Vain Fortune Part 14

'I doubt it. At the last moment he'll find that the third act doesn't satisfy him, and will postpone the production till the spring.'

'What do you think of his work?'

'Very intelligent, but a little insipid--like himself. Look at him. _Il est bien l'homme de ses ouvres_. There is something dry about him, and his writings are like himself--hard, dry and wanting in personal pa.s.sion.'

'Yet he talks charmingly, with vivacity and intelligence, and he is so full of appreciation of Shakespeare, Goethe, and such genuine love for antiquity.'

'I've heard him talk Shakespeare, Goethe, and Ibsen,' said Harding, 'but I never heard him say anything new, anything personal. It seems to me that you mistake quotation for perception. He a.s.similates, but he originates nothing. He has read a great deal; he is covered with literature like a rock with moss and lichen. He's appreciative, I will say that for him. He would make a capital editor, or a tutor, or a don, an Oxford don. He would be perfectly happy as a don; he could read up the German critics and expound Sophocles. He would be perfectly happy as a don. As it is, he is perfectly miserable.'

'There was a fellow who had a studio over mine,' said Thompson. 'He had been in the army and used to paint a bit. The academy by chance hung a portrait, so he left the army and turned portrait-painter. One day he saw a picture by Velasquez, and he understood how horrid were the red things he used to send to the academy. He used to come down to see me; he used to say, "I wish I had never seen a picture, by Gad, it is driving me out of my mind." Poor chap, I wanted him to go back to the army. I said, Why paint?

no one forces you to; it makes you miserable; don't do so any more. When you have anything to say, art is a joy; when you haven't, it is a curse to yourself and to others.'

Philipps, the editor of _The Cosmopolitan_, turned towards Harding, and he said--

'I cannot follow you in your estimate of Hubert Price. I don't see him either mentally or physically as you do. It seems to me that you distort the facts to make them fit in with your theory. He is tall and thin, but I do not think that his nature is hard and dry. I should, on the contrary, say that he was of a soft rather than a hard nature. The expression of his face is mild and melancholy. I do not detect the dry, hard, rocky basis of which you speak. I should say that Price was a sentimental man.'

'I have never heard of him being in love,' said Harding. 'I should say that he had been entirely uninfluenced by women.'

'But love of women is only one form of sentimentality and not the highest, nor the deepest,' said Philipps. 'I can imagine a man being exceedingly sentimental and not caring about women at all.'

'What you say is true,' said Harding. His face showed that he felt the observation to be true and was interested in it. 'But I think I described him truly when I said he was like a rock overgrown with moss and lichen.

There is not sufficient root-hold for any idea to grow in him, it withers and dies. Examine his literature, and you'll see it is as I say. He has written some remarkable plays, I don't say he hasn't. But they seem to be better than they are. He gets a picturesque situation, but there is always something mechanical about it. There's a human emotion somewhere, but it's never really there; it might have been, but it is not.... It is very well done, it is very intelligent; but it does not seem to live, to palpitate.... In like manner there are men who have read everything, who understand everything, who can theorise; they can tell you all about the masterpiece, but when it comes to producing one, well, they're not on in that scene.'

'What an excellent character he would make in a novel! A drama of sterility,' said Phillips.

'Or the dramas which they bring about,' said Harding.

'Yes, or the dramas they bring about. But what drama can Price bring about--he shuts himself up in a room and tries to write a play,' said Phillips. 'I don't see how he can dramatise any life but his own.'

'All deviations from the normal tend to bring about drama,' said Harding.

'Then, why don't you do a Hubert Price in a book? It would be most interesting. Do you think you ever will?'

'I don't think so.'

'Why not? Because he is a friend of yours, and you would not like----'

'I never allow my private life to interfere with my literature. No; for quite other reasons. I admit that he represents physically and mentally a great deal of the intellectual impotence current in our time. But it would be difficult, I think, to bring vividly before the reader that tall, thin, blonde man, with his pale gentle eyes and his insipid mind. I should take quite a different kind of man as my model.'

'What kind of man?' said Phillips, and the five or six writers and painters leaned forward to listen to Harding.

