She betook herself to the Queen's next morning less buoyantly than she had anticipated. Her meeting with Heriot had depressed her. She retained much of the nature of a child, and laughed or cried very easily. She had met Heriot laughing, and he had been serious and sad. With some petulance she felt that it was very unfortunate for her that he had fallen in love with her, and chosen that particular day to tell her so.
She entered the stage-door with no presentiment of conquest, and inquired of the man in the little recess if Mr. Casey was in the theatre. Stage-door keepers are probably the surliest class in existence. They have much to try them, and they spend their official lives in a violent draught; but if there is a stage-door keeper sweet and sunny in his home, he provides an interesting study for the dramatic authors.
The man took her measure in an instant, saving in one particular—she was prepared to give him a shilling and he did not guess it.
"Mr. Casey's on the stage," he said; "he won't be disturbed now."
"If I waited, do you think I might see him?"
"I couldn't tell you, I'm sure."
He resumed his perusal of a newspaper, and Mamie looked at him through the aperture helplessly. There was the usual knot of loafers about the step—a scene-hand or two in their shirt-sleeves; a girl in her pathetic best dress, also hoping for miracles; a member of the company, who had slipped out from rehearsal to smoke a cigarette.
Cerberus was shown where his estimate had been at fault. He said "Miss" now: "If you write your business on one of these forms, Miss, I'll send it in to Mr. Casey."
He gave her a stump of pencil, and a printed slip, specially designed to scare intruders. She wrote her name, and Mr. Casey's name, and could find no scope for euphemisms regarding the nature of the interview she sought. She added, "To obtain engagement as extra lady," and returned the paper with embarrassment; she was sufficiently unsophisticated in such matters to assume that her object had not been divined.
"'Ere, Bill!" One of the scene-hands turned. "Take it in to Mr. Casey for this lady."
The man addressed as Bill departed through a second door with a grunt and a bang, and she waited expectantly. The girl in her best frock sneered; she could not afford to dispense shillings, herself, and already her feet ached. The door swung back constantly. At intervals of a few seconds a stream of nondescripts issued from the unknown interior, and Mamie stood watching for the features of her messenger. It was nearly a quarter of an hour before he reappeared.
"Mr. Casey can't see you," he announced.
The stage-door keeper heard the intelligence with absolute indifference; but the girl on the step looked gratified.
"What shall I do?" asked Mamie.
"I can't do no more than send in for you, Miss. It ain't much good your waiting—the call won't be over till three o'clock."
"Could I see him then?"
"He'll come out. If you like to take your chance——"
"I'll come back at three o'clock," she said. It was then eleven.
She turned into the Strand—the Strand that has broken more hearts than Fleet Street. Here a young actor passed her, who was also pacing the inhospitable pavements until the hour in which he hoped to see patience and importunity bear fruit. He wore a fashionable overcoat, and swung his cane with a gloved hand. Presently he would seek a public-house and lunch on a scone, and a glass of "mild-and-bitter." If he had "bitter," he would be a halfpenny short in his homeward fare to Bow. There a musical comedy actress went by, who had "married a swell." His family had been deeply wounded, and showed their mortification by allowing her to support him. She had had three children; and when he was drunk, which was frequently, he said, "God forbid that they should ever become damned mummers like their mother!" A manager had just told her that "she had lost her figure, and wouldn't look the part!" and she was walking back to Islington, where the brokers were in the house. A popular comedian, who had been compelled to listen to three separate tales of distress between Charing Cross and Bedford Street, and had already lent unfortunate acquaintances thirty shillings, paused, and hailed a hansom from motives of economy. It was the typical crowd of the Strand, a crowd of the footlights. The men whose positions had been won were little noticeable, but the gait and costume of the majority—affected Youth, and disheartened Age—indicated their profession to the least experienced eyes. Because she grew very tired, and not that she had any expectation of hearing good news, Mamie went into Mr. Passmore's office, and sat down.
And she did not hear any. After an hour she went away, and rested next in the anteroom of another of the agents, who repeated that "things were very quiet," and that "he wouldn't forget her." Seven or eight other girls were waiting their turn to be told the same thing. At a quarter to three she went back to the Queen's.
"Is he coming out now?" she said. "Am I too soon?"
"Eh?" said the stage-door keeper.
"You told me he'd be out about three. I was asking for Mr. Casey this morning."
"Oh, were you?" he said. "There's been a good many asking for him since then." He gradually recalled her. "Mr. Casey's gone," he added; "they finished early. He won't be here till to-night."
There was a week in which she went to the stage-door of the Queen's Theatre every day, at all hours, and at last she learnt casually that as many extra ladies as were required for the production had been engaged. There were months during which she persisted in her applications at other stage-doors and hope flickered within her still. But when September came, and a year had passed since her arrival, the expiring spark had faded into lassitude. She tried no longer. Only sometimes, out of the sickness of her soul, the impulse to write was born, and she picked up a pen.
Then it was definitely decided that she should return to America. It was characteristic of her that she had no sooner dried her eyes after the decision than she was restless to return at once; Duluth was no drearier than Wandsworth. Externally it was even picturesque, with the blue water and the sunshine, and the streets of white houses rising in tiers like a theatre; in Duluth the residents "looked down on one another" literally. The life was appalling, but when all was said, was it more limited than Aunt Lydia? And if, in lieu of acting, she dared aspire to dramatic authorship—the thought stirred her occasionally—she could work as well in Minnesota as in Middlesex. Cheriton had remitted the amount of her passage, and suggested that she should sail in a week or two. She had not received the draft two hours when she went up to town and booked a berth in the next steamer.
When it was done, she posted a note to Heriot, acquainting him with her intention. His visits had not been discontinued, but he came at much longer intervals latterly, and she could not go without bidding him good-bye.
She sat in the Lavender Street parlour the next evening, wondering if he would come. Almost she hoped that he would not. She had written, and therefore done her duty. To see him would, in the circumstances, humiliate her cruelly, she felt. She remembered how she had talked to him twelve months before—recalled her confidence, her pictures of a future that she was never to know, and her eyes smarted afresh. She had even failed to obtain a hearing. "What a fool, what an idiot I look!" she thought passionately.
Tea was over, but the maid-of-all-work had not removed the things; and when Heriot entered, the large loaf and the numerous knives, which are held indispensable to afternoon tea in Lavender Street, were still on the big round table. The aspect of the room did not strike him any more. He was familiar with it, like the view of the kitchen when the front door had been opened, and the glimpse of clothes-line in the yard beyond.
"May I come in?" he said. "Did you expect me?"
"Lor, it's Mr. Heriot!" said Mrs. Baines. "Fancy!"
She told the servant to take away the teapot, and to bring in another knife. He wondered vaguely what he was supposed to do with it.
