diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/nonav10.txt | 1614 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/nonav10.zip | bin | 0 -> 32413 bytes |
2 files changed, 1614 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/nonav10.txt b/old/nonav10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9d74146 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/nonav10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1614 @@ +**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Nona Vincent, by Henry James** +#32 in our series by Henry James + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + +*It must legally be the first thing seen when opening the book.* +In fact, our legal advisors said we can't even change margins. + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Title: Nona Vincent + +Author: Henry James + +July, 2001 [Etext #2717] + + +**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Nona Vincent, by Henry James** +*****This file should be named nonav10.txt or nonav10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, nonav11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, nonav10a.txt + + +This etext was scanned by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, +from the 1893 Macmillan and Co. edition. Proofing was by Nina +Hall, Mohua Sen, Bridie, Francine Smith and David. + + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any +of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text +files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+ +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users. + +At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third +of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we +manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly +from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an +assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few +more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we +don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person. + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are +tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- +Mellon University). + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> +hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org +if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if +it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . . + +We would prefer to send you this information by email. + +****** + +To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser +to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by +author and by title, and includes information about how +to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also +download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This +is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com, +for a more complete list of our various sites. + +To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any +Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror +sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed +at http://promo.net/pg). + +Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better. + +Example FTP session: + +ftp metalab.unc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg +cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext01, etc. +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] +GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books] + +*** + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** + +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at +Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other +things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +We are planning on making some changes in our donation structure +in 2000, so you might want to email me, hart@pobox.com beforehand. + + + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was scanned by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, +from the 1893 Macmillan and Co. edition. Proofing was by Nina +Hall, Mohua Sen, Bridie, Francine Smith and David. + + + + + +Nona Vincent + +by Henry James + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + + +"I wondered whether you wouldn't read it to me," said Mrs. Alsager, +as they lingered a little near the fire before he took leave. She +looked down at the fire sideways, drawing her dress away from it and +making her proposal with a shy sincerity that added to her charm. +Her charm was always great for Allan Wayworth, and the whole air of +her house, which was simply a sort of distillation of herself, so +soothing, so beguiling that he always made several false starts +before departure. He had spent some such good hours there, had +forgotten, in her warm, golden drawing-room, so much of the +loneliness and so many of the worries of his life, that it had come +to be the immediate answer to his longings, the cure for his aches, +the harbour of refuge from his storms. His tribulations were not +unprecedented, and some of his advantages, if of a usual kind, were +marked in degree, inasmuch as he was very clever for one so young, +and very independent for one so poor. He was eight-and-twenty, but +he had lived a good deal and was full of ambitions and curiosities +and disappointments. The opportunity to talk of some of these in +Grosvenor Place corrected perceptibly the immense inconvenience of +London. This inconvenience took for him principally the line of +insensibility to Allan Wayworth's literary form. He had a literary +form, or he thought he had, and her intelligent recognition of the +circumstance was the sweetest consolation Mrs. Alsager could have +administered. She was even more literary and more artistic than he, +inasmuch as he could often work off his overflow (this was his +occupation, his profession), while the generous woman, abounding in +happy thoughts, but unedited and unpublished, stood there in the +rising tide like the nymph of a fountain in the plash of the marble +basin. + +The year before, in a big newspapery house, he had found himself next +her at dinner, and they had converted the intensely material hour +into a feast of reason. There was no motive for her asking him to +come to see her but that she liked him, which it was the more +agreeable to him to perceive as he perceived at the same time that +she was exquisite. She was enviably free to act upon her likings, +and it made Wayworth feel less unsuccessful to infer that for the +moment he happened to be one of them. He kept the revelation to +himself, and indeed there was nothing to turn his head in the +kindness of a kind woman. Mrs. Alsager occupied so completely the +ground of possession that she would have been condemned to inaction +had it not been for the principle of giving. Her husband, who was +twenty years her senior, a massive personality in the City and a +heavy one at home (wherever he stood, or even sat, he was +monumental), owned half a big newspaper and the whole of a great many +other things. He admired his wife, though she bore no children, and +liked her to have other tastes than his, as that seemed to give a +greater acreage to their life. His own appetites went so far he +could scarcely see the boundary, and his theory was to trust her to +push the limits of hers, so that between them the pair should astound +by their consumption. His ideas were prodigiously vulgar, but some +of them had the good fortune to be carried out by a person of perfect +delicacy. Her delicacy made her play strange tricks with them, but +he never found this out. She attenuated him without his knowing it, +for what he mainly thought was that he had aggrandised HER. Without +her he really would have been bigger still, and society, breathing +more freely, was practically under an obligation to her which, to do +it justice, it acknowledged by an attitude of mystified respect. She +felt a tremulous need to throw her liberty and her leisure into the +things of the soul--the most beautiful things she knew. She found +them, when she gave time to seeking, in a hundred places, and +particularly in a dim and sacred region--the region of active pity-- +over her entrance into which she dropped curtains so thick that it +would have been an impertinence to lift them. But she cultivated +other beneficent passions, and if she cherished the dream of +something fine the moments at which it most seemed to her to come +true were when she saw beauty plucked flower-like in the garden of +art. She loved the perfect work--she had the artistic chord. This +chord could vibrate only to the touch of another, so that +appreciation, in her spirit, had the added intensity of regret. She +could understand the joy of creation, and she thought it scarcely +enough to be told that she herself created happiness. She would have +liked, at any rate, to choose her way; but it was just here that her +liberty failed her. She had not the voice--she had only the vision. +The only envy she was capable of was directed to those who, as she +said, could do something. + +As everything in her, however, turned to gentleness, she was +admirably hospitable to such people as a class. She believed Allan +Wayworth