A Mummer's Wife Part 46

'Is Mrs. Forest in?'

The hall porter told the page boy to take Mr. Lennox up to Mrs. Forest's rooms.

'All this smells money,' d.i.c.k said to himself in the lift.

The page boy threw open the door, and after walking through a long corridor the boy knocked at a door, and d.i.c.k walked into a red twilight in which he caught sight of a green dress in a distant corner.

'I hope you're not one of those people who require the glare of the sun always. I like the sun in its proper place out of doors,' and while thinking of an appropriate answer d.i.c.k strove to find his way through the numerous pieces of furniture littered over the carpet.

'Come and sit on the sofa beside me.'

'If you'll allow me,' he answered, 'I will sit in this armchair. I shall be able to devote myself more completely to the hearing of your poem.'

It was not polite to refuse to sit beside the lady, but d.i.c.k contrived to convey that her presence would trouble his intellectual enjoyment, and the slight displeasure which the refusal had caused vanished out of the painted face. This first success almost succeeded in s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up d.i.c.k's courage to the point of asking her if he might remove the flower vase that stood on the cabinet behind him, but he did not dare, and at every moment he seemed to recognize a new scent. An odour of burning pastilles drifted from a distant corner into a zone of patchouli in which the lady seemed to have encircled herself and which her every movement seemed to spread in more and more violent flavours, till d.i.c.k began to think he would not be able to hold out till the end of the lady's narrative. Patchouli always gave him a headache, but the word 'opera' restored him to himself, and with lips quivering like a cat watching a sparrow he heard that the subject of her opera was derived from her own life; and telling him that it could not be understood without a relation of the events that had given it birth, she drew her legs up on the sofa, and leaning her head against the back commenced in a low, cooing, but not disagreeable voice to tell of her first love adventure. 'I might almost call my departure for Bulgaria, some ten years ago, a spiritual adventure,' she said.

The departure for Bulgaria seemed full of interest, but from d.i.c.k's point of view the leading up to the departure was unduly prolonged, and he found it difficult to listen with any show of interest to Mrs. Forest's a.s.surances that until she met the Bulgarian she had thought that babies were found in parsley-beds or under gooseberry-bushes, and this innocence of mind was so inherent in her that the Bulgarian had not succeeded altogether in robbing her of it. 'Nor, indeed, did he ever attempt to do so,' she continued. 'Our friendship was founded purely on the intellect.'

This admission was a disappointment to d.i.c.k, who had looked forward to the story of a novel love adventure which might easily be worked into a comic opera, Bulgaria offering a suitable background. With many pretty smiles he tried to lead the lady into the real story of her past, but Mrs. Forest insisted so well that he was fain to believe that there had been no past in her life suitable to comic opera. Her Bulgarian adventure had been animated by love of liberty and a n.o.ble desire to free an oppressed race from the ign.o.ble rule of the Turks; 'ma.s.sacres,' she said, 'full of nameless horrors.'

d.i.c.k would have liked her to name these horrors, but before he could ask her to do so she was telling him of the instinct in every woman to mother something. The Bulgarians had appealed to her sympathies, and she had helped to bring about their liberation by her poetry. In three years she had learnt the language and had composed two volumes of poems in it.

'I've looked out copies of my Bulgarian poems for you,' and she leaned over the edge of the sofa towards a small table. The movement disarranged her skirt, and d.i.c.k's eyes were regaled by the show of a thick shapeless leg, 'doubtless swarthy,' he said to himself.

'The t.i.tle of the first volume,' she said, handing him the books, 'is, _Songs of a Stranger_. My friend the Bulgarian' (and she mentioned an unp.r.o.nounceable name) 'contributed a preface. The second volume is ent.i.tled, _New Songs by the Stranger_. You will find a translation appended to each.'

d.i.c.k promised that he would read the poems as soon as he got home, and begged Mrs. Forest to proceed with her interesting story of the war in which she had lost her great friend, her spiritual adventure, as she called him.

From Bulgaria she had set forth on a long journey, visiting many parts of China, returning home full of love for Eastern civilization, and regret that Western influence would soon make an end of it. 'But,' she said, 'when I think of my own life, my narrative seems but a faint echo of it all; only a fragment of it appears, whereas, if I could tell the whole of it----'

But d.i.c.k inclined to the belief that her genius was dramatic rather than narrative, and to bring the autobiography to an end, he asked her how she had come to be the Mother Superior of the Yarmouth Convent. 'If I can only get her to cut the cackle and get to the 'osses,' he said to himself, but this was not easy to do. Mrs. Forest had to relate her socialistic adventures, her engagement to Edgar Horsley.