"I thought it likely you'd be here," said Mamie; "won't you sit down?"
"I only had your letter this morning. So you are going away?"
"I am going away. I bow, more or less gracefully, to the inevitable."
"To bow gracefully to the inevitable is strong evidence of the histrionic gift," he said.
"I came, I saw, I was conquered; please don't talk about it.... It was only settled yesterday. I sail on Saturday, you know."
"Yes, you wrote me," murmured Heriot. "It's very sudden."
"I'm crazy to do something, if only to confess myself beaten."
"May I offer you a cup o' tea, Mr. Heriot?" asked Mrs. Baines.
She always "offered" cups of tea, and was indebted to neighbours for their "hospitality."
He thanked her.
"You will miss your niece?" he said, declining a place at the table, to which she had moved a chair.
"Yes, I'm sure!" she answered. "I say now it's a pity she didn't go with her father last October. Going in a vessel by herself, oh, dear! I say I wouldn't have got accustomed to having her with me if she'd gone with her father. Though that's neither here nor there!"
"Yes, I think you may believe you'll be missed, Miss Cheriton," he said.
"I say it's very odd she couldn't be an actress as she wanted," continued Mrs. Baines. "Seems so unfortunate with all the trouble that she took. But lor, my dear, we can't see what lies ahead of us, and perhaps it's all for the best! I say perhaps it's all for the best, Mr. Heriot, eh? Dear Mamie may be meant to do something different—writing, or such like; it's not for us to say."
"Have you been writing again?" asked Heriot, turning to the girl.
"A little," she said bitterly. "My vanity dies hard—and Aunt Lydia has encouraged me."
Heriot looked a reproach; her tone hurt him, though he understood of what it was the outcome.
"I should be glad if you had encouragement," he replied; "I think you need it now."
But it hurt him, also, to discuss her pain in the presence of the intolerable third. He knew that if he remained to supper there would be a preparatory quarter of an hour in which he was alone with her; and it was for this quarter of an hour that he hungered, conscious that during the opening of the lobster-tin two destinies would be determined.
"That's right, Mr. Heriot," said Mrs. Baines placidly. "I'm glad to hear you say so. That's what I've been telling her. I say she mustn't be disheartened. Why, it's surprising, I'm sure, how much seems to be thought of people who write stories and things nowadays; they seem to make quite a fuss of them, don't they? And I'm certain dear Mamie could write if she put her mind to it. I was reading in the paper,Tit-Bits, only last week, that there was a book calledRobert Ellis, or some such name, that made the author quite talked about. Now, I read the piece out to you, dear, didn't I? A book about religion, it was, by a lady; and I'm sure dear Mamie knows as much about religion as anyone."
"My aunt meansRobert Elsmere," said Mamie, in a laboured voice. "You may have heard it mentioned?"
"You mustn't expect Mr. Heriot to know much about it," said Mrs. Baines; "Mr. Heriot is so busy a gentleman that very likely he doesn't hear of these things. But I assure you, Mr. Heriot, the story seems to have been read a great deal; and what I say is, if dear Mamie can't be an actress, why shouldn't she write books, if she wants to do something of the sort? I wonder my brother didn't teach her to paint, with her notions and that—but, not having learnt, I say she ought to write books. That's the thing for her—a nice pen and ink, and her own home."
"I agree with you, Mrs. Baines. If she wants to write, she can do that in her own home."
"Not to compare it with such a profession as yours, Mr. Heriot," she said, "which, of course, is sensible and grave. But girls can't be barristers, and——"
"Will you open the window for me?" exclaimed Mamie; "it's frightfully warm, don't you think so?"
She stood there with her head thrown back, and closed eyes, her foot tapping the floor restlessly.
"Are you wishing you hadn't come?" she asked under her breath.
"Why?"
"One must suffer to be polite here."
"Aren't you a little unjust?" said Heriot deprecatingly.
"You have it for an hour," she muttered; "Ihave had it for twelve months. Have you ever wanted to shriek?Iwanted to shriek just now, violently!"
"I know you did," he said. "Well, it's nearly over.... Are you glad?"
"Yes, and no—I can't say. If——"
"Won't you go on?"
"If I dared hope to do anything else.... But I'm not going to talk like that any more! I'm ridiculous enough already."
"To whom are you ridiculous?"
"To my own perception—you!"
"Not to me," he said.
"'Pathetic'? Yes, to you I'm 'pathetic.' You pity me as you might pity a lunatic who imagined she was the Queen of England."
"I think you know," said Heriot diffidently, "that neither the Queen nor a lunatic inspires in me quite the feeling that I have for you."
She changed her position, and spoke at random.
"This street is awfully stupid, isn't it?" she said. "Look at that man going up the steps!"
"Yes, he is very stupid, I daresay. What of it?"
"He is a clerk," she said; "and wheels his babies out on Sunday."
"Mamie!"
"Come and talk to Aunt Lydia again. How rude we are!"
"I want to talk toyou," he demurred. "Aren't you going to ask me to stay to supper?"
The suggestion came from the widow almost at the same moment.
"I think we had better have the lamp," she went on. "The days are drawing in fast, Mr. Heriot, aren't they? We shall soon have winter again. Do you like the long evenings, or the long afternoons best? Just about now I always say that I can't bear to think of having to begin lighting up at five or six o'clock—it seems so unnatural; and then, next summer, somehow I feel quite lost, not being able to let down the blinds and light the lamp for tea. Mamie, dear, shut the window, and let down the blinds before I light the lamp—somebody might see in!" She suggested the danger in the same tone in which she might have apprehended a burglary.
Under a glass shade a laggard clock ticked drearily towards the crisis, and Heriot provoked its history by the eagerness with which he looked to see the time. It had been a wedding-present from "poor dear Edward's brother," and only one clockmaker had really understood it. The man had died, and since then——
He listened, praying for the kitchen to engulf her.
When she withdrew at last, with an apology for leaving him, he rose, and went to the girl's side.
"Do you know why I came this afternoon?" he said.
She did know—had known it in the moment that he opened the window for her:
"To say 'good-bye,'" she murmured.
"I came to beg you not to go! Dearest, what do you relinquish by marrying me now? Not the stage—your hope of the stage is over; not your ambition in itself—you can be ambitious as my wife. You lose nothing, and you give—a heaven. Mamie, won't you stay?"
She leant on the mantelpiece without speaking. In the pause, Mrs. Baines' voice reached them distinctly, as she said, "Put the brawn on a smaller dish."
"You are forgetting. There was ... a reason besides the stage."
"It is you who've forgotten. I told you I would be content.... It wouldn't be repugnant to you?"
"To refuse while I thought I had a future, and to say 'yes,' now that——How can you ask me? It would be an insult to your love."