'I think I should imagine a man about the medium height. A nice figure, light, trim, neat. Good-looking, straight nose, eyes bright and intelligent. I think he would have beard, a very close-cut beard. The turn of his mind would be metaphysical and poetic--an intense subtility of mind combined with much order. He would be full of little habits. He would have note-books of a special kind in which to enter his ideas. The tendency of his mind would be towards concision, and he would by degrees extend his desire for concision into the twilight and the night of symbolism.'

'A sort of constipated Browning,' said Phillips.

'Exactly,' said Harding.

'And would you have him married?' asked John Norton.

'Certainly. I imagine him living in a tiny little house somewhere near the river--Westminster or Chelsea. His wife would be a dreadful person, thin, withered, herring-gutted--a sort of red herring with a cap. But his daughter would be charming, she would have inherited her father's features.

I can imagine these women living in admiration of this man, tending on him, speaking very little, removed from worldly influences, seeing only the young men who come every Tuesday evening to listen to the poet's conversation--I don't hear them saying much--I can see them sitting in a corner listening for the ten thousandth time to aestheticisms not one word of which they understand, and about ten o'clock stealing away to some mysterious chamber. Something of the poet's sterility would have descended upon them.'

'That is how you imagine _un genie rate_,' said Phillips. 'Your conception is clear enough; why don't you write the book?'

'Because there is nothing more to say on the subject. It is a subject for a sketch, not for a book. But of this I'm sure, that the dry-rock man would come out more clearly in a book than the soft, insipid, gentle, companionable, red-bearded fellow.'

'If Price were the dry, sterile nature you describe, we should feel no interest in him, we should not be discussing him as we are,' said Phillips.

'Yes, we should--Price suffers; we're interested in him because he suffers--because he suffers in public--"I never was happy except on those rare occasions when I thought I was a great man." In that sentence you'll find the clew to his attractiveness. But in him there is nothing of the irresponsible pa.s.sion which is genius. There's that little Rose Ma.s.sey--that little baby who spends half her day dreaming, and who is as ignorant as a cod-fish. Well, she has got that something--that undefinable but always recognisable something. It was Price who discovered her. We used to laugh at him when he said she had genius. He was right; we were wrong.

The other night I was standing in the wings; she was coming down from her dressing-room--she lingered on the stairs, looking the most insignificant little thing you can well imagine; but the moment her cue came a strange light came into her eyes and a strange life was fused in her limbs; she was transformed, and went on the stage a very symbol of pa.s.sion and romance.'

The slate colour of the sky did not seem to change, and yet the night grew visibly denser in the park; and there had come the sensation of things ended, a movement of wraps thrown over shoulders and thought of bedtime and home. The crowd was moving away, and nearly lost in the darkness Hubert came towards his friends. He had just knocked the ash from his cigar, and as he drew in the smoke the glow of the lighted end fled over his blonde face.

XIV

One day a short letter came from Hubert, asking Mrs. Bentley to send the dog-cart to the station to fetch him. He had decided to come home at once, and postpone the production of his play till the coming spring.

Every rehearsal had revealed new and serious faults of construction. These he had attempted to remove when he went home in the evening, but though he often worked till daybreak, he did not achieve much. The very knowledge that he must come to rehearsal with the re-written scene seemed to produce in him a sort of mental paralysis, and, striking the table with his fist, he would get up, and a thought would cross his mind of how he might escape from this torture. After one terrible night, in which he feared his brain was really giving way, he went down to the theatre and dismissed the company, for he had resolved to return to Ashwood and spend another autumn and another winter re-writing _The Gipsy_. If it did not come right then, he would bother no more about it. Why should he? There was so much else in life besides literature. He had plenty of money, and was determined in any case to enjoy himself. So did his thoughts run as he leaned back on the cushions of a first-cla.s.s carriage, glancing casually through the evening paper. Presently his eye was caught by a paragraph narrating an odd calamity which had overtaken a scene carpenter, an honest, respectable, sober, hard-working man, who had fulfilled all social obligations as perfectly as the most exacting could desire, until the day he had conceived the idea of a machine for the better exhibition of advertis.e.m.e.nts on the h.o.a.rdings. His system was based on the roller-towel. The roller was moved by clockwork, and the advertis.e.m.e.nts went round like the towel. At first he spent his spare time and his spare money upon it, but as the hobby took possession of him, he devoted all his time and all his money to it; then he p.a.w.ned his clothes, and then he raised money on the furniture; the brokers came in, and finally the poor fellow was taken to a lunatic asylum, and his wife and family were thrown on the parish. The story impressed Hubert strangely. He saw an a.n.a.logy between himself and the crazy inventor, and he asked himself if he would go on re-writing _The Gipsy_ until he went out of his mind. 'Even if I do,' he thought, 'I can hurt no one but myself. No one else is dependent on me; my hobby can hurt no one but myself.' These forebodings pa.s.sed away, and his mind filled up with schemes of work. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he looked forward to doing it. He wanted quiet, he wanted long days alone with himself. Such were his thoughts in the dog-cart as he drove home, and it was therefore vaguely unpleasant to him to meet the two ladies waiting for him at the lodge gate.

