NOT TWO MEN, BUT ONE
Great is the power of coincidence. Things have got a habit of
happening just when they are most likely to be useful. It is not on
the stage alone that the long-lost uncle turns up, or the long-missing
will is found in the cupboard. And you cannot invent for fiction
anything half so strange as the daily coincidence of common life. A
tolerably long experience of the common life has convinced me of this
great truth. Therefore, the coincidence which happened to Armorel on
the very day when the young dramatist unfolded his griefs will not, by
wise men, be thought at all strange.
It was in the evening. She was sitting with her companion, thinking
over Archie and his play. Was it really good? Was it good enough to
hold the stage, and to command the attention of the audience? To her
it seemed a singularly beautiful, poetical, and romantic piece. But
Armorel was of a lowly and humble mind. She knew that she had no
experience in things dramatic. Had it been a picture, now----
'Oh!' cried her companion, suddenly starting upright in the cushioned
chair where she was lying apparently asleep, 'I had almost forgotten.
My dear, I have got a present for you.'
'From yourself, Zoe?'
'Yes; from myself. It is a present which cost me nothing, but is worth
a good deal. The making of it cost nobody anything. Yet it is a very
precious thing. The material of which it is made is worth nothing. Yet
the thing is worth anything you please.'
'It must be a picture, then.'
'It is a Work of Art, but not a picture. Guess again.'
'No; I will not guess any more. May I have it without guessing?'
Zoe held in her hands a small roll of blue paper. This she now opened,
and gazed at the writing upon it with idolatry: but it hardly carried
conviction with it--perhaps it was a little overdone.
'Least imaginative of girls,' she said. It pleased her to consider
Armorel's refusal to join in that little scheme of hers as proving a
lack of imagination. 'I have brought you, though you do not deserve
it, what any other girl in London would give--would give--a dance,
perhaps, to obtain, and you shall have it for nothing.'
'I want to hear what it is.'
'It is nothing less, Armorel, nothing less--I got it to-day from the
table in his studio--than an autograph: it is the copy used by the
printers--an autograph poem of Alec's! An autograph poem, as yet
unpublished.'
'Is that all?' replied the least imaginative of girls. 'You must not
give it to me, really. You will value it far more than I shall.
Besides, I suppose it is to be published some day.'
'But the original manuscript--the autograph poem, dear child! Don't
you know the value of such a thing? Take it. You shall be enriched in
spite of yourself. Take it and put it aside somewhere in your desk, in
some safe place. Heavens! if one had the autograph of a poem of Byron,
for example!'
'Mr. Feilding is not Byron,' said Armorel, coldly. 'He may write
pretty feminine verses, but he is not Byron. Thank you, however. I
will take it, and I will keep it and value it because you think it
valuable. I do not suppose the autograph verses of small poets are
worth keeping; but still--as you value it' ...
This was very ungracious and ungrateful. But she was really tired of
Mr. Feilding's praises, and after the discovery of the pictures, and
after the strange story she had heard only that morning--no; she
wanted to hear no more, for the present, of the praises of this
man--the cleverest man in London!
However, she unrolled the paper, and began to read the contents, at
first carelessly. Then, 'Oh! what is this?' she cried.
'What is what?' asked Mrs. Elstree.
'This is a copy.'
They were the same words as she had used concerning the pictures. She
remembered this, and a strange suspicion seized her. 'A copy,' she
repeated, wondering.
'A copy? Not at all. They are the verses which are to appear in the
next number of the journal--or the number after next. Alec's own
verses, of course. Sweetly pretty, I think: what makes you say that
they are copied?'
'I thought that I had seen them--something like them--somewhere
before.' She went on reading. As she read she remembered the lines
more clearly.
'What is the matter, Armorel?' asked Zoe. 'What makes you look so
fierce? Heaven help your husband when you look like that!'
'Did I look fierce? It must have been something that I remembered.
Yes--that was it.'
'May I read the verses again?' Zoe read them, suspiciously. There was
something in them which had startled Armorel. What was it? She could
see nothing to account for this emotion. Certainly she was not fond of
poetry, and failed to appreciate the fine turns and subtle tones, the
felicitous phrase and the unexpected thought with which the poet
delights his readers. In this little poem she could find nothing but a
few jingling rhymes. Why should Armorel behave so strangely?
'What is it, my dear?' she asked again.
'Something I remembered--nothing of any importance.'
'Armorel, has Alec said anything to you? Has he--has he wanted to make
love to you? Has he offended you by speaking?'
'No. There has been no question of love-making between us, and there
never will be.'
'One cannot say.' Zoe looked at the matter from experience. 'One can
never say. Men are strange creatures; and Alec certainly thinks a
great deal of you.'
'I cannot imagine his making love--any more than I can imagine his
painting a picture or writing a poem. Perhaps he would make love as he
paints.'
