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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43971 ***
+
+Note: Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/onemansviewwithi00merruoft
+
+
+
+
+
+ONE MAN'S VIEW
+
+by
+
+LEONARD MERRICK
+
+With an Introduction by Granville Barker
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Hodder & Stoughton
+London--New York--Toronto
+
+1922
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+This story can be said to date, though quite in the sense that a
+story legitimately may. It is historic, though that is not to say
+old-fashioned. If one searches by internal evidence for the time of
+its writing, 1889 might be a safe guess. It was about then that many
+Londoners (besides the American girls in the story) were given their
+first glimpse of Niagara at the Panorama near Victoria Street. The
+building is a motor garage now; it lies beneath the cliffs of Queen
+Anne's Mansions; aeroplanes may discover its queer round roof. And it
+was in an ageing past too--for architectural ages veritably flash by in
+New York--that Broadway could be said to spread into the "brightness
+of Union Square." To-day there is but a chaos of dingy decay owning
+to that name. Soon it will be smart skyscrapers, no doubt; when the
+tide of business has covered it, as now the tide of fashion leaves
+it derelict. Duluth, too, with its "storekeepers spitting on wooden
+sidewalks"! Duluth foresees a Lake Front that will rival Chicago.
+
+But in such honest "dating," and in the inferences we may draw from it,
+lie perhaps some of the peculiar merits of Mr. Merrick's method--his
+straight telling of a tale. And digging to the heart of the book, the
+One Man's View of his faithless wife--more importantly too, the wife's
+view of herself--is, in a sense, an "historic" view. Not, of course, in
+its human essentials. Those must be true or false of this man and this
+woman whenever, however they lived and suffered. Such sufferings are
+dateless. And whether they are truly or falsely told, let the reader
+judge. No preface-writer need pre-judge for him. For in such things,
+the teller of the tale, from the heart of his subject, speaks straight
+to the heart and conscience of his audience, and will succeed or fail
+by no measurable virtue of style or wit, but by the truth that is in
+him, by how much of it they are open to receive.
+
+Look besides with ever so slightly an historical eye at the
+circumstances in which the lives of these two were set to grow, and
+to flourish or perish, as it was easier or harder to tend them. See
+the girl with her simple passion for the theatre--so apt a channel
+for her happy ambition as it appears--and that baulked, her very life
+baulked. To-day, this war-day, and most surely for the immediate
+enfranchised to-morrow breaking so close, the same girl will turn her
+back light-heartedly on the glamour of that little tinselled world to
+many another prospect of self-fulfilment.
+
+And the lawyer, lost in his law. If a Solicitor-Generalship is his
+aim, he will be worldly-wise enough, one hopes, to come home not too
+tired to make at least a passably attractive figure at his wife's
+well-chosen dinner-parties. Or is that phase of English government now
+also to pass? No; for probably a country will always be governed from
+its dinner-tables, while its well-being is finally determined by their
+quality! Mamie to-day, though, would be doing more than give dinners.
+It is a question if the Mamie of to-morrow will have time to.
+
+And the literary flâneur--the half-hearted seducer of passionless
+ladies--is he out of date? Mr. Merrick implies the quite wholesome
+truth that he always was. Through books and bookish dreams--beautiful,
+wise dreams--lies the passage to life of many boys and girls. But the
+healthiest instincts in them are seeking still a real world in which
+it will be both sane and fine to live. Their dreams are mostly a hard
+test of it when it is found; and, oh, the pity if the finding it quite
+breaks their dream!
+
+In sum, then, it was Mamie's tragedy to seek her realities during a
+phase of art and letters which, in their utter unreality, seemed to
+deny the very existence of any real world at all. Neither true art nor
+true letters then; they were so turning from reality with fear.
+
+Are they still denying it to-day? If so this story does not date at
+all, and Mamie's tragedy is a tragedy of our time. For tragedy it is,
+even though in _One Man's View_ she finds at last reposeful salvation
+of a sort. But our hope is better. And half our pleasure in the story
+and in its historical truth is the thought that, true author as he
+is, were he writing it to-day, and of to-day, Mr. Merrick would have
+written it just so much differently.
+
+Granville Barker.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The idea was so foreign to his temperament that Heriot was reluctant
+to believe that he had entertained it even during a few seconds. He
+continued his way past the big pink house and the girl on the balcony,
+surprised at the interest roused in him by this chance discovery of
+her address. Of what consequence was it where she was staying? He had
+noticed her on the terrace, by the band-stand one morning, and admired
+her. In other words, he had unconsciously attributed to the possessor
+of a delicious complexion, and a pair of grey eyes, darkly fringed,
+vague characteristics to which she was probably a stranger. He had seen
+her the next day also, and the next--even hoped to see her; speculated
+quite idly what her social position might be, and how she came beside
+the impossible woman who accompanied her. All that was nothing; his
+purpose in coming to Eastbourne was to be trivial. But why the sense of
+gratification with which he had learnt where she lived?
+
+As to the idea which had crossed his brain, that was preposterous!
+Of course, since the pink house was a boarding establishment, he
+might, if he would, make her acquaintance by the simple expedient
+of removing there, but he did not know how he could have meditated
+such a step. It was the sort of semi-disreputable folly that a man a
+decade or so younger might commit and describe as a "lark." No doubt
+many men a decade or so younger would commit it. He could conceive
+that a freshly-painted balcony, displaying a pretty girl for an hour
+or two every afternoon, might serve to extend the clientèle of a
+boarding-house enormously, and wondered that more attention had not
+been paid to such a form of advertisement. For himself, however---- His
+hair was already thinning at the temples; solicitors were deferential
+to him, and his clerk was taking a villa in Brixton; for himself, it
+would not do!
+
+Eastbourne was depressing, he reflected, as he strolled towards the
+dumpy Wish Tower. He was almost sorry that he hadn't gone to Sandhills
+and quartered himself on his brother for a week or two instead. Francis
+was always pleased to meet him of recent years, and no longer remarked
+early in the conversation that he was "overdrawn at Cox's." On the
+whole, Francis was not a bad fellow, and Sandhills and pheasants would
+have been livelier.
+
+He stifled a yawn, and observed with relief that it was near the
+dinner-hour. In the evening he turned over the papers in the
+smoking-room. He perceived, as he often did perceive in the vacations,
+that he was lonely. Vacations were a mistake: early in one's career
+one could not afford them, and by the time one was able to afford
+them, the taste for holidays was gone. This hotel was dreary, too. The
+visitors were dull, and the cooking was indifferent. What could be more
+tedious than the meal from which he had just risen?--the feeble soup,
+the flaccid fish, the uninterrupted view of the stout lady with the
+aquiline nose, and a red shawl across her shoulders. Now he was lolling
+on a morocco couch, fingering the _The Field_; two or three other men
+lay about, napping, or looking at the _The Graphic_. There was a great
+deal of tobacco-smoke, and a little whisky; he might as well have
+stopped in town and gone to the Club. He wondered what they did in
+Belle Vue Mansion after dinner. Perhaps there was music, and the girl
+sang? he could fancy that she sang well. Or they might have impromptu
+dances? Personally he did not care for dancing, but even to see others
+enjoying themselves would be comparatively gay. After all, why should
+he not remove to Belle Vue Mansion if he wished? He had attached a
+significance to the step that it did not possess, making it appear
+absurd by the very absurdity of the consideration that he accorded it.
+He remembered the time when he would not have hesitated--those were
+the days when Francis was always "overdrawn at Cox's." Well, he had
+worked hard since then, and anything that Francis might have lent him
+had been repaid, and he had gradually acquired soberer views of life.
+Perhaps he might be said to have gone to an extreme, indeed, and taken
+the pledge! He sometimes felt old, and he was still in the thirties.
+Francis was the younger of the two of late, although he had a boy in
+the Brigade; but elder sons often kept young very long--it was easy for
+them, like the way of righteousness to a bishop.... A waiter cast an
+inquiring glance round the room, and, crossing to the sofa, handed him
+a card. Heriot read the name with astonishment; he had not seen the man
+for sixteen years, and even their irregular correspondence had died a
+natural death.
+
+"My dear fellow!" he exclaimed in the hall. "Come inside."
+
+In the past, of which he had just been thinking, he and Dick Cheriton
+had been staunch friends, none the less staunch because Cheriton was
+some years his senior. Dick had a studio in Howland Street then, and
+was going to set the Academy on fire. In the meanwhile he wore a yellow
+necktie, and married madly, and smoked a clay pipe; he could not
+guarantee that he would be an R.A., but at least he was resolved that
+he would be a bohemian. He had some of the qualifications for artistic
+success, but little talent. When he discovered the fact beyond the
+possibility of mistake, he accepted a relative's offer of a commercial
+berth in the United States, and had his hair cut. The valedictory
+supper in the studio, at which he had renounced ambition, and solemnly
+burned all his canvases that the dealers would not buy, had been a very
+affecting spectacle.
+
+"My dear fellow!" cried Heriot. "Come inside. This is a tremendous
+pleasure. When did you arrive?"
+
+"Came over in the _Germanic_, ten days ago. It _is_ you, then; I saw
+'George Heriot' in the Visitors' List, and strolled round on the
+chance. I scarcely hoped---- How are you, old man? I'm mighty glad to
+see you--fact!"
+
+"You've been here ten days?"
+
+"Not here, no; I've only been in Eastbourne a few hours."
+
+"You should have looked me up in town."
+
+"I tried. Your chambers were shut."
+
+"The hall-porter at the Club----"
+
+"What club? You forget what an exile I am!"
+
+"Have a drink? Well, upon my word, this is very jolly! Sit down; try
+one of these."
+
+"Would you have recognised me?" asked Cheriton, stretching his legs,
+and lighting the cigar.
+
+"You've changed," admitted Heriot; "it's a long time. I've changed too."
+
+They regarded each other with a gaze of friendly criticism. Heriot
+noted with some surprise that the other's appearance savoured little
+of the American man of business, or of the man of business outside
+America. His hair, though less disordered than it had been in the
+Howland Street period, was still rather longer than is customary in the
+City. It was now grey, and became him admirably. He wore a black velvet
+jacket, and showed a glimpse of a deep crimson tie. He no longer looked
+a bohemian, but he had acquired the air of a celebrity.
+
+"Have you come home for good, Cheriton?"
+
+Cheriton shook his head.
+
+"I guess America has got me for life," he answered; "I'm only making a
+trip. And you? You're still at the Bar, eh?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Heriot drily; "I'm still at the Bar." It is not
+agreeable, when you have succeeded in a profession, to be asked if you
+are in it still. "I've travelled along the lines on which you left
+me--it doesn't make an exciting narrative. Chambers, court, and bed. A
+laundress or two has died in the interval. The thing pays better than
+it used to do, naturally; that's all."
+
+"You're doing well?"
+
+"I should have called it 'doing well' once; but we are all Olivers in
+our hearts. To-day----"
+
+"Mistake!" said the elder man. "You wanted the Bar--you've got the Bar;
+you ought to be satisfied. Now _I_----"
+
+"Yes?" said Heriot, as he paused. "How's the world used you, Cheriton?
+By the way, you never answered my last letter, I think."
+
+"It was _you_ who didn't answer _me_."
+
+"I fancy not. You were going to Chicago, and I wrote----"
+
+"I wrote after I arrived in Chicago."
+
+"Well, it must be five years ago; we won't argue. What did you do in
+Chicago, Cheriton?"
+
+"No good, sir. I went there with a patent horse-collar. Capital
+invention--not my own, I never invented anything!--but it didn't catch
+on. They seemed to take no interest in horse-collars; no money in it,
+not a cent! After the horse-collar I started in the dry-goods trade;
+but I was burned out. From Chicago I went to Duluth; I've an hotel
+there to-day."
+
+"An hotel?"
+
+"That's so. It isn't a distinguished career, running a little hotel,
+but it's fairly easy. Compared with hustling with horse-collars it's
+luxurious. Duluth is not ideal, but what would you have! I make my way,
+and that's all I ask now. If I had my life over again----" He sighed.
+"If we could have our lives over again, eh, Heriot?"
+
+"Humph!" said Heriot doubtfully; he was wondering if he could make any
+better use of his own--if he would be any livelier the next time he was
+eight-and-thirty. "I suppose we all blunder, of course."
+
+"_You_ are a young man yet; it's different for you; and you're in the
+profession of your choice: it's entirely different. We don't look at
+the thing from the same standpoint, Heriot."
+
+"You don't mean that you regret giving up Art?"
+
+"Sir," said Cheriton mournfully, "it was the error I shall always
+regret. I wouldn't say as much to anybody else; I keep it here"--he
+tapped his velvet jacket--"but I had a gift, and I neglected it; I
+had power, and--and I run an hotel. When I reflect, man, there are
+hours--well, it's no use crying over spilt milk; but to think of the
+position I should have made, and to contrast it with what I am, is
+bitter!" He swept back his wavy hair impatiently, and in the momentary
+pose looked more like a celebrity still.
+
+Heriot could see that the cherished delusion gave him a melancholy
+pleasure, and was at a loss how to reply. "It was uphill work," he said
+at last. "Who can tell? Luck----"
+
+"I was a lad, an impetuous lad; and I was handicapped--I married." The
+man with a failure to explain is always grateful to have married. "But
+I had the stuff in me, I had the temperament. 'Had' it? I have it now!
+I may keep an hotel, but I shall never be an hotel-keeper. God gave
+me my soul, sir; circumstances gave me an hotel. I mayn't paint any
+more, but an artist by nature I shall always be. I don't say it in any
+bragging spirit, Heriot; I should be happier if I didn't feel it. The
+commonplace man may be contented in the commonplace calling: he fills
+the rôle he was meant for. It's the poor devil like myself, who knows
+what he _might_ have been, who suffers."
+
+Heriot didn't pursue the subject; he puffed his cigar meditatively.
+After the effervescence subsides, such meetings must always have a
+little sadness; he looked at the wrinkles that had gathered on his
+friend's face, and realised the crow's-feet on his own.
+
+"You lost your wife, you wrote me?" he remarked, breaking a rather
+lengthy silence.
+
+"In New York, yes--pneumonia. _You_ never married, eh?"
+
+"No. Do you stay over here long?"
+
+"A month or two; I can't manage more. But I shall leave my girl in
+London. I've brought her with me, and she'll remain."
+
+"Of course," said Heriot, "you have a child--of course you have! I
+remember a little thing tumbling about in Howland Street. She must be a
+woman, Cheriton?"
+
+"Mamie is twenty-one. I want to see if I can do anything for her before
+I go back. She loathes Duluth; and she has talent. She'll live with my
+sister. I don't think you ever saw my sister, did you? She's a widow,
+and stagnates in Wandsworth--Mamie will be company for her."
+
+"Your daughter paints?"
+
+"No, not paints; she wants to be an actress. I wasn't very keen on it;
+but she's got the material in her, and I concluded I'd no right to say
+'no.' Still, she's not very strong--takes after her mother, I'm afraid,
+a little; I'd rather she'd had a gift for something else."
+
+"Was it necessary for her to have a gift at all?" asked Heriot, a shade
+sarcastically. "Couldn't she stop at home?"
+
+"Well," said Cheriton, "she tried it, but it's a hard thing for a girl
+like Mamie to content herself with the life in Duluth. There isn't
+much art in that, Heriot; there isn't much anything. There's the lake,
+and Superior Street, and the storekeepers lounging in the doorways
+and spitting on the wooden sidewalks. And there's a theatre of a
+sort--which made her worse. For a girl panting to be famous, Duluth is
+a hell. She's been breaking her heart in it ever since she was sixteen;
+and after all, it's in the blood. It would have been odd if my daughter
+_hadn't_ had the artistic temperament, I suppose!"
+
+"I suppose it would," said Heriot. "Well, why doesn't she go on the
+stage in America? I shouldn't think she'd find it easy here."
+
+"She wouldn't find it easy there. There's no stock company in Duluth;
+only the travelling companies come sometimes for a few nights. There's
+no bigger opportunity for her on the other side than on this. Besides,
+she wants the English stage. I wonder if you know anybody who could
+give her any introductions?"
+
+"I? Not a soul!"
+
+"I'm sorry to hear you say that," said Cheriton blankly; "I was
+counting on you some."
+
+Heriot looked at him.
+
+"You counted on _me_? For Heaven's sake, why?"
+
+"Well, I don't know many people over here to-day, you see; the fellows
+I used to knock against have died, gone to the Colonies--fizzled out.
+You were solid; and you were a swell, with connections and all that. I
+understand the stage has become very fashionable in London--I thought
+you might meet actor-managers at dinners and things. That was the idea;
+I daresay it was very stupid, but I had it. I mentioned your name to
+Mamie as soon as it was settled we should come. However, we'll fix the
+matter somehow."
+
+"I'm sorry to prove a disappointment," said Heriot. "Tell your daughter
+so for me. I'd do what you want with pleasure, if I were able. You know
+that, I'm sure?"
+
+"Oh, I know that," said Cheriton; "it can't be helped. Yes, I'll
+tell her. She _will_ be disappointed, of course; she understands how
+difficult the thing is without influence, and I've talked about you a
+lot."
+
+"Do you think you were wise to--to----"
+
+"Oh, it was a mistake as it turns out!"
+
+"I don't mean that only. I mean, do you think you were wise to
+encourage her hopes in such a direction at all? Frankly, if _I_ had a
+daughter---- Forgive me for speaking plainly."
+
+"My dear fellow! your daughter and mine!--their paths would be as wide
+apart as the poles. And you don't know Mamie!"
+
+"At all events I know that the stage is more overcrowded every year.
+Most girls are stage-struck at some time or other; and there are
+hundreds of actresses who can't earn bread-and-cheese. A man I know
+has his type-writing done by a woman who used to be on the stage. She
+played the best parts in the country, I believe, and, I daresay, nursed
+the expectation of becoming a Bernhardt. She gets a pound a week in his
+office, he tells me, and was thankful to obtain the post."
+
+"Mamie is bound to come to the front. She's got it--she's an artist
+born. I tell you, I should be brutal to stand in the way of her career;
+the girl is pining, really pining, for distinction! When you've talked
+to her you'll change your views."
+
+"Perhaps," said Heriot, as the shortest way of ending the discussion;
+"very likely I'm wrong." The budding genius bored him. "Mind you
+explain to the young lady that my inability, and not my will, refuses,
+at any rate."
+
+"That's all right," declared Cheriton, getting up. "I told her I was
+coming round to see if it was you." He laughed. "I bet she's picturing
+me coming back with a bushel of letters of introduction from you by
+now! Well, I must be going; it's getting late."
+
+"You brought her down to Eastbourne to-day?"
+
+"Oh, I've been dangling about town a little by myself; Mamie and
+my sister have been here a week. Good-night, old chap; shall I see
+you to-morrow? You might give us a look in if you will--say in the
+afternoon. Belle Vue Mansion; don't forget!"
+
+"Where?" exclaimed Heriot, startled into interest.
+
+"Belle Vue Mansion," repeated Cheriton, gripping his hand. "You can't
+miss it: a big pink house on the Esplanade."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Heriot betook himself there on the following day with a curious
+eagerness. If the girl he had noticed should prove to be Cheriton's
+daughter, how odd it would be! He at once hoped for the coincidence,
+and found the possibility a shade pathetic. It emphasised his years to
+think that the ill-kept child of the dirty studio might have become
+the girl he had admired. His progress during the interval appeared
+momentarily insignificant to him; he felt that while a brat became a
+woman he ought to have done much more. He was discouraged to reflect
+that he had not taken silk; for he had always intended to take silk,
+and had small misgivings that he would have cause to repent it. His
+practice had indicated for some time that he would not suffer by the
+step, and yet he had delayed his application. His motto had been, "Slow
+and sure," but it seemed to him suddenly that he had been too slow; his
+income as a Junior should not have contented him so long.
+
+He pulled the bell, and was preceded up the stairs by a maid-servant,
+who opened a door, and announced him to the one occupant of the room.
+Heriot saw that she was the girl of the balcony and the terrace, and
+that she moved towards him smiling.
+
+"I am Mamie Cheriton," she said. "My father is expecting you."
+
+Her intonation was faintly American, but her voice was full and sweet.
+He took her hand with pleasure, and a touch of excitement that did not
+concord with his countenance, which was formal and impassive.
+
+"I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Cheriton."
+
+"Won't you sit down?" she said. "He will be here in a minute."
+
+Heriot took a seat, and decided that her eyes were even lovelier than
+he had known.
+
+"When I saw you last, you were a child," he remarked inaccurately.
+
+"Yes; it must have astonished you meeting my father again after so many
+years. It was funny, your being here, wasn't it?... But perhaps you
+often come to Eastbourne?"
+
+"No," said Heriot, "no, I don't often come. How does it strike you,
+Miss Cheriton? I suppose you can hardly remember England, can you?"
+
+"Well, I shan't be sorry to be settled in London; it was London I was
+anxious to go to, not the sea-shore.... Do you say 'sea-shore' in
+Europe, or is it wrong? When I said 'sea-shore' this morning, I noticed
+that a woman stared at me."
+
+"One generally says 'seaside' over here; I don't know that it's
+important."
+
+"Well, the 'seaside' then. The seaside was my aunt's wish.
+Well---- Well, I'm saying 'well' too often, I guess?--that's American,
+too! I've got to be quite English--that's my first step. But at least I
+don't talk like Americans in your comic papers, do I?"
+
+"You talk very delightfully, I think," he said, taken aback.
+
+"I hope you mean it. My voice is most important, you know. It would be
+very cruel if I were handicapped by having anything the matter with my
+voice. I shall have difficulties enough without!"
+
+"I'm afraid," he said, "that I'm unfortunate. I wish I could have done
+something to further the ambitions your father mentioned."
+
+She smiled again, rather wistfully this time.
+
+"They seem very absurd to you, I daresay?"
+
+He murmured deprecation: "Why?"
+
+"The stage-struck girl is always absurd."
+
+Recognising his own phrase, he perceived that he had been too
+faithfully reported, and was embarrassed.
+
+"I spoke hastily. In the abstract the stage-struck girl may be absurd,
+but so is a premature opinion."
+
+"Thank you," she said. "But why 'stage-struck,' anyhow? it's a term I
+hate. I suppose you wanted to be a barrister, Mr. Heriot?"
+
+"I did," he confessed, "certainly. There are a great many, but I
+thought there was room for one more."
+
+"But you weren't described as 'bar-struck'?"
+
+"I don't think I ever heard the expression."
+
+"It would be a very foolish one?"
+
+"It would sound so to me."
+
+"Why 'stage-struck' then? Is it any more ridiculous to aspire to one
+profession than another? You don't say a person is 'paint-struck,' or
+'ink-struck,' or anything else '-struck'; why the sneer when one is
+drawn towards the theatre? But perhaps _no_ form of art appears to you
+necessary?"
+
+"I think I should prefer to call it 'desirable,' since you ask the
+question," he said. "And 'art' is a word used to weight a great many
+trivialities too! Everybody who writes a novel is an artist in his own
+estimation, and personally, I find existence quite possible without
+novels."
+
+"Did you ever read _Mademoiselle de Maupin_?" asked Miss Cheriton.
+
+"Have _you_?" he said quickly.
+
+"Oh yes; books are very cheap in America. 'I would rather grow roses
+than potatoes,' is one of the lines in the preface. _You_ would rather
+grow potatoes than roses, eh?"