could do something, and she liked to hear him talk of the +ways in which he meant to show it. He talked of them almost to no +one else--she spoiled him for other listeners. With her fair bloom +and her quiet grace she was indeed an ideal public, and if she had +ever confided to him that she would have liked to scribble (she had +in fact not mentioned it to a creature), he would have been in a +perfect position for asking her why a woman whose face had so much +expression should not have felt that she achieved. How in the world +could she express better? There was less than that in Shakespeare +and Beethoven. She had never been more generous than when, in +compliance with her invitation, which I have recorded, he brought his +play to read to her. He had spoken of it to her before, and one dark +November afternoon, when her red fireside was more than ever an +escape from the place and the season, he had broken out as he came +in--"I've done it, I've done it!" She made him tell her all about +it--she took an interest really minute and asked questions +delightfully apt. She had spoken from the first as if he were on the +point of being acted, making him jump, with her participation, all +sorts of dreary intervals. She liked the theatre as she liked all +the arts of expression, and he had known her to go all the way to +Paris for a particular performance. Once he had gone with her--the +time she took that stupid Mrs. Mostyn. She had been struck, when he +sketched it, with the subject of his drama, and had spoken words that +helped him to believe in it. As soon as he had rung down his curtain +on the last act he rushed off to see her, but after that he kept the +thing for repeated last touches. Finally, on Christmas day, by +arrangement, she sat there and listened to it. It was in three acts +and in prose, but rather of the romantic order, though dealing with +contemporary English life, and he fondly believed that it showed the +hand if not of the master, at least of the prize pupil. + +Allan Wayworth had returned to England, at two-and-twenty, after a +miscellaneous continental education; his father, the correspondent, +for years, in several foreign countries successively, of a +conspicuous London journal, had died just after this, leaving his +mother and her two other children, portionless girls, to subsist on a +very small income in a very dull German town. The young man's +beginnings in London were difficult, and he had aggravated them by +his dislike of journalism. His father's connection with it would +have helped him, but he was (insanely, most of his friends judged-- +the great exception was always Mrs. Alsager) INTRAITABLE on the +question of form. Form--in his sense--was not demanded by English +newspapers, and he couldn't give it to them in THEIR sense. The +demand for it was not great anywhere, and Wayworth spent costly weeks +in polishing little compositions for magazines that didn't pay for +style. The only person who paid for it was really Mrs. Alsager: she +had an infallible instinct for the perfect. She paid in her own way, +and if Allan Wayworth had been a wage-earning person it would have +made him feel that if he didn't receive his legal dues his palm was +at least occasionally conscious of a gratuity. He had his +limitations, his perversities, but the finest parts of him were the +most alive, and he was restless and sincere. It is however the +impression he produced on Mrs. Alsager that most concerns us: she +thought him not only remarkably good-looking but altogether original. +There were some usual bad things he would never do--too many +prohibitive puddles for him in the short cut to success. + +For himself, he had never been so happy as since he had seen his way, +as he fondly believed, to some sort of mastery of the scenic idea, +which struck him as a very different matter now that he looked at it +from within. He had had his early days of contempt for it, when it +seemed to him a jewel, dim at the best, hidden in a dunghill, a taper +burning low in an air thick with vulgarity. It was hedged about with +sordid approaches, it was not worth sacrifice and suffering. The man +of letters, in dealing with it, would have to put off all literature, +which was like asking the bearer of a noble name to forego his +immemorial heritage. Aspects change, however, with the point of +view: Wayworth had waked up one morning in a different bed +altogether. It is needless here to trace this accident to its +source; it would have been much more interesting to a spectator of +the young man's life to follow some of the consequences. He had been +made (as he felt) the subject of a special revelation, and he wore +his hat like a man in love. An angel had taken him by the hand and +guided him to the shabby door which opens, it appeared, into an +interior both splendid and austere. The scenic idea was magnificent +when once you had embraced it--the dramatic form had a purity which +made some others look ingloriously rough. It had the high dignity of +the exact sciences, it was mathematical and architectural. It was +full of the refreshment of calculation and construction, the +incorruptibility of line and law. It was bare, but it was erect, it +was poor, but it was noble; it reminded him of some sovereign famed +for justice who should have lived in a palace despoiled. There was a +fearful amount of concession in it, but what you kept had a rare +intensity. You were perpetually throwing over the cargo to save the +ship, but what a motion you gave her when you made her ride the +waves--a motion as rhythmic as the dance of a goddess! Wayworth took +long London walks and thought of these things--London poured into his +ears the mighty hum of its suggestion. His imagination glowed and +melted down material, his intentions multiplied and made the air a +golden haze. He saw not only the thing he should do, but the next +and the next and the next; the future opened before him and he seemed +to walk on marble slabs. The more he tried the dramatic form the +more he loved it, the more he looked at it the more he perceived in +it. What he perceived in it indeed he now perceived everywhere; if +he stopped, in the London dusk, before some flaring shop-window, the +place immediately constituted itself behind footlights, became a +framed stage for his figures. He hammered at these figures in his +lonely lodging, he shaped them and he shaped their tabernacle; he was +like a goldsmith chiselling a casket, bent over with the passion for +perfection. When he was neither roaming the streets with his vision +nor worrying his problem at his table, he was exchanging ideas on the +general question with Mrs. Alsager, to whom he promised details that +would amuse her in later and still happier hours. Her eyes were full +of tears when he read her the last words of the finished work, and +she murmured, divinely - + +"And now--to get it done, to get it done!" + +"Yes, indeed--to get it done!" Wayworth stared at the fire, slowly +rolling up his type-copy. "But that's a totally different part of +the business, and altogether secondary." + +"But of course you want to be acted?" + +"Of course I do--but it's a sudden descent. I want to intensely, but +I'm sorry I want to." + +"It's there indeed that the difficulties begin," said Mrs. Alsager, a +little off her guard. + +"How can you say that? It's there that they end!" + +"Ah, wait to see where they end!" + +"I mean they'll now be of a totally different order," Wayworth +explained. "It seems to me there can be nothing in the world more +difficult than to write a play that will stand an all-round test, and +that in comparison with them the complications that spring up at this +point are of an altogether smaller kind." + +"Yes, they're not inspiring," said Mrs. Alsager; "they're +discouraging, because they're vulgar. The other problem, the working +out of the thing itself, is pure art." + +"How well you understand everything!" The young man had got up, +nervously, and was leaning against the chimney-piece with his back to +the fire and his arms folded. The roll of his copy, in his fist, was +squeezed into the hollow of one of them. He looked down at Mrs. +Alsager, smiling gratefully, and she answered him with a smile from +eyes still charmed and suffused. "Yes, the vulgarity will begin +now," he presently added. + +"You'll suffer dreadfully." + +"I shall suffer in a good cause." + +"Yes, giving THAT to the world! You must leave it with me, I must +read it over and over," Mrs. Alsager pleaded, rising to come nearer +and draw the copy, in its cover of greenish-grey paper, which had a +generic identity now to him, out of his grasp. "Who in the world +will do it?