I read on and on, till at length my voice trailed over the last line, rose gallantly at the last fence, the single word _Curtain_, and abruptly broke. The strain had been too much for me.
Tenderly my mother drew me to the sofa; and quietly, with closed eyelids, I lay there until, in the soft cool of the evening, I asked for her verdict.
Seeing, as she did instantly, that it would be more dangerous to deny my request than to accede to it, she spoke.
"That there is an absence, my dear Margie, of any relationship with life, that not a single character is in any degree human, that pa.s.sion and virtue and vice and real feeling are wanting--this surprises me more than I can tell you. I had expected to listen to a natural, ordinary, unactable episode arranged more or less in steichomuthics.
There is no work so scholarly and engaging as the amateur"s. But in your play I am amazed to find the touch of the professional and experienced playwright. Yes, my dear, you have proved that you happen to possess the quality--one that is most difficult to acquire--of surrounding a situation which is improbable enough to be convincing with that absurdly mechanical conversation which the theatre-going public demands. As your mother, I am disappointed. I had hoped for originality. As your literary well-wisher, I stifle my maternal feelings and congratulate you unreservedly."
I thanked my mother effusively. I think I cried a little.
She said affectionately that the hour had been one of great interest to her, and she added that she would be glad to be consulted with regard to the steps I contemplated taking in my literary future.
She then resumed her book.
I went to my room and re-read the last letter I had had from James.
_The Barrel Club, Covent Garden, London._
MY DARLING MARGIE,--I am writing this line simply and solely for the selfish pleasure I gain from the act of writing to you. I know everything will come right some time or other, but at present I am suffering from a bad attack of the blues. I am like a general who has planned out a brilliant attack, and realises that he must fail for want of sufficient troops to carry a position, on the taking of which the whole success of the a.s.sault depends. Briefly, my position is like this. My name is pretty well known in a small sort of way among editors and the like as that of a man who can turn out fairly good stuff. Besides this, I have many influential friends. You see where this brings me? I am in the middle of my attacking movement, and I have not been beaten back; but the key to the enemy"s position is still uncaptured. You know what this key is from my other letters.
It"s the stage. Ah, Margie, one acting play! Only one! It would mean everything. Apart from the actual triumph and the direct profits, it would bring so much with it. The enemy"s flank would be turned, and the rest of the battle would become a mere rout. I should have an accepted position in the literary world which would convert all the other avenues to wealth on which I have my eye instantly into royal roads. Obstacles would vanish. The fact that I was a successful playwright would make the acceptance of the sort of work I am doing now inevitable, and I should get paid ten times as well for it. And it would mean--well, you know what it would mean, don"t you? Darling Margie, tell me again that I have your love, that the waiting is not too hard, that you believe in me. Dearest, it will come right in the end. Nothing can prevent that. Love and the will of a man have always beaten Time and Fate. Write to me, dear.
_Ever your devoted James._
How utterly free from thought of self! His magnificent loyalty forgot the dreadful tension of his own great battle, and pictured only the tedium of waiting which it was my part to endure.
I finished my letter to James very late that night. It was a very long and explanatory letter, and it enclosed my play.
The main point I aimed at was not to damp his spirits. He would, I knew well, see that the play was suitable for staging. He would, in short, see that I, an inexperienced girl, had done what he, a trained professional writer, had failed to do. Lest, therefore, his pique should kill admiration and pleasure when he received my work, I wrote as one begging a favour. "Here," I said, "we have the means to achieve all we want. Do not--oh, do not--criticise. I have written down the words. But the conception is yours. The play was inspired by you. But for you I should never have begun it. Take my play, James; take it as your own. For yours it is. Put your name to it, and produce it, if you love me, under your own signature. If this hurts your pride, I will word my request differently. You alone are able to manage the business side of the production. You know the right men to go to. To approach them on behalf of a stranger"s work is far less likely to lead to success. I have a.s.sumed, you will see, that the play is certain to be produced. But that will only be so if you adopt it as your own. Claim the authorship, and all will be well."
Much more I wrote to James in the same strain; and my reward came next day in the shape of a telegram: "Accept thankfully.--Cloyster."
Of the play and its reception by the public there is no need to speak.
The criticisms were all favourable.
Neither the praise of the critics nor the applause of the public aroused any trace of jealousy in James. Their unanimous note of praise has been a source of pride to him. He is proud--ah, joy!--that I am to be his wife.
I have blotted the last page of this commonplace love-story of mine.
The moon has come out from behind a cloud, and the whole bay is one vast sheet of silver. I could sit here at my bedroom window and look at it all night. But then I should be sure to oversleep myself and be late for breakfast. I shall read what I have written once more, and then I shall go to bed.
I think I shall wear my white muslin tomorrow.