+
+"You are an enthusiast," said Heriot; "I see!" He pitied her for being
+Dick Cheriton's daughter. She was inevitable: the pseudo-artist's
+discontent with realities--the inherited tendencies, fanned by
+thinly-veiled approval! He understood.
+
+Cheriton came in after a few minutes, followed by the aunt, to whom
+Heriot was presented. He found her primitive, and far less educated
+than her brother. She was very happy to see dear Dick again, and she
+was sorry that she must lose him again so soon. Dear Mamie, though,
+would be a consolation. A third-rate suburban villa was stamped upon
+her; he could imagine her making hideous antimacassars for forbidding
+armchairs, and that a visit to an Eastbourne boarding-house was the
+event of her life. She wore jet earrings, and stirred her tea with vast
+energy. With the circulation of the tea, strangers drifted into the
+room, and the conversation was continued in undertones.
+
+"Have you been talking to Mamie about her intentions?" Cheriton
+inquired.
+
+"We've been chatting, yes. What steps do you mean to take, Miss
+Cheriton? What shall you do?"
+
+"I propose to go to the dramatic agents," she said, "and ask them to
+hear me recite."
+
+"Dramatic agents must be kept fairly busy, I should say. What if they
+don't consent?"
+
+"I shall recite to them."
+
+"You are firm!" he laughed.
+
+"I am eager, Mr Heriot. I have longed till I am sick with longing.
+London has been my aim since I was a little girl. I have dreamt of
+it!--I've gone to sleep hoping that I might; I couldn't recall one of
+its streets, but in dreams I've reached it over and over again. The way
+was generally across Lincoln Park, in Chicago; and all of a sudden I
+was among theatres and lights, and it was London!"
+
+"And you were an actress. And the audience showered bouquets!"
+
+"I always woke up before I was an actress. But now I'm here really, I
+mean to try to wake London up."
+
+"I hope you will," he said. Her faith in herself was a little
+infectious, since she was beautiful. If she had been plain, he would
+have considered her conceited.
+
+"Have I gushed?" she said, colouring.
+
+He was not sure but what she had.
+
+"She's like her father," said Cheriton gaily; "get her on the subject
+of art, and her tongue runs away with her. We're all children, we
+artists--up in the skies, or down in the dumps. No medium with us! She
+must recite to _you_ one of these days, Heriot; I want you to hear her."
+
+"Will you, Miss Cheriton?"
+
+"If you like," she said.
+
+"Dear Mamie must recite to _me_," murmured Mrs. Baines; "I'm quite
+looking forward to it. What sort of pieces do you say, dear? Nice
+pieces?"
+
+"She knows the parts of Juliet, and Rosalind, and Pauline by heart,"
+said Cheriton, ignoring his sister. "I think you'll say her Balcony
+Scene is almost as fine a rendering as you've ever heard. There's a
+delicacy, a spiritual----"
+
+"Has she been trained?" asked Heriot; "I understood she was quite a
+novice."
+
+"I've coached her myself," replied Cheriton complacently. "I don't
+pretend to be an elocutionist, of course; but I've been able to give
+her some hints. All the arts are related, you know, my boy--it's only
+a difference in the form of expression. They're playing _Romeo and
+Juliet_ at the theatre here to-night, and we're going; she never loses
+an opportunity for study. It's been said that you can learn as much by
+watching bad acting as good. Will you come with us?" he added, lowering
+his voice. "You'll see how she warms up at the sight of the footlights."
+
+"I don't mind," said Heriot, "if I shan't be in the way. Suppose we all
+dine together at the hotel, and go on from there? What do you say?" He
+turned to the ladies, and the widow faltered:
+
+"Lor, I'm sure it's very kind of you to invite me, Mr. Heriot. That
+_would_ be gay, wouldn't it!"
+
+She smoothed her flat hair tremulously, and left the decision to her
+brother and her niece.
+
+Heriot took his leave with the understanding that he was to expect
+them, and sauntered along the Parade more cheerfully than was his wont.
+The girl had not failed to impress him, though he disapproved of her
+tendencies; nor did these appear quite so preposterous to him now,
+albeit he thought them regrettable. He did not know whether he believed
+in her or not yet, but he was conscious that he wished to do so. His
+paramount reflection was that she would have been a wholly charming
+girl if she had had ordinary advantages--a finishing governess, and a
+London season, and a touch of conventionality. He disliked to use the
+word "conventionality," for it sounded priggish; but "conventionality"
+was what he meant.
+
+At dinner, however, and more especially after it, he forgot his
+objections. In the theatre he watched Miss Cheriton more attentively
+than the stage. She herself sat with her eyes riveted on it, and he
+could see that she was the prey to strong excitement. He wondered
+whether this was created by the performance, which seemed to him
+indifferent, or by the thoughts that it awoke, and he resolved to ask
+her. When the curtain fell, and they went out, he wasn't sorry that
+Cheriton derided his suggestion of a cab and declared that the walk
+back would be agreeable. He kept by the girl's side, and the others
+followed.
+
+She did not speak, and after a minute he said:
+
+"Will it jar upon you if I say, 'Let us talk'?"
+
+She turned to him with a slight start.
+
+"Of course not! How can you think me so ridiculous?"
+
+"Yet it did!" said Heriot; "I could see."
+
+"I know exactly how I appear," she said constrainedly. "I look an
+affected idiot. If you knew how I hate to appear affected! I give
+you my word I don't put it on; I can't help it. The theatre gives me
+hot and cold shivers, and turns me inside out. That isn't prettily
+expressed, but it describes what I mean as nearly as possible. Am I
+'enthusing' again?"
+
+"I never said you 'enthused' before. You're not my idea of--of 'the
+gushing girl' at all."
+
+"I'm glad to hear it. I was very ashamed when you had gone this
+afternoon." She hesitated painfully. "I wish I could explain myself,
+but I can't--without a pen. I can write what I feel much better than I
+can say it. I began to write a play once, and the girl said just what
+I felt. It was a bad play, but a big relief. I've sometimes thought
+that if I walked about with a pen in my hand, I should be a good
+conversationalist."
+
+"Try to tell me what you feel without one," said Heriot.
+
+"You encourage me to bore you. Mr. Heriot, I yearn, I crave, to do
+something clever. It isn't only vanity: half the craving is born of
+the desire to live among clever people. Ever since I can remember
+I've ached to know artists, and actors, and people who write, and do
+things. I've been cooped among storekeepers without an idea in their
+heads; I've never seen a man or woman of talent in my life, excepting
+my father; I've never heard anybody speak who knew what art or ambition
+meant. You may laugh, but if I had it, I would give five hundred
+dollars to go home with some of those actresses to-night, and sit mum
+in a corner and listen to them."
+
+"Don't you think it very likely you might be disappointed?" he asked.
+
+"I don't. I don't expect they would talk blank-verse at supper, but
+they would talk of their work, of their hopes. An artist must be an
+artist always--on the stage, or off it; in his studio, or in his club.
+My father is an instance: he could not be a philistine if he tried. He
+once said something I've always remembered; he said: 'God gave me my
+soul, child; circumstances gave me an hotel.' I thought it happily put."
+
+Heriot perceived that Cheriton had thought so too, as the "impromptu"
+had been repeated.
+
+"What a different world we should have lived in by now if he had kept
+in his profession!" she exclaimed. "I quiver when I realise what I've
+missed. People that I only know through their books, or the newspapers,
+would have been familiar friends. I should have seen Swinburne smoking
+cigars in our parlour; and Sarah Bernhardt would have dropped in to tea
+and chatted about the rehearsal she had just left, and showed me the
+patterns of the new costumes she was ordering. Isn't it wonderful?"
+
+In sympathy for her he said:
+
+"It's possible your father might have remained in England without
+becoming intimate with celebrities."
+
+She looked doubtful. "Even if he hadn't--and one likes to believe
+in one's own father--the atmosphere would have been right. They
+mightn't have been Swinburnes and Bernhardts that were at home in our
+place--they might have been people the world hasn't heard of yet. But
+they would have talked of the time when the world was _going_ to hear
+of them. One can respect an obscure genius as much as a famous one."
+
+They had reached the door of Belle Vue Mansion; and when he was
+begged to go in for half an hour, Heriot did not demur. They had the
+drawing-room to themselves now, and Cheriton descanted with relish
+on the qualifications for a successful actress. He had no knowledge
+of the subject, but possessed great fluency, and he spoke of "broad
+effects," and "communicable emotion," and "what he might call a matter
+of perspective" with an authority which came near to disguising the
+fact that there was little or no meaning in what he said. The girl sat
+pale and attentive, and Mrs. Baines listened vaguely, as she might have
+done to a discourse in Chinese. Relatives who came back from America
+and invited her to stay with them in a house where she cost two guineas
+a week, must be treated with deference; but the stage and the circus
+were of equal significance to her mind, and she would have simpered
+just as placidly if her niece had been anxious to jump through a hoop.
+Her chief emotion was pride at being in a room with a barrister who,
+she had learnt, was the brother of a baronet; and she watched him
+furtively, with the anticipation of describing the event in Lavender
+Street, Wandsworth, where the magnate was a gentleman who travelled in
+a brougham, and haberdashery.
+
+"Would it be inconsiderate to ask you to recite to-night, Miss
+Cheriton?" inquired Heriot. "Don't, if you are too tired."
+
+She rose at once, as if compelling herself to subdue reluctance, and
+moved towards the bay of the window slowly. For a second or two after
+she stood there she did not speak, only her lips trembled. Then she
+began Portia's speech on Mercy. In recitation her voice had the slight
+tremolo that is natural to many beginners who feel deeply; but its
+quality was delicious, and her obvious earnestness was not without
+effect. Conscious that her gestures were stiff, she had chosen a
+speech that demanded little action, and it was not until she came to
+"Therefore, Jew, though justice be thy plea," that her hands, which
+she had clasped lightly in front of her, fell apart. With the change
+of position she seemed to acquire a dignity and confidence that made
+the climax triumphant, and though Heriot could see that she had much to
+learn, his compliments were sincere.
+
+When he bade her good-night, she looked at him appealingly.
+
+"Tell me the truth," she said under her breath; "I've only had my
+father's opinion. Tell me the truth!"
+
+"I honestly believe you're clever," he answered. "I'm sure of it." He
+felt his words to be very cold compared with the sympathy that was
+stirring in him.
+
+The proprietress, who had entered, hovered about with an eye on the
+gas, and he repeated his adieux hurriedly. The interest that he already
+took in the question of Miss Cheriton's success surprised him. The
+day had had a charm that was new, and he found that he was eagerly
+anticipating the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+On the pavements of the Strand the snow had turned to slush; and from
+the river a fog was blowing up, which got into the girl's throat, and
+made her cough. She mounted a flight of gloomy stairs, and pulled a
+bell. Already her bearing had lost something that had distinguished it
+in the summer: something of courage. She rang the bell deprecatingly,
+as if ashamed.
+
+The anteroom into which she passed had become painfully familiar to
+her, like the faces of many of the occupants. They all wore the same
+expression--an air of repressed eagerness, of diffidence striving to
+look assured. The walls were covered with theatrical photographs,
+and in a corner a pimply youth sat writing at a table. What he wrote
+nobody knew or cared. The crowd had but one thought--the door that
+communicated with the agent's private office, to which they prayed,
+though they were no longer sanguine, that they would gain admission.
+It was four o'clock, and at five the office would close. There were
+so many of them that it was impossible for Mr. Passmore to interview
+everybody. Which of them would be lucky to-day?
+
+Mamie also looked towards the door, and from the door back to
+her companions in distress. A little fair woman in a light fawn
+costume--terribly unsuitable to the season, but her least shabby--met
+her eyes and spoke.
+
+"Have you got an appointment?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, then you won't see him," said the little woman more cheerfully. "I
+thought, as you'd come in so late, that you had an appointment. _I've_
+been here since twelve."
+
+The door opened, and Mr. Passmore appeared on the threshold. He did not
+say "good-afternoon" to his clients; he cast an indifferent gaze round
+the room, and signed to a cadaverous man who sat sucking the handle of
+his umbrella.
+
+"Here! _You!_" he said, retiring again. The cadaverous man rose
+hurriedly, among envious glances, and twenty-five heads that had been
+lifted in expectation drooped dejectedly. The men whose watches were
+not pawned looked to see the time.
+
+"What's your line?" said the little woman, addressing Mamie once more.
+
+"I beg your pardon? Oh, I'm trying for my first engagement; I haven't
+acted yet at all."
+
+The other showed surprise and some contempt.
+
+"A novice, are you! Good Lord, it's no good your coming to the agents,
+my dear; they can't find shops for _us_."
+
+"I paid Mr. Passmore the usual fee," said Mamie; "he promised he'd do
+what he could."
+
+The little woman smiled, and turned her shoulder to her, declining
+further discussion. Another girl rang the bell, but withdrew with a
+sigh as she perceived the futility of waiting. The cadaverous man came
+out, with "an engagement" writ large upon his features. He stowed a
+type-written part into the pocket of his overcoat, and nodded good-bye
+to an acquaintance, whose cast of countenance proclaimed him a low
+comedian.
+
+"Got anything, dear boy?" inquired the latter in a husky whisper.
+
+"They want me for the _White Slaves_ Company--the Father. Offered four.
+Of course I refused point-blank. 'No,' I said, 'six.' 'Oh,' he said,
+'impossible!' I wouldn't budge; what do _you_ think! Why, I had eight
+with Kavanagh, and she's as good as booked me for her next tour. '_I_
+don't mind,' I said; 'I'll go to the Harcourts!' They've been trying to
+get me back, and he knows it. 'Don't do that,' he said; 'say five, my
+boy!' 'Six!' I said, 'and I only take it then to fill in.' 'Well, they
+want you,' he said; 'you're the only man for the part, and I suppose
+you've got to have your own terms; but they wouldn't pay it to anybody
+else.'" His salary was to be three-pounds-ten, and he could have shed
+tears of relief to get it.
+
+"Damn fine, old chap!" said the low comedian, who didn't believe him.
+"Is the comedy part open, do you know? I might----"
+
+"Don't think so; fancy they're complete." His manner was already
+condescending. "Olive oil!"
+
+"Now, I can't see you people to-day!" exclaimed Mr. Passmore, putting
+up his hands impatiently. "No good, Miss Forbes," as a girl made a dart
+towards him with a nervous smile that was meant to be ingratiating;
+"got nothing for you, it's no use.... What do _you_ want, my dear?"
+
+Another lady, who found it embarrassing to explain her anxiety in
+public, faltered "that she had just looked in to hear if Mr. Passmore
+could kindly----"
+
+"Nothing doing! perhaps later on. I'll let you know."
+
+"You _will_ bear me in mind, _won't_ you, Mr. Passmore?" she pleaded.
+
+"What?" he said. "Oh, yes, yes; I'll drop you a postcard--I won't
+forget you. Good-day." He did not even recollect her name.
+
+"Can I speak to you, Mr. Passmore?" said Mamie, rising.
+
+"You?" he said questioningly. "Oh, I can't do anything for you yet!
+Everything's made up--things are very quiet just now.... Here, Miss
+Beaumont, I want a word with you."
+
+"Give me a minute," persisted Mamie. "I want an engagement; I don't
+care how small the part is. I'll be a servant, I'll be anything, I want
+a beginning! I recited to you, if you remember, and----"
+
+"Did you?" he said. "Oh, yes, yes, I remember--very nice. You wanted to
+play Juliet!" He laughed.
+
+"I'll be _anything!_" she said again. "I'll give you double the
+commission if----"
+
+"Have you got enough voice for chorus?" he asked testily. "How are your
+limbs?"
+
+"I want to be an actress," she said, flushing. "I mean to work!"
+
+"Come on, Miss Beaumont!" he cried. And Miss Beaumont swept past her
+into the sanctum.
+
+The girl who six months ago had looked forward to playing Juliet made
+her way down the dingy staircase drearily. This was but one of many
+dramatic agents with whom she had gone through the form of registering
+her name. Mr. Passmore's booking-fee had been five shillings; the
+booking-fee of most of the others had been five shillings; one had
+charged a guinea. All had been affable when she paid her first visit,
+and forgotten who she was when she paid her second; all had been
+reminded who she was, and failed to recognise her when she called
+again. She called on one or another of them every day, and contrived to
+gain such an interview as she had just had about once a week. She had
+taken in the theatrical papers and replied to shoals of advertisements,
+but as she had to state that she was a novice, nobody ever took any
+notice of her applications. She had haunted the stage-doors when
+she read that a new piece was to be produced, begging in vain to be
+allowed to see the manager. She had, in fine, done everything that was
+possible; and she was as far from securing an engagement as on the day
+that she arrived in England. And she had talent, and she was beautiful,
+and was prepared to begin upon the lowest rung of the ladder.
+
+The stage is generally supposed to be the easiest of all callings to
+enter. The girl who is unhappy at home, the boy who has been plucked
+for the army, the woman whose husband has failed on the Stock Exchange,
+all speak of "going on the stage" as calmly as if it were only
+necessary to take a stroll to get there. As a matter of fact, unless an
+extraordinary piece of luck befalls her, it is almost as difficult for
+a girl without influence, or a good deal of money, to become an actress
+as it is for her to marry a duke. She may be in earnest, but there are
+thousands who are in earnest; she may be pretty, but there are hundreds
+of pretty actresses struggling and unrecognised; she may be a genius,
+but she has no opportunity to display her gift until the engagement is
+obtained. And this is the tremendous obstacle. She can prove nothing;
+she can only say, "I feel I should succeed." If she is allowed to
+recite--and it is very rarely that she is--a recital is little or no
+test of her qualifications for the stage. She may recite cleverly, and
+as an actress be very indifferent. She has to beg to be taken on trust,
+while a myriad women, eager for the vacant part, can cry, "I can refer
+you to so-and-so; I have experience!" Though other artistic professions
+may be as hard to rise in, there is probably none other in which it is
+quite so difficult to make the first steps. If a girl is able to write,
+she can sit alone in her bedroom, and demonstrate her capability; if
+she can paint, her canvases speak for her; if she pants to be a prima
+donna, she can open her mouth and people hear her sing. The would-be
+actress, alone among artists, can do nothing to show her fitness
+for the desired vocation until her self-estimate has been blindly
+accepted--and she may easily fail to do herself justice then, cast, as
+she will be, for minor parts entirely foreign to her bent.
+
+To succeed on the stage requires indomitable energy, callousness to
+rebuffs, tact, luck, talent, and facilities for living six or nine
+months out of the year without earning a shilling. To get on to the
+stage requires valuable introductions or considerable means. If a woman
+has neither, the chances are in favour of her seeking an opening vainly
+all her life. And as to a young man so situated who seeks it, he is
+endeavouring to pass through a brick wall.
+
+Mamie descended the dingy staircase, and at the foot she saw the girl
+who had been addressed as "Miss Forbes." She was standing on the
+doorstep, gathering up her skirts. It had begun to snow again, and
+she contemplated the dark, damp street shrinkingly. An impulse seized
+Mamie to speak as she passed. From such trifles great things sometimes
+followed, she remembered. She was at the age when the possibility of
+the happy accident recurs to the mind constantly--a will-o'-the-wisp
+that lightens the gloom. The reflection takes marvellous forms, and at
+twenty-one the famous actor--of the aspirant's imagination--who goes
+about the world crying, "A genius! you must come to me!" may be met in
+any omnibus. The famous actor of the aspirant's imagination is like the
+editor as conceived by the general public: he spends his life in quest
+of obscure ability.
+
+"If we're going the same way, I can offer you a share of my umbrella,"
+she said.
+
+"Oh, thanks!" said the girl in a slightly surprised voice; "I'm going
+to Charing Cross."
+
+"And _I'm_ going to Victoria, so our road is the same," said Mamie.
+
+A feeling of passionate pleasure suffused her as she moved away by
+the girl's side through the yellow fog. The roar of the Strand had
+momentarily the music of her dreams while she yearned in Duluth; the
+greatness of the city--the London of theatres, art, and books--throbbed
+in her veins. She was walking with an actress!
+
+"Isn't it beastly?" said the girl. "I suppose you've got to train it?"
+
+"Yes; I'm living at Wandsworth. Have _you_ far to go?"
+
+"Notting Hill. I take the bus. Passmore hadn't got anything for you,
+had he?"
+
+Mamie shook her head. "We were both unlucky; but perhaps it doesn't
+matter so much to you?"
+
+"Doesn't it!... Have you been on his books long, Miss----?"
+
+"Miss Cheriton--Mamie Cheriton."
+
+"That's a good name; it sounds like a character in a play--as if she'd
+have a love-scene under the apple blossom! Where were you last?"
+
+"At Mr. Faulkner's; but he didn't know of any vacancy either."
+
+"I don't mean that," said Miss Forbes; "I mean, how long have you been
+out?"
+
+"Oh," answered Mamie, "I left home at one o'clock; that's the worst of
+living such a long way off!"
+
+The other stared.
+
+"Don't you understand?" she exclaimed. "I mean, what company were you
+in last, and when did it finish?"
+
+"Oh, I see," stammered Mamie. "I'm sorry to say I've everything in
+front of me! I've never had a part yet at all. I'm that awful thing--a
+novice."
+
+"Crumbs!" said Miss Forbes.
+
+"I guess you actresses look down on novices rather?"
+
+"Well, the profession is full enough already, goodness knows! Still, I
+suppose we've all got a right to begin. I don't mind a novice who goes
+to the agents in the snow; it shows she means business anyhow. It's the
+amateurs who go to the managers in hansoms that I hate. But it's an
+awful struggle, my dear, take my word for it; you'd better stop at home
+if you can afford to. And Passmore will never be any use to you. Look
+at _me!_ I've been going to him for four months; and I played Prince
+Arthur on tour with Sullivan when I was nine."
+
+"I _am_ looking at you," said Mamie, smiling, "and envying you till I'm
+ill. You say Passmore is no use: let me into a secret. What _can_ I do
+to get an engagement?"
+
+"Blest if _I_ know, if you haven't got any friends to pull the strings!
+I'd like to know the secret myself. Well," she broke off, "perhaps we
+shall meet again. I must say 'good evening' here; there's my bus."
+
+"Don't go yet!" begged Mamie. "Won't you come and have some tea first?"
+
+Miss Forbes hesitated eloquently.
+
+"I shall get tea when I reach home," she murmured, "and I'm rather
+late."
+
+"Oh, let me invite an actress to tea! Do, please! It will be the next
+best thing to getting a part."
+
+"You're very kind. I don't mind, I'm sure. There's a place close by
+where they give you a pot for two for fourpence. You're American,
+aren't you?"
+
+"I've lived in America; I'm English really."
+
+They were soon seated at a table. Mamie ordered a pot of tea, and
+muffins.
+
+"It's nice and warm in here," she said.
+
+"Isn't it! I noticed you in the office. My name is Mabel Forbes; but I
+daresay you heard Passmore speak to me?"
+
+"Yes; he didn't speak very nicely, did he?"
+
+"They never do; they're all alike. They know we can't do without them,
+and they treat us like dirt. I tell you, it's awful; you don't know
+what you're letting yourself in for, my dear."
+
+"To succeed I'd bear anything, all the snubs and drudgery imaginable. I
+do know; I know it's not to be avoided. I've read the biographies of so
+many great actresses. I should think of the future--the reward. I'd set
+my teeth and _live_ for that time; and I'd work for it morning, noon,
+and night."
