CHAPTER 2 JAMES SETS OUT
CHAPTER 3 A HARMLESS DECEPTION
PART TWO James Orlebar Cloyster’s Narrative
CHAPTER 1 THE INVASION OF BOHEMIA
CHAPTER 2 I EVACUATE BOHEMIA
CHAPTER 3 THE ORB
CHAPTER 4 JULIAN EVERSLEIGH
CHAPTER 5 THE COLUMN
CHAPTER 6 NEW YEAR’S EVE
CHAPTER 7 I MEET MR. THOMAS BLAKE
CHAPTER 8 I MEET THE REV. JOHN HATTON
CHAPTER 9 JULIAN LEARNS MY SECRET
CHAPTER 10 TOM BLAKE AGAIN
CHAPTER 11 JULIAN’S IDEA
CHAPTER 12 THE FIRST GHOST
CHAPTER 13 THE SECOND GHOST
CHAPTER 14 THE THIRD GHOST
CHAPTER 15 EVA EVERSLEIGH
CHAPTER 16 I TELL JULIAN
Sidney Price’s Narrative
CHAPTER 17 A GHOSTLY GATHERING
CHAPTER 18 ONE IN THE EYE
CHAPTER 19 IN THE SOUP
CHAPTER 20 NORAH WINS HOME
Julian Eversleigh’s Narrative
CHAPTER 21 THE TRANSPOSITION OF SENTIMENT
CHAPTER 22 A CHAT WITH JAMES
CHAPTER 23 IN A HANSOM
Narrative Resumed
CHAPTER 24 A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS
CHAPTER 25 BRIGGS TO THE RESCUE
CHAPTER 26 MY TRIUMPH
PART ONE
_Miss Margaret Goodwin’s Narrative_
CHAPTER 1
JAMES ARRIVES
I am Margaret Goodwin. A week from today I shall be Mrs. James Orlebar
Cloyster.
It is just three years since I first met James. We made each other’s
acquaintance at half-past seven on the morning of the 28th of July in
the middle of Fermain Bay, about fifty yards from the shore.
Fermain Bay is in Guernsey. My home had been with my mother for many
years at St. Martin’s in that island. There we two lived our uneventful
lives until fate brought one whom, when first I set my eyes on him, I
knew I loved.
Perhaps it is indiscreet of me to write that down. But what does it
matter? It is for no one’s reading but my own. James, my _fiancé_, is
_not_ peeping slyly over my shoulder as I write. On the contrary, my
door is locked, and James is, I believe, in the smoking-room of his
hotel at St. Peter’s Port.
At that time it had become my habit to begin my day by rising before
breakfast and taking a swim in Fermain Bay, which lies across the road
in front of our cottage. The practice—I have since abandoned it—was
good for the complexion, and generally healthy. I had kept it up,
moreover, because I had somehow cherished an unreasonable but
persistent presentiment that some day Somebody (James, as it turned
out) would cross the pathway of my maiden existence. I told myself that
I must be ready for him. It would never do for him to arrive, and find
no one to meet him.
On the 28th of July I started off as usual. I wore a short tweed skirt,
brown stockings—my ankles were, and are, good—a calico blouse, and a
red tam-o’-shanter. Ponto barked at my heels. In one hand I carried my
blue twill bathing-gown. In the other a miniature alpenstock. The sun
had risen sufficiently to scatter the slight mist of the summer
morning, and a few flecked clouds were edged with a slender frame of
red gold.
Leisurely, and with my presentiment strong upon me, I descended the
steep cliffside to the cave on the left of the bay, where, guarded by
the faithful Ponto, I was accustomed to disrobe; and soon afterwards I
came out, my dark hair over my shoulders and blue twill over a portion
of the rest of me, to climb out to the point of the projecting rocks,
so that I might dive gracefully and safely into the still blue water.
I was a good swimmer. I reached the ridge on the opposite side of the
bay without fatigue, not changing from a powerful breast-stroke. I then
sat for a while at the water’s edge to rest and to drink in the
thrilling glory of what my heart persisted in telling me was the
morning of my life.
And then I saw Him.
Not distinctly, for he was rowing a dinghy in my direction, and
consequently had his back to me.
In the stress of my emotions and an aggravation of modesty, I dived
again. With an intensity like that of a captured conger I yearned to be
hidden by the water. I could watch him as I swam, for, strictly
speaking, he was in my way, though a little farther out to sea than I
intended to go. As I drew near, I noticed that he wore an odd garment
like a dressing-gown. He had stopped rowing.
I turned upon my back for a moment’s rest, and, as I did so, heard a
cry. I resumed my former attitude, and brushed the salt water from my
eyes.
The dinghy was wobbling unsteadily. The dressing-gown was in the bows;
and he, my sea-god, was in the water. Only for a second I saw him. Then
he sank.
How I blessed the muscular development of my arms.