"I do ask you," he urged; "I implore."
"You implore me to be contemptible. You would have a disappointed woman for your wife. You deserve something better than that."
"Oh, my God," said Heriot, in a low voice, "if I could only tell you how I ache to take you in my arms—as softly as if you were a child! If I could tell you what it is to me to know that you are passing out of my life and that in two days' time I shall never see you again!... Mamie?"
The heavy shuffle of the servant was heard in the passage.
"Mamie?" he repeated desperately. "It will be worse over there."
Her eyes were big with perplexity and doubt.
"Mamie?"
"Are you sure you—sure——"
"I love you; I want you. Only trust me!... Mamie?"
"If you're quite sure you wish it," she faltered,—"yes!"
When Heriot informed his brother of his approaching marriage, Sir Francis said, "I never offer advice to a man on matters of this sort"; and proceeded to advise. He considered the union undesirable, and used the word.
Heriot replied, "On the contrary, I desire it extremely."
"You're of course the best judge of your own affairs. I'll only say that it is hardly the attachment I should have expected you to form. It appears to me—if I may employ the term—romantic."
"I should say," said Heriot, in his most impassive manner, "that that is what it might be called. Admitting the element of romance, what of it?"
"We are not boys, George," said Sir Francis. He added, "And the lady is twenty-two! The father is an hotel-keeper in the United States, you tell me, and the aunt lives in Wandsworth. Socially, Wandsworth is farther than the United States, but geographically it is close. This Mrs. Payne—or Baynes—is not a connection you will be proud of, I take it?"
"I shall be very proud of my wife," said Heriot, with some stiffness. "There are more pedigrees than happy marriages."
The Baronet looked at his watch. "As I have said, it's not a matter that I would venture to advise you upon. Of course I congratulate you. We shall see Miss Cheriton at Sandhills, I hope? and—er—Catherine will be delighted to make her acquaintance. I have to meet Phil at the Club. He's got some absurd idea of exchanging—wants to go out to India, and see active service. And I got him into the Guards! Boys are damned ungrateful.... When do you marry?"
"Very shortly—during the vacation. There'll be no fuss."
Sir Francis told his wife that it was very "lamentable," and Lady Heriot preferred to describe it as "disgusting." But in spite of adjectives the ceremony took place.
The honeymoon was brief, and when the bride and bridegroom came back to town, they stayed in an hotel in Victoria Street while they sought a flat. Ultimately they decided upon one in South Kensington, and it was the man's delight to render this as exquisite as taste and money made possible. The furniture for his study had simply to be transferred from his bachelor quarters, but the other rooms gave scope for a hundred consultations and caprices; and like a lad he enjoyed the moments in which he and Mamie bent their heads together over patterns and designs.
She would have been more than human, and less than lovable, if in those early weeks her disappointment had not been lost sight of; more than a girl if the atmosphere of devotion in which she moved had not persuaded her primarily that she was content. Only after the instatement was effected and the long days while her husband was away were no longer occupied by upholsterers' plans, did the earliest returning stir of recollection come; only as she wandered from the drawing-room to the dining-room and could find no further touches to make, did she first sigh.
A gift of Heriot's—he had chosen it without her knowledge, and it had been delivered as a surprise—was a writing-table; a writing-table that was not meant merely to be a costly ornament. And one morning she sat down to it and began another attempt at a play. The occupation served to interest her, and now the days were not so empty. In the evening, as often as he was able, Heriot took her out to a theatre, or a concert, or to houses from which invitations came. The evenings were enchantingly new to her; less so, perhaps, when they dined at the solemn houses than when a hansom deposited them at the doors of a restaurant, and her husband's pocket contained the tickets for a couple of stalls. She was conscious that she owed him more than she could ever repay; and though she had casually informed him that she had begun a drama, she did not discuss the subject with him at any length. To dwell upon those eternal ambitions of hers was to remind him that she had said she would be dissatisfied, and he deserved something different from that; he deserved to forget it, to be told that she had not an ungratified wish! She felt ungrateful to realise that such a statement would be an exaggeration.
In the November following the wedding it was seen that "Her Majesty had been pleased, on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor, to approve the name of George Langdale Heriot to the rank of Queen's Counsel," and Heriot soon found reason to congratulate himself on his step. A man may earn a large income as a Junior, and find himself in receipt of a very poor one as a Leader. There is an instance cited in the Inns of Court of a stuff-gownsman, making eight thousand a year, whose income fell, when he took silk, to three hundred. But Heriot's practice did not decline. Few men at the Bar could handle a jury better, or showed greater address in their dealings with the Bench. He knew instinctively the moment when that small concession was advisable, when the attitude of uncompromising rigour would be fatal to his case. He had his tricks in court: the least affected of men out of it, in court he had his tricks. Counsel acquire them inevitably, and one of Heriot's had been a favourite device of Ballantyne's: in cross-examination he looked at the witness scarcely at all, but kept his face turned to the jury-box. Why this should be persuasive is a mystery that no barrister can explain, but its effectiveness is undeniable. Nevertheless, he was essentially "sound." As he had been known as "a safe man" while a Junior, so, now that he had taken silk, he was believed in as a Leader. The figures on the briefs swelled enormously; his services were more and more in demand. Then by-and-by there came a criminal case that was discussed day by day throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom—in drawing-rooms and back parlours, in clubs and suburban trains, and Heriot was for the Defence. The Kensington study had held him until dawn during weeks, for he had to break down medical evidence. And on the last day he spoke for five hours, while the reporters' pens flew, and the prisoner swayed in the dock; and the verdict returned was "Not Guilty."
When he unrobed and left the court, George Heriot walked into the street the man of the hour; and he drove home to Mamie, who kissed him as she might have kissed her father.
He adored his wife, and his wife felt affection for him. But the claims of his profession left her to her own resources; and she had no child.
When they had been married three years she knew many hours of boredom. She could not disguise from herself that she found the life she led more and more unsatisfying—that luxury and a devoted husband, who was in court during the day, and often in his study half the night, were not all that she had craved for; that her environment was philistine, depressing, dull!
And she lectured herself and said the fault was her own, and that it was a very much better environment than her abilities entitled her to. She recited all the moral precepts that a third person might have uttered; and the dissatisfaction remained.
To write plays ceases to be an attractive occupation when they are never produced. She had written several plays by this time, and submitted them, more or less judiciously, to several West End theatres. There had even been an instance of a manager returning a manuscript in response to her fourth application for it. But she was no nearer to success, or to an artistic circle.