+
+"It would do me good to live with you, if we were on tour together,"
+said Miss Forbes cheerfully; "you'd keep my pecker up, I think. I
+loathe sharing diggings with another girl, as a rule--one always
+quarrels with her, and, with the same bedroom, one has nowhere to go
+and cry. After they've been in the profession a few years they don't
+talk like you. Not that there's really much in it," she added with a
+sigh. "To set your teeth and work morning, noon, and night sounds very
+fine, but what does it amount to? It means you'd get two-ten a week,
+and study leading business on the quiet till you thought you were as
+good as Ellen Terry. But if nobody made you an offer, what then?"
+
+"You mean it's possible to be really clever, and yet not to come to the
+front?" asked Mamie earnestly.
+
+"How can you come to the front if no one gives you the opportunity?
+You may be liked where you are--in what you're doing--but you can't
+play lead in London unless a London manager offers you an engagement to
+play lead, can you? You can't make him! Do you suppose the only clever
+actresses alive are those who're known? Besides, if leading business is
+what you are thinking of, I don't believe you've the physique for it;
+you don't look strong enough. I should have thought light comedy was
+more your line."
+
+"It isn't. If I'm meant for anything, it's for drama, and--and tragedy.
+But I'd begin in the smallest way and be grateful. The ideas I had when
+I came to London have been knocked out of me--and they were moderate
+enough, too! I'd begin by saying that the 'dinner was ready.' Surely it
+can't be so difficult to get an opening like that, if one knows how to
+set about it?"
+
+"Well, look here, my dear. I played Prince Arthur with Sullivan when I
+was nine, as I tell you, and I've been in the profession ever since.
+But I've been out of an engagement for four months now; all I could
+save out of my last screw has gone in bus fares and stamps--and my
+people haven't got any more money than they know how to spend. If an
+engagement to announce the dinner had been offered _me_ to-day, I'd
+have taken it and I'd be going back to Notting Hill happy."
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," said Mamie sympathetically. "Shall we have another
+muffin?"
+
+"No, I don't want any more, thanks. But you've no idea what a business
+it is! I've got talent and experience, and I'm not bad-looking, and yet
+you see how I've got to struggle. One is always too late everywhere. I
+was at the Queen's this morning. There are always any number of small
+parts in the Queen's things, you know, and I thought there might be a
+chance for _The Pride of the Troop_. They'd got everybody except the
+extra ladies. By the way, you might try to get on at the Queen's as an
+extra, if you like. With your appearance you'd have a very good chance,
+I should say."
+
+Mamie felt her heart stirring feverishly. "Do you mean it?" she asked.
+"What are 'extras'--you don't mean 'supers'?"
+
+"Oh, they're better than supers--different class, you know. Of
+course they've nothing to say, except in chorus. They come on in the
+race-course scene and the ball-room and look nice. They wear swagger
+frocks--the management finds their dresses--and are supposed to murmur,
+and laugh, and act in dumb-show in the background. _You_ know! They're
+frightful fools--a girl who _could_ act a bit would stand out among
+extra ladies like a Bernhardt at the Ladbroke Hall."
+
+"If they'd take me," said Mamie, clasping her hands; "if they'd only
+take me! Do you really think they will?"
+
+"It couldn't hurt to try. Ask for Mr. Casey and tell him you want to
+'walk on.' There, I've given you a hint, after all!" she exclaimed, as
+she got up; "one can't think of everything right off. It might prove
+a start for you; who knows? If Casey sees you're intelligent, he may
+give you a line or two to speak. You go up to one of the principals,
+and say, 'Lord Tomnoddy, where's that bracelet you promised to send me
+when I saw you at Kempton Park?' Then the low-comedy merchant--it's
+generally the low-comedy merchant you speak to--says something that
+gets a laugh, and bustles up the stage, and you run after him angrily.
+But don't be sanguine, even of getting on as an extra! There's always a
+crowd of women besieging the Queen's at every production--you won't be
+the only pretty one. Well, I must be going, my dear. I wish you luck."
+
+"And luck to _you!_" said Mamie, squeezing her hand gratefully; "and
+many, many thanks. I look forward to telling you the result. I suppose
+we're sure to see each other at Mr. Passmore's?"
+
+"Oh, we're bound to run against each other somewhere before long,"
+returned Miss Forbes cordially. "Yes, I shall be curious to hear what
+you do; I've enjoyed our chat very much. Take care of yourself!"
+
+She hurried towards her bus, waving au revoir, and Mamie crossed the
+road. London widened between the girls--and their paths in it never met
+again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+As she reached the opposite pavement Heriot exclaimed: "Miss Cheriton!
+Are you going to cut me?"
+
+"You?" she cried with surprise. "It was--it was the fog's fault; I
+didn't see. What a stranger you are! it's a fortnight since you came
+out to us. A 'fortnight,' you observe--I'm 'quite English, you know,'
+now."
+
+"You're in good spirits," he said. "What have you been doing?"
+
+"I've been rising in my career," she answered gaily; "I have had tea
+in a cakeshop with an actress. I have just shaken hands with her; she
+has just given me a piece of advice. I am, in imagination, already a
+personage."
+
+"Who is she?" asked Heriot. "Where does she come from?... Let me see
+you to Victoria; I suppose that's where you are going?"
+
+He stopped a hansom, and scrutinised her sadly as they took their
+seats. "Have you been out in this weather long?" he said. "You poor
+child, how wet you must be! Well, you know an actress. Aren't you going
+to tell me all about it?"
+
+She was as voluble as he wished; he had become in the last few months
+her confidant and consoler. Lavender Street, Wandsworth, or those
+residents who commanded a view of No. 20, had learnt to know his
+figure well. Awhile ago he had marvelled at the rôle he was filling;
+latterly he had ceased to marvel. He realised the explanation--and as
+he listened to her tale her words smote him. It hurt him to think of
+the girl beside him cringing to a theatrical agent, forming a chance
+acquaintance in the streets, and contemplating so ignoble a position as
+the one of which she spoke. He looked at her yearningly.
+
+"You are not pleased," she said.
+
+"Is there a great deal to be pleased at? Is this sort of thing worthy
+of you?"
+
+"It is the first step. Oh, be nice about it, do! If you understood ...
+can I be Juliet at once! If I'm to succeed----"
+
+"I have sympathised with you," he said; "I've entered into your
+feelings; I do understand. But you don't know what you're meditating.
+Admitting it's inevitable--admitting, if you're to be an actress, that
+you must begin, since you've no influence, where you're content to
+begin--can you bear it? These women you'll be thrown amongst----"
+
+"Some, at least," she said, "will be like myself, surely? I am not the
+only girl who has to begin. And ... Whatever they are, it can't be
+helped! Remember, I'm in earnest! I talked at first wildly; I see how
+childish I was. What should I be if I faltered because the path isn't
+strewn with roses? An actress must be satisfied to work."
+
+"It isn't decreed that you need be an actress," answered Heriot. "After
+all, there is no necessity to fight for your bread-and-butter. If you
+were compelled----"
+
+"There are more compelling forces than poverty. Can't you recognise
+ambition?"
+
+"Haven't I?" he said. "Have I been wood?"
+
+"Ah," she smiled, "forgive me. I didn't mean that. But be nice still.
+Am I to reject a career because I'm not starving? I'm starving with my
+soul. I'm like a poor mute battling for voice. I want--I want to give
+expression to what I feel within me." She beat her hands in her lap.
+"I'm willing to struggle--eager to! You've always known it. Why do
+you disappoint me now? I have to begin even lower than I understood,
+that's all. And what is it? I shall be surrounded by artists then. By
+degrees I shall rise. 'You are in the right way, but remember what I
+say, Study, study, study! Study well, and God bless you!' Do you know
+who said that?--Mrs. Siddons to Macready. It was at Newcastle, and it
+was about her performance the same night that he wrote: 'The violence
+of her emotion seemed beyond her power longer to endure, and the words,
+faintly articulated, "Was he alive?" sent an electric thrill through
+the audience.' Think what that means; three words! I can't do it, I've
+tried--oh, how I've tried! For months after I read that book, I used to
+say them dozens of times every day, with every intonation I could think
+of. But there was no effect, no thrill even to myself. 'Study, study,
+study! Keep your mind on your art, do not remit your study, and you are
+certain to succeed!' I _will_ keep my mind on it, I'll obey her advice,
+I _will_ succeed. Heaven couldn't be so cruel as to let me fail after
+putting such longings into me."
+
+Heriot sighed. The impulse to tell her that he loved her, to keep her
+to himself, was mastering him. Never before had her hold on him been
+displayed so vividly, nor had the temptation to throw prudence to the
+winds been quite so strong.
+
+"If you had a happier home," he said, "there would be other influences.
+Don't think me impertinent, but it can't be very lively for you in that
+house."
+
+"It isn't a whirl of gaiety, and Aunt Lydia is not ideal. But--but I
+was just the same in Duluth."
+
+"Duluth!" he echoed; "it was dreary in Duluth, too."
+
+"At all events I had my father there."
+
+"What does he write?" asked Heriot. "Have you had a letter since I saw
+you?"
+
+"He gives no news. The news is to come from _me_."
+
+"I think there's a little," he said; "I can tell it by your tone."
+
+"It's cheerful to be with some one who _can_ tell things by one's tone.
+Well, he thinks, if I can't make a beginning, that I may as well go
+back."
+
+"I see," he said. "I won't ask you if you mean to."
+
+She laughed a shade defiantly. "Duluth has many charms--I've been
+remembering them since his letter. There is my father, and there's
+strawberry-shortcake. My father will be disappointed in me if I have
+to go; the strawberry-shortcake--well, there's a tiny shop there where
+they sell it hot. I've never seen it hot anywhere else--and they turn
+on the cream with a tap, out of a thing that looks like a miniature
+cistern."
+
+"You're not going back," he said. "You're going on the stage as a
+supernumerary instead?"
+
+In the flare of the station lamps her eyes flashed at him; he could see
+the passionate trembling of her mouth. The cab stopped, and they got
+out, and threaded their way among the crowd to the barriers. There was
+a train in ten minutes, Heriot learnt.
+
+"Shall we go to the waiting-room?"
+
+"No," said Miss Cheriton.
+
+"Forgive me what I said just now. I am sorry."
+
+"What does it matter?"
+
+"It was brutal."
+
+"Rather, perhaps. It was unexpected. You have failed me when I wanted
+you most."
+
+He took two first-class tickets--he wished to be alone with her, and he
+knew that she travelled "second."
+
+"I'm coming with you," he said.
+
+"But you can't have dined? Our suppers are not extensive."
+
+"Let us get in!" he answered.
+
+They had the compartment to themselves when the door banged, and he
+regarded her silently, with nerves that had escaped control.
+
+"I have warned you," she said. "It will be something out of a tin for
+certain, with vinegar over it."
+
+"Mamie!"
+
+There was rebuke in her expression.
+
+"Mamie," he repeated, "I love you. Why I dislike your going on the
+stage is because I want you myself. I was 'brutal' because I'm fond of
+you. Will you marry me?"
+
+She lay back against the darkness of the cushions, pale and startled.
+
+"Are you serious?" she said. "You--want to marry me? do you mean it?"
+
+"I mean it. I don't seem able to tell you how much I mean it. Can you
+like me well enough to be my wife?"
+
+"I do like you," she stammered; "but I hadn't an idea.... I never
+thought you thought----Oh, I'm sorry!"
+
+"Why? Why can't you say 'yes'?"
+
+"To marry you?"
+
+"I'll be very gentle to you," he said shakily. "I--for God's sake,
+don't judge my love for you by the way I put it! I haven't had much
+practice in love-making; it's a pity, perhaps. There's a word that
+says it all--I 'worship' you. My darling, what have you to look
+forward to? You've seen, you've tried, you know what an uphill life
+it will be. It's not as if I begged you to waive your hopes while
+you had encouragement to hope--you've made the attempt, and you know
+the difficulties now. Come to me instead. You shall live where you
+like--you can choose your own quarter. You can have everything you care
+for--books, pictures, theatres too. Oh, my sweet, come to me, and I'll
+fulfil every wish! Will you, Mamie?"
+
+"I can't," she said tremulously, "it wouldn't be fair." Her eyes shone
+at him, and she leant forward with parted lips. "I like you, I like you
+very much, but I don't--I'm not---- I've never been in love with anyone."
+
+"I'll be grateful for small mercies," said Heriot, with an unhappy
+laugh.
+
+"And I _could_ not do what you ask. If I fail, I fail; but I must
+persevere. I can't accept failure voluntarily--I can't stretch out my
+arms to it. I should despise myself if I gave in to-day. Even you----"
+
+"You know better than that!" he said.
+
+"Well, yes," she owned, "perhaps I'm wrong there; to you it would seem
+a sensible step. But I believe in myself. All my life I've had the
+thought, and I should be miserable, I should hate myself! I should be
+like my father--I should be always thinking of the 'might have been.'
+You'd be good to me, but you'd know you had been a fool. I'm not a bit
+the sort of woman you should marry, and you'd repent it."
+
+Heriot took her hand and held it tightly.
+
+"I love you," he said. "Consider your own happiness only. I love you."
+
+"I am quite selfish--I know it wouldn't content me; I'm not pretending
+to any nobility. But I'm sorry; I may say that? I didn't dream you
+liked me in this way. I'm not hard, I'm not a horror, and I can see--I
+can see that I'm a lot to you."
+
+"I'm glad of that," he said simply. "Yes, you're 'a lot to me,' Mamie.
+If you know it, and you can't care for me enough, there's no more for
+me to say. Don't worry yourself. It's not unusual for a man to be fond
+of a woman who doesn't want to marry him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+She betook herself to the Queen's next morning less buoyantly than
+she had anticipated. Her meeting with Heriot had depressed her. She
+retained much of the nature of a child, and laughed or cried very
+easily. She had met Heriot laughing, and he had been serious and sad.
+With some petulance she felt that it was very unfortunate for her that
+he had fallen in love with her, and chosen that particular day to tell
+her so.
+
+She entered the stage-door with no presentiment of conquest, and
+inquired of the man in the little recess if Mr. Casey was in the
+theatre. Stage-door keepers are probably the surliest class in
+existence. They have much to try them, and they spend their official
+lives in a violent draught; but if there is a stage-door keeper sweet
+and sunny in his home, he provides an interesting study for the
+dramatic authors.
+
+The man took her measure in an instant, saving in one particular--she
+was prepared to give him a shilling and he did not guess it.
+
+"Mr. Casey's on the stage," he said; "he won't be disturbed now."
+
+"If I waited, do you think I might see him?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you, I'm sure."
+
+He resumed his perusal of a newspaper, and Mamie looked at him through
+the aperture helplessly. There was the usual knot of loafers about
+the step--a scene-hand or two in their shirt-sleeves; a girl in her
+pathetic best dress, also hoping for miracles; a member of the company,
+who had slipped out from rehearsal to smoke a cigarette.
+
+Cerberus was shown where his estimate had been at fault. He said "Miss"
+now: "If you write your business on one of these forms, Miss, I'll send
+it in to Mr. Casey."
+
+He gave her a stump of pencil, and a printed slip, specially designed
+to scare intruders. She wrote her name, and Mr. Casey's name, and could
+find no scope for euphemisms regarding the nature of the interview she
+sought. She added, "To obtain engagement as extra lady," and returned
+the paper with embarrassment; she was sufficiently unsophisticated in
+such matters to assume that her object had not been divined.
+
+"'Ere, Bill!" One of the scene-hands turned. "Take it in to Mr. Casey
+for this lady."
+
+The man addressed as Bill departed through a second door with a grunt
+and a bang, and she waited expectantly. The girl in her best frock
+sneered; she could not afford to dispense shillings, herself, and
+already her feet ached. The door swung back constantly. At intervals
+of a few seconds a stream of nondescripts issued from the unknown
+interior, and Mamie stood watching for the features of her messenger.
+It was nearly a quarter of an hour before he reappeared.
+
+"Mr. Casey can't see you," he announced.
+
+The stage-door keeper heard the intelligence with absolute
+indifference; but the girl on the step looked gratified.
+
+"What shall I do?" asked Mamie.
+
+"I can't do no more than send in for you, Miss. It ain't much good your
+waiting--the call won't be over till three o'clock."
+
+"Could I see him then?"
+
+"He'll come out. If you like to take your chance----"
+
+"I'll come back at three o'clock," she said. It was then eleven.
+
+She turned into the Strand--the Strand that has broken more hearts than
+Fleet Street. Here a young actor passed her, who was also pacing the
+inhospitable pavements until the hour in which he hoped to see patience
+and importunity bear fruit. He wore a fashionable overcoat, and swung
+his cane with a gloved hand. Presently he would seek a public-house
+and lunch on a scone, and a glass of "mild-and-bitter." If he had
+"bitter," he would be a halfpenny short in his homeward fare to Bow.
+There a musical comedy actress went by, who had "married a swell."
+His family had been deeply wounded, and showed their mortification by
+allowing her to support him. She had had three children; and when he
+was drunk, which was frequently, he said, "God forbid that they should
+ever become damned mummers like their mother!" A manager had just told
+her that "she had lost her figure, and wouldn't look the part!" and she
+was walking back to Islington, where the brokers were in the house. A
+popular comedian, who had been compelled to listen to three separate
+tales of distress between Charing Cross and Bedford Street, and had
+already lent unfortunate acquaintances thirty shillings, paused, and
+hailed a hansom from motives of economy. It was the typical crowd
+of the Strand, a crowd of the footlights. The men whose positions
+had been won were little noticeable, but the gait and costume of
+the majority--affected Youth, and disheartened Age--indicated their
+profession to the least experienced eyes. Because she grew very tired,
+and not that she had any expectation of hearing good news, Mamie went
+into Mr. Passmore's office, and sat down.
+
+And she did not hear any. After an hour she went away, and rested next
+in the anteroom of another of the agents, who repeated that "things
+were very quiet," and that "he wouldn't forget her." Seven or eight
+other girls were waiting their turn to be told the same thing. At a
+quarter to three she went back to the Queen's.
+
+"Is he coming out now?" she said. "Am I too soon?"
+
+"Eh?" said the stage-door keeper.
+
+"You told me he'd be out about three. I was asking for Mr. Casey this
+morning."
+
+"Oh, were you?" he said. "There's been a good many asking for him since
+then." He gradually recalled her. "Mr. Casey's gone," he added; "they
+finished early. He won't be here till to-night."
+
+There was a week in which she went to the stage-door of the Queen's
+Theatre every day, at all hours, and at last she learnt casually
+that as many extra ladies as were required for the production had
+been engaged. There were months during which she persisted in her
+applications at other stage-doors and hope flickered within her still.
+But when September came, and a year had passed since her arrival, the
+expiring spark had faded into lassitude. She tried no longer. Only
+sometimes, out of the sickness of her soul, the impulse to write was
+born, and she picked up a pen.
+
+Then it was definitely decided that she should return to America.
+It was characteristic of her that she had no sooner dried her eyes
+after the decision than she was restless to return at once; Duluth
+was no drearier than Wandsworth. Externally it was even picturesque,
+with the blue water and the sunshine, and the streets of white houses
+rising in tiers like a theatre; in Duluth the residents "looked down
+on one another" literally. The life was appalling, but when all was
+said, was it more limited than Aunt Lydia? And if, in lieu of acting,
+she dared aspire to dramatic authorship--the thought stirred her
+occasionally--she could work as well in Minnesota as in Middlesex.
+Cheriton had remitted the amount of her passage, and suggested that she
+should sail in a week or two. She had not received the draft two hours
+when she went up to town and booked a berth in the next steamer.
+
+When it was done, she posted a note to Heriot, acquainting him with her
+intention. His visits had not been discontinued, but he came at much
+longer intervals latterly, and she could not go without bidding him
+good-bye.
+
+She sat in the Lavender Street parlour the next evening, wondering if
+he would come. Almost she hoped that he would not. She had written,
+and therefore done her duty. To see him would, in the circumstances,
+humiliate her cruelly, she felt. She remembered how she had talked to
+him twelve months before--recalled her confidence, her pictures of a
+future that she was never to know, and her eyes smarted afresh. She had
+even failed to obtain a hearing. "What a fool, what an idiot I look!"
+she thought passionately.
+
+Tea was over, but the maid-of-all-work had not removed the things; and
+when Heriot entered, the large loaf and the numerous knives, which are
+held indispensable to afternoon tea in Lavender Street, were still on
+the big round table. The aspect of the room did not strike him any
+more. He was familiar with it, like the view of the kitchen when the
+front door had been opened, and the glimpse of clothes-line in the yard
+beyond.
+
+"May I come in?" he said. "Did you expect me?"
+
+"Lor, it's Mr. Heriot!" said Mrs. Baines. "Fancy!"
+
+She told the servant to take away the teapot, and to bring in another
+knife. He wondered vaguely what he was supposed to do with it.
+
+"I thought it likely you'd be here," said Mamie; "won't you sit down?"
+
+"I only had your letter this morning. So you are going away?"
+
+"I am going away. I bow, more or less gracefully, to the inevitable."
+
+"To bow gracefully to the inevitable is strong evidence of the
+histrionic gift," he said.
+
+"I came, I saw, I was conquered; please don't talk about it.... It was
+only settled yesterday. I sail on Saturday, you know."
+
+"Yes, you wrote me," murmured Heriot. "It's very sudden."
+
+"I'm crazy to do something, if only to confess myself beaten."
+
+"May I offer you a cup o' tea, Mr. Heriot?" asked Mrs. Baines.
+
+She always "offered" cups of tea, and was indebted to neighbours for
+their "hospitality."
+
+He thanked her.
+
+"You will miss your niece?" he said, declining a place at the table, to
+which she had moved a chair.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure!" she answered. "I say now it's a pity she didn't go
+with her father last October. Going in a vessel by herself, oh, dear! I
+say I wouldn't have got accustomed to having her with me if she'd gone
+with her father. Though that's neither here nor there!"
+
+"Yes, I think you may believe you'll be missed, Miss Cheriton," he said.
+
+"I say it's very odd she couldn't be an actress as she wanted,"
+continued Mrs. Baines. "Seems so unfortunate with all the trouble that
+she took. But lor, my dear, we can't see what lies ahead of us, and
+perhaps it's all for the best! I say perhaps it's all for the best, Mr.
+Heriot, eh? Dear Mamie may be meant to do something different--writing,
+or such like; it's not for us to say."
+
+"Have you been writing again?" asked Heriot, turning to the girl.
+
+"A little," she said bitterly. "My vanity dies hard--and Aunt Lydia has
+encouraged me."
+
+Heriot looked a reproach; her tone hurt him, though he understood of
+what it was the outcome.
+
+"I should be glad if you had encouragement," he replied; "I think you
+need it now."
+
+But it hurt him, also, to discuss her pain in the presence of the
+intolerable third. He knew that if he remained to supper there would be
+a preparatory quarter of an hour in which he was alone with her; and it
+was for this quarter of an hour that he hungered, conscious that during
+the opening of the lobster-tin two destinies would be determined.
+
+"That's right, Mr. Heriot," said Mrs. Baines placidly. "I'm glad
+to hear you say so. That's what I've been telling her. I say she
+mustn't be disheartened. Why, it's surprising, I'm sure, how much
+seems to be thought of people who write stories and things nowadays;
+they seem to make quite a fuss of them, don't they? And I'm certain
+dear Mamie could write if she put her mind to it. I was reading in
+the paper, _Tit-Bits_, only last week, that there was a book called
+_Robert Ellis_, or some such name, that made the author quite talked
+about. Now, I read the piece out to you, dear, didn't I? A book about
+religion, it was, by a lady; and I'm sure dear Mamie knows as much
+about religion as anyone."
