6
"Hilloa," he said, "you're late!"
"No, I'm not," Gilbert replied.
"Yes, you are. The Jaynes have gone!"
"I saw them going. I've been here for over half-an-hour, waiting for you!"
"Over half-an-hour! What's up, Gilbert?"
Gilbert put his arm in Henry's and made him move out of the Savoy courtyard. "Come down to the Embankment," he said. "It's quieter there. I want to talk to you!"
"But hadn't we better go home? We can talk on the way. It's late...."
"No. I want to go to the Embankment. Damn it all, Quinny, it's a sentimental place for a heart-to-heart talk, isn't it?"
"You aren't drunk, Gilbert, I suppose?"
"Never so sober in my life, Quinny. Besides, I don't get drunk. People who talk about beer and whisky as much as I do, never get drunk. Come along, there's a good chap!"
"Very well ... only I'm not going to stay long. I'm no good for work the day after I've had a long night...."
"I won't keep you long. How did the supper-party go off?"
"Damnably. Two tame novelists turned up ... Boltt and Lensley!"
"Those asses!"
"Yes. Lensley 'chattered' to Lady Cecily, and Boltt bored and bored and bored.... I took him down a bit. I rubbed in the Morning Report review. The little toad could hardly sit still! Of course, he affected the superior person attitude!"
"God be merciful to him, poor little rat! He wants to be a wicked, hell-for-leather fellow, but he hasn't got the stomach for it! What did Cecily say when I didn't turn up?"
"She looked rather cross. She told me as we came away to tell you she was angry with you. You're to go and apologise to her as soon as possible!"
"Did she?"
"Yes. I say, Gilbert, why didn't you turn up?"
They had reached the Embankment, and they crossed to the riverside and leant against the parapet.
"Because I was afraid to," said Gilbert.
"Afraid to!"
"Yes. Can't you see I'm in love with her?"
"Well, I guessed as much...."
"I love her so much that she can do what she likes with me, and all she likes to do is to destroy me!"
"Destroy you!"
"Yes. If you love Cecily, she demands the whole of your life. Every bit of it. She consumes you.... Oh, I know this sounds like a penny dreadful, Quinny, but it's true. I've asked her to run away with me, but she won't come. She says she hates scandal and she likes her social position. My God, I feel sick when I see Jimphy with her ... like a damned big lobster putting his ... his claws about her. He isn't a bad fellow in his silly way, but I can't stand him as Cecily's husband!"
"I know what you mean," said Henry.
"I thought that if Cecily and I were to go away together, we could get our lives into some sort of perspective, and then I could go on with my work and have her as well, but she won't go away with me. She wants me to hang around, being her lover ... and I can't do that, Quinny. It's mean and furtive, and I hate that. You're always listening for some one coming ... a servant or the husband or some one ... and I can't stand that. If I love a woman, I love her, and I don't want to spend part of my life in pretending that I don't. I loathe myself when I have to change the talk suddenly or move away when a door opens.... Do you understand, Quinny?"
Henry nodded his head, but did not speak.
"Once when I'd been begging Cecily to go away with me, Jimphy walked into the room ... and I had to pretend to be talking about some nasturtiums that Cecily had grown. I felt like a cad. That's what's rotten about loving another man's wife. It's the treachery of the thing, the pretending.... I've often wondered why it is that love of that sort seems so romantic and splendid in books and so damnably mean when it comes into the Divorce Court ... but when I met Cecily I knew why ... it's because of the treachery and the deceit. I used to think that it was beautiful in books because artists were able to see the hidden beauty, and ugly in the Divorce Court because ordinary people only saw the surface things ... but I'm not sure now."
He stopped speaking, but Henry did not speak instead. He did not know what to say; he felt indeed that there was nothing to be said, that he must simply listen. He watched the electric signs on the other side of the river as they spelt out the virtues of Someone's Teas and Another's Whisky, and wondered how long it would be before Gilbert said something else. He was beginning to be bored by the business, and he felt sleepy. He was jealous too, when he thought that Gilbert had kissed Cecily and had been held in her beautiful arms....
"Cecily doesn't mind about the shabbiness of it," he heard Gilbert saying. "We've talked about that, and she says it doesn't matter a bit. All that matters to her is that she shan't be found out ... too publicly anyhow! She called me a prig when I said that I was afraid of tainting my work...."