A career at the Bar is not all causes célèbres, and the details of Heriot's briefs were rarely enthralling to her mind, even when he discussed them with her; and when he came into the drawing-room he did not want to discuss his briefs. He wanted to talk trifles, just as he preferred to see a musical comedy or a farce when they went out. Nor did he press her for particulars of her own pursuits during his absence. She never sighed over him, and as she appeared to be cheerful, he thought she was contented. That such allusions to her literary work as she made were careless, he took to mean that she had gradually acquired staider views. Once he perceived that it was perhaps quieter for her than for most women, for she had no intimate acquaintances; but then she had never been used to any! There were her books, and her music, and her shopping—no, he did not think she could be bored. Besides, her manner at dinner was always direct evidence to the contrary!
She was now twenty-five years old, and the Kensington flat, and abundant means had lost their novelty. She was never moved by a clever novel without detesting her own obscurity; never looked at the window of the Stereoscopic Company without a passion of envy for the successful artists; never accompanied Heriot to the solemn houses without yearning for a passport to Upper Bohemia instead. She was twenty-five years old, and marriage, without having fulfilled the demands of her temperament, had developed her sensibilities. It was at this period that she met Lucas Field.
If her existence had been a story, nothing could have surprised her less than such a meeting. It would have been at this juncture precisely that she looked for the arrival of an artist, and Lucas Field would probably have been a brilliant young man who wore his hair long and wrote decadent verse. The trite in fiction is often very astonishing in one's own life, however, and, as a matter of fact, she found their introduction an event, and foresaw nothing at all.
Lucas Field was naturally well known to her by reputation—so well known that when the hostess brought "Mr. Field" across to her, Mamie never dreamed of identifying him with the dramatist. She had long since ceased to expect to meet anybody congenial at these parties, and the fish had been reached before she discovered who it really was who had taken her down.
Field was finding it a trifle dreary himself. He had not been bred in the vicinity of the footlights—-his father had been a physician, and his mother the daughter of a Lincolnshire parson—but he had drifted into dramatic literature when he came down from Oxford, and the atmosphere of the artistic world had become essential to him by now. Portman Square, though he admitted its desirability, and would have been mortified if it had been denied to him, invariably oppressed him a shade when he entered it. He was at the present time foretasting hell in the fruitless endeavour to devise a scenario for his next play, and he had looked at Mamie with a little interest as he was conducted across the drawing-room. A beautiful woman has always an air of suggestion; she is a beginning, a "heroine" without a plot. Regarded from the easel she is all-sufficing—contemplated from the desk, she is illusive. After you have admired the tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck, you realise with despondence that she takes you no farther than if she had been plain.
Field had realised that she left him in the lurch before his soup plate had been removed. Presently he inquired if she was fond of the theatre.
"Please don't say 'yes' from politeness," he added.
"Why should I?"
She had gathered the reason in the next moment, and her eyes lit with eagerness. He had a momentary terror that she was going to be commonplace.
"I couldn't dream that it was you—here!" she said apologetically.
"Isn't a poor playwright respectable?" he asked.
There was an instant in which she felt that on her answer depended the justification of her soul. She said afterwards that she could have "fallen round an epigram's neck."
"I should think the poor playwright must be very dull," she replied.
This was adequate, however, and better than his own response, which was of necessity conventional.
"I have seen your new comedy," she continued.
"I hope it pleased you?"
"I admired it immensely—like every one else. It is a great success, isn't it?"
"The theatre is very full every night," he said deprecatingly.
"Then itisa success!"
"Does that follow?"
"You are not satisfied with it—it falls short of what you meant? I shouldn't have supposed that; it seemed to me entirely clear!"
"That I had a theory? Really? Perhaps I have not failed so badly as I thought." He did not think he had failed at all, but this sort of thing was his innocent weakness.
"Miss Millington is almost perfect as 'Daisy,' isn't she?"
"'Almost'? Where do you find her weak?"
She blushed.
"She struck me—of course I am no authority—as not quite fulfilling your idea in the first act—when she accepted the Captain. I thought perhaps she was too responsible there—too grown up."
"There isn't a woman in London who could play 'Daisy,'" said Field savagely. "In other words, you think she wrecked the piece?"
"Oh no, indeed!"
"If 'Daisy' isn't a child when she marries, the play has no meaning, no sense. That is why the character was so difficult to cast—in the first act she must be a school-girl, and in the others an emotional woman."
"Perhaps I said too much."
"You are a critic, Mrs. Heriot."
"Oh, merely——"
"Merely?"
"Merely very interested in the stage."
"To be interested in the stage is very ordinary; to be a judge of it is rather rare. No, you didn't say too much: Miss Millingtondoesn'tfulfil my idea when she accepts 'Captain Arminger.' And to be frank,Ihaven't fulfilled Miss Millington's idea of a consistent part."
"I can understand," said Mamie, "that the great drawback to writing for the stage is that one depends so largely on one's interpreters. A novelist succeeds or fails by himself, but a dramatist——"
"A dramatist is the most miserable of created beings," said Field, "if he happens to be an artist."
"I can hardly credit that. I can't credit anybody being miserable who is an artist." (He laughed. It was not polite, but he couldn't help it.) "Though I can understand his having moods of the most frightful depression!" she added.
"Oh, you can understand that?"
"Quite. Would he be an artist if he didn't have them!"
"May I ask if you write yourself?"
"N—no," she murmured.
"Does that mean 'yes'?"
"It means 'only for my own amusement.'"
"The writer who only writes for his own amusement is mythical, I'm afraid," said Field. "One often hears of him, but he doesn't bear investigation. You don't write plays?"
"No—I try to!"
He regarded her a little cynically.
"I thought ladies generally wrote novels?"
"I wish to be original, you see."
"Do you send them anywhere?"
"Oh, yes; Isendthem; I suppose I always shall!"
"You're really in earnest then? You're not discouraged?"
"I'm earnest, and discouraged, too.... Is it impertinent to ask ifyouhad experiences like mine when you were younger?"
"I wrote plays for ten years before I ever passed through a stage-door—one must expect to work for years before one is produced.... Of course, one may work all one's life, and not be produced then!"
"It depends how clever one is, or whether one is clever at all?"
"It depends on a good many things. It depends sometimes on advice."
If she had been less lovely, he would not have said this, and he knew it; if she had not been Mrs. Heriot, he would not have said it either. The average woman who "wants a literary man's advice" is the bane of his existence, and Field was, not only without sympathy for the tyro as a rule—he was inclined to disparage the majority of his colleagues. He was clever, and was aware of it; he occupied a prominent position. He had arrived at the point when he could dare to be psychological. "It depends sometimes on advice," he said. And the wife of George Heriot, Q.C., murmured: "Unfortunately, I have nobody to advise me!"
