“World’s use is cold—world’s love is vain,—
World’s cruelty is bitter bane;
But pain is not the fruit of pain.”
E. B. Browning.
If life during the past three years had been difficult for Macneillie it had been tenfold more difficult for Christine Greville. As everyone had foreseen, her position called for a strength of character which she did not possess, for a power of endurance which she was only learning by slow degrees, and for that sound judgment and prompt womanly wisdom which had never been her strong point.
She had indeed resigned the cares and anxieties of Management, but this also meant that she was obliged to put up with whatever arrangements commended themselves to Barry Sterne at the theatre; and though he and his wife had always been good friends to her she was often unable to approve of his way of looking at things.
They had nearly come to a serious disagreement when he engaged Dudley the comedian assuring her that the man had quite lived down his past. And though time had more or less reconciled her to this belief, she was never quite without the instinct which had made Myra Kay shrink from the man in Scotland. She grew to feel a little more confidence in him when one day he happened to mention Ralph Denmead in her presence. It was not so much what he said, but rather his tone and expression when referring to Ralph.
“So young Denmead is to play Orlando at Stratford next month, I see,” he observed one morning before rehearsal. “That boy will do well if I’m not mistaken. There was a touch of genius about him even when I knew him as a half-starved novice in Scotland.”
“Did you know him then?” said Christine for the first time volunteering an unnecessary remark to Dudley. “He used to tell me when I was acting with him in Edinburgh what straits he had been reduced to during the spring.”
“Yes, we had a rough time, but he was always a plucky, goodnatured fellow ready to take the fortune of war. I’m glad he has fallen on his feet. Macneillie has been the making of him.”
“They say Macneillie’s health has broken down,” said another actor strolling up. “He has gone to Scotland to recruit.”
“He has been roaming about the world too long,” remarked a third. “I wonder he doesn’t give up his travelling company and settle in town. It would be better for him in every way.”
“Well he’s doing very good work,” said Dudley. “As a matter of fact his company and Lorimer’s are the only training schools we have for the stage. How can the rising generation learn otherwise in these days of long runs?”
The arrival of Barry Sterne checked the conversation at this moment and Christine turned away sick at heart, to get through her work as well as she could to the tune of those haunting words—“His health has broken down!”
Was it true? Or had some lying paragraph in a newspaper set afloat a false report?
Her whole nature seemed to rise up in rebellion against the miserable ignorance of his movements to which she was doomed. It tortured her to think that dozens of people who were wholly indifferent to him knew all, while she was racked with anxiety and fear on his behalf.
She went home feeling wretched beyond expression; even Charlie’s eager greeting could not bring a smile to her face or ease her pain.
“Auntie,” he exclaimed, “there’s a lady in the drawing-room waiting to see you. She has been here a long time, and she would wait for you. Susan says she looks as if she were in great trouble.”
“What name did she give?” asked Christine, her mind still full of Hugh Macneillie’s illness, and a terror seizing her that some bearer of ill news had come.
Dugald Linklater handed her a card which bore a name quite unknown to her,—Mrs. Bouvery. She rose with a sigh of weariness.
“Don’t wait for me, Charlie,” she said, “I am not hungry and will interview this lady first.”
Everything in Christine’s drawing-room was in the perfection of taste, there were no bright colours; no incongruous mixtures, the prevailing tint was a quiet low-toned blue: birds sang in the window, and everywhere her love of growing plants manifested itself. Nothing could have been more restful and harmonious than the effect of the whole, and probably no one could have seemed more tranquil and self-possessed than the graceful fair-haired woman who came forward to greet her visitor, though all the time beneath the surface her restless heart was full of passionate pain.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” she said, her clear musical voice making each syllable a separate delight to the ear. As she spoke she looked wonderingly into the hard grief-worn face of the elderly lady who had risen as she entered and had coldly acknowledged her greeting.
There was an uncomfortable pause.
“Can I do anything for you?” said Christine, wondering whether her visitor had called for a subscription, or whether she was perhaps the mother of some stage-struck girl come for advice?
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bouvery, “you can listen to what I have to tell you. You have broken my daughter’s heart madam, you have ruined her life.”
Nervous terror began to fill Christine’s mind. Surely this lady must be mad. She instinctively measured the distance from the place where she was sitting to the door.
“I do not understand you,” she faltered. “There must be some mistake. I do not even know your name.”
“Your name unfortunately is only too familiar to us, however,” said her visitor remorselessly. “My daughter was engaged to be married to Captain Karey and until he had the misfortune to see you on the stage she was perfectly happy. From that day however, all her misery dated. He was infatuated about you and you lured him on to his death.
“Madam,” said Christine pale with indignation, “you do me a very great wrong. I never encouraged Captain Karey. On the contrary his persistent attentions annoyed me very much.”
“Oh, so you say! so they all say!” said Mrs. Bouvery choking back a sob. “But I don’t believe a word of it. You actresses are all alike; as long as your vanity is satisfied you don’t care what wretchedness you cause to others.”
