CHAPTER XVIII A LOVER, AND NEWS OF LOVERS
Mary Marriott sat alone in her little flat at the top of the old house in Bloomsbury. The new year had begun, bright and cold from its very first day until the present—eight days after its birth.
The terrible fogs and depression of the old year had vanished as if they had never been. On such a morning as this was they seemed but a dim memory.
And yet how much had happened during those weeks when London lay under a leaden pall. For Mary at least they had been the most eventful weeks of her life.
Everything had been changed for her. From obscurity she had been given an unparalleled opportunity of gaining fame—swift and complete—a fame which some of the best judges in London told her was already assured. Nor was this all, stupendous though it was. A few weeks ago she had been as friendless and lonely a girl as any in London; now she had troops of friends, distinguished, brilliant, and fascinating, and among all these kind people she was, as it were, upon a pedestal. They regarded her as a great artist, took her on trust as that; they regarded her also as a tremendous force to aid the victory of the Cause they had at heart.
And there was more even than this. In the old days her art had always been her one ideal in life. The art of the theatre was everything to her. It was so still, but it was welded and fused with another ideal. Art for art's sake, just that and nothing more, was welded and fused with something new and uplifting. She saw how her art might become a means of definitely helping forward a movement which had for its object the relief of the down-trodden and oppressed, the doing away with poverty and misery, the ushering in—at last—of the Golden Age! She was to fulfil her artistic destiny, to do the work she came into the world to do, and at the same time to consecrate that work to the service of her sisters and brethren of England.
In all the socialistic ranks there was no more enthusiastic convert than this lovely and brilliant girl. She was singing now as she sat in her little room, and the crisp, bright winter sunshine poured into it; crooning an old Jacobite song, though her eyes were fixed upon the typewritten manuscript of her part in the new play at the Park Lane Theatre. Her ivory brow was wrinkled a little, for she was deep in thought over a detail of her work—should the voice drop at the end of that impressive line, or would not the excitement in which it was to be uttered give it a sharper and more staccato character?—it required thinking out.
The little sitting-room was not quite the same as it had been. Another bookshelf had been added, and it was filled with the literature of Socialism. On the top shelf was a long row of neat volumes bound in grey-green, the complete works of James Fabian Rose, presented to Mary by the author himself. All over the place masses of flowers were blooming, pale mauve violets from the Riviera, roses of sulphur and blood-colour from Grasse, striped carnations from Nice. Mary had many friends now who sent her flowers. They came constantly, and her tiny room was redolent of sweet odours. The walls of the room now bore legends painted upon them in quaint lettering. Mr. Conrad, the socialistic clergyman, Fabian Rose's friend, was clever with his brush, and had indeed decorated his church with fresco work. He had painted sentences and socialistic texts upon the walls of Mary's sitting-room.
"The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all," was taken from the Book of Proverbs and painted over the door. Upon the board over the fire, painted in black letter, was this quotation from Sir Thomas More: "I am persuaded that till property is taken away there can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor can the world be happily governed, for so long as that is maintained the greatest and the far best of mankind will be still oppressed with a load of cares and anxieties."
There were many other pregnant and pithy sayings upon the walls, and Mary, who used to speak of her cosy little attic as her "sanctum" or "nest," now laughingly called it her "Profession of faith."
Mary also was not quite as she had been. A larger experience of life, new interests, new friends, and, above all, a new ideal had added to her grace and charm of manner, given fulness and maturity even to her beauty. More than ever she was marvellously and wonderfully alive, charged with a kind of radiant energy and force, a joyous power of true correspondence with environment which had made Conrad whisper to James Fabian Rose—one night in the house at Westminster: "For she on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise." Indeed, her experiences had been strangely varied and diversified during the last few weeks.