Even as it was, he regretted it when he took his leave; and the manuscript that he had offered to read lay in his study for three weeks before he opened it. He picked it up one night, remembering that the writer had been very beautiful. The reading inspired him with a desire to see her again. That the play was full of faults goes without saying, but it was unconventional, and there was character in it. He recollected that she had interested him while they talked after dinner on a couch by the piano; and, as her work was promising, he wrote, volunteering to point out in an interview, if she liked, those errors in technique which it would take too long to explain by letter. It cannot be made too clear that if she had sent him a work of genius and had been plain Miss Smith in a home-made blouse, he would have done nothing of the sort. He called upon her with no idea that his hints would make a dramatist of her, nor did he care in the slightest degree whether they did, or did not. She was a singularly lovely woman, and as her drama had not been stupid—stupidity would have repelled him—he thought a tête-à-tête with her would be agreeable.
To Mamie, however, the afternoon when he sat sipping tea in her drawing-room, like an ordinary mortal, was the day of her life. She told him that she had once hoped to be an actress, and believed that the avowal would advance her in his esteem. He answered that he should not be astonished if she had the histrionic gift; and was secretly disenchanted a shade by what he felt to be banal. Then they discussed his own work, and he found her appreciation remarkably intelligent. To talk about himself to a woman, who listened with exquisite eyes fixed upon his face, was very gratifying to him. Field had rarely spent a pleasanter hour. It is not intimated that he was a vain puppy—he was not a puppy at all. He had half unconsciously felt the want of a sympathetic confidant for a long while, though, and albeit he did not instantaneously realise that Mrs. Heriot supplied the void, he walked back to his chambers with exhilaration.
He realised it by degrees. He had never married. He had avoided matrimony till he was thirty because he could not afford it; and during the last decade he had escaped it because he had not met a woman whom he desired sufficiently to pay such a price. When he had seen Mamie several times—and in the circumstances it was not difficult to invent reasons for seeing her—he wondered whether he would have proposed to her if she had been single.
Heriot was very pleased to have him dine with them; and he was not ignorant that during the next few months Field often dropped in about five o'clock. Mamie concealed nothing—knowingly—and the subject of her writing was revived now. She told George that Mr. Field thought she had ability. She repeated his criticisms; frankly admired his talent; confessed that she was proud to have him on her visiting list—and fell in love with him without either analysing her feelings, or perceiving her risk.
And while Mrs. Heriot fell in love with him, Lucas Field was not blind. He saw a great deal more than she saw herself—he saw, not only the influence he exercised over her, but that she had moped before he appeared. He did not misread her; he was conscious that she would never take a lover from caprice—that she was the last woman in the world to sin lightly, or under the rose. He saw that, if he yielded to the temptation that had begun to assail him, he must be prepared to ask her to live with him openly. But he asked himself whether it was impossible that he could prevail on her to do that, had he the mind to do so—whether she was so impregnable as she believed.
He was by this time fascinated by her. His happiest afternoons were spent in South Kensington, advancing his theories, and talking of his latest scenes; nor was it a lie when he averred that she assisted him. To be an artist it is not necessary to be able to produce, and if her own attempts had been infinitely more futile than they were, she might still have expressed opinions that were of service to another. Many of her views were impracticable, naturally. Psychological as his tendencies were, he was a dramatist, and he could not snap his fingers at the laws imposed by the footlights, though he might affect to deride them in his confidences. The only dramatist alive was Ibsen, he said; yet he did not model himself on Ibsen, albeit he was delighted when she exclaimed, "How Ibsenish that is!" Many of her views were impracticable, because she was ignorant about the stage; but many were intensely stimulating. The more he was with her, the less he doubted her worthiness of sinning for his sake. He was so different from the ordinary dramatic author! On the ordinary dramatic author, with no ideas beyond "curtains" and "fees," she would have been thrown away. He did not wish to be associated with a scandal—it would certainly be unpleasant—but she dominated him, there was no disguising the fact. And he would be very good to her; he would marry her. She was adorable!
His meditations had not progressed so far without the girl's eyes being opened to her weakness; and now she hated herself more bitterly than she had hated the tedium of her life. She knew that she loved him. She was wretched when he was not with her, and ashamed when he was there. She wandered about the flat in her solitude, frightened as she realised what an awful thing had come to her. But she was drunk—intoxicated by the force of the guilty love, and by the thought that such a man as Lucas Field could be in love withher. She revered him for not having told her of the feelings that she inspired. Her courage was sustained by the belief that he did not divine her own—that she would succeed in stamping them out without his dreaming of the danger she had run. Yet she was "drunk"; and one afternoon the climax was reached—he implored her to go away with him.
If a woman sins, and the chronicler of her sin desires to excuse the woman, her throes and her struggles, her pangs and her prayers always occupy at least three chapters. If one does not seek to excuse her, the fact of her fall may as well be stated in the fewest possible words. Mamie did struggle—she struggled for a long time—but in the end she was just as guilty as if she hadn't shed a tear. Field's pertinacity and passion wore her resistance out at last. Theirs was to be the ideal union, and of course he cited famous cases where the man and woman designed for each other by Heaven had met only after one of them had blundered. He did not explain why Heaven had permitted the blunders, after being at the pains to design kindred souls for each other's ecstasy; but there are things that even the youngest curate cannot explain. He insisted that she would never regret her step; he declared that, with himself for her husband, she would become celebrated. Art, love, joy, all might be hers at a word. And she spoke it.
When Heriot came in one evening, Mamie was not there, and he wondered what had become of her, for at this hour she was always at home. But he had not a suspicion of evil—he was as far from being prepared for the blow that was in store as if Field had never crossed their path. He had let himself in with his latch-key, and after a quarter of an hour it occurred to him that she might be already in the dining-room. When he entered it, he noted with surprise that the table was laid only for one.
"Where is Mrs. Heriot?" he said to the servant who appeared in response to his ring.
"Mrs. Heriot has gone out of town, sir."
"Out of town!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"
"Mrs. Heriot left a note for you, sir, to explain. There it is, sir."
Heriot took it from the mantelpiece quickly; but still he had no suspicion—not an inkling of the truth. He tore the envelope open and read, while the maid waited respectfully by the door.
"Your mistress has been called away," he said when he had finished; "illness! She will be gone some time."
His back was to her; he could command his voice, but his face was beyond his control. He felt that if he moved he would reel, perhaps fall. He stood motionless, with the letter open in his hand.
"Shall I serve dinner, sir?"
"Yes, serve dinner, Odell; I'm quite ready."
When the door closed, it was his opportunity to gain the chair; he walked towards it slowly, like a blind man. The letter that he held had left but one hope possible—the last hope of despair—to keep the matter for awhile from the servants' knowledge. As yet he was not suffering acutely; indeed, in these early moments, the effect of the shock was more physical than mental. There was a trembling through his body, and his head felt queerly light—empty, not his own.
