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.