Vain Fortune Part 16

'If Emily would only continue the talking,' she thought, 'I should be able to get away.' But Emily said not a word. She sat as if frozen in her chair; and at length Mrs. Bentley was obliged to enter, however cursorily, into the conversation.

'If you have written out _The Gipsy_ from end to end, I should advise you to produce it without further delay. Once it is put on the stage, you will be able to see better where it is wrong.'

'Then it will be too late. The critics will have expressed their opinion; the work will be judged. There are only one or two points about which I am doubtful. I wish Harding were here. I cannot work unless I have some one to talk to about my work. I don't mean to say that I take advice; but the very fact of reading an act to a sympathetic listener helps me. I wrote the first act of _Divorce_ in that way. It was all wrong. I had some vague ideas about how it might be mended. A friend came in; I told him my difficulties; in telling them they vanished, and I wrote an entirely new act that very night.'

'I'm sorry,' said Mrs. Bentley, 'that I am not Mr. Harding. It must be very gratifying to one's feelings to be able to help to solve a literary difficulty, particularly if one cannot write oneself.'

'But you can--I'm sure you can. I remember asking your advice once before; it was excellent, and was of immense help to me. Are you sure it will not bore you? I shall be so much obliged if you will.'

'Bore me! No, it won't bore me,' said Mrs. Bentley. 'I'm sure I feel very much flattered.' The colour mounted to her cheek, a smile was on her lips; but it went out at the sight of Emily's face.

'Then come up to my study. We shall have just time to get through the first act before dinner.'

Mrs. Bentley hesitated; and, noticing her hesitation, Hubert looked surprised. At that moment Emily said--

'May I not come too?'

'Well, I don't know, Emily. You see that we wish to see if there is anything in the play that a young girl should not hear.'

'Always an excuse to get rid of me. You want to be alone. I never come into the room that you do not stop speaking. Oh, I can bear it no longer!'

'My dear Emily!'

'Don't touch me! Go to her; shut yourself up together. Don't think of me. I can bear it no longer!' And she fled from the room, leaving behind her a sensation of alarm and pity. Hubert and Mrs. Bentley stood looking at each other, both at a loss for words. At last he said--

'That poor child will cry herself into her grave. Have you noticed how poorly she is looking?'

'Not noticed! But you do not know half of it. It has been going on now a long time. You don't know half!'

'I have noticed that things are not settling down as I hoped they would. It really has become quite dreadful to see that poor face looking reproachfully at you all day long. And I am quite at a loss to know what's the right thing to do.'

'It is worse than you think. You have not noticed that we hardly speak now?'

'You--who were such friends--surely not!'

Then she told him hurriedly, in brief phrases, of the change that had taken place in Emily in the last three months. 'It was only the other night she accused me of going after you, of having designs upon you. It is very painful to have to tell you these things, but I have no choice in the matter. She lay on her bed crying, saying that every one hated her, that she was thoroughly miserable. Somehow she seems naturally an unhappy child.

She was unhappy at home before she came here; but then I believe she had excellent reasons,--her mother was a very terrible person. However, all that is past; we have to consider the present now. She accused me of having designs on you, insisting all the while that every one was talking about it, and that she was fretting solely because of my good name. Of course, it is very ridiculous; but it is very pitiful, and will end badly if we don't take means to put a stop to it. I shouldn't be surprised if she went off her head. We ought to have the best medical advice.'

'This is very serious,' he said. And then, at the end of a long silence, he said again, 'This is very serious--perhaps far more serious than we think.'

'Not more serious than I think. I ought to have spoken about it to you before; but the subject is a delicate one. She hardly sleeps at all at night; she cries sometimes for hours; she works herself up into such fits of nervousness that she doesn't know what she is saying,--accuses me of killing her, and then repents, declaring that I am the only one who has ever cared for her, and begs of me not to leave her. I do a.s.sure you it is becoming very serious.'

'Have you any proposal to make regarding her? I need hardly say that I'm ready to carry out any idea of yours.'

'You know what the cause of it is, I suppose?'

'I do not know; I am not certain. I daresay I'm mistaken.'

'No, you are not; I wish you were--that is to say, unless---- But I was saying that it is most serious. The child's health is affected; she is working herself up into an awful state of mind; she is losing all self-control. I'm sure I'm the last person who would say anything against her; but the time has come to speak out. Well, the other day, when we were at the Eastwicks, you took the chair next to mine when she left the room.

When she returned, she saw that you had changed your place, and she said to Ethel Eastwick, "Oh, I'm fainting. I cannot go in there; they are together." Ethel had to take her up to her room. Well, this morbid sensitiveness is most unhealthy. If I walk out on the terrace, she follows, thinking that I have made an appointment to meet you. Jealousy of me fills up her whole mind. I a.s.sure you that I am most seriously alarmed. Something occurs every day--trifles, no doubt; and in anybody else they would mean nothing, but in her they mean a great deal.'