“Is it possible you really believe that I encouraged a mere boy who must have been at least fifteen years my junior?” said Christine incredulously. “The moment I saw there was the least risk of anything serious, I would have nothing more to do with him. Every one of the presents he tried to give me were returned immediately. What more could I do?”
“You could retire from a profession which is unfit for any woman, you could refuse any longer to make your beauty a snare and a peril to men.”
“I think,” said Christine quietly, but with a ring of indignation in her voice, “you forget that some of the very best of women have been on the stage. Is art to be crippled, and are we all to retire to nunneries, because some men are weak fools and some men vicious knaves?”
“I do not care to argue with you,” said her visitor coldly, “The fact remains that you have spoilt my daughter’s whole life.”
“Indeed I am very sorry for her,” said Christine with a sigh. “I can’t blame myself for what has happened, but I can feel very much grieved about it.”
“Whether you blame yourself or not,” said Mrs. Bouvery, “Captain Karey’s death will be laid to your account at the last day.”
“His death?” cried Christine with dilated eyes. “What do you mean? I had heard nothing.”
“Oh you had not seen it in the papers? Yes, he died three days ago from an over-dose of chloral—it was brought in as ‘death by misadventure.’ I do not envy you your feelings at this moment. It was a sad day for him when he first saw you, for him and for my poor daughter.”
Christine did not speak a word. She was horror-struck by the news so abruptly told her; it was no time to assert her own blamelessness, nay she could pardon the poor grief-stricken woman for reproaching her so bitterly, for insulting her by such cruel, false imputations. The admirer whose love letters had so greatly annoyed her, whose infatuation had for some time past been difficult to baffle, had been driven out of his senses by his unhappy and overmastering passion, and had died leaving the girl who had loved him to her desolate sorrow.
Had Mrs. Bouvery been less hard and bitter, Christine could have opened her heart to her, and made her understand how distorted a view of the case she had taken; as it was they parted almost in silence and she could only resolve to find out a little more about the daughter and if possible to write to her later on.
But for many days after that the story haunted her and made her miserable. Afterwards too, in her depression, the thought of Mrs. Bouvery’s cruel words returned to her.
“Had I not been a solitary woman she would never have dared to attack me like that,” she reflected with tears in her eyes. “A woman without a protector is at the mercy of anyone who chooses to torment her. Were I not worse than widowed, Lord Rosscourt and men of his type would be unable to persecute me with attentions that are insults. They would not dare to send me letters which one can hardly glance at without feeling defiled.”
It happened that among her best and most trusted friends was a certain literary man named Conway Sartoris. She had known him and the sensible middle-aged sister who kept house for him for the last ten years, and they had been the first to discern how very miserable was her married life. During the difficult years that followed her separation their entirely unaltered friendship had been a great comfort to her. Conway Sartoris was not only a brilliant writer and an advanced thinker, but a most delightful companion, full of dry humour, and shrewd common sense; while his sister had a genuine affection for Christine and always gave her a warm welcome at their pretty old-fashioned house in Westminster. She was dining with them on the following Sunday and found it a great relief to tell them of the tragedy with which so unwittingly she had become connected, and of Mrs. Bouvery’s interview.
Alas! in seeking comfort she only met with fresh trouble. For the next evening on her return from the theatre she found a long letter from Conway Sartoris in which he frankly admitted that his friendship had some time ago deepened into love, that he was sure her life would always be difficult and perilous without a protector, and that he would do his utmost to make her happy. In blank dismay Christine read his proposal that they should enter into a union which would virtually be a marriage; he quoted instances in which such unions had been after a time condoned by society and had proved eminently happy, and he argued very plausibly that the best way to bring about a speedy reform of the present unjust law under which she suffered was to add another instance to the cases in which it had been deliberately and conscientiously broken.
His pleading, as far as he himself was concerned, proved of course quite useless. Christine could only write in reply that her friendship and respect for him must always remain unaltered, but that her heart was still with the lover of her youth—the man who through her own weakness and ambition had been so cruelly sacrificed years ago.
To this she received a very straightforward and kindly answer, and Conway Sartoris entreated her not to allow what had passed in any way to affect their friendship. But this was more easily said than done. His avowal had put an end to the perfect ease and rest of their intercourse and she felt more than ever alone in the world.
Another result of this episode was that his arguments were constantly recurring to her mind. Surely there was great force in the suggestion he had brought forward in his masterly clear-headed way? Were there not bound to be exceptions to every rule? Was not Hugh Macneillie’s notion of obedience even to an unjust law, because it was the law of the land, an overstrained nicety? It might be a counsel of perfection, but surely it could not be the actual duty of each citizen? Hugh had such an element of austerity about his life; kind and genial and tolerant as he was with regard to others his own notions of right and wrong were so rigid. He was certainly old-fashioned, not up to date, not able to accommodate himself tofin de siècleconditions.