'For three years,' she said, 'I was engaged to him, and at the end of this time it seemed to me that we must come to an understanding. He was talking of going to Jamaica, and to go to Jamaica with him we would have to be married. So I went down to where he was staying in the country, a cottage in Somersetshire, at the end of a very pretty lane.'

'Good G.o.d! if she's going to describe the landscape to me,' said d.i.c.k to himself. But Mrs. Forest had no eye for the appearance of trees showing against the sky, and she was quickly at the cottage door, which was opened to her, she said, by a suspicious-looking woman, who said, 'I think I've heard of you. Mr. Horsley is out, but you can come in and wait,' 'and in about half an hour he came in and introduced me to the woman who had opened the door to me. "Isabel" is all that I can remember of her name. "Isabel,"

he said, "has been living with me for the last ten years, but if you like to come with us to Jamaica you can join us." This seemed to me to be an inacceptable proposition. "What you propose to me," I said, "is unthinkable," and I left the house, and have not seen or heard of Mr. Edgar Horsley since. I've looked at water, I've looked at poison, and I've looked at daggers.'

d.i.c.k asked her why she had meditated suicide and she answered:

'Was not such an end to a three years' engagement sufficient to inspire in any woman a thought of suicide? And I'm very exceptional.'

A great deal of Mrs. Forest's life had been unfolded; the only thing that remained in obscurity was how she had come to be the Mother Superior of the Yarmouth Convent, and to make that plain, she said it would be necessary to tell the story of her conversion to the Catholic faith. 'But that was after the convent; the convent was intended for the reformation of dipsomaniacs, female drunkards,' she said; 'but it was afterwards that I became a Roman Catholic.'

d.i.c.k had no wish to hear what dogma it was that had tempted her, but it amused him as he returned home to think of all the strange things that Mrs.

Forest had told him; one thing especially amused him, that her real interest in Catholicism was the confessional. 'How one does get back to oneself in all these things,' he muttered as he panted up the hot steep road. 'A convent for the reformation of female drunkards,' he repeated.

'It's very strange: she can't know anything about my wife. A strange woman,' he continued, and fell to thinking if all that she had told him was the truth, or if it was one of those stories that people imagine about themselves, and imagine so vividly that after a few years they begin to believe that everything they have told has befallen them. He pulled the books from his pocket; they were evidently written in a strange language, but there were people who could learn languages and could do nothing else.

Her Bulgarian poetry could not be better than her English, and he knew what that was like. 'I suppose as soon as she hears I'm married, and she's sure to find out sooner or later, she will be off on some other back. But is this altogether sure?' He had not walked many steps before he remembered that the lecture she was giving at the Working Men's Club was on the chast.i.ty of the marriage state; moreover, she had admitted to him that the Bulgarian adventure was a spiritual one. 'I should say she was a woman with a big temperament which must have been worth gratifying when she went away with that Bulgarian; I wouldn't have minded being in his skin. She hasn't forgotten that she was once a beautiful girl, that's the worst of it, she hasn't forgotten,' and d.i.c.k remembered that at parting she was a little demonstrative, saying to him on the staircase: 'But we aren't parting for long. You will be here tomorrow at my door at the same hour.'

XXVI

The appointment was for five o'clock, and Kate would have liked to remain on the pier with d.i.c.k enjoying the summer evening, but he seemed so intent on returning to their lodging that she did not like to oppose his wishes, and she allowed herself to be led all the way up the dusty town to their close, hot rooms that she might try over Fredegonde's music. That he should wish to hear her voice again in this music flattered her, but she rose from the piano, her face aflame, when he began to mention an appointment.

'It's too bad of you, d.i.c.k, to bring me home and then remember an appointment.'

d.i.c.k overflowed with mellifluous excuses which did not seem to allay Kate's anger, and as he hurried down the street it occurred to him that he might have thought of a better reason than Fredegonde for bringing her home.

However this might be, his thoughts were now with Montgomery and Mrs.

Forest rather than with Kate, and it was not till he drew the latchkey from his pocket that Kate's singing of the waltz returned to him: he ascended the stairs singing it.

