felt it a relief. It afforded her an opportunity to reduce her establishment and to sell off some of the furniture. But the joy of turning our possessions into ready money and of ridding ourselves of old associates who have become encumbrances is a dearly bought one. It is likely that her health had been secretly unsatisfactory for years. It failed visibly from the day poor Druce, with the tears streaming down her honest wooden face, clasped her young mistress to her sparely covered chest in the hall and said "Good-bye." She had never been a good sleeper, but insomnia now became her nightly habit. Her cheeks grew flabby, her eyes dull; her comely face exchanged its pleasant pallor for a disquieting earthen tint.
Fenella would have been less than human if, amid all these anxieties, regrets, and annoyances, Lumsden's letters had come to her otherwise than as cheerful heralds from a happier world, bright assurances of a better time in store. He wrote oftener than many friends, though not as often as most lovers. He was generous enough or wise enough not to depart from the note he had struck during their conversation upon the day of winter sports at Freres Lulford. She was still his "investment," always "in training." And yet it was marvellous what a very wide field of inquiry, of advice and speculation, this position was held to justify. Her cheeks sometimes burned at Bryan's letters. Even when they were mere cheery chronicles of sport and pleasure, there was a little mocking undercurrent of sarcasm in them—sarcasm, as a rule, at the expense of society's hypocrisies—its standards of what might and what might not be permitted between two friends of opposite sexes, which she secretly resented—resented, that is to say, to the extent of never referring to it in her answers. Why should Bryan expect her to take the more cynical view, she wondered? Surely illusions were permissible to a girl of her age. What man who respected one, wished one well, would see her cheated of them? Clever letters are seldom written without ulterior motive. When heart speaks to heart it does so in language that admits of no double construction. It would save many a tangle were more sophisticated ones subjected to a merciless paraphrase.
For the rest, the time had probably passed when, in any sense of the word, she could be said to be "afraid" of Lumsden. He stood before her imagination now in all his pleasant power, holding open the gates of the fairyland to which he had the golden key, encouraging, inviting her to enter. Once through the gates, she had no doubt of her ability to justify and to repay. That money can discharge any obligation was just one of the obscuring simplicities of her youth. Another was that a stigma attached to the acceptance of money or money's visible worth. Beyond a cab-fare, she would have shrunk from such a thing as from actual dishonor; yet that money, to the extent of many hundreds of pounds, was being risked upon her untested power to please gave her only a very vague sense of indebtedness. It is true that to Bryan's personal interest she referred, with a completeness that was a little unfair to Mr. Dollfus's really kind heart, the ameliorations in her hard task—the warm dressing-room, the polite seriousness with which her views were entertained by the leader of the orchestra, the chair in the wings at rehearsals. She even fancied that she could detect a conspiracy to keep the seamy side of theatrical life from her. Mr. Lavigne, the stage-manager, never swore in her presence, though from her dressing-room she often heard language whose very volume implied profanity reverberate like stage thunder through the dark empty auditorium.
When general rehearsals began in March, among her new comrades upon the draughty, echoing boards, who stood blowsy or haggard in the perverse up-thrown light and exchanged the knowing, raffish jargon of their craft, there was abundant discussion as to her precise position, but no doubt at all. It is a pitiful thing to relate, but Bryan even got the credit of the clothes in which poor foolish Mrs. Barbour had sunk the profits of her enterprise. Fenella's dress had always possessed sophistication, and although by this time she was "economizing," enough of elegance remained from the old life to wreck her character in the new. But where she was now such things were a common-place. The misconception even was of use to her in one way. It removed her from the envy of those who were struggling upward on the strength of mere talents. Seen from the wings, her dancing made little impression upon a race not prone to enthusiasm, and notoriously bad judges of their own craft. She was to have the lime-light, the big letters on the bills, the "fat"—that was enough. She washors concours, a thing apart. The latest recruit might dream, and did dream, of having the same chance some day. A strange thing, that it should be not so much "luck" which failure resents as the crown upon hard work.
By an unhappy coincidence, the first dress rehearsal was called upon the day when her spirits were at lowest ebb. The night before, her mother, unable to keep the secret locked up in her breast any longer, had exposed with tears and incoherent self-reproach, the whole disastrous domestic situation. It was all mismanagement, muddle, abused confidence, rights signed away for a tithe of their value, mortgages and life assurances effected in the interests of people whose one service seemed to have been to draw the strangling net a little tighter. Fenella closed the eyes of her mental vision firmly and wisely against the disastrous prospect. She let her mother have her cry out upon her shoulder.
"No, dear; of course I'm not angry with you, or only a tiny bit for letting me be a foolish over-dressed little pig all these years. We'll give up this great big house before it's swallowed all that's left and move into a smaller one. They must give us something for the lease. And I've got Lady Anne's money coming to me in two years. We can raise something on that now. I'll speak to Mr. Dollfus about it. And Mr. Lavigne told me theDime Duchesscomes on early in May; then I shall begin to draw salary, and all our troubles will be over. And, mummy, youmustgive those disgusting people upstairs notice. Never mind what they owe. Turn them out! I'll live in a garret with you, dear, but I won't have our home turned into a common lodging-house."
