PART FOURTHE PEN AND THE BOARDS
The manner of Wynne’s return to England was fortuitous. It resulted from the remark of a chance customer at the little restaurant.
“I wish to heaven you’d come right down to one of my rehearsals, young man, and show the Gordam idiot I’ve engaged how a waiter waits.”
The speaker was a Cockney impresario who had come to Paris to collect a few French revue artistes for a scene in a London production.
“I’ll come and play the part if you like,” replied Wynne.
The little man scrutinized him closely.
“Some idea!” he ejaculated (he had a habit of employing American expressions). “But could you realize your own personality?—that’s the point.”
“Good God! you don’t imagine this is my personality,” came the reply. “This is as much a performance as any of Sarah Bernhardt’s.”
“Durn me, but I believe you.”
As a result Wynne took the evening off without permission, and made his first acquaintance with the histrionic art. Being in no way affected with nervousness he did not attempt to do otherwise than portray a waiter as a waiter actually is. The producer acclaimed the performance with delight. He sacked the other probationer, and gave Wynne a contract for two months at a salary of two pounds five shillings a week.
“If I am to come with you I shall want five pounds down to discharge a debt,” said Wynne.
The impresario grumbled somewhat, but since he was paying thirty shillings a week less than he had anticipated, and was getting a vastly superior article, he finally agreed.
So Wynne signed the contract, pocketed the notes, and went to break the news to his employer.
M. le Patron was not stinting in the matter of abuse. He condemned Wynne very heartily for lack of devotion to his welfare, upbraided himself for misplaced generosity, offered him an increased wage to remain, and finally—protest proving useless—shook hands and wished him every kind of good fortune.
Four days later found the little company of players waiting for the outgoing train at the Gare du Nord. To Wynne there was something tremendously portentous in the moment. To find seclusion for his thoughts he walked to the extreme end of the platform, where it sloped down to the line, and here, to the unlistening ears of a great hanging water-pipe, he bade farewell to the Unfriendly City.
“One of these days I shall return,” he spoke aloud; “one of these days you will stretch out your hands to welcome me.”
And the little Cockney impresario who had followed him, fearful lest he should try to escape with the five pounds, touched his shoulder, and said:
“Studying your part, son?”
“Always,” came the answer.
They arrived in London about half-past six the same evening, and Wynne could not help smiling as he noticed how all the good people were hurrying homeward from their work as though their lives depended upon expedition. As he came from the station he observed how they fought for places on the omnibuses, and jostled down the steps to the tube stations.
In Paris one is never conscious of that soundless siren which bids mankind close the ledger and lock the office door. The Parisian does not appear to be in any immediate hurry when work is over. He stays awhile to converse with a friend, or takes hispetit verreunder the shade of a café awning.
Wynne reflected that the English must be a very virtuous race to exert so much energy to arrive home. He recognized that the old goddess of punctuality was still at work, and that the popular craving to be at a certain place at a certain time, which had galled him so much as a boy, was no false imagination.
“They are still in a hurry—still tugged along by their watch-springs,” he thought.
As he watched the tide of hastening humanity he became suddenly aware that he was glad that it should be so—glad for a personal reason.
Routine which formed so national a characteristic argued a nation whose opinions, once formed, would endure.
To be accepted by such a people would mean to inherit an imperishable greatness.
“Presently,” he thought, “these people will accept me as essential to their lives. I shall be as necessary to them as the 8.40 from Sydenham. They will no more miss me than they would miss their breakfasts.”
At this point the little impresario once more broke in upon his reflections.
“Ten o’clock rehearsal tomorrow,” he said. Then with severity, slightly diluted with humour, “No slipping off, mind. Feel I ought to keep an eye on you till that debt’s wiped off.”
It is hard for any one to maintain glorious views as to the future while the present holds a doubt as to his probity in the matter of a five-pound note.
For the second time in his life Wynne occupied the bedroom in the little Villers Street hotel. The good lady proprietress said she really did not remember if he had stayed there before or not, but she “dared say” he had. It was the sight of apparently the same uncooked sirloin surrounded by apparently the same tomatoes which had lured Wynne back to the little eating-house.
At dinner he conversed with the waiter upon technical subjects, and gave his views upon perfection in the art of waiting. The worthy fellow to whom these were addressed was not greatly interested however. He was glad to converse with any one skilled in his native tongue, but a long sojourn in the British Isles had given him taste for a meatier conversational diet, and he preferred the remarks of two men at another table who exchanged views relative to Aston Villa’s chances in the Cup Tie.
In consequence Wynne was left to his own thoughts, which, on this particular night, he found both pleasant and companionable. It was good to feel that at last he would be earning a livelihood by means of an Art, and a good Art too. Not so good, perhaps, but that it might not be a great deal better. In the few rehearsals he had already attended he had noted some glaring conventions and very grave stupidities, which he vowed in the future he would eradicate. The position of producer—a calling of which hitherto he had hardly been aware—suggested, of a sudden, illimitable possibilities.
The producer was the man with the palette and brushes, and the artistes were merely tubes of colour, to be applied how and where they would give the best result. There was no end to what a producer might achieve, and perhaps no better medium for conveying ideas to the public mind than through the stage.
And just as Wynne had said, nearly two years before, “I must learn this trade of painting,” he now determined to master the art of acting in all its variations.
“But I must write, too,” he thought, “and read and work all the time.”
He passed a hand across his forehead and exhaled noisily. Great are the responsibilities which a man will take upon his shoulders!
At the outset of his career as an actor Wynne found much to disappoint him. He learnt that brains and application do not necessarily result in stage success.
Among all the actors he met it was all too often the case that the most intelligent were the least successful. Personality and notoriety outweighed intellect. Even the most egregious ass, provided he was representative of a certain type, prospered exceedingly, while the really clever ones languished in the understudy room or formed unspeaking props to hang clothes upon.
