"And the women," I suggested, "do they marry their ideals?"
He laughed. "Ask them."
"The difference between men and women," he continued, "is very slight; we exaggerate it for purposes of art. What sort of man do you suppose he is, Norah"s ideal? Can"t you imagine him?--But I can tell you the type of man she will marry, ay, and love with all her heart."
He looked at me from under his strong brows drawn down, a twinkle in his eye.
"A nice enough fellow--clever, perhaps, but someone--well, someone who will want looking after, taking care of, managing; someone who will appeal to the mother side of her--not her ideal man, but the man for whom nature intended her."
"Perhaps with her help," I said, "he may in time become her ideal."
"There"s a long road before him," growled Dan.
It was Norah herself who broke to me the news of Barbara"s elopement with Hal. I had seen neither of them since my return to London. Old Hasluck a month or so before I had met in the City one day by chance, and he had insisted on my lunching with him. I had found him greatly changed.
His buoyant self-a.s.surance had deserted him; in its place a fretful eagerness had become his motive force. At first he had talked boastingly: Had I seen the _Post_ for last Monday, the _Court Circular_ for the week before? Had I read that Barbara had danced with the Crown Prince, that the Count and Countess Huescar had been entertaining a Grand Duke? What [duplicated line of text] I think of that! and such like. Was not money master of the world? Ay, and the n.o.bs should be made to acknowledge it!
But as he had gulped down gla.s.s after gla.s.s the brag had died away.
"No children," he had whispered to me across the table; "that"s what I can"t understand. Nearly four years and no children! What"ll be the good of it all? Where do I come in? What do I get? d.a.m.n these rotten popinjays! What do they think we buy them for?"
It was in the studio on a Monday morning that Norah told me. It was the talk of the town for the next day--and the following eight. She had heard it the evening before at supper, and had written to me to come and see her.
"I thought you would rather hear it quietly," said Norah, "than learn it from a newspaper paragraph. Besides, I wanted to tell you this. She did wrong when she married, putting aside love for position. Now she has done right. She has put aside her shame with all the advantages she derived from it. She has proved herself a woman: I respect her."
Norah would not have said that to please me had she not really thought it. I could see it from that light; but it brought me no comfort. My G.o.ddess had a heart, pa.s.sions, was a mere human creature like myself.
From her cold throne she had stepped down to mingle with the world. So some youthful page of Arthur"s court may have felt, learning the Great Queen was but a woman.
I never spoke with her again but once. That was an evening three years later in Brussels. Strolling idly after dinner the bright lights of a theatre invited me to enter. It was somewhat late; the second act had commenced. I slipped quietly into my seat, the only one vacant at the extreme end of the front row of the first range; then, looking down upon the stage, met her eyes. A little later an attendant whispered to me that Madame G---- would like to see me; so at the fall of the curtain I went round. Two men were in the dressing-room smoking, and on the table were some bottles of champagne. She was standing before her gla.s.s, a loose shawl about her shoulders.
"Excuse my shaking hands," she said. "This d.a.m.ned hole is like a furnace; I have to make up fresh after each act."
She held them up for my inspection with a laugh; they were smeared with grease.
"D"you know my husband?" she continued. "Baron G--; Mr. Paul Kelver."
The Baron rose. He was a red-faced, pot-bellied little man. "Delighted to meet Mr. Kelver," he said, speaking in excellent English. "Any friend of my wife"s is always a friend of mine."
He held out his fat, perspiring hand. I was not in the mood to attach much importance to ceremony. I bowed and turned away, careless whether he was offended or not.
"I am glad I saw you," she continued. "Do you remember a girl called Barbara? You and she were rather chums, years ago.
"Yes," I answered, "I remember her."
"Well, she died, poor girl, three years ago." She was rubbing paint into her cheeks as she spoke. "She asked me if ever I saw you to give you this. I have been carrying it about with me ever since."
