IN but one important respect was Brent's original plan modified. Instead of getting her stage experience in France, Susan joined a London company making one of those dreary, weary, cheap and trashy tours of the smaller cities of the provinces with half a dozen plays by Jones, Pinero, and Shaw.
Clélie stayed in London, toiling at the language, determined to be ready to take the small part of French maid in Brent's play in the fall. Brent and Palmer accompanied Susan; and every day for several hours Brent and the stage manager—his real name was Thomas Boil and his professional name was Herbert Streathern—coached the patient but most unhappy Susan line by line, word by word, gesture by gesture, in the little parts she was playing. Palmer traveled with them, making a pretense of interest that ill concealed his boredom and irritation. This for three weeks; then he began to make trips to London to amuse himself with the sports, amateur and professional, with whom he easily made friends—some of them men in a position to be useful to him socially later on. He had not spoken of those social ambitions of his since Susan refused to go that way with him—but she knew he had them in mind as strongly as ever. He was the sort of man who must have an objective, and what other objective could there be for him who cared for and believed in the conventional ambitions and triumphs only—the successes that made the respectable world gape and grovel and envy?
"You'll not stick at this long," he said to Susan.
"I'm frightfully depressed," she admitted. "It's tiresome—and hard—and so hideously uncomfortable! And I've lost all sense of art or profession. Acting seems to be nothing but a trade, and a poor, cheap one at that."
He was not surprised, but was much encouraged by this candid account of her state of mind. Said he:
"It's my private opinion that only your obstinacy keeps you from giving it up straight off. Surely you must see it's nonsense. Drop it and come along—and be comfortable and happy. Why be obstinate? There's nothing in it."
"Perhaps it is obstinacy," said she. "I like to think it's something else."
"Drop it. You want to. You know you do."
"I want to, but I can't," replied she.
He recognized the tone, the expression of the eyes, the sudden showing of strength through the soft, young contour. And he desisted.