I reached him as he came to the surface.
“That’s twice,” he remarked contemplatively, as I seized him by the
shoulders.
“Be brave,” I said excitedly; “I can save you.”
“I should be most awfully obliged,” he said.
“Do exactly as I tell you.”
“I say,” he remonstrated, “you’re not going to drag me along by the
roots of my hair, are you?”
The natural timidity of man is, I find, attractive.
I helped him to the boat, and he climbed in. I trod water, clinging
with one hand to the stern.
“Allow me,” he said, bending down.
“No, thank you,” I replied.
“Not, really?”
“Thank you very much, but I think I will stay where I am.”
“But you may get cramp. By the way—I’m really frightfully obliged to
you for saving my life—I mean, a perfect stranger—I’m afraid it’s quite
spoiled your dip.”
“Not at all,” I said politely. “Did you get cramp?”
“A twinge. It was awfully kind of you.”
“Not at all.”
Then there was a rather awkward silence.
“Is this your first visit to Guernsey?” I asked.
“Yes; I arrived yesterday. It’s a delightful place. Do you live here?”
“Yes; that white cottage you can just see through the trees.”
“I suppose I couldn’t give you a tow anywhere?”
“No; thank you very much. I will swim back.”
Another constrained silence.
“Are you ever in London, Miss——?”
“Goodwin. Oh, yes; we generally go over in the winter, Mr.——”
“Cloyster. Really? How jolly. Do you go to the theatre much?”
“Oh, yes. We saw nearly everything last time we were over.”
There was a third silence. I saw a remark about the weather trembling
on his lip, and, as I was beginning to feel the chill of the water a
little, I determined to put a temporary end to the conversation.
“I think I will be swimming back now,” I said.
“You’re quite sure I can’t give you a tow?”
“Quite, thanks. Perhaps you would care to come to breakfast with us,
Mr. Cloyster? I know my mother would be glad to see you.”
“It is very kind of you. I should be delighted. Shall we meet on the
beach?”
I swam off to my cave to dress.
Breakfast was a success, for my mother was a philosopher. She said very
little, but what she did say was magnificent. In her youth she had
moved in literary circles, and now found her daily pleasure in the
works of Schopenhauer, Kant, and other Germans. Her lightest reading
was _Sartor Resartus_, and occasionally she would drop into Ibsen and
Maeterlinck, the asparagus of her philosophic banquet. Her chosen mode
of thought, far from leaving her inhuman or intolerant, gave her a
social distinction which I had inherited from her. I could, if I had
wished it, have attended with success the tea-drinkings, the
tennis-playings, and the éclair-and-lemonade dances to which I was
frequently invited. But I always refused. Nature was my hostess.
Nature, which provided me with balmy zephyrs that were more comforting
than buttered toast; which set the race of the waves to the ridges of
Fermain, where arose no shrill, heated voice crying, “Love—forty”;
which decked foliage in more splendid sheen than anything the local
costumier could achieve, and whose poplars swayed more rhythmically
than the dancers of the Assembly Rooms.
The constraint which had been upon us during our former conversation
vanished at breakfast. We were both hungry, and we had a common topic.
We related our story of the sea in alternate sentences. We ate and we
talked, turn and turn about. My mother listened. To her the affair,
compared with the tremendous subjects to which she was accustomed to
direct her mind, was broad farce. James took it with an air of
restrained amusement. I, seriously.
Tentatively, I diverged from this subject towards other and wider
fields. Impressions of Guernsey, which drew from him his address, at
the St. Peter’s Port Hotel. The horrors of the sea passage from
Weymouth, which extorted a comment on the limitations of England.
England. London. Kensington. South Kensington. The Gunton-Cresswells?
Yes, yes! Extraordinary. Curious coincidence. Excursus on smallness of
world. Queer old gentleman, Mr. Gunton-Cresswell. He is, indeed. Quite
one of the old school. Oh, quite. Still wears that beaver hat? Does he
really? Yes. Ha, ha! Yes.
Here the humanising influence of the Teutonic school of philosophic
analysis was demonstrated by my mother’s action. Mr. Cloyster, she
said, must reconcile himself to exchanging his comfortable rooms at the
St. Peter’s Port—(“I particularly dislike half-filled hotel life, Mrs.
Goodwin”)—for the shelter of our cottage. He accepted. He was then
“warned” that I was chef at the cottage. Mother gave him “a chance to
change his mind.” Something was said about my saving life and
destroying digestion. He went to collect his things in an ecstasy of
merriment.
At this point I committed an indiscretion which can only be excused by
the magnitude of the occasion.
My mother had retired to her favourite bow-window where, by a _tour de
force_ on the part of the carpenter, a system of low, adjustable
bookcases had been craftily constructed in such a way that when she sat
in her window-seat they jutted in a semicircle towards her hand.
