Matravers' luncheon party marked the termination for some time of any
confidential intercourse between Berenice and himself. Every moment of
her time was claimed by Fergusson, who, in his anxiety to produce a
play from which he hoped so much before the wane of the season, gave
no one any rest, and worked himself almost into a fever. There were
two full rehearsals a day, and many private ones at her rooms.
Matravers calling there now and then found Fergusson always in
possession, and by degrees gave it up in despair. He had a horror of
interfering in any way, even of being asked for his advice concerning
the practical reproduction of his work. Fergusson's invitations to
the rehearsals at the theatre he rejected absolutely. As the time grew
shorter, Berenice became pale and almost haggard with the unceasing
work which Fergusson's anxiety imposed upon her. One night she sent
for Matravers, and hastening to her rooms, he found her for the first
time alone.
[Illustration: "Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad?"]
"I have sent Mr. Fergusson home," she exclaimed, welcoming him with
outstretched hands, but making no effort to rise from her easy chair.
"Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad? I want you to
interfere."
"What can I do?" he said.
"Anything to bring him to reason! He is over-rehearsing! Every line,
every sentence, every gesture, he makes the subject of the most
exhaustive deliberation. He will have nothing spontaneous; it is
positively stifling. A few more days of it and my reason will go! He
is a great actor, but he does not seem to understand that to reduce
everything to mathematical proportions is to court failure."
"I will go and see him," Matravers said. "You wish for no more
rehearsals, then?"
"I do not want to see his face again before the night of the
performance," she declared vehemently. "I am perfect in my part. I
have thought about it--dreamed about it. I have lived more as
'Bathilde' than as myself for the last three weeks. Perhaps," she
continued more slowly, "you will not be satisfied. I scarcely dare to
hope that you will be. Yet I have reached my limitations. The more I
am made to rehearse now, the less natural I shall become."
"I will speak to Fergusson," Matravers promised. "I will go and see
him to-night. But so far as you are concerned, I have no fear; you
will be the 'Bathilde' of my heart and my brain. You cannot fail!"
She rose to her feet. "It is," she said, "The desire of my life to
make your 'Bathilde' a creature of flesh and blood. If I fail, I will
never act again."
"If you fail," he said, "the fault will be in my conception, not
in your execution. But indeed we will not consider anything so
improbable. Let us put the play behind us for a time and talk of
something else! You must be weary of it."
She shook her head. "Not that! never that! Just now it is my life,
only it is the details which weary me, the eternal harping upon the
mechanical side of it. Will you read to me for a little? and I will
make you some coffee. You are not in a hurry, are you?"
"I have come," he said, "to stay with you until you send me away! I
will read to you with pleasure. What will you have?"
She handed him a little volume of poems; he glanced at the title and
made a faint grimace. They were his own.
Nevertheless, he read for an hour, till the streets below grew silent,
and his own voice, unaccustomed to such exercise, lost something of
its usual clearness. Then he laid the volume down, and there was
silence between them.
"I have been thinking," he said at last, "of a singular incident in
connection with your performance at the New Theatre; it was brought
into my mind just then. I meant to have mentioned it before."
She looked up with only a slight show of interest. Those days at the
theatre seemed to her now to be very far behind. There was nothing in
connection with them which she cared to remember.
"It was the night of my first visit there," he continued. "There is a
terrible scene at the end of the second act between Herdrine and her
husband--you recollect it, of course. Just as you finished your
denunciation, I distinctly heard a curious cry from the back of the
house. It was a greater tribute to your acting than the applause, for
it was genuine."
"The piece was gloomy enough," she remarked, "to have dissolved the
house in tears."
"At least," he said, "it wrung the heart of one man. For I have
not told you all. I was interested enough to climb up into the
amphitheatre. The man sat there alone amongst a wilderness of empty
seats. He was the picture of abject misery. I could scarcely see his
face, but his attitude was convincing. It was not a thing of chance
either. I made some remark about him to an attendant, and he told me
that night after night that man had occupied the same seat, always
following every line of the play with the same mournful concentration,
never speaking to any one, never moving from his seat from the
beginning of the play to the end."
"He must have been," she declared, "a person of singularly morbid
taste. When I think of it now I shiver. I would not play Herdrine
again for worlds."
"I am very glad to hear you say so," he said, smiling. "Do you know
that to me the most interesting feature of the play was its obvious
effect upon this man. Its extreme pessimism is too much paraded, is
laid on altogether with too thick a hand to ring true. The thing is
an involved nightmare. One feels that as a work of art it is never
convincing, yet underneath it all there must be something human, for
it found its way into the heart of one man."
"It is possible," she remarked, "that he was mad. The man who found it
sufficiently amusing to come to the theatre night after night could
scarcely have been in full possession of his senses."
"That is possible," he admitted; "but I do not believe it. The man's
face was sad enough, but it was not the face of a madman."
"You did see his face, then?"
"On the last night of the play," he continued. "You remember you were
going on to Lady Truton's, so I did not come behind. But I had a fancy
to see you for a moment, and I came round into Pitt Street just as you
were driving off. On the other side of the way this man was standing
watching you!"
She looked at him with a suddenly kindled interest--or was it
fear?--in her dark eyes. The colour had left her cheeks; she was white
to the lips.
"Watching me?"
"Yes. As your carriage drove off he stood watching it. I don't know
what prompted me, but I crossed the street to speak to him. He seemed
such a lone, mournful figure standing there half dazed, shabby,
muttering softly to himself. But when he saw me coming, he gave one
half-frightened look at me and ran, literally ran down the street on
to the Strand. I could not follow,--the police would have stopped him.
So he disappeared."
"You saw his face. What was he like?"
Berenice had leaned right back amongst the yielding cushions of her
divan, and he could scarcely see her face. Yet her voice sounded to
him strange and forced. He looked at her in some surprise.
"I had a glimpse of it. It was an ordinary face enough; in fact, it
disappointed me a little. But the odd part of it was that it seemed
vaguely familiar to me. I have seen it before, often. Yet, try as I
will, I cannot recollect where, or under what circumstances."
"At Oxford," she suggested. "By the bye, what was your college?"
"St. John's. No, I do not think,--I hope that it was not at Oxford.
Some day I shall think of it quite suddenly."
Berenice rose from her chair with a sudden, tempestuous movement and
stood before him.
"Listen!" she exclaimed. "Supposing I were to tell you that I knew or
could guess who that man was--why he came! Oh, if I were to tell you
that I were a fraud, that----"
Matravers stopped her.
"I beg," he said, "that you will tell me nothing!"
There was a short silence. Berenice seemed on the point of breaking
down. She was nervously lacing and interlacing her fingers. Her breath
was coming spasmodically.
"Berenice," he said softly, "you are over-wrought; you are not quite
yourself to-night. Do not tell me anything. Indeed, there is no need
for me to know; just as you are I am content with you, and proud to be
your friend."
"Ah!"
She sat down again. He could not see her face, but he fancied that
she was weeping. He himself found his customary serenity seriously
disturbed. Perhaps for the first time in his life he found himself not
wholly the master of his emotions. The atmosphere of the little room,
the perfume of the flowers, the soft beauty of the woman herself,
whose breath fell almost upon his cheek, affected him as nothing of
the sort had ever done before. He rose abruptly to his feet.
"You will be so much better alone," he said, taking her fingers and
smoothing them softly in his for a moment. "I am going away now."
"Yes. Good-by!"
At the threshold he paused. She had not looked up at him. She was
still sitting there with bowed head and hidden face. He closed the
door softly, and went out.