A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS
O perfidy of woman! O feminine inconstancy! That is the only allusion I
shall permit to escape me on the subject of Eva Eversleigh’s engagement
to that scoundrel Julian.
I had the news by telegraph, and the heavens darkened above me, whilst
the solid earth rocked below.
I had been trapped into dishonour, and even the bait had been withheld
from me.
But it was not the loss of Eva that troubled me most. It should have
outweighed all my other misfortunes and made them seem of no account,
but it did not. Man is essentially a materialist. The prospect of an
empty stomach is more serious to him than a broken heart. A broken
heart is the luxury of the well-to-do. What troubled me more than all
other things at this juncture was the thought that I was face to face
with starvation, and that only the grimmest of fights could enable me
to avoid it. I quaked at the prospect. The early struggles of the
writer to keep his head above water form an experience which does not
bear repetition. The hopeless feeling of chipping a little niche for
oneself out of the solid rock with a nib is a nightmare even in times
of prosperity. I remembered the grey days of my literary
apprenticeship, and I shivered at the thought that I must go through
them again.
I examined my position dispassionately over a cup of coffee at Groom’s,
in Fleet Street. Groom’s was a recognised _Orb rendezvous_. When I was
doing “On Your Way,” one or two of us used to go down Fleet Street for
coffee after the morning’s work with the regularity of machines. It
formed a recognised break in the day.
I thought things over. How did I stand? Holiday work at the _Orb_ would
begin very shortly, so that I should get a good start in my race.
Fermin would be going away in a few weeks, then Gresham, and after that
Fane, the man who did the “People and Things” column. With luck I ought
to get a clear fifteen weeks of regular work. It would just save me. In
fifteen weeks I ought to have got going again. The difficulty was that
I had dropped out. Editors had forgotten my work. John Hatton they
knew, and Sidney Price they knew; but who was James Orlebar Cloyster?
There would be much creaking of joints and wobbling of wheels before my
triumphal car could gather speed again. But, with a regular salary
coming in week by week from the _Orb_, I could endure this. I became
almost cheerful. It is an exhilarating sensation having one’s back
against the wall.
Then there was Briggs, the actor. The very thought of him was a tonic.
A born fighter, with the energy of six men, he was an ideal model for
me. If I could work with a sixth of his dash and pluck, I should be
safe. He was giving me work. He might give me more. The new edition of
the _Belle of Wells_ was due in another fortnight. My lyrics would be
used, and I should get paid for them. Add this to my _Orb_ salary, and
I should be a man of substance.
I glared over my coffee-cup at an imaginary John Hatton.
“You thought you’d done me, did you?” I said to him. “By Gad! I’ll have
the laugh of you all yet.”
I was shaking my fist at him when the door opened. I hurriedly tilted
back my chair, and looked out of the window.
“Hullo, Cloyster.”
I looked round. It was Fermin. Just the man I wanted to see.
He seemed depressed. Even embarrassed.
“How’s the column?” I asked.
“Oh, all right,” he said awkwardly. “I wanted to see you about that. I
was going to write to you.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, “of course. About the holiday work. When are you
off?”
“I was thinking of starting next week.”
“Good. Sorry to lose you, of course, but——”
He shuffled his feet.
“You’re doing pretty well now at the game, aren’t you, Cloyster?” he
said.
It was not to my interests to cry myself down, so I said that I was
doing quite decently. He seemed relieved.
“You’re making quite a good income, I suppose? I mean, no difficulty
about placing your stuff?”
“Editors squeal for it.”
“Because, otherwise what I wanted to say to you might have been
something of a blow. But it won’t affect you much if you’re doing
plenty of work elsewhere.”
A cold hand seemed laid upon my heart. My mind leaped to what he meant.
Something had gone wrong with the _Orb_ holiday work, my sheet-anchor.
“Do you remember writing a par about Stickney, the butter-scotch man,
you know, ragging him when he got his peerage?”