She took a ring from her finger. It was the one ring Barbara had worn as a girl, a chrysolite set plainly in a band of gold. I had noticed it upon her hand the first time I had seen her, sitting in my father"s office framed by the dusty books and papers. She dropped it into my outstretched palm.
"Quite a pretty little romance," laughed the Baron.
"That"s all," added the woman at the gla.s.s. "She said you would understand."
From under her painted lashes she flashed a glance at me. I hope never to see again that look upon a woman"s face.
"Thank you," I said. "Yes, I understand. It was very kind of you. I shall always wear it."
Placing the ring upon my finger, I left the room.
CHAPTER X.
PAUL FINDS HIS WAY.
Slowly, surely, steadily I climbed, putting aside all dreams, paying strict attention to business. Often my other self, little Paul of the sad eyes, would seek to lure me from my work. But for my vehement determination never to rest for a moment till I had purchased back my honesty, my desire--growing day by day, till it became almost a physical hunger--to feel again the pressure of Norah"s strong white hand in mine, he might possibly have succeeded. Heaven only knows what then he might have made of me: politician, minor poet, more or less able editor, hampered by convictions--something most surely of but little service to myself. Now and again, with a week to spare--my humour making holiday, nothing to be done but await patiently its return--I would write stories for my own pleasure. They made no mark; but success in purposeful work is of slower growth. Had I persisted--but there was money to be earned.
And by the time my debts were paid, I had established a reputation.
"Madness!" argued practical friends. "You would be throwing away a certain fortune for, at the best, a doubtful competence. The one you know you can do, the other--it would be beginning your career all over again."
"You would find it almost impossible now," explained those who spoke, I knew, words of wisdom, of experience. "The world would never listen to you. Once a humourist always a humourist. As well might a comic actor insist upon playing Hamlet. It might be the best Hamlet ever seen upon the stage; the audience would only laugh--or stop away."
Drawn by our mutual need of sympathy, "Goggles" and I, seeking some quiet corner in the Club, would pour out our souls to each other.
He would lay before me, at some length, his conception of Romeo--an excellent conception, I have no doubt, though I confess it failed to interest me. Somehow I could not picture him to myself as Romeo. But I listened with every sign of encouragement. It was the price I paid him for, in turn, listening to me while I unfolded to him my ideas how monumental literature, helpful to mankind, should be imagined and built up.
"Perhaps in a future existence," laughed Goggles, one evening, rising as the clock struck seven, "I shall be a great tragedian, and you a famous poet. Meanwhile, I suppose, as your friend Brian puts it, we are both sinning our mercies. After all, to live is the most important thing in life."
I had strolled with him so far as the cloak-room and was helping him to get into his coat.
"Take my advice"--tapping me on the chest, he fixed his funny, fishy eyes upon me. Had I not known his intention to be serious, I should have laughed, his expression was so comical. "Marry some dear little woman"
(he was married himself to a placid lady of about twice his own weight); "one never understands life properly till the babies come to explain it to one."
I returned to my easy-chair before the fire. Wife, children, home!
After all, was not that the true work of man--of the live man, not the dreamer? I saw them round me, giving to my life dignity, responsibility.
The fair, sweet woman, helper, comrade, comforter, the little faces fashioned in our image, their questioning voices teaching us the answers to life"s riddles. All other hopes, ambitions, dreams, what were they?
Phantoms of the morning mist fading in the sunlight.
Hodgson came to me one evening. "I want you to write me a comic opera,"
he said. He had an open letter in his hand which he was reading. "The public seem to be getting tired of these eternal translations from the French. I want something English, something new and original."
"The English is easy enough," I replied; "but I shouldn"t clamour for anything new and original if I were you."
"Why not?" he asked, looking up from his letter.
"You might get it," I answered. "Then you would be disappointed."
He laughed. "Well, you know what I mean--something we could refer to as "new and original" on the programme. What do you say? It will be a big chance for you, and I"m willing to risk it. I"m sure you can do it.
People are beginning to talk about you."
I had written a few farces, comediettas, and they had been successful.