‘THEN STREAMED LIFE’S FUTURE ON THE FADING PAST.’
MORE than a year had gone by since Maurice Clissold had said farewell to
Borcel End, and he had not yet found leisure to revisit that peaceful
homestead. He had corresponded with Martin Trevanard regularly during
the interval, and had heard all that was to be told of Borcel and its
neighbourhood; how Mrs. Penwyn was daily becoming more and more popular,
how her schools flourished, her cottagers thrived, her cottage gardens
blossomed as the rose; and how Mr. Penwyn, though respected for his
liberality and justice, and looked up to very much in his parliamentary
capacity, had not yet found the knack of making himself popular. From
time to time, in reply to Maurice’s inquiries, Martin had written a few
words about Muriel. She was always the same—there was no change. She was
neither better nor worse, and the good old grandmother was very careful
of her, and kept her from wandering about the house at night. Nothing
had happened to disturb the even current of life at Borcel End.
This year that had gone had brought success, and, in some measure, fame,
to Maurice Clissold. He had published the long-contemplated volume of
verse, the composition whereof had been his labour and delight since he
left the university. His were not verses ‘thrown off’ in the leisure
half-hours of a man whose occupations were more serious—verses to be
apologized for, with a touch of proud humility, in a preface. They
contained the full expression of his life. They were strong with all the
strength of his manhood. Passion, fervour, force, intensity, were there;
and the world, rarely slow to appreciate youthful fire, was quick to
recognise their real power. Maurice Clissold slowly awoke to the fact
that, under his _nom de plume_, he was famous. He had taken care not to
affix his real name to that confession of faith—not to let all the world
know that his was that inner life which a poet reveals half
unconsciously, even when he writes about the shadows his fancy has
created. In the story-poem which made the chief portion of his volume
Maurice had, in some wise, told the story of his own passion, and his
own disappointment. Pain and disillusion had given their bitter flavour
to his verse; but happily for the poet’s reputation, it was just that
bitter-sweet—that sub-acid, which the lovers of sentimental poetry like.
That common type of womanhood, fair and lovable, and only false under
the pressure of circumstance, was here represented with undeniable
vigour. The modern Helen, the woman whose passive beauty and sweetness
are the source of tears and death, and whom the world forgives because
she is mild and fair, here found a powerful limner. He had spared not a
detail of that cruel portrait. It was something better than a miniature
of that one girl who had jilted him. It was the universal image of
weakly, selfish womanhood, yielding, unstable, caressing, dependent, and
innately false.
Side by side with this picture from life he had set the ideal woman,
pure, and perfect, and true, lovely in face and form, but more lovely in
mind and soul. Between these two he had placed his hero, wayward,
mistaken, choosing the poison-flower, instead of the sweet thornless
rose, led through evil ways to a tragical end, comforted by the
angel-woman only as chill death sealed his lips. Bitterness and sorrow
were the dominant notes of the verse, but it was a pleasing bitter, and
a melodious sadness.
There was a run on Mudie’s for ‘A Life Picture, and other Poems,’ by
Clifford Hawthorn. The book was widely reviewed, but while some critics
hailed the bard as that real poet for whom the age had been waiting,
others dissected the pages with a merciless scalpel, and denounced the
writer as a profligate and an infidel. The fugitive pieces, brief lyrics
some of them, with the delicate finish of a cabinet picture, won almost
universal favour. In a word Maurice Clissold’s first venture was a
success.
He was not unduly elated. He did not believe in himself as the poet for
whom the expectant age had been on the look-out. He had measured himself
against giants, and was pretty clear in his estimate of his own powers.
This pleasant taste of the strong wine of success made him only more
intent upon doing better. It stimulated ambition, rather than satisfied
it. Perhaps the adverse criticism did him most good, for it created just
that spirit of opposition which is the best incentive to effort.
Very happy was the bachelor-poet’s life in those days. He had lived just
long enough to survive the pain of his first disappointment. It was a
bitter memory still, but a memory which but rarely recurred to mar his
peace. He had friends who understood him—two or three real friends, who
with his publisher alone knew the secret of his authorship. He had an
occupation he loved, just enough ambition to give a stimulus to life,
and he had not a care.
