An incident, which Matravers had found once or twice uppermost in his
mind during the last few days, was recalled to him with sudden
vividness as he took his seat in an ill-lit, shabbily upholstered box
in the second tier of the New Theatre. He seemed almost to hear again
the echoes of that despairing cry which had rung out so plaintively
across the desert of empty benches from somewhere amongst the shadows
of the auditorium. Several times during the performance he had glanced
up in the same direction; once he had almost fancied he could see a
solitary, bent figure sitting rigid and motionless in the first row of
the amphitheatre. No man was possessed of a smaller share of curiosity
in the ordinary sense of the word than Matravers; but the thought
that this might be the same man come again to witness a play which had
appealed to him before with such peculiar potency, interested him
curiously. At the close of the second act he left his seat, and, after
several times losing his way, found himself in the little narrow space
behind the amphitheatre. Leaning over the partition, and looking
downwards, he had a good view of the man who sat there quite alone,
his head resting upon his hand, his eyes fixed steadily upon a soiled
and crumpled programme, which was spread out carefully before him.
Matravers wondered whether there was not in the clumsy figure and
awkward pose something vaguely familiar to him.
An attendant of the place standing by his side addressed him
respectfully.
"Not much of a house for the last night, sir," he remarked.
Matravers agreed, and moved his head downwards towards the solitary
figure.
"There is one man, at least," he said, "who finds the play
interesting."
The attendant smiled.
"I am afraid that the gentleman is a little bit 'hoff,' sir. He seems
half silly to talk to. He's a queer sort, anyway. Comes here every
blessed night, and in the same place. Never misses. Once he came
sixpence short, and there was a rare fuss. They wouldn't let him in,
and he wouldn't go away. I lent it him at last."
"Did he pay you back?" Matravers asked.
"The very next night; never had to ask him, either. There goes the
bell, sir. Curtain up in two minutes."
The subject of their conversation had not once turned his head or
moved towards them. Matravers, conscious that he was not likely to do
so, returned to his seat just as the curtain rose upon the last act.
The play, grim, pessimistic, yet lifted every now and then to a higher
level by strange flashes of genius on the part of the woman, dragged
wearily along to an end. The echoes of her last speech died away; she
looked at him across the footlights, her dark eyes soft with many
regrets, which, consciously or not, spoke to him also of reproach. The
curtain descended, and her hands fell to her side. It was the end, and
it was failure!
Matravers, making his way more hurriedly than usual from the house,
hoped to gain another glimpse of the man who had remained the solitary
tenant of the round of empty seats. But he was too late. The man and
the audience had melted away in a thin little stream. Matravers stood
on the kerbstone hesitating. He had not meant to go behind to-night.
He had a feeling that she must be regarding him at that moment as the
executioner of her ambitions. Besides, she was going on to a
reception; she would only be in a hurry. Nevertheless, he made his way
round to the stage door. He would at least have a glimpse of her. But
as he turned the corner, she was already stepping into her carriage.
He paused, and simultaneously with her disappearance he realized that
he was not the only one who had found his way to the narrow street to
see the last of Berenice. A man was standing upon the opposite
pavement a little way from the carriage, yet at such an angle that a
faint, yellow light shone upon what was visible of his pale face. He
had watched her come out, and was gazing now fixedly at the window of
her brougham. Matravers knew in a moment that this was the man whom he
had seen sitting alone in the amphitheatre; and almost without any
definite idea as to his purpose, he crossed the street towards him.
The man, hearing his footstep, looked up with a sudden start; then,
without a second's hesitation, he turned and hurried off. Matravers
still followed him. The man heard his footsteps, and turned round,
then, with a little moan, he started running, his shoulders bent, his
head forward. Matravers halted at once. The man plunged into the
shadows, and was lost amongst the stream of people pouring forth from
the doors of the Strand theatres.
