I
In the weeks following it was made clearly evident that Wynne Rendall was taking no precautions that his wife should share his new prosperity. Conceivably he thought that the mere sharing of his name—a name which had sprung into such instant prominence—was adequate compensation for any woman.
The newspapers had given him unsparing praise, and already he had been approached by several managements with a view to undertaking their productions. To these offers he shook his head, replying that he was a writer by profession and not a producer.
In an interview he told the reporter that he only worked in the direction of his ambitions, and for the moment his ambitions were satisfied.
This was, of course, mere persiflage, but several members of the reading public thought it very fine.
He was asked everywhere—but only accepted invitations which appealed to him. At the functions he attended he usually contrived to fire off at least a couple of startling phrases which were remembered and repeated by those persons who unintentionally work inside advertising for the would-be great.
Being out and about so much he did not bother to alter the conditions of life at home. It is true he left rather more money for Eve to use, but since he showed no disposition for her to take a place beside him on the new plane she found no incentive to change the old régime.
On the morning after the play was produced, with all the notices before her, Eve had stretched out a hand to him, and said:
“You’ve won—absolutely you’ve won. My dear, I am so proud.”
“Yes, I’ve made a start. There’s a long way to go yet.”
With a chilly sense she felt that he had not said this from any modesty, but rather to delay admitting the success for which they had fought their battle.
She was conscious afterwards that he shunned the topic of his success, and kept the conversation on impersonal lines.
That glorious moment to which all her hopes had been pinned and all her labours consecrated did not mature into reality. It seemed that he was floating out of her life as a steamship passes a yacht at sea. And so, with the measure of his success, there came about in Eve a corresponding stagnation.
It would have been easy then to have engaged a servant to do the housework, to have bought furniture, linen, and the many delightful things she had planned to do; but somehow the inclination to do so had gone. It was preferable to have occupation of some sort, if only to keep her thoughts from brooding on these disappointments. Besides, she took an almost cynical interest in wondering how long he would allow her to remain as a drudge who worked for him with her two hands.
Wynne himself was cheerfully indifferent to the trend of her thoughts. He was in excellent spirits, enthusiastic for the present, and full of plans for the future.
When “Witches” came to an end he said he proposed to put on a play of his own. Lane Quiltan would supply the capital.
“Have you asked him?” said Eve.
“Not yet.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to do so before being too sure?”
He tossed the idea aside with:
“Some things one can take for granted. I am as confident of his support as I am confident that at least five young ladies in the company are wondering when I shall invite them to Brighton for the week-end.”
With rather an effort, Eve replied:
“Only five?”
“I said in the company,” he very rapturously retorted.
The suggestion of these words struck a peculiar chord of memory in Eve. They recalled very vividly a vulgar little cousin of hers—a boy scarcely out of his teens—who had boasted, with considerable pride, of a liaison with a young lady at a tobacconist’s. It was an unpleasant parallel, but she could not clear it from her mind.
Hitherto the physical side of Wynne had been so dormant. She had nursed the shell which held his spirit, and nourished it to a manlier form. As he stood there before speaking she realized that in body he was a man of different fibre, capable of passions not only of the mind. It would be tragic and pitiable if these were to be awakened by the same vulgar instincts which attack the little Lotharios of nineteen.
This was the man who had starved for a week to buy a copy of Walter Pater.
She fell to wondering whether, had their first meeting been now instead of then, she could have sat the night through in his rooms without fear of consequence.
And while she wondered upon these matters, Wynne’s eyes travelled critically over her face and figure.
“You’re rather drab,” he thought; “you haven’t much colour. If your hair were dressed differently it would be an improvement, perhaps. That is certainly a deplorable dress—and your hands!”
A man whose function is to produce plays acquires a ready knack of judging possible qualities by external indications. The habit is not one to be recommended in the home, for in practising it he is apt to overlook many essentials and ignore grave liabilities.
A just man would not accuse a sweep of possessing a blackened soul because his face was sooted from sweeping the flues. The instance may sound trivial enough, but it is no less trivial than the train of thought running through Wynne’s lightly-poised mind as he contemplated the wife of his own making. His eyes were deceived by petty superficiality, and blinded to the beauty veiled behind a screen of three years’ unremitting toil. He did not bother to speculate if that beauty would leap to glorious life at the touch of the hand that swept the screen away. To follow his thoughts to their inglorious anchorage, he was sensible to a wave of self-pity. It seemed rather ill-luck, with the ball of success at his feet, a fresh glow of manhood ripening in his veins, that he should be tied to a woman who had lost the fine edge of her desirability.
“I see,” said Eve at last; “and do you propose to disappoint them?”
Wynne dropped his cigarette into the grate.
“I never know what I propose to do. The greatest mistake in the world is to cut the picnic sandwiches before knowing what the weather will be.”