It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

Was Judith Arkroyd aware, all the time, that this man's bark was in troubled waters, while she was floating in a secure haven—secure, at least, for now? Did she ask herself any questions?

Or was Challis just a shade priggish to show a stony front to such a very meek little reminiscence? His actual reply was: "I thought it was a good deal more, since my visit to Royd, I mean."

"I hope you'll pay us another visit." Judith thought to herself that two could play that game. And Challis immediately felt chilly, illogically; rather as though the soul-brush had slacked off. He would have to say something serious now, to merge this little fault in the stratification of their conversation.

"I hope to, certainly. Well!—what were we saying?... Oh yes!—you told me your age, you know. But even then I had misgivings about Aminta Torrington. I can't say I wasn't glad when old Magnus put his foot down. It's an odious part, and it wouldn't have suited you. Thyrza Schreckenbaum won't look so well on the stage, but it's more her part than yours."

"I should have thought Estrild was wicked enough for anything."

"So she is. But it's mediæval—good, honest, outrageous atrocity. It's almost Scriptural. Suppose, now, you had to apologize to the papa of your little tire-maiden for putting her on the stage, think how much easier it would be if she was only to play Messalina or Lucrezia Borgia than if it was Frou-frou, for instance!"

"That little sugar-plum—just fancy! No, I shouldn't like her to play Frou-frou at all. The atmosphere is purer in the other cases. How ridiculous one is! But point your moral, Mr. Dramatist."

"Let me see!—what are we talking about?" For Challis had forgotten. "I believe I'm on a line of self-justification. Didn't I tell you I never succeeded? I believe I'm creeping round to a sneaking apology for having offered you Aminta Torrington at all. I wouldn't have written the part for you—even then. But there it was, and you asked for the chance, and it was the only thing I had to offer."

Judith's laugh rang out. She had a capital stage laugh, musical but penetrating. "Nobody's finding fault with you, stupid man! But why 'even then'? It's not four months since. Where is the difference?" She had opened her eyes full on him to laugh at him, and now closed them again to wait for an answer. Had Challis been at his best, observing nature with a view to copy, he would have noticed that last time she laughed—about the sugar-plum's message—she had left her eyes open, full flash on him.

But he was too busy with a difficulty to do his duty by human nature, that it behoved him to know, like Peter Ronsard. That unfortunate "even then" that he had blundered out had brought him face to face with a fact that—so it struck him now—he had never felt properly ashamed of. How came it that, up to this moment, he had scarcely seen in it a matter to be ashamed of at all; and now, almost involuntarily, he had drawn a distinction between now and then that seemed to place Judith Arkroyd then on a lower level? It was actually true that three months ago he was trying for all he was worth to negotiate this girl into the good graces of his stage Jupiter; to get her on the boards to represent a woman whose wickedness he had specially invented, thereby to fall into the fashion of a time that he himself accounted an age of stark fools. For he had never come across an Aminta Torrington; but he conceived, for all that, when he put her on the stage, and set Mr. Guppy and Dick Swiveller off being up-to-date about her, that he was performing his part in the dance—the dance of fools! He felt he was in difficulties, and even for a moment contemplated an appeal to the Artist's Love for His Work, as an excuse for his own attempt to get the help of Judith's beauty for his corps dramatique. He hesitated, negatived it, and said to himself uncandidly that—thank God!—he had not fallen as low as that. But he never suspected, as this story has begun to do, that his sense of shame was due to the fact that this lady had become less cheap to him in these three months—dangerously less.