Rose and his friends had spared nothing in the effort to make her a very perfect instrument which should interpret their ideas to the world at large. They had found their task not only easy, but full of intense pleasure. The girl was so responsive, so quick to mark and learn, of such an enthusiastic and original temper of mind that her education on new lines was a specific joy, and their first hopes seemed already assured of fruition.
It was now only a few days before the play upon which so many hopes depended was to be produced at the Park Lane Theatre.
Already the whole of London was in a fever of curiosity about it. Mr. Goodrick had begun the stimulation of public curiosity in the Daily Wire, Lionel Westwood had continued the work until the whole Press had interested itself and daily teemed with report, rumour, and conjecture.
Almost everyone in the metropolis knew that something quite out of the ordinary, unprecedented, indeed, in the history of the theatre was afoot. Absolutely correct information there was none. Goodrick was reserving full and accurate details for the day before the production, when the Daily Wire promised a complete and authoritative statement of an absolutely exclusive kind.
The three facts which had leaked out in more or less correct fashion, and which were responsible for much of the eager curiosity of London, were the three essential ones. The Socialist, which was announced as the title of the play, was known to be the first step in an organised attempt to use the theatre as a method of socialistic propaganda. It was also said that the play was indubitably the masterpiece of James Fabian Rose. This in itself was sufficient to attract marked interest.
Secondly, every one seemed to be aware that a young actress of extraordinary beauty and talent had been discovered in the provinces and was about to burst into the theatrical firmament as a full-fledged star, a new Duse or Bernhardt, a star of the first magnitude.
Again, there were the most curious rumours afloat in regard to the actual plot of the play. It was said that the whole scheme was nothing more or less than a virulent attack upon a certain great nobleman who owned a large portion of the West End of London and whose name had been much in the public mouth of late. No newspaper had as yet ventured to print the actual name, but it was a more or less open secret that the Duke of Paddington was meant.
Mary had seen but little of the duke, and then she had thought his manner altered. She had met him once or twice at the Roses' house, and he seemed to her to have lost his usual serenity. He was as a man on whose mind something weighs heavily. Restless, and with a certain appeal in his eyes. He looked, Mary reflected upon one of these occasions, like a man who had made some great mistake and was beginning to find it out. She had had little or no private talk with him except on one occasion, and then only for a moment.
One afternoon the duke had taken her and Mrs. Rose to Paddington House in Piccadilly, and showed the two ladies the treasures of the historic place. It was an old-standing promise, dating from the time of his illness at Westminster, that he should do so.
He had called for them in his motor-brougham, and they had noticed his restlessness and depression, both of which seemed accentuated. After a little while the young man's spirits began to improve, and he had not been with them for half an hour when he became bright and animated. In some subtle way he managed to convey to Mary—and she knew that she was not mistaken—a sense that he was glad to see her, glad to be with her, that he liked her.
When they were in the picture gallery Mrs. Rose had walked on a few yards to examine a Goya, and the two younger people were left alone for a minute.
"I have secured my box for the first performance of The Socialist, Miss Marriott," the duke said.
Mary flushed a little, she could not help it. "I am sure——" she began, and then hesitated as to what she should say.
"You mean that I had better not come," the duke answered with a smile. "Oh, I don't think I shall mind Rose's satire, judging from what I heard when the play was read, at any rate, and, besides, I quite understand that it is not I personally who am shot at so much as that I am unfortunately a sort of typical target. The papers I see are full of it and all my friends are chaffing me."
Mary looked at him, her great eyes full of doubt and musing. There was something in his voice which touched her—a weariness, a sadness. "I don't know," she said, "but I think it very likely that when you see the play as it is now you will find it hits harder than you expect. We are all very much in earnest. I think it is very good of you to come at all. I hope at any rate that you will forgive me my part in it. You and I live in very different ways of life, but since we have met once or twice I should not like you to think hardly of me."
She spoke perfectly sincerely, absolutely naturally, as few people ever spoke to him.