But, for all her brave words, her own spirits sank. Was she so sure of success, after all? To have so much depending upon it was only a reason the more for misgiving. Dancing seemed to be in the air. The flaming posters that met her eye on every side, of women in one stage or another of uncoveredness, filled her with nausea. Nothing depresses true genius so much as to feel that an inspiration with which they could deal worthily is given broadcast, under various mean forms of impulse or emulation, to those whose touch can only degrade. It is a failing so like unworthy envy that even to be forced to admit it to oneself is demoralizing.
When she reached the theatre a drama that was no part of theDime Duchesswas in progress. Miss Enid Carthew stood down centre. Her dress was Doucet and her hat Virot. Her sable coat was open at the throat and a diamondcollierstreamed blue fire on her agitated bosom. Her arm, thrust through a muff whose tails swept the dusty stage, was akimbo on her slender hip. She had a pretty, dissipated, sour face and a quantity of fair hair.
"Oh! I can't have it at all, Mr. Dollfus," she was saying, evidently not for the first time, biting her lips and tapping the stage with her foot. The manager, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, his back to the footlights, straddled his legs in a truculent manner.
"You can't haf it!" he repeated, derisively. "Well, can yer lump it? Ah! Think yer the only tin can in the alley, dontcher, eh? Think you're de manachment, ain't it? I tell you once for all: I bills who I like, unt I bills 'em as big's I like. Now then—ah! eh?"
"You can tell all this to my solicitor," said Miss Carthew, loftily.
The word seemed to goad Mr. Dollfus to frenzy. He took a stride forward and shook a brown, ringed finger within an inch or two of Miss Carthew's Grecian profile.
"Now, don't gif me no contract talk. Pleace—pleacedon't. 'Cos I drew up de contract, and I know what's in um. You can't holt me on de contract—see? You can go on rehearsing or you can t'row yer part down, and that's all—now?"
"I've a good mind to do it."
"Vell, make yer goot mind up quick, pleace, 'cos this happens ter be my busy day."
Before poor Fenella could retreat from the storm, the leading lady looked her up and down with an expression that was meant for contempt, but only succeeded in expressing dislike. The advantage of five years is not to be annihilated by a glance.
"Another of Lumsden's kindergarten," she observed, with a short, disagreeable laugh, and, having launched this Parthian shaft, exit left.
Mr. Dollfus turned upon the cause of the trouble rather irritably.
"Vot! aintcher dressed yet, neither. Good Got! ve oughter be t'rough the first act. Run upstairs at once! And while we're waiting let's haf the finale ofer again. I ain't satisfied yet, Mr. Lavigne. Come,kapell-meister!"
Somehow, and by an effort of her whole will, Fenella got through her two dances without actual disaster. For the first time in her life discouragement failed to react in bodily movement. Her limbs felt heavy—out of accord with the music, and, though this is a strange term for arms and legs, maliciously stupid. Once she stumbled and all but fell. Mr. Dollfus looked puzzled, and in the wings, where a brisk murmur of sympathy with the deposed favorite had been running, significant glances were exchanged.
She was leaving the stage-door, glad to be in the cool, wet street, when a big man who was holding cheerful converse with an exquisite youth—all waist and relaxed keenness—raised his hat and made a little familiar sign with his head for her to wait. Next moment Lumsden had cut his conversation short, resisting an obvious appeal for introduction, and was holding out his hand.
"Hello, Flash!"
At another time she would have been glad to see him, but, with that dreadful sentence ringing in her ears, his touch seemed an abasement. She plucked her hand away.
"I thought you were in Cannes."
"Came back Tuesday. Had lunch?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Get in, then, and let me drive you home."
There was a dark green motor-coupé standing by the curb. Fenella took a seat in it automatically. She noticed he had no difficulty in recalling her address.
"I've been sitting in front watching you."
"I wish I'd done better. I made a fool of myself to-day."
"Oh, you were all right. Been over-working?"
She shook her head.
"Dolly told me there was a breeze. Hope it didn't upset you."
No answer.
"Bless you! That sort of thing's an everyday affair with us. Oh, fie, Flash!"
"Sir Bryan"—and a big sob.
"Well, what is it? Having trouble with the boys?"
"I know you'll be furious."
"Never mind. Spit it out in mummy's hand."
"Don't make me laugh. I—I want to give it up."
"Pshaw!"
"Oh, but I do."
"What on earth for?"
She clenched her hands. "Because I feel such ahumbugcoming on this way. Those other girls have worked and worked and been acting when I was at school. And now I step in front of them because—oh! you know what they think."
"I warned you of that before, you know."
"Yes; but I didn't realize then."
"And now, because a spiteful woman has said the obvious thing, you do. Oh, fie, Flash! This is weak-minded. I wish you knew her own history."