--who in the world CAN?" she went on, close to him, +turning over the leaves. Before he could answer she had stopped at +one of the pages; she turned the book round to him, pointing out a +speech. "That's the most beautiful place--those lines are a +perfection." He glanced at the spot she indicated, and she begged +him to read them again--he had read them admirably before. He knew +them by heart, and, closing the book while she held the other end of +it, he murmured them over to her--they had indeed a cadence that +pleased him--watching, with a facetious complacency which he hoped +was pardonable, the applause in her face. "Ah, who can utter such +lines as THAT?" Mrs. Alsager broke out; "whom can you find to do +HER?" + +"We'll find people to do them all!" + +"But not people who are worthy." + +"They'll be worthy enough if they're willing enough. I'll work with +them--I'll grind it into them." He spoke as if he had produced +twenty plays. + +"Oh, it will be interesting!" she echoed. + +"But I shall have to find my theatre first. I shall have to get a +manager to believe in me." + +"Yes--they're so stupid!" + +"But fancy the patience I shall want, and how I shall have to watch +and wait," said Allan Wayworth. "Do you see me hawking it about +London?" + +"Indeed I don't--it would be sickening." + +"It's what I shall have to do. I shall be old before it's produced." + +"I shall be old very soon if it isn't!" Mrs. Alsager cried. "I know +one or two of them," she mused. + +"Do you mean you would speak to them?" + +"The thing is to get them to read it. I could do that." + +"That's the utmost I ask. But it's even for that I shall have to +wait." + +She looked at him with kind sisterly eyes. "You sha'n't wait." + +"Ah, you dear lady!" Wayworth murmured. + +"That is YOU may, but _I_ won't! Will you leave me your copy?" she +went on, turning the pages again. + +"Certainly; I have another." Standing near him she read to herself a +passage here and there; then, in her sweet voice, she read some of +them out. "Oh, if YOU were only an actress!" the young man +exclaimed. + +"That's the last thing I am. There's no comedy in ME!" + +She had never appeared to Wayworth so much his good genius. "Is +there any tragedy?" he asked, with the levity of complete confidence. + +She turned away from him, at this, with a strange and charming laugh +and a "Perhaps that will be for you to determine!" But before he +could disclaim such a responsibility she had faced him again and was +talking about Nona Vincent as if she had been the most interesting of +their friends and her situation at that moment an irresistible appeal +to their sympathy. Nona Vincent was the heroine of the play, and +Mrs. Alsager had taken a tremendous fancy to her. "I can't TELL you +how I like that woman!" she exclaimed in a pensive rapture of +credulity which could only be balm to the artistic spirit. + +"I'm awfully glad she lives a bit. What I feel about her is that +she's a good deal like YOU," Wayworth observed. + +Mrs. Alsager stared an instant and turned faintly red. This was +evidently a view that failed to strike her; she didn't, however, +treat it as a joke. "I'm not impressed with the resemblance. I +don't see myself doing what she does." + +"It isn't so much what she DOES," the young man argued, drawing out +his moustache. + +"But what she does is the whole point. She simply tells her love--I +should never do that." + +"If you repudiate such a proceeding with such energy, why do you like +her for it?" + +"It isn't what I like her for." + +"What else, then? That's intensely characteristic." + +Mrs. Alsager reflected, looking down at the fire; she had the air of +having half-a-dozen reasons to choose from. But the one she produced +was unexpectedly simple; it might even have been prompted by despair +at not finding others. "I like her because YOU made her!" she +exclaimed with a laugh, moving again away from her companion. + +Wayworth laughed still louder. "You made her a little yourself. +I've thought of her as looking like you." + +"She ought to look much better," said Mrs. Alsager. "No, certainly, +I shouldn't do what SHE does." + +"Not even in the same circumstances?" + +"I should never find myself in such circumstances. They're exactly +your play, and have nothing in common with such a life as mine. +However," Mrs. Alsager went on, "her behaviour was natural for HER, +and not only natural, but, it seems to me, thoroughly beautiful and +noble. I can't sufficiently admire the talent and tact with which +you make one accept it, and I tell you frankly that it's evident to +me there must be a brilliant future before a young man who, at the +start, has been capable of such a stroke as that. Thank heaven I can +admire Nona Vincent as intensely as I feel that I don't resemble +her!" + +"Don't exaggerate that," said Allan Wayworth. + +"My admiration?" + +"Your dissimilarity. She has your face, your air, your voice, your +motion; she has many elements of your being." + +"Then she'll damn your play!" Mrs. Alsager replied. They joked a +little over this, though it was not in the tone of pleasantry that +Wayworth's hostess soon remarked: "You've got your remedy, however: +have her done by the right woman." + +"Oh, have her 'done'--have her 'done'!" the young man gently wailed. + +"I see what you mean, my poor friend. What a pity, when it's such a +magnificent part--such a chance for a clever serious girl! Nona +Vincent is practically your play--it will be open to her to carry it +far or to drop it at the first corner." + +"It's a charming prospect," said Allan Wayworth, with sudden +scepticism. They looked at each other with eyes that, for a lurid +moment, saw the worst of the worst; but before they parted they had +exchanged vows and confidences that were dedicated wholly to the +ideal. It is not to be supposed, however, that the knowledge that +Mrs. Alsager would help him made Wayworth less eager to help himself. +He did what he could and felt that she, on her side, was doing no +less; but at the end of a year he was obliged to recognise that their +united effort had mainly produced the fine flower of discouragement. +At the end of a year the lustre had, to his own eyes, quite faded +from his unappreciated masterpiece, and he found himself writing for +a biographical dictionary little lives of celebrities he had never +heard of. To be printed, anywhere and anyhow, was a form of glory +for a man so unable to be acted, and to be paid, even at +encyclopaedic rates, had the consequence of making one resigned and +verbose. He couldn't smuggle style into a dictionary, but he could +at least reflect that he had done his best to learn from the drama +that it is a gross impertinence almost anywhere. He had knocked at +the door of every theatre in London, and, at a ruinous expense, had +multiplied type-copies of Nona Vincent to replace the neat +transcripts that had descended into the managerial abyss. His play +was not even declined--no such flattering intimation was given him +that it had been read. What the managers would do for Mrs. Alsager +concerned him little today; the thing that was relevant was that they +would do nothing for HIM. That charming woman felt humbled to the +earth, so little response had she had from the powers on which she +counted. The two never talked about the play now, but he tried to +show her a still finer friendship, that she might not think he felt +she had failed him. He still walked about London with his dreams, +but as months succeeded months and he left the year behind him they +were dreams not so much of success as of revenge. Success seemed a +colourless name for the reward of his patience; something fiercely +florid, something sanguinolent was more to the point. His best +consolation however was still in the scenic idea; it was not till now +that he discovered how incurably he was in love with it. By the time +a vain second year had chafed itself away he cherished his fruitless +faculty the more for the obloquy it seemed to suffer. He lived, in +his best hours, in a world of subjects and situations; he wrote +another play and made it as different from its predecessor as such a +very good thing could be. It might be a very good thing, but when he +had committed it to the theatrical limbo indiscriminating fate took +no account of the difference. He was at last able to leave England +for three or four months; he went to Germany to pay a visit long +deferred to his mother and sisters. + +Shortly before the time he had fixed for his return he received from +Mrs. Alsager a telegram consisting of the words: "Loder wishes see +you--putting Nona instant rehearsal." He spent the few hours before +his departure in kissing his mother and sisters, who knew enough +about Mrs. Alsager to judge it lucky this respectable married lady +was not there--a relief, however, accompanied with speculative +glances at London and the morrow. Loder, as our young man was aware, +meant the new "Renaissance," but though he reached home in the +evening it was not to this convenient modern theatre that Wayworth +first proceeded. He spent a late hour with Mrs. Alsager, an hour +that throbbed with calculation. She told him that Mr. Loder was +charming, he had simply taken up the play in its turn; he had hopes +of it, moreover, that on the part of a professional pessimist might +almost be qualified as ecstatic. It had been cast, with a margin for +objections, and Violet Grey was to do the heroine. She had been +capable, while he was away, of a good piece of work at that foggy old +playhouse