'I think it will work out all right.'

'What will work out all right? You're an hour later than you said you'd be.'

'Never mind about the hour,' he answered and began to weave a story about his meeting with a pal from London, as he was leaving the pier the other day: he hadn't spoken to her about it before, not caring to do so until something definite had happened.

'What has happened?' Kate asked, and d.i.c.k, his face aglow, related how the pal had spoken of a great revival of interest in comic opera, especially in French music, and that many city men with plenty of money were on the lookout for somebody who knew how to produce this cla.s.s of work and was in sympathy with the Folies Dramatiques tradition.

Kate, who believed everything that d.i.c.k told her, listened with a heightened temperature. At Margate the admirer of Herve's music became an American who wished to see _Chilperic, Trone d'ecosse, Le Pet.i.t Faust, L'Oeil Creve, Marguerite de Navarre_, reproduced as they had been produced under the composer's direction when d.i.c.k was stage-manager at that theatre. The American was interested in Herve; for he not only wrote the music but also the words of his operas. Herve was, therefore, the Wagner of light comic opera. And if the new venture received sufficient support from the public d.i.c.k would like to add other works by Herve--_La Belle Poule_ and _Le Hussard Persecute_--and having puzzled Kate with many t.i.tles and an imaginary biography of this musical American he fell to telling her of Blanche D'Antigny, singing all the little tunes he could remember and branching off into an account of _Le Canard a Trois Becs_. This last opera was not by Herve, but the American liked it and might be persuaded to produce it later on.

'It contained a part,' he said, 'in which Kate would succeed in establishing herself one of London's favourites;' but his praise of her singing and acting set her wondering if he were gulling her once more, or if he still believed in her. It might be that her continued sobriety had reawakened his old love for her, and she remembered suddenly that she had never really cared for drink, and never would have touched drink if d.i.c.k had not driven her mad with jealousy. And the fact that her voice had returned to her helped her to believe that d.i.c.k was sincere when he told her that she would be a better Fredegonde than Blanche D'Antigny, who created the part originally. Montgomery endorsed this view one evening; he refused to take 'no' for an answer: she must sing the score through with him, and several times he stopped playing; and looking up in her face told her he had never known a voice to improve so rapidly and so suddenly. d.i.c.k nodded his acquiescence in Montgomery's opinion and hoped there would be no more need to tell Kate lies once she was settled in a lodging behind the Cattle Market. But in this he was mistaken, for in London the need to keep up the fiction of Herve's American admirer was more necessary than at Margate. d.i.c.k had to relate his different quests every evening. He had been after the Lyceum, but was unable to get an answer from the lessee; he hoped to get one next week; and when next week came he spoke about the Royalty and the Adelphi and the Haymarket, neglecting, however, to mention the theatre in which he hoped to produce Laura's opera. 'The large stage of the Lyceum would be excellently well suited,' he said, 'for a fine production of _Chilperic_,' and he besought Kate to apply herself to the study of the part of Fredegonde. His imagination led him into dreams of an English company going over to Paris with all Herve's works, and Kate obliterating the Blanche D'Antigny tradition. Kate listened delighted, discovering in d.i.c.k's praise of her singing a hope that his love of her had survived the many tribulations it had been through; and while listening she vowed she would never touch drink again. Nor did her happiness vanish till morning, till she saw him struggling into his greatcoat, and foresaw the long dividing hours. But he had said so many kind things overnight that she was behoven to stifle complaint, and bore with her loneliness all day long refusing food, for without d.i.c.k's presence food had no pleasure for her, however hungry she might be. She would wait contented hour after hour if she could have him to herself when he returned. But sometimes he would bring back a friend with him, and the pair would sit up talking of women and their apt.i.tudes in different parts. As none of them were known personally to Kate, the names they mentioned suggested only new causes for jealousy, and the thought that d.i.c.k was living among all these women while she was hidden away in this lodging from night till morning, from morning till night, maddened her. It seemed to her that having been out all day d.i.c.k might at least reserve his evenings for her; and one night she showed the man he had brought back to supper plainly that his absence would, so far as she was concerned, have been preferable to his company. 'I wouldn't have come back,' he said, 'only d.i.c.k insisted;' and interrupting his regrets that she did not like him, she said: 'It isn't that I don't like you, but you're used to women who aren't in love with their husbands, and I'm in love with mine.' The friend repeated Kate's words to d.i.c.k, who said he hadn't a moment till the cast of the new piece was settled, and a few nights later he brought back some music which he said he would like her to try over. 'But it's ma.n.u.script, d.i.c.k. Why don't you bring home the printed score?' The lie that came to his lips was that the score of _Trone d'ecosse_ had never been printed, and this seeming to her very unlikely she said she didn't care whether it had or hadn't, but was tired of living in Islington, and would like to see something of the London of which she had heard so much.

