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.