James, whom I had escorted down the garden path, had left me at the
little wooden gate and had gone swinging down the road. I, shielded
from outside observation (if any) by a line of lilacs, gazed
rapturously at his retreating form. The sun was high in the sky now. It
was a perfect summer’s day. Birds were singing. Their notes blended
with the gentle murmur of the sea on the beach below. Every fibre of my
body was thrilling with the magic of the morning.
Through the kindly branches of the lilac I watched him, and then, as
though in obedience to the primaeval call of that July sunshine, I
stood on tiptoe, and blew him a kiss.
I realised in an instant what I had done. Fool that I had been. The
bow-window!
I was rigid with discomfiture. My mother’s eyes were on the book she
held. And yet a faint smile seemed to hover round her lips. I walked in
silence to where she sat at the open window.
She looked up. Her smile was more pronounced.
“Margie,” she said.
“Yes, mother?”
“The hedonism of Voltaire is the indictment of an honest bore.”
“Yes, mother.”
She then resumed her book.
CHAPTER 2
JAMES SETS OUT
_(Miss Margaret Goodwin’s narrative continued)_
Those August days! Have there been any like them before? I realise with
difficulty that the future holds in store for me others as golden.
The island was crammed with trippers. They streamed in by every boat.
But James and I were infinitely alone. I loved him from the first, from
the moment when he had rowed out of the unknown into my life, clad in a
dressing-gown. I like to think that he loved me from that moment, too.
But, if he did, the knowledge that he did came to him only after a
certain delay. It was my privilege to watch this knowledge steal
gradually but surely upon him.
We were always together; and as the days passed by he spoke freely of
himself and his affairs, obeying unconsciously the rudder of my tactful
inquisitiveness. By the end of the first week I knew as much about him
as he did himself.
It seemed that a guardian—an impersonal sort of business man with a
small but impossible family—was the most commanding figure in his
private life. As for his finances, five-and-forty sovereigns, the
remnant of a larger sum which had paid for his education at Cambridge,
stood between him and the necessity of offering for hire a sketchy
acquaintance with general literature and a third class in the classical
tripos.
He had come to Guernsey to learn by personal observation what chances
tomato growing held out to a young man in a hurry to get rich.
“Tomato growing?” I echoed dubiously. And then, to hide a sense of
bathos, “People _have_ made it pay. Of course, they work very hard.”
“M’yes,” said James without much enthusiasm.
“But I fancy,” I added, “the life is not at all unpleasant.”
At this point embarrassment seemed to engulf James. He blushed,
swallowed once or twice in a somewhat convulsive manner, and stammered.
Then he made his confession guiltily.
I was not to suppose that his aims ceased with the attainment of a
tomato-farm. The nurture of a wholesome vegetable occupied neither the
whole of his ambitions nor even the greater part of them. To write—the
agony with which he throatily confessed it!—to be swept into the
maelstrom of literary journalism, to be _en rapport_ with the
unslumbering forces of Fleet Street—those were the real objectives of
James Orlebar Cloyster.
“Of course, I mean,” he said, “I suppose it would be a bit of a
struggle at first, if you see what I mean. What I mean to say is,
rejected manuscripts, and so on. But still, after a bit, once get a
footing, you know—I should like to have a dash at it. I mean, I think I
could do something, you know.”
“Of course you could,” I said.
“I mean, lots of men have, don’t you know.”
“There’s plenty of room at the top,” I said.
He seemed struck with this remark. It encouraged him.
He had had his opportunity of talking thus of himself during our long
rambles out of doors. They were a series of excursions which he was
accustomed to describe as hunting expeditions for the stocking of our
larder.
Thus James would announce at breakfast that prawns were the day’s
quarry, and the foreshore round Cobo Bay the hunting-ground. And to
Cobo, accordingly, we would set out. This prawn-yielding area extends
along the coast on the other side of St. Peter’s Port, where two halts
had to be made, one at Madame Garnier’s, the confectioners, the other
at the library, to get fiction, which I never read. Then came a journey
on the top of the antediluvian horse-tram, a sort of _diligence_ on
rails; and then a whole summer’s afternoon among the prawns. Cobo is an
expanse of shingle, dotted with seaweed and rocks; and Guernsey is a
place where one can take off one’s shoes and stockings on the slightest
pretext. We waded hither and thither with the warm brine lapping
unchecked over our bare legs. We did not use our nets very
industriously, it is true; but our tongues were seldom still. The slow
walk home was a thing to be looked forward to. Ah! those memorable
homecomings in the quiet solemnity of that hour, when a weary sun
stoops, one can fancy with a sigh of pleasure, to sink into the bosom
of the sea!
Prawn-hunting was agreeably varied by fish-snaring, mussel-stalking,
and mushroom-trapping—sports which James, in his capacity of Head
Forester, included in his venery.