A man needs to be on the stage some while before he can appreciate that casting and the box office are the chief considerations in a producer’s mind. It is easier and more satisfactory to engage a fool to play a fool than to ask a wise man to turn his wisdom to folly. Also it is a shrewd business stroke to give the public some very rapturous feminine vision to behold rather than give the part to some lady whose brain has a greater claim to admiration than her features. The world forgives stupidity when offset by loveliness—or even by a hint of subtle scandal—but a very high standard of intellectual perfection is required before the world will ignore a youth which has passed.
Taking these matters into consideration, Wynne was constrained to believe that if theatre-goers were blind, and men gave up talking of matters which concerned them not, there would be an immediate demand for a class of actors, and particularly actresses, of a far higher mental quality than heretofore.
Regarding acting as an Art he had more admiration for the surviving members of the old school, who handed over their lines with an assumption of great importance, than he entertained for the scions of the new.
“You, at least, do something,” he observed to one old fellow, in a drama company of which he had become a member. “You do something, and do it deliberately.”
“That’s so, my boy—that’s so,” came the mightily satisfied endorsement.
“These moderns do nothing but realize their own ineffability.”
“It’s true—it’s too true!”
“And of course the worst of it is what you do is utterly useless—utterly false—and utterly wrong—”
“Eh?” A stick of grease-paint fell to the floor.
“Whereas what they fail to do is, in the general sense, absolutely right.”
Remarks of this kind do not make for popularity. This, however, did not concern Wynne in the least. He had acquired the habit of talking rather less than he was used to do. The thoughts and convictions which at one time had bubbled to the surface he now mentally noted and preserved. He felt, in the pride of his egoism, that it was not wise to give away his ideas in conversation to the more or less trivial people with whom he came into touch.
It was otherwise when one of the more successful members of the company deigned to exchange a few remarks, for then he would bring all his mental batteries to work with a view to prove to them how vastly inferior they actually were.
One or two engagements were lost through the exercise of this habit, and several straitened and penniless periods resulted. Twice in three years Wynne left the stage, but from circumstance or inclination gravitated back again. He was always able to earn two pounds to two pounds ten a week playing small character parts, and if his attitude had been a shade more congenial it is probable he would have done still better.
As a character actor he was singularly faultless and singularly conscientious. He possessed a remarkable facility for submerging his own personality and throwing off tiny portraits of different types, which were recognizable to the minutest detail. In the performance of these he took special pride, but if the producer interfered or made any suggestions he was truculent to a degree, and fought for his rendering with tiresome constancy.
“It isn’t as if your suggestion would be in the least improving, and—good God!—if I am not to be trusted alone with eight lines, why on earth engage me?”
This remark was fired at a super-eminent producer before an entire West End company, and brought back from the black void of the auditorium:
“Would you please draw a fortnight’s salary from the business manager, Mr. Rendall, and return your contract?”
He left the theatre straight away, and did not attempt to draw the salary. In the sunshine outside he was overtaken with a masterful desire to cry:
“They shan’t lead me—they shan’t! they shan’t!”
It was the wail of a little boy rather than of a man who fain would be a king.
He returned to his room in Endell Street and flung himself face downward on the bed, where he lay with heaving shoulders for a long, long while. Presently he turned round and sat bolt upright.
“Everybody is against me, and I’m against everybody.”
On the table before him was a heap of books and a pile of papers, odd jottings, queer little articles, scraps of poetry written in the after-theatre hours. With a sudden fury he kicked at the table-leg and sent them tumbling and fluttering to the floor.
“Why do I hate the world when I want to exalt it? Oh, God—God—God! Damn this room! Oh, I’m lonely, I am so—so horribly lonely!”
He went and stood in the corner, rested his head on the faded wallpaper, and sniffed:
“I’m lonely—lonely—lonely—lonely—lonely! I don’t think I’m very strong—I think I’m ill—ill and lonely—lonely and ill—very ill, and very lonely!”
Then suddenly he burst out laughing:
“Fool!—idiot!—I’m all right! Papers all over the place. Pick ’em up. What’s all this rot about?” He read a few lines in his own handwriting: “A good sort is the type of man with whom we trust our sisters—a bad sort is the type of man with whom our sisters trust themselves!’ Epigram! Too long! ‘A sport is a man who says Cherio, and carries his brains in a cigarette case.’ Necktie would be better. Oh! what’s the good of writing this rubbish? What am I going to do now?”
He snatched a hat and went out. Presently he found himself in Pen and Ink Square, with the ceaseless grumble of the news-producing engines throbbing in the air. Before him was a doorway over which was written “The Oracle.” He knew “The Oracle” for a democratic organ which shrieked obscenely at the politics and morals of the country—under the guise of seeking to purify, it contrived to include in its columns some very prurient matter, without which its sales would have been even smaller than they were.
Wynne walked straight in, mounted some stairs, and beholding a door labelled “Editor—Private,” entered without knocking.
“Who the devil are you?” said a stout man sitting before a roll-top desk.
“You wouldn’t know if I told you,” replied Wynne. “I’m nobody yet.”
“What d’you want?”
“Thought I’d write some articles for you.”
“Think again—outside!”
“Might not get in so easily another time.”
“Well, get out now, then.”
“That’s very foolish. How d’you know I may not be bringing you a fortune?”
“I’m prepared to take the risk.”
“Then take a smaller one, and give me a subject to write you a sample about.”
“Write about damn nuisances,” said the editor.
“Give me a sheet of paper.”
“Look here! Are you going to get out?”
“No. You told me to write about damn nuisances, and I’m going to do it.”
At this the editor leant back in his chair and said:
“Well, if you haven’t a profound cheek—”
Realizing the opening, Wynne seated himself before a vacant table and took up a pen.
“Paper and silence,” he said, “are the ingredients required, and you shall have your article in an hour’s time.”
Being a man of some humour the editor relaxed, and laughed exuberantly.