He had visited the Penwyns in Eton Square several times during the
course of the season, but he had been careful not to go to that very
pleasant house too often. Afternoon tea in Mrs. Penwyn’s
drawing-room—the smaller drawing-room, with its wealth of flowers, was a
most delightful manner of wasting an hour or so. But Maurice felt
somehow that it was an indulgence he must not give himself too often. He
had a lurking fear of Viola. She was very fair, and sweet and gentle,
like the girl he had loved, and though he had, as yet, regarded her with
only the most fraternal feeling—nay, a sentiment approaching
indifference,—he had an idea that there might be peril in too much
friendliness.
Dropping in one afternoon at the usual hour, he was pleased to see his
own book on one of the gipsy tables.
‘Have you read this “Life Picture,” which the critics have been abusing
so vigorously?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I saw it dreadfully cut up in the _Saturday Review_, so I thought
it must be nice, and sent to the publishers for a copy,’ answered Madge.
‘I’ve had it down on my Mudie’s list ever so long, without effect. It’s
a wonderful book. Viola and I were up till three o’clock this morning
reading it together. Neither of us could wait. From the moment we began
with that picture of a London twilight, and the two girls and the young
lawyer sitting in a balcony talking, we were riveted. It is all so easy,
so lifelike, so full of vigour and freshness and colour.’
‘The author would be very much flattered if he could hear you,’ said
Maurice.
‘The author—oh, I’m afraid he must be rather a disagreeable person. He
seems to have such a bad opinion of women.’
‘Oh, Madge, his heroine is a noble creature!’ cried Viola.
‘Yes, but the woman his hero loves best is worthless.’
‘Well, I should like to know the author,’ said Viola.
‘I don’t think Churchill would get on very well with him,’ said Madge.
And that to her mind made an end of the question.
The only people she sought were people after Churchill’s own heart. This
poet had a wildness in his ideas which the Squire of Penwyn would hardly
approve.
* * * * *
Among Mr. Clissold’s literary acquaintance was a clever young dramatic
author, whose work was just beginning to be popular. One afternoon at
the club—a rather Bohemian institution for men of letters, in one of the
streets of the Strand—this gentleman—Mr. Flittergilt—invited Maurice to
assist at the first performance of his last comedietta at a small and
popular theatre near at hand.
They dined together, and dropped in at the theatre just as the curtain
was falling on a half-hour farce played while the house was filling. The
piece of the evening came next. ‘No Cards,’ an original comedy in three
acts; which announcement was quite enough to convince Maurice that the
motive was adapted from Scribe, and the comic underplot conveyed from a
Palais Royal farce.
‘There’s a new girl in my piece,’ said Mr. Flittergilt, on the tiptoe of
expectation, ‘such a pretty girl, and by no means a bad actress.’
‘Where does she come from?’
‘Goodness knows. It’s her first appearance in London.’
‘Humph, comes to the theatre in her brougham, I suppose, and has her
dresses made by Worth.’
‘Not the least in the world. She wore a shabby grey thing, which I
believe you call alpaca, at rehearsal this morning, and she ran into the
theatre, dripping like a naiad, in a waterproof—if you can imagine a
naiad in a waterproof—having failed to get a seat in a twopenny
omnibus.’
‘That is the prologue,’ said Maurice, with a slight shoulder-shrug.
‘Perhaps Madge was right, and that he really had a bad opinion of
women.’
He turned to the programme listlessly presently, and read the old names
he knew so well, for this house was a favourite lounge of his.
‘Is the piece really original, Jack?’ he inquired of his friend.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Flittergilt, pulling on a new glove, and making a wry
face, perhaps at the tightness of the glove—perhaps at the awkwardness
of the question—‘I admit there was a germ in that last piece at the
Vaudeville, which I have ripened and expanded, you know. There always is
a germ, you see, Maurice. It’s only from the brains of a Jove that you
get a full-grown Minerva at a rush.’
‘I understand. The piece is a clever adaptation. Why, what’s this?’
It was a name in the programme which evoked that sudden question.
‘Celia Flower, Miss Justina Elgood.’
‘Flittergilt,’ said Maurice, solemnly, ‘I know that young woman, and I
regret to inform you that, though really a superior girl in private
life, she is a very poor actress. If the fortunes of your piece are
entrusted to her, I am sorry for you.’
‘If she acts as well to-night as she did this morning at rehearsal, I
shall be satisfied,’ replied Mr. Flittergilt. ‘But how did you come to
know her?’
Maurice told the story of those two days at Eborsham. ‘Poor child, when
last I saw her she was bowed down with grief for my murdered friend. I
dare say she has forgotten all about him by this time.’
‘She doesn’t look like a girl who would easily forget,’ said the
dramatist.