+
+"My aunt means _Robert Elsmere_," said Mamie, in a laboured voice. "You
+may have heard it mentioned?"
+
+"You mustn't expect Mr. Heriot to know much about it," said Mrs.
+Baines; "Mr. Heriot is so busy a gentleman that very likely he doesn't
+hear of these things. But I assure you, Mr. Heriot, the story seems to
+have been read a great deal; and what I say is, if dear Mamie can't be
+an actress, why shouldn't she write books, if she wants to do something
+of the sort? I wonder my brother didn't teach her to paint, with her
+notions and that--but, not having learnt, I say she ought to write
+books. That's the thing for her--a nice pen and ink, and her own home."
+
+"I agree with you, Mrs. Baines. If she wants to write, she can do that
+in her own home."
+
+"Not to compare it with such a profession as yours, Mr. Heriot," she
+said, "which, of course, is sensible and grave. But girls can't be
+barristers, and----"
+
+"Will you open the window for me?" exclaimed Mamie; "it's frightfully
+warm, don't you think so?"
+
+She stood there with her head thrown back, and closed eyes, her foot
+tapping the floor restlessly.
+
+"Are you wishing you hadn't come?" she asked under her breath.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"One must suffer to be polite here."
+
+"Aren't you a little unjust?" said Heriot deprecatingly.
+
+"You have it for an hour," she muttered; "_I_ have had it for twelve
+months. Have you ever wanted to shriek? _I_ wanted to shriek just now,
+violently!"
+
+"I know you did," he said. "Well, it's nearly over.... Are you glad?"
+
+"Yes, and no--I can't say. If----"
+
+"Won't you go on?"
+
+"If I dared hope to do anything else.... But I'm not going to talk like
+that any more! I'm ridiculous enough already."
+
+"To whom are you ridiculous?"
+
+"To my own perception--you!"
+
+"Not to me," he said.
+
+"'Pathetic'? Yes, to you I'm 'pathetic.' You pity me as you might pity
+a lunatic who imagined she was the Queen of England."
+
+"I think you know," said Heriot diffidently, "that neither the Queen
+nor a lunatic inspires in me quite the feeling that I have for you."
+
+She changed her position, and spoke at random.
+
+"This street is awfully stupid, isn't it?" she said. "Look at that man
+going up the steps!"
+
+"Yes, he is very stupid, I daresay. What of it?"
+
+"He is a clerk," she said; "and wheels his babies out on Sunday."
+
+"Mamie!"
+
+"Come and talk to Aunt Lydia again. How rude we are!"
+
+"I want to talk to _you_," he demurred. "Aren't you going to ask me to
+stay to supper?"
+
+The suggestion came from the widow almost at the same moment.
+
+"I think we had better have the lamp," she went on. "The days are
+drawing in fast, Mr. Heriot, aren't they? We shall soon have winter
+again. Do you like the long evenings, or the long afternoons best? Just
+about now I always say that I can't bear to think of having to begin
+lighting up at five or six o'clock--it seems so unnatural; and then,
+next summer, somehow I feel quite lost, not being able to let down
+the blinds and light the lamp for tea. Mamie, dear, shut the window,
+and let down the blinds before I light the lamp--somebody might see
+in!" She suggested the danger in the same tone in which she might have
+apprehended a burglary.
+
+Under a glass shade a laggard clock ticked drearily towards the crisis,
+and Heriot provoked its history by the eagerness with which he looked
+to see the time. It had been a wedding-present from "poor dear Edward's
+brother," and only one clockmaker had really understood it. The man had
+died, and since then----
+
+He listened, praying for the kitchen to engulf her.
+
+When she withdrew at last, with an apology for leaving him, he rose,
+and went to the girl's side.
+
+"Do you know why I came this afternoon?" he said.
+
+She did know--had known it in the moment that he opened the window for
+her:
+
+"To say 'good-bye,'" she murmured.
+
+"I came to beg you not to go! Dearest, what do you relinquish by
+marrying me now? Not the stage--your hope of the stage is over; not
+your ambition in itself--you can be ambitious as my wife. You lose
+nothing, and you give--a heaven. Mamie, won't you stay?"
+
+She leant on the mantelpiece without speaking. In the pause, Mrs.
+Baines' voice reached them distinctly, as she said, "Put the brawn on a
+smaller dish."
+
+"You are forgetting. There was ... a reason besides the stage."
+
+"It is you who've forgotten. I told you I would be content.... It
+wouldn't be repugnant to you?"
+
+"To refuse while I thought I had a future, and to say 'yes,' now
+that----How can you ask me? It would be an insult to your love."
+
+"I do ask you," he urged; "I implore."
+
+"You implore me to be contemptible. You would have a disappointed woman
+for your wife. You deserve something better than that."
+
+"Oh, my God," said Heriot, in a low voice, "if I could only tell you
+how I ache to take you in my arms--as softly as if you were a child!
+If I could tell you what it is to me to know that you are passing out
+of my life and that in two days' time I shall never see you again!...
+Mamie?"
+
+The heavy shuffle of the servant was heard in the passage.
+
+"Mamie?" he repeated desperately. "It will be worse over there."
+
+Her eyes were big with perplexity and doubt.
+
+"Mamie?"
+
+"Are you sure you--sure----"
+
+"I love you; I want you. Only trust me!... Mamie?"
+
+"If you're quite sure you wish it," she faltered,--"yes!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Heriot informed his brother of his approaching marriage, Sir
+Francis said, "I never offer advice to a man on matters of this sort";
+and proceeded to advise. He considered the union undesirable, and used
+the word.
+
+Heriot replied, "On the contrary, I desire it extremely."
+
+"You're of course the best judge of your own affairs. I'll only say
+that it is hardly the attachment I should have expected you to form. It
+appears to me--if I may employ the term--romantic."
+
+"I should say," said Heriot, in his most impassive manner, "that that
+is what it might be called. Admitting the element of romance, what of
+it?"
+
+"We are not boys, George," said Sir Francis. He added, "And the lady
+is twenty-two! The father is an hotel-keeper in the United States, you
+tell me, and the aunt lives in Wandsworth. Socially, Wandsworth is
+farther than the United States, but geographically it is close. This
+Mrs. Payne--or Baynes--is not a connection you will be proud of, I take
+it?"
+
+"I shall be very proud of my wife," said Heriot, with some stiffness.
+"There are more pedigrees than happy marriages."
+
+The Baronet looked at his watch. "As I have said, it's not a matter
+that I would venture to advise you upon. Of course I congratulate you.
+We shall see Miss Cheriton at Sandhills, I hope? and--er--Catherine
+will be delighted to make her acquaintance. I have to meet Phil at
+the Club. He's got some absurd idea of exchanging--wants to go out to
+India, and see active service. And I got him into the Guards! Boys are
+damned ungrateful.... When do you marry?"
+
+"Very shortly--during the vacation. There'll be no fuss."
+
+Sir Francis told his wife that it was very "lamentable," and Lady
+Heriot preferred to describe it as "disgusting." But in spite of
+adjectives the ceremony took place.
+
+The honeymoon was brief, and when the bride and bridegroom came back to
+town, they stayed in an hotel in Victoria Street while they sought a
+flat. Ultimately they decided upon one in South Kensington, and it was
+the man's delight to render this as exquisite as taste and money made
+possible. The furniture for his study had simply to be transferred from
+his bachelor quarters, but the other rooms gave scope for a hundred
+consultations and caprices; and like a lad he enjoyed the moments in
+which he and Mamie bent their heads together over patterns and designs.
+
+She would have been more than human, and less than lovable, if in those
+early weeks her disappointment had not been lost sight of; more than a
+girl if the atmosphere of devotion in which she moved had not persuaded
+her primarily that she was content. Only after the instatement was
+effected and the long days while her husband was away were no longer
+occupied by upholsterers' plans, did the earliest returning stir of
+recollection come; only as she wandered from the drawing-room to the
+dining-room and could find no further touches to make, did she first
+sigh.
+
+A gift of Heriot's--he had chosen it without her knowledge, and it had
+been delivered as a surprise--was a writing-table; a writing-table
+that was not meant merely to be a costly ornament. And one morning she
+sat down to it and began another attempt at a play. The occupation
+served to interest her, and now the days were not so empty. In the
+evening, as often as he was able, Heriot took her out to a theatre,
+or a concert, or to houses from which invitations came. The evenings
+were enchantingly new to her; less so, perhaps, when they dined at
+the solemn houses than when a hansom deposited them at the doors of a
+restaurant, and her husband's pocket contained the tickets for a couple
+of stalls. She was conscious that she owed him more than she could ever
+repay; and though she had casually informed him that she had begun a
+drama, she did not discuss the subject with him at any length. To dwell
+upon those eternal ambitions of hers was to remind him that she had
+said she would be dissatisfied, and he deserved something different
+from that; he deserved to forget it, to be told that she had not an
+ungratified wish! She felt ungrateful to realise that such a statement
+would be an exaggeration.
+
+In the November following the wedding it was seen that "Her Majesty had
+been pleased, on the recommendation of the Lord Chancellor, to approve
+the name of George Langdale Heriot to the rank of Queen's Counsel," and
+Heriot soon found reason to congratulate himself on his step. A man
+may earn a large income as a Junior, and find himself in receipt of a
+very poor one as a Leader. There is an instance cited in the Inns of
+Court of a stuff-gownsman, making eight thousand a year, whose income
+fell, when he took silk, to three hundred. But Heriot's practice did
+not decline. Few men at the Bar could handle a jury better, or showed
+greater address in their dealings with the Bench. He knew instinctively
+the moment when that small concession was advisable, when the attitude
+of uncompromising rigour would be fatal to his case. He had his tricks
+in court: the least affected of men out of it, in court he had his
+tricks. Counsel acquire them inevitably, and one of Heriot's had been a
+favourite device of Ballantyne's: in cross-examination he looked at the
+witness scarcely at all, but kept his face turned to the jury-box. Why
+this should be persuasive is a mystery that no barrister can explain,
+but its effectiveness is undeniable. Nevertheless, he was essentially
+"sound." As he had been known as "a safe man" while a Junior, so, now
+that he had taken silk, he was believed in as a Leader. The figures
+on the briefs swelled enormously; his services were more and more in
+demand. Then by-and-by there came a criminal case that was discussed
+day by day throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom--in
+drawing-rooms and back parlours, in clubs and suburban trains, and
+Heriot was for the Defence. The Kensington study had held him until
+dawn during weeks, for he had to break down medical evidence. And on
+the last day he spoke for five hours, while the reporters' pens flew,
+and the prisoner swayed in the dock; and the verdict returned was "Not
+Guilty."
+
+When he unrobed and left the court, George Heriot walked into the
+street the man of the hour; and he drove home to Mamie, who kissed him
+as she might have kissed her father.
+
+He adored his wife, and his wife felt affection for him. But the claims
+of his profession left her to her own resources; and she had no child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+When they had been married three years she knew many hours of boredom.
+She could not disguise from herself that she found the life she led
+more and more unsatisfying--that luxury and a devoted husband, who was
+in court during the day, and often in his study half the night, were
+not all that she had craved for; that her environment was philistine,
+depressing, dull!
+
+And she lectured herself and said the fault was her own, and that it
+was a very much better environment than her abilities entitled her
+to. She recited all the moral precepts that a third person might have
+uttered; and the dissatisfaction remained.
+
+To write plays ceases to be an attractive occupation when they are
+never produced. She had written several plays by this time, and
+submitted them, more or less judiciously, to several West End theatres.
+There had even been an instance of a manager returning a manuscript in
+response to her fourth application for it. But she was no nearer to
+success, or to an artistic circle.
+
+A career at the Bar is not all causes célèbres, and the details of
+Heriot's briefs were rarely enthralling to her mind, even when he
+discussed them with her; and when he came into the drawing-room he did
+not want to discuss his briefs. He wanted to talk trifles, just as
+he preferred to see a musical comedy or a farce when they went out.
+Nor did he press her for particulars of her own pursuits during his
+absence. She never sighed over him, and as she appeared to be cheerful,
+he thought she was contented. That such allusions to her literary work
+as she made were careless, he took to mean that she had gradually
+acquired staider views. Once he perceived that it was perhaps quieter
+for her than for most women, for she had no intimate acquaintances;
+but then she had never been used to any! There were her books, and
+her music, and her shopping--no, he did not think she could be bored.
+Besides, her manner at dinner was always direct evidence to the
+contrary!
+
+She was now twenty-five years old, and the Kensington flat, and
+abundant means had lost their novelty. She was never moved by a
+clever novel without detesting her own obscurity; never looked at the
+window of the Stereoscopic Company without a passion of envy for the
+successful artists; never accompanied Heriot to the solemn houses
+without yearning for a passport to Upper Bohemia instead. She was
+twenty-five years old, and marriage, without having fulfilled the
+demands of her temperament, had developed her sensibilities. It was at
+this period that she met Lucas Field.
+
+If her existence had been a story, nothing could have surprised her
+less than such a meeting. It would have been at this juncture precisely
+that she looked for the arrival of an artist, and Lucas Field would
+probably have been a brilliant young man who wore his hair long and
+wrote decadent verse. The trite in fiction is often very astonishing
+in one's own life, however, and, as a matter of fact, she found their
+introduction an event, and foresaw nothing at all.
+
+Lucas Field was naturally well known to her by reputation--so well
+known that when the hostess brought "Mr. Field" across to her, Mamie
+never dreamed of identifying him with the dramatist. She had long since
+ceased to expect to meet anybody congenial at these parties, and the
+fish had been reached before she discovered who it really was who had
+taken her down.
+
+Field was finding it a trifle dreary himself. He had not been bred
+in the vicinity of the footlights---his father had been a physician,
+and his mother the daughter of a Lincolnshire parson--but he had
+drifted into dramatic literature when he came down from Oxford, and
+the atmosphere of the artistic world had become essential to him by
+now. Portman Square, though he admitted its desirability, and would
+have been mortified if it had been denied to him, invariably oppressed
+him a shade when he entered it. He was at the present time foretasting
+hell in the fruitless endeavour to devise a scenario for his next
+play, and he had looked at Mamie with a little interest as he was
+conducted across the drawing-room. A beautiful woman has always an air
+of suggestion; she is a beginning, a "heroine" without a plot. Regarded
+from the easel she is all-sufficing--contemplated from the desk, she is
+illusive. After you have admired the tendrils of hair at the nape of
+her neck, you realise with despondence that she takes you no farther
+than if she had been plain.
+
+Field had realised that she left him in the lurch before his soup plate
+had been removed. Presently he inquired if she was fond of the theatre.
+
+"Please don't say 'yes' from politeness," he added.
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+She had gathered the reason in the next moment, and her eyes lit
+with eagerness. He had a momentary terror that she was going to be
+commonplace.
+
+"I couldn't dream that it was you--here!" she said apologetically.
+
+"Isn't a poor playwright respectable?" he asked.
+
+There was an instant in which she felt that on her answer depended the
+justification of her soul. She said afterwards that she could have
+"fallen round an epigram's neck."
+
+"I should think the poor playwright must be very dull," she replied.
+
+This was adequate, however, and better than his own response, which was
+of necessity conventional.
+
+"I have seen your new comedy," she continued.
+
+"I hope it pleased you?"
+
+"I admired it immensely--like every one else. It is a great success,
+isn't it?"
+
+"The theatre is very full every night," he said deprecatingly.
+
+"Then it _is_ a success!"
+
+"Does that follow?"
+
+"You are not satisfied with it--it falls short of what you meant? I
+shouldn't have supposed that; it seemed to me entirely clear!"
+
+"That I had a theory? Really? Perhaps I have not failed so badly as I
+thought." He did not think he had failed at all, but this sort of thing
+was his innocent weakness.
+
+"Miss Millington is almost perfect as 'Daisy,' isn't she?"
+
+"'Almost'? Where do you find her weak?"
+
+She blushed.
+
+"She struck me--of course I am no authority--as not quite fulfilling
+your idea in the first act--when she accepted the Captain. I thought
+perhaps she was too responsible there--too grown up."
+
+"There isn't a woman in London who could play 'Daisy,'" said Field
+savagely. "In other words, you think she wrecked the piece?"
+
+"Oh no, indeed!"
+
+"If 'Daisy' isn't a child when she marries, the play has no meaning, no
+sense. That is why the character was so difficult to cast--in the first
+act she must be a school-girl, and in the others an emotional woman."
+
+"Perhaps I said too much."
+
+"You are a critic, Mrs. Heriot."
+
+"Oh, merely----"
+
+"Merely?"
+
+"Merely very interested in the stage."
+
+"To be interested in the stage is very ordinary; to be a judge of it
+is rather rare. No, you didn't say too much: Miss Millington _doesn't_
+fulfil my idea when she accepts 'Captain Arminger.' And to be frank,
+_I_ haven't fulfilled Miss Millington's idea of a consistent part."
+
+"I can understand," said Mamie, "that the great drawback to writing
+for the stage is that one depends so largely on one's interpreters. A
+novelist succeeds or fails by himself, but a dramatist----"
+
+"A dramatist is the most miserable of created beings," said Field, "if
+he happens to be an artist."
+
+"I can hardly credit that. I can't credit anybody being miserable who
+is an artist." (He laughed. It was not polite, but he couldn't help
+it.) "Though I can understand his having moods of the most frightful
+depression!" she added.
+
+"Oh, you can understand that?"
+
+"Quite. Would he be an artist if he didn't have them!"
+
+"May I ask if you write yourself?"
+
+"N--no," she murmured.
+
+"Does that mean 'yes'?"
+
+"It means 'only for my own amusement.'"
+
+"The writer who only writes for his own amusement is mythical, I'm
+afraid," said Field. "One often hears of him, but he doesn't bear
+investigation. You don't write plays?"
+
+"No--I try to!"
+
+He regarded her a little cynically.
+
+"I thought ladies generally wrote novels?"
+
+"I wish to be original, you see."
+
+"Do you send them anywhere?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I _send_ them; I suppose I always shall!"
+
+"You're really in earnest then? You're not discouraged?"
+
+"I'm earnest, and discouraged, too.... Is it impertinent to ask if
+_you_ had experiences like mine when you were younger?"
+
+"I wrote plays for ten years before I ever passed through a
+stage-door--one must expect to work for years before one is
+produced.... Of course, one may work all one's life, and not be
+produced then!"
+
+"It depends how clever one is, or whether one is clever at all?"
+
+"It depends on a good many things. It depends sometimes on advice."
+
+If she had been less lovely, he would not have said this, and he knew
+it; if she had not been Mrs. Heriot, he would not have said it either.
+The average woman who "wants a literary man's advice" is the bane of
+his existence, and Field was, not only without sympathy for the tyro as
+a rule--he was inclined to disparage the majority of his colleagues. He
+was clever, and was aware of it; he occupied a prominent position. He
+had arrived at the point when he could dare to be psychological. "It
+depends sometimes on advice," he said. And the wife of George Heriot,
+Q.C., murmured: "Unfortunately, I have nobody to advise me!"
+
+Even as it was, he regretted it when he took his leave; and the
+manuscript that he had offered to read lay in his study for three
+weeks before he opened it. He picked it up one night, remembering that
+the writer had been very beautiful. The reading inspired him with a
+desire to see her again. That the play was full of faults goes without
+saying, but it was unconventional, and there was character in it. He
+recollected that she had interested him while they talked after dinner
+on a couch by the piano; and, as her work was promising, he wrote,
+volunteering to point out in an interview, if she liked, those errors
+in technique which it would take too long to explain by letter. It
+cannot be made too clear that if she had sent him a work of genius and
+had been plain Miss Smith in a home-made blouse, he would have done
+nothing of the sort. He called upon her with no idea that his hints
+would make a dramatist of her, nor did he care in the slightest degree
+whether they did, or did not. She was a singularly lovely woman, and as
+her drama had not been stupid--stupidity would have repelled him--he
+thought a tête-à-tête with her would be agreeable.
+
+To Mamie, however, the afternoon when he sat sipping tea in her
+drawing-room, like an ordinary mortal, was the day of her life. She
+told him that she had once hoped to be an actress, and believed that
+the avowal would advance her in his esteem. He answered that he should
+not be astonished if she had the histrionic gift; and was secretly
+disenchanted a shade by what he felt to be banal. Then they discussed
+his own work, and he found her appreciation remarkably intelligent. To
+talk about himself to a woman, who listened with exquisite eyes fixed
+upon his face, was very gratifying to him. Field had rarely spent a
+pleasanter hour. It is not intimated that he was a vain puppy--he
+was not a puppy at all. He had half unconsciously felt the want of a
+sympathetic confidant for a long while, though, and albeit he did not
+instantaneously realise that Mrs. Heriot supplied the void, he walked
+back to his chambers with exhilaration.
+
+He realised it by degrees. He had never married. He had avoided
+matrimony till he was thirty because he could not afford it; and during
+the last decade he had escaped it because he had not met a woman whom
+he desired sufficiently to pay such a price. When he had seen Mamie
+several times--and in the circumstances it was not difficult to invent
+reasons for seeing her--he wondered whether he would have proposed to
+her if she had been single.
+
+Heriot was very pleased to have him dine with them; and he was not
+ignorant that during the next few months Field often dropped in about
+five o'clock. Mamie concealed nothing--knowingly--and the subject of
+her writing was revived now. She told George that Mr. Field thought she
+had ability. She repeated his criticisms; frankly admired his talent;
+confessed that she was proud to have him on her visiting list--and fell
+in love with him without either analysing her feelings, or perceiving
+her risk.
+
+And while Mrs. Heriot fell in love with him, Lucas Field was not
+blind. He saw a great deal more than she saw herself--he saw, not only
+the influence he exercised over her, but that she had moped before
+he appeared. He did not misread her; he was conscious that she would
+never take a lover from caprice--that she was the last woman in the
+world to sin lightly, or under the rose. He saw that, if he yielded to
+the temptation that had begun to assail him, he must be prepared to
+ask her to live with him openly. But he asked himself whether it was
+impossible that he could prevail on her to do that, had he the mind to
+do so--whether she was so impregnable as she believed.
+
+He was by this time fascinated by her. His happiest afternoons were
+spent in South Kensington, advancing his theories, and talking of his
+latest scenes; nor was it a lie when he averred that she assisted him.
+To be an artist it is not necessary to be able to produce, and if
+her own attempts had been infinitely more futile than they were, she
+might still have expressed opinions that were of service to another.
+Many of her views were impracticable, naturally. Psychological as his
+tendencies were, he was a dramatist, and he could not snap his fingers
+at the laws imposed by the footlights, though he might affect to
+deride them in his confidences. The only dramatist alive was Ibsen, he
+said; yet he did not model himself on Ibsen, albeit he was delighted
+when she exclaimed, "How Ibsenish that is!" Many of her views were
+impracticable, because she was ignorant about the stage; but many were
+intensely stimulating. The more he was with her, the less he doubted
+her worthiness of sinning for his sake. He was so different from the
+ordinary dramatic author! On the ordinary dramatic author, with no
+ideas beyond "curtains" and "fees," she would have been thrown away.
+He did not wish to be associated with a scandal--it would certainly be
+unpleasant--but she dominated him, there was no disguising the fact.
+And he would be very good to her; he would marry her. She was adorable!
+
+His meditations had not progressed so far without the girl's eyes being
+opened to her weakness; and now she hated herself more bitterly than
+she had hated the tedium of her life. She knew that she loved him. She
+was wretched when he was not with her, and ashamed when he was there.