The maid came back, and he forced himself to dine. The first spoonfuls of the soup he took were but heat, entirely tasteless, to his mouth, and at the pit of his stomach a sensation of sickness rose and writhed like something living. When she retired once more, his head fell forward on his arms; it was a relief to rest it so. He did not know how he could support the long strain of her vigilance.
By degrees his stupor began to pass, as he stared at the vacant place where his wife should have sat; the dazed brain rallied to comprehension. His wife was not there because she was with her lover! Oh, God! with her "lover"—Mamie had given herself to another man!Mamie!Mamie had gone to another man. His face was grey and distorted now, and the glass that he was lifting snapped at the stem. She had gone. She was no longer his wife. She was guilty, shameless, defiled—Mamie!
He rose, an older, a less vigorous, figure.
"I shall be busy to-night," he muttered; "don't let me be disturbed."
He went to his study, and dropped upon the seat before his desk. Her photograph confronted him, and he took it down and held it shakenly. How young she looked! was there ever a face more pure? And Heaven knew that he had loved her as dearly only an hour ago as on the day that they were married! Not a whim of hers had been refused; not a request could he recollect that he had failed to obey. Yet now she was with a lover! She smiled in the likeness; the eyes that met his own were clear and tender; truth was stamped upon her features. He recalled incidents of the past three years, incidents that had been rich in the intimacy of their life. Surely in those hours she had loved him? That had not been gratitude—a sense of duty merely?—had she not loved him then? He remembered their wedding-day. How pale she had been, how innocent—a child. Yet now she was with a lover! A sob convulsed him, and he nodded slowly at the likeness through his tears. Presently he put it back; he was angered at his weakness. He had deserved something better at her hands! Pride forbade that he should mourn for her. He had married wildly, yes, he should have listened to advice; Francis had warned him. Perhaps while he wept, they were laughing at him together, she and Field! How did he know that it was Field—had she mentioned his name in the letter? He knew that it was Field instinctively; he marvelled that he had not foreseen the danger, and averted it. How stupid had the petitioners in divorce suits often appeared to him in his time!—he had wondered that men could be so purblind—and he himself had been as dense as any!... But she would not laugh. Ah, guilty as she was, she would not laugh—she was not so vile as that! The clock in the room struck one. He heard it half unconsciously—then started, and threw out his arms with a hoarse cry. He sprang to his feet, fired with the tortures of the damned. The sweat burst out on him, and the veins in his forehead swelled like cords. He was a temperate man, at once by taste and by necessity, but now he walked to where the brandy was kept and drank a wineglassful in gulps. "Mamie!" he groaned again; "Mamie!" The brandy did not blot the picture from his brain; and he refilled the glass.... Nothing would efface the picture.
He knew that it was hopeless to attempt to sleep, yet he went to the bedroom. The ivory brushes were gone from the toilet-table—she had been able to think of brushes! In the wardrobe the frocks were fewer, and the linen was less; the jewellery that he had given to her had been left behind. All was orderly. There were no traces of a hurried departure; the room had its usual aspect. He looked at the pillows. Against the one that had been hers lay the bag of silk and lace that contained her night-dress. Had she forgotten it; or was it that she had been incapable of transferring that? He picked it up, and dropped it out of sight in one of the drawers.
He did not go to bed; he spent the night in an armchair, re-reading the letter, and thinking. When the servant knocked at the door, he went to his dressing-room, and shaved. He had a bath, and breakfasted, and strolled to the station. Outwardly he had recovered from the blow, and his clerk who gave him his list of appointments remarked nothing abnormal about him. In court, Heriot remembered that Mamie and he were to have dined in Holland Park that evening, and during the luncheon adjournment he sent a telegram of excuse. If any one had known what had happened to him, he would have been thought devoid of feeling.
He had scarcely re-entered the flat when Mrs. Baines called. His first impulse was to decline to see her; but he told the maid to show her in.
A glance assured him that she was ignorant of what had occurred.
"Dear Mamie is away, the servant tells me," she said, simpering. "I hadn't seen her for such a long time that I thought I'd look in to-day. Not that I should have been so late, but I missed my train! I meant to come in and have a cup of tea with her at five o'clock. Well, Iamunfortunate! And how have you been keeping, Mr. Heriot?"
"I'm glad to see you. I hope you are well, Mrs. Baines."
"Where has dear Mamie gone?" she asked. "Pleasuring?"
"She is on the Continent, I believe. May I tell them to bring you some tea now?"
"On the Continent alone?" exclaimed Mrs. Baines. "Fancy!"
"No, she is not alone," said Heriot. "You must prepare yourself for a shock, Mrs. Baines. Your niece has left me."
She looked at him puzzled. His tone was so composed that it seemed to destroy the significance of his words.
"Left you? How do you mean?"
"She has gone with her lover."
"Oh, my Gawd!" said Mrs. Baines.... "Whatever are you saying, Mr. Heriot? Don't!"
"Your niece is living with another man. She left me yesterday," he continued quietly. "I am sorry to have to tell you such news."
He was sorrier as he observed the effect of it, but he could not soften the shock for her by any outward participation in her grief. Since he must speak at all, he must speak as he did.
"Oh, to hear of such a thing!" she gasped. "Oh, to think that—well—— Oh, Mr. Heriot, I can't ... it can't be true. Isn't it some mistake? Dear Mamie would never be so wicked, I'm sure she wouldn't! It's some awful mistake, you may depend."
"There's no mistake, Mrs. Baines. My authority is your niece herself. She left a letter to tell me she was going, and why."
The widow moaned feebly.
"With another man?"
He bowed.
"Oh, Heaven will punish her, Mr. Heriot! Oh, what will her father say—how could she do it! And you—how gentle and kind to her you wereIcould see."
"I did my best to make her happy," he said; "evidently I didn't succeed. Is it necessary for us to talk about it much? Believe me, you have my sympathy, but talking won't improve matters."
"Oh, but I can't look at it so—so calmly, Mr. Heriot! The disgrace! and so sudden. And it isn't formeto haveyoursympathy, I'm sure. I say it isn't foryouto sympathise withme. My heart bleeds for you, Mr. Heriot."
"You're very good," he answered; "but I don't know that a faithless wife is much to grieve for after all."
"Ah, but you don't mean that! you were too fond of her to mean it. She'll live to repent it, you may be certain—the Lord will bring it home to her. Oh, how could she do it! You don't—you don't intend to have a divorce?"
"Naturally I intend it. What else do you propose?"
"Oh, I don't know," she quavered, rocking herself to and fro, and smearing the tears down her cheeks with a forefinger in a black silk glove; "but the disgrace! And all Lavender Street to read about it! Ah, you won't divorce her, Mr. Heriot? It would be so dreadful!"