“I will not let him wreck his life!” she thought, pacing with agitated steps up and down her room. “My heart is breaking for want of him, and he is ill and alone. What do I care for the tongues of narrow-minded, conventional people who know nothing of our real story? ‘Let them rave!’ He is mine and I am his. All the unfair unequal laws in the world can’t alter that.”
Just then she happened to notice a letter upon the mantel-piece which by some oversight she had left unopened.
“What is this?” she exclaimed glancing through it. “An invitation from Mrs. Hereford to lunch on Sunday, to meet Ralph Denmead and his wife? Yes, I will go, from them I may at any rate learn how Hugh is.”
Her stay at Monkton Verney had led to her becoming a friend of the Herefords; she had an unbounded respect for them both, and at their house in Grosvenor Square she invariably enjoyed herself. Charlie too, liked nothing better than to go there with her, and there was something in the atmosphere of the household which was curiously refreshing and invigorating. They were busy people but they never bored others with their work, and always seemed to have time for merriment, and for keen appreciation of the interests of their friends.
On this Sunday however she was more taken up with the Denmeads than with her host and hostess. There was something in the mere happiness of the young husband and wife that appealed to her, and she had a long talk with them and heard all that she craved to know. Macneillie, they judged by his letters, was still far from well, and even the visit to his own country had failed to do him much good. He was to go on the following day to Stratford and for the sake of quiet would stay just outside the town at a curious old-fashioned house called The Swan’s Nest. He would remain there probably until the Birthday week when they were to rejoin him for the performances at the Memorial Theatre.
Then Evereld had much to say about the Manager’s kindness to them, of Dick’s devotion to him, and all the many little details which her womanly instinct taught her would be to Christine what bread is to the starving. It was all told naturally and simply and as a matter of course, there was never any uncomfortable consciousness that they knew all about her past and could guess how bitter was her present. It was only when thinking it over afterwards that Christine felt sure that the Denmeads knew the whole truth, and she loved them for their tact and consideration.
But all through the night that followed she was haunted by the thought of Hugh Macneillie ill and alone, unable even to find comfort in his mother’s society,—beyond the cure even of his native land.
It is during wakeful nights that burdens usually grow unbearable. And Christine had now reached the point when every consideration but the one prevailing idea is crowded out of the mind.
“I cannot let him suffer any more,” she thought. “At all costs this intolerable state of things must and shall be ended. I am free all this week, free till Easter Monday. To-morrow I will go down to Leamington with Charlie and the servants, and the next day I will see him.”
“Greatly to do is great, but greater still
Greatly to suffer.”
J. Noel Paton.
The following Tuesday proved to be as fine a day as Christine could have wished. Charlie was delighted to fall in with her suggestion of driving from Leamington to Warwick, and she left him with Linklater and his beloved camera to spend a long afternoon in seeing the castle, the church and the many picturesque places to be found in the old town.
“I have to pay a call in the neighbourhood,” she explained, “and will meet you here at six o’clock. See that he has plenty to eat, Linklater, for we made a very early lunch.”
When they were safely within the castle gates she ordered a Victoria at the hotel and drove in to Stratford. Up to that very moment she had felt eager and alert, ready to dare anything in her desperation. But now when there was no longer anything to do, she lay back in the carriage feeling utterly spent, unable to find the least comfort in the soft spring air, or in the beautiful expanse of country, or in the hedge-rows just bursting into leaf, or in the joyous song of the birds. It was not until they were close to Shakspere’s town that her spirit returned to her once more, and as they passed the Roman Catholic Church she sat up and called to her driver.
“I will get out here,” she said adjusting her white gossamer travelling veil. “You can drive on and put up at the Shakspere Hotel until I come there.”
The man obeyed and she walked on until upon the left she saw Clopton’s Bridge, at the further side of which she knew the Swan’s Nest was situated. As usual she was dressed with scrupulous quietness, there was nothing in her black serge coat and skirt and sailor hat to distinguish her from hundreds of other women, and no passer-by would have recognised her through her veil.
Nevertheless her heart failed her somewhat when the little old-fashioned inn with its red brick walls and tiled roof came into sight. She fully realised that she was taking a desperate step.
But then did not desperate diseases require desperate remedies? And had not Hugh Macneillie in the letter he wrote her three and a half years ago entreated her to let him serve her if ever she found herself in a difficulty?
No one else could help her now. He only could shield her and make her life worth living. And was not he ill and in need of her? Was she not fully justified in seeking him? She had paused involuntarily on the bridge lost in thought and now just for a moment the exceeding beauty of the view drew her attention away from her perplexities.
The silvery Avon, crossed a little further down by an old bridge of red brick, the irregular buildings of the little town, the finely proportioned Memorial theatre standing in its gardens upon the river’s brink; facing it a lovely pastoral bit of green meadows, and budding trees, and in the distance the old church spire with rooks circling about it.
