De Courcy Smyth was not drunk, but he had been drinking--persistently
nipping, as his custom was in times of mental excitement, in the
fallacious hope of keeping up courage and steadying irritable nerves.
The series of moods usually resultant on such recourse to spirituous
liquors, followed one another with clock-work regularity. He was
alternately hysterically elated, preternaturally moral, offensively
quarrelsome, maudlin to the point of tears. The first _matinee_ of his
long-promised play had prospered but very ill, notwithstanding large
advertisement and free list. The second had prospered even worse.
Mercifully disposed persons, slipping out between the acts, had been
careful not to return. Less amiably disposed ones had remained to
titter or hiss. Failure had been written in capital letters across the
whole performance--and deservedly, in the estimation of every one save
the unhappy author himself. The play had perished in the very act of
birth.
But of this tragic termination to so many extravagant hopes Dominic
Iglesias was still ignorant, as he entered the dismantled sitting-room
at Cedar Lodge that same night a little after half-past ten o'clock. He
had dined in the old house in Holland Street; served by Frederick, the
German-Swiss valet, who, some weeks previously, hearing of his intended
departure, had announced his intention of "bettering himself," had
given Mrs. Porcher warning, and, in moving terms and three languages,
implored employment of Iglesias, declaring that the other gentlemen
resident at Cedar Lodge were "no class," their clothes utterly unworthy
of his powers of brushing and folding.
Iglesias stayed on in Holland Street until late, the charm and
gentleness of old associations, the sight of familiar objects, the
gladness of restored friendship with George Lovegrove working upon him
to thankfulness. He was tranquil in spirit, serene with the calm
twilight serenity of the strong who have learned the secret of
detachment, and, who, while welcoming all glad and gracious
occurrences, have schooled themselves to resignation, and, in the
affairs of this world, do neither greatly fear nor greatly hope. And it
was in this spirit he had made his way back to Cedar Lodge and entered
the square panelled sitting-room. But, the door closed, he paused,
aware of some sinister influence, some unknown yet repulsive presence.
The room was nearly dark, the gas being lowered to a pin-point on
either side the mantelpiece. Dominic moved across to turn it up, and in
so doing stumbled over an unexpected obstacle. De Courcy Smith, who had
been dozing uneasily in the one remaining armchair, sat upright with an
oath.
"What are you at, you swine!" he shouted. Then as the light shone forth
he made an effort to recover himself.
"It's hardly necessary to announce your advent by kicking me, Mr.
Iglesias," he said thickly, and without attempting to rise from his
seat. "Not but that there is an appropriateness in that graceful form
of introduction. Only a kick from the benevolent patron, who professed
himself so charitably disposed towards me, was required to make up the
sum of outrage which has been my portion to-day.--Have you seen the
theatrical items in the evening papers?" With trembling hands he spread
out a newspaper upon his knees. "See the way that dirty reptile, Percy
Gerrard, who succeeded me upon _The Daily Bulletin_, has chopped me and
my play to mincemeat, cut bits of live flesh out of me and fried them
in filth, and washed down my wounds with the vitriol of hypocritical
compassion and good advice? That is the style of recognition a really
first-class work of art, fit to rank with the classics, with Wycherley,
and Congreve, and Sheridan, or Lytton--for there are qualities of all
these very dissimilar masters in my writing--gets from the present-day
press. As I have told you all along, the critics and playwrights hate
me because they fear me. I have never spared them. I have exposed them
and their ignorance, and want of scholarship, in print. They know I
spoke the truth. Their hatred is witness to my veracity. They have been
nursing their venom for years. Now with one consent they pour it forth.
It is a vile plot and conspiracy. They were sworn to swamp me, so they
formed a ring. They did not care what they spent so long as they
succeeded in crushing me. Every one has been bought, miserably,
scandalously bought. This is the only conceivable explanation of the
reception my play has met with. They got at the members of my company.