"Don't you want to see the man marry her?"
"How 'marry her'?" she asked vaguely. "Oh, I understand! Yes, I suppose hecouldmarry her then, couldn't he? I'm not a lawyer like you—I didn't look so far ahead. But I don't want a divorce."
"Ah, well,Iwant it," he said; "for my own sake."
"Then you don't love her any more, Mr. Heriot?"
He laughed drearily.
"Your niece has ended her life with me of her own accord. I've nothing more to do with her."
"Those are cruel words," said Mrs. Baines; "those are cruel words about a girl who was your lawful wife—the flesh of your bone in the sight of Gawd and man. You're harder than I thought, Mr. Heriot; you don't take it quite as I'd have supposed you'd take it.... So quiet and stern like! I think if you'd loved her tenderly, you'd have talked more heart-broken, though it's not for me to judge."
Heriot rose.
"I can't discuss my sentiments with you, Mrs. Baines. Think, if you like, that I didn't care for her at all. At least my duty to her is over; and I have a duty to myself to-day."
"To cast her off?" The semi-educated classes use the phrases of novelettes habitually. Whether this is the reason the novelettes trade in the phrases, or whether the semi-educated acquire the phrases from the novelettes, is not clear.
"To——" He paused. He could not trust himself to speak at that moment.
"To cast her off?" repeated Mrs. Baines. "Oh, I don't make excuses for her—I don't pity her. Though she is my brother's child, I say she is deserving of whatever befalls her. I remember well that when Dick married I warned him against it; I said, 'She isn't the wife for you!' It's the mother's blood coming out in her, though my brother's child. But ... What was I going to say? I'm that upset that—— Oh yes! I make no excuses for her, but I would have liked to see more sorrow on your part, Mr. Heriot; I could have pitied you more if you'd have taken it more to heart. You may think me too bold, but it was ever my way to say what was in my mind. I don't think I'll stop any longer. The way you may take it is between you and your Gawd, but——" She put out her hand. "I don't think I'll stop."
"Good-evening," he said stonily. "I'm sorry you can't stay and dine."
She recollected on the stairs that she had not inquired who the man was; but she was too much disgusted by Heriot's manner to go back.
When a naturally pure woman, who is not sustained by any emancipated views, consents to live with a man in defiance of social prejudices, she probably obtains as clear an insight as the world affords into the enormous difference that exists between the ideal and the actual. Matrimony does not illumine the difference so vividly, because matrimony, with all its disillusions, leaves her an unembarrassed conscience. With her lover such a woman experiences all the prose of wedlock, and a sting to boot. A man cannot be at concert-pitch all day long with his mistress any more easily than with his wife. She has to submit to bills and other practical matters just as much with a smirched reputation as she had with a spotless one. The romance does not wear any better because the Marriage Service is omitted. A lover is no less liable to be commonplace than a husband when the laundress knocks the buttons off his shirts.
Yes, Mamie was infatuated by Field; she had not sinned with a cool head simply to procure a guide up Parnassus. But she had hoped to pick a few laurels there all the same. She found herself in a little flat in the rue Tronchet. They had few visitors, and those who did come were men who talked a language that she did not understand, but who looked things that she understood only too well.
The remorse and humiliation that she felt was not leavened by any consciousness of advancing in her art. Field rather pooh-poohed her art, as the months went by after the decreenisiwas pronounced. He still discussed his work with her—perhaps less as if she had been a sybil, but still with interest in her ideas. Her own work, however, bored him now. He had no intention of being cold, but the subject seemed puerile to his mind. If she did write a play that was produced one day, or if she didn't, what earthly consequence was it? She would never write a great one; and these panting aspirations which begot such mediocre results savoured to him of a storm in a teacup—of a furnace lit to boil the kettle.
He was rather sorry that he had run away with her, but he did not regret it particularly. Of course he would marry her as soon as he could—he owed her that; and, since he was not such a blackguard as to contemplate deserting her by-and-by, he might just as well marry her as not. The whole affair had been a folly certainly. He was not rich, and he was extravagant; he would have done better to remain as he was. Still many men envied him. He trusted fervently she would not have children, though! It didn't seem likely; but if she ever did, the error would be doubled. He did not want a son who had cause to be ashamed of his mother when he grew up.
It was curious that she did not refer more often to his legalising their union. Her position pained her, he could see, and made her very frequently a dull companion. That was the worst of these things! One paid for the step dearly enough to expect lively society in return, and yet, if one complained of mournfulness, one would be a brute. He would write a drama some time or other to show that it was really the man who was deserving of sympathy in such an alliance. It would be very original, as he would treat it. The lover should explain his situation to another woman whom he had learnt to love since, and—well, he didn't see how it should end:—with the dilemma repeated? And it didn't matter, after all, for nobody would have the courage to produce it!
He made these reflections in his study. In the salon—furnished in accordance with the tastes of the lady who had sub-let the flat to them for six months—Mamie stood staring down at the street. It was four o'clock, and, saving for half an hour at luncheon, she had not seen him since ten. For distraction she could make her choice among some Tauchnitz novels, her music, and a walk. Excepting that the room was tawdry and ill-ventilated, and that she had lost her reputation, it was not unlike her life in South Kensington.
In her pocket was a letter from her father—the most difficult letter that it had ever fallen to Dick Cheriton's lot to compose. Theoretically he thought social prejudices absurd—as became an artist to whom God had given his soul—and he had often insisted on their ineptitude. In the case of his own daughter, however, he would have preferred to see them treated with respect. There was a likeness to Lucas Field here. Field also dwelt on the hill-top, but he wanted his son, if he ever had one, to boast a stainless mother. Cheriton had not indited curses, like the fathers in melodrama, and the people who have "found religion"; only parents in melodrama, and some "Christians" who go to church twice every Sunday, are infamous enough to curse their children; he had told her that if she found herself forsaken, she was to cable for her passage-money back to Duluth. But that he was ashamed and broken by what she had done, he had not attempted to conceal; and as she stood there, gazing down on the rue Tronchet, Mamie was recalling the confession to which this was an answer. Phrases that she had used came back to her:—"I have done my best, but my love was too strong for me"; "Wicked as it may be to say it, I know that, even in my guilt, I shall always be happy. I met the right man too late, but I am so young—I could not suffer all my life without him. Forgive me if you can." Had she—it was a horrible thought—had she been mistaken? Had she blundered more terribly than when she married? For, unless her prophecies of joy to the brim were fulfilled—unless her measure of thanksgiving overflowed—the blunderwasmore terrible, infinitely more terrible: she was a gambler who had staked her soul, in her conviction of success.