“Go to it then,” he said. “I’m off to tea, and I shall clear you out when I come back.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind. I’ll be on the permanent staff by nightfall.”
In writing upon damn nuisances Wynne took for his subject such widely divergent national symbols as the Albert Memorial andThe Oracle. Of the twoThe Oraclefared worst, and came in for the most complete defamation in its heartily criticized career. The article was iconoclastic, spirited and intensely funny. The entire office staff read it, and the editor volunteered to take Wynne out and make him drunk then and there. This offer Wynne declined, but he accepted the post of a casual article writer at a penny a line, and returned home with a greater feeling of satisfaction than he had known for some time.
The satisfaction, however, was short-lived, for in a very little while he was heartily ashamed of subscribing his signature to scurrilous paragraphs deprecating the private lives of parsons, and hinting darkly at dirty doings in Downing Street.
He perceived that by such means greatness was not to be achieved, and sought to ease his conscience by spending nearly all his earnings on reputable books, and most of his spare time in the reading-room at the British Museum. In the matter of food he was most provident, scarcely, if ever, standing himself a good meal. He acquired the habit of munching chocolate and of making tea at all hours of the day and night. By this means, although he staved off actual hunger, he was never properly satisfied, and his physical side became ill-nourished and gaunt. The hours he kept were as irregular as could well be conceived, and he frequently worked all night without a thought of going to bed.
The days of his employment on the staff ofThe Oraclewere far from happy, and the material he was asked to write soured his style and embittered his outlook. Of this circumstance he was painfully aware, and tried to combat it by writing of simple, gentle matters for his own education. But the canker of cynicism overran and corrupted his better thoughts like deadly nightshade twining in the brambles of a hedgerow.
Always his own severest critic, he would tear up the sheets of close-written manuscript and scatter them over the room, stamp his feet or throw up the window and hurl imprecation at the dying night.
Sometimes he sent articles or stories to the press, but from them he received no encouragement.The Oraclehad an unsavoury reputation in Fleet Street, and no self-respecting editor desired to employ the journalists who wrote for this vicious little rag.
After his uncompromising attitude at their first meeting, the editor ofThe Oraclemade a great deal of Wynne, and besought him to sign a binding contract.
“I won’t sign anything,” Wynne replied.
“I’ll give you a salary of seven pounds a week if you do.”
“I wouldn’t for seventy.”
“You’ll think better of it later on.”
“Later on I shall wish to God I had never written for you at all. It isn’t a thing to be proud of.”
At this the editor laughed and clapped him on the back.
“I’ve been wanting some one like you for years,” he cried.
“You’ll be wanting some one like me again before long,” came the answer.
Strange to say, the stout man did not resent Wynne’s attitude, neither did he understand it. He regarded this queer, emaciated boy as an agreeable oddity, and allowed him to say whatever he liked. Wynne was most valuable toThe Oracle, for his articles were infinitely more educated and infinitely more stinging than any of the other writers’. As a direct result they caused a corresponding increase of irritation and a corresponding improvement in sales.
Whenever there was a hint of scandal, or any disreputable suggestion in regard to some notable personage, Wynne was put on the track, withcarte noireto give the affair the greatest possible publicity. In the pursuance of this degrading journalese of detection and exposure he disclosed unexpected moral considerations. When he did not consider the person to be attacked merited rough handling he would resolutely decline to associate himself in any way with the campaign. Entreaties and protests were alike incapable of moving him. He would set his mouth, and refuse, and fly into a towering fury with the editor when he suggested:
“Very well, then, Harbutt must do it.”
“Isn’t there enough beastliness in the world without seeking it where it doesn’t exist?” cried Wynne. “I’ll burn this damn building to the ground one of these days.”
He did not actually put this threat into practice, but did the next best thing. A dispute had arisen in regard to some sordid disclosures which the editor desired to make, and Wynne had proved beyond dispute that there was no foundation for the charges. The editor, however, decided that the story was too good to lose, and accordingly had it inserted, with a thin veil drawn over the identity of the persons concerned.
“All right,” said Wynne, after he had seen a copy. “You’re going through the hoops for this.”
An opportunity arose a short while after, and Wynne seized it without scruple.
It was the habit of the paper to reserve a column each month in which to set forth their ideals and intentions. Sometimes one and sometimes another of the writers undertook this work. As a rule it was the last paragraph to be inserted, and depended for its length upon the available space.
The sub-editor, who was also proof-reader, was not a conscientious man, and frequently delegated his duties to subordinates.
“It’s all plain sailing,” he said to Wynne. “Write about four hundred words, and sling it over to the compositor. I’m meeting a friend or two tonight.”
With that he went out, and Wynne, with a peculiar smile, wrote the article, and very faithfully described the motives which inspired the paper.
“The Oracle,” he wrote, “is the Mungo of the London Press—a sniffing wretch for ever scrabbling garbage in the national refuse heaps.”
There was a good deal more in this style, and the compositor, while setting up the type, was not a little disturbed in mind.
“Is this to be printed?” he asked Wynne.
“Certainly.”
“Danged if I can see what the idea is.”
“Imagine the sales, and go ahead.”
The entire issue had to be destroyed, but one or two copies escaped from the printer’s hands, and a rival flew to hilarious headlines about it.
To the amazement of every one Wynne marched into the office the morning after he had perpetrated the offence.
“What the hell is the idea?” shouted the editor. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting even with my conscience,” replied Wynne.
He looked very frail and insignificant with the semi-circle of scarlet, inflamed countenances and threatening fists besetting him.
“If you don’t want to be killed, take your blasted conscience out of here.”
He did, but with no great speed, although many were the offers of violence made as he passed out.
On the Embankment Wynne apologized to God very sincerely for having debased his art. It was rather a pretty little prayer which he put up, and had a gentler tenor than his wonted expression. After it was finished he felt easier in mind, and comforted. But when he returned to his rooms the oppression of a great loneliness took command of his soul. Of late this feeling had dominated his thoughts not a little. He desired some one to whom he might confess his thoughts and fears, some one of the sympathetic intellect, who could smooth out the harsher creases of life’s cloak, and give companionable warmth to the solitary hours.