The duke's answer had been singular, and Mary did not forget it. "Miss Marriott," he said in a voice which suddenly became intensely earnest and vibrated strangely, "let me say this, once and for all, Never, under any circumstances whatever, could I think hardly or unkindly of you. To be allowed to call myself your friend, if, indeed, I may be so allowed, is one of the greatest privileges I possess or ever can possess."
He had been about to say more, and his eyes seemed eloquent with further words, when Mrs. Rose rejoined them. Mary heard him give a little weary sigh, saw the light die out of his eyes, and something strangely like resignation fall over his face.
She had wondered very much at the time what were the causes of the recent changes in the duke's manner, what trouble assailed him. When he had spoken to her in the picture gallery there had been almost a note of pleading in his voice. It hurt her at the time, and she had often recalled it since, more especially as she had seen nothing of him for some time. He had not been to see the Roses, and had, it seemed, quite dropped out of the life of Mary and her friends.
The girl was sorry, perhaps more sorry than she cared to admit to herself. Quite apart from the romance of their first meeting, without being in any way influenced by the unique circumstances of his rank and wealth, Mary liked the duke very much indeed. She liked him better, perhaps, than any other man she had ever met. It was always a pleasure to her to be in his society, and she made no disguise about it to herself.
Mary put down the manuscript of the play and glanced at the little carriage clock, covered in red leather, which stood on the mantelshelf.
It was eleven o'clock, and she had to be at the theatre at the half hour to meet Aubrey Flood and discuss some details of stage business with him. Then she was to lunch with the Roses at Westminster, after which she would return to the theatre and begin a rehearsal, which, with a brief interval for dinner, might last till any hour of the night.
She put on her hat and jacket, descended the various flights of stairs which led to her nest in the old Georgian mansion, and walked briskly towards Park Lane.
Mr. Flood had not yet arrived, she was told by the stage-door keeper, and thanking him she passed down a short stone passage and pushed open the swing door which led directly on to the stage itself.
She was in a meditative mood that morning, and as her feet tapped upon the boards of the huge empty space she wondered if indeed she was destined to triumph there. Was this really to be the scene in which she would realise her life-long dreams or—— She put the ugly alternative away from her with a shudder and fell to considering her part, walking the boards and taking up this or that position upon them in solitary rehearsal.
The curtain was up and the enormous cavern of the auditorium in gloom, save only where a single pale shaft of sunlight filtered through a circular window in the roof. The brown holland which covered all the seats and gilding seemed like some ghostly audience. To Mary's right, on the prompt side of the proscenium, a man stood upon a little railed-in platform some eight feet above the stage-floor level. He was an electrician, and was busy with the frame of black vulcanite, full four feet square and covered with taps and switches of brass. From here the operator would control all the lights of the stage as the play went on. A click, and the moon would rise over the garden and flood it with soft, silver light; a handle turned this way or that, and the lights of the mimic scene would rise or die and flood the stage with colour—colour fitted to the emotion of the moment, as the music of the orchestra would be fitted to it also—science invoked once more to aid the great illusion.
Mary looked up at the man and the thought came to her swiftly. Yes, it was illusion, a strange and dream-like phantasma of the truth! She herself was a shadow in a dream, moving through unrealities, animated by art, so that the dream should take shape and colour, and the others—the real people—on the other side of the footlights should learn their lesson and take a forceful memory home. It was a strange and confusing thought, remote from actuality, as her mood was at that moment. She looked upwards into a haze of light, far away among the network of beams and ropes and hanging scenery of the "grid."
A narrow-railed bridge crossed the open space nearly forty feet above her. Two men in their shirt-sleeves were standing there talking, small and far away. They seemed like sailors on the yard of a ship, seen from the deck below.
