‘AH, LOVE, THERE IS NO BETTER LIFE THAN THIS.’
JUSTINA had made a success at the Royal Albert Theatre. The newspapers
were tolerably unanimous in their verdict. The more æsthetic and
critical journals even gave her their approval, which was a kind of
_cachet_. The public, always straightforward and single-minded in their
expression of satisfaction, had no doubt about her. She was accepted at
once as one of the most popular and promising young actresses of the
day—natural yet artistic—free from all trick, unaffected, modest, yet
with the impulsive boldness of a true artist, who forgets alike herself
and her audience in the unalloyed delight of her art.
A success so unqualified gave the girl extreme pleasure, and elevated
Matthew Elgood to a region of bliss which he had never before attained.
For the first time in his life he found himself supplied with ample
means for the gratification of desires which, at their widest, came
within a narrow limit. The manager of the Royal Albert Theatre had made
haste to be liberal, lest other managers, ever on the watch for rising
talent, should attempt to lure Justina to their boards by offers of
larger reward. He sprang his terms at once from the weekly three
guineas, which Matthew had gladly accepted at the outset, to double that
amount, and promised further increase if Miss Elgood’s second part were
as successful as the first.
‘With a very young actress one can never be sure of one’s ground,’ he
said, diplomatically. ‘The part in “No Cards” just fits your daughter.
I’ve no idea what she may be in the general run of business. I’ve seen
so many promising first appearances lead to nothing.’
‘My daughter has had experience, and tuition from an experienced actor,
sir,’ replied Matthew, with dignity. ‘She has a perfect knowledge of her
art, and the more you call upon her the better stuff you will get from
her. Such a part as that in “No Cards” is a mere bagatelle for her. Fits
her, indeed! It fits her too well, sir. Her genius has no room to expand
in it!’
Six guineas—by no means a large income in the eyes of a paterfamilias
with a wife, and a servant or two, and a nest-full of small children to
provide for, to say nothing of the rent of the nest to pay—seemed wealth
to Mr. Elgood, whose ideas of luxury were bounded by a Bloomsbury
lodging, a hot dinner every day, and his glass of gin and water mixed
with a liberal hand. He expanded himself in this new sunshine, passed
his leisure in spelling through the daily papers, escorting his daughter
to and from the theatre, and hanging about the green-room, where he told
anecdotes of Macready, bragged of Justina’s talents when she was out of
the room, and made himself generally agreeable.
That Bloomsbury lodging of Mr. Elgood’s, though located in the shabbier
quarter of the parish, seemed curiously near that highly respectable
street where Maurice Clissold had his handsome first-floor chambers, so
little account did Mr. Clissold make of the distance between the two
domiciles. He was always dropping in at Mr. Elgood’s, bringing Justina
fresh flowers from the glades of Covent Garden, or a new book, or some
new music. She had improved her knowledge of that delightful art during
the last two years, and now played and sang sweetly, with taste and
expression that charmed the poet.
Before Justina had been many weeks at the Albert Theatre, it became an
established fact that Mr. Clissold was to drink tea with Miss Elgood
every afternoon. The gentle temptations of the kettledrum, which he had
resisted so bravely in Eton Square, beguiled him here in Bloomsbury,
though the simple feast was held on a second floor, with a French
mechanic working sedulously at his trade below. Many an hour did Maurice
Clissold waste in careless happy talk in that second-floor sitting-room,
with its odour of stale tobacco, its shabby old-fashioned furniture, its
all-pervading air of poverty and commonness. The room was glorified for
him somehow, as he sat by the sunny window sipping an infusion of congou
and pekoe out of a blue delft teacup.
One day it struck him suddenly that Justina ought to have prettier
teacups, and a few days afterwards there arrived a set of curious old
dragon-china cups and saucers. He had not gone to a china-shop, like a
rich man, and ordered the newest and choicest ware that Minton’s factory
had produced. But he had walked half over London, and peered into all
manner of obscure dens in the broker’s shop line, till he found
something to please him. Old red and blue sprawling monsters of the
crocodile species, on thinnest opalescent porcelain, cups and saucers
that had been hoarded and cherished by ancient housekeepers, only
surrendered when all that life can cling to slipped from death’s dull
hand. The old fragile pottery pleased him beyond measure, and he carried
the cups and saucers off to a cab, packed in a basket of paper shavings,
and took them himself to Justina.
‘I don’t suppose they are worth very much now-a-days when Oriental china
is at a discount,’ he said, ‘and they cost me the merest trifle. But I
thought you’d like them.’
Justina was enraptured. Those old cups and saucers were the first
present she had ever received—the first actual gift bestowed out of
regard for her pleasure which she could count in all her life; except
the same donor’s offerings of books and music.
‘How good of you!’ she said, more than once, and with a look worth three
times as many words. Maurice laughed at her delight.
‘It was worth my perambulation of London to see you so pleased,’ he
said.