the "Legitimate;" the piece was a clumsy rechauffe, but she +at least had been fresh. Wayworth remembered Violet Grey--hadn't he, +for two years, on a fond policy of "looking out," kept dipping into +the London theatres to pick up prospective interpreters? He had not +picked up many as yet, and this young lady at all events had never +wriggled in his net. She was pretty and she was odd, but he had +never prefigured her as Nona Vincent, nor indeed found himself +attracted by what he already felt sufficiently launched in the +profession to speak of as her artistic personality. Mrs. Alsager was +different--she declared that she had been struck not a little by some +of her tones. The girl was interesting in the thing at the +"Legitimate," and Mr. Loder, who had his eye on her, described her as +ambitious and intelligent. She wanted awfully to get on--and some of +those ladies were so lazy! Wayworth was sceptical--he had seen Miss +Violet Grey, who was terribly itinerant, in a dozen theatres but only +in one aspect. Nona Vincent had a dozen aspects, but only one +theatre; yet with what a feverish curiosity the young man promised +himself to watch the actress on the morrow! Talking the matter over +with Mrs. Alsager now seemed the very stuff that rehearsal was made +of. The near prospect of being acted laid a finger even on the lip +of inquiry; he wanted to go on tiptoe till the first night, to make +no condition but that they should speak his lines, and he felt that +he wouldn't so much as raise an eyebrow at the scene-painter if he +should give him an old oak chamber. + +He became conscious, the next day, that his danger would be other +than this, and yet he couldn't have expressed to himself what it +would be. Danger was there, doubtless--danger was everywhere, in the +world of art, and still more in the world of commerce; but what he +really seemed to catch, for the hour, was the beating of the wings of +victory. Nothing could undermine that, since it was victory simply +to be acted. It would be victory even to be acted badly; a +reflection that didn't prevent him, however, from banishing, in his +politic optimism, the word "bad" from his vocabulary. It had no +application, in the compromise of practice; it didn't apply even to +his play, which he was conscious he had already outlived and as to +which he foresaw that, in the coming weeks, frequent alarm would +alternate, in his spirit, with frequent esteem. When he went down to +the dusky daylit theatre (it arched over him like the temple of fame) +Mr. Loder, who was as charming as Mrs. Alsager had announced, struck +him as the genius of hospitality. The manager began to explain why, +for so long, he had given no sign; but that was the last thing that +interested Wayworth now, and he could never remember afterwards what +reasons Mr. Loder had enumerated. He liked, in the whole business of +discussion and preparation, even the things he had thought he should +probably dislike, and he revelled in those he had thought he should +like. He watched Miss Violet Grey that evening with eyes that sought +to penetrate her possibilities. She certainly had a few; they were +qualities of voice and face, qualities perhaps even of intelligence; +he sat there at any rate with a fostering, coaxing attention, +repeating over to himself as convincingly as he could that she was +not common--a circumstance all the more creditable as the part she +was playing seemed to him desperately so. He perceived that this was +why it pleased the audience; he divined that it was the part they +enjoyed rather than the actress. He had a private panic, wondering +how, if they liked THAT form, they could possibly like his. His form +had now become quite an ultimate idea to him. By the time the +evening was over some of Miss Violet Grey's features, several of the +turns of her head, a certain vibration of her voice, had taken their +place in the same category. She WAS interesting, she was +distinguished; at any rate he had accepted her: it came to the same +thing. But he left the theatre that night without speaking to her-- +moved (a little even to his own mystification) by an odd +procrastinating impulse. On the morrow he was to read his three acts +to the company, and then he should have a good deal to say; what he +felt for the moment was a vague indisposition to commit himself. +Moreover he found a slight confusion of annoyance in the fact that +though he had been trying all the evening to look at Nona Vincent in +Violet Grey's person, what subsisted in his vision was simply Violet +Grey in Nona's. He didn't wish to see the actress so directly, or +even so simply as that; and it had been very fatiguing, the effort to +focus Nona both through the performer and through the "Legitimate." +Before he went to bed that night he posted three words to Mrs. +Alsager--"She's not a bit like it, but I dare say I can make her do." + +He was pleased with the way the actress listened, the next day, at +the reading; he was pleased indeed with many things, at the reading, +and most of all with the reading itself. The whole affair loomed +large to him and he magnified it and mapped it out. He enjoyed his +occupation of the big, dim, hollow theatre, full of the echoes of +"effect" and of a queer smell of gas and success--it all seemed such +a passive canvas for his picture. For the first time in his life he +was in command of resources; he was acquainted with the phrase, but +had never thought he should know the feeling. He was surprised at +what Loder appeared ready to do, though he reminded himself that he +must never show it. He foresaw that there would be two distinct +concomitants to the artistic effort of producing a play, one +consisting of a great deal of anguish and the other of a great deal +of amusement. He looked back upon the reading, afterwards, as the +best hour in the business, because it was then that the piece had +most struck him as represented. What came later was the doing of +others; but this, with its imperfections and failures, was all his +own. The drama lived, at any rate, for that hour, with an intensity +that it was promptly to lose in the poverty and patchiness of +rehearsal; he could see its life reflected, in a way that was sweet +to him, in the stillness of the little semi-circle of attentive and +inscrutable, of water-proofed and muddy-booted, actors. Miss Violet +Grey was the auditor he had most to say to, and he tried on the spot, +across the shabby stage, to let her have the soul of her part. Her +attitude was graceful, but though she appeared to listen with all her +faculties her face remained perfectly blank; a fact, however, not +discouraging to Wayworth, who liked her better for not being +premature. Her companions gave discernible signs of recognising the +passages of comedy; yet Wayworth forgave her even then for being +inexpressive. She evidently wished before everything else to be +simply sure of what it was all about. + +He was more surprised even than at the revelation of the scale on +which Mr. Loder was ready to proceed by the discovery that some of +the actors didn't like their parts, and his heart sank as he asked +himself what he could possibly do with them if they were going to be +so stupid. This was the first of his disappointments; somehow he had +expected every individual to become instantly and gratefully +conscious of a rare opportunity, and from the moment such a +calculation failed he was at sea, or mindful at any rate that more +disappointments would come. It was impossible to make out what the +manager liked or disliked; no judgment, no comment escaped him; his +acceptance of the play and his views about the way it should be +mounted had apparently converted him into a veiled and shrouded +figure. Wayworth was able to grasp the idea that they would all move +now in a higher and sharper air than that of compliment and +confidence. When he talked with Violet Grey after the reading he +gathered that she was really rather crude: what better proof of it +could there be than her failure to break out instantly with an +expression of delight about her great chance? This reserve, however, +had evidently nothing to do with high pretensions; she had no wish to +make him feel that a person of her eminence was superior to easy +raptures. He guessed, after a little, that she was puzzled and even +somewhat frightened--to a certain extent she had not understood. +Nothing could appeal to him more than the opportunity to clear up her +difficulties, in the course of the examination of which he quickly +discovered that, so far as she HAD understood, she had understood +wrong. If she was crude it was only a reason the more for talking to +her; he kept saying to her "Ask me--ask me: ask me everything you +can think of." + +She asked him, she was perpetually asking him, and at the first +rehearsals, which were without form and void to a degree that made +them strike him much more as the death of an experiment than as the +dawn of a success, they threshed things out immensely in a corner of +the stage, with the effect of his coming to feel that at any rate she +was in