In the opposite direction lay peaceful fields, and all along the bank pollard willows overhung the stream which curved round in a way that delighted her eye. Just at the bend of the river, moored to a willow tree, a small golden-brown boat was to be seen. It was empty but on the bank above it lay the figure of a man with his head propped on his arm and a book in his hand. She could not distinguish his features at that distance but from something in his attitude she at once knew that it was Hugh Macneillie.
Moreover she could see a corner of the plaid which he had invariably taken about with him, the dark blue and green of the Macneil tartan with its thin alternate cross lines of white and yellow. It was the very same one that in old days had often been spread over her knees on some cold wintry railway journey.
Somehow the sight of this restored her failing heart; she swiftly made her way down to the river-side and youth and hope seemed to come back to her as her feet touched the springy turf and passed lightly over the white and gold of the daisies.
Macneillie, just glancing up from his book, saw a lady approaching clad in the costume which is almost a uniform; he devoutly hoped, after the fashion of celebrities on a holiday, that she would not recognise him.
Christine could so well read his thoughts and understand his slightest gesture that she could hardly help laughing. She put up her veil and walked straight towards him, her brown eyes full of that soft love-light which for years he had not seen in them. As she paused close to him he involuntarily looked up once more, and with a cry sprang to his feet.
“Christine!” he exclaimed taking both her hands in his. “Is it indeed you!”
Just for one exquisite moment he forgot everything, was only conscious that she was beside him, and that they loved each other, with a love which surpassed even the first bliss of the early days of their betrothal. The next moment, with a horrible revulsion, he remembered the barrier that lay between them. Neither of them spoke; in the stillness they were each conscious of the clear birdlike whistle of an errand boy crossing the bridge. He had caught up one of the prettiest airs in “Haddon Hall”—“To thine own heart be true”!
“Hugh,” she said softly, “you told me if ever a time came when there was no one else who could help me more fitly that I was to come to you. I am driven almost desperate and I have come to claim your promise. Where can we talk quietly?”
“If you will not find it too cold I could row you up the river towards Charlcote,” he said. “Later in the week Stratford will be full of excursionists, but there is no one on the river this afternoon, we shall be quite unmolested.”
She thought this an excellent plan and let him help her into the boat and spread the plaid over her knees.
“It was by this dear old tartan that I recognised you, at least chiefly by that,” she said.
“Like its owner it has seen its best days,” said Macneillie with a smile. “But I have the same feeling for it that the fellow in Gounod’s song had for his old coat,
‘Mon viel ami
Ne nous séparons pas.’”
And he sighed a little as he remembered how in the days of their betrothal he had often taken her under his “plaidie.”
A strange, dreamy, unreal feeling crept over Christine as she leant back in the stern, while Macneillie with his strong arms rowed her up the winding river. She almost wished his strokes had not been so long and steady, for it seemed to her as if this heaven of peace and repose would end too swiftly. At last he paused.
“We couldn’t well find a more lovely place than this,” he said glancing over his shoulder and dexterously guiding the boat in between the grassy bank and the branches of an overhanging willow tree.
“I never saw such a wonderful colour as these new spring shoots of the willow,” said Christine, as he drew in his oars and sat down beside her in the stern.
Not a breath of wind stirred the leaves, the flies came out and made a cheerful droning sound as though summer had already come, a lark was singing far up in the blue vault above, and everywhere the quiet of perfect peace seemed to brood.
Macneillie felt that longer silence was perilous, he had learned to allow himself scant leisure when temptation was rife.
“Tell me now what your trouble is,” he said quietly.
“Oh!” she cried vehemently, “it seems like sacrilege even to speak of it in such a place as this where all is so peaceful.”
Macneillie, who was very far from being at peace, smiled a little involuntarily.
“The place is well enough,” he said glancing round. “But now that we are actually among the ‘pendent boughs’ it reminds me rather too much of
‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook.’
It might be the identical spot where Ophelia was drowned.”
“I wonder if it is,” she said diverted for a minute from her own anxieties. “Poor Ophelia! Somehow I have never cared for acting that part of late years. You spoiled me for all other Hamlets. I have often wondered since, Hugh, how you contrived to get through that last season in London.”
“Well it was a rough time,” said Macneillie, “for, like the Danish Prince,
‘In my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep.’
By the end of the season I was as nearly mad as Hamlet feigned to be. But no more of that. It is of the present we must talk not of the past. How can I help you? Has anyone been molesting you?”
“Yes,” she faltered. “I will tell you all, and then you will understand.”
So in her musical voice, and with that extraordinary charm of manner which made her irresistible, she told him simply and truthfully all the difficulties she had had to contend with. Lastly she told him of Conway Sartoris and of the arguments he had used in his letter.
“They seem to me quite unanswerable,” she said, “and he is a man everyone respects, he is far more intellectual than we are, and he doesn’t merely theorise, he knows the difficulties of real life. The more I think of it, the more it seems to me that you and I are wrecking our lives and suffering so cruelly all for a mistaken idea,—a sort of fetish-worship for the law of the land.”