‘What, did you take so much trouble to get them?’
‘I walked a good long way. The only merit my offering has is that I took
some pains to find it. I am not a rich man, you know, Justina.’
He called her by her Christian name always, with a certain brotherly
freedom that was not unpleasant to either.
‘I am so glad of that,’ she exclaimed, naïvely.
‘Glad I’m not rich? Why, that’s scarcely friendly, Justina.’
‘Isn’t it? But if you were rich you wouldn’t come to see us so often,
perhaps. Rich people have such hosts of friends.’
‘Yes, Crœsus has generally a wideish circle—not the best people,
possibly, but plenty of them. But I don’t think all the wealth of the
Indies—the peacock throne of the great Mogul, and so on—would make any
difference in my desire to come here. No, Justina, were the chief of the
Rothschilds to transfer his balance to my account to-morrow I should
drop in all the same for my afternoon refresher, as regularly as five
o’clock struck.’
They had talked of literature and poetry, and fully discussed that new
poet whose book Justina had wept over, but by no word had Maurice hinted
at his identity with the writer. He liked to hear her speculate upon
that unknown poet—wondering what he was like—setting up her ideal image
of him. One day he made her describe what manner of man she imagined the
author of ‘A Life Picture;’ but she found it difficult to reduce her
fancies to words.
‘I cannot compliment you on the clearness of your delineation,’ he said.
‘I haven’t yet arrived at the faintest notion of your ideal poet. If you
could compare him to any one we know, it might help me out. Is he like
Mr. Flittergilt, the dramatist?’
‘Mr. Flittergilt,’ she cried, contemptuously. ‘Mr. Flittergilt, who is
always making bad puns, and talking of his own successes, and telling us
that clever remark he made yesterday!’
‘Not like Flittergilt? Has he any resemblance to me, for instance?’
Justina laughed, and shook her head—a very positive shake.
‘No, you are too light-hearted for a poet. You take life too easily. You
seem too happy.’
‘In your presence, Justina. You never see me in my normal condition,’
remonstrated Maurice, laughing.
‘No, I cannot fancy the author of that poem at all like you. He is a man
who has suffered.’
Maurice sighed.
‘And you think I have never suffered?’
‘He must be a man who has loved a false and foolish woman, and who has
been stung to the quick by remorse for his own weakness.’
‘Ah, we are all of us weak once in our lives, and apt to be deceived,
Justina. Happy the man who knows no second weakness, and is not twice
deceived.’
He said this gravely enough for poet and thinker. Justina looked at him
with a puzzled expression.
‘Now you seem quite a different person,’ she said. ‘I could almost fancy
you capable of being a poet. I know there are glimpses of poetry in your
talk sometimes.’
‘When I talk to you, Justina. Some people have an influence that is
almost inspiration. All manner of bright thoughts come to me when you
and I are together.’
‘That cannot be true,’ she said. ‘It is you who bring the bright
thoughts to me. Consider how ignorant I am, and how much you know—all
the great world of poetry, of which so many doors are barred against me.
You read Goethe and Schiller. You go into that solemn temple where the
Greek poets live in their strange old world. When you took me to the
museum the other day, you pointed out all the statues, and talked of
them as familiarly as if they had been the statues of your own friends.
While I, who have hardly a schoolgirl’s knowledge of French, cannot even
read that Alfred de Musset of whom you talk so much.’
‘You know the language in which Shakespeare wrote. You have all that is
noblest and grandest in human literature in your hand when you take up
that calf-bound, closely printed, double-columned volume yonder, from
the old Chiswick press. I think an English writer who never read
anything beyond his Bible and his Shakespeare would have a nobler style
than the man of widest reading, who had not those two books in his heart
of hearts. Other poets are poets. That one man was the god of poetry.
But we will read some of De Musset’s poems together, Justina, and I will
teach you something more than a schoolgirl’s French.’
After this it became an established thing for Maurice and Justina to
read together for an hour or so, just as it was an established thing for
Maurice to drop in at tea-time. He made his selections from De Musset
discreetly, and then passed on to Victor Hugo; and thus that more
valuable part of education which begins when a schoolgirl has been
‘finished’ was not wanting to Justina. Never was a pupil brighter or
more intelligent. Never master more interested in his work.
Matthew Elgood looked on, not unapprovingly. In the first place, he was
a man who took life lightly, and always held to the gospel text about
the day and the evil thereof. He had ascertained from good-natured Mr.
Flittergilt that Maurice Clissold had an income of some hundreds per
annum, and was moreover the scion of a good old family. About the good
old family Matthew cared very little; but the income was an important
consideration, and assured of that main fact, he saw no harm in the
growing intimacy between Justina and Maurice.
‘It’s on the cards for her to do better, of course,’ reflected Mr.