+She wandered about the flat in her solitude, frightened as she realised
+what an awful thing had come to her. But she was drunk--intoxicated by
+the force of the guilty love, and by the thought that such a man as
+Lucas Field could be in love with _her_. She revered him for not having
+told her of the feelings that she inspired. Her courage was sustained
+by the belief that he did not divine her own--that she would succeed in
+stamping them out without his dreaming of the danger she had run. Yet
+she was "drunk"; and one afternoon the climax was reached--he implored
+her to go away with him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+If a woman sins, and the chronicler of her sin desires to excuse the
+woman, her throes and her struggles, her pangs and her prayers always
+occupy at least three chapters. If one does not seek to excuse her, the
+fact of her fall may as well be stated in the fewest possible words.
+Mamie did struggle--she struggled for a long time--but in the end she
+was just as guilty as if she hadn't shed a tear. Field's pertinacity
+and passion wore her resistance out at last. Theirs was to be the ideal
+union, and of course he cited famous cases where the man and woman
+designed for each other by Heaven had met only after one of them had
+blundered. He did not explain why Heaven had permitted the blunders,
+after being at the pains to design kindred souls for each other's
+ecstasy; but there are things that even the youngest curate cannot
+explain. He insisted that she would never regret her step; he declared
+that, with himself for her husband, she would become celebrated. Art,
+love, joy, all might be hers at a word. And she spoke it.
+
+When Heriot came in one evening, Mamie was not there, and he wondered
+what had become of her, for at this hour she was always at home. But he
+had not a suspicion of evil--he was as far from being prepared for the
+blow that was in store as if Field had never crossed their path. He had
+let himself in with his latch-key, and after a quarter of an hour it
+occurred to him that she might be already in the dining-room. When he
+entered it, he noted with surprise that the table was laid only for one.
+
+"Where is Mrs. Heriot?" he said to the servant who appeared in response
+to his ring.
+
+"Mrs. Heriot has gone out of town, sir."
+
+"Out of town!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"
+
+"Mrs. Heriot left a note for you, sir, to explain. There it is, sir."
+
+Heriot took it from the mantelpiece quickly; but still he had no
+suspicion--not an inkling of the truth. He tore the envelope open and
+read, while the maid waited respectfully by the door.
+
+"Your mistress has been called away," he said when he had finished;
+"illness! She will be gone some time."
+
+His back was to her; he could command his voice, but his face was
+beyond his control. He felt that if he moved he would reel, perhaps
+fall. He stood motionless, with the letter open in his hand.
+
+"Shall I serve dinner, sir?"
+
+"Yes, serve dinner, Odell; I'm quite ready."
+
+When the door closed, it was his opportunity to gain the chair; he
+walked towards it slowly, like a blind man. The letter that he held
+had left but one hope possible--the last hope of despair--to keep the
+matter for awhile from the servants' knowledge. As yet he was not
+suffering acutely; indeed, in these early moments, the effect of the
+shock was more physical than mental. There was a trembling through his
+body, and his head felt queerly light--empty, not his own.
+
+The maid came back, and he forced himself to dine. The first spoonfuls
+of the soup he took were but heat, entirely tasteless, to his mouth,
+and at the pit of his stomach a sensation of sickness rose and writhed
+like something living. When she retired once more, his head fell
+forward on his arms; it was a relief to rest it so. He did not know how
+he could support the long strain of her vigilance.
+
+By degrees his stupor began to pass, as he stared at the vacant
+place where his wife should have sat; the dazed brain rallied to
+comprehension. His wife was not there because she was with her
+lover! Oh, God! with her "lover"--Mamie had given herself to another
+man! _Mamie!_ Mamie had gone to another man. His face was grey and
+distorted now, and the glass that he was lifting snapped at the stem.
+She had gone. She was no longer his wife. She was guilty, shameless,
+defiled--Mamie!
+
+He rose, an older, a less vigorous, figure.
+
+"I shall be busy to-night," he muttered; "don't let me be disturbed."
+
+He went to his study, and dropped upon the seat before his desk. Her
+photograph confronted him, and he took it down and held it shakenly.
+How young she looked! was there ever a face more pure? And Heaven knew
+that he had loved her as dearly only an hour ago as on the day that
+they were married! Not a whim of hers had been refused; not a request
+could he recollect that he had failed to obey. Yet now she was with a
+lover! She smiled in the likeness; the eyes that met his own were clear
+and tender; truth was stamped upon her features. He recalled incidents
+of the past three years, incidents that had been rich in the intimacy
+of their life. Surely in those hours she had loved him? That had not
+been gratitude--a sense of duty merely?--had she not loved him then? He
+remembered their wedding-day. How pale she had been, how innocent--a
+child. Yet now she was with a lover! A sob convulsed him, and he nodded
+slowly at the likeness through his tears. Presently he put it back;
+he was angered at his weakness. He had deserved something better at
+her hands! Pride forbade that he should mourn for her. He had married
+wildly, yes, he should have listened to advice; Francis had warned him.
+Perhaps while he wept, they were laughing at him together, she and
+Field! How did he know that it was Field--had she mentioned his name
+in the letter? He knew that it was Field instinctively; he marvelled
+that he had not foreseen the danger, and averted it. How stupid had the
+petitioners in divorce suits often appeared to him in his time!--he
+had wondered that men could be so purblind--and he himself had been as
+dense as any!... But she would not laugh. Ah, guilty as she was, she
+would not laugh--she was not so vile as that! The clock in the room
+struck one. He heard it half unconsciously--then started, and threw
+out his arms with a hoarse cry. He sprang to his feet, fired with the
+tortures of the damned. The sweat burst out on him, and the veins in
+his forehead swelled like cords. He was a temperate man, at once by
+taste and by necessity, but now he walked to where the brandy was kept
+and drank a wineglassful in gulps. "Mamie!" he groaned again; "Mamie!"
+The brandy did not blot the picture from his brain; and he refilled the
+glass.... Nothing would efface the picture.
+
+He knew that it was hopeless to attempt to sleep, yet he went to the
+bedroom. The ivory brushes were gone from the toilet-table--she had
+been able to think of brushes! In the wardrobe the frocks were fewer,
+and the linen was less; the jewellery that he had given to her had
+been left behind. All was orderly. There were no traces of a hurried
+departure; the room had its usual aspect. He looked at the pillows.
+Against the one that had been hers lay the bag of silk and lace that
+contained her night-dress. Had she forgotten it; or was it that she had
+been incapable of transferring that? He picked it up, and dropped it
+out of sight in one of the drawers.
+
+He did not go to bed; he spent the night in an armchair, re-reading
+the letter, and thinking. When the servant knocked at the door, he
+went to his dressing-room, and shaved. He had a bath, and breakfasted,
+and strolled to the station. Outwardly he had recovered from the blow,
+and his clerk who gave him his list of appointments remarked nothing
+abnormal about him. In court, Heriot remembered that Mamie and he were
+to have dined in Holland Park that evening, and during the luncheon
+adjournment he sent a telegram of excuse. If any one had known what had
+happened to him, he would have been thought devoid of feeling.
+
+He had scarcely re-entered the flat when Mrs. Baines called. His first
+impulse was to decline to see her; but he told the maid to show her in.
+
+A glance assured him that she was ignorant of what had occurred.
+
+"Dear Mamie is away, the servant tells me," she said, simpering. "I
+hadn't seen her for such a long time that I thought I'd look in to-day.
+Not that I should have been so late, but I missed my train! I meant to
+come in and have a cup of tea with her at five o'clock. Well, I _am_
+unfortunate! And how have you been keeping, Mr. Heriot?"
+
+"I'm glad to see you. I hope you are well, Mrs. Baines."
+
+"Where has dear Mamie gone?" she asked. "Pleasuring?"
+
+"She is on the Continent, I believe. May I tell them to bring you some
+tea now?"
+
+"On the Continent alone?" exclaimed Mrs. Baines. "Fancy!"
+
+"No, she is not alone," said Heriot. "You must prepare yourself for a
+shock, Mrs. Baines. Your niece has left me."
+
+She looked at him puzzled. His tone was so composed that it seemed to
+destroy the significance of his words.
+
+"Left you? How do you mean?"
+
+"She has gone with her lover."
+
+"Oh, my Gawd!" said Mrs. Baines.... "Whatever are you saying, Mr.
+Heriot? Don't!"
+
+"Your niece is living with another man. She left me yesterday," he
+continued quietly. "I am sorry to have to tell you such news."
+
+He was sorrier as he observed the effect of it, but he could not soften
+the shock for her by any outward participation in her grief. Since he
+must speak at all, he must speak as he did.
+
+"Oh, to hear of such a thing!" she gasped. "Oh, to think
+that--well---- Oh, Mr. Heriot, I can't ... it can't be true. Isn't
+it some mistake? Dear Mamie would never be so wicked, I'm sure she
+wouldn't! It's some awful mistake, you may depend."
+
+"There's no mistake, Mrs. Baines. My authority is your niece herself.
+She left a letter to tell me she was going, and why."
+
+The widow moaned feebly.
+
+"With another man?"
+
+He bowed.
+
+"Oh, Heaven will punish her, Mr. Heriot! Oh, what will her father
+say--how could she do it! And you--how gentle and kind to her you were
+_I_ could see."
+
+"I did my best to make her happy," he said; "evidently I didn't
+succeed. Is it necessary for us to talk about it much? Believe me, you
+have my sympathy, but talking won't improve matters."
+
+"Oh, but I can't look at it so--so calmly, Mr. Heriot! The disgrace!
+and so sudden. And it isn't for _me_ to have _your_ sympathy, I'm sure.
+I say it isn't for _you_ to sympathise with _me_. My heart bleeds for
+you, Mr. Heriot."
+
+"You're very good," he answered; "but I don't know that a faithless
+wife is much to grieve for after all."
+
+"Ah, but you don't mean that! you were too fond of her to mean it.
+She'll live to repent it, you may be certain--the Lord will bring it
+home to her. Oh, how could she do it! You don't--you don't intend to
+have a divorce?"
+
+"Naturally I intend it. What else do you propose?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she quavered, rocking herself to and fro, and
+smearing the tears down her cheeks with a forefinger in a black silk
+glove; "but the disgrace! And all Lavender Street to read about it! Ah,
+you won't divorce her, Mr. Heriot? It would be so dreadful!"
+
+"Don't you want to see the man marry her?"
+
+"How 'marry her'?" she asked vaguely. "Oh, I understand! Yes, I suppose
+he _could_ marry her then, couldn't he? I'm not a lawyer like you--I
+didn't look so far ahead. But I don't want a divorce."
+
+"Ah, well, _I_ want it," he said; "for my own sake."
+
+"Then you don't love her any more, Mr. Heriot?"
+
+He laughed drearily.
+
+"Your niece has ended her life with me of her own accord. I've nothing
+more to do with her."
+
+"Those are cruel words," said Mrs. Baines; "those are cruel words about
+a girl who was your lawful wife--the flesh of your bone in the sight
+of Gawd and man. You're harder than I thought, Mr. Heriot; you don't
+take it quite as I'd have supposed you'd take it.... So quiet and stern
+like! I think if you'd loved her tenderly, you'd have talked more
+heart-broken, though it's not for me to judge."
+
+Heriot rose.
+
+"I can't discuss my sentiments with you, Mrs. Baines. Think, if you
+like, that I didn't care for her at all. At least my duty to her is
+over; and I have a duty to myself to-day."
+
+"To cast her off?" The semi-educated classes use the phrases of
+novelettes habitually. Whether this is the reason the novelettes trade
+in the phrases, or whether the semi-educated acquire the phrases from
+the novelettes, is not clear.
+
+"To----" He paused. He could not trust himself to speak at that moment.
+
+"To cast her off?" repeated Mrs. Baines. "Oh, I don't make excuses for
+her--I don't pity her. Though she is my brother's child, I say she
+is deserving of whatever befalls her. I remember well that when Dick
+married I warned him against it; I said, 'She isn't the wife for you!'
+It's the mother's blood coming out in her, though my brother's child.
+But ... What was I going to say? I'm that upset that---- Oh yes! I make
+no excuses for her, but I would have liked to see more sorrow on your
+part, Mr. Heriot; I could have pitied you more if you'd have taken it
+more to heart. You may think me too bold, but it was ever my way to
+say what was in my mind. I don't think I'll stop any longer. The way
+you may take it is between you and your Gawd, but----" She put out her
+hand. "I don't think I'll stop."
+
+"Good-evening," he said stonily. "I'm sorry you can't stay and dine."
+
+She recollected on the stairs that she had not inquired who the man
+was; but she was too much disgusted by Heriot's manner to go back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When a naturally pure woman, who is not sustained by any emancipated
+views, consents to live with a man in defiance of social prejudices,
+she probably obtains as clear an insight as the world affords into
+the enormous difference that exists between the ideal and the actual.
+Matrimony does not illumine the difference so vividly, because
+matrimony, with all its disillusions, leaves her an unembarrassed
+conscience. With her lover such a woman experiences all the prose of
+wedlock, and a sting to boot. A man cannot be at concert-pitch all day
+long with his mistress any more easily than with his wife. She has
+to submit to bills and other practical matters just as much with a
+smirched reputation as she had with a spotless one. The romance does
+not wear any better because the Marriage Service is omitted. A lover
+is no less liable to be commonplace than a husband when the laundress
+knocks the buttons off his shirts.
+
+Yes, Mamie was infatuated by Field; she had not sinned with a cool head
+simply to procure a guide up Parnassus. But she had hoped to pick a
+few laurels there all the same. She found herself in a little flat in
+the rue Tronchet. They had few visitors, and those who did come were
+men who talked a language that she did not understand, but who looked
+things that she understood only too well.
+
+The remorse and humiliation that she felt was not leavened by any
+consciousness of advancing in her art. Field rather pooh-poohed her
+art, as the months went by after the decree _nisi_ was pronounced. He
+still discussed his work with her--perhaps less as if she had been a
+sybil, but still with interest in her ideas. Her own work, however,
+bored him now. He had no intention of being cold, but the subject
+seemed puerile to his mind. If she did write a play that was produced
+one day, or if she didn't, what earthly consequence was it? She would
+never write a great one; and these panting aspirations which begot such
+mediocre results savoured to him of a storm in a teacup--of a furnace
+lit to boil the kettle.
+
+He was rather sorry that he had run away with her, but he did not
+regret it particularly. Of course he would marry her as soon as he
+could--he owed her that; and, since he was not such a blackguard as to
+contemplate deserting her by-and-by, he might just as well marry her
+as not. The whole affair had been a folly certainly. He was not rich,
+and he was extravagant; he would have done better to remain as he was.
+Still many men envied him. He trusted fervently she would not have
+children, though! It didn't seem likely; but if she ever did, the error
+would be doubled. He did not want a son who had cause to be ashamed of
+his mother when he grew up.
+
+It was curious that she did not refer more often to his legalising
+their union. Her position pained her, he could see, and made her very
+frequently a dull companion. That was the worst of these things! One
+paid for the step dearly enough to expect lively society in return,
+and yet, if one complained of mournfulness, one would be a brute. He
+would write a drama some time or other to show that it was really the
+man who was deserving of sympathy in such an alliance. It would be very
+original, as he would treat it. The lover should explain his situation
+to another woman whom he had learnt to love since, and--well, he didn't
+see how it should end:--with the dilemma repeated? And it didn't
+matter, after all, for nobody would have the courage to produce it!
+
+He made these reflections in his study. In the salon--furnished in
+accordance with the tastes of the lady who had sub-let the flat to them
+for six months--Mamie stood staring down at the street. It was four
+o'clock, and, saving for half an hour at luncheon, she had not seen
+him since ten. For distraction she could make her choice among some
+Tauchnitz novels, her music, and a walk. Excepting that the room was
+tawdry and ill-ventilated, and that she had lost her reputation, it was
+not unlike her life in South Kensington.
+
+In her pocket was a letter from her father--the most difficult
+letter that it had ever fallen to Dick Cheriton's lot to compose.
+Theoretically he thought social prejudices absurd--as became an artist
+to whom God had given his soul--and he had often insisted on their
+ineptitude. In the case of his own daughter, however, he would have
+preferred to see them treated with respect. There was a likeness to
+Lucas Field here. Field also dwelt on the hill-top, but he wanted his
+son, if he ever had one, to boast a stainless mother. Cheriton had not
+indited curses, like the fathers in melodrama, and the people who have
+"found religion"; only parents in melodrama, and some "Christians" who
+go to church twice every Sunday, are infamous enough to curse their
+children; he had told her that if she found herself forsaken, she was
+to cable for her passage-money back to Duluth. But that he was ashamed
+and broken by what she had done, he had not attempted to conceal;
+and as she stood there, gazing down on the rue Tronchet, Mamie was
+recalling the confession to which this was an answer. Phrases that she
+had used came back to her:--"I have done my best, but my love was too
+strong for me"; "Wicked as it may be to say it, I know that, even in
+my guilt, I shall always be happy. I met the right man too late, but I
+am so young--I could not suffer all my life without him. Forgive me if
+you can." Had she--it was a horrible thought--had she been mistaken?
+Had she blundered more terribly than when she married? For, unless her
+prophecies of joy to the brim were fulfilled--unless her measure of
+thanksgiving overflowed--the blunder _was_ more terrible, infinitely
+more terrible: she was a gambler who had staked her soul, in her
+conviction of success.
+
+The question was one that she had asked herself many times before,
+without daring to hear the answer; but that the answer was in her
+heart, though she shrank from acknowledging it, might be seen in her
+expression, in her every pose; it might be seen now, as she drooped
+by the window. She sighed, and sat down, and shivered. Yes, she knew
+it--she had thrown away the substance for the shadow; she could deceive
+herself no longer. Lucas Field was not so poetical a personality as
+she had imagined; guilt had no glamour; her devotion had been a flash
+in the pan--a madness that had burned itself out. She had no right
+to blame her lover for that; only, the prospect of marriage with him
+filled her with no elation; it inspired misgiving rather. If she had
+made a blunder, would it improve matters to perpetuate it? He was
+considerate to her, he spared her all the ignominy that was possible;
+but instinctively she was aware that, if they parted, he would never
+miss her as her husband had done. In _his_ life she would never make a
+hole! She guessed the depth of Heriot's love better now that she had
+obtained a smaller one as plummet. Between the manner of the man who
+was not particularly sorry to have run away with her, and his whose
+pride she had been, the difference was tremendous to a woman whose
+position was calculated to develop her natural sensitiveness to the
+point of a disease.
+
+Should she marry Lucas or not? Hitherto she had merely avoided the
+query; now she trembled before it. Expedience said, "Yes"; something
+within her said, "No." The decree would be made absolute in two months'
+time. What was to become of her if they separated? To Duluth she could
+never go, to be pointed at and despised! She sighed again.
+
+"Bored, dear?" asked Field, in the doorway.
+
+"I was thinking."
+
+"That was obvious. Not of your--er--work?"
+
+"No, not of my--'er--work.'"
+
+He pulled his moustache with some embarrassment.
+
+"I didn't mean anything derogatory to it."
+
+"Oh, I know," she said wearily; "don't--it doesn't matter. You can't
+think much less of it than I am beginning to do myself. You can't take
+much less interest in it."
+
+"You are unjust," said Field.
+
+"I am moped. Take me out. Take me out of myself if you can, but take me
+out of doors at any rate! I am yearning to be in a crowd."
+
+"We might go to a theatre to-night," he said; "would you like to?"
+
+"It doesn't amuse me very much; I don't understand what they say. Still
+it would be something. But I want to go out now, for a walk. I don't
+like walking here alone; can't you come with me?"
+
+"I'm afraid I can't. You forget I promised an interview to that paper
+this afternoon. I expect the fellow here any moment."
+
+"You promised it?" she exclaimed, with surprise. "Why, I thought
+you said that the paper was a 'rag' and that you wouldn't dream of
+consenting?"
+
+"After all, one must be courteous; I changed my mind. There's some talk
+of translating _A Clever Man's Son_ into French. An interview just now
+would be good policy."
+
+"You are going to be adapted? _A Clever Man's Son_?"
+
+"Translated," he said. "I may adapt. I _am_--translated."
+
+She smiled, but perceived almost at the same instant that she had not
+been intended to do so and that he had said it seriously.
+
+"I make a very good interview," he continued, lighting a cigarette;
+"I daresay you've noticed it. I never count an epigram or two wasted,
+though they do go into another chap's copy. That's where many men make
+a mistake; or very likely they can't invent the epigrams. Anyhow, they
+don't! The average interview is as dull as the average play. People
+think it's the journalists' fault, but it isn't. It's the fault of the
+deadly dull dogs who've got nothing to tell them. I ought to have gone
+a good deal further than I have: I've the two essential qualities for
+success--I'm an artist and a showman."
+
+"Don't!" she murmured; "Don't!"
+
+He laughed gaily.
+
+"I'm perfectly frank; I admit the necessities of life--I've told you so
+before. My mind never works so rapidly as it does in prospect of a good
+advertisement. There the fellow is, I expect!" he added, as the bell
+rang. "The study is quite in disorder for him, and there are a bunch
+of Parma violets and a flask of maraschino on the desk. I'm going to
+remark that maraschino and the scent of violets are indispensable to me
+when I work. He won't believe it, unless he is very young, but he'll be
+immeasurably obliged; that sort of thing looks well in an interview.
+Violets and maraschino are a graceful combination, I think."
+
+She did not reply; she sat pale and chagrined. He was renowned enough,
+and more than talented enough to dispense with these stage-tricks in
+the library. She knew it, and _he_ knew it, but he could not help them.
+Awhile ago they had caused her the cruellest pain; now she was more
+contemptuous than anything else, although she was still galled that
+he should display his foibles so candidly. "I am quite frank," he had
+said. She found such "frankness" a milestone on the road that she had
+travelled.
+
+"My dear child," said Field, "among the illusions of a man's youth
+is the belief that, if he goes through life doing his humble best in
+an unobtrusive way, the Press will say what a jolly fine fellow he
+is, and hold him up as a pattern to all the braggarts and poseurs who
+are blowing their own trumpets, and scraping on their own fiddles.
+Among the things he learns as he grows older is the fact that, if
+he does his best in an unobtrusive way, the Press will say nothing
+about him at all. The fiddle and the trumpet are essential; but it is
+possible to play them with a certain amount of refinement. It is even
+possible--though a clever man cannot dispense with the fiddle and the
+trumpet--for the fiddle and the trumpet to be played so dexterously
+that he may dispense with cleverness. I do not go to such lengths
+myself----"
+
+"You have no need to do so," she said coldly.
+
+"I have no need to do so--thank you. But I can quite conceive that,
+say, violets and maraschino, worked for all they were worth, might
+alone make a man famous. A mouse liberated a lion, and things smaller
+than a mouse have created one before now. The violet in the hedgerow
+'bloomed unseen,'--or 'died unknown,' was it? it did something modest
+and unsuccessful, I know. The violet assiduously paragraphed and
+paraded might lead to fortune."
+
+"I would rather be obscure and do honest, conscientious work," answered
+Mamie, "than write rubbish, and finesse myself into popularity."
+
+"It is much easier," he said tranquilly. "To be obscure is the one
+thing that _is_ easy still. You don't mind my saying that I hate
+the adjectives you used, though, do you? The words 'honest' and
+'conscientious,' applied to literature, dearest, make me shudder. I am
+always afraid that 'wholesome' is coming in the next sentence."
