“Psha! sir,” said the actress. “Nothing in this world is certain. I am a poor moralist, but I recognise the fact, and make it the guide of my life. At the same time I have noticed that, although one's carefully arranged plans are daily thrown into terrible disorder by the slovenliness of the actors to whom we assign certain parts and certain dialogue, yet in the end nature makes even a more satisfactory drama out of the ruins of our schemes than we originally designed. So, in this case, sir, I am not without hope that even though our gentleman's lips remain sealed—nay, even though our gentleman remain sober—a great calamity—we may still be able to accomplish our purpose. You will keep your ears open and I shall keep my eyes open, and it will be strange if between us we cannot get the better of so commonplace a scoundrel.”
“I place myself unreservedly in your hands, madam,” said Oliver; “and I can only repeat what you have said so well—namely, that even the most clumsy of our schemes—which this one of yours certainly is not—may become the basis of a most ingenious drama, designed and carried out by that singularly adroit playwright, Destiny. And so I shall not fail you on Thursday evening.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
Goldsmith for the next few days felt very ill at ease. He had a consciousness of having wasted a good deal of valuable time waiting upon Mrs. Abington and discussing with her the possibility of accomplishing the purpose which he had at heart; for he could not but perceive how shallow was the scheme which she had devised for the undoing of Mary Horneck's enemy. He felt that it would, after all, have been better for him to place himself in the hands of the fencing-master whom Baretti had promised to find out for him, and to do his best to run the scoundrel through the body, than to waste his time listening to the crude scheme concocted by Mrs. Abington, in close imitation of some third-class playwright.
He felt, however, that he had committed himself to the actress and her scheme. It would be impossible for him to draw back after agreeing to join her at supper on the Thursday night. But this fact did not prevent his exercising his imagination with a view to find out some new plan for obtaining possession of the letters. Thursday came, however, without seeing him any further advanced in this direction than he had been when he had first gone to the actress, and he began to feel that hopelessness which takes the form of hoping for the intervention of some accident to effect what ingenuity has failed to accomplish-Mrs. Abington had suggested the possibility of such an accident taking place—in fact, she seemed to rely rather upon the possibility of such an occurrence than upon the ingenuity of her own scheme; and Oliver could not but think that she was right in this respect. He had a considerable experience of life and its vicissitudes, and he knew that when destiny was in a jesting mood the most judicious and cunningly devised scheme may be overturned by an accident apparently no less trivial than the raising of a hand, the fluttering of a piece of lace, or the cry of a baby.
He had known of a horse's casting a shoe preventing a runaway match and a vast amount of consequent misery, and he had heard of a shower of rain causing a confirmed woman hater to take shelter in a doorway, where he met a young woman who changed—for a time—all his ideas of the sex. As he recalled these and other freaks of fate, he could not but feel that Mrs. Abington was fully justified in her confidence in accident as a factor in all human problems. But he was quite aware that hoping for an accident is only another form of despair.
In the course of the day appointed by Mrs. Abington for her supper he met Baretti, and reminded him of the promise he had made to find an Italian fencing master and send him to Brick Court.
“What!” cried Baretti. “Have you another affair on your hands in addition to that in which you have already been engaged? Psha! sir. You do not need to be a swordsman in order to flog a bookseller.”