The curtain rose on one of those daintily furnished interiors which the
modern stage realizes to such perfection. Flowers, birds, statuettes,
pictures, a glimpse of sunlit garden on one side, and an open piano on
the other. A girl was seated on the central ottoman, looking over a
photograph album. A young man was in a half-recumbent position at her
feet, looking up at her. The girl was Justina Elgood—the old Justina,
and yet a new Justina—so wondrously had the overgrown girl of seventeen
improved in womanly beauty and grace. The dark blue eyes, with their
depth of thought and tenderness of expression, were alone unchanged.
Maurice could have recognised the girl anywhere by those eyes.
The management had provided the costumes for the piece, and Justina, in
her white silk dress, with its voluminous frills and flouncings, looked
as elegant a young woman as one could desire to see offered up,
Iphigenia-like, on the altar of loyalty at St. James’s Palace, to be
almost torn to pieces on a drawing-room day. Celia Flower is the heroine
of the comedy, and this is her wedding morning, and this young man at
her feet is a cousin and rejected lover. She is looking over the
portraits of her friends, in order to determine which she shall preserve
and which drop after marriage.
Mr. Flittergilt’s comedy goes on to show that Celia’s intended union is
altogether a mistake, that she really loves the rejected cousin, that he
honestly loves her, that nothing but misery can result from the marriage
of interest which has been planned by Celia’s relatives.
Celia is at first indifferent and frivolous, thinking more of her bridal
toilet than of the bond which it symbolizes. Little by little she
awakens to deeper thought and deeper feeling, and here, slender as Mr.
Flittergilt’s work is, there is scope for the highest art.
Curiously different is the actress of to-day from the girl whose
ineptitude the strolling company at Eborsham had despised. There is a
brightness and spontaneity about her comedy, a simple artless tenderness
in her touches of sentiment, which show the untaught actress—the actress
whose art has grown out of her own depth of feeling, whose acting is the
outcome of a rich and thoughtful mind rather than the hard and dry
result of tuition and study, or the mechanical art of imitation. Impulse
and fancy give their bright brief flashes of light and colour to the
interpretation, and the dramatist’s creation lives and moves before the
audience,—not a mere mouthpiece for smart sayings or graceful bits of
sentiment—but a being with a soul, an original absolute creation of an
original mind.
The audience are enchanted, Mr. Flittergilt is in fits of admiration of
himself and the actress. ‘By Jove, that girl is as good as Nesbitt, and
my dialogue is equal to Sheridan’s!’ he ejaculates, when the first act
is over, and the rashly enthusiastic, without waiting for the end, begin
to clamour for the author. And Maurice—well, Maurice sits in a brown
study, far back in the box, and unseen by the actors, astride upon his
chair, his arms folded upon the back of it, his chin upon his folded
arms, the image of intense contemplation.
‘By heaven, the girl is a genius,’ he says to himself. ‘I thought there
was something noble about her, but I did not think two short years would
work such a change as this.’
At the end of the piece Justina was received with what it is the fashion
to call an ovation. There were no bouquets thrown to her, for these
floral offerings are generally pre-arranged by the friends and admirers
of an actress, and Justina had neither friends nor admirers in all the
great city to plan her triumph. She had conquered by the simple force of
an art which was spontaneous and unstudied as the singing of a
nightingale. Time and practice had made her mistress of the mechanism of
her art, had familiarized her with the glare of the lights and the
strange faces of the crowd, had made her as much at her ease on the
stage as in her own room. The rest had come unawares, it had come with
the ripening of her mind, come with the thoughtfulness and depth of
feeling that had been the growth of that early disappointment, that
first brief dream of love, with its sad sudden ending.
When the piece was over, and Justina and Mr. Flittergilt had enjoyed
their triumph, and all the actors had been called for and applauded by a
delighted audience, Maurice suddenly left the box. He had done nothing
to help the applause, but had stood in his dark corner like a rock,
while the little theatre shook with the plaudits of pit and gallery.
‘Come, I say, that’s rather cool,’ the dramatist muttered to himself.
‘He might have said something civil, anyhow; I was just going to ask him
if he’d like to go behind the scenes, too.’ The accomplished Flittergilt
had contented himself with bowing from his box, and he was now in haste
to betake himself to the green-room, there to receive the
congratulations of the company, and to render the usual meed of praise
and thanks to the interpreters of his play.