No such friendships had come his way, and when he turned his thoughts more closely to the subject he could not imagine that he would be likely to happen upon such a one. Beyond the intermittent flashes of Uncle Clem’s society there had been no one with whom he could discuss his real feelings and emotions. Pride, and desire to excel, had kept him from seeking Uncle Clem when the mood of loneliness was upon him. He, as it were, saved up that friendship for the great days ahead. The few occasions when he had sought to quicken intimacy from acquaintance had invariably led to nothing. Once a young actor asked him to share an idle hour or two, and before they arrived at the end of the street stopped at the door of a public-house and invited him to enter.
“Let’s get primed—what do you say?”
And Wynne said, “Need we? I don’t drink for a hobby.”
“Care for a game of pills?”
“Not very much.”
“Well, whatdoyou care about?”
The suggestion that in order to be entertained one must either drink or play billiards made Wynne laugh, and since no man cares to have his more serious pleasures ridiculed, the young actor snorted, and left him to spend the rest of the evening alone.
Possibly it was loneliness which directed Wynne once more to seek employment upon the stage. In the play in which he appeared he was given the part of a hot-potato man who was on the stage for only a few moments.
To perfect the detail for this rôle he made the acquaintance of a real example of this calling, and spent many midnight hours talking with the old fellow and warming himself before the pleasant coke fire.
Wynne discovered that there was a deal of philosophy to be gleaned in this manner. Thereafter he became well known to many of the strange, quiet men who feed the hungry in queer, out-of-the-way corners of the sleeping city.
On Sundays he would go to Petticoat Lane, or pry into the private lives of the outcasts of Norfolk House. The East End fascinated him, with its mixture of old customs and new—its spice of adventure and savour of Orientalism. Many of the folk with whom he conversed were strangely illuminating. After an initial period of distrust and suspicion they would open out and disgorge some startling views on life and matters in general. They spoke of anarchy and crime and confinements as their more civilized brothers of the West spoke of the brand of cigarettes they preferred. The elemental side of these men’s natures, being so totally dissimilar from his own, made a profound impression upon Wynne. Their attitude toward women amazed and perplexed him. The phrase, “mywoman,” with its solid, possessive, animal note, was original to the ears. It suggested an entirely different attitude from the one he had observed in France, the one so alive with thrill and volatile desire.
“Mywoman!” he repeated it over to himself as he plodded homeward through the dark streets. He said it experimentally with the same inflection that had been used—and yet to him it was only an inflection. He could not conceive a circumstance in which he would naturally stress the “my,” or would actually feel the possessive impulse to make it inevitable.
“She’smywoman,” the man had said, when telling his story—“mywoman, d’y’hear?” Followed an oathy description of a chair and table fight, a beer bottle broken across a bedrail and used as a dagger—something, that was once a man, carried in the arms of a trustworthy few and hidden in a murky doorway a couple of streets distant.
It was hard to imagine such a coming about at the dictates of a convention of sex. If a woman inclined to sin with another man, let her—what did it matter? Fidelity was of very little consequence. Common reason proved it to be a myth. Yet men committed murder that fidelity—physical fidelity—might be preserved. That’s what it amounted to. But did it? That possessive “my” argued a greater and more masterful motive—something beyond mere moral adherences.
“Mywoman!” Very perplexing!
“But I suppose I would fight to the death for my ideals—whatever they may be.”
With sudden force it struck Wynne that he should define his ideals, and know precisely at what he aimed. It was good for a man to be certain of those things for which he would be prepared to lay down his life.
He set himself the task of writing down what his ideals actually were, and in so doing failed horribly. What he wrote was inconclusive and embryonic. To a reader it would have conveyed little or nothing. There was a hint of some ambition, but nothing more. It showed the target of his hopes in the pupal stage. The grammatical perfection with which he wrote only added melancholy to the failure.
“My God!” exclaimed Wynne, “I can’t even write a specification of what I want to do.”
The play in which Wynne figured as a hot-potato man was not a success, and there followed a period in which he found no work, and very considerable hardship. Then his fortunes turned a trifle, and to reward himself for all he had endured he took new rooms at the top of a house near Tottenham Court Road, and spent all his money buying furniture and queer odds and ends of brass and Oriental china. It was the first time he had indulged in the luxury of agreeable appointments, and it gave him tremendous pleasure. The furniture he bought was true to its period, though time and the worm had bitten deep beneath the blackened surfaces. He bought in the Caledonian Market or little known streets, and took a fierce pride in bartering for his prizes. These he would bring home upon his head, or, if their size defeated his powers, would push them before him on a greengrocer’s barrow. For pieces ofvertuhe possessed a sure and infallible eye, and a remarkable sense for disposing them to the best advantage.
On the mantelpiece of the attic sitting-room he achieved successfully what, years before, he had failed to do in his father’s home. A note of colour from a cracked Kin Lung bowl, a fillip of light from a battered copper kettle, a slanting pile of beautifully-bound books, and the thing was done.
There was no struggle after effect, but the effect was there as if by nature—the right things had found their rightful abiding place.
He found writing easier in these surroundings. Hitherto his eye had inevitably fallen upon some hideous object or picture, unthinkingly bought and disastrously disposed in relation to its neighbours—then his thoughts would travel away, lose the thread of their reasoning, or become involved in futile speculation upon other folks’ perverted tastes. But here it was different: here there were no disturbing influences, nothing but a pleasant, restful simplicity.
Mrs. Mommet, the bed-shaker, who, for a very small wage, gave Wynne an equally small measure of time, did not share his high opinions of himself as a decorator.
“I don’t know ’ow you can put up with the place,” she said, shaking her head sadly over the pail of dirty water which was her constant companion. “It gives me the creeps every time I comes into it. That ole table, y’know. Well, itlooksas if it was a ’undred years old.”