For mushroom-trapping an early start had to be made—usually between six
and seven. The chase took us inland, until, after walking through the
fragrant, earthy lanes, we turned aside into dewy meadows, where each
blade of grass sparkled with a gem of purest water. Again the necessity
of going barefoot. Breakfast was late on these mornings, my mother
whiling away the hours of waiting with a volume of Diogenes Laertius in
the bow-window. She would generally open the meal with the remark that
Anaximander held the primary cause of all things to be the Infinite, or
that it was a favourite expression of Theophrastus that time was the
most valuable thing a man could spend. When breakfast was announced,
one of the covers concealed the mushrooms, which, under my
superintendence, James had done his best to devil. A quiet day
followed, devoted to sedentary recreation after the labours of the run.
The period which I have tried to sketch above may be called the period
of good-fellowship. Whatever else love does for a woman, it makes her
an actress. So we were merely excellent friends till James’s eyes were
opened. When that happened, he abruptly discarded good-fellowship. I,
on the other hand, played it the more vigorously. The situation was
mine.
Our day’s run became the merest shadow of a formality. The office of
Head Forester lapsed into an absolute sinecure. Love was with
us—triumphant, and no longer to be skirted round by me; fresh,
electric, glorious in James.
We talked—we must have talked. We moved. Our limbs performed their
ordinary, daily movements. But a golden haze hangs over that second
period. When, by the strongest effort of will, I can let my mind stand
by those perfect moments, I seem to hear our voices, low and measured.
And there are silences, fond in themselves and yet more fondly
interrupted by unspoken messages from our eyes. What we really said,
what we actually did, where precisely we two went, I do not know. We
were together, and the blur of love was about us. Always the blur. It
is not that memory cannot conjure up the scene again. It is not that
the scene is clouded by the ill-proportion of a dream. No. It is
because the dream is brought to me by will and not by sleep. The blur
recurs because the blur was there. A love vast as ours is penalised, as
it were, by this blur, which is the hall-mark of infinity.
In mighty distances, whether from earth to heaven, whether from 5245
Gerrard to 137 Glasgow, there is always that awful, that disintegrating
blur.
A third period succeeded. I may call it the affectionately practical
period. Instantly the blur vanishes. We were at our proper distance
from the essence of things, and though infinity is something one yearns
for passionately, one’s normal condition has its meed of comfort. I
remember once hearing a man in a Government office say that the
pleasantest moment of his annual holiday was when his train rolled back
into Paddington Station. And he was a man, too, of a naturally lazy
disposition.
It was about the middle of this third period, during a
mushroom-trapping ramble, that the idea occurred to us, first to me,
then—after reflection—to James, that mother ought to be informed how
matters stood between us.
We went into the house, hand-in-hand, and interviewed her.
She was in the bow-window, reading a translation of _The
Deipnosophists_ of Athenaeus.
“Good morning,” she said, looking at her watch. “It is a little past
our usual breakfast time, Margie, I think?”
“We have been looking for mushrooms, mother.”
“Every investigation, says Athenaeus, which is guided by principles of
Nature fixes its ultimate aim entirely on gratifying the stomach. Have
you found any mushrooms?”
“Heaps, Mrs. Goodwin,” said James.
“Mother,” I said, “we want to tell you something.”
“The fact is, Mrs. Goodwin——”
“We are engaged.”
My mother liked James.
“Margie,” she once said to me, “there is good in Mr. Cloyster. He is
not for ever offering to pass me things.” Time had not caused her to
modify this opinion. She received our news calmly, and inquired into
James’s means and prospects. James had forty pounds and some odd
silver. I had nothing.
The key-note of my mother’s contribution to our conference was, “Wait.”
“You are both young,” she said.
She then kissed me, smiled contemplatively at James, and resumed her
book.
When we were alone, “My darling,” said James, “we must wait. Tomorrow I
catch the boat for Weymouth. I shall go straight to London. My first
manuscript shall be in an editor’s hands on Wednesday morning. I will
go, but I will come back.”
I put my arms round his neck.
“My love,” I said, “I trust you. Go. Always remember that I know you
will succeed.”
I kissed him.
“And when you have succeeded, come back.”
CHAPTER 3
A HARMLESS DECEPTION
_(Miss Margaret Goodwin’s narrative continued)_
They say that everyone is capable of one novel. And, in my opinion,
most people could write one play.
Whether I wrote mine in an inspiration of despair, I cannot say. I
wrote it.
Three years had passed, and James was still haggling with those who buy
men’s brains. His earnings were enough just to keep his head above
water, but not enough to make us two one.
Perhaps, because everything is clear and easy for us now, I am
gradually losing a proper appreciation of his struggle. That should
never be. He did not win. But he did not lose; which means nearly as
much. For it is almost less difficult to win than not to lose, so my
mother has told me, in modern journalistic London. And I know that he
would have won. The fact that he continued the fight as he did was in
itself a pledge of ultimate victory. What he went through while trying
with his pen to make a living for himself and me I learned from his
letters.