The green-room at the Royal Albert Theatre was a very superior apartment
to the green-room at Eborsham. It was small, but bright and
comfortable-looking, with carpeted floor, looking-glasses over
chimney-piece and console table, photographs and engraved portraits of
popular actors and actresses upon the gaily papered walls, a cushioned
divan all round the room, and nothing but the table and its
appurtenances wanted to make the apartment resemble a billiard-room in a
pleasant unpretentious country house.
Here, standing by the console table, and evidently quite at his ease,
Mr. Flittergilt found his friend talking to the new actress. Mr.
Clissold had penetrated to the sacred chamber somehow, without the
dramatist’s safe-conduct.
‘How did you get here?’ asked Flittergilt, annoyed.
‘Oh, I hardly know. The old man at the stage door didn’t want to admit
me. I’m afraid I said I was Miss Elgood’s brother, or something of that
kind, I was so desperately anxious to see her.’
He had been congratulating Justina on her developed talents. The girl’s
success had surprised herself more than any one else. She had been
applauded and praised by provincial critics of late, but she had not
thought that a London audience was so easily conquered. The dark eyes
shone with a new light, for success was very sweet. In the background
stood a figure that Maurice had not observed till just now, when he made
way for Mr. Flittergilt.
This was Matthew Elgood, clad in the same greasy-looking frock coat, or
just such a coat as that which he had worn two years ago at Eborsham,
but smartened by an expanse of spotless shirt-front, which a side view
revealed to be only frontage, and not an integral part of his shirt, and
a purple satin cravat.
‘How do you do, Mr. Elgood? Are you engaged here too?’ asked Maurice.
‘No, sir. There was no opening for a man of my standing. The pieces
which are popular now-a-days are too flimsy to afford an opening for an
actor of weight, or else they are one-part pieces written for some
mannerist of the hour. The genuine old legitimate school of acting—the
school which was fostered in the good old provincial theatres—is nowhere
now-a-days. I bow to the inevitable stroke of Time. I was born some
twenty years too late. I ought to have been the compeer of Macready.’
‘Your daughter has been fortunate in making such a hit.’
‘Ay, sir. The modern stage is a fine field for a young woman with beauty
and figure, and when that young woman’s talents have been trained and
fostered by a man who knows his art, she enters the arena with the
assurance of success. There was a time when the malignant called my
daughter a stick. There was a time when my daughter hated the
profession. But my fostering care has wrought the change which surprises
you to-night. A dormant genius has been awakened—I will not venture to
say by a kindred genius, lest the remark should savour of egotism.’
‘You are without occupation, then, in London, Mr. Elgood?’
‘Yes, Mr. Clissold, but I have my vocation; I am here as guardian and
protector of my innocent child.’
‘I told Miss Elgood two years ago that, if ever she came to London and
needed a friend, my best services should be at her disposal. But her
success of to-night has made her independent of friendship.’
‘I don’t know about that, Mr. Clissold. You are a literary man, I
understand, a friend of Mr. Flittergilt’s, and you have doubtless some
influence with dramatic critics. One can never have too much help of
that kind. There is a malevolent spirit in the press which requires to
be soothed and overcome by friendly influences. Beautiful, gifted as my
daughter is, I feel by no means sure of the newspapers. Our unpretending
domicile is at No. 27, Hudspeth Street, Bloomsbury, a lowly but a
central locality. If you will favour us with a call I shall be
delighted. Our Sunday evenings are our own.’
‘I shall lose no time in availing myself of your kind permission,’ said
Maurice; and then he added in a lower tone, for Mr. Elgood’s ear only,
‘I hope your daughter has got over the grief which that dreadful event
at Eborsham occasioned her.’
‘She has recovered from the blow, sir, but she has not forgotten it. A
curiously sensitive child, Mr. Clissold. Who could have supposed that so
brief an acquaintance with your murdered friend could have produced so
deep an impression upon that young mind? She was never the same girl
afterwards. From that time she seemed to me to dwell apart from us all,
in a world of her own. She became after a while more attentive to her
professional duties—more anxious to excel—more interested in the
characters she represented, and she began to surprise us all by touches
of pathos which we had not expected from her. She engaged with Mr.
Tilberry, of the Theatre Royal, Westborough, for the juvenile lead about
six months after your young friend’s death, and has maintained a leading
position in the provinces ever since. “Sweet are the uses of adversity,
which, like the toad,” &c. Her genius seemed to have been called into
being by sorrow. Good night, Mr. Clissold. I dare say Justina will be
ready to go home by this time. If you _can_ square any of the critics
for us, you will discover that Matthew Elgood knows the meaning of the
word gratitude.’