+
+"Are you going to say so to your interviewer?"
+
+"The remark isn't brilliant. It was sincere, and to be sincere and
+brilliant at the same time is a little difficult.... I've been both,
+though, in the scene I've just done; you must read it, or rather I'll
+read it to you. You'll be pleased with it. As soon as the piece is
+finished I must write to Erskine. It will suit the Pall Mall down to
+the ground, and I should like it done there, only----"
+
+"Only what?"
+
+Field hesitated.
+
+"I meant it for Erskine from the start. He saw the scenario, and the
+part fits him like a glove."
+
+"But what were you going to say?"
+
+"Well, I fancy he has some idea that a piece of mine just now---- You
+understand, with the case so fresh in people's minds!... Erskine's a
+fool. What on earth does the public care? Of course he'll do it when he
+reads the part he's got! Only I know he's doubting whether my name'd be
+a judicious card to play yet awhile."
+
+There was a pause, in which her heart contracted painfully.
+
+"I see," she rejoined, in a low voice.
+
+He fidgeted before the mirror, and glanced at his watch.
+
+"That fellow must be getting impatient."
+
+"You had better go in to him," she said.
+
+"Well, we'll go to the Vaudeville, or somewhere to-night, Mamie--that's
+arranged?"
+
+"Yes, to the Vaudeville, or somewhere," she assented, with another sigh.
+
+She went back to the window, and stared at the rue Tronchet with wet
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Some weeks afterwards Field went to England. He did not take Mamie with
+him, for he intended to remain only a few days, nor had she been at all
+desirous of accompanying him. She had begun, indeed, to see that she
+did not know what she did desire. Her life in Paris oppressed her; the
+notion of Duluth was horrible; and the thought of living with Lucas in
+London, where she might meet an acquaintance of Heriot's at any turn,
+was repugnant in an almost equal degree.
+
+Field was unexpectedly detained in London. The business that had been
+responsible for his journey constantly evaded completion, and after
+he had been gone about a month a letter came, in which he mentioned
+incidentally that he had a touch of influenza. After this letter a
+fortnight went by without her hearing from him; and, rendered anxious
+at last, she wrote to inquire if his silence was attributable to his
+indisposition--if the latter was of a serious nature.
+
+Her mind did not instantaneously grasp the significance of the telegram
+that she tore open a few hours later. It ran:
+
+"My nephew dangerously ill. If you desire to see him, better
+come.--Porteous."
+
+She stood gazing at it. Who had telegraphed? Who---- Then she understood
+that it was Lucas who was meant. Lucas was "dangerously ill"! She must
+go to him. She must go at once! She was so staggered by the suddenness
+of the intelligence that she was momentarily incapable of recollecting
+when the trains left, or how she should act in order to ascertain. All
+she realised was that this was Paris, and Lucas lay "dangerously ill"
+in London, and that she had to reach him. Her head swam, and the little
+French that she knew seemed to desert her; the undertaking looked
+enormous--beset with difficulties that were almost insuperable.
+
+The stupidity of the _bonne_, for whom she pealed the bell, served to
+sharpen her faculties a trifle, but she made her preparations as in a
+dream. When she found herself in the train, it appeared to her unreal
+that she could be there. The interval had left no salient impressions
+on her brain, nothing but a confused sense of delay. It was only now
+that she felt able to reflect.
+
+The telegram was crumpled in her pocket, and she took it out and
+re-read it agitatedly. How did this relative come to be at the hotel?
+Lucas had scarcely spoken of his relations. "If you desire to see him"!
+The import of those words was frightful--he could not be expected to
+recover. Her stupefaction rolled away, and was succeeded by a fever of
+suspense. The restriction of the compartment was maddening, and she
+looked at her watch a dozen times, only to find that not ten minutes
+had passed since she consulted it last.
+
+It seemed to her that she had been travelling for at least two days,
+when she stood outside a bedroom in a little hotel off Bond Street and
+tapped at the door with her heart in her throat.
+
+The door was opened by a woman whose dress proclaimed her to be an
+institution nurse. Field slept, and Mamie sank into a chair, and waited
+for his wakening.
+
+"How is he?" she asked in a low tone.
+
+The nurse shook her head.
+
+"He's not doing as well as we could wish, ma'am."
+
+"Is Mr. Porteous here?"
+
+"_Mrs._ Porteous. She'll be coming presently. She lives close by."
+
+So it was a woman who had telegraphed! Somehow she had assumed
+unquestioningly that it was a man. "If you desire to see him----"
+Ah, yes, she might have known it! An aunt, who would be frigid and
+contemptuous, of course. Well, she deserved that, she would have no
+right to complain; nor was it to be expected that Lucas's family should
+show her much consideration, though she could not perceive that she had
+done them any injury.
+
+Two hours passed before she had an interview with the lady. Mamie was
+in the room that she had engaged in the meanwhile. She had bathed her
+face, and was making ready to return to the sick-room, when she was
+told that Mrs. Porteous was inquiring for her.
+
+"Won't you come in?" she asked. "Our voices won't disturb him here."
+
+Mrs. Porteous entered gingerly. She was a massive woman, of middle age,
+fashionably dressed. Her expression suggested no grief, only a vague
+fear of contamination. She had telegraphed to Paris because she felt
+that it was her duty to do so; but she had not telegraphed until it was
+almost certain that the patient would not rally sufficiently to make a
+will.
+
+"You are--er--Mrs. Heriot?" she said, regarding her curiously. "The
+doctor thought that Mr. Field's condition ought to be made known to
+you; so I wired."
+
+"Thank you; it was very kind."
+
+"The doctor advised it," said Mrs. Porteous again, significantly.
+
+"Is he--is there no hope?"
+
+"We fear not; my nephew is sinking fast--it's as well you should
+understand it. If you think it necessary to remain---- I see you have
+taken a room? As--as 'Mrs. Field,' I presume?"
+
+"I should have been 'Mrs. Field,' if Lucas----"
+
+His aunt shivered.
+
+"There are things we need not discuss. Of course I'm aware that you are
+living under my nephew's name. I was about to say that if you think it
+necessary to remain till the end, I have no opposition to offer; but
+the end is very near now. My telegram must have prepared you? I should
+not have wired unless----"
+
+"I understood," answered Mamie, "yes. I am glad that your nephew had a
+relative near him, though your name was quite strange to me. He never
+mentioned it."
+
+"Really! Lucas called to see us at once. Our house is in the
+neighbourhood."
+
+"He wrote me," said Mamie, "that he had a touch of influenza. It seems
+extraordinary that influenza should prove so serious? He was strong, he
+was in good health----"
+
+The other's air implied that she did not find it necessary to discuss
+this either.
+
+"People die of influenza, or the results of it, every year," she said.
+"The doctor will give you any information you may desire, no doubt. You
+must excuse me--I may be wanted."
+
+While Field lingered she never left his side, after Mamie's arrival.
+Men committed preposterous actions on their death-beds, and though he
+was not expected to recover consciousness, there was the possibility
+that he might do so. If an opportunity occurred, his mistress would
+doubtless produce a solicitor and a provision for herself with the
+rapidity of a conjuring trick. As it was, Mrs. Porteous had small
+misgivings but what he would die intestate. There might not be much,
+but at any rate, what he had should not swell the coffers of guilty
+wives!
+
+Events proved that her summons had not been precipitate, however. Field
+spoke at the last a few coherent words, and took Mamie's hand. But that
+was all. Then he never spoke any more. Even as she stood gazing at the
+unfamiliar face on the pillow, the swiftness of the catastrophe made
+it difficult for the girl to realise that all was over. The calamity
+had fallen on her like a thunderbolt--it seemed strange, inexplicable,
+untrue. The last time but one that he had talked to her he had been
+full of vigour, packing a portmanteau, humming a tune, alluding to
+fees, some details of the theatre, the prospect of a smooth crossing.
+And now he was dead. There had been little or no transition; he was
+well--he was dead! The curtain had tumbled in the middle of the
+play--and it would never go up any more.
+
+It was not till after the funeral that she was capable of meditating on
+the change that Lucas Field's death had wrought in her life. She did
+not ask herself whether he had left her anything, or not. The idea that
+he might have done so never occurred to her, nor would she have felt
+that she could accept his bequest if he had made one. She perceived
+that she had nobody to turn to but her father, and to him she cabled.
+
+Cheriton replied by two questions: What was Field's will? And would she
+like to return to Duluth? To the second she made a definite answer.
+"Impossible; pray don't ask me." And then there was an interval of
+correspondence.
+
+While Mrs. Porteous rejoiced to find that her confidence was justified
+and that her nephew had died intestate, Mamie was contemplating the
+choice of swallowing her repugnance to going back to America, or of
+living with Mrs. Baines. Cheriton had written to them both, and that
+one course or the other should be adopted he was insistent. Mamie need
+not live in Lavender Street; Mrs. Baines might make her home in another
+neighbourhood, where they would be strangers. But that the girl should
+remain alone in England was out of the question. Which line of conduct
+did she prefer?
+
+She could not decide immediately. Both proposals distressed her. On the
+whole, perhaps, the lesser evil was to resign herself to her Aunt Lydia
+if, as her father declared, her aunt was willing to receive her. Mrs.
+Baines, at any rate, was but one, while in Duluth half the population
+would be acquainted with her story.
+
+But _was_ her Aunt Lydia willing?--was she expected to write to her and
+inquire? She was not entitled to possess dignity, of course; but it was
+not easy to eat dust because the right to self-respect was forfeited.
+
+She had removed to a lodging in Bernard Street, Bloomsbury, and in the
+fusty sitting-room she sat all day, lonely and miserable, reviewing
+the blunder of her life. She neither wrote nor read--her writing was
+an idea she hated now; she merely thought--wishing she could recall
+the past, wondering how she could bear the future. One afternoon when
+she sat there, pale and heavy-eyed, the maid-of-all-work announced a
+visitor, and Mrs. Baines came in.
+
+Mamie rose nervously, and the other advanced. She had rehearsed an
+interview which should be a compromise between the instructions that
+had been given her by her brother, and the attitude of righteous rebuke
+that she felt to be a permissible luxury, but the forlornness of the
+figure before her drove her opening sentence from her head. All she
+could utter was the girl's name; and then there was a pause in which
+they looked at each other.
+
+"It is kind of you to come," Mamie murmured.
+
+"I hope you're well?" said Mrs. Baines.
+
+"Not very. I----Won't you sit down?"
+
+"I never thought I should see you like this, Mamie!" said the widow
+half involuntarily, shaking her head.
+
+The girl made no answer in words. She caught her breath, and stood
+passive. If the lash fell she would suffer silently.
+
+"We always see sin punished, though." She believed we always did; she
+retained such startling optimism. "It's not for me to reproach you."
+
+"Thank you. I'm not too happy, Aunt Lydia."
+
+"I daresay, my dear. I haven't come to make it worse for you."
+
+She scrutinised her again. She would have been horrified to hear
+the suggestion, but her niece's presence was not without a guilty
+fascination, a pleasurable excitement, to her as she remembered that
+here was one who had broken the Seventh Commandment. She was sitting
+opposite a girl who had lived in Paris with a lover; and she was
+sitting opposite her in circumstances which redounded to her own credit!
+
+"I have heard from your father," she went on; "I suppose you know?"
+
+"Yes," said Mamie; "he has written me."
+
+"And do you wish to make your home with me again? I'm quite ready to
+take you if you like."
+
+"I could never live in Lavender Street any more, Aunt Lydia. You must
+understand that--that it would be awful to me."
+
+"Your father hinted at my moving. It will be a great trouble, but I
+shan't shirk my duty, dear Mamie. If it will make your burden any
+easier to bear, we will live together somewhere else. I say, if I can
+make your burden any easier for you, I will live somewhere else."
+
+"I am not ungrateful. I.... Yes, if you will have me, I should like to
+come to you."
+
+Mrs. Baines sighed, and smoothed her skirt tremulously.
+
+"To Balham?" she inquired.
+
+"You are moving to Balham?"
+
+"I was thinking about it. I was over there the other day to get some
+stuff for a bodice. It's nice and healthy, and the shopping is cheap."
+
+"It's all the same to me where we go," said Mamie, "so long as the
+people don't know me."
+
+"I hear you were living with--with _him_ in Paris? Operas, and
+drives, and all manner of things to soothe your conscience he gave
+you, no doubt?" said Mrs. Baines, in an awestruck invitation to
+communicativeness. "After that terrible life in Paris, Balham will seem
+quiet to you, I daresay; but perhaps you won't mind that?'
+
+"No place can be too quiet for me. The quieter it is, the better I
+shall like it."
+
+"That's as it should be! Though, I suppose, with _him_ you were out
+among gaieties every night?" She waited for a few particulars again. As
+none were forthcoming: "Then I'll try to let the house, and we'll go
+over together and look at some in Balham as soon as you like, my dear,"
+she continued. "Your father will see that I'm not put to any expense.
+In the meantime you'll stay where you are, eh? You know--you know I saw
+Mr. Heriot after you'd gone, don't you?"
+
+"No," stammered the girl, lifting eager eyes. "You went to him?"
+
+"The very next day, my dear, so it seemed! I thought I'd drop in and
+have a cup of tea with you, not having seen you for so long; and
+through missing a train, and having such a time to wait at the station,
+I was an hour and more late when I got to Kensington. He was at home.
+Of course I had no idea there was anything wrong; I shall never forget
+it--never! You might have knocked me down with a feather when I heard
+you'd gone."
+
+"What," muttered Mamie, "what did he say?"
+
+"It was like this. I said to him, 'Dear Mamie's away, the servant tells
+me?' For naturally I thought you were visiting friends; 'as likely
+as not, she's with his family,' I thought to myself. 'Oh, yes,' he
+said, 'you must prepare yourself for a shock, Mrs. Baines--my wife has
+left me.' 'Left you?' I said. 'Yes,' said he, so cool that it turned
+me a mask of blood to hear him, 'she's gone away with a lover.' 'Mr.
+Heriot!' I exclaimed--'_Mister_ Heriot!' 'She left a note,' he said,
+'so it's quite true. Do you think we need talk about it much? I don't
+know that a worthless woman is any loss,' he said."
+
+"He said that?"
+
+"Those were his very words, my dear. And that cool! I stared at him.
+I'd no mind to make excuses for you, Gawd knows; but, for all that,
+one's own flesh and blood wasn't going to be talked about like niggers
+in _my_ hearing. When I got my wits together, I said, 'It seems to
+me I'd be sorrier for you, Mr. Heriot, if you took it different.'
+'Oh,' said he in his superior way, 'would you? We needn't discuss
+my feelings, madam. Perhaps you'll stay and dine?' I was so angry
+that I couldn't be civil to him. 'I thank you,' I said, 'I will not
+stay and dine. And I take the opportunity, Mr. Heriot, of telling
+you you're a brute!' With that I came away; but there was much more
+in between that I've forgotten. About the divorce it was. He said he
+had 'a duty to himself,' and that the man could marry you when you
+were divorced; which I suppose he _would_ have done if he had lived?
+though whether your sin would have been any less, my dear, if an
+archbishop had performed the ceremony is a question that I couldn't
+undertake to decide. You must begin your life afresh, now that it's all
+'absolute'--which I learn is the proper term--and you'll never be in a
+newspaper any more. Pray to Heaven for aid, and take heart of grace!
+And if it will relieve you to speak sometimes of those sinful months
+with--with the other one in Paris, why, you shall talk about them to
+me, my dear, and I won't reproach you."
+
+Mamie was no longer listening. An emotion that she did not seek to
+define was roused in her as she wondered if Heriot could indeed have
+taken the blow so stoically as her aunt declared. She scarcely knew
+whether she wished to put faith in his demeanour or not, but the
+subject was one that filled her thoughts long after Mrs. Baines's
+departure. It was one to which she constantly recurred.
+
+With less delay than might have been anticipated, the widow found
+a house in Balham to fulfil her requirements, and the removal was
+effected several months before No. 20, Lavender Street was sub-let.
+
+The houses of this class differ from one another but slightly.
+Excepting that the one in Balham was numbered "44," and that the street
+was called "Rosalie Road," Mamie could have found it easy to believe
+that she was re-installed in Wandsworth. It seemed to her sometimes
+as if the van that had removed the furniture had also brought the
+ground-floor parlour, with the miniature bay window overlooking the
+shrubs and the plot of mould. The back yard with the clothes prop, and
+the neighbours' yards with the continuous clatter, they too might have
+been transferred from Lavender Street; and so abiding was the clatter
+that even if she felt sleepy at nine o'clock, it was useless to go to
+bed before eleven. In view of this unintermittent necessity for back
+yards, she wondered how the inmates of more expensive houses for which
+back yards were not provided managed to support the deficiency. The
+women that she viewed, from the bedroom, among the clothes lines, or
+across the plot of mould, as they went forth with string bags, might
+have been the Lavender Street tenants. And were they not the Lavender
+Street children, these who on week-days swung, unkempt, on the little
+creaking gates along the road, and on Sundays walked abroad in colours
+so grotesquely unsuited to them?
+
+Such houses are, for the most part, happily, the crown of lives too
+limited to realise their limitations--too unsuccessful to be aware
+that they have failed. To Rosalie Road, Balham, with her Aunt Lydia
+for companion, the divorced woman at the age of twenty-six retired
+to remember that she had once hoped to be an artist, and had had the
+opportunity of being happy.
+
+To-day she hoped for nothing. There was no scope for hope. If she could
+have awakened to find herself famous, her existence would have been
+coloured a little--though she knew that fame could not satisfy her now
+as it would once have done--but the ability to labour for distinction
+was gone. She was apathetic, she had no interest in anything. When six
+months had passed, she regarded death as the only event to which she
+could still look forward; when she had been here a year, a glimmer of
+relief entered into her depression--the doctor who had attended her,
+and sounded her lungs, told her that she "must take care of herself."
+
+Sometimes a neighbour looked in, and spoke of dilapidations and
+the indifference of the landlord; of the reductions at a High Road
+linendraper's, and the whooping-cough. Sometimes a curate called to
+sell tickets for a concert more elementary than his sermons. In the
+afternoon she walked to Tooting Bec and stared at the bushes; in the
+evening she betook herself to the "circulating library," where _Lady
+Audley's Secret_ and _The Wide, Wide World_ were displayed and the
+proprietor said he hadn't heard of Meredith--"perhaps she had made a
+mistake in the name?" God help her! She was guilty and she had left
+a husband desolate; but the music that she had dreamed of was the
+opera on Wagner nights; the books that she had expected were copies
+containing signatures that were the envy of the autograph-collector;
+the circle that had been her aim was the world of literature and art.
+She lived at Balham; she saw the curate, and she heard about the
+dilapidations in the neighbour's roof. One year merged into another;
+and if she lived for forty more, the neighbour and the curate would be
+her All.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+When five years had passed after the divorce, the Liberal Party
+came into power again, and George Heriot, Q.C., M.P., was appointed
+Solicitor-General. His work and ambitions had not sufficed to mend
+the gap in his life; but it had been in work and ambition that he
+endeavoured to find assuagement of the wound. Perhaps eagerness
+had never been so keen in him after his wife went as while he was
+contesting the borough that he represented now; perhaps he had never
+realised the inadequacy of success so fully as he did to-day when one
+of the richest prizes of his profession was obtained. Conscious that
+the anticipated flavour was lacking, the steps to which he might look
+forward still lost much of their allurement. Were he promoted to the
+post of Attorney-General, and raised to the Bench, he foresaw that it
+would elate him no more than it elated him now, as Sir George Heriot,
+and a very wealthy man, to recall the period when, as a struggling
+Junior, he had sat up half the night to earn a guinea.
+
+The five years had left their mark upon him; the hours of misery which
+no one suspected had left their mark upon him. The lines about his eyes
+and mouth had deepened; his hair was greyer, his figure less erect. Men
+who, in their turn, sat up half the night to earn a guinea, envied him,
+cited his career as an example of brilliant luck--the success of others
+is always "luck"--and, though they assumed that a fellow was "generally
+cut up a bit when his wife went wrong," found it difficult to conceive
+that Sir George had permitted domestic trouble to alloy his triumphs
+to any great extent. Nobody imagined that there were still nights when
+he suffered scarcely less acutely than on the one when he returned to
+discover that Mamie had gone; nobody guessed that there were evenings
+when his loneliness was almost unbearable to the dry, self-contained
+man--that moments came when he took from a drawer the likeness that
+had once stood on his desk and yearned over it in despair. That was
+his secret; pride forbade that he should share it with another. He
+contemned himself that he did suffer still. A worthless woman should
+not be mourned. Out of his life should be out of his memory; such
+weakness shamed him!
+
+In August, a week or so after the vacation began, he went to stay at
+Sandhills. His object in going to Sandhills was not wholly to see
+his brother, and still less was it to see his sister-in-law. He was
+solitary, he was wretched, and he was only forty-seven years of age. He
+had been questioning for some time whether the wisest thing he could
+do would not be to marry again; he sought no resumption of rapture,
+but he wanted a home. An estimable wife, perhaps a son, would supply
+new interests; and the vague question that had entered his mind had
+latterly been emphasised by his introduction to Miss Pierways, who, he
+was aware, was now the guest of Lady Heriot.
+
+Miss Pierways was the daughter of a lady who had been the Hon. Mrs.
+Pierways, and whose straitened circumstances had debarred her from the
+suite in Hampton Court that she might otherwise have had at the period
+of her husband's death. The widow and the girl had retired to obscure
+lodgings; the only break in the monotony of the latter's existence
+being an occasional visit to some connections, or friends, at whose
+places it was hoped she might form a desirable alliance. The most
+stringent economies had to be practised in order to procure passable
+frocks for these visits, but the opportunities had led to no result,
+though she had beauty. And then an extraordinary event occurred. When
+the girl was twenty-eight, the widow who, for once, had reluctantly
+accepted an invitation to accompany her, received an offer of marriage
+herself, and became the wife of an American who was known to be several
+times over a millionaire.
+
+For one door that had been ajar to the daughter of the Hon. Mrs.
+Pierways, with nothing but her birth and her appearance to recommend
+her, a hundred doors flew open to the step-daughter of Henry Van Buren;
+and it was shortly after the startling metamorphosis in the fortunes of
+the pair that Heriot had first met them.
+
+The dowry that Agnes Pierways might bring to her husband weighed
+with him very little, for he was in a position to disregard such
+considerations. But Miss Pierways' personality appeared to him
+suggestive of all the qualifications that he sought in the lady whom
+he should marry. Without her manner being impulsive or girlish, she
+was sufficiently young to be attractive. She was handsome, and in a
+slightly statuesque fashion that bore promise of the serenity which he
+told himself was now his aim. Certainly if he did re-marry--and he was
+contemplating the step very seriously--it would be difficult to secure
+a partner to fulfil his requirements more admirably than Miss Pierways.
+Whether he fulfilled hers, he could ascertain when he had fully made up
+his mind. It was with the intention of making up his mind, in proximity
+to the lady, that he had gone to Sandhills; and one evening, when he
+was alone in the smoking-room with his brother, the latter blundered
+curiously enough on to the bull's-eye of his meditations.
+
+"I wonder," said Sir Francis, "that you've never thought of
+re-marrying, George?"
+
+"My experience of matrimony was not fortunate," answered Heriot,
+smoking slowly, but with inward perturbation.
+
+"Your experience of matrimony was a colossal folly. All things
+considered, the consequences might easily have been a good deal worse."
+
+"I don't follow you."