“London,” he wrote, “is not paved with gold; but in literary fields
there are nuggets to be had by the lightest scratching. And those
nuggets are plays. A successful play gives you money and a name
automatically. What the ordinary writer makes in a year the successful
dramatist receives, without labour, in a fortnight.” He went on to
deplore his total lack of dramatic intuition. “Some men,” he said,
“have some of the qualifications while falling short of the others.
They have a sense of situation without the necessary tricks of
technique. Or they sacrifice plot to atmosphere, or atmosphere to plot.
I, worse luck, have not one single qualification. The nursing of a
climax, the tremendous omissions in the dialogue, the knack of stage
characterisation—all these things are, in some inexplicable way,
outside me.”
It was this letter that set me thinking. Ever since James had left the
island, I had been chafing at the helplessness of my position. While he
toiled in London, what was I doing? Nothing. I suppose I helped him in
a way. The thought of me would be with him always, spurring him on to
work, that the time of our separation might be less. But it was not
enough. I wanted to be _doing_ something.... And it was during these
restless weeks that I wrote my play.
I think nothing will ever erase from my mind the moment when the
central idea of _The Girl who Waited_ came to me. It was a boisterous
October evening. The wind had been rising all day. Now the branches of
the lilac were dancing in the rush of the storm, and far out in the bay
one could see the white crests of the waves gleaming through the
growing darkness. We had just finished tea. The lamp was lit in our
little drawing-room, and on the sofa, so placed that the light fell
over her left shoulder in the manner recommended by oculists, sat my
mother with Schopenhauer’s _Art of Literature_. Ponto slept on the rug.
Something in the unruffled peace of the scene tore at my nerves. I have
seldom felt so restless. It may have been the storm that made me so. I
think myself that it was James’s letter. The boat had been late that
morning, owing to the weather, and I had not received the letter till
after lunch. I listened to the howl of the wind, and longed to be out
in it.
My mother looked at me over her book.
“You are restless, Margie,” she said. “There is a volume of Marcus
Aurelius on the table beside you, if you care to read.”
“No, thank you, mother,” I said. “I think I shall go for a walk.”
“Wrap up well, my dear,” she replied.
She then resumed her book.
I went out of our little garden, and stood on the cliff. The wind flew
at me like some wild thing. Spray stung my face. I was filled with a
wild exhilaration.
And then the idea came to me. The simplest, most dramatic idea. Quaint,
whimsical, with just that suggestion of pathos blended with it which
makes the fortunes of a play. The central idea, to be brief, of _The
Girl who Waited_.
Of my Maenad tramp along the cliff-top with my brain afire, and my
return, draggled and dripping, an hour late for dinner; of my writing
and re-writing, of my tears and black depression, of the pens I wore
out and the quires of paper I spoiled, and finally of the ecstasy of
the day when the piece began to move and the characters to live, I need
not speak. Anyone who has ever written will know the sensations. James
must have gone through a hundred times what I went through once. At
last, at long last, the play was finished.
For two days I gloated alone over the great pile of manuscript.
Then I went to my mother.
My diffidence was exquisite. It was all I could do to tell her the
nature of my request, when I spoke to her after lunch. At last she
understood that I had written a play, and wished to read it to her. She
took me to the bow-window with gentle solicitude, and waited for me to
proceed.
At first she encouraged me, for I faltered over my opening words. But
as I warmed to my work, and as my embarrassment left me, she no longer
spoke. Her eyes were fixed intently upon the blue space beyond the
lilac.
I read on and on, till at length my voice trailed over the last line,
rose gallantly at the last fence, the single word _Curtain_, and
abruptly broke. The strain had been too much for me.
Tenderly my mother drew me to the sofa; and quietly, with closed
eyelids, I lay there until, in the soft cool of the evening, I asked
for her verdict.
Seeing, as she did instantly, that it would be more dangerous to deny
my request than to accede to it, she spoke.
“That there is an absence, my dear Margie, of any relationship with
life, that not a single character is in any degree human, that passion
and virtue and vice and real feeling are wanting—this surprises me more
than I can tell you. I had expected to listen to a natural, ordinary,
unactable episode arranged more or less in steichomuthics. There is no
work so scholarly and engaging as the amateur’s. But in your play I am
amazed to find the touch of the professional and experienced
playwright. Yes, my dear, you have proved that you happen to possess
the quality—one that is most difficult to acquire—of surrounding a
situation which is improbable enough to be convincing with that
absurdly mechanical conversation which the theatre-going public
demands. As your mother, I am disappointed. I had hoped for
originality. As your literary well-wisher, I stifle my maternal
feelings and congratulate you unreservedly.”
I thanked my mother effusively. I think I cried a little.