Maurice promised to do his best, and that evening at his club near the
Strand, used all the influence he had in Justina’s favour. He found his
task easy. The critics who had seen Mr. Flittergilt’s new comedy were
delighted with the new actress. Those who had been elsewhere, assisting
at the production of somebody else’s new piece, heard their brothers of
the pen enthusiastic in their encomiums, and promised to look in at the
Royal Albert Theatre on Monday.
To-night was Saturday. Maurice promised himself that he would call in
Hudspeth Street to-morrow evening. He had another engagement, but it was
one that could be broken without much offence. And he was curious to see
the successful actress at home. Was she much changed from the girl he
had surprised on her knees by the clumsy old arm-chair, shedding
passionate tears for James Penwyn’s death? He had thought her half a
child in those days, and the possibilities of fame whereof he had spoken
so consolingly very far away. And behold! she was famous already—in a
small way, perhaps, but still famous. On Monday the newspapers would be
full of her praises. She would be more immediately known to the world
than he, the poet, had made himself yet. And she had already tasted the
sweetness of applause coming straight from the hearts and hands of her
audience, not filtered through the pens of critics, and losing
considerable sweetness in the process.
* * * * *
The illimitable regions of Bloomsbury have room enough for almost every
diversity of domicile, from the stately mansions of Russell Square to
the lowly abode of the mechanic and the charwoman. Hudspeth Street is an
old-fashioned, narrow street of respectable and substantial-looking
houses, which must once have been occupied by the professional classes,
or have served as the private dwellings of wealthy traders, but which
now are for the most part let off in floors to the shabby-genteel and
struggling section of humanity, or to more prosperous mechanics, who ply
their trades in the sombre paneled rooms, with their tall mantel-boards
and deep-set windows.
The street lies between the oldest square of this wide district and a
busy thoroughfare, where the costermongers have it all their own way
after dark; but Hudspeth Street wears at all times a tranquil gloom, as
if it had been forgotten somehow by the majority, and left behind in the
general march of progress. Other streets have burst out into stucco, and
masked their aged walls with fronts of plaster, as ancient dowagers hide
their wrinkles under Bloom de Ninon or Blanc de Rosati. But here the
dingy old brick façades remain undisturbed, the old carved garlands
still decorate the doorways, the old extinguishers still stand ready to
quench torches that have gone to light the dark corridors of Hades.
To Maurice Clissold on this summer evening—Sunday evening, with the
sound of many church bells filling the air—Hudspeth Street seems a
social study, a place worth half an hour’s thought from a philosophical
lounger, a place which must have its memories.
No. 27 is cleaner and brighter of aspect than its immediate neighbours.
A brass plate upon the door announces that Louis Charlevin, artist in
buhl and marqueterie, occupies the ground-floor. Another plate upon the
doorpost bears the name of Miss Girdleston, teacher of music; and a
third is inscribed with the legend, Mrs. Mapes, Furnished Lodgings, and
has furthermore a little hand pointing to a bell, which Maurice rings.
The door is opened by a young person, who is evidently Mrs. Mapes’s
daughter. Her hair is too elaborate, her dress too smart, her manner too
easy for a servant under Mrs. Mapes’s dominion. She believes that Mr.
Elgood is at home, and begs the visitor to step up to the second floor
front, not troubling herself to precede and announce him.
Maurice obeys, and speeds with light footstep up the dingy old
staircase. The house is clean and neat enough, but has not been painted
for the last thirty years, he opines. He taps lightly at the door and
some one bids him enter. Mr. Elgood is lying on a sofa, smoking
luxuriously, with a glass of cold punch on the little table at his
elbow. The Sunday papers lie around him. He has been reading the records
of Justina’s success, and is revelling in the firstfruits of prosperity.
Justina is sitting by an open window, dressed in some pale lavender-hued
gown, which sets off the tall and graceful figure. Her head leans a
little back against the chintz cushion of the high-backed chair, an open
book lies on her lap. It falls as she rises to receive the visitor, and
Maurice stoops to pick it up.
His own poem.
It gives him more pleasure, somehow, to find it in her hands than he
derived from the praises of those two fashionable and accomplished
women, Mrs. Penwyn and her sister. It touches him more deeply still to
see that Justina’s cheeks are wet with tears.
‘She has been crying over some foolish poetry, instead of thanking
Providence for such criticism as this,’ said Mr. Elgood, slapping his
hand upon the _Sunday Times_.
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