At her door an hour later Berenice saw the outline of a figure now
become very familiar to her, and Matravers, who had been leaving a box
of roses, whose creamy pink-and-white blossoms, mingled together in a
neighbouring flower-shop, had pleased his fancy, heard his name called
softly across the pavement. He turned, and saw Berenice stepping from
her carriage. With an old-fashioned courtesy, which always sat well
upon him, he offered her his arm.
[Illustration: With an old-fashioned courtesy ... he offered her his
arm]
"I thought that you were to be late," he said, looking down at her
with a shade of anxiety in his clear, grave face. "Was not this Lady
Truton's night?"
She nodded.
"Yes; don't talk to me--just yet. I am upset! Come in and sit with
me!"
He hesitated. With a scrupulous delicacy, which sometimes almost
irritated her, he had invariably refrained from paying her visits so
late as this. But to-night was different! Her fingers were clasping
his arm,--and she was in trouble. He suffered himself to be led up the
stairs into her little room.
"Some coffee for two," she told her woman. "You can go to bed then! I
shall not want you again!"
She threw herself into an empty chair, and loosened the silk ribbons
of her opera cloak.
"Do you mind opening the window?" she asked. "It is stifling in here.
I can scarcely breathe!"
He threw it wide open, and wheeled her chair up to it. The glare from
the West End lit up the dark sky. The silence of the little room and
the empty street below, seemed deepened by that faint, far-away roar
from the pandemonium of pleasure. A light from the opposite side of
the way,--or was it the rising moon behind the dark houses?--gleamed
upon her white throat, and in her soft, dim eyes. She lay quite still,
looking into vacancy. Her hand hung over the side of the chair nearest
to him. Half unconsciously he took it up and stroked it soothingly.
The tears gushed from her eyes. At his kindly touch her over-wrought
feelings gave way. Her fingers closed spasmodically upon his.
He said nothing. The time had passed when words were necessary between
them. They were near enough to one another now to understand the
value of silence. But those few moments seemed to him for ever like a
landmark in his life. A new relation was born between them in the
passionate intensity of that deep quietness.
He watched her bosom cease to heave, and the dimness pass from her
eyes. Then he took up the box which he had been carrying, and emptied
the pink-and-white blossoms into her lap. She stooped down and buried
her face in them. Their faint, delicate perfume seemed to fill the
room.
"You are very good," she said abruptly. "Thank God that there is some
one who is good to me!"
The coffee was in the room, and Berenice threw off her cloak and
brought it to him. A fit of restlessness seemed to have followed upon
her moment of weakness. She began walking with quick, uneven steps up
and down the room. Matravers forgot to drink his coffee. He was
watching her with a curious sense of emotional excitement. The little
chamber was full of half lights and shadows, and there seemed to him
something almost unearthly about this woman with her soft grey gown
and marble face. He was stirred by her presence in a new way. The
rustle of her silken skirts as she swept in and out of the dim light,
the delicate whiteness of her arms and throat, the flashing of a
single diamond in her dark coiled hair,--these seemed trivial things
enough, yet they were yielding him a new and mysterious pleasure. For
the first time his sense of her beauty was fully aroused. Every now
and then he caught faint glimpses of her face. It was like the face of
a new woman to him. There was some tender and wonderful change there,
which he could not understand, and yet which seemed to strike some
responsive chord in his own emotions. Instinctively he felt that she
was passing into a new phase of life. Surely, he, too, was walking
hand and hand with her through the shadows! The touch of her
interlaced fingers had burned his flesh.
[Illustration: There seemed to him something almost unearthly about
this woman with her soft grey gown and marble face]
Presently she came and sat down beside him.
"Forgive me!" she murmured. "It does me so much good to have you here.
I am very foolish!"
"Tell me about it!"
She frowned very slightly, and looked away at a star.