The girl had seen it all a thousand times before, under every aspect of shifting light and colour, but to-day it had a certain unfamiliarity and strangeness. She realised that she was not quite herself, her usual self, this morning, though for what reason she could not divine. Perhaps the strain of hard work, of opening her mind to new impressions and ideals, was beginning to tell a little upon her. Life had changed too suddenly for her, perhaps, and, above all, there was the abiding sense of waiting and expectation. Her triumph or her failure were imminent. One thing or the other would assuredly happen. But, meanwhile, the waiting was trying, and she longed for the moment of fruition—this way or that.
Her reverie was broken in upon. With quick footsteps, quick footsteps which echoed on the empty stage, Aubrey Flood came up to her. He was wearing a heavy fur coat, the collar and cuffs of Persian lamb. His hat was of grey felt—a hard hat—for he had a little farm down at Pinner, where he went for week-ends, and affected something of the country gentleman in his dress.
Mary was glad to see him at last, not only because she had been waiting for him to discuss business matters, but because a friendly face at this moment cut into her rather weary and dreamy mood, and brought her back to the life of the moment and the movement of the day.
"Oh, here you are!" she said gladly. "I've been waiting quite a long time, and I've been in the blues, rather. The empty theatre, when one is the only person in it, suggests horrible possibilities for the future, don't you think?"
He answered her quickly. "No, I don't think anything of the sort. Mary, you are getting into that silly nervous state which comes to so many girls before the first night, the first important night, I mean. You must not do it, I won't allow it, I won't let you. You're overstrained, of course. We're all very much over-strained. So much depends upon the play. But, all the same, we all know that everything is sure and certain. So cheer up, Mary."
Flood had called her by her Christian name for two weeks now. The two had become friends. The celebrated young actor-manager and the unknown provincial actress had realised each other in the kindliest fashion. The girl had never met a cleverer, more artistic, nor more chivalrous man in the ranks of her profession, and Flood himself, a decent, clean-living citizen of London, had not grasped hands with a girl like Mary for many months.
Mary Marriott sighed. "Oh," she said, "it's all very well for you to talk in that way. But you know, Mr. Flood, how all of you have poured the whole thing on to me, as it were. You have insisted that I am the pivot of it all, and there are moments when it is too overwhelming and one gets tired and dispirited."
"Don't talk nonsense," he answered quickly.
"All right, then, I won't," she replied. "Now let's go into the question of that business in the second act. My idea is, that Lord Winchester should——"
He cut her short with a single exclamation. "That's a thing we can talk over later," he said. "At the moment I have something more important to say."
Mary stopped. Flood's voice was very earnest and urgent. She felt that he had discovered some flaw in the conduct of the rehearsals, that some very serious hitch had occurred.
Her voice was anxious as she said that they had better discuss the thing immediately. "I hope that it's nothing very serious," she said, alarmed by the disturbance in his voice. "I am going to lunch with the Roses, and as you're late I ought to be off in a few minutes. But what's gone wrong?"
"As yet," he replied, "nothing has gone wrong at all."
"I hope nothing will," she said, by now quite alarmed by his tone. "Please tell me at once."
"I can't tell you here," he replied. "Would you mind coming into my room?"
She followed him, wondering.
They went into Flood's private room. It faced west, and the winter sun being now high in the heavens did not penetrate there at this hour. The fire was nearly out, only a few cinders glowed with their dull black and crimson on the hearth.
"How cheerless!" Mary said as she came into the room.
With a quick movement Aubrey Flood turned to the wall. There was a succession of little clicking noises, and then the electric light leaped up and the place was full of a dusky yellow radiance.
"That's better," he said in a curiously muffled voice, "though it's not right. Somehow I know it's not right. No, I am sure that it's not right!"
His voice rang with pain. His voice was full of melancholy and pain as he looked at her. Never, in all his stage triumphs in the mimic life he could portray so skilfully and well, had his mobile, sensitive voice achieved such a note of pain as now.
Suddenly Mary knew.
"What do you mean, Mr. Flood?" she said faintly.
He turned swiftly to her, his voice had a note of passion also now. His eyes shone, his mobile lips trembled a little—they seemed parched and dry.