earnest. He felt more and more that his heroine was the +keystone of his arch, for which indeed the actress was very ready to +take her. But when he reminded this young lady of the way the whole +thing practically depended on her she was alarmed and even slightly +scandalised: she spoke more than once as if that could scarcely be +the right way to construct a play--make it stand or fall by one poor +nervous girl. She was almost morbidly conscientious, and in theory +he liked her for this, though he lost patience three or four times +with the things she couldn't do and the things she could. At such +times the tears came to her eyes; but they were produced by her own +stupidity, she hastened to assure him, not by the way he spoke, which +was awfully kind under the circumstances. Her sincerity made her +beautiful, and he wished to heaven (and made a point of telling her +so) that she could sprinkle a little of it over Nona. Once, however, +she was so touched and troubled that the sight of it brought the +tears for an instant to his own eyes; and it so happened that, +turning at this moment, he found himself face to face with Mr. Loder. +The manager stared, glanced at the actress, who turned in the other +direction, and then smiling at Wayworth, exclaimed, with the humour +of a man who heard the gallery laugh every night: + +"I say--I say!" + +"What's the matter?" Wayworth asked. + +"I'm glad to see Miss Grey is taking such pains with you." + +"Oh, yes--she'll turn me out!" said the young man, gaily. He was +quite aware that it was apparent he was not superficial about Nona, +and abundantly determined, into the bargain, that the rehearsal of +the piece should not sacrifice a shade of thoroughness to any +extrinsic consideration. + +Mrs. Alsager, whom, late in the afternoon, he used often to go and +ask for a cup of tea, thanking her in advance for the rest she gave +him and telling her how he found that rehearsal (as THEY were doing +it--it was a caution!) took it out of one--Mrs. Alsager, more and +more his good genius and, as he repeatedly assured her, his +ministering angel, confirmed him in this superior policy and urged +him on to every form of artistic devotion. She had, naturally, never +been more interested than now in his work; she wanted to hear +everything about everything. She treated him as heroically fatigued, +plied him with luxurious restoratives, made him stretch himself on +cushions and rose-leaves. They gossipped more than ever, by her +fire, about the artistic life; he confided to her, for instance, all +his hopes and fears, all his experiments and anxieties, on the +subject of the representative of Nona. She was immensely interested +in this young lady and showed it by taking a box again and again (she +had seen her half-a-dozen times already), to study her capacity +through the veil of her present part. Like Allan Wayworth she found +her encouraging only by fits, for she had fine flashes of badness. +She was intelligent, but she cried aloud for training, and the +training was so absent that the intelligence had only a fraction of +its effect. She was like a knife without an edge--good steel that +had never been sharpened; she hacked away at her hard dramatic loaf, +she couldn't cut it smooth. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + + +"Certainly my leading lady won't make Nona much like YOU!" Wayworth +one day gloomily remarked to Mrs. Alsager. There were days when the +prospect seemed to him awful. + +"So much the better. There's no necessity for that." + +"I wish you'd train her a little--you could so easily," the young man +went on; in response to which Mrs. Alsager requested him not to make +such cruel fun of her. But she was curious about the girl, wanted to +hear of her character, her private situation, how she lived and +where, seemed indeed desirous to befriend her. Wayworth might not +have known much about the private situation of Miss Violet Grey, but, +as it happened, he was able, by the time his play had been three +weeks in rehearsal, to supply information on such points. She was a +charming, exemplary person, educated, cultivated, with highly modern +tastes, an excellent musician. She had lost her parents and was very +much alone in the world, her only two relations being a sister, who +was married to a civil servant (in a highly responsible post) in +India, and a dear little old-fashioned aunt (really a great-aunt) +with whom she lived at Notting Hill, who wrote children's books and +who, it appeared, had once written a Christmas pantomime. It was +quite an artistic home--not on the scale of Mrs. Alsager's (to +compare the smallest things with the greatest!) but intensely refined +and honourable. Wayworth went so far as to hint that it would be +rather nice and human on Mrs. Alsager's part to go there--they would +take it so kindly if she should call on them. She had acted so often +on his hints that he had formed a pleasant habit of expecting it: it +made him feel so wisely responsible about giving them. But this one +appeared to fall to the ground, so that he let the subject drop. +Mrs. Alsager, however, went yet once more to the "Legitimate," as he +found by her saying to him abruptly, on the morrow: "Oh, she'll be +very good--she'll be very good." When they said "she," in these +days, they always meant Violet Grey, though they pretended, for the +most part, that they meant Nona Vincent. + +"Oh yes," Wayworth assented, "she wants so to!" + +Mrs. Alsager was silent a moment; then she asked, a little +inconsequently, as if she had come back from a reverie: "Does she +want to VERY much?" + +"Tremendously--and it appears she has been fascinated by the part +from the first." + +"Why then didn't she say so?" + +"Oh, because she's so funny." + +"She IS funny," said Mrs. Alsager, musingly; and presently she added: +"She's in love with you." + +Wayworth stared, blushed very red, then laughed out. "What is there +funny in that?" he demanded; but before his interlocutress could +satisfy him on this point he inquired, further, how she knew anything +about it. After a little graceful evasion she explained that the +night before, at the "Legitimate," Mrs. Beaumont, the wife of the +actor-manager, had paid her a visit in her box; which had happened, +in the course of their brief gossip, to lead to her remarking that +she had never been "behind." Mrs. Beaumont offered on the spot to +take her round, and the fancy had seized her to accept the +invitation. She had been amused for the moment, and in this way it +befell that her conductress, at her request, had introduced her to +Miss Violet Grey, who was waiting in the wing for one of her scenes. +Mrs. Beaumont had been called away for three minutes, and during this +scrap of time, face to face with the actress, she had discovered the +poor girl's secret. Wayworth qualified it as a senseless thing, but +wished to know what had led to the discovery. She characterised this +inquiry as superficial for a painter of the ways of women; and he +doubtless didn't improve it by remarking profanely that a cat might +look at a king and that such things were convenient to know. Even on +this ground, however, he was threatened by Mrs. Alsager, who +contended that it might not be a joking matter to the poor girl. To +this Wayworth, who now professed to hate talking about the passions +he might have inspired, could only reply that he meant it couldn't +make a difference to Mrs. Alsager. + +"How in the world do you know what makes a difference to ME?" this +lady asked, with incongruous coldness, with a haughtiness indeed +remarkable in so gentle a spirit. + +He saw Violet Grey that night at the theatre, and it was she who +spoke first of her having lately met a friend of his. + +"She's in love with you," the actress said, after he had made a show +of ignorance; "doesn't that tell you anything?" + +He blushed redder still than Mrs. Alsager had made him blush, but +replied, quickly enough and very adequately, that hundreds of women +were naturally dying for him. + +"Oh, I don't care, for you're not in love with HER!" the girl +continued. + +"Did she tell you that too?" Wayworth asked; but she had at that +moment to go on. + +Standing where he could see her he thought that on this occasion she +threw into her scene, which was the best she had in the play, a +brighter art than ever before, a talent that could play with its +problem. She was perpetually doing things out of rehearsal (she did +two or three to-night, in the other man's piece), that he as often +wished to heaven Nona Vincent might have the benefit of. She +appeared to be able to do them for every one but him--that is for +every one but Nona. He was conscious, in these days, of an odd new +feeling, which mixed (this was a part of its oddity) with a very +natural and comparatively old one and which in its most definite form +was a dull ache of regret that this young lady's unlucky star should +have placed her on the stage. He wished in his worst uneasiness +that, without going further, she would give it up; and yet it soothed +that uneasiness to remind himself that he saw grounds