My actors played better at first, better at rehearsal. Yesterday and
to-day they have played like a row of wooden ninepins, of straw-stuffed
scarecrows, of rot-stricken idiots! They missed their cues, and forgot
their lines, or pretended to do so; and then had the infernal
impertinence to giggle and gag, blast them! I heard them. I could have
screamed. I tried to stop them; and the stage-manager swore at me in
the wings, and the scene-shifters laughed. It was a hideous nightmare.
The audience laughed--the sound of it is in my ears now, and it
tortures me, for it was not natural laughter. It was not
spontaneous--how could it be so? It was simply part of this iniquitous
conspiracy to ruin me. It was hired mockery, bought and paid for, the
mockery of subsidised traitors, liars, imbeciles, the inhuman mockery
of grinning apes!"
He crushed the newspaper together with both hands, flung it across the
room, and broke into hysterical weeping.
"For my play is a masterpiece," he wailed. "It is a work of genius. No
other man living could have written it. Yet it is damned by a brainless
public and vindictive press, while I know and they know--they must
know, the fact is self-evident--that it is great, nothing less than
great."
During this harangue Dominic Iglesias stood immovable, facing the
speaker, but looking down, not at him, rigid in attitude, silent. Any
attempt to stem the torrent of the wretched man's speech would have
been futile. Dominic judged it kindest just to wait, letting passion
tear him till, by force of its own violence, it had worn itself out.
Then, but not till them, it might be helpful to intervene. Still the
exhibition was a very painful one, putting a heavy strain upon the
spectator. For be a fellow creature never so displeasing in nature and
in habit, never so cankered by vanity and self-love, it cannot be
otherwise than hideous to see him upon the rack. And that de Courcy
Smyth was very actually upon the rack--a rack well deserved, may be,
and of his own constructing, but which wrenched his every joint to the
agony of dislocation nevertheless--there could be no manner of doubt.
Coming as conclusion to the long day, to the peaceful evening--the
thought of the Lady of the Windswept Dust, moreover, and her fortunes
so eminently and presently just now in the balance, in his mind--the
whole situation was horrible to Dominic Iglesias.
But Smyth's mood changed, his tears ceasing as incontinently as they
had begun. He ceased to slouch and writhe, passed his hands across his
blood-shot eyes, drew himself up in his chair, began to snarl, even to
swagger.
"I forget myself, and forget you, too, Mr. Iglesias--which is
annoying," he said; "for you are about the last person from whom I
could expect, or should desire to receive, sympathy. Persons of my
world, scholars and idealists, and persons of your world,
money-grubbing materialists, can, in the nature of things, have very
little in common. There is a great gulf fixed between them. I beg your
pardon for having so far forgotten myself as to ignore that fact, and
talked on subjects incomprehensible to you. What follows, however, will
be more in your line, I imagine, and it is this which has made me come
here to-night. You realise that your investment has turned out an
unfortunate one? You have lost, irretrievably lost, your money."
"I was not wholly unprepared for that," Dominic answered. His temper
was beginning to rise. Sodden with drink, maddened by failure, hardly
accountable for his words or actions, still the man's tone was rather
too offensive for endurance. "I had made full provision for such a
contingency. I accept the loss. Pray do not let it trouble you."
"Oh! you accept it, do you? You were prepared for it?" Smyth broke in.
"You can afford to throw way a cool three hundred pounds--the expenses
will amount to that at least in the bulk. How very agreeable for you!
Your late operations in the City must have been surprisingly
profitable. I was not aware, until now, that we had the honour of
numbering a millionaire among us at Cedar Lodge. But let me tell you
this extremely superior tone does not please me, Mr. Iglesias. It
smells of insult. I warn you, you had better be a little careful. Even
a miserable persecuted pauper like myself can make it unpleasant for
those who insult him. I must request you to remember that I am a
gentleman by birth, and that I have the feelings of my class where my
personal honour is concerned. Do you suppose I do not know perfectly
well that the benevolent attitude you have seen fit to assume towards
me has been a blind, from first to last; and that every penny you have
advanced me until now, as well as the three hundred pounds, the loss of
which you so amiably beg me not to let trouble me, is hush-money? Yes,
hush-money, I repeat, the price of my silence regarding your intrigue
with my wife--my wife who calls herself--"
"We will introduce no woman's name into this conversation, if you
please," Iglesias interrupted sternly.