“It’s a great deal more,” said Wynne.
“There you are, y’see! Why you don’t git a nice cloth and cover it up beats me!”
“Roundheads drank at that table,” said Wynne.
“Fat-’eads, more like—nowhere for your knees or anything. And the walls, too! My ole man does a bit o’ paper-’anging to oblige in ’is spare time. I dessay ’e’d ’ang a piece for you, to oblige.”
“He would oblige me very much by doing nothing of the kind.”
“Thet’s silly—that is. No one can’t like plain walls when they can ’ave ’em floral. Not so much as a picture anywhere! W’y don’t you pin up a few photos?”
“Don’t possess any, and I—”
“Well, if that’s all, I dessay I could give you a few. Liknesses, they’d be—not views. You could ’ave any one of my pore Minnie o’o was took.”
Wynne did not want to offend the woman, but was forced to safeguard his own peace of mind.
“You ought not to give them away in the circumstances,” he said.
Fortunately Mrs. Mommet did not press the offer. She had some views to express in relation to “nice plush curtains,” which Wynne hastily discouraged.
“Oh, well, you must please yourself, I s’pose. Gentlemen never do ’ave any taste, as the sayin’ is. Still, it’s no small wonder you look poorly, and yer face is as white as the under-side of a lemon sole.”
The description was apt. Wynne’s features were certainly of a lifeless hue. The long hours, the poor food, and the never-ending mental activity had sapped a full measure of his youth. No one would have placed his age at twenty-three, yet twenty-three summers were all that he held to his credit. One might have guessed him nearer forty—and a none too hearty forty either. Only his eyes were young—young and greedily active—for ever assessing and assimilating, but this seemed to detract from, rather than add to, his youth.
Yet despite his frailty and general suggestion of weakness, Wynne could, upon occasion, develop startling energy. He used his brain as the driving force which overcame his feebleness, and bade his muscles undertake tasks out of all proportion to their ability. On one occasion he carried an armchair, weighing nearly a hundredweight, for three miles, a task which a strong man might well have failed to accomplish. His power lay in the will to do, and a form of obstinate courage which defied all obstacles.
“I am glad you said soul,” he said, “for I have long believed that to be the only thing that matters.”
Mrs. Mommet shook her head.
“I was talkin’ of fishmonger’s, not parson’s souls,” she replied; “but if you ask me, I should say firce look after the body, and the soul’ll look after itself. Same as the ole sayin’ ’bout the pennies and the poun’s. If you was to feed your body up a bit, ’stead o’ wastin’ money on ole cracked plates, books and whatnot, you’d be doing yerself more good, you would.”
“Depends on the point of view.”
“I know I can’t never do nothin’ if I neglect my bit o’ nourishment.”
“Nor I, but you work with your body and I with my brain. That’s why we stock our larders with different fare. There’s mine yonder.” He tilted his head toward the crowded bookcases.
“Lot o’ nonsense! Ole books!”
“Don’t despise them, please.”
“I don’t; but a book’s a thing for after dinner, not to make yer dinner off of, like you do. Wonder is you ’aven’t more pride in yerself.”
“Pride?” He was quite startled.
“A young feller like wot you are lettin’ ’imself go to pieces like the lilies in the field, or whatever the sayin’ is. ’Ow d’you s’pose you’ll ever take the fancy of a young woman lookin’ like you do? You wouldn’t never do it.”
Wynne smiled. “Is it only the dressed ox which can go to the altar?” he asked.
“I donno nothin’ ’bout dressed oxes, but I do know as any young woman of spirit looks for a man with a bit of blood in ’im. After all, nature’s nature, y’know, with Christian or ’eathen alike, and there’s no gettin’ away from it.”
“You should write a treatise on Eugenics,” said Wynne, and escaped to the solitude of his bedroom.
PART FIVEEVE
During a rehearsal of a new play in which he was engaged Wynne noticed Eve Dalry. She was walking-on in the crowd, and did not seem of a piece with the other girls. When her scene was over she slipped away to a quiet corner and produced a book. Finding the required page, she shook her head as though to banish other considerations, seated herself on an upturned box, and began to read with great absorption.
Partly from curiosity to see the title of the book Wynne moved toward her. Carlyle’s “Heroes and Hero Worship.” A queer choice for a girl to make, he thought, and wondered how much she understood. For awhile he stood behind her glancing at a paragraph here and there, and watching the careful way she turned over a page, then turned it back again to reread and reconsider some passage not wholly understood. He was unused to women who read so seriously, and, despite the semi-cynical smile at the corners of his mouth, her studiousness impressed him.
Presently, impelled by a new and curious familiarity, he drew a long, tapered forefinger over the straight, thin parting in her hair. She looked up slowly, as though his action had been scarcely enough to distract her attention.
“I like the shape of your head,” he found himself saying in reply to the query in her eyes, “it is the kind of vessel which is never empty. The square of your chin, too, is so very right. One seldom sees the two together.”
She met the critical survey with equal candour.
“I have been liking your head,” she said, “but not the chin. Its—”
She drew a slanting line in the air.
“I know,” he nodded; “but it’s not significant.”
“I meant that—insignificant.”
Wynne was not at his best when humour turned against him. His smile and his frown struck a balance.
“I could quote the names of a dozen brilliant men who did not carry their strength or wit in the lower half of their faces, and illustrate my instances at the National Portrait Gallery.”
“Are you brilliant?” There was no barb to the question.
“It pleases me to think so.”
“One wonders, then, why you are doing this little jobbery in a theatre.”
“Yes, that’s reasonable enough. I wonder, too, sometimes. I suppose I was hungry when I took the engagement.”
“This is not your real work, then?”
“I hardly know what my real work is, but it is not in the market. In theory real work never should be in the market.”