to hope she +would go far enough to make a marked success of Nona. There were +strange and painful moments when, as the interpretress of Nona, he +almost hated her; after which, however, he always assured himself +that he exaggerated, inasmuch as what made this aversion seem great, +when he was nervous, was simply its contrast with the growing sense +that there WERE grounds--totally different--on which she pleased him. +She pleased him as a charming creature--by her sincerities and her +perversities, by the varieties and surprises of her character and by +certain happy facts of her person. In private her eyes were sad to +him and her voice was rare. He detested the idea that she should +have a disappointment or an humiliation, and he wanted to rescue her +altogether, to save and transplant her. One way to save her was to +see to it, to the best of his ability, that the production of his +play should be a triumph; and the other way--it was really too queer +to express--was almost to wish that it shouldn't be. Then, for the +future, there would be safety and peace, and not the peace of death-- +the peace of a different life. It is to be added that our young man +clung to the former of these ways in proportion as the latter +perversely tempted him. He was nervous at the best, increasingly and +intolerably nervous; but the immediate remedy was to rehearse harder +and harder, and above all to work it out with Violet Grey. Some of +her comrades reproached him with working it out only with her, as if +she were the whole affair; to which he replied that they could afford +to be neglected, they were all so tremendously good. She was the +only person concerned whom he didn't flatter. + +The author and the actress stuck so to the business in hand that she +had very little time to speak to him again of Mrs. Alsager, of whom +indeed her imagination appeared adequately to have disposed. +Wayworth once remarked to her that Nona Vincent was supposed to be a +good deal like his charming friend; but she gave a blank "Supposed by +whom?" in consequence of which he never returned to the subject. He +confided his nervousness as freely as usual to Mrs. Alsager, who +easily understood that he had a peculiar complication of anxieties. +His suspense varied in degree from hour to hour, but any relief there +might have been in this was made up for by its being of several +different kinds. One afternoon, as the first performance drew near, +Mrs. Alsager said to him, in giving him his cup of tea and on his +having mentioned that he had not closed his eyes the night before: + +"You must indeed be in a dreadful state. Anxiety for another is +still worse than anxiety for one's self." + +"For another?" Wayworth repeated, looking at her over the rim of his +cup. + +"My poor friend, you're nervous about Nona Vincent, but you're +infinitely more nervous about Violet Grey." + +"She IS Nona Vincent!" + +"No, she isn't--not a bit!" said Mrs. Alsager, abruptly. + +"Do you really think so?" Wayworth cried, spilling his tea in his +alarm. + +"What I think doesn't signify--I mean what I think about that. What +I meant to say was that great as is your suspense about your play, +your suspense about your actress is greater still." + +"I can only repeat that my actress IS my play." + +Mrs. Alsager looked thoughtfully into the teapot. + +"Your actress is your--" + +"My what?" the young man asked, with a little tremor in his voice, as +his hostess paused. + +"Your very dear friend. You're in love with her--at present." And +with a sharp click Mrs. Alsager dropped the lid on the fragrant +receptacle. + +"Not yet--not yet!" laughed her visitor. + +"You will be if she pulls you through." + +"You declare that she WON'T pull me through." + +Mrs. Alsager was silent a moment, after which she softly murmured: +"I'll pray for her." + +"You're the most generous of women!" Wayworth cried; then coloured as +if the words had not been happy. They would have done indeed little +honour to a man of tact. + +The next morning he received five hurried lines from Mrs. Alsager. +She had suddenly been called to Torquay, to see a relation who was +seriously ill; she should be detained there several days, but she had +an earnest hope of being able to return in time for his first night. +In any event he had her unrestricted good wishes. He missed her +extremely, for these last days were a great strain and there was +little comfort to be derived from Violet Grey. She was even more +nervous than himself, and so pale and altered that he was afraid she +would be too ill to act. It was settled between them that they made +each other worse and that he had now much better leave her alone. +They had pulled Nona so to pieces that nothing seemed left of her-- +she must at least have time to grow together again. He left Violet +Grey alone, to the best of his ability, but she carried out +imperfectly her own side of the bargain. She came to him with new +questions--she waited for him with old doubts, and half an hour +before the last dress-rehearsal, on the eve of production, she +proposed to him a totally fresh rendering of his heroine. This +incident gave him such a sense of insecurity that he turned his back +on her without a word, bolted out of the theatre, dashed along the +Strand and walked as far as the Bank. Then he jumped into a hansom +and came westward, and when he reached the theatre again the business +was nearly over. It appeared, almost to his disappointment, not bad +enough to give him the consolation of the old playhouse adage that +the worst dress-rehearsals make the best first nights. + +The morrow, which was a Wednesday, was the dreadful day; the theatre +had been closed on the Monday and the Tuesday. Every one, on the +Wednesday, did his best to let every one else alone, and every one +signally failed in the attempt. The day, till seven o'clock, was +understood to be consecrated to rest, but every one except Violet +Grey turned up at the theatre. Wayworth looked at Mr. Loder, and Mr. +Loder looked in another direction, which was as near as they came to +conversation. Wayworth was in a fidget, unable to eat or sleep or +sit still, at times almost in terror. He kept quiet by keeping, as +usual, in motion; he tried to walk away from his nervousness. He +walked in the afternoon toward Notting Hill, but he succeeded in not +breaking the vow he had taken not to meddle with his actress. She +was like an acrobat poised on a slippery ball--if he should touch her +she would topple over. He passed her door three times and he thought +of her three hundred. This was the hour at which he most regretted +that Mrs. Alsager had not come back--for he had called at her house +only to learn that she was still at Torquay. This was probably +queer, and it was probably queerer still that she hadn't written to +him; but even of these things he wasn't sure, for in losing, as he +had now completely lost, his judgment of his play, he seemed to +himself to have lost his judgment of everything. When he went home, +however, he found a telegram from the lady of Grosvenor Place--"Shall +be able to come--reach town by seven." At half-past eight o'clock, +through a little aperture in the curtain of the "Renaissance," he saw +her in her box with a cluster of friends--completely beautiful and +beneficent. The house was magnificent--too good for his play, he +felt; too good for any play. Everything now seemed too good--the +scenery, the furniture, the dresses, the very programmes. He seized +upon the idea that this was probably what was the matter with the +representative of Nona--she was only too good. He had completely +arranged with this young lady the plan of their relations during the +evening; and though they had altered everything else that they had +arranged they had promised each other not to alter this. It was +wonderful the number of things they had promised each other. He +would start her, he would see her off--then he would quit the theatre +and stay away till just before the end. She besought him to stay +away--it would make her infinitely easier. He saw that she was +exquisitely dressed--she had made one or two changes for the better +since the night before, and that seemed something definite to turn +over and over in his mind as he rumbled foggily home in the four- +wheeler in which, a few steps from the stage-door, he had taken +refuge as soon as he knew that the curtain was up. He lived a couple +of miles off, and he had chosen a four-wheeler to drag out the time. + +When he got home his fire was out, his room was cold, and he lay down +on his sofa in his overcoat. He had sent his landlady to the dress- +circle, on purpose; she would overflow with words and mistakes. The +house seemed a black void, just as the streets had done--every one +was, formidably, at his play. He was quieter at last than he had +been for a fortnight, and he felt too weak even to wonder how the +thing was going. He believed afterwards that he had slept an hour; +but even if he had he felt it to be still too early to return to the +theatre. He sat down by his lamp and tried to read--to read a little +compendious