_(End of Miss Margaret Goodwin"s narrative.)_
PART TWO
James Orlebar Cloyster"s Narrative
CHAPTER 1
THE INVASION OF BOHEMIA
It is curious to reflect that my marriage (which takes place today week) destroys once and for all my life"s ambition. I have never won through to the goal I longed for, and now I never shall.
Ever since I can remember I have yearned to be known as a Bohemian.
That was my ambition. I have ceased to struggle now. Married Bohemians live in Oakley Street, King"s Road, Chelsea. We are to rent a house in Halkett Place.
Three years have pa.s.sed since the excellent, but unsteady, steamship _Ibex_ brought me from Guernsey to Southampton. It was a sleepy, hot, and sticky wreck that answered to the name of James Orlebar Cloyster that morning; but I had my first youth and forty pounds, so that soap and water, followed by coffee and an omelette, soon restored me.
The journey to Waterloo gave me opportunity for tobacco and reflection.
What chiefly exercised me, I remember, was the problem whether it was possible to be a Bohemian, and at the same time to be in love. Bohemia I looked on as a region where one became inevitably entangled with women of unquestionable charm, but doubtful morality. There were supper parties.... Festive gatherings in the old studio.... Babette....
Lucille.... The artists" ball.... Were these things possible for a man with an honest, earnest, whole-hearted affection?
The problem engaged me tensely till my ticket was collected at Vauxhall. Just there the solution came. I would be a Bohemian, but a misogynist. People would say, "Dear old Jimmy Cloyster. How he hates women!" It would add to my character a pleasant touch of dignity and reserve which would rather accentuate my otherwise irresponsible way of living.
Little did the good Bohemians of the metropolis know how keen a recruit the boat train was bringing to them.
As a _pied-a-terre_ I selected a cheap and dingy hotel in York Street, and from this base I determined to locate my proper sphere.
Chelsea was the first place that occurred to me. There was St. John"s Wood, of course, but that was such a long way off. Chelsea was comparatively near to the heart of things, and I had heard that one might find there artistic people whose hand-to-mouth, Saturnalian existence was redolent of that exquisite gaiety which so attracted my own casual temperament.
Sallying out next morning into the brilliant sunshine and the dusty rattle of York Street, I felt a sense of elation at the thought that the time for action had come. I was in London. London! The home of the fragrant motor-omnibus and the night-blooming Hooligan. London, the battlefield of the literary aspirant since Caxton invented the printing press. It seemed to me, as I walked firmly across Westminster Bridge, that Margie gazed at me with the lovelight in her eyes, and that a species of amorous telepathy from Guernsey was girding me for the fight.
Manresa Road I had once heard mentioned as being the heart of Bohemian Chelsea. To Manresa Road, accordingly, I went, by way of St. James"s Park, Buckingham Palace Road, and Lower Sloane Street. Thence to Sloane Square. Here I paused, for I knew that I had reached the last outpost of respectable, inartistic London.
"How sudden," I soliloquised, "is the change. Here I am in Sloane Square, regular, business-like, and unimaginative; while, a few hundred yards away, King"s Road leads me into the very midst of genius, starvation, and possibly Free Love."
Sloane Square, indeed, gave me the impression, not so much of a suburb as of the suburban portion of a great London railway terminus. It was positively pretty. People were shopping with comparative leisure, omnibus horses were being rubbed down and watered on the west side of the Square, out of the way of the main stream of traffic. A postman, clearing the letter-box at the office, stopped his work momentarily to read the contents of a postcard. For the moment I understood Caesar"s feelings on the brink of the Rubicon, and the emotions of Cortes "when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific." I was on the threshold of great events. Behind me was orthodox London; before me the unknown.
It was distinctly a Caesarian glance, full of deliberate revolt, that I bestowed upon the street called Sloane; that clean, orderly thoroughfare which leads to Knightsbridge, and thence either to the respectabilities of Kensington or the plush of Piccadilly.
Setting my hat at a wild angle, I stepped with a touch of _abandon_ along the King"s Road to meet the charming, impoverished artists whom our country refuses to recognise.
My first glimpse of the Manresa Road was, I confess, a complete disappointment. Never was Bohemianism more handicapped by its setting than that of Chelsea, if the Manresa Road was to be taken as a criterion. Along the uninviting uniformity of this street no trace of unorthodoxy was to be seen. There came no merry, roystering laughter from attic windows. No talented figures of idle geniuses fetched pints of beer from the public-house at the corner. No one dressed in an ancient ulster and a battered straw hat and puffing enormous clouds of blue smoke from a treasured clay pipe gazed philosophically into s.p.a.ce from a doorway. In point of fact, save for a most conventional butcher-boy, I was alone in the street.
Then the explanation flashed upon me. I had been seen approaching. The word had been pa.s.sed round. A stranger! The clique resents intrusion.