The limit of things pardonable had been passed. His face was white and
keen as a sword. The weight of years and of failing health had
vanished, burned up by fierce disgust and anger, as is mist by the
sun-heat. He was young, arrogant in bearing, careless of consequence or
of danger as some fifteenth-century finely bred fighting man face to
face with his enemy and traducer, who, given honourable opportunity, he
would kill or be killed by, without faintest scruple or remorse. And of
this temper of mind his aspect was so eloquent that de Courcy Smyth,
muddled with liquor though he was, seeing him, was seized with panic.
He scrambled to his feet, flung himself behind the chair, clinging to
the back of it for support.
"Don't look at me like that, you Spanish devil!" he whimpered. "You
paralyse me. You hypnotise me. My brain is splitting. You're drawing
the life out of me. I shall go mad. If you come a step nearer I'll make
a scandal. I'll call for help. Ah! God in heaven, who's that?"
Only the housemaid entering, salver in hand, and leaving the door wide
open behind her. Upon the landing with out, Farge and Worthington, in
comic attitudes, stood at attention.
"A telegram for you, sir. Is the boy to wait?" she inquired, in a
stifled voice. "She could hardly keep a straight face," as she reported
downstairs subsequently, "that ridiculous Farge was so full of his
jokes."
Iglesias tore open the yellow envelope and held the telegraph-form to
the light.
"Glorious luck. Happy as a queen. Come to supper after performance
to-morrow. Love. Poppy."
His face softened.
"No answer," he said, and turned purposing to speak some word of mercy
to wretched de Courcy Smyth. But the latter had slunk out at the open
door, while Mr. Farge, in an ungovernable paroxysm of humour--levelled
at the departing housemaid--effectually covered his retreat by
cake-walking, with very high knee action, the length of the landing,
playing appropriate dance-music, the while, upon an imaginary banjo in
the shape of Worthington's new crook-handled walking stick.
For some time Dominic Iglesias heard shuffling, nerveless footsteps
moving to and fro in the room overhead. Then Smyth threw himself
heavily upon his bed. The wire-wove mattress creaked, and creaked again
twice. Unbroken silence followed, and Iglesias breathed more easily,
hoping the miserable being slept. For him, Iglesias, there was no
sleep. His body was too tired. His mind too vividly and painfully
awake. He lay down, it is true, since he did not care to remain in the
dismantled sitting-room or occupy the chair in which de Courcy Smyth
had sat. But, throughout the night, he stared at the darkness and heard
the hours strike. At sunset the wind had dropped dead. In the small
hours it began to rise, and before dawn to freshen, veering to another
quarter. Softly at first, and then with richer diapason, the cedar tree
greeted its mysterious comrade, singing of far-distant times and
places, and of the permanence of nature as against the fitful
evanescent life of man. That husky singing soothed Dominic Iglesias,
and calmed him, assuring him that in the hands of the Almighty are all
things, small and great, past, present, and to come. There is neither
haste, nor omission, nor accident, nor oversight in the divine plan;
but that plan is large beyond the possibility of human intellect to
grasp or comprehend, therefore humble faith is also highest wisdom.
As the dawn quickened into day Dominic drew aside the curtain and
looked out. Behind the dark branches, where they cleared the housetops
and met the open sky, thrown wide upward to the zenith, was the
rose-scarlet of sunrise, holding, as it seemed to him, at once the
splendour of battle and the peace of crowned achievement and--was it
but a pretty conceit or a truth of happiest import?--the colour of
certain flaring omnibus knifeboard bills and the colour of a certain
woman's name.