A Duel Part 23

"But suppose I'm dragging Harry down? I shouldn't be surprised if it's all through me that his MSS. keep on being returned.

I said to him, 'Let me make drawings to ill.u.s.trate your stories--I'd love to'. And I do love to! 'Then we'll send the stories and the drawings to the editors together.' But they nearly all come back. I've a horrid feeling that it's my drawings which ruin them."

"Stuff! It's Harry's work that's no good."

"No good? How dare you! You've said yourself over and over again that it's splendid."

"That's what's against it--it's splendid." Miss Johnson, stretching her right arm to its extreme length, dangled her gloves between the tips of her fingers. "Margaret Wallace, literature means to me at least three pounds a week, it may be four, if possible, five. I can live on three, be comfortable on four, a swell on five. The problem being thus stated in all its beautiful simplicity, it only remains for me to discover the quickest and easiest solution. I have learned, from experience, that the _Home Muddler_ is willing to give me half a guinea for a column of drivel, and the _Hearthstone Smasher_ fifteen shillings for another. The _Family Flutterer_ prints eight or ten thousand words of an endless serial at five shillings a thousand--one of these days I mean to strike for seven-and-six.

But in the meantime there you are--the pursuit of literature has brought me bread and cheese. Why doesn't your Harry tread the same path?"

"The idea!"

"Of course!--the idea!--and that's where he gets left. It's my experience that in literature----"

"Literature!"

"I said literature. I was observing, when you interrupted, that it is my experience that in literature"--Miss Johnson paused, Miss Wallace was contemptuously silent--"men always get paid at least twice as much as the women. I don't know why; it seems to be one of the rules of the game. It therefore follows that if your Harry did as I do he would earn six, eight, ten pounds a week, which, with management, would keep two--not to speak of your drawings, which ought to bring in something. I believe the _Family Flutterer_ pays as much as seven-and-six for a full page."

"My dear Dollie, you know as well as I do that we both of us would rather starve."

"Sweet Meg, I'm not saying you're right or wrong, only, if you have resolved to eschew the easily earned loaves and fishes, don't revile because, having set out on the track of the rarer creatures, you discover--what every one knows, and you know!--that they are difficult to find. My private opinion is that Harry will find them one day--if he keeps on long enough--though I don't know when."

"You're a comforting sort of person."

"I'm a practical sort of person, which is better. Cheer up, Meg!

he'll get there--and perhaps you will too--though of course his stories are better than your drawings."

"I don't need you to tell me that."

Miss Johnson, descending from the table, put her arm round the girl who was seated on the other side.

"You poor darling! I'm a perfect pig! I say, Meg, are you hard up?"

"I always am."

"Beyond the ordinary, I mean?"

"If you mean, can you lend me, or give me, any money, you can't--thank you very much. I'm going to hoe my own furrow, right to the end."

"How about Harry? He gets some of his stuff accepted; then there's the three hundred pounds a year certain which he gets for being that party's secretary. I call that practicality, if you like! He ought to be getting on first-rate."

"He doesn't seem to think so, anyhow. As for what you call the three hundred pounds a year certain, I doubt if anything could be more uncertain, the engagement may terminate any day. I believe that Harry is really more worried than I am, and--and that's saying a good deal."

"Then the marriage is not coming off just yet?"

"Marriage!--and you call yourself a practical person!--how can you be so absurd?"

"I am not sure that I am absurd. If I ever loved a man--which I am never likely to do, men are such beings!--really loved him, and knew that he loved me, I shouldn't hesitate to marry him on a pound a week. Marriage, properly understood, is a spur; it's not, necessarily, anything like the clog romantic people like you seem to think it is."

When Miss Johnson had gone Margaret Wallace went and stood before a photograph which hung over the mantelpiece--the photograph of a man.

"I think, Cuthbert Grahame, it's possible that you'll shortly be revenged; if you knew just how things are I fancy you'd be of opinion that you're revenged already. If you'd been even a shadowy semblance of the father you once professed to be, I--I shouldn't be wondering where I'm to get my dinner from."

She examined the physiognomy of the man in front of her as if, instead of being the most familiar of faces, she saw it now for the first time. Going back to her seat at the table, she was examining the drawings which had accompanied the returned MS., as if desirous of learning what improvement she could make in them, when there came a tap at the door.

"Come in." Mr. Talfourd entered. In a moment she was in his arms. "Harry!"

"Meg!--more roses for you." He handed her the La France roses which had been presented to him by Mrs. Lamb. "What are you doing?"

She was eyeing the roses, without any great show of enthusiasm, which was possibly lacking because she knew from whom they had originally come.

"Harry, I've more bad news for you--I never seem to have anything else. The story's back from the _Searchlight_."

"What does it matter?"

"I don't like to hear you talk like that, because, you see, we both know that it matters, dear. Harry, do you think that it may have been returned because my drawings aren't up to the mark--honestly?"

"Honestly, I am certain it has not. Your drawings are at least as good as my story. I have never met any one who can ill.u.s.trate me as well as you do."

"You mean that? If I weren't Margaret Wallace would you say so still?"

"I should. I should congratulate myself on having met some one who could ill.u.s.trate me as I like to be ill.u.s.trated. You misunderstood me just now. I said what does it matter, because it doesn't matter, in view of something of much greater importance which I have to say to you."

"Harry! what is it?"

"I hardly know how to begin, it's such a queer position. It's this--in a way, my play's accepted."

"'The Gordian Knot'?--by Mr. Winton?"

"No, not by Winton, by Mrs. Lamb."

"Mrs. Lamb?--Harry!" He told her how the play had come into Mrs.

Lamb's hands, and how that lady had expressed her willingness to give it immediate production, on the understanding that she was to create Lady Glover. "But I didn't know she could act. Why should she want to anyhow?--she a rich woman!--especially such a part! Lady Glover's a horrible creature! I suppose you think she'd make a mess of it--and of course she would. She must be a very conceited person."

"Sweetheart, shall I tell you, quite frankly, what I really think?"

"You hadn't better tell me anything else."

"Then I'll make you my father confessor. I've a strong feeling, amounting to a positive conviction, that she'd make a magnificent Lady Glover. That's one reason why I hesitate."

"Now I don't understand. If she makes a success of the part, what else do you want?"

"I'll endeavour to explain. For one thing, I think it possible that she'll make it the part of the play, and so put Winton in the shade entirely. In the theatre he proposes to manage I'm certain he's no intention to be overshadowed by any one. Not that, in such a matter, I'm likely to be too sensitive about his feelings--but there it is. What, from my point of view, would be more serious, is that it is extremely probable that, by her rendition of Lady Glover, she'll warp the play out of what I intended to be its setting. As she was talking just now it dawned upon me that, in her hands, the play might become transformed--something altogether different to what I meant it to be."

"But if it's a success?"

"Meg, I find it difficult to put into words just what's in my mind. Of course if it's successful it will mean----"

"It will mean everything."