'Well, he paints very well.'
'Very well indeed, I dare say.' She got up. 'I am going to leave you
to-night, Zoe. I want to go to my own room. I have things to write.
You don't mind?'
'My dear child, mind! Of course, one would rather have your company.
But since you must leave me'--she sank back in her chair with a sigh.
'Give me that book, dear--if you please--the French novel. When one
has been married one can read French novels without trying to conceal
the fact. They are mostly wicked, and sometimes witty. Not always.
Good-night, dear. I shall not expect you back this evening.'
Armorel, in her own room, opened the manuscript book of poems which
Archie had given her, and found--the very last of all--the lines which
she had remembered. She laid the precious autograph beside Effie's
poem. Word for word--comma for comma--they were exactly the same.
There was not the slightest difference. And again Armorel thought of
the two pictures.
Then she thought of the little dainty volume in white parchment
containing the Second Series of 'Voice and Echo, by Alec Feilding.'
She had tossed it aside, impatient with the man, when Zoe gave it to
her. Now she looked for it, and found it after a little search. She
opened it side by side with Effie's manuscript book. Presently she
found the page in Effie's book which corresponded with the first page
of the printed volume. There were about thirty or forty poems in the
little book: in the manuscript book there were double that number; but
the same poems followed each other one after the other in the same
order, and without the difference of a single word, both in book and
manuscript.
This discovery justifies my remarks about the common coincidences of
daily life.
Again Armorel remembered that Zoe possessed another volume--the First
Series of 'Voice and Echo, by Alec Feilding.' It was lying--she had
seen it in the afternoon--in the drawing-room. She went in search of
it, and returned without waking her companion, who had apparently
fallen asleep over her novel.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Elstree was not sleeping. She was broad
awake, but she was curious. She desired to know what it all meant: why
Armorel was suddenly struck with hardness, why her cheek burned, and
her eyes flashed; and what she wanted in the drawing-room. She
perceived that Armorel had come in search of Alec's first volume of
verse. Oh! Alec's first volume of verse. Now--what might Armorel want
with that book?
* * * * *
At the end of March it is light at about half-past five. Everybody is
then in their soundest sleep. But at that hour Mrs. Elstree came
softly out of her bedroom, wrapped in a dressing-gown, her feet in
soft slippers of white wool, and looked at the books and papers on the
table in Armorel's room. There was a manuscript volume of verse,
professing to be by one Effie Wilmot. There were also two printed
little volumes, bound in white-and-gold, containing verses by one Alec
Feilding. Strange and wonderful! The verses in both books were exactly
the same! Mrs. Elstree returned to bed, thoughtful.
* * * * *
Armorel, for her part, when she returned to her own room, compared the
first series of poems, as she had compared the second, with the
manuscript book. And the first series, too, word for word, was the
same as the earlier poems in the book.
'Good heavens!' cried Armorel. 'The man steals his verses, as he
steals his pictures! Poor Effie! She is as bad as Roland!'
This was Thought the First. One has already seen how the three
Thoughts treated her before. This time it was just the same. Thought
the Second came next, and began to argue. A very capable logician is
Thought the Second, once distinguished for what Oxford men call
Science. If, said Thought the Second, the manuscript and the volumes
agree, it seems to show that Effie has copied the latter into her own
book, and now tries to pass the poems off as her own. Such things have
been done. If this was the case--and why not?--Effie would be, indeed,
a girl full of deceit and desperately wicked. But then, how came Effie
to have in her volume a poem hitherto unpublished, which was lying on
Mr. Feilding's table? Yet, surely, it was quite as probable that the
girl should deceive her as that the man should deceive the world.
Next. Thought the Third. This sage remarked calmly, 'The man is full
of villany. He has deceived the world in the matter of the pictures.
Why not also in the matter of the poems? But let us consider the
character of the verses. Take internal evidence.' Then Armorel read
the whole series right through in the two little printed volumes. Oh!
They were feminine. Only a woman could write these lines. Womanhood
breathed in every one. Now that the key was supplied, she understood.
She recognised the voice, eager, passionate, of her friend.
'They are all Effie's!' she cried again; 'all--all. The man has stolen
his verses as well as his pictures.'
This discovery, when she had quite made up her mind that it was as
true as the former, entirely fell in with all that Effie had told her
concerning herself. She had sold her poems all to one editor--he was
the only editor who would ever take them--and now she was afraid that
he would take no more. Why?--why?--because--oh, now she understood
all--because he wanted to be a dramatist in the same way that he was a
painter and a poet, and neither Archie nor his sister would consent!
'Yes,' she said, 'he is, indeed, the cleverest man in London.'
Before she went to bed that night she had devised a little plan--quite
an ingenious clever little plan. You shall hear what it was, and how
it came off.