Macneillie had grown very pale, his hands trembled, but from long force of habit his voice was well under control.
“Sin is lawlessness,” he quoted in a low tone.
“Yes, yes,” she said quickly. “But this law that parts us, that makes our lives a hell—you say it is an unjust law and ought to be reformed. You said that in your letter.”
“I long for its reform with all my heart,” he replied. “And the greatest of living statesmen and the most devoted of English Churchmen did his utmost in 1857 to prevent this wicked double standard of morality from ever finding a place in the Divorce Law. He said he would deliberately prefer an increase in the number of cases of divorce to the acceptance of this shameful inequality between men and women.”
“And are we patiently and tamely to go on enduring it?” she cried. “Why, surely, all reforms have been won by those who were not afraid to break the bad laws that had no business to exist. Think of your Covenanters who gloriously broke the law and saved their country from tyranny! Almost all heroes and martyrs have broken the law when it deserved to be broken.”
“Yes, that is true,” he said. “But they only broke it out of obedience to a higher law, they did not break it for their own gain. My dearest,” he took her hand and held it closely in his, “though this law cries aloud for reform, let us be law-abiding citizens, and wait.”
Her eyes filled with tears, her voice quivered pitifully when after awhile she spoke.
“You talk of waiting, but when one sees how truth and justice are set at naught in parliament,—how with people agonising and dying, and with so much that is wrong to be righted our representatives will haggle miserably for months and years over useless questions, how from sheer spite they will waste the time of the nation, how from party jealousy they will thwart measures,—the thought of waiting grows intolerable.”
“But reform is bound to come,” said Macneillie, “most of the fair minded people who have studied the matter and who know anything of practical life desire it, we have against us only the narrow minded and the men of vicious life.”
“You sayonly!” exclaimed Christine with a laugh that was a sob. “But it is just the narrow good and the vicious bad who work all the misery of the world. Oh, Hugh! I am not strong and brave like you, I am weak and tired and worn out. I cannot live longer without you. I have tried to bear it but I have come to the end of my strength.”
She covered her face with her hands, he could see great tears slowly falling between her slender white fingers, and the sight wrung his heart. Yet he did not respond to her appeal. It was not because he failed to understand that bitter cry of exhaustion, it was because he understood it so well, had been indeed for the last few weeks so drearily conscious of just that same feeling that he could endure no longer, that his strength was gone. It was well that Christine could not see his face, for the agonising struggle which was going on within him was only too clearly visible. In the intense stillness of the calm sunny afternoon it seemed to him that all nature was at rest save themselves, and as in moments of great physical pain some very slight detail will attract the sufferer’s attention, so now, while he passed through the most cruel ordeal of his life, Macneillie was watching half unconsciously the pretty movements of a little water-rat which had run up the stem of a bush growing close to the river, and was evidently enjoying itself to the best of its ability. The birds, too, were singing as though in a perfect ecstasy of joy.
Their song contrasted mockingly with the torturing thoughts which filled his mind, and yet nevertheless it was through the joyousness of these lesser creatures that his help was to come. For it carried him back to the thought of a great Teacher who, when speaking to “an innumerable multitude of people,” average men and women, tempest-tossed as he was now, had told them that not one single bird was forgotten by God, and had said, “Fear not, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
With that highest courage which in times of dire dismay can rise from what seems like certain defeat, and kindle hope and strength in the hearts of others, and win in a desperate fight, Macneillie gripped the words to his heart and was strong once more, with that trust in God which is man’s righteousness.
“I know exactly what you mean,” he said, as Christine at length looked up and dried her tears. “Many a time I have felt at the end of my strength. It’s just a device of the devil’s own making. Depend upon it, God won’t take away His gift just when it is most needed. Is it likely He would do that?”
“It seems to me that the devil rules,” said Christine. “I can believe in little but evil in the wretched life I have had to live. Here, with you, it is different, I seem another being altogether. You can make me good.”
There was truth in what she said. He had always had over her the best possible influence. Without each other they were incomplete.
“And yet,” he said, “it is just because I so love and honour you that the arguments of Conway Sartoris which you mentioned just now, clever and plausible though they are, seem contemptible. Shall I let the one I love best in all the world bear shame and reproach? Shall you and I who have tried all these years to be a credit to the profession give such a handle to its enemies? Shall we dare to bring down upon innocent children the curse of illegitimacy? And all because we were too weakly impatient to wait—or too cowardly to suffer? Forgive me, my dear one, I put these things in a blunt way, but are they not things we must think out clearly if we would come safely through this ordeal?”
She looked up in his face, it was singularly beautiful just at the minute, in spite of the havoc which time and suffering had wrought in it. She fancied that he would wear that look of manly courage, of noble strength in his resurrection body. The thought seemed to give her new life. Quietly, indeed with a calmness which surprised herself, she slipped her hand into his; it was done spontaneously as a child slips its hand into that of a trusted companion.