'I've been in London all my life,' d.i.c.k said, 'and I haven't been to the Tower or to St. Paul's. However, dear, if you'd like to see them we'll visit all these places together as soon as _Chilperic_ is produced.'

With this promise he consoled her in a measure, and she watched d.i.c.k depart and then took up a novel and read it till she could read no longer. She then went out for a little walk, but soon returned, finding it wearisome to be always asking the way. So forlorn and lost did she seem that even the fat landlady, the mother of the ten children who clattered about the head of the kitchen staircase, took pity upon her and told her the number of the bus that would bring her to the British Museum, a.s.suring her that she would find a great deal there to distract her attention.

It did not matter to her where she went if d.i.c.k wasn't with her; without d.i.c.k all places were the same to her, and the British Museum would do as well as any other place. She must go somewhere, and the British Museum would do as well as the Tower or St. Paul's. There were things to be seen, and she didn't mind what she saw as long as she saw something new. She couldn't look any longer at the two pictures on the walls--"With The Stream" and "Against The Stream," the wax fruit, the mahogany sideboard, the dingy furniture, the torn curtains; and of all she must get out of hearing of the children and the surly landlady, who a few minutes ago was less surly, and had told her of the British Museum, and all the wonderful things that were to be seen there. But she hadn't the bus fare, and didn't like to ask the landlady for a few pence. As long as she hadn't any money she was out of temptation, and it was by her own wish that d.i.c.k left her without money. As she walked to and fro she caught sight of his clothes thrown over the back of a chair in the bedroom; and he might have left a few pence in one of his pockets.

She searched the trousers; how careless d.i.c.k was: several shillings: one, two, three, four, five. Five and sixpence. She would take sixpence. As she walked out of the bedroom clinking the coppers the desire to read his letters fell upon her, and yielding to it she put her hand into the inside pocket of his coat and drew from it a packet of letters and some papers, ma.n.u.scripts, poems.

'Now, who,' she asked, 'can have been sending him these _Cla.s.sical Cartoons_, number four?'

She read of heroes, the glory of manhood collected along the sh.o.r.es of the terrible river that guards the dominions of Pluto. She knew nothing of Pluto, but recognized the handwriting as a woman's, and the lines:

'Zeus, the monarch of heaven, clothed in the form of a mortal, Kneeling, caressed and caressing, drank from her lips joy and love-draughts,'

caused Kate to dash the ma.n.u.script from her. A letter accompanied the poem and read:

'My dear, nothing can be done without you, and if you don't come at once we shall miss getting a theatre this season, and without a theatre we are helpless.'

Kate did not need to read any more. The letter left no doubt that d.i.c.k was engaged in an intrigue with a woman who had written some play or opera which he was going to produce, and the envelope out of which she had taken the letter bore the direction: 'Richard Lennox, Esq., Post Restante, Margate.'

'So it was lies all the while at Margate,' she said to herself, walking about the room, stopping now and again to stare at some object which she did not see. 'There was no American, and no _Chilperic_, no _Trone d'ecosse_, no _L'Oeil Creve_, no _La Belle Poule_, no _Marguerite de Navarre_. Lies, lies! Nothing but lies! He never intended to produce one of them, or that I should play "Fredegonde." Lies! Lies! And the great part in _Le Canard a Trois Becs_ which would establish my reputation in London.

Lies! He never intended to produce one of these operas,' she cried. 'He shut me up here in this lodging so that I should be out of the way while he carried on with that What's-her-name.'

Her brain at that instant seemed to catch fire, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up some money from the mantelpiece, she rushed out of the house tumbling over the children as she made her way to the front door without hat or jacket. The sunlight awoke her and she looked round puzzled, and only just escaped being run over by a pa.s.sing cart. In front of her was a public-house.

Drink! She went in and drank till she recovered her reason and began to lose it again.