_Which discovers a Great Man in the Hour of his Triumph_
Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre stood at the windows of the
best rooms of the best hotel in London--he enjoyed the fine view, the
great reach of the Thames--the towers and ancient majestic piles and
many-windowed warehouses turning to fairy palaces in the lilac haze of
the coming twilight.
The great actress’s infatuation for him brought him his every desire in
these days; and he felt that such was as it should be--it was pathetic
to think of the number of common-minded persons who must have lived
in that room and seen no beauty in the world. Nay, it was a crime. He
sighed that Nature was so wasteful.
He stood, his hands behind his back, his colourless hair with its
untidy forelock over his paste-coloured forehead, a smirk under his
drooping, ill-kempt moustache. His sloping shoulders shrugged content:
“God!” said he--“this is my day.”
Indeed, Mr. Myre was thrilled at a far more emotional prospect than any
view of a Thames reach. For days the newspapers had been quarrelling
over him--his name was everywhere. Worry, worry, worry! and in the
midst of the din was always Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre.
He had struck a master-stroke....
Quogge Myre had become weary of his scandal. The novelty of his
relation to Marguerite Olmé was flown. He was not even barred. People
treated it as carelessly as though it had been marriage. Nay, worse;
society was grown tired of it--he was not asked out so much as he had
been.
He could see nothing more to be got out of the romantic association;
he had had a splendid flash of life with her, the glamour that still
remained was but the after-glow----
And the stage notoriously aged women!
He was no weakling to dawdle on in the twilight of a romance, kicking
his feet aimlessly through the fallen leaves of a withered passion.
He saw that he must do something original--or with an original air.
He had conceived a bold scheme for a renewal of public interest in him
and his works.
He had given to the world a recklessly daring account of his most
intimate relations with the great actress, thinly disguised as a
romance--indeed, he had forestalled all misunderstanding, had drawn
aside all shred of disguise, by inspiring preliminary paragraphs in the
press.
The result went beyond his wildest hopes; raised him beyond his fondest
conceit.
The clamour was prodigious; indeed, it did the English press credit,
for it displayed a lurking sense of decency, a hint of manhood in the
shabbiest.
The abuse brought this man to the front again; and the curiosity of
smart society was again assured towards him.
And it would do more--it would make a dramatic end to his life with the
great actress. He had revealed all the secrets of her dressing-table,
the little makeshifts of figure, the use of additions to Nature’s
artistic handicraft.
It had only been fair to himself; for she had begun to be tedious--a
bore--humiliation. To sit opposite to the same woman at table day
after day! It cramped his imagination. There were two or three other
women--it might make a difference if he were not tied to this one--he
had only made one mistake--he ought to have cleared off the whole of
his debts before he published the book--but----
His man came in.
Yes, he would dress for dinner. But he had accepted two invitations for
that night--to which of these handsome women must he send the telegram
of his inability to go?
He decided to dine with the countess.
Quogge Myre adored the “intelligent” peerage.
In her rooms in Paris sat Marguerite Olmé, reading a book.
She had been reading it all day--and the red blood burned her face with
shame. She missed no word of the brutal details of her most intimate
life with this man--there was little reservation, even by innuendo.
The elbow-nudgings and the leer at her love-ecstasies--nay, at the very
manner in which she had hidden the only small defect of her figure; the
display of all her bodily habits; the jibes at the little reliances
on the arts of her dressing-table; the sneers at the coming little
threat of wrinkles, at the grey threads of hairs amongst the glorious
nut-brown masses--tshah! She had been a mad fool to love a man twelve
years her junior! Poor fool, she blamed _herself_!
It was one of those books that are written by such men as batten,
parasitic, louse-like, upon a woman.
And this one not only battened upon her means, but upon her reputation,
her honour, her affections, her very soul.
Merely to be rich is to live in the most vulgar state of poverty.
There have been colossal sneaks in the world of letters, that have not
been without genius--Rousseau, de Musset, and the rest--though their
genius has been somewhat rotten at the core. We read every line of
Rousseau with suspicion, for is there not haunting every line he wrote,
threading in and out through all, the ignominy of the dirty little
caddish soul that slimes the pages of his _Confessions_? And what man
does not feel his sex outraged by the hermaphroditic venom of de Musset
as he sullies the frail love of George Sand?
To betray the woman whose sole folly has been that she loved you! Even
though but for a gadding while.
A woman can give a man nothing greater than the love of her life--that
is the weightiest dower. It is beyond a price. The sentences that
can only be whispered--the sentences that cannot be whispered--the
tendernesses--the surrenders--the endearments--the mystic emotions
that reach in the love of man and woman the nearest to some ecstatic
conception of the mystery of life, that are the worthy beginnings of
a new life, these things can only be lived; they cannot be spoken of
even by the most reverent tongue; but when their exposure is made the
foul weapon with which to wound the woman for her only fault in having
surrendered herself to an egregious cad, that cad is only fit to be
spat upon. The betrayal of the Christ was to this a healthy sin. Such a
dirty rogue should be blotted out. The wit of such a man must stink--if
he have wit. The art of such a man must be a foul sore. The influence
of such a man must be a filthy disease; his companionship a loathsome
suppuration; his life a paltry ignominy.
Marguerite Olmé brushed back her hair from her brow with the wondrous
hands that were as eloquent as her voice. She was stunned with shame.
She uttered a little moan, when she should have answered a light knock
at the door.
Her maid entered:
“Madame--it is time to dress for the play--it is the first night of----”
“Hush, Ernestine!” she said hoarsely; and the girl was startled at the
voice.
“Madame is ill?”
The girl ran to her as to a child.
“No----”
The wounded woman stroked the girl’s shoulders, and signed to a desk;
the maid brought her pen and ink and paper.
After she had written awhile, the great actress handed the maid a book
and a letter:
“Ernestine--this is like a play, isn’t it?” She smiled: “Burn that,”
she said--“and post this.”
Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre was released from his bondage
quite easily. He was cast off.
He read the letter, shrugged his shoulders, flung the scented
notepaper into the fire. He had promised to read her letter to his
admirers--when it came. He decided that he must invent one instead.
Yet--this one--well----
It was simple enough--quite devoid of style:
“Mr. Myre would do well to avoid Madame Olmé’s house in the future,
as the footmen have orders to flog him down the stairs.”
Mr. Myre smiled:
“The French are so melodramatic!” he said.