“You are right, Hugh, quite right,” she said. “We will wait. You must forgive me for having come here to-day.”
“You were only keeping your promise,” he said, “and perhaps to talk things out was best for both of us.”
He was silent for a few minutes, wondering what could be done to render her life a little more bearable. What was it that had been his own greatest relief during the last few years? Well, undoubtedly, it had been the companionship of Ralph and his wife and little Dick. They were a very fascinating trio and carried about with them an atmosphere of youth and brightness which was pleasant enough to middle-aged folk sorely burdened with care and trouble. A sudden idea flashed into his mind. Many people are ready to assert that they would lay down their lives for those they love. Macneillie seldom protested in words but had a way of quietly giving up his most treasured possessions, so quietly, indeed, that most people hardly noticed that he did it at all.
“And now,” he said, “I am going to ask you to do something for me. Do you recollect a young fellow who was acting with you at Edinburgh four summers ago—Ralph Denmead by name?”
“Why yes, to be sure. I met him only last Sunday at the Herefords. What a nice fellow he seems, and I lost my heart to his dear little wife.”
“I am glad you saw them both, they are a delightful couple. Well now, could you possibly get him a London engagement? Would Barry Sterne have any opening for him? It seems to me that there is a very good chance just now for a young romantic actor. We have no really satisfactory Romeo or Orlando.”
“But surely you are in no hurry to part with him? I hear he is very popular everywhere.”
“For myself I am in no hurry,” said Macneillie. “But I should be glad for him to get a London engagement, he deserves it, and then this wandering life is a little hard on his wife and child. They had better settle down, and if they were somewhere in your neighbourhood you would perhaps befriend them. Evereld is a dear little woman, you would like her, and she has the greatest admiration for you.”
Christine’s face brightened up, it pleased her greatly that he should have asked her to do something for him; she resolved to leave no stone unturned and to do her utmost for his friends.
“I should like to have them near me; you can’t think how lonely it is often,” she said. “If it were not for my work and for Charlie’s companionship I don’t think I could have endured it all this time. The best plan would be for Barry Sterne to see him act. I wonder whether there would be a chance of getting him to ran down for one of the performances in the Memorial Week?”
“That is a good idea,” said Macneillie. “By the bye, Sterne will scarcely remember it, but the boy did go to him some years ago when he first made up his mind to be an actor. I have often heard him describe the interview. He got cold comfort from Sterne and a most discouraging letter from me. But nothing daunts your real genius. He plodded on, and starved and struggled till things took a turn. And some day if I am not much mistaken he will be one of our leading actors.”
“His own opinion is that he owes everything to you,” said Christine with a smile. “I heard a great deal about you on Sunday from both of them. I shall be so glad if I can really do anything for people you care for, Hugh. The Denmeads will be quite a new object in life for me.”
Those words and the look which went with them were Macneillie’s comfort when, shortly after, he parted with Christine. But to stay longer at Stratford with nothing to do had become impossible for him. The river was a haunted place, he dared not go on it again, everything which on his arrival had seemed so peaceful bore upon it now the ineffaceable stamp of the bitter struggle he had passed through.
To go back to his work was directly against the doctor’s orders, but go somewhere he must. He packed his portmanteau, and tried to think of any place in the world he wished to see, but could not care even to return to his own country. All things were “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.”
“Fate shall decide,” he said to himself with the ghost of a smile playing about his lips. And dragging out an ancient atlas from the pile of books on the sitting-room table, he opened at the map of Europe and solemnly spun a threepenny bit. After threatening to come to an end in the middle of the German Ocean it finally settled down in Holland.
“Via Harwich and the Hook,” said Macneillie pocketing the arbiter of his fate. “So be it. I will run across and see if the bulbs are coming into bloom.”
“Be noble! and the nobleness that lies
In other men, sleeping, but never dead
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own;
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many eyes,
Then will pure light around thy path be shed,
And thou wilt never more be sad and lone.”—Lowell.
The entire change of scene, the vigour of his own mind, and the sturdy resolution with which he laid aside care and anxiety soon restored Macneillie to a great extent. He recovered his power of sleeping, and returned to Stratford to find Ralph and Evereld already settled there and awaiting him with a warmth of welcome which did his heart good. To hear him telling comical stories of his adventures among the Dutch as they lingered over the supper table that first evening, no one would have believed that he had passed through any ordeal whatever, and he seemed quite ready for all the hard work that lay before him.
Indeed Ivy Grant thought him unnecessarily vigorous.
“It’s all very well for Mr. Macneillie who has been enjoying a holiday all these weeks, but it’s rather hard on us,” she protested, “to be kept rehearsing every day till four o’clock, just when we wanted a little free time, too.”
For Ivy was rejoicing in the presence of Dermot and Bride O’Ryan, who had come down for the Shaksperian performances, Bride for pleasure, and Dermot chiefly to see Ivy and to write a series of articles for his paper.