The girl turned to him, and even laid a timid hand on his sleeve.
"Sir Bryan, that's the mistake you make. You're always telling me—I mean in your letters—what a hypocrite this person or that is. But it doesn't make any difference to me. Of course, we understand one another, don't we?"
"I think we've made a start," Lumsden replied, in all seriousness.
"Yes, but those girls at the Dominion—some of them even younger than me. Think what I must seem to them. I can't go to them and say, 'Oh, believe me, it's not what you think.' And so the more they admire me, and the better I succeed, the greater scandal I shall be to them. And perhaps, some day——Oh! it seems such a responsibility, doesn't it?"
"Such a big one, that I advise you to put it out of your head."
"Oh, if I could!"
"Well, don't do anything in a hurry. And, oh, by the way, Flash, I believe I met an old friend of yours last night. World's a small place."
"A friend of mine? One of the people from Lulford?"
"Oh, no. Further back. At La Palèze. By George! that seems ancient history."
His kind, candid expression did not change, and yet not a detail of the girl's agitation was escaping him.
"Where did you meet him? Tell me, quick!"
"Don't look so scared. It was at a very nice house indeed, and he was looking uncommonly well."
"Did you speak to him?"
"No. He hadn't much to say. It was at the Rees house, and he's evidentlyépris."
"What's that?"
"Why, smitten with his pretty hostess—Mrs. Hepworth—the woman who calls herself Althea Rees, and writes rummy books. He stayed behind. I saw it arranged, like the fly, with my little eye. I finished the evening with Nick Templeton, who knows 'em well, and he says every one's expecting——Hello! here we are."
He held her hand again at parting, and this time she didn't snatch it away. Once inside the door, she returned a languid negative to the suggestion of lunch, and went upstairs to change her clothes and think over what she had just heard. First she cried a little, though nothing like as much as she had expected from the apparent weight at her heart; then, opening her trunk, she took out a leather box and emptied all his letters on to the hearth. So often, during that last lonely week by the sea, when she was hungering for news of him in vain, had she taken them down to the dunes to read, that there was almost a teaspoonful of fine sand at the bottom of the case. She had even been reading them over, she remembered, the day Bryan spoke to her first. She sat down on the hearth-rug, struck a match, and, crumbling each letter scientifically in her hand, burned piecemeal about half her little hoard from the wrecked past. Then she lost patience and locked the rest away. She was chilly; there had been no warmth in this sudden eager flame. She stretched herself and looked once more at her reflection in the long mirror. Her tears had thickened her features and throat. Something strangely, suddenly mature—some new adaptibility to life's sterner purposes—was looking back at her. She had wept—oh, how she had wept!—before, and yet only yesterday with her tears it had been the aspect of childhood that returned upon her. You would have said then: "There is a little girl who has broken her doll"; not until to-day: "There is a woman who has broken her heart." Was it so, indeed? Had it survived the first, the crueller blow, to break now at a piece of intelligence that was only to be looked for? Had there been hope, insane and unavowed? And why could she not hate him, as was her right? Why was it that only a brooding, yearning pity for him survived this final evidence of his faithlessness? Oh! it was because life was so hard on him—always would be so hard on him. Into whatever toils he had fallen, she could forgive him, because she knew he had not been seeking his own happiness when he fell. Just as she had never once conjectured concerning the old loves, so now she hazarded no guess as to the history of the new; but her woman's instinct, her appreciation of the nature by whose complexities her clear, sane common-sense had refused to be baffled, served her truly. It was still his compassion that sold him into new bondage—still his fatal fellowship with all that was weak, maimed or forsaken that, like a millstone round his neck, sunk him out of her sight. Hate him? Oh, what an uprush of smothered waters! What a tingling, as love like blood flowed back into her numbed heart, rebuked the suggestion! She reached out her arms to the mirror, and from its frozen depths, like an embodiment of all he had renounced in life—happiness, love, laughter, and ease of heart—the woman whom he had held shyly and awkwardly against his distracted heart, and whom to-morrow a thousand base eyes would covet, reached out her arms, too, in a mocking response.
"Oh, darling! why couldn't you trust me a little longer? Just because I couldn'tsaythings, didn't I feel them? I was what you wanted most. Just because Iwasso different. Why weren't you a little patient with me, Paul?"
And now for her work. There was another rehearsal next week, but she couldn't wait. She would telephone Joe; have one called for Friday. They should see something then. She had a bit up her sleeve.
She was leaving her bedroom, humming over the first bars of herChaconne, when she cannoned into the little maid who had replaced the irreproachable Druce. The sleeves of the girl's print dress were rolled up to her elbows, her cap awry.
"Frances, it's five o'clock. Why aren't you dressed?"
"Oh, miss! It's the missus."
"Your mistress? What's the matter with her?"
"Oh, miss, I dunno. She's a setting in the big armchair. It ain't sleep. Me nor cook can't rouse 'er, try 'ow we may. She's a moanin', too. I think it must be some kind of a stroke."