"It is nothing! It is beginning to seem less than nothing! I have
written a book for women, for the sake of women, because my heart
ached for their sufferings, and because I too have felt the fire. I
wonder whether it was really an evil book," she added, still looking
away from him at that single star in the dark sky. "People say so! The
newspapers say so! Yet it was a true book! I wrote it from my soul,--I
wrote it with my own blood. I have not been a good woman, but I have
been a pure woman! When I wrote it, I was lonely; I have always been
lonely. But I thought, now I shall know what it is like to have
friends. Many women will understand that I have suffered in doing this
thing for their sakes! For it was my own life which I lay bare, my own
life, my own sufferings, my own agony! I thought, they will come to me
and they will thank me for it! I shall have sympathy and I shall have
friends.... And now my book is written, and I am wiser. I know now
that woman does not want her freedom! Though they drag her down into
hell, the chains of her slavery have grown around her heart and have
become precious to her! Tell me, are those pure women who willingly
give their souls and their bodies in marriage to men who have sinned
and who will sin again? They do it without disguise, without shame,
for position, or for freedom, or for money! yet there are other women
whom they call courtesans, and from whose touch they snatch away the
hem of their skirts in horror! Oh, it is terrible! There can be no
corruption worse than this in hell!"
"Yours has been the common disappointment of all reformers," he said
gravely. "Gratitude is the rarest tribute the world ever offers to
those who have laboured to cleanse it. When you are a little older you
will have learnt your lesson. But it is always very hard to learn....
Tell me about to-night!"
She raised her head a little. A faint spot of colour stained her
cheek.
"There was one woman who praised me, who came to see me, and sent me
cards to go to her house. To-night I went. Foolishly I had hoped a
good deal from it! I did not like Lady Truton herself, but I hoped
that I should meet other women there who would be different! It was a
new experience to me to be going amongst my own sex. I was like a
child going to her first party. I was quite excited, almost nervous. I
had a little dream,--there would be some women there--one would be
enough--with whom I might be friends, and it would make life very
different to me to have even one woman friend. But they were all
horrid. They were vulgar, and one woman, she took me on one side and
praised my book. She agreed, she said, with every word in it! She had
found out that her husband had a mistress,--some chorus-girl,--and she
was repaying him in his own coin. She too had a lover--and for every
infidelity of his she was repaying him in this manner. She dared to
assume that I--I should approve of her conduct; she asked me to go and
see her! My God! it was hideous."
Matravers laid his hand upon hers, and leaned forward in his chair.
"Lady Truton's was the very worst house you could have gone to," he
said gently. "You must not be too discouraged all at once. The women
of her set, thank God, are not in the least typical Englishwomen.
They are fast and silly,--a few, I am afraid, worse. They make use
of the free discussions in these days of the relations between our
sexes, to excuse grotesque extravagances in dress and habits which
society ought never to pardon. Do not let their judgments or their
misinterpretations trouble you! You are as far above them, Berenice,
as that little star is from us."
"I do not pretend to be anything but a woman," she said, bending her
head, "and to stand alone always is very hard."
"It is very hard for a man! It must be very much harder for a woman.
But, Berenice, you would not call yourself absolutely friendless!"
She raised her head for a moment. Her dark eyes were wonderfully soft.
"Who is there that cares?" she murmured.
He touched the tips of her fingers. Her soft, warm hand yielded itself
readily, and slid into his.
"Do I count for no one?" he whispered.
There was a silence in the little room. The yellow glare had faded
from the sky, and a night wind was blowing softly in. A clock in the
distance struck one. Together they sat and gazed out upon the
darkness. Looking more than once into her pale face, Matravers
realized again that wonderful change. His own emotions were curiously
disturbed. He, himself, so remarkable through all his life for a
changeless serenity of purpose, and a fixed masterly control over his
whole environment, felt himself suddenly like a rudderless ship at
the mercy of a great unknown sea. A sense of drifting was upon him.