“ ‘And no one shall work for moneyAnd no one shall work for fame,’ ”
“ ‘And no one shall work for moneyAnd no one shall work for fame,’ ”
“ ‘And no one shall work for moneyAnd no one shall work for fame,’ ”
“ ‘And no one shall work for money
And no one shall work for fame,’ ”
quoted Eve.
“Spare me from Kipling. It is so disheartening to find one’s views supported by quotations.”
“I’m not so advanced as that. I’m rather proud of quotations—I look on them as medals for reading.”
He made an intolerant gesture.
“But no sane persons show their medals.”
“While I’m young I had rather not be altogether sane.”
“Good! I take back sanity. It’s the worst asset an artist can possess.”
She looked at him with a faint, intricate smile.
“You are easy to catch out,” she said.
“Possibly. I don’t aspire to be a cricketer. Indeed, cricket stands for all I dislike most. Cricket is an Englishman’s notion of the proper conduct of life—a game with rules. If he resists seducing a friend’s wife it is because to do so is not cricket.”
“Do you favour his doing so?”
“Not I—but it depends on the mood and the man, and the attraction. I simply do not admit the existence of cricket in these matters.”
“Do you know,” said Eve, “you seem to me to be expressing ideas and not thoughts. Tell me, what is your real work?”
“I assume that one day I shall know, but I don’t know yet. If I were to say painting—writing—talking—acting—I should be equally right. I have searched the dictionaries in vain to find a word to describe myself. The verb ‘to lead’ is the nearest approach. I think, by nature, I am the centre of a circle—a circle that is even widening. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?—to lead from the centre of a circle.”
The conviction and frankness with which he discussed himself was remarkable, and, strangely enough, not offensive. He possessed a quality of magnetism which robbed his words of half their arrogance. Eve allowed her eyes to travel over him with calm interest. His clothes were careless and shabby, his collar too big, and his cuffs frayed; his tie seemed anywhere but in the right place. At the first glance she saw he was ill-nourished, and felt an immediate impulse to feed him up with possets and strong beef tea. Frailty excites kindly resolves from the generous-hearted. She found his features attractive, despite their irregularity, and his eyes appealed to her enormously. They were such plucky eyes, eyes that would look the world in the face unfalteringly and support with impertinent courage the wildest views which the mobile, cynical, and weak mouth might choose to utter.
When anything pleased her, Eve laughed—not so much a laugh of amusement as a purr of satisfaction. The unusual appealed to her, and beyond all doubt Wynne Rendall was unusual. Hers were plucky eyes too. They rested frankly, and seemed to read the meanings of what they reflected. Eve had a broad forehead, straight brows, and clean-cut, clearly defined features. Her mouth was sweet and tolerant; to borrow from a painter’s terminology, it was a beautifully drawn mouth. One felt she would be very sure in all her dealings—analytic and purposeful. Hers was not a present-day face, but belonged rather to the period of the old Florentine Masters.
For quite a while these two young people surveyed each other with calm appreciation, and presently Wynne broke the silence.
“You are a new type to me,” he said—“a perplexing type. I’ve seen you on canvas, but never in the flesh. Something of Leonardo’s Lucretia! We might see more of each other, I think.”
“Yes,” she said.
He was about to speak again when the leading man came through a door in the canvas scene and moved toward them. In an instant Wynne pulled down the corners of his mouth pathetically.
“Oh dear! I must go.”
“Why? Your scene is a long way ahead.”
“I know, but here’s K. G. If I stayed he might think I wanted to talk to him—and I don’t.”
Eve understood the feeling very well. Those whose future is all to make are wary and resentful of patronage, and often needlessly shun the society of others more successful than themselves. None is more jealous of his pride than the climber.
She allowed Wynne to depart unhindered, and presently the eminent K. G. came near enough to condescend a “Good morning.”
“Been talking to young Rendall?” he queried.
She nodded.
“A queer boy—quite a clever actor—quite! A good sense of character!”
“Very.”
“Know him well?”
“About five minutes.”
“Oh, yes—yes. Sadly opinionated! Notice it?”
“He has opinions, certainly.”
“H’m! Never get on—people with too many views. He won’t learn—clever enough in himself, but won’t learn from others.”
“I rather thought he had learnt a good deal from others.”
“Oh no—most inaccessible.”
“Does that mean he wouldn’t learn from you?” she inquired, very frankly.
K. G. looked down in mild surprise. Young ladies who are “walking-on” should agree with and not interrogate those lofty beings whose salaries are paid by cheque. But this young lady ignored the principle, and seemed to expect an answer.
“Yes,” he replied, very frankly. “Of course it’s his own affair if he cares to ignore the advice of—well—” Modesty forbade the mention of his own name, and he finished the sentence by a gesture.
“Of course it is,” said Eve.
K. G. frowned. The conversation was not proceeding on orthodox lines.
“Still, as I say, young men of that sort do not get on.”
“I can’t see why. Perhaps he thought you could teach him nothing.”
It was the protective mother instinct compelled the words. The remark annoyed K. G. excessively. It was not, however, his habit to vent irritation upon a woman, even though she might be its original cause, consequently he attacked Wynne Rendall.
“He is a fellow who wants a good kicking, and has never had it.”
“A man always wants to kick what he cannot understand,” said Eve.
To defend some one who is absent from the attacks of a third person is a sure basis upon which friendships are established. When Eve returned to her little bed-sitting-room after the rehearsal, Wynne Rendall occupied a large share of her thoughts.
“I like him,” she said to herself. “He’s all wrong in all sorts of ways, but there’s something tremendous about him in spite of that—and I like him.”
She fell to wondering how he had arrived at what he was, what queer turns of circumstance or inclination had aged the youth from him. With quickening sympathy she recalled his sunken cheeks, the nervous sensitive movements of his hands and head.
“Looks as if he never had enough to eat. I’m sure he doesn’t eat enough.”