She said affectionately that the hour had been one of great interest to
her, and she added that she would be glad to be consulted with regard
to the steps I contemplated taking in my literary future.
She then resumed her book.
I went to my room and re-read the last letter I had had from James.
_The Barrel Club,
Covent Garden,
London._
MY DARLING MARGIE,—I am writing this line simply and solely for the
selfish pleasure I gain from the act of writing to you. I know
everything will come right some time or other, but at present I am
suffering from a bad attack of the blues. I am like a general who has
planned out a brilliant attack, and realises that he must fail for want
of sufficient troops to carry a position, on the taking of which the
whole success of the assault depends. Briefly, my position is like
this. My name is pretty well known in a small sort of way among editors
and the like as that of a man who can turn out fairly good stuff.
Besides this, I have many influential friends. You see where this
brings me? I am in the middle of my attacking movement, and I have not
been beaten back; but the key to the enemy’s position is still
uncaptured. You know what this key is from my other letters. It’s the
stage. Ah, Margie, one acting play! Only one! It would mean everything.
Apart from the actual triumph and the direct profits, it would bring so
much with it. The enemy’s flank would be turned, and the rest of the
battle would become a mere rout. I should have an accepted position in
the literary world which would convert all the other avenues to wealth
on which I have my eye instantly into royal roads. Obstacles would
vanish. The fact that I was a successful playwright would make the
acceptance of the sort of work I am doing now inevitable, and I should
get paid ten times as well for it. And it would mean—well, you know
what it would mean, don’t you? Darling Margie, tell me again that I
have your love, that the waiting is not too hard, that you believe in
me. Dearest, it will come right in the end. Nothing can prevent that.
Love and the will of a man have always beaten Time and Fate. Write to
me, dear.
_Ever your devoted
James._
How utterly free from thought of self! His magnificent loyalty forgot
the dreadful tension of his own great battle, and pictured only the
tedium of waiting which it was my part to endure.
I finished my letter to James very late that night. It was a very long
and explanatory letter, and it enclosed my play.
The main point I aimed at was not to damp his spirits. He would, I knew
well, see that the play was suitable for staging. He would, in short,
see that I, an inexperienced girl, had done what he, a trained
professional writer, had failed to do. Lest, therefore, his pique
should kill admiration and pleasure when he received my work, I wrote
as one begging a favour. “Here,” I said, “we have the means to achieve
all we want. Do not—oh, do not—criticise. I have written down the
words. But the conception is yours. The play was inspired by you. But
for you I should never have begun it. Take my play, James; take it as
your own. For yours it is. Put your name to it, and produce it, if you
love me, under your own signature. If this hurts your pride, I will
word my request differently. You alone are able to manage the business
side of the production. You know the right men to go to. To approach
them on behalf of a stranger’s work is far less likely to lead to
success. I have assumed, you will see, that the play is certain to be
produced. But that will only be so if you adopt it as your own. Claim
the authorship, and all will be well.”
Much more I wrote to James in the same strain; and my reward came next
day in the shape of a telegram: “Accept thankfully.—Cloyster.”
Of the play and its reception by the public there is no need to speak.
The criticisms were all favourable.
Neither the praise of the critics nor the applause of the public
aroused any trace of jealousy in James. Their unanimous note of praise
has been a source of pride to him. He is proud—ah, joy!—that I am to be
his wife.
I have blotted the last page of this commonplace love-story of mine.
The moon has come out from behind a cloud, and the whole bay is one
vast sheet of silver. I could sit here at my bedroom window and look at
it all night. But then I should be sure to oversleep myself and be late
for breakfast. I shall read what I have written once more, and then I
shall go to bed.
I think I shall wear my white muslin tomorrow.
_(End of Miss Margaret Goodwin’s narrative.)_
PART TWO
James Orlebar Cloyster’s Narrative
CHAPTER 1
THE INVASION OF BOHEMIA
It is curious to reflect that my marriage (which takes place today
week) destroys once and for all my life’s ambition. I have never won
through to the goal I longed for, and now I never shall.
Ever since I can remember I have yearned to be known as a Bohemian.
That was my ambition. I have ceased to struggle now. Married Bohemians
live in Oakley Street, King’s Road, Chelsea. We are to rent a house in
Halkett Place.
Three years have passed since the excellent, but unsteady, steamship
_Ibex_ brought me from Guernsey to Southampton. It was a sleepy, hot,
and sticky wreck that answered to the name of James Orlebar Cloyster
that morning; but I had my first youth and forty pounds, so that soap
and water, followed by coffee and an omelette, soon restored me.
The journey to Waterloo gave me opportunity for tobacco and reflection.
What chiefly exercised me, I remember, was the problem whether it was
possible to be a Bohemian, and at the same time to be in love. Bohemia
I looked on as a region where one became inevitably entangled with
women of unquestionable charm, but doubtful morality. There were supper
parties.... Festive gatherings in the old studio.... Babette....