They were both drifting. Surely this little room, with its dim light
and shadows and its faint odour of roses, had become a hotbed of
tragedy. He had imagined that death itself was something like this,--a
dissolution of all fixed purposes. And with it all, this remnant of
life, if it were but a remnant, seemed suddenly to be flowing through
his veins with all the rich, surpassing sweetness of some exquisite
symphony!
"You count for a great deal," she said. "If you had not come to me, I
think that I must have died.... If I were to lose you ... I think that
I should die."
She threw herself back in her chair with a gesture of complete
abandonment. Her arms hung loosely down over its sides. The moonlight,
which had been gradually gathering strength, shone softly upon her
pale face and on the soft, lustrous pearls at her throat. Her dark,
wet eyes seemed touched with smouldering fire. She looked at him. He
sprang to his feet and walked restlessly up and down the room. His
forehead was hot and dry, and his hands were trembling.
"There is not any reason," he said, halting suddenly in front of her,
"why we should lose one another. I was coming to-morrow morning to
make a proposition to you. If you accept it, we shall be forced to see
a great deal of one another."
"Yes?"
"You perhaps did not know that I had any ambitions as a dramatic
author. Yet my first serious work after I left Oxford was a play; I
took it up yesterday."
"You have really written a play," she murmured, "and you never told
me."
"At least I am telling you now," he reminded her; "I am telling you
before any one, because I want your help."
"You want what?"
"I want you to help me by taking the part of my heroine. I read it
yesterday by appointment to Fergusson. He accepted it at once on the
most liberal terms. I told him there was one condition--that the part
of my heroine must be offered to you, if you would accept it. There
was a little difficulty, as, of course, Miss Robinson is a fixture at
the Pall Mall. However, Fergusson saw you last night from the back of
the dress circle, and this morning he has agreed. It only remains for
you to read, or allow me to read to you the play."
"Do you mean to say that you are offering me the principal part in a
play of yours--at the Pall Mall--with Fergusson?"
"Well, I think that is about what it comes to," he assented.
She rose to her feet and took his hands in hers.
"You are too good--much too good to me," she said softly. "I dare not
take it; I am not strong enough."
"It will be you, or no one," he said decidedly. "But first I am going
to read you the play. If I may, I shall bring it to you to-morrow."
"I want to ask you something," she said abruptly. "You must answer me
faithfully. You are doing this, you are making me this offer because
you think that you owe me something. It is a sort of reparation for
your attack upon Herdrine. I want to know if it is that."
"I can assure you," he said earnestly, "that I am not nearly so
conscientious. I wrote the play solely as a literary work. I had no
thought of having it produced, of offering it to anybody. Then I saw
you at the New Theatre; I think that you inspired me with a sort of
dramatic excitement. I went home and read my play. Bathilde seemed to
me then to speak with your tongue, to look at me with your eyes, to
be clothed from her soul outwards with your personality. In the
morning I wrote to Fergusson."
"I want to believe you," she said softly; "but it seems so strange. I
am no actress like Adelaide Robinson; I am afraid that if I accept
your offer, I may hurt the play. She is popular, and I am unknown."
"She has talent," he said, "and experience; you have genius, which is
far above either. I am not leaving you any choice at all. To-morrow I
shall bring the play."
"You may at least do that," she answered. "It will be a pleasure to
hear it read. Come to luncheon, and we will have a long afternoon."
Matravers took his leave with a sense of relief. Their farewell had
been cordial enough, but unemotional. Yet even he, ignorant of women
and their ways as he was, was conscious that they had entered
together upon a new phase of their knowledge of each other. The touch
of their fingers, the few conventional words which passed between
them, as she leaned over the staircase watching him descend, seemed to
him to savour somehow of mockery. He passed out from her presence into
the cool, soft night, dazed, not a little bewildered at this new
strong sense of living, which had set his pulses beating to music and
sent his blood rushing through his body with a new sweetness. Yet with
it all he was distressed and unhappy. He was confronted with the one
great influence of life against which he had deliberately set his
face.