life of a great English statesman, out of a "series." It +struck him as brilliantly clever, and he asked himself whether that +perhaps were not rather the sort of thing he ought to have taken up: +not the statesmanship, but the art of brief biography. Suddenly he +became aware that he must hurry if he was to reach the theatre at +all--it was a quarter to eleven o'clock. He scrambled out and, this +time, found a hansom--he had lately spent enough money in cabs to add +to his hope that the profits of his new profession would be great. +His anxiety, his suspense flamed up again, and as he rattled +eastward--he went fast now--he was almost sick with alternations. As +he passed into the theatre the first man--some underling--who met +him, cried to him, breathlessly: + +"You're wanted, sir--you're wanted!" He thought his tone very +ominous--he devoured the man's eyes with his own, for a betrayal: +did he mean that he was wanted for execution? Some one else pressed +him, almost pushed him, forward; he was already on the stage. Then +he became conscious of a sound more or less continuous, but seemingly +faint and far, which he took at first for the voice of the actors +heard through their canvas walls, the beautiful built-in room of the +last act. But the actors were in the wing, they surrounded him; the +curtain was down and they were coming off from before it. They had +been called, and HE was called--they all greeted him with "Go on--go +on!" He was terrified--he couldn't go on--he didn't believe in the +applause, which seemed to him only audible enough to sound half- +hearted. + +"Has it gone?--HAS it gone?" he gasped to the people round him; and +he heard them say "Rather--rather!" perfunctorily, mendaciously too, +as it struck him, and even with mocking laughter, the laughter of +defeat and despair. Suddenly, though all this must have taken but a +moment, Loder burst upon him from somewhere with a "For God's sake +don't keep them, or they'll STOP!" "But I can't go on for THAT!" +Wayworth cried, in anguish; the sound seemed to him already to have +ceased. Loder had hold of him and was shoving him; he resisted and +looked round frantically for Violet Grey, who perhaps would tell him +the truth. There was by this time a crowd in the wing, all with +strange grimacing painted faces, but Violet was not among them and +her very absence frightened him. He uttered her name with an accent +that he afterwards regretted--it gave them, as he thought, both away; +and while Loder hustled him before the curtain he heard some one say +"She took her call and disappeared." She had had a call, then--this +was what was most present to the young man as he stood for an instant +in the glare of the footlights, looking blindly at the great vaguely- +peopled horseshoe and greeted with plaudits which now seemed to him +at once louder than he deserved and feebler than he desired. They +sank to rest quickly, but he felt it to be long before he could back +away, before he could, in his turn, seize the manager by the arm and +cry huskily--"Has it really gone--REALLY?" + +Mr. Loder looked at him hard and replied after an instant: "The +play's all right!" + +Wayworth hung upon his lips. "Then what's all wrong?" + +"We must do something to Miss Grey." + +"What's the matter with her?" + +"She isn't IN it!" + +"Do you mean she has failed?" + +"Yes, damn it--she has failed." + +Wayworth stared. "Then how can the play be all right?" + +"Oh, we'll save it--we'll save it." + +"Where's Miss Grey--where IS she?" the young man asked. + +Loder caught his arm as he was turning away again to look for his +heroine. "Never mind her now--she knows it!" + +Wayworth was approached at the same moment by a gentleman he knew as +one of Mrs. Alsager's friends--he had perceived him in that lady's +box. Mrs. Alsager was waiting there for the successful author; she +desired very earnestly that he would come round and speak to her. +Wayworth assured himself first that Violet had left the theatre--one +of the actresses could tell him that she had seen her throw on a +cloak, without changing her dress, and had learnt afterwards that she +had, the next moment, flung herself, after flinging her aunt, into a +cab. He had wished to invite half a dozen persons, of whom Miss Grey +and her elderly relative were two, to come home to supper with him; +but she had refused to make any engagement beforehand (it would be so +dreadful to have to keep it if she shouldn't have made a hit), and +this attitude had blighted the pleasant plan, which fell to the +ground. He had called her morbid, but she was immovable. Mrs. +Alsager's messenger let him know that he was expected to supper in +Grosvenor Place, and half an hour afterwards he was seated there +among complimentary people and flowers and popping corks, eating the +first orderly meal he had partaken of for a week. Mrs. Alsager had +carried him off in her brougham--the other people who were coming got +into things of their own. He stopped her short as soon as she began +to tell him how tremendously every one had been struck by the piece; +he nailed her down to the question of Violet Grey. Had she spoilt +the play, had she jeopardised or compromised it--had she been utterly +bad, had she been good in any degree? + +"Certainly the performance would have seemed better if SHE had been +better," Mrs. Alsager confessed. + +"And the play would have seemed better if the performance had been +better," Wayworth said, gloomily, from the corner of the brougham. + +"She does what she can, and she has talent, and she looked lovely. +But she doesn't SEE Nona Vincent. She doesn't see the type--she +doesn't see the individual--she doesn't see the woman you meant. +She's out of it--she gives you a different person." + +"Oh, the woman I meant!" the young man exclaimed, looking at the +London lamps as he rolled by them. "I wish to God she had known +YOU!" he added, as the carriage stopped. After they had passed into +the house he said to his companion: + +"You see she WON'T pull me through." + +"Forgive her--be kind to her!" Mrs. Alsager pleaded. + +"I shall only thank her. The play may go to the dogs." + +"If it does--if it does," Mrs. Alsager began, with her pure eyes on +him. + +"Well, what if it does?" + +She couldn't tell him, for the rest of her guests came in together; +she only had time to say: "It SHA'N'T go to the dogs!" + +He came away before the others, restless with the desire to go to +Notting Hill even that night, late as it was, haunted with the sense +that Violet Grey had measured her fall. When he got into the street, +however, he allowed second thoughts to counsel another course; the +effect of knocking her up at two o'clock in the morning would hardly +be to soothe her. He looked at six newspapers the next day and found +in them never a good word for her. They were well enough about the +piece, but they were unanimous as to the disappointment caused by the +young actress whose former efforts had excited such hopes and on +whom, on this occasion, such pressing responsibilities rested. They +asked in chorus what was the matter with her, and they declared in +chorus that the play, which was not without promise, was handicapped +(they all used the same word) by the odd want of correspondence +between the heroine and her interpreter. Wayworth drove early to +Notting Hill, but he didn't take the newspapers with him; Violet Grey +could be trusted to have sent out for them by the peep of dawn and to +have fed her anguish full. She declined to see him--she only sent +down word by her aunt that she was extremely unwell and should be +unable to act that night unless she were suffered to spend the day +unmolested and in bed. Wayworth sat for an hour with the old lady, +who understood everything and to whom he could speak frankly. She +gave him a touching picture of her niece's condition, which was all +the more vivid for the simple words in which it was expressed: "She +feels she isn't right, you know--she feels she isn't right!" + +"Tell her it doesn't matter--it doesn't matter a straw!" said +Wayworth. + +"And she's so proud--you know how proud she is!" the old lady went +on. + +"Tell her I'm more than satisfied, that I accept her gratefully as +she is." + +"She says she injures your play, that she ruins it," said his +interlocutress. + +"She'll improve, immensely--she'll grow into the part," the young man +continued. + +"She'd improve if she knew how--but she says she doesn't. She has +given all she has got, and she doesn't know what's wanted." + +"What's wanted is simply that she should go straight on and trust +me." + +"How can she trust you when she feels she's losing you?" + +"Losing me?" Wayworth cried. + +"You'll never forgive her if your play is taken off!" + +"It will run six months," said the author of the piece. + +The old lady laid her hand on his arm. "What will you do for her if +it does?" + +He looked at Violet Grey's aunt a moment. "Do you say your niece is +very proud?" + +"Too proud for her dreadful profession." + +"Then she wouldn't wish you to ask me that," Wayworth answered, +getting up. + +When he reached home