The question was one that she had asked herself many times before, without daring to hear the answer; but that the answer was in her heart, though she shrank from acknowledging it, might be seen in her expression, in her every pose; it might be seen now, as she drooped by the window. She sighed, and sat down, and shivered. Yes, she knew it—she had thrown away the substance for the shadow; she could deceive herself no longer. Lucas Field was not so poetical a personality as she had imagined; guilt had no glamour; her devotion had been a flash in the pan—a madness that had burned itself out. She had no right to blame her lover for that; only, the prospect of marriage with him filled her with no elation; it inspired misgiving rather. If she had made a blunder, would it improve matters to perpetuate it? He was considerate to her, he spared her all the ignominy that was possible; but instinctively she was aware that, if they parted, he would never miss her as her husband had done. Inhislife she would never make a hole! She guessed the depth of Heriot's love better now that she had obtained a smaller one as plummet. Between the manner of the man who was not particularly sorry to have run away with her, and his whose pride she had been, the difference was tremendous to a woman whose position was calculated to develop her natural sensitiveness to the point of a disease.
Should she marry Lucas or not? Hitherto she had merely avoided the query; now she trembled before it. Expedience said, "Yes"; something within her said, "No." The decree would be made absolute in two months' time. What was to become of her if they separated? To Duluth she could never go, to be pointed at and despised! She sighed again.
"Bored, dear?" asked Field, in the doorway.
"I was thinking."
"That was obvious. Not of your—er—work?"
"No, not of my—'er—work.'"
He pulled his moustache with some embarrassment.
"I didn't mean anything derogatory to it."
"Oh, I know," she said wearily; "don't—it doesn't matter. You can't think much less of it than I am beginning to do myself. You can't take much less interest in it."
"You are unjust," said Field.
"I am moped. Take me out. Take me out of myself if you can, but take me out of doors at any rate! I am yearning to be in a crowd."
"We might go to a theatre to-night," he said; "would you like to?"
"It doesn't amuse me very much; I don't understand what they say. Still it would be something. But I want to go out now, for a walk. I don't like walking here alone; can't you come with me?"
"I'm afraid I can't. You forget I promised an interview to that paper this afternoon. I expect the fellow here any moment."
"You promised it?" she exclaimed, with surprise. "Why, I thought you said that the paper was a 'rag' and that you wouldn't dream of consenting?"
"After all, one must be courteous; I changed my mind. There's some talk of translatingA Clever Man's Soninto French. An interview just now would be good policy."
"You are going to be adapted?A Clever Man's Son?"
"Translated," he said. "I may adapt. Iam—translated."
She smiled, but perceived almost at the same instant that she had not been intended to do so and that he had said it seriously.
"I make a very good interview," he continued, lighting a cigarette; "I daresay you've noticed it. I never count an epigram or two wasted, though they do go into another chap's copy. That's where many men make a mistake; or very likely they can't invent the epigrams. Anyhow, they don't! The average interview is as dull as the average play. People think it's the journalists' fault, but it isn't. It's the fault of the deadly dull dogs who've got nothing to tell them. I ought to have gone a good deal further than I have: I've the two essential qualities for success—I'm an artist and a showman."
"Don't!" she murmured; "Don't!"
He laughed gaily.
"I'm perfectly frank; I admit the necessities of life—I've told you so before. My mind never works so rapidly as it does in prospect of a good advertisement. There the fellow is, I expect!" he added, as the bell rang. "The study is quite in disorder for him, and there are a bunch of Parma violets and a flask of maraschino on the desk. I'm going to remark that maraschino and the scent of violets are indispensable to me when I work. He won't believe it, unless he is very young, but he'll be immeasurably obliged; that sort of thing looks well in an interview. Violets and maraschino are a graceful combination, I think."
She did not reply; she sat pale and chagrined. He was renowned enough, and more than talented enough to dispense with these stage-tricks in the library. She knew it, andheknew it, but he could not help them. Awhile ago they had caused her the cruellest pain; now she was more contemptuous than anything else, although she was still galled that he should display his foibles so candidly. "I am quite frank," he had said. She found such "frankness" a milestone on the road that she had travelled.
"My dear child," said Field, "among the illusions of a man's youth is the belief that, if he goes through life doing his humble best in an unobtrusive way, the Press will say what a jolly fine fellow he is, and hold him up as a pattern to all the braggarts and poseurs who are blowing their own trumpets, and scraping on their own fiddles. Among the things he learns as he grows older is the fact that, if he does his best in an unobtrusive way, the Press will say nothing about him at all. The fiddle and the trumpet are essential; but it is possible to play them with a certain amount of refinement. It is even possible—though a clever man cannot dispense with the fiddle and the trumpet—for the fiddle and the trumpet to be played so dexterously that he may dispense with cleverness. I do not go to such lengths myself——"
"You have no need to do so," she said coldly.
"I have no need to do so—thank you. But I can quite conceive that, say, violets and maraschino, worked for all they were worth, might alone make a man famous. A mouse liberated a lion, and things smaller than a mouse have created one before now. The violet in the hedgerow 'bloomed unseen,'—or 'died unknown,' was it? it did something modest and unsuccessful, I know. The violet assiduously paragraphed and paraded might lead to fortune."
"I would rather be obscure and do honest, conscientious work," answered Mamie, "than write rubbish, and finesse myself into popularity."
"It is much easier," he said tranquilly. "To be obscure is the one thing thatiseasy still. You don't mind my saying that I hate the adjectives you used, though, do you? The words 'honest' and 'conscientious,' applied to literature, dearest, make me shudder. I am always afraid that 'wholesome' is coming in the next sentence."
"Are you going to say so to your interviewer?"
"The remark isn't brilliant. It was sincere, and to be sincere and brilliant at the same time is a little difficult.... I've been both, though, in the scene I've just done; you must read it, or rather I'll read it to you. You'll be pleased with it. As soon as the piece is finished I must write to Erskine. It will suit the Pall Mall down to the ground, and I should like it done there, only——"
"Only what?"
Field hesitated.
"I meant it for Erskine from the start. He saw the scenario, and the part fits him like a glove."
"But what were you going to say?"
"Well, I fancy he has some idea that a piece of mine just now—— You understand, with the case so fresh in people's minds!... Erskine's a fool. What on earth does the public care? Of course he'll do it when he reads the part he's got! Only I know he's doubting whether my name'd be a judicious card to play yet awhile."
There was a pause, in which her heart contracted painfully.
"I see," she rejoined, in a low voice.
He fidgeted before the mirror, and glanced at his watch.
"That fellow must be getting impatient."
"You had better go in to him," she said.
"Well, we'll go to the Vaudeville, or somewhere to-night, Mamie—that's arranged?"
"Yes, to the Vaudeville, or somewhere," she assented, with another sigh.
She went back to the window, and stared at the rue Tronchet with wet eyes.