"Mary," he said, "I love you as I have never loved any one in the world before, and I am frightened because I see no answering light in your eyes, they do not change when you see me."
He paused for a moment, and then with a swift movement he caught her by the hands, drew her a little closer to him, and gazed steadily into her face. His own was quite changed. She had never seen him like this before. It was as if for the first time a mask had been suddenly peeled away and the real man beneath revealed. He had made love to Mary during rehearsals, he was her lover in the play of James Fabian Rose—but this was quite different.
He spoke simply without rhetoric or bombast. He was a man now, no longer an actor.
"Oh, my dear!" he said, "I have no words to tell you how I love and reverence you. I am not playing a part now, I'm not a puppet mouthing the words of another man any longer, and I can't find expression. I can only say that my whole heart and soul are consumed by one wish, one hope. It is you! Ever since I first met you at Rose's house I have watched you with growing wonder and growing love. Now I can keep silence no longer. Dear, do you care for me a little? Can you ever care for me? I am not worthy of one kind look from your beautiful eyes, I know that well. But I am telling you the truth when I say that I have not been a beast as so many men in the profession are. You know how things sometimes are with actors, every one knows. Well, I've not been like that, Mary; I've kept straight, I can offer you a clean and honest love, and though such things would never weigh with you, I am well-to-do. My position on the stage, you know. I am justified in calling it a fairly leading one, am I not? We should have all the community of tastes and interests that two people could possibly have. We love the same art. My dear, dear girl, my beautiful and radiant lady, will you marry me? Will you make me happiest of living men?"
His urgent, pleading voice dropped and died away. He held her hands still. His face shone with an earnestness and anxiety that were almost tragic.
Mary was deeply moved and stirred. No man had ever spoken to her like this before. Her life had been apart from anything of the kind. All her adult years had been spent upon the stage and touring about from one place to another in the provinces. She had always lived with another girl in the company, and had always enjoyed the pleasant, easy bohemian camaraderie with men that the touring life engenders. Men had flirted with her, of course. There had been sighs and longings, equally, of course, and now and then, though rarely, she had endured the vile persecution of some human beast in authority, a manager, or what not. But never had she heard words like these before, had seen an honourable and distinguished gentleman consumed with love of her and offering her himself and all he had, asking her to be his wife. He was saying it once more: "Mary, will you be my wife?"
She trembled as she heard the words, trembled all over as a leaf in the wind. It was as though she had never heard it before, it came like a chord of sweet music.
In that moment dormant forces within her awoke, things long hidden from herself began to move and stir in her heart. A curtain seemed to roll up within her consciousness, and she knew the truth. She knew that it was for this that she had come into the world, that the holy sacrament of marriage was her destined lot.
Yet, though it was the passionate pleading of the man before her which had worked this change and revealed things long hidden, it was not to him that her heart went out. She thought of no one, no vision rose in her mind. She only knew that this was not the man who should strike upon the deep chords of her being and wake from them the supreme harmonies of love.
She was immensely touched, immensely flattered, full of a sisterly tenderness towards him. Affection welled up in her. She wanted to kiss him, to stroke his hair, to say how sorry she was for him. She had never had a brother, she would like a brother just like this. He was simple and good, true, and in touch with the verities of life—down under the veneer imposed upon him by his vocation and position upon the stage.
She answered him as frankly and simply as he had spoken to her; she was voicing her thoughts, no more, no less. Almost instinctively she called him by his Christian name. She hardly knew that she did it. He had bared his soul to her and she felt that she had known him for years and had always known him.
"It's not possible in that way, Aubrey," she said. "I know it isn't, I can't give you any explanation. There is no one else, but, somehow, I know it within me. But, believe me, I do care for you, I honour and respect you. I like you more than almost any one I have ever met. I will be your friend for ever and ever. But what you ask is not mine to give. I can only say that." The pain on his face deepened. "I knew," he answered sadly, "I knew that is what you would say, and, indeed, who am I that you should love me? But you said"—he hesitated—"you said that there was no one else."