+
+"Between ourselves, the end never seemed to me so regrettable as you
+think it."
+
+"My wife left me."
+
+"And you divorced her! And you have no children."
+
+"If I had had children," said Heriot musingly, "it is a fact that the
+consequences would have been worse."
+
+"But in any case," said the Baronet, "it was a huge mistake. Really one
+may be frank, in the circumstances! You married madly. The probability
+is that if your wife had been--if you were living together still, you
+would be a miserable man to-day. It was a very lamentable affair, of
+course, when it happened, but regarding it coolly--in looking back on
+it--don't you fancy that perhaps things are just as well as they are?"
+
+"I was very fond of my wife," replied Heriot, engrossed by his cigar.
+
+"To an extent," said Sir Francis indulgently, "no doubt you had an
+affection for her. But, my dear fellow, what companionship had you? Was
+she a companion?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Was she interested in your career? Could she understand your ways of
+thought? Was she used to your world? One doesn't ask a great deal of
+women, but had you any single thing in common?"
+
+"I don't know," said Heriot again.
+
+Sir Francis shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Take my word for it that, with such a girl as you married, your
+divorce wasn't an unmixed evil. It wasn't the release one would have
+chosen, but at least it was better for you than being tied to her for
+life. Damn it, George! what's the use of blinking the matter now? She
+was absolutely unsuited to you in every way; you must admit it!"
+
+"I suppose she was. At the same time I was happy with her."
+
+"How long would the infatuation have lasted?"
+
+"It lasted more than three years."
+
+"Would it have lasted another five?"
+
+"Speaking honestly, I believe it would."
+
+"Though you had nothing in common?"
+
+"I don't explain," said Heriot. "I tell you, I was happy with her,
+that's all. Viewing it dispassionately, I suppose she _was_ unsuited to
+me--I don't know that we did have anything in common; I don't see any
+justification for the fool's paradise I lived in. But for all that, if
+I married again, I should never care for the woman as--as I cared for
+_her_. In fact, I should merely marry to----" He was about to say "to
+try to forget her"--"to make a home for myself," he said, instead.
+
+"Have you considered such a step?" asked Sir Francis.
+
+"Sometimes, yes."
+
+"The best thing you could do--a very proper thing for you to do....
+Anybody in particular?"
+
+"It's rather premature----"
+
+"You're not in chambers, old fellow!"
+
+"What do you think of Miss Pierways?" inquired Heriot after a scarcely
+perceptible pause.
+
+"A very excellent choice! I should congratulate you heartily. We had
+not noticed the---- And Catherine is very acute in these matters----"
+
+"There has been nothing to notice; probably she would refuse me
+point-blank. But in the event of my determining to marry again, I've
+wondered whether Miss Pierways wouldn't be the lady I proposed to."
+
+"I don't think you could do better."
+
+"Really? You don't think I'm too old for her?"
+
+"On my honour! 'Too old for her'? Not a bit, a very sensible marriage!
+I'm not surprised that you should be attracted by her."
+
+"'Attracted by her,'" said Heriot, "suggests rather more than the
+actual facts. I appreciate her qualities, but I can't say I'm sensible
+of any attachment. I'm sorry that I'm not. I appreciate her so fully
+that I am anxious to be drawn towards her a little more. I'm somewhat
+past the age for ardent devotion, but I couldn't take a wife as I
+might buy a horse. Of course, I've not been very much in her society.
+Er--down here, I daresay, when I come to know her better---- Have you
+met Van Buren?"
+
+"In town, before he sailed. He is in New York, you know. I like them
+all. We were very pleased to have the mother and the girl come to
+us.... Well, make your hay while the sun shines!"
+
+"It isn't shining," said Heriot; "I'm just looking east, waiting for
+it to rise. But I'm glad to have talked to you; as soon as the first
+ray comes I think I'll take your advice. I _ought_ to marry, Francis; I
+know you're right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The more he reflected, the more he was convinced of it; in marriage
+lay his chance of contentment. And during the ensuing fortnight his
+approval of Miss Pierways deepened. The house would not fill until the
+following month, and the smallness of the party there at present was
+favourable to the development of acquaintance.
+
+Excepting that she was a trifle cold, there was really no scope for
+adverse criticism upon Miss Pierways. She was unusually well read,
+took an intelligent interest in matters on which women of her age were
+rarely informed, and was accomplished to the extent that she played
+the piano after dinner with brilliant execution and admirable hands
+and wrists. Her coldness, theoretically, was no drawback to him, and
+Heriot was a little puzzled by his own attitude. Her air was neither
+so formal as to intimate that his advances would be unwelcome, nor so
+self-conscious as to repel him by the warmth of its encouragement; yet,
+in spite of his admiration, the idea of proposing to her dismayed him
+when he forced himself to approach the brink.
+
+His vacillation was especially irritating since he had learned that
+the ladies were at the point of joining Van Buren in New York. The
+opportunity of which he was failing to take advantage would speedily
+be past, and he dreaded that if he suffered it to escape him, he would
+recall the matter with regret. He perceived as well, however, that if
+he were precipitate, he might regret that too, and he was sorry that
+they were not remaining in Europe longer.
+
+One evening, when their departure was being discussed, the mother
+expressed surprise that he had never visited America, though she had
+had no curiosity about it, herself, until she married an American; and
+in answer Heriot declared that he had frequently thought of "running
+across during the long vacation."
+
+"If you ever do," she said, "I hope you will choose a year when we are
+there."
+
+"To tell you the truth, I was thinking of it this year."
+
+"We may see you in New York, Sir George?" said Miss Pierways. "Really?
+How strange that will seem! I've been eager to go to New York all my
+life; but now that I'm going, I'm rather afraid. The idea of a great
+city where I haven't any friends----"
+
+"But you will have many friends, Agnes."
+
+"By-and-by," answered Miss Pierways. "Yes, I suppose so. But it's very
+fatiguing _making_ friends, don't you think so? And I tremble at the
+voyage."
+
+"How delightful it would be," remarked Mrs. Van Buren, "if we were
+going by the same steamer, Sir George!"
+
+Heriot laughed.
+
+"It would be very delightful to me to make the voyage in your company.
+But I might bore you frightfully; a week at sea must be a severe test.
+I should be afraid of being found out."
+
+"We are promised other passengers," observed Miss Pierways, looking
+down with a faint smile. Her archness was a shade stiff, but her neck
+was one of her chief attractions.
+
+"Why don't you go, George?" said Lady Heriot cheerfully. "You'd much
+better go by Mrs. Van Buren's boat than any other; and you've been
+talking of making a trip to America 'next year' ever since I've known
+you!"
+
+This amiable fiction was succeeded by fresh protestations from Mrs.
+Van Buren that no arrangement could be more charming, and Heriot,
+half against his will, half with pleasure, found himself agreeing to
+telegraph in the morning to inquire if he could obtain a berth.
+
+He hardly knew whether he was sorry or glad when he had done so. That
+the step would result in an engagement might be predicted with a
+tolerable degree of certainty, and he would have preferred to arrive at
+an understanding with himself under conditions which savoured less of
+coercion.
+
+Since a state-room proved to be vacant, however, he could do no less
+now than engage it; and everybody appeared so much pleased, and Miss
+Pierways was so very gracious, that the misgivings that disturbed him
+looked momentarily more unreasonable than ever.
+
+The night before he sailed, in their customary chat over whisky and
+cigars, Sir Francis said to him:
+
+"'Ask, and it shall be given unto you'!"
+
+"I'm inclined to think you're right," said his brother. "I suppose it
+will end in it.... She's a trifle like a well-bred machine--doesn't
+it strike you so?--warranted never to get out of order!" The other's
+look was significant, and Heriot added, "Very desirable in a wife, of
+course! Only somehow----"
+
+"'Only somehow' you're eccentric, George--you always were!"
+
+"It's not my reputation," said Heriot drily; "I believe that I'm
+considered particularly practical."
+
+"Reputations," retorted the Baronet, attempting an epigram, as he
+sometimes did in the course of his second whisky-and-potash, and
+failing signally in the endeavour, "are like tombstones--generally
+false." He realised the reality of tombstones, and became
+controversial. "_I've_ known you from a boy, and I say you were always
+eccentric. It was nothing but your eccentricity that you had to thank
+before. Here's a nice girl, a girl who will certainly have a good
+settlement, a girl who's undeniably handsome, ready to say 'yes' at the
+asking, and you grumble--I'm hanged if you don't grumble!--because you
+see she is to be depended on. What the devil do you want?"
+
+"I want to be fond of her," answered Heriot. "I admit all you've said
+of her; I want to like her more."
+
+"So you ought to; but what does it matter if you don't? All women are
+alike to the men who've married them after a year or two. She'll make
+an admirable mother, and that's the main thing, I suppose?"
+
+Was it?
+
+Heriot recalled the criticism during his first day on board. Neither
+of the ladies was visible until Queenstown was reached, and he paced
+the deck, pursuing his reflections by the aid of tobacco. She would
+"make an admirable mother, and that was the main thing"! Of the second
+half of the opinion he was not so sure. To marry a woman simply because
+one believed she would shine in a maternal capacity was somewhat too
+altruistic, he thought. However, he was fully aware that Miss Pierways
+had other recommendations.
+
+She appeared with her mother at the head of the companion-way while he
+was wishing that he hadn't come, and he found their chairs for them,
+and arranged their rugs, and subsequently gave their letters to the
+steward to be posted.
+
+After leaving Queenstown, Mrs. Van Buren's sufferings increased, and
+the girl, who, saving for a brief interval, was well and cheerful, was
+practically in his charge. It was Heriot who accompanied her from the
+saloon after breakfast, and strolled up and down with her till she was
+tired. When the chair and the rug--the salient features of a voyage are
+the woman, the chair, and the rug--were satisfactorily arranged, it was
+he who sat beside her, talking. Flying visits she made below, while her
+mother kept her cabin; but for the most part she was on deck--or in the
+saloon, or in the reading-room--and for the most part Heriot was the
+person to whom she looked for conversation. If he had been a decade or
+two younger, he would probably have proposed to her long before they
+sighted Sandy Hook, and it surprised him that he did not succumb to the
+situation as it was. A woman is nowhere so dangerous, and nowhere is a
+man so susceptible, as at sea. The interminable days demand flirtation,
+if one is not to perish of boredom. Moonlight and water are notoriously
+potent, even when viewed for only half an hour; and at sea, the man and
+the girl look at the moonlight on the water together regularly every
+evening. And it is very becoming to the girl. Miss Pierways' face was
+always a disappointment to Heriot at breakfast. The remembrance of
+its factitious softness the previous night made its hardness in the
+sunshine look harder. He wondered if it was the remembrance of its
+hardness at breakfast that kept him from proposing to her when they
+loitered in the moonlight. He was certainly doing his best to fall in
+love with her, and everything conspired to assist him; but the days
+went on, and the momentous question remained unuttered.
+
+"We shall soon be there," she said one evening as they strolled about
+the deck after dinner. "I'm beginning to be keen. Have you noticed how
+everybody is saying, 'New York' now? At first no one alluded to it--we
+mightn't have been due for a year--and since yesterday nobody's talking
+of anything else!"
+
+"Nearly everyone I've spoken to seems to have made the trip half a
+dozen times," said Heriot. "I feel dreadfully untravelled in the
+smoking-room. When are you going to Niagara? Niagara is one of the
+things I'm determined not to miss."
+
+"I was talking to some girls who have lived in New York all their
+lives--when they weren't in Europe--and they haven't been there yet.
+They told me they had been to the panorama in Westminster!"
+
+"I have met a Londoner who had never been to the Temple."
+
+"No? How perfectly appalling!" she exclaimed, none the less fervently
+because she hadn't been to it herself. "Oh yes, I know I shall adore
+Niagara! I want to see a great deal of America while I'm there."
+
+"I wish _I_ had time to see more; I should like to go to California."
+
+"I wouldn't see California for any consideration upon earth!" she
+declared. "California, to me, is Bret Harte--I should be so afraid of
+being disillusioned. When we went to Ireland once, do you know, Sir
+George, it was a most painful shock to me! My ideas of Ireland were
+founded on Dion Boucicault's plays--I expected to see all the peasants
+in fascinating costumes, with their hair down their backs, just as one
+sees them on the stage. The reality was terrible. I shudder when I
+recall the disappointment."
+
+"I sympathise."
+
+"Of course you're laughing at me! I shall have my revenge, if you don't
+like New York. But, I don't know--I may feel guilty. You mustn't blame
+us if you don't like New York, Sir George. Fortunately you won't have
+time to be very bored, though; will you?"
+
+"'Fortunately'?"
+
+"Fortunately if it doesn't amuse you, I mean. When does the--how do you
+say it? When does your holiday end?"
+
+"I must be back in London on the twenty-fourth of next month; I'm
+almost American myself. I shall have such a fleeting glimpse of the
+country, that I must really think of writing a book about it."
+
+"You have something better to do than write vapid books. To me your
+profession seems the most fascinating one there is. If I were a man,
+I'd rather be called to the Bar than anything. You'd be astonished
+if you knew how many biographies of eminent lawyers I've read--they
+enthralled me as a child. I don't know any career that suggests such
+power to me as the Bar. Don't smile: sometimes, when we're talking and
+I remember the tremendous influence you wield, I tremble."
+
+She lifted her eyes to him, deprecating her enthusiasm, which was too
+palpably a pose, and again Heriot was conscious that the opportunity
+was with him, if he could but grasp it. They had paused by the
+taffrail, and he stood looking at her, trying to speak the words that
+would translate their relations to a definite footing. He no longer had
+any doubt as to her answer; he could foresee her reply--at least the
+manner of her reply--with disturbing clearness. He knew that she would
+hesitate an instant, and droop her head, and ultimately murmur correct
+phrases that would exhilarate him not at all. In imagination he already
+heard her tones, as she promised to be his wife. He supposed, as they
+were screened from observation, that he might take her hand. How
+passionless, how mechanical and flat it would all be! He replied with a
+commonplace, and after a few moments they continued their stroll. When
+he turned in, however, he reproached himself more forcibly than he had
+done yet, and his vacillation was by no means at an end. He was at war,
+not with his judgment, but with his instinct, and it was the perception
+of this fact that always increased his perturbation.
+
+They landed the following day, and, after being introduced to Mr. Van
+Buren in the custom-house, Heriot drove to an hotel. The hotel he
+found excellent; New York he found wonderful, but a city different
+from what he had expected. He had vaguely pictured New York as a Paris
+where everybody talked English. This was before the introduction of
+the automobile had changed the face of Paris, and the face of the
+Parisian--before it incidentally reduced the number of half-fed horses
+barbarously used in that city, which is the negro's paradise, and
+the "horse's hell"--and the Boulevard was even more unlike Broadway
+then than now. Broadway, broad in name only till it spread into the
+brightness of Union Square, suggested London more than Paris--London in
+an unprecedented burst of energy. The tireless vigour of the throng,
+the ubiquitous rush of the Elevated Railway confused him. Though he
+paid homage to the cuisine of America, which proved as much as much
+superior to that of England as the worst transatlantic train was to
+our best of that period, he told himself that he was disappointed. The
+truth was that, not wishing to take the Van Burens' invitations too
+literally, and having no other acquaintances here, he was dull.
+
+American hospitality, however, is the most charming in the world,
+and he spent several very agreeable hours inside the big brownstone
+house. Nothing could have exceeded the geniality of Van Buren's manner,
+nor was this due solely to the position of his visitor and a hope
+of their becoming connected. The average American business man will
+show more kindness to a stranger, who intrudes into his office, than
+most Englishmen display to one who comes to them with a letter of
+introduction from a friend, and Van Buren's welcome was as sincere as
+it was attractive.
+
+Heriot stayed in New York a week, and then fulfilled his desire to
+visit Niagara. On his return he called in Fifth Avenue again. He was
+already beginning to refer to his homeward voyage, and he was still
+undetermined whether he would propose to Miss Pierways or not. The days
+slipped by without his arriving at a conclusion; and then one morning
+he told himself he had gone too far to retreat now--that the step,
+which was doubtless the most judicious he could take, should be made
+without delay.
+
+He called at the house the same afternoon--for on the next day but
+one the _Etruria_ sailed--and he found the ladies at home. He sat
+down, wondering if he would be left alone with Miss Pierways and take
+his departure engaged to her. But for half an hour there seemed no
+likelihood of a tête-à-tête. Presently there were more callers and they
+were shown into another room. Mrs. Van Buren begged him to excuse her.
+He rose to leave, but was pressed to remain.
+
+"I want to talk to you when they've gone," she said; "I haven't half
+exhausted my list of messages to London."
+
+Heriot resumed his seat, and Miss Pierways smiled.
+
+"Poor mamma wishes she were going herself, if she told the truth! Now
+that we're here, it is I who like New York, not she."
+
+"We're creatures of custom," he said; "your mother has lived in London
+too long to accustom herself to America very easily... Of course you'll
+be over next season?"
+
+"Oh yes. Shall you ever come to America again, Sir George?"
+
+"I--I hardly know," he answered. "I certainly hope to."
+
+"Oh, then, you will! You're your own master."
+
+"Is anybody his own master?"
+
+"To the extent of travelling to America, many people, I should think!"
+
+He remembered with sudden gratification that he had never said a word
+to her that might not have been spoken before a crowd of listeners.
+What was there to prevent him withholding the proposal if he liked!
+
+"I've no doubt I shall come," he said abstractedly.
+
+She looked slightly downcast. It was not the reply that she had hoped
+to hear.
+
+"I shall always owe a debt of gratitude to you and to Mr. and Mrs. Van
+Buren for making my visit so pleasant to me," he found himself saying
+next. "My trip has been a delightful experience."
+
+She murmured a conventional response, but chagrin began to creep about
+her heart.
+
+Heriot diverged into allusions which advanced the position not at all.
+They spoke of New York, of England, of the voyage--she perfunctorily,
+and he with ever-increasing relief. And now he felt that he had been on
+the verge of the precipice for the last time. He had escaped--and by
+the intensity of his gratitude he realised how ill-judged had been his
+action in playing around it.
+
+When Mrs. Van Buren reappeared, followed by her husband, her daughter's
+face told her that the climax had not been reached; and bold in
+thanksgiving, Heriot excused himself when he was asked to dine with
+them that evening. Had he been offered the alternative of the next
+evening, he could not without rudeness have found a pretext for
+refusing; but on the morrow, as luck would have it, the Van Burens were
+dining out.
+
+The footman opened the big door, and Heriot descended the steps with a
+sensation that was foreign to him, and not wholly agreeable. He knew
+that he did not want to marry Miss Pierways, and that he had behaved
+like a fool in trying to acquire the desire, but he was a little
+ashamed of himself. His conduct had not been irreproachable; and he was
+conscious that when the steamer sailed and the chapter was closed for
+good and all, he would be glad to have done with it. He had blundered
+badly. Nevertheless he would have blundered worse, and been a still
+greater fool, if the affair had terminated in an engagement. Of course
+his brother would say distasteful things when they met, and Lady Heriot
+would convey her extreme disapproval of him without saying anything.
+That he must put up with! Of two evils, he had at any rate chosen the
+lesser.
+
+He repeated the assurance with still more conviction on Saturday
+morning during the quarter of an hour in which the cab rattled him to
+the boat. The experience had been a lesson to him, and he was resolved
+that henceforward he would dismiss the idea of marriage from his mind.
+He saw his portmanteau deposited in his cabin, and he returned to the
+deck as the steamer began to move. The decks were in the confusion
+that obtains at first. Passengers still hung at the taffrail, taking a
+farewell gaze at friends on the landing-stage. The chairs were huddled
+in a heap, and stewards bustled among stacks of luggage, importuned at
+every second step with instructions and inquiries.
+
+The deep pulsations sounded more regular; the long line of sheds
+receded; and the figures of the friends were as little dark toys,
+waving specks of white. Even the most constant among the departing
+began to turn away now. The hastening stewards were importuned more
+frequently than before. Everybody was in a hurry, and all the women in
+the crowd that flocked below seemed to be uttering the words "baggage"
+and "state-room" at the same time.
+
+A few men were temporarily in possession of the deck, striding to and
+fro behind pipes or cigars. The regulation as to "No smoking abaft
+this" was not in force yet, or was, at least, disobeyed at present.
+Heriot sauntered along the length of deck until it began to fill
+again. The pile of chairs received attention--they were set out in a
+row under the awning. The deck took a dryness and a whiteness, and a
+few passengers sat down, and questioned inwardly if they would find
+one another companionable. He bent his steps to the smoking-room. But
+it was empty and uninviting thus early, and he forsook it after a few
+minutes. As the door slammed behind him, he came face to face with the
+woman who had been his wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+She approached--their gaze met--he had bowed, and passed her. Perhaps
+it had lasted a second, the mental convulsion in which he looked in
+her eyes; he did not know. He found a seat and sank into it, staring
+at the sky and sea, acutely conscious of nothing but her nearness. He
+could not tell whether it was despair or rejoicing that beat in him; he
+knew nothing but that the world had swayed, that life was in an instant
+palpitating and vivid--that he had seen her!
+
+Then he knew that, in the intensity of emotion that shook him body and
+brain, there was a thrill of joy, inexplicable but insistent. But when
+he rose at last, he dreaded that he might see her again.
+
+He did not see her till the evening--when he drew back at the door of
+the saloon as she came out. His features were imperturbable now and
+betrayed nothing, though her own, before her head drooped, were piteous
+in appeal.
+
+He noted that she looked pale and ill, and that she wore a black dress
+with crape on it. He wondered whether she had lost her father, or her
+aunt. Next morning he understood that it was her father, for he saw
+her sitting beside Mrs. Baines. So Dick Cheriton was dead. He had once
+been fond of Dick Cheriton.... The stranger in the black frock had once
+slept in his arms, and borne his name.... The sadness of a lifetime
+weighed on his soul.
+
+He perceived that she shunned him by every means in her power. But they
+were bound to meet; and then across her face would flash the same look
+that he had seen at the foot of the companion-way; its supplication
+and abasement wrung him. Horrible as the continual meetings grew, in
+the reading-room, on deck, or below, their lines crossed a dozen times
+between breakfast and eleven o'clock at night. It became as torturous
+to Heriot as to her. He felt as if he had struck her, as he saw her
+whiten and shrink as he passed her by. Soon he hated himself for being
+here to cause her this intolerable pain.
+
+It was on the evening of the third day that her endurance broke down
+and she made her petition. With a pang he recognised the voice of her
+messenger before he turned.
+
+"Mrs. Baines!"
+
+"You're surprised I should address you, Mr. Heriot," she said. "I
+shouldn't have, but _she_ wants me to beg you to speak to her, if it's
+only for five minutes. She implores you humbly to let her speak to you.
+She made me ask you; I couldn't say 'no.'"
+
+His pulses throbbed madly, and momentarily he couldn't reply.
+
+"What purpose would it serve?" he said in tones he struggled to make
+firm.
+
+"She can't bear it, Mr. Heriot--_Sir_ Heriot, I should say; I was
+forgetting, I'm sure I beg your pardon! She 'implores you humbly to let
+her speak to you'; I was to use those words. Won't you consent? She is
+ill, she's dying."
+
+"Dying?" whispered Heriot by a physical effort.
+
+She nodded slowly. "The doctor has told her. She won't be here long,
+poor girl. But whether she's to be pitied for it or not, it's hard to
+say; I don't think she'll be sorry to go.... My brother is gone, Sir
+Heriot."