Elgood; ‘actresses have married into the peerage before to-day, and no
end of them have married bankers and heavy mercantile swells. But,
after all, Justina isn’t the kind of beauty to take the world by
storm; and this success of hers may be only a flash in the pan. I
haven’t much confidence in the duration of this blessed new school of
acting, these drawing-room comedies, with their how-d’ye-do, and
won’t-you-take-a-chair dialogue. The good old heavy five-act drama
will have its turn by and by, when the public is tired of this milk
and water. And Justina has hardly physique enough for the five-act
drama. It might be a good thing to get her comfortably married if I
was quite clear about my own position.’
That was an all-important question. Justina single and on the stage
meant, at a minimum, six guineas a week at Mr. Elgood’s disposal. The
girl handed her salary over to the paternal exchequer without a
question, and was grateful for an occasional pound or two towards the
replenishment of her scanty wardrobe.
Mr. Elgood lost no time in trying to arrive at Maurice’s ideas upon this
subject.
‘It’s a hard thing for a man when he outlives his generation,’ he
remarked, plaintively, one Sunday evening when Maurice had dropped in
and found the comedian alone, Justina not having yet returned from
evening service at St. Pancras. ‘Here am I, in the prime of life, with
all my faculties in their full vigour, laid up in port, as useless a
creature as if I were a sheer hulk, like poor Tom Bowling—actually
dependent upon the industry of a girl! There’s something degrading in
the idea. If it were not for Justina, I’d accept an engagement for the
heavies at the lowest slum in London, roar my vitals out in three pieces
a night, rather than eat the bread of dependence. But Justina won’t have
it. “I want you to bring me home from the theatre of a night, father,”
she says. And that’s an argument I can’t resist. The streets of London
are no place for unprotected innocence after dark, and cabs are an
expensive luxury. Yet it’s a bitter thing to consider that if Justina
were to marry I should have to go to the workhouse.’
‘Hardly, if she married an honest man, Mr. Elgood,’ replied Maurice. ‘No
honest man would take your daughter away from you without making some
provision for your future.’
‘Well, I _have_ looked at it in that light,’ said Matthew, reflectively,
as if the question had thus dimly presented itself before him. ‘I think
an honest man wouldn’t feel it quite the right thing to take away my
bread-winner, and leave me to spend my declining days in want and
misery. Yet, as Shakespeare has it, “Age is unnecessary.” “Superfluous
lags the veteran on the stage.” “_To have done_ is to hang—
“Quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail,
In monumental mockery.”’
‘Be assured, Mr. Elgood, that if your daughter marries a man who really
loves her, your age will not be uncared for.’
‘I do not wish to be a burden upon my child,’ pursued the actor,
tearfully.
His second tumbler of gin and water was nearly emptied by this time.
‘A hundred and four pounds per annum—two pounds a week—secured to me,
would give me all I ask of luxury; my lowly lodging, say in May’s Court,
St. Martin’s Lane, or somewhere between Blackfriars Bridge and the
Temple; my rasher or my bloater for breakfast, my beefsteak for dinner;
and my modest glass of gin and water hot, to soothe the tired nerves of
age. These, and an occasional ounce of tobacco, are all the old man
craves.’
‘Your desires are very modest, Mr. Elgood.’
‘They are, my dear boy. I would bear the pang of severance from my sweet
girl, if I saw her ascend to a loftier sphere, and keep my lowly place
without repining. But I should like the two pounds a week made as
certain as the law of the land could make it.’
This was a pretty clear declaration of his views, and having thus
expressed himself, Mr. Elgood allowed life to slip on pleasantly,
enjoying his comfortable little two o’clock dinners, and his afternoon
glass of gin and water, and dozing in his easy chair, while Maurice and
Justina read or talked, only waking at five o’clock when the dragon
teacups made a cheerful clatter, and Justina was prettily busy with the
task of tea-making.
Even the old common lodging-house sitting-room began by and by to assume
a brighter and more homelike air. A vase of choice flowers, a row of
books neatly arranged on the old-fashioned sideboard, a Bohemian glass
inkstand, clean muslin covers tacked over the faded chintz
chair-backs—small embellishments by which a woman makes the best of the
humblest materials. The dragon china tea-service was set out on the
chiffonier top when not in use, and made the chief ornament of the room.
Composition statuettes of Shakespeare and Dante, which Maurice had
bought from an itinerant image-seller, adorned the chimney-piece, whence
the landlady’s shepherd and shepherdess were banished.
In a scene so humble, in a circle so narrow, Maurice spent some of the
happiest hours of his life. He remembered Cavendish Square sometimes
with a pang, the shadowy drawing-room at twilight, the flower-screened
balcony, so pleasant a spot to linger in when the lamps were lighted in
the square below, and the long vista of Wigmore Street converged to a
glittering point, and the moon rose above the gloomy roof of Cavendish
House—hours of happiness as unalloyed—dreams that were over, days that
were gone. And he asked himself whether this second birth of joy was a
delusion and a snare like the first.
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