Then she laughed, for in her own existence eating did not enter very largely. A salary of one pound one shilling per week does not admit of extravagantmenus. A woman can keep the roses of her cheeks flowering upon very little. With a man it is different. A man, to be a man, must set his teeth in solid victuals, or nature denied will deny.
She thought over her exchange with the leading man, and was glad she had stood up for Wynne. It offended her that a fat, luxurious fellow should say what he chose, and imagine himself immune from counter-attack on account of his position in the company. She would not have been at ease with her conscience if she had acted otherwise. In the circumstances Eve did not prosper well with her reading that night. “Heroes and Hero Worship” was cast aside to make room for other considerations.
At the rehearsal next day it was with almost a proprietary interest she responded to Wynne’s flickering greeting.
“You are making a reputation,” he said, and added, “by the easiest way.”
“What way is that?”
“Being frank with your superiors.”
“Is it easy?”
“Assuredly—if you have the courage. Most people are content to accept their superiors as being superior. Invert the principle—tell an accepted success you consider him an ass—and you create an immediate interest in yourself.”
“It wasn’t my reason,” said Eve.
“Wasn’t it?” He seemed quite surprised.
“No. He annoyed me, and I showed him I was annoyed.”
“You were sincere, then?”
“Of course.”
“How queer of you.”
“Why queer?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It seems so odd to be sincere with a man like that. Are you often sincere?”
“Yes. Aren’t you?”
“Inside I am. Been at the stage long?”
“This is the beginning.”
“The egg stage?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me, where do you live?”
“A room—anywhere.”
“You’ve no people, then?”
“None to whom I matter—or who matter to me.”
“I know. D’you know I was afraid you might have been rich and comfortable.”
Eve fingered a piece of her dress and held it out.
“Eight-three a yard, and made at home.”
“There are rich women who disguise themselves.”
“I am not one. I have king’s treasures, that is all.”
“A row of books over your bed, h’m.”
“That was clever,” she smiled.
“I could guess the authors.”
“Try.”
“Meredith—Browning—Hardy—Wendell Holmes.”
“Pretty good—especially Meredith.”
“You mustn’t overdo Meredith—he is a cult, not an author. You’re intricate—with the ‘Diana’ courage, and that’s dangerous. If you care to borrow I have some books. Come and choose a few.”
“May I? I should like that.”
“Come tonight?”
“It’s the first night of the play.”
“I’d forgotten. Well”—with a sudden impulse—“why not after it is over?”
“If you like.”
He rubbed his chin with his long, sensitive fingers, and nodded approvingly.
“You’d make a friend,” he said.
He could say things very attractively when he chose. The remark was a compliment to Eve and her sex.
Wynne’s part ended with the first act, but he waited at the stage door till the close of the play. Presently Eve came out and joined him.
Very small she looked wrapped in a long brown coat, with her hands tucked in the pockets. She wore a little close-fitting hat which accentuated the oval of her gravely piquant face.
“Which way?” she asked.
“Through Covent Garden, if we walk. Be jollier to walk, I think, don’t you?”
He suddenly remembered when last he had put the same question, and almost flushed at the memory. Then, as now, he had been seeking a friend. He had been a long time finding one.
“Yes, much,” said Eve. “I always walk back. I like it, and it saves the pennies.”
“I like it, and try not to remember that it saves the pennies,” he remarked whimsically. “ ’Tisn’t bad being poor when one doesn’t mean to be poor for ever. I have tremendous beliefs that this is only a passing stage, haven’t you?”
“A valley?”
“Yes, which in passing through gives us the answer to all manner of whys and wherefores.”
Eve nodded. “What a queer old street!” she said. “I haven’t been this way before.”
“There’s a coffee stall at the corner where I buy provender; that’s why I brought you. There it is.”
They stopped at the stall, with the proprietor of which Wynne seemed on excellent terms, and bought some hard-boiled eggs, “balls of chalk” as they are familiarly called.
“A friend to every one that man is,” said Wynne as they proceeded on their way. “Does all manner of good turns to the queer folk whose business keeps ’em abroad late. He lent me three suppers once, at a time when I needed them badly.”
From a glowing oven on wheels nearer his lodging they bought baked potatoes.
“Put one in each pocket. Finest things in the world to keep your hands warm.” As she followed his advice he nodded encouragingly.
“That’s the way. It’s a fire and a good dinner all in one. I’ve a very great regard for a baked potato; it’s the president of the republic of vegetables, as the hot pie is the dowager queen of confectionery.”
“What do you call a hot pie?”
“Just that! They used to be cooked in the streets in little portable ovens. Did you never meet a pieman?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Daresay not, for the last one died two years ago. A fine fellow he was. I went to his funeral.”
“I’d love to have seen a real pieman. Didn’t Simple Simon meet one going to a fair?”
“So it’s said.”
“And now they’ve all gone for ever. How sad!”
“Tell you what,” exclaimed Wynne, “there’s an old man Richmond way who sells hot turnovers. When the spring comes we might ’bus down there, have a walk in the park, and munch turnovers in the night on the way home.”
“Yes, let’s do that.”
Very ordinary affairs assume a delicate outline when approached in a romantic spirit. The idea of eating turnovers on the top of a ’bus does not sound very attractive, and yet to Wynne, as he suggested it, and to Eve as she listened, the promised expedition seemed full of the happiest possibilities. They felt the touch of a spring breeze blowing in their hair, and saw the whitey-green of the new leaves, and the blue sky turn to a lavender in which the stars appeared. Almost they could taste the good baked crust and the sour-sweet apples of the midnight feast.
“D’you know,” said Eve, “I think, of all things in the world, the most glorious are those we mean to do.”
They stopped before an old Queen Anne house, and producing a latchkey Wynne unlocked the door.
“Top floor,” he said, “and rather a climb.”
They mounted the creaky stairs, and he was puffing gustily when they reached the top landing. For a young man he seemed unduly exhausted. Striking a light on his boot, he entered and lit a shaded lamp.