"Tainting your work?"
"Yes. Perhaps it is priggish of me, but I feel that if I'm mean in one thing I may be mean in another. I'm terribly afraid of doing bad work, Quinny, and I got an idea into my head that if I let taint into my life in one place, I couldn't confine it and it would spread to other places. Do you see? If I let myself get into a rotten position with Cecily, I might write down...."
"I don't see that," said Henry. "Because you love a married woman, it doesn't follow that you'll pot-boil."
"No, perhaps not. But I was afraid of it. I suppose it was priggish of me. That wasn't the only thing, however. I knew that if I did what Cecily wanted me to do, I'd spend most of my time with her or thinking about her. I can't work if I'm doing that, for I think of her and long for her.... Oh, let's go home. It isn't fair to keep you here listening to my twaddle!"
But they did not move. They gazed down on the swiftly-flowing river, and presently they heard Big Ben striking one deep note.
"One o'clock!" said Gilbert.
"What are you going to do about it, Gilbert?" Henry asked at last.
"I'm going away from London. I've chucked my job on the Daily Echo...."
"Good Lord, man, what for?"
"Well, I'm fed-up with the English theatre to begin with, and I'm fed-up with journalism too ... and it's the only way I can get free of Cecily. I must finish the new comedy and I can't finish it if I stay in town and see Cecily. She won't let me finish it. She'll make me go here and go there with her. Shell keep me making love to her when I ought to be working. God damn women, Quinny!"
"You're excited, Gilbert!"
"Yes, I know I am. When I'm with Cecily, I'm like a jelly-fish. She sucks the brains out of me. She doesn't care whether I finish my comedy or not. She doesn't care what happens to my work so long as I hang around and love her and kiss her whenever she wants me to. My brains go to bits when I'm with her. I'm all emotion and sensation ... just like those asses Lensley and Boltt. Quinny, fancy spending your life turning out the sort of stuff those two men write. They've written about a dozen books each, and I suppose they're good for twenty or thirty more. I'd rather be a scavenger!"
They walked along the Embankment towards Waterloo Bridge.
"I'm going to Anglesey," Gilbert said. "I shall go and stay there until the end of the summer!"
"I shall miss you, Gilbert. So will Ninian and Roger!"
"I shall miss you three, but it can't be helped. I'm the sort of man who succumbs to women ... I can't help it. If they're beautiful and soft and full of love ... like Cecily ... they down me. Their femininity topples me over, and there's no work to be got out of me while I'm like that. But my work's of more consequence to me than loving and kissing, Quinny, and if I can't do it while I'm Cecily's lover, then I'll go away from her and do it!"
"What makes you think you could do it if she were to go away with you?"
"I don't know. Hope, I suppose."
They walked up Villiers Street into the Strand, and made their way towards Bloomsbury.
"I suppose," said Gilbert, "you wouldn't like to come to Anglesey too?"
Henry hesitated for a few moments. He had a vision of Lady Cecily's beautiful face leaning against the padded side of the car, and he remembered that she had smiled and waved her hand to him....
"No," he replied, "I don't think so ... not at present at any rate!" and then, added in explanation, "If I go, too, the house will be broken up. That would be a pity!"
"I forgot that," Gilbert answered. "Yes, of course!"
THE SIXTH CHAPTER
1
Gilbert did not leave London, as he had intended, for Sir Geoffrey Mundane definitely decided to produce "The Magic Casement" in succession to the play which was then being performed at his theatre. He had already discussed the caste with Gilbert, and on the morning after the scene on the Embankment, he telephoned to Gilbert, telling him that he had made engagements for the play, and would like to fix a date on which he should read the manuscript to the company. "Any day'll suit me," Gilbert had informed him, and Sir Geoffrey thereupon settled that the reading should take place two days later. "I suppose," he said, "you'd like to attend the rehearsals?" and Gilbert, forgetting his resolution to fly from Lady Cecily, said that he would. He thought that the experience would be very valuable to him. He became so excited at the prospect of seeing a play of his performed at a West End theatre that he was unable to sit still, and his language, always extravagant, became absurd. He broke every rule that Roger had invented. "It'll take all the royalties you'll receive to pay off this score!" Roger said, thrusting the fine-book before him.