Their smiles of welcome irritated him; he longed for the solitude of his study, the companionship of his work; and instead he had to sit with them in the drawing-room, and tell them how he liked London, what he had done there, whom he had seen there, and why he had been unable to finish his play to his satisfaction.

In the morning Emily or Mrs. Bentley was generally about to pour out his coffee for him and keep him company. One day Hubert noticed that it was no longer Mrs. Bentley but Emily who met him in the pa.s.sage, and followed him into the dining-room. And while he was eating she sat with her feet on the fender, talking of some girls in the neighbourhood--their jealousies, and how Edith Eastwick could not think of anything for herself, but always copied her dresses. Dandy drowsed at her feet, and very often she would take him to the window and make him go through all his tricks, calling on Hubert to admire him.

She had a knack of monopolising Hubert, and since his return from London, her desire to do so had become almost a determination. Hubert showed no disinclination, and after breakfast they were to be seen together in the gardens. Hubert was a great catch, and there were other young ladies eager to be agreeable to him; but he did not seem to desire flirtation with any.

So they came to speak of him as a very clever man, no doubt; but as they knew nothing about plays, he very probably did not care to talk to them.

Hubert was not attractive in general society, and he would soon have failed to interest them at all had it not been for Emily. She was proud of her influence over him, and for the first time showed a desire to go into society. Day by day her conversation turned more and more on tennis-parties, and she even spoke about a ball. He consented to take her; and he had to dance with her, and she refused nearly every one, saying she was tired, leading Hubert away for long conversations in the galleries and on the staircases. Hubert had positively nothing to say to her; but she seemed quite happy as long as she was with him. And as they drove through the dawn Emily chattered of a hundred trifles,--what Edith had said, what Mabel wore, of the possibility of a marriage, and the arrival of a detachment of some cavalry regiment. Hubert found it hard to affect interest in these conversations. His brain was weary with waltz tunes, the shape of shoulders, and the glare and rustle of silk; but as she chattered, rubbing the misted windows from time to time, so as to determine how far they were from home, he wondered if he should ever marry, and half playfully he thought of her as his wife.

But without warning his dreams were broken by a sudden thought, and he said--

'Another time, I think it will be better, my dear Emily, that Mrs. Bentley should take you out.'

'Why should you not take me out?... I suppose you don't care to--I bore you.'

'No; on the contrary, I enjoy it--I like to see you amused; but I think you should have a proper chaperon.'

Emily did not answer; and a little cloud came over her face. Hubert thought she looked even prettier in her displeasure than she had done in her joy; and he went to sleep thinking of her. Never had he thought her so beautiful--never had she touched him with so personal an interest; and next morning, when he lounged in his study, he was glad to hear her knock at the door; and the half-hour he spent with her there, yielding to her pleading to come for a walk with her, or drive her over to Southwater in the dog-cart, was one of unalloyed pleasure. But a few days after, as he lay in bed, a new idea came to him for his third act. So he said he would have breakfast in his study. He dressed, thinking the whole time how he could round off his idea and bring it into the act. So clear and precise did it seem in his mind that he sat down immediately after breakfast, forgetting even his matutinal cigar, and wrote with a flowing pen. He had left orders that he was not to be disturbed; and was annoyed when the door opened and Emily entered.

'I am very sorry, but you must not be cross with me; I do so want you to come and see the Eastwicks with me.'

'My dear Emily, I could not think of such a thing this morning. I am very busy--indeed I am.'

'What are you doing? Nothing very important, I can see. You are only writing your play. You might come with me.'

'My play is as important to me as a visit to the Eastwicks is to you,' he answered, smiling.

'I have promised Edith.... I really do wish you would come.'