“Take off your hat and I’ll get the fire going. Look! I must have paid the rent, for it is actually laid.”
Eve smiled as he went down on his knees before a tiny basket grate, then let her gaze travel round the room. Inset, in the damp-stained slanting roof, were two gable windows, broad silled and littered with books and papers. Before one of these was a writing table, dilapidated but glorious with age; this, too, was liberally sprinkled with half-written manuscripts, pens, cigarette ends, and the jumble of odds and ends with which a man surrounds himself. A small Jacobean table stood in the middle of the uncarpeted floor, a tarnished copper bowl, battered but still shapely, giving tone to its dark fissured surface. Two age-worn grandfather chairs were drawn up near the fire. In each recess in the walls was a bookcase, piled ceiling-high with books. A couple of Holbein prints, and an unframed Albrecht Dürer completed the decoration. It was a shabby, unkempt room, yet, like its owner, it possessed individuality and charm.
“I like this,” said Eve. “I’m glad I came.”
“You like it. I thought you would—hoped so, too. I’ve never shown it to any one else. It is good though, isn’t it? Try that chair. I carried it back on my head from a ragshop in Holloway Road, and having nearly deprived me of life it gave it back to me in sweet repose. Take off your coat first, won’t you? That’s right. Don’t forget the ’taters though. Thanks! I’ll put ’em on the trivet. Good. Thank God the fire means to burn. D’you know sometimes I’ve almost cried when it wouldn’t. I can’t lay a fire, and I loathe to be defeated.”
He began wandering round the room and producing plates and knives from unexpected quarters. Presently he stopped and puzzled.
“Can you think of a likely place to find the bread?” he asked.
“Where did you see it last?”
“I don’t know. I have meals at all sorts of odd times and places, so one loses track. Wait a minute, though.”
He disappeared into the bedroom and emerged with a loaf and a saucer with butter on it.
“Breakfasted while I was dressing,” he explained, “or else I had supper in there over night. I don’t know which—but let’s make a start.”
They feasted very royally off bread and hard-boiled eggs and hot potatoes and raspberry jam, followed by a pot of tea. The tea they drank from little Chinese Saki cups without handles.
“I only use these on the especialist occasions,” he announced, adding with a smile, “In fact I have never used them before.”
“Haven’t you many friends?”
“No. Have you?”
“No.”
“I thought you hadn’t.”
“Why?”
“People with lots of friends don’t like me—but then I don’t like them—so that’s that—isn’t it. Let’s draw near the fire. The poor little thing means well, but it can’t reach us at such a distance.”
So they drew up their chairs and talked. They talked of books, of dead men, and of great ambitions. Under the influence of her society Wynne seemed to lose much of his arrogance and cynicism. He spoke of the things he loved naturally and with reverence. Ever and again he would dart to the shelves for a volume and read some passage to the point of the subject they had been discussing. Then he would throw it aside and paraphrase with a clear and almost inspired insight.
“One should always paraphrase,” he said. “One should paraphrase one’s own thoughts and every one else’s. It’s the sure way of getting down to basic facts. If I were to produce a play of Shakespeare’s I should make every actor translate his lines into colloquial schoolboy English. Then we should know he had his meanings right. Some glimmer of that necessity occurred to me the first time I went to a theatre, but now I see how absolutely essential it is.”
The talk always led back to himself. His own ego was the all-important factor.
“Extraordinary wrong most people are in their ideas!”
“When will you start to put them right?”
He looked at her keenly—on guard lest she should be laughing at him. But the question was sincere enough.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t believe in beginnings—gradual ascent, ladder of fame, and all that. Life to me is divided into two halves—the period of finding out and the period of handing out. I don’t intend to be a person who is beginning to be spoken of. When I am spoken of it will be by every one—simultaneously. In the meantime it is better to be obscure—and absorbent.”
“You want success.”
“I shall have it too.”
“For the world’s sake.”
“Ye-es—and for mine.”
Quarter after quarter boomed out from the neighbouring clocks. It was after two when Eve rose and took her coat from the nail on the door.
“You going?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I walk with you?”
“No, it isn’t far.”
“Very well—I want to work too. But you’ll come again, won’t you?”
“If I may.”
“ ’Course you may. You must. You’re an easy person—easier than I’d have thought possible—you sort of—don’t bother me. Take a Walter Pater with you. Better for you than Meredith. Treat it gently, though; I starved a whole week to buy that book.”
She took the white-vellum bound volume, nodded, and tucked it under her arm.
“Good-night.”
“ ’Night. You are rather an admirable person.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. A girl is generally frightened to be in a man’s rooms in the middle of the night.”
“It wouldn’t occur to me to be frightened of you,” said Eve.
“Why not?”
“A man who starved for a week to buy this.” She touched the book under her arm.
For some reason her gently spoken words piqued him, and he replied:
“Yet I am a man just the same.”
“A man but not the same,” she said, and, smiling, passed out on to the landing.
She had descended the first flight before he moved and followed her to the front door.
“I will walk back with you.” It was what any man would have said.
“No, please not. I had rather think of you as the student working for the day.”
He hesitated—then, “Very well. Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
He retraced his steps slowly. The memory of her attitude and her words puzzled him.
“More like a boy,” he concluded, which if you think it out was a very fine form of conceit.
His thoughts wandered from his work, and he bit his pen for a long, long while. His eyes rested unseeingly on the black patch which was the window.
“More like a boy—much more.”
He nodded to convince himself. After all, the friendship of a boy who is really a girl is very pleasant.
Never once did it cross his mind how entirely negligible was the physical side of his nature. A man whose brain works with febrile intensity night and day, and whose earnings are scarcely sufficient to buy the meanest fare, knows little or nothing of passionate callings. Unlike your idle, over-fed fellow whose intellect performs no greater task than finding excuses for bodily indulgence, the student’s sensuality lies in words and colour. His worst vice is the prostitution of an artistic standard.