Evereld was delighted to have her friend with her and thoroughly enjoyed her first experience of the Memorial week. Stratford had naturally very happy associations for her, and though the weather was not quite so perfect as it had been during their brief honeymoon, it did not affect the audiences which were always large and enthusiastic.
One evening towards the end of the week Bride and Evereld were as usual setting off together for the theatre. There had been rain during the day but the evening was bright and clear so that there was nothing to prevent them from going by the river.
“There is something so delicious in just stepping into the ‘Miranda’ and being rowed to the very door,” said Evereld as she took her place in that same boat in which only a little while before Macneillie and Christine had had their last interview. “It must be like this at Venice.”
“Minus the Shaksperian associations and plus the smells,” said Bride with a smile. “Here come these vicious swans that look so picturesque and are really so bad tempered. One of them nearly made an end of Dick the other day, according to Bridget.”
They glided on peacefully, watching the mellow sunset sky and the church spire and the stately trees surrounding it until the landlord rowed them up to the steps in the garden surrounding the theatre, and here as they climbed the grassy bank they were surprised to come across Macneillie walking to and fro with someone they did not recognise. Evereld wondered much how it came that he was deep in conversation, for it was nearly time for the performance to begin. He seemed somewhat relieved when he caught sight of her and introduced Mr. Barry Sterne, then telling her to see that the attendants gave him a good place, and arranging to meet him later on, he hurried to the Stage door, leaving Evereld and Bride to enjoy the talk of the new comer.
“This looks something like Shakspere worship,” he remarked glancing round the perfectly built theatre which was already well filled. “I wish I had here with me the curious old fossil I met to-day in the train. There were a couple of Americans plying him with questions about Stratford; they set upon him the moment we left Euston, and ‘Wanted to know’ everything. The old gentleman couldn’t get in a word edgeways for some time, what with the tunnels and the sharp fire of questions. At last he remarked stiffly, ‘I have never read any of Shakspere’s plays myself, but I have always understood that he was a most immoral writer.’ You should have seen the faces of the two Yankees! It was as good as a play. And the old fellow was quite unaware that he had said anything extraordinary and blandly went on reading a religious newspaper!”
The play was “As You Like It,” and for the first time Ivy was to play the part of Celia and Ralph was to make his first appearance as Orlando. Evereld wondered much what Barry Sterne thought of the performance. He was rather silent at the close of the second act and she was half afraid that he had not approved of it until she found that he had been listening to the criticisms of the people immediately behind them.
“It is to me about the most amusing thing in the world to hear the comments of the public,” he said to Evereld. “Your amateur is always such a merciless critic. The less he knows the more scathing will be his fault finding. Now Macneillie’s melancholy Jaques is about as fine a piece of acting as one could wish to see, I don’t know anyone who makes so much of the character. But those wise-acres behind are carping away because they think it shows what cultured mortals they are.”
“It is much the same at the Academy,” said Evereld. “The less people know about painting the more severe are their comments.”
“If Lear wrote a modern version of his nonsense alphabet it ought to be ‘C was the carping cantankerous critic who cavilled and canted of Culture,’” said Barry Sterne with a laugh. “Your husband makes an excellent Orlando. I hear, too, that his Romeo is very good. I suppose you have often seen him in that part?”
“Oh, yes, very often. The last time,” she smiled at the remembrance, “was in the autumn up in the north of England; I shall never forget it. Exactly opposite the theatre on a bit of waste ground, a wild beast show was being held, and it had the most noisy band imaginable. All through the Balcony scene it was thundering out ‘The man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo.’ And the next night Hamlet had to soliloquise to the strains of ‘Daisy Bell.’ It was the funniest thing I ever heard!”
Barry Sterne capped this story with a reminiscence of the days when he had been in a travelling company, and by the end of the evening Evereld was ready to consider him the best raconteur she had ever met.
He went round afterwards to Macneillie’s dressing-room and Evereld was escorted home by Dermot and Bride, who would not however accept her invitation to supper as they were already engaged to meet Ivy at the Brintons’. The night had turned chilly. Evereld was glad to find a fire awaiting them, and she curled herself up comfortably in an armchair waiting for the return of the men-folk and finishing Black’s charming story “Judith Shakspere.”
“How long they are to-night!” she exclaimed, when the last page was turned and Judith whose grave she had seen in the chancel of Stratford church only that morning, had been left happily with her lover Tom Quiney. “I shall starve if they don’t come soon. What a fire this is for toast! I will make some to pass the time.”
After a while steps were heard on the stairs and in came Macneillie and Ralph with apologies for having kept her so long. Macneillie, who was a man with a strong shrinking from any sort of change in his surroundings, felt a pang as he reflected that soon there would be no bright-faced little housekeeper waiting to welcome him, and making a home out of each place they stayed at in their wandering life. He stood warming himself by the fire noticing dreamily the mute caress which passed between husband and wife, the funny way in which Evereld divided her attention between the perfect toasting of a particular slice of bread, and the discussion of the way in which Orlando had carried Adam in the forest banquet scene, and then her half anxious glance in his direction which seemed to say, “I know you are tired and out of spirits but you shall not be bothered with questions, you shall be fed.”