+
+His answer was inarticulate.
+
+"We got there just at the end. If we had been too late, she----She has
+been ailing a long while, but we didn't know it was so serious. When
+she saw you, it was awful for her. I---- Oh, what am I to tell her?
+She's waiting now!"
+
+"Where?" said Heriot, hoarsely.
+
+"Will you come with me?"
+
+"Show me," he said; "show me where she is."
+
+He still heard the knell of it--"Dying!" He heard it as the lonely
+figure in the darkness rose:
+
+"Thank you, I am grateful."
+
+The familiar voice knocked at his heart.
+
+"Mrs. Baines has told me you are ill. I am grieved to learn how ill you
+are."
+
+"It doesn't matter. It was good of you to come; I thought you would.
+I--I have prayed to speak to you again!"
+
+"It wasn't much to ask," he said; "I--am human."
+
+He could see that she trembled painfully. He indicated the chair that
+she had left, and drew one closer for himself. Then for a minute there
+was silence.
+
+"Do you hate me?" she said.
+
+He shook his head. "Should I have come to tell you so?"
+
+"But you can never forgive me?"
+
+"Why distress yourself? If for a moment I hesitated to come, it was
+because I _knew_ it would be distressing for you. Perhaps a refusal
+would have been kinder after all."
+
+"No, no; I was sure you wouldn't refuse. She doubted; but _I_ was sure.
+I said you'd come when you heard about me."
+
+"Is it so serious? What is it? Tell me; I know nothing."
+
+"It's my lungs: they were never very strong, you remember. The doctor
+told me in Duluth: 'Perhaps a year,' if I am 'very careful.' I'm _not_
+very careful--it'll soon be all over. Don't look like that! Why should
+you care? _I_ don't care--I don't want to live a bit. Only----Do you
+think, if--if there's anything afterwards, that a woman who's gone
+wrong like me will be punished?"
+
+"For God's sake," he said, "don't talk so!"
+
+"But _do_ you? It makes one think of these things when one knows one
+has only a very little time to live. _You_ can't forgive me--you said
+so."
+
+"I do," he said; "I forgive you freely. If I could undo your
+wretchedness by giving my life for you, I'd give it. You don't know how
+I loved you--what it meant to me to find you gone! Ah, Mamie, how could
+you do it?"
+
+The tears stood in her eyes, as she lifted her white face to him.
+
+"I'm ashamed!" she moaned. "What can I say?"
+
+"Why?" said Heriot, at the end of a tense pause. "Why? Did you care for
+him so much? If he had lived and married you, would you be happy?"
+
+"Happy!" she echoed, with something between a laugh and a sob.
+
+"Tell me. I hoped you'd be happy. That's true. I never wanted you to
+suffer for what you'd done. I suffered enough for both."
+
+"I don't think I should have married him. I don't know; I don't think
+so. I knew I'd made a mistake before--oh, in the first month! If _you_
+haven't hated me, I have hated myself."
+
+"And since? You've been with _her_?"
+
+"Ever since. My poor father wanted me to go home. I wish I had! You
+know I've lost him--she told you that? He wanted me to go home, but I
+couldn't--where everybody knew! You understand? And then she moved to
+Balham, and we never left it till two months ago, when the cable came.
+We were in time to see him die. My poor father!"
+
+He touched her hand, and her fingers closed on it.
+
+"You oughtn't to be up here at night," he said huskily, looking at her
+with blinded eyes. "Didn't the man tell you that the night air was bad?
+And that flimsy wrap--it's no use so! Draw it across your mouth."
+
+"What's the difference?--there, then! Shall you--will you speak to me
+again after this evening, or is this the last talk we shall have? I
+had so much to say to you, but I don't seem able to find it now you're
+here.... If you believe that I ask your pardon on my knees, I suppose,
+after all, that that's everything. If ever a man deserved a good
+wife it was you; I realise it more clearly than I did while we were
+together--though I think I knew it then.... You never married again?"
+
+"No," he answered; "no, I haven't married."
+
+"But you will, perhaps? Why haven't you?"
+
+"I'm too old, and--I cared too much for _you_."
+
+The tears were running down her face now; she loosed his hand to wipe
+them away.
+
+"Don't say I've ruined your life," she pleaded; "don't say that! My
+own--yes; my own--it served me right! but I've tried so hard to believe
+that _you_ had got over it. When I read of your election, and then that
+you were made Solicitor-General, I was glad, ever so glad. I thought,
+'He's successful; he has his career.' I've always wanted to believe
+that your work was enough--that you had forgotten. It wasn't so?"
+
+"No, it wasn't so. I did my best to forget you, but I couldn't."
+
+"Aunt Lydia said you weren't cut up at all when she saw you. You
+deceived her very well. 'A worthless woman,' you called me; I 'wasn't
+any loss'! It was quite true; but I knew you couldn't feel like
+that--not so soon. 'Worthless'! I've heard it every day since she told
+me.... I meant to do my duty when I married you, George; if I could
+have foreseen----" She broke off, coughing. "If I could have foreseen
+what the end would be, I'd have killed myself rather than become your
+wife. I was always grateful to you; you were always good to me--and I
+only brought you shame."
+
+"Not 'only,'" he said; "you gave me happiness first, Mamie--the
+greatest happiness I've known. I loved you, and you came to me. You
+never understood how much I did love you--I think that was the trouble."
+
+"'There's a word that says it all: I worship you'! do you remember
+saying that? You said it in the train when you first proposed to me. I
+refused you then--why did I ever give way!... How different everything
+would be now! You 'worshipped' me, and I----"
+
+Her voice trailed off, and once more only the pounding of the engine
+broke the stillness on the deck. The ocean swelled darkly under a
+starless sky, and he sat beside her staring into space. In the steerage
+someone played "Robin Adair" on a fiddle. A drizzle began to fall, to
+blow in upon them. Heriot became conscious of it with a start.
+
+"You must go below," he said; "it's raining."
+
+She rose obediently, shivering a little, and drawing the white scarf
+more closely about her neck.
+
+"Good-night," she said, standing there with wide eyes.
+
+He put out his hand, and her clasp ran through his blood again.
+
+"Good-night," he repeated gently. "Sleep well."
+
+Was it real? Was he awake? He looked after her as she turned
+away--looked long after she had disappeared. The fiddle in the steerage
+was still scraping "Robin Adair"; the black stretch of deck was
+desolate. A violent impulse seized him to overtake her, to snatch her
+back, to hold her in his arms for once, with words and caresses of
+consolation. "Dying"! He wondered if Davos, Algiers, the Cape, anything
+and everything procurable by money, could prolong her life. Then he
+remembered that she did not wish to live. But that was horrible! She
+should consult a specialist in town, and follow his advice; he would
+make her promise it. With the gradual defervescence of his mood, he
+wondered if she was properly provided for, and he resolved to question
+Mrs. Baines on the point. He would elicit the information the following
+day, and something could be arranged, if necessary--if not with Mamie's
+knowledge, then without it.
+
+The morning was bright, and Mamie was in her chair when he came up
+from the saloon after breakfast. As he approached, she watched him
+expectantly, and it was impossible to pass without a greeting. It was
+impossible, when the greeting had been exchanged, not to remain with
+her for a few minutes.
+
+"How are you feeling?" he asked; "any better?"
+
+"I never feel very bad; I'm just the same to-day as yesterday, thank
+you." The "thank you" was something more than a formula, and he felt
+it. It hurt him to hear the gratitude in her tone, natural as it might
+be.
+
+"I want you to go to a good physician when you arrive," he said, "say,
+to Drummond; and to do just as he tells you. You _must_ do that; it is
+a duty you owe to yourself."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "What for? That I may last two years,
+perhaps, instead of one? It is kind of you to care, but I'm quite
+satisfied as things are. Don't bother about me."
+
+"You will have to go!" he insisted. "Before we land I shall speak to
+your aunt about it."
+
+He had paused by her seat with the intention of resuming his saunter
+as soon as civility permitted, but her presence was subversive of the
+intention. He sat down beside her as he had done the previous evening.
+But now it was inevitable that they should speak of other subjects than
+infidelity and death. The sky was blue, and the white deck glistened in
+the sunshine. The sea before them tumbled cheerfully, and to right and
+left were groups of passengers laughing, flirting, doing fancy-work, or
+reading novels.
+
+"You haven't told me how it was you came to the States?" she said
+presently; "were you in New York all the time?"
+
+Heriot did not answer, and she waited with surprise.
+
+"I'll tell you, if you wish," he said hastily. "I came out half meaning
+to marry."
+
+"Oh!" she said, as if he had struck her.
+
+"I thought I might be happier married. The lady and her mother were
+going to New York, and I travelled with them. I--I was mistaken in
+myself."
+
+They were not looking at each other any longer, and her voice trembled
+a little as she replied:
+
+"You weren't fond enough of her?"
+
+"No," he said. "I shall never marry again; I told you so last night."
+
+After a long pause, she said:
+
+"Was she pretty?... Prettier than _I_ used to be?"
+
+"She was handsome, I think. Not like you at all. Why talk about it?...
+I'm glad I came, though, or I shouldn't have seen you. I shall always
+be glad to have seen you again. Remember that, after we part. For me,
+at least, it will never be so bitter since we've met and I've heard you
+say you're sorry."
+
+"God bless you," she murmured almost inaudibly.
+
+He left her after half an hour, but drifted towards her again in the
+afternoon. Insensibly they lost by degrees much of their constraint in
+talking together. She told him of her father's illness, of her own life
+in Balham; Heriot gave her some details of his appointment, explaining
+that it was the duty of an Attorney-General and Solicitor-General to
+reply to questions of law in the House, to advise the Government,
+and conduct its cases, and the rest of it. By Wednesday night it was
+difficult to him to realise that their first interview had occurred
+only forty-eight hours ago. It had become his habit on deck to turn his
+steps towards her, to sip tea by her side in the saloon, to saunter
+with her after dinner in the starlight. Even at last he felt no
+embarrassment as he moved towards her; even at last she came to smile
+up at him as he drew near. Moments there could not fail to be when such
+a state of things seemed marvellous and unnatural--when conversation
+ceased, and they paused oppressed and tongue-tied by a consciousness
+of the anomaly of their relations. Nevertheless such moments were but
+hitches in an intercourse which grew daily more indispensable to them
+both.
+
+How indispensable it had become to herself the woman perceived as the
+end of the voyage approached; and now she would have asked no better
+than for them to sail on until she died. When she undressed at night,
+she sighed, "Another day over"; when she woke in the morning, eagerness
+quickened her pulses. On Saturday they would arrive; and when Friday
+dawned, the reunion held less of strangeness than the reflection that
+she and Heriot would separate again directly. To think that, as a
+matter of course, they would say good-bye to each other, and resume
+their opposite sides of an impassable gulf, looked more unnatural to
+her than the renewed familiarity.
+
+Their pauses were longer than usual on Friday evening. Both were
+remembering that it was the last. Heriot had ascertained that Cheriton
+had been able to leave her but little; and the notion of providing her
+with the means to winter in some favourable climate was hot in his mind.
+
+"It is understood," he said abruptly, "that you go to Drummond and do
+exactly as he orders? You'll not be so mad as to refuse at the last
+moment?"
+
+"All right!" she answered apathetically, "I'll go. Shall I--will you
+care to hear what he says?"
+
+"Your aunt has promised to write to me. By the way, there's something
+I want to say to-night. If what he advises is expensive, you must let
+me make it possible for you. I claim that as my right. I intended
+arranging it with Mrs. Baines, but she tells me you--you'd be bound to
+know where the money came from. He'll probably tell you to live abroad."
+
+"Thank you," she said after a slight start, "I could not take your
+money. It is very good of you, but I would rather you didn't speak of
+it. If you talked forever, I wouldn't consent."
+
+"Mamie----"
+
+"The very offer turns me cold. Please don't!"
+
+"You're cruel," he said. "You're refusing to let me prolong your life.
+Have I deserved that from you?"
+
+"Oh!" she cried, in a tortured voice, "for God's sake, don't press me!
+Leave me something--I won't say 'self-respect,' but a vestige, a grain
+of proper pride. Think what my feelings would be, living on money from
+you--it wouldn't prolong my life, George; it would kill me sooner.
+You've been generous and merciful to me; be merciful to me still and
+talk of something else."
+
+"You are asking me to stand by and see you die. _I_ have feelings, too,
+Mamie. I can't do it!"
+
+"I'm dying," she said; "if it happens a little sooner, or a little
+later, does it matter very much? If you want to be very kind to me,
+to--to brighten the time that remains as much as you can, tell me that
+if I send to you when--when it's a question of days, you'll come to the
+place and see me again. I'd bless you for that! I've been afraid to ask
+you till now; but it would mean more to me than anything else you could
+do. Would you, if I sent?"
+
+"Why," said Heriot labouredly, after another pause, "why would it mean
+so much?"
+
+They were leaning over the taffrail; and suddenly her head was bent,
+and she broke into convulsive sobs that tore his breast.
+
+"Mamie!" he exclaimed. "Mamie, tell me!" He glanced round and laid a
+trembling touch on her hands. "Tell me, dear!" he repeated hoarsely.
+"Do you love me, then?"
+
+Her figure was shaken by the shuddering sobs. His touch tightened to a
+clasp; he drew the hands down from the distorted face, drew the shaken
+figure closer, till his own met it--till her bosom was heaving against
+his heart.
+
+"Do you love me, Mamie?"
+
+"Yes!" she gasped. And then for an instant only their eyes spoke, and
+in the intensity of their eyes each gave to the other body and soul.
+
+"Yes, I love you," she panted; "it's my punishment, I suppose, to
+love you too late. I shall never see you after to-morrow, till I am
+dying--if then--but I love you. Remember it! It's no good to you, you
+won't care, but remember it, because it's my punishment. You can say,
+'When it was too late, she knew! She died detesting herself, shrinking
+at her own body, her own loathsome body that she gave to another man!'
+Oh!"--she beat her hands hysterically against his chest--"I hate him,
+I hate him! God forgive me, he's in his grave, but I hate him when I
+think what's been. And it wasn't his fault; it was mine, mine--my own
+degraded, beastly self. Curse me, throw me from you! I'm not fit to be
+standing here; I'm lower than the lowest woman in the streets!"
+
+The violence of her emotion maddened him. He knew that _he_ loved
+_her;_ the truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought
+for years to wrap it--he knew that he had never ceased to love her; and
+a temptation to make her his wife again, to cherish and possess her
+so long as life should linger in her veins, flooded his reason. Their
+gaze grew wider, deeper still; he could feel her quivering from head
+to foot. Another moment, and he would have offered his honour to her
+keeping afresh. Some men left the smoking-room; there was the sharp
+interruption of laughter--the slam of the door. They both regained some
+semblance of self-possession as they moved apart.
+
+"I must go down," she said. And he did not beg her to remain.
+
+It was their real farewell, for on the morrow they could merely
+exchange a few words amid the bustle of arrival. Liverpool was reached
+early in the morning, and when he saw her, she wore a hat and veil and
+was already prepared to go ashore. In the glare of the sunshine the
+veil could not conceal that her eyes were red with weeping, however,
+and he divined that she had passed a sleepless night. To Mrs. Baines
+he privately repeated his injunctions with regard to the physician,
+for he was determined to have his way; and the widow assured him that
+she would write to Morson Drummond for an appointment without loss of
+time. The delays and shouts came to an end while he was speaking to
+her; and the gangway was lowered, and Mamie moved forward to her side.
+He saw them again in the custom-house, but for a minute only, and from
+a distance. Evidently they got through without trouble, for when he
+looked across again, they had gone.
+
+As he saw that they had gone, a sensation of blankness fell upon
+Heriot's mood, where he stood waiting among the scattered luggage. His
+life felt newly empty and the day all at once seemed cold and dark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The truth was stripped of the disguise in which he had sought to wrap
+it; he knew that he had never ceased to love her. As he had known it
+while she sobbed beside him on the boat, so he knew it when the Bar
+claimed him again and he wrestled with temptation amid his work. He
+might re-marry her! He could not drive this irruptive idea from his
+mind. It lurked there, impelled attention, dozed, woke, and throbbed
+in his consciousness persistently. Were he but weak enough to make the
+choice, the woman that he loved might belong to him once more.
+
+Were he but weak enough! There were minutes in which he was very near
+to it, minutes in which the dishonour, if dishonour it were, looked as
+nothing to him compared with the joy of having her for his wife again.
+Yet were he but "weak" enough? Would it indeed be weakness--would it
+not rather be strength, the courage of his convictions? The longing
+illumined his vision, and he asked himself on what his doubt and
+hesitation was based. She had sinned; but he had pardoned her sin,
+not merely in words, but in his heart. And she was very dear to him;
+and she had repented. Then why should it be impossible? What after
+all had they done to her, what change in the beloved identity had
+they wrought, those months that were past? He was aware that it was
+the physical side that repelled him--there had been another man. Yet
+if she had been a widow when he met her first, there would have been
+another man, and it would have mattered nothing. Did this especial sin
+make of a woman somebody else? Did it give her another face, another
+form, another brain? Did unfaithfulness transform her personality?
+The only difference was the knowledge of what had happened--the woman
+herself was the same! But he would not vindicate his right to love
+her--he loved her, that was enough. In its simplicity, the question was
+whether he would do better to condone her guilt and know happiness, or
+to preserve his dignity and suffer. He could not blink the question;
+it confronted him nakedly when a week had worn by. Without her he was
+lonely and wretched; with her, while she lived, he was confident that
+his joy would be supreme. The step that he considered was, if any one
+pleased, revolting; but if it led to his contentment, perhaps to be
+"revolting" might be the height of wisdom. He must sacrifice his pride,
+or his peace! And at last, quite deliberately, without misgiving or a
+backward glance, Heriot determined to gain peace.
+
+A few days after the arrival, Mrs. Baines had written to inform him
+that the physician was out of town, but now a line came to say that an
+appointment had been made for "Monday" and that she would communicate
+Dr. Drummond's pronouncement immediately they reached home after the
+interview. It was on Monday morning that Heriot received the note, and
+he resolved to go to Mamie the same evening.
+
+The thought of the amazement that his appearance would cause her
+excited him wildly as he drove to Victoria. He could foresee the wonder
+in her eyes as he entered, the incredulity on her features as she heard
+what he was there to say; and the profoundest satisfaction pervaded him
+that he had resolved to say it. The comments that his world would make
+had no longer any place in his meditations; a fico for the world that
+would debar him from delight and censure what it could not understand!
+He had suffered long enough; his only regret was for the years which
+had been lost before he grasped the vivid truth that, innocent or
+guilty, the woman who conferred happiness was the woman to be desired.
+
+A criticism of his brother's recurred to him: "You hadn't a single
+taste in common!" He had not disputed it at the time; he was not
+certain that he could deny it now. But there was no need to consider
+whether their views were kindred or opposed, whether she was defiled
+or stainless, when she was the woman whose magic could transfigure his
+existence. He was conscious that this marriage to be approved by his
+judgment, and condemned by Society, would be a sweeter and holier union
+than their first, to which she had brought purity, and indifference.
+As the cab sped down Victoria Street, his excitement increased, and in
+imagination he already clasped her and felt the warmth of her cheek
+against his face.
+
+The hansom slackened, jerked to a standstill; and he leapt out and
+hurried to the booking-office. A train was at the point of starting.
+The sentiment of the bygone was quick in him as he found that he must
+pass through a yellow barrier on to the same platform to which he used
+to hasten when he went to see her in Lavender Street, Wandsworth.
+He had never trodden it since. A thousand associations, sad but
+delicious, were revived as he took his seat, and the guard, whose
+countenance seemed familiar, sauntered with a green flag and a lantern
+past the window. Victoria slipped back. It had been in one of these
+compartments--perhaps in this one--that he had first asked her to be
+his wife. How wet her cape had been when he touched it! A porter sang
+out, "Grosvenor Road," and at the sound of it Heriot marvelled at
+having forgotten that they were about to stop there. Yes, "Grosvenor
+Road," and then--what next? He could not remember. But memory knocked
+with a louder pang as each of the places on the line was reached. When
+"Wandsworth Common" was cried, he glanced at the dimly-lighted station
+while in fancy he threaded his way to the shabby villa that had been
+her home. He thought that he could find it blindfold.
+
+After this the line was quite strange to him; and now the impatience of
+his mood had no admixture and he trembled with eagerness to gain his
+destination.
+
+"Balham!" was bawled two minutes later; and among a stream of clerks
+and nondescripts, he descended a flight of steps and emerged into a
+narrow street. No cab was visible, and, having obtained directions, he
+set forth for Rosalie Road afoot.
+
+A glimpse he had of cheap commerce, of the flare of gas-jets on
+oranges, and eggs, and fifth-rate millinery; and then the shops and
+the masses were left behind, and he was in obscurity. The sound of
+footsteps occurred but seldom here, and he wandered in a maze of little
+houses for nearly half an hour before a welcome postman earned a
+shilling.
+
+Rosalie Road began in darkness, and ended in a brickfield. He
+identified Number 44 by the aid of a vesta, and pulled the bell.
+Impatience was mastering him when he discerned, through the panes, a
+figure advancing along the passage.
+
+His voice was strange in his ears, as he inquired if Mamie was in.
+
+"Yessir; she's in the drorin'-room. 'Oo shall I say?"
+
+"Sir George Heriot. Is Mrs. Baines at home?"
+
+His title rendered the little maid incapable of an immediate response.
+
+"Missis is out of a herrand, sir," she stammered; "she won't be long."
+
+"When she comes in, tell her that I'm talking privately to her niece.
+'Privately'; don't forget!"
+
+She turned the handle, and Heriot followed her into the room. Vaguely
+he heard her announce him; he saw the room as in a mist. Momentarily
+all that was clear was Mamie's face, white and wondering in the
+lamplight. She stood where she had been standing at his entrance,
+looking at him; he had the impression of many seconds passing while she
+only looked; many seconds seemed to go by before her colour fluttered
+back and she said, "You?"
+
+"Yes, it's I. Won't you say you're glad to see me?"
+
+"Aunt Lydia has written to you," she said, still gazing at him as if
+she doubted his reality. "Her letter has gone."
+
+"I've come to hear what Dr. Drummond says."
+
+She motioned him to a chair, and drooped weakly on to the shiny couch.
+
+"I am not going to die," she muttered. "Your sympathy has been thrown
+away--I'm a fraud."
+
+In the breathless pause he felt deafened by the thudding of his heart.
+
+"He has given you hope?"
+
+"He said, 'Bosh!' I told him what the doctor told me in Duluth. He
+said, 'Bosh!' One lung isn't quite sound, that's all; I may live to be
+eighty."
+
+"O dear God!" said Heriot slowly, "I thank You!"
+
+She gave a short laugh, harsh and bitter.
+
+"I always posed. My last pose was as a dying woman!"
+
+"Mamie," he said firmly--he went across to her and sat down by her
+side--"Mamie, I love you. I want you to come back to me, my darling. My
+life's no good without you, and I want you for my wife again. Will you
+come?"
+
+He heard her catch her breath; she could not speak. He took her hands,
+and drew her to him. Their lips clung together, and presently he felt
+tears on his cheek.
+
+Then she released herself with a gesture of negation.
+
+"You are mad!" she said. "And _I_ should be madder to accept the
+sacrifice!"
+
+For this he was prepared.
+
+"I am very sane," he answered. "Dearest, when you understand, you will
+see that it is the only reparation you can make me. Listen!"
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43971 ***