Lucille.... The artists’ ball.... Were these things possible for a man
with an honest, earnest, whole-hearted affection?
The problem engaged me tensely till my ticket was collected at
Vauxhall. Just there the solution came. I would be a Bohemian, but a
misogynist. People would say, “Dear old Jimmy Cloyster. How he hates
women!” It would add to my character a pleasant touch of dignity and
reserve which would rather accentuate my otherwise irresponsible way of
living.
Little did the good Bohemians of the metropolis know how keen a recruit
the boat train was bringing to them.
As a _pied-à-terre_ I selected a cheap and dingy hotel in York Street,
and from this base I determined to locate my proper sphere.
Chelsea was the first place that occurred to me. There was St. John’s
Wood, of course, but that was such a long way off. Chelsea was
comparatively near to the heart of things, and I had heard that one
might find there artistic people whose hand-to-mouth, Saturnalian
existence was redolent of that exquisite gaiety which so attracted my
own casual temperament.
Sallying out next morning into the brilliant sunshine and the dusty
rattle of York Street, I felt a sense of elation at the thought that
the time for action had come. I was in London. London! The home of the
fragrant motor-omnibus and the night-blooming Hooligan. London, the
battlefield of the literary aspirant since Caxton invented the printing
press. It seemed to me, as I walked firmly across Westminster Bridge,
that Margie gazed at me with the lovelight in her eyes, and that a
species of amorous telepathy from Guernsey was girding me for the
fight.
Manresa Road I had once heard mentioned as being the heart of Bohemian
Chelsea. To Manresa Road, accordingly, I went, by way of St. James’s
Park, Buckingham Palace Road, and Lower Sloane Street. Thence to Sloane
Square. Here I paused, for I knew that I had reached the last outpost
of respectable, inartistic London.
“How sudden,” I soliloquised, “is the change. Here I am in Sloane
Square, regular, business-like, and unimaginative; while, a few hundred
yards away, King’s Road leads me into the very midst of genius,
starvation, and possibly Free Love.”
Sloane Square, indeed, gave me the impression, not so much of a suburb
as of the suburban portion of a great London railway terminus. It was
positively pretty. People were shopping with comparative leisure,
omnibus horses were being rubbed down and watered on the west side of
the Square, out of the way of the main stream of traffic. A postman,
clearing the letter-box at the office, stopped his work momentarily to
read the contents of a postcard. For the moment I understood Caesar’s
feelings on the brink of the Rubicon, and the emotions of Cortes “when
with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific.” I was on the threshold of
great events. Behind me was orthodox London; before me the unknown.
It was distinctly a Caesarian glance, full of deliberate revolt, that I
bestowed upon the street called Sloane; that clean, orderly
thoroughfare which leads to Knightsbridge, and thence either to the
respectabilities of Kensington or the plush of Piccadilly.
Setting my hat at a wild angle, I stepped with a touch of _abandon_
along the King’s Road to meet the charming, impoverished artists whom
our country refuses to recognise.
My first glimpse of the Manresa Road was, I confess, a complete
disappointment. Never was Bohemianism more handicapped by its setting
than that of Chelsea, if the Manresa Road was to be taken as a
criterion. Along the uninviting uniformity of this street no trace of
unorthodoxy was to be seen. There came no merry, roystering laughter
from attic windows. No talented figures of idle geniuses fetched pints
of beer from the public-house at the corner. No one dressed in an
ancient ulster and a battered straw hat and puffing enormous clouds of
blue smoke from a treasured clay pipe gazed philosophically into space
from a doorway. In point of fact, save for a most conventional
butcher-boy, I was alone in the street.
Then the explanation flashed upon me. I had been seen approaching. The
word had been passed round. A stranger! The clique resents intrusion.
It lies hid. These gay fellows see me all the time, and are secretly
amused. But they do not know with whom they have to deal. I have come
to join them, and join them I will. I am not easily beaten. I will
outlast them. The joke shall be eventually against them, at some
eccentric supper. I shall chaff them about how they tried to elude me,
and failed.
The hours passed. Still no Bohemians. I began to grow hungry. I sprang
on to a passing ’bus. It took me to Victoria. I lunched at the
Shakespeare Hotel, smoked a pipe, and went out into the sunlight again.
It had occurred to me that night was perhaps the best time for trapping
my shy quarry. Possibly the revels did not begin in Manresa Road till
darkness had fallen. I spent the afternoon and evening in the Park,
dined at Lyons’ Popular Café (it must be remembered that I was not yet
a Bohemian, and consequently owed no deference to the traditions of the
order); and returned at nine o’clock to the Manresa Road. Once more I
drew blank. A barrel-organ played cake-walk airs in the middle of the
road, but it played to an invisible audience. No bearded men danced
can-cans around it, shouting merry jests to one another. Solitude
reigned.