She made them laugh at supper over Barry Sterne’s travelling companion who had been sure that Shakspere was a most immoral writer, but she could see that something was troubling Ralph, for instead of being the life of the party he was silent and abstracted.
Macneillie soon solved the mystery, and turning to her with one of his humourous smiles, said, “I am sure you would think to look at him that he had dismally failed or had been half slaughtered by the critics. I assure you, my dear, it’s nothing of the sort. He has just had the offer of a very good London engagement.”
“What, from Mr. Sterne?” asked Evereld in amazement.
“Yes, they brought out a new piece you know on Easter Monday and it seems that Jack Carrington is again going to prove Ralph’s good genius by failing altogether to get hold of the part he has to play. The fact is, Carrington is excellent as far as he goes, but his range is limited, he feels that he will never succeed in this play and Sterne sees it too. They are parting quite amicably, and he wants Ralph to take his place.”
“I can’t leave you, Governor,” said Ralph with a vibration in his voice which made the tears start to Evereld’s eyes.
“Oh no,” she said eagerly. “Don’t let us go—why we belong to you now.”
“My dear child,” said Macneillie, “don’t you go and encourage him in refusing an offer which he ought to jump at. We have been arguing the matter ever since we parted with Barry Sterne at the station and nothing can I get out of Ralph but protests which quite take me back to Mrs. Micawber. The fact is you two read Dickens to such an extent that you are quite saturated with him. This is an excellent offer and ought to be accepted.”
“But I never will, no I never will desert Mr. Macneillie!” quoted Evereld merrily. “Why are you so anxious to get rid of us? You always pretend that you miss us when we are away.”
“So I do, my dear, there’s no pretence about it,” said Macneillie, “but joking apart, it really would be madness to refuse such a chance as this just because we are the best of friends and are very happy together. Moreover there are two special reasons why I want you to accept it. The first I will tell you now, and the second shall be for Ralph presently. I don’t deny that I shall miss you horribly, but I shall be happier in the long run to think that you have a home of your own, and I should always reproach myself if Ralph neglected a chance which will probably lead on to fortune. You and I must consider what is best for his career. If he were my own son I should insist on his going, as it is I can only strongly advise it.”
They talked for some little time over the proposed change, and then Evereld went to her room leaving the men to argue the matter out at still greater length over their pipes. In her own mind she began to have some vague suspicion of the reason why he was so anxious for them to accept the offer, and later on Ralph confirmed her in this idea. She was still brushing out her sunny brown hair when he came in.
“Well darling, I believe we shall have to go,” he said. “Hateful as it will be to leave Macneillie, it is of course a step upward, and he seems really anxious that we should not lose such a chance. Moreover it is not alone of us that he is thinking. It is of Miss Greville.”
“I felt somehow that it was, and yet what difference can it make to her?” said Evereld wonderingly. “I admire her more than I can tell you, but of what possible use can we be to her?”
“Well it’s hard to say, but she seems to have told Macneillie that she had taken a great fancy to you the other day when we met her at the Herefords, and then I think he said something about the possibility of some opening in London for me, and naturally she would like to help his friends. Then too from what he told me she must be awfully lonely, and though she tries to lead as retired a life as possible yet difficulties are always cropping up.”
“Where does she live?”.
“She has had a flat in Victoria Street, but is leaving, Barry Sterne told us. I think he said she had got another flat at Chelsea.”
“Could we afford to live in such a neighbourhood as Chelsea?”
“Yes, I think we might if we can find anything suitable, my salary will be better than it is now, and we could furnish by degrees.”
“Oh, Ralph! what fun!” cried Evereld her eyes lighting up at the prospect of furnishing, for she was a true woman.
“We would do it very, very economically. We would begin like Traddles and Sophy ‘on a Britannia metal footing;’ there would always be the Memorial spoons for visitors, you know.”
And thus Macneillie’s plot prospered exceedingly, and though the wrench of parting was hard, Ralph and Evereld soon settled down very happily in their new quarters, a snug little flat at the very top of the same building at Chelsea in which Christine Greville occupied the first floor, and she could see as much or as little of them as she liked. She liked to see a great deal of them as it happened, and Evereld and Dick were always ready to come in and companionise Charlie, while Ralph proved himself a most trusty knight-errant, and the happiness of the young husband and wife cheered Christine as it had cheered Macneillie. Those whose lives have been clouded by some grievous trouble are supposed theoretically to hate the sight of happiness; but that is merely a popular fallacy. With the great majority it is an intense relief to come across happiness, the mere sight of it does good, and the happy confer on the sorrowful a real boon by their mere existence.