She nodded, hardly trusting herself to speak, for his face was a wedge of sheer despair. "Then," he said suddenly, more to himself than to her, "then perhaps some day I may have another chance." He dropped her hands and half turned from her. "God bless you, dear," he said simply, "and now let us forget what has passed for the present and resume ordinary relations again. Remember that both for the sake of our art, our own reputations, and the cause we believe in, The Socialist has got to be a success."
In a minute more they were both eagerly discussing the technical theatre business which was the occasion of their meeting. Both found it a great relief.
Almost before they had concluded Flood was called away, and Mary, looking at her watch, found that she might as well go down to Westminster at once, for though the Roses did not lunch until a quarter before two there was no object in going back to her flat. She went out into the surging roar of Oxford Street at high noon, momentarily confusing and bewildering after the gloom and semi-silence of the empty theatre. Her idea had been to walk through the park, but when she began she found that the scene through which she had passed had left her somewhat shaken. She trembled a little, her limbs were heavy, she could not walk.
She got into a hansom and was driving down Park Lane, thinking deeply as she rolled easily along that avenue of palaces. She knew well enough that in a sense a great honour had been done her. There was no one on the stage with a better reputation than Aubrey Flood. He was a leading actor; he was a gentleman against whom nothing was said; he was rich, influential, and charming. Sincerity was the keynote of his life. Hundreds of girls, as beautiful and cleverer than she was—so she thought to herself—would have gladly accepted all he had to offer. She was a humble-minded girl, entirely bereft of egotism or conceit, and she felt certain that Aubrey Flood might marry almost any one for choice.
She had always liked him, now she did far more than that. A real affection for him had blossomed in her heart, and yet it was no more than that. Why had she not accepted him? She put the answer away from her mind; she would not, dare not, face it.
There are few people with sensitive minds who take life seriously, who value their own inward and spiritual balance, that have not experienced—at some time or another—this most serious of all sensations recurring within the hidden citadel of the soul.
A thought is born, a thought we are afraid of. It rises in the subconscious brain, and our active and conscious intelligence tells us that one thing is there. We are aware of its presence, but we shun it, push it away, try to forget it. We exercise our will and refuse to allow it to become real to us. It was thus with Mary now.
Mrs. Rose met her in the hall of the beautiful and artistic little house in Westminster. She kissed the girl affectionately.
"I shall be busy for half an hour, dear," she said; "household affairs, you know. Fabian is out; he went to breakfast with Mr. Goodrick this morning to discuss the Press campaign in connection with the play. But he'll be back to lunch, and he'll go with you to the rehearsal this afternoon. Take your things off in my room and go into the drawing-room. The weekly papers have just come, and there are all these. I will send the morning papers up, too."
Mary did as she was bid. The beautiful drawing-room was bright and cheery, as the sunlight poured into it and a wood fire crackled merrily upon the hearth.
She sat down with a sigh of relief. Unwilling to think, yet afraid of the restful silence which was so conducive to thought, she took up one of the morning papers and opened it. Her eyes fell idly upon the news column for a moment, and then she grew very pale while the crisp sheet rustled in her hands.
She saw two oval portraits. One was of the Duke of Paddington, an excellent likeness of the young man as she knew him and had seen him look a thousand times.
The second portrait, which was joined and looped to the first by a decoration of true lover's knots, was that of a girl of extraordinary and patrician beauty. Underneath this was the name, "The Lady Constance Camborne."
She read: "We are able to announce the happy intelligence that a marriage has been arranged——" when the paper fell from her fingers upon the carpet.
Mary knew now. The hidden thought had awakened into full and furious life. Her pale face suddenly grew hot with shame and she covered it with her hands. When she eventually picked up the paper and finished the paragraph she found that the duke's engagement had been a fact for a month past, but was only now formally announced.