"Poo!" said Gilbert. "I'll buy up the Ten Commandments with one night's royalty! Oh, it's going to be a success, I tell you. It'll run for a year ... more than that ... two years!..." He began to estimate the number of performances the play would receive. "Six evening performances and two matinées every week for fifty-two weeks! Eight times fifty-two, Roger ... you were a Second Wrangler, you ought to know that! Four hundred and sixteen! Lordy God, what a lot! And if I get ten pounds every time it's done ... Oh-h-h! Four thousand, one hundred and sixty pounds! And then there'll be American rights and provincial rights.... I'll tell you what I'll do, coves! I'll buy you all a stick of barley-sugar each, or a penn'orth of acid-drops ... which 'ud you like?..."
It was during the rehearsals of "The Magic Casement" that "Broken Spears" was published.
"It isn't as good as 'Drusilla,'" they said to Henry, when they had read it, "but it'll be more popular!"
It was. The critics who had praised "Drusilla" were not impressed by "Broken Spears," but the critics who had been indifferent to "Drusilla" praised "Broken Spears" so extravagantly that six thousand copies of it were sold in six months, apart from the copies which were sold to the lending libraries, and the sale of "Drusilla," in consequence of the success of "Broken Spears," increased from three hundred and seventy-five copies to one thousand five hundred and eighty. Mr. Quinn, in thanking Henry for a copy of it, merely said, in direct reference to the book, "I see you've been tickling the English. Don't go on doing it!" and the effect of this criticism was so stimulating that Henry destroyed the three chapters of "Turbulence" which were in manuscript and started to re-write the book. Literary agents now began to write to him, telling him how charmed they were with his work and how certain they were of their ability to increase his income considerably; and a publisher of some enterprise and resource wrote to him and said that he would like to see his third book.
"You look as if you were established, Quinny!" said Roger, and Henry blushed and murmured deprecatingly about himself.
"How's the Bar?" he said.
"Oh, it's not bad. I got a fellow off to-day who ought to have had six months hard," Roger answered. "And a new solicitor has given me a brief. We ought to ask him to dinner and feed him well. F. E. Robinson always tells his butler to bring out the second-quality wine for solicitors. Snob!"
"We seem to be getting on, don't we, coves?" Gilbert interjected. "Look at all these press-cuttings!..."
He held out a fistful of slips which had come that evening from a Press-Cutting Agency. "All about me," he said, "and the play. Mundane knows more about the preliminary puff than any one else in England. He calls me 'this talented young author from whom much may be expected.' I never thought I should get pleasure out of a trade advertisement, but I do. I'm lapping up this stuff like billy-o. I saw a poster on the side of a 'bus this afternoon, advertising 'The Magic Casement.' Mundane's name was in big letters, and you could just see mine with the naked eye. I hopped on to the 'bus and went for a fourpenny ride on it, so's I could touch the damn thing ... and I very nearly told the conductor who I was. It's no good pretending I'm not conceited. I am, and I don't care. Where's Ninian?"
"Not come in yet. How'd the rehearsals go to-day?" Roger answered.
"Better than any other day. They're beginning to feel their parts. It's about time, too. I felt sick with fright yesterday, they were so wooden. Mundane might have been the village idiot, instead of the fine actor he is ... but they're better now. Ninian's late!"
"Is he? He'll be here presently. By the way, my Cousin Rachel's coming to town to-morrow. She's been investigating something or other ... factory life, I think. I thought I'd bring her here to dinner. She may be interesting."
"Do," said Gilbert, and then, as he heard the noise of the street-door being closed, he added, "There's Ninian now!"
Ninian, on his way to his room, stopped for a moment or two, to shout at them, "I say, the mater and Mary've come up from Devon. I got a wire this afternoon. I'm not grubbing with you to-night. They want to go to a theatre, and I've got to climb into gaudy garments and go with them...."
He closed the door and ran up the stairs, but before he reached the first landing, Gilbert called after him, "I say, Ninian!"
"Yes," he answered, pausing on the stairs.
"Bring them to dinner to-morrow night. Roger's Cousin Rachel is coming, and we may as well make a party of it. Gaudy garments and liqueurs. Do you think they'll stay for the first night of my play?"
"That's one of the reasons why they've come up," Ninian answered.