he was very tired, and for a person to whom it +was open to consider that he had scored a success he spent a +remarkably dismal day. All his restlessness had gone, and fatigue +and depression possessed him. He sank into his old chair by the fire +and sat there for hours with his eyes closed. His landlady came in +to bring his luncheon and mend the fire, but he feigned to be asleep, +so as not to be spoken to. It is to be supposed that sleep at last +overtook him, for about the hour that dusk began to gather he had an +extraordinary impression, a visit that, it would seem, could have +belonged to no waking consciousness. Nona Vincent, in face and form, +the living heroine of his play, rose before him in his little silent +room, sat down with him at his dingy fireside. She was not Violet +Grey, she was not Mrs. Alsager, she was not any woman he had seen +upon earth, nor was it any masquerade of friendship or of penitence. +Yet she was more familiar to him than the women he had known best, +and she was ineffably beautiful and consoling. She filled the poor +room with her presence, the effect of which was as soothing as some +odour of incense. She was as quiet as an affectionate sister, and +there was no surprise in her being there. Nothing more real had ever +befallen him, and nothing, somehow, more reassuring. He felt her +hand rest upon his own, and all his senses seemed to open to her +message. She struck him, in the strangest way, both as his creation +and as his inspirer, and she gave him the happiest consciousness of +success. If she was so charming, in the red firelight, in her vague, +clear-coloured garments, it was because he had made her so, and yet +if the weight seemed lifted from his spirit it was because she drew +it away. When she bent her deep eyes upon him they seemed to speak +of safety and freedom and to make a green garden of the future. From +time to time she smiled and said: "I live--I live--I live." How +long she stayed he couldn't have told, but when his landlady +blundered in with the lamp Nona Vincent was no longer there. He +rubbed his eyes, but no dream had ever been so intense; and as he +slowly got out of his chair it was with a deep still joy--the joy of +the artist--in the thought of how right he had been, how exactly like +herself he had made her. She had come to show him that. At the end +of five minutes, however, he felt sufficiently mystified to call his +landlady back--he wanted to ask her a question. When the good woman +reappeared the question hung fire an instant; then it shaped itself +as the inquiry: + +"Has any lady been here?" + +"No, sir--no lady at all." + +The woman seemed slightly scandalised. "Not Miss Vincent?" + +"Miss Vincent, sir?" + +"The young lady of my play, don't you know?" + +"Oh, sir, you mean Miss Violet Grey!" + +"No I don't, at all. I think I mean Mrs. Alsager." + +"There has been no Mrs. Alsager, sir." + +"Nor anybody at all like her?" + +The woman looked at him as if she wondered what had suddenly taken +him. Then she asked in an injured tone: "Why shouldn't I have told +you if you'd 'ad callers, sir?" + +"I thought you might have thought I was asleep." + +"Indeed you were, sir, when I came in with the lamp--and well you'd +earned it, Mr. Wayworth!" + +The landlady came back an hour later to bring him a telegram; it was +just as he had begun to dress to dine at his club and go down to the +theatre. + +"See me to-night in front, and don't come near me till it's over." + +It was in these words that Violet communicated her wishes for the +evening. He obeyed them to the letter; he watched her from the +depths of a box. He was in no position to say how she might have +struck him the night before, but what he saw during these charmed +hours filled him with admiration and gratitude. She WAS in it, this +time; she had pulled herself together, she had taken possession, she +was felicitous at every turn. Fresh from his revelation of Nona he +was in a position to judge, and as he judged he exulted. He was +thrilled and carried away, and he was moreover intensely curious to +know what had happened to her, by what unfathomable art she had +managed in a few hours to effect such a change of base. It was as if +SHE had had a revelation of Nona, so convincing a clearness had been +breathed upon the picture. He kept himself quiet in the entr'actes-- +he would speak to her only at the end; but before the play was half +over the manager burst into his box. + +"It's prodigious, what she's up to!" cried Mr. Loder, almost more +bewildered than gratified. "She has gone in for a new reading--a +blessed somersault in the air!" + +"Is it quite different?" Wayworth asked, sharing his mystification. + +"Different? Hyperion to a satyr! It's devilish good, my boy!" + +"It's devilish good," said Wayworth, "and it's in a different key +altogether from the key of her rehearsal." + +"I'll run you six months!" the manager declared; and he rushed round +again to the actress, leaving Wayworth with a sense that she had +already pulled him through. She had with the audience an immense +personal success. + +When he went behind, at the end, he had to wait for her; she only +showed herself when she was ready to leave the theatre. Her aunt had +been in her dressing-room with her, and the two ladies appeared +together. The girl passed him quickly, motioning him to say nothing +till they should have got out of the place. He saw that she was +immensely excited, lifted altogether above her common artistic level. +The old lady said to him: "You must come home to supper with us: it +has been all arranged." They had a brougham, with a little third +seat, and he got into it with them. It was a long time before the +actress would speak. She leaned back in her corner, giving no sign +but still heaving a little, like a subsiding sea, and with all her +triumph in the eyes that shone through the darkness. The old lady +was hushed to awe, or at least to discretion, and Wayworth was happy +enough to wait. He had really to wait till they had alighted at +Notting Hill, where the elder of his companions went to see that +supper had been attended to. + +"I was better--I was better," said Violet Grey, throwing off her +cloak in the little drawing-room. + +"You were perfection. You'll be like that every night, won't you?" + +She smiled at him. "Every night? There can scarcely be a miracle +every day." + +"What do you mean by a miracle?" + +"I've had a revelation." + +Wayward stared. "At what hour?" + +"The right hour--this afternoon. Just in time to save me--and to +save YOU." + +"At five o'clock? Do you mean you had a visit?" + +"She came to me--she stayed two hours." + +"Two hours? Nona Vincent?" + +"Mrs. Alsager." Violet Grey smiled more deeply. "It's the same +thing." + +"And how did Mrs. Alsager save you?" + +"By letting me look at her. By letting me hear her speak. By +letting me know her." + +"And what did she say to you?" + +"Kind things--encouraging, intelligent things." + +"Ah, the dear woman!" Wayworth cried. + +"You ought to like her--she likes YOU. She was just what I wanted," +the actress added. + +"Do you mean she talked to you about Nona?" + +"She said you thought she was like her. She IS--she's exquisite." + +"She's exquisite," Wayworth repeated. "Do you mean she tried to +coach you?" + +"Oh, no--she only said she would be so glad if it would help me to +see her. And I felt it did help me. I don't know what took place-- +she only sat there, and she held my hand and smiled at me, and she +had tact and grace, and she had goodness and beauty, and she soothed +my nerves and lighted up my imagination. Somehow she seemed to GIVE +it all to me. I took it--I took it. I kept her before me, I drank +her in. For the first time, in the whole study of the part, I had my +model--I could make my copy. All my courage came back to me, and +other things came that I hadn't felt before. She was different--she +was delightful; as I've said, she was a revelation. She kissed me +when she went away--and you may guess if I kissed HER. We were +awfully affectionate, but it's YOU she likes!" said Violet Grey. + +Wayworth had never been more interested in his life, and he had +rarely been more mystified. "Did she wear vague, clear-coloured +garments?" he asked, after a moment. + +Violet Grey stared, laughed, then bade him go in to supper. "YOU +know how she dresses!" + +He was very well pleased at supper, but he was silent and a little +solemn. He said he would go to see Mrs. Alsager the next day. He +did so, but he was told at her door that she had returned to Torquay. +She remained there all winter, all spring, and the next time he saw +her his play had run two hundred nights and he had married Violet +Grey. His plays sometimes succeed, but his wife is not in them now, +nor in any others. At these representations Mrs. Alsager continues +frequently to be present. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Nona Vincent, by Henry James + diff --git a/old/nonav10.zip b/old/nonav10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..401795e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/nonav10.zip |