“Yes.”
It was one of the best paragraphs I had ever done. A two-line thing,
full of point and sting. I had been editing “On Your Way” that day,
Fermin being on a holiday and Gresham ill; and I had put the paragraph
conspicuously at the top of the column.
“Well,” said Fermin, “I’m afraid there was rather trouble about it.
Hamilton came into our room yesterday, and asked if I should be seeing
you. I said I thought I should. ‘Well, tell him,’ said Hamilton, ‘that
that paragraph of his about Stickney has only cost us five hundred
pounds. That’s all.’ And he went out again. Apparently Stickney was on
the point of advertising largely with the _Orb_, and had backed out in
a huff. Today, I went to see him about my holiday, and he wanted to
know who was coming in to do my work. I mentioned you, and he
absolutely refused to have you in. I’m awfully sorry about it.”
I was silent. The shock was too great. Instead of drifting easily into
my struggle on a comfortable weekly salary, I should have to start the
tooth-and-nail fighting at once. I wanted to get away somewhere by
myself, and grapple with the position.
I said good-bye to Fermin, retaining sufficient presence of mind to
treat the thing lightly, and walked swiftly along the restless Strand,
marvelling at what I had suffered at the hands of Fortune. The deceiver
of Margaret, deceived by Eva, a pauper! I covered the distance between
Groom’s and Walpole Street in sombre meditation.
In a sort of dull panic I sat down immediately on my arrival, and tried
to work. I told myself that I must turn out something, that it would be
madness to waste a moment.
I sat and chewed my pen from two o’clock till five, but not a page of
printable stuff could I turn out. Looking back at myself at that
moment, I am not surprised that my ideas did not flow. It would have
been a wonderful triumph of strength of mind if I had been able to
write after all that had happened. Dr. Johnson has laid it down that a
man can write at any time, if he sets himself to it earnestly; but mine
were exceptional circumstances. My life’s happiness and my means for
supporting life at all, happy or otherwise, had been swept away in a
single morning; and I found myself utterly unable to pen a coherent
sentence.
At five o’clock I gave up the struggle, and rang for tea.
While I was having tea there was a ring at the bell, and my landlady
brought in a large parcel.
I recognised the writing on the label. The hand was Margaret’s. I
wondered in an impersonal sort of way what Margaret could be sending to
me. From the feel of it the contents were paper.
It amuses me now to think that it was a good half-hour before I took
the trouble to cut the string. Fortune and happiness were waiting for
me in that parcel, and I would not bother to open it. I sat in my
chair, smoking and thinking, and occasionally cast a gloomy eye at the
parcel. But I did not open it. Then my pipe went out, and I found that
I had no matches in my pocket. There were some at the farther end of
the mantelpiece. I had to get up to reach them, and, once up, I found
myself filled with a sufficient amount of energy to take a knife from
the table and cut the string.
Languidly I undid the brown paper. The contents were a pile of
typewritten pages and a letter.
It was the letter over which my glassy eyes travelled first.
“My own dear, brave, old darling James,” it began, and its purport was
that she had written a play, and wished me to put my name to it and
hawk it round: to pass off as my work her own amateurish effort at
playwriting. Ludicrous. And so immoral, too. I had always imagined that
Margaret had a perfectly flawless sense of honesty. Yet here she was
asking me deliberately to impose on the credulity of some poor,
trusting theatrical manager. The dreadful disillusionment of it shocked
me.
Most men would have salved their wounded susceptibilities by putting a
match to the manuscript without further thought or investigation.
But I have ever been haunted by a somewhat over-strict conscience, and
I sat down there and then to read the stupid stuff.
At seven o’clock I was still reading.
My dinner was brought in. I bolted it with Margaret’s play propped up
against the potato dish.
I read on and on. I could not leave it. Incredible as it would appear
from anyone but me, I solemnly assure you that the typewritten nonsense
I read that evening was nothing else than _The Girl who Waited_.