I wait. The duel continues. What grim determination, what perseverance
can these Bohemians put into a mad jest! I find myself thinking how
much better it would be were they to apply to their Art the same
earnestness and fixity of purpose which they squander on a practical
joke.
Evening fell. Blinds began to be drawn down. Lamps were lit behind
them, one by one. Despair was gnawing at my heart, but still I waited.
Then, just as I was about to retire defeated, I was arrested by the
appearance of a house numbered 93A.
At the first-floor window sat a man. He was writing. I could see his
profile, his long untidy hair. I understood in a moment. This was no
ordinary writer. He was one of those Bohemians whose wit had been
exercised upon me so successfully. He was a literary man, and though he
enjoyed the sport as much as any of the others he was under the
absolute necessity of writing his copy up to time. Unobserved by his
gay comrades, he had slipped away to his work. They were still watching
me; but he, probably owing to a contract with some journal, was obliged
to give up his share in their merriment and toil with his pen.
His pen fascinated me. I leaned against the railings of the house
opposite, enthralled. Ever and anon he seemed to be consulting one or
other of the books of reference piled up on each side of him. Doubtless
he was preparing a scholarly column for a daily paper. Presently a
printer’s devil would arrive, clamouring for his “copy.” I knew exactly
the sort of thing that happened. I had read about it in novels.
How unerring is instinct, if properly cultivated. Hardly had the clocks
struck twelve when the emissaries—there were two of them, which showed
the importance of their errand—walked briskly to No. 93A, and knocked
at the door.
The writer heard the knock. He rose hurriedly, and began to collect his
papers. Meanwhile, the knocking had been answered from within by the
shooting of bolts, noises that were followed by the apparition of a
female head.
A few brief questions and the emissaries entered. A pause.
The litterateur is warning the menials that their charge is sacred;
that the sheets he has produced are impossible to replace. High words.
Abrupt re-opening of the front door. Struggling humanity projected on
to the pavement. Three persons—my scribe in the middle, an emissary on
either side—stagger strangely past me. The scribe enters the purple
night only under the stony compulsion of the emissaries.
What does this mean?
I have it. The emissaries have become over-anxious. They dare not face
the responsibility of conveying the priceless copy to Fleet Street.
They have completely lost their nerve. They insist upon the author
accompanying them to see with his own eyes that all is well. They do
not wish Posterity to hand their names down to eternal infamy as “the
men who lost Blank’s manuscript.”
So, greatly against his will, he is dragged off.
My vigil is rewarded. No. 93A harbours a Bohemian. Let it be inhabited
also by me.
I stepped across, and rang the bell.
The answer was a piercing scream.
“Ah, ha!” I said to myself complacently, “there are more Bohemians than
one, then, in this house.”
The female head again appeared.
“Not another? Oh, sir, say there ain’t another wanted,” said the head
in a passionate Cockney accent.
“That is precisely what there is,” I replied. “I want——”
“What for?”
“For something moderate.”
“Well, that’s a comfort in a wiy. Which of ’em is it you want? The
first-floor back?”
“I have no doubt the first-floor back would do quite well.”
My words had a curious effect. She scrutinised me suspiciously.
“Ho!” she said, with a sniff; “you don’t seem to care much which it is
you get.”
“I don’t,” I said, “not particularly.”
“Look ’ere,” she exclaimed, “you jest ’op it. See? I don’t want none of
your ’arf-larks here, and, what’s more, I won’t ’ave ’em. I don’t
believe you’re a copper at all.”
“I’m not. Far from it.”
“Then what d’yer mean coming ’ere saying you want my first-floor back?”
“But I do. Or any other room, if that is occupied.”
“’Ow! _Room_? Why didn’t yer siy so? You’ll pawdon me, sir, if I’ve
said anything ’asty-like. I thought—but my mistake.”
“Not at all. Can you let me have a room? I notice that the gentleman
whom I have just seen——”
She cut me short. I was about to explain that I was a Bohemian, too.
“’E’s gorn for a stroll, sir. I expec’ him back every moment. ’E’s
forgot ’is latchkey. Thet’s why I’m sitting up for ’im. Mrs. Driver my
name is, sir. That’s my name, and well known in the neighbour’ood.”
Mrs. Driver spoke earnestly, but breathlessly.
“I do not contemplate asking you, Mrs. Driver, to give me the
apartments already engaged by the literary gentleman——”
“Yes, sir,” she interpolated, “that’s wot ’e wos, I mean is. A literary
gent.”
“But have you not another room vacant?”
“The second-floor back, sir. Very comfortable, nice room, sir. Shady in
the morning, and gets the setting sun.”
Had the meteorological conditions been adverse to the point of
malignancy, I should have closed with her terms. Simple agreements were
ratified then and there by the light of a candle in the passage, and I
left the house, promising to “come in” in the course of the following
afternoon.