'But what do you propose?'

'Unless you intend to marry her--forgive me for speaking so plain--there is only one thing to do. I must leave.'

'No, no; you must not leave! She could not live alone with me. But does she want you to leave?'

'No; that is the worst of it. I have proposed it; she will not hear of it; to mention the subject is to provoke a scene. She is afraid if I left that you would come and see me; and the very thought of my escaping her vigilance is intolerable.'

'It is very strange.'

'Yes, it is very strange; but, opposed though she be to all thoughts of it, I must leave.'

'As a favour I ask you to stay. Do me this service, I beg of you. I have set my heart on finishing my play this autumn. If it isn't finished now, it never will be finished; and your leaving would create so much trouble that all thought of work would be out of the question. Emily could not remain alone here with me. I should have to find another companion for her; and you know how difficult that would be. I'm worried quite enough as it is.' A look of pain pa.s.sed through his eyes, and Mrs. Bentley wondered what he he could mean. 'No,' he said, taking her hands, 'we are good friends--are we not? Do me this service. Stay with me until I finish this play; then, if things do not mend, go, if you like, but not now. Will you promise me?'

'I promise.'

'Thank you. I am deeply obliged to you.'

At the end of a long silence, Hubert said, 'Will you not come up-stairs, and let me read you the first act?'

'I should like to, but I think it better not. If Emily heard that you had read me your play, she would not close her eyes to-night; it would be tears and misery all the night through.'

XVI

The study in which he had determined to write his masterpiece had been fitted up with taste and care. The floor was covered with a rare Persian carpet, and the walls were lined with graceful bookcases of Chippendale design; the volumes, half morocco, calf, and the yellow paper of French novels, showed through the diamond panes. The writing-table stood in front of the window; like the bookcases, it was Chippendale, and on the dark mahogany the handsome silver inkstand seemed to invite literary composition. There was a scent of flowers in the room. Emily had filled a bowl of old china with some pale September roses. The curtains were made of a modern cretonne--their colour was similar to the bowl of roses; and the large couch on which Hubert lay was covered with the same material. On one wall there was a sea-piece by Courbet, and upon another a river landscape, with rosy-tinted evening sky, by Corot. The chimney-piece was set out with a large gilt timepiece, and candelabra in Dresden china. Hubert had bought these works of art on the occasion of his last visit to London, about two months ago.

It was twelve o'clock. He had finished reading his second act, and the reading had been a bitter disappointment. The idea floated, pure and seductive, in his mind; but when he tried to reduce it to a precise shape upon paper, it seemed to escape in some vague, mysterious way. Enticingly, like a b.u.t.terfly it fluttered before him; he followed like a child, eagerly--his brain set on the mazy flight. It led him through a country where all was promise of milk and honey. He followed, sure that the alluring spirit would soon choose a flower; then he would capture it. Often it seemed to settle. He approached with palpitating heart; but lo! when the net was withdrawn it was empty.

A look of pain and perplexity came upon his face; he remembered the lodging at seven shillings a week in the Tottenham Court Road. He had suffered there; but it seemed to him that he was suffering more here. He had changed his surroundings, but he had not changed himself. Success and failure, despair and hope, joy and sorrow, lie within and not without us. His pain lay at his heart's root; he could not pluck it forth, and its gratification seemed more than ever impossible. He changed his position on the couch.

Suddenly his thoughts said, 'Perhaps I am mistaken in the subject. Perhaps that is the reason. Perhaps there is no play to be extracted from it; perhaps it would be better to abandon it and choose another.' For a few seconds he scanned the literary horizon of his mind. 'No, no!' he said bitterly, 'this is the play I was born to write. No other subject is possible; I can think of nothing else. This is all I can feel or see.' It was the second act that now defied his efforts. It had once seemed clear and of exquisite proportions; now no second act seemed possible: the subject did not seem to admit of a second act; and, clasping his forehead with his hands, he strove to think it out.

Any distraction from the haunting pain, now become chronic, is welcome, and he answers with a glad 'Come in!' the knock at the door.

'I'm sorry,' said Mrs. Bentley, 'for disturbing you, but I should like to know what fish you would like for your dinner--soles, turbot, or whiting?

Immersed in literary problems as you are, I daresay these details are very prosaic; but I notice that later in the day----'

Hubert laughed. 'I find such details far more agreeable than literature. I can do nothing with my play.'

'Aren't you getting on this morning?'

'No, not very well.'

'What do you think of turbot?'