CHAPTER X
PRINCE OF DREAMERS
I was lucky in getting a state-room on the Garguantuan, and on reading over the list of passengers I saw a name that seemed vaguely familiar, Miss B. Tevandale. Where had I heard it before?
Then my memory sluggishly prompted me. Wasn’t there a Miss Boadicea Tevandale who had played some part in my life? Oh, Irony! when we recall our past loves and have difficulty in remembering their names!
For the first two days the weather was very unsettling and I decided that I would better sustain my dignity by remaining in my cabin. On the third, however, I ventured on deck, and there sure enough I saw a Junoesque female striding mannishly up and down. Yes, it was Boadicea. She was looking exasperatingly fit—I had almost written fat; but really, she seemed to have grown positively adipose.
“Miss Tevandale.”
“Mr. Madden.”
“Why, you look wretched,” she said, after the first greetings were over.
“Yes; I’m a little seedy,” I answered wanly. “Haven’t quite got my sea-legs yet. But you seem a good sailor?”
“Aggressively so. But where have you been all this time? What wild, strange land has been claiming you? All the world wondered. It seemed as if you had dropped off the earth.”
“I’ve been concealing myself in the heart of civilisation. And you? I thought you would have been Mrs. Jarraway Tope by now.”
“Why! Didn’t you get my letter? I wrote just after you left to say that I had broken off my engagement.”
“No; the letter never reached me. I suppose it got side-tracked somewhere. So you didn’t marry Jarraway after all. Well, well, it’s a funny world.”
“You don’t seem tremendously excited at the news.”
“Ah! You want me to ask why you broke it off. I beg your pardon. I did not think I had the right to ask that.”
“If you have no right, who has?”
“I—I don’t quite understand.”
“Don’t you remember the words you said when last we met?”
I blush to say I did not remember, but I answered emotionally:
“Yes; they are engraven on my memory forever.”
“Then can you wonder?”
“You don’t mean to say it was on my account you broke off your marriage with a millionaire?”
She answered me with a shade of bitterness.
“Listen, Horace; there need be no mincing of matters between us two. Since I saw you last I have been greatly interested in Woman’s Suffrage. In fact I have been devoting myself body and soul to the Cause. Even now I am returning from a series of meetings in England, which I attended as a delegate from New York, and mixing with these noble-minded women has completely cured me of that false modesty that so handicaps our sex. I believe now that it is a woman’s privilege, just as much as a man’s, to declare her affection. Horace, I love you. I have always loved you from that day. Will you be my husband?”
I grew pale. I hung my head. My lips trembled.
“Boadicea,” I faltered, “I cannot. It is too late. I am already married.”
I saw the strong woman shrink as if she had received a blow. Then quickly she recovered herself.
“How was it? Tell me about it,” she said quickly.
So there, as we watched the rolling of the whale-grey sea and each billow seemed part of a cosmic conspiracy to upset my equilibrium, I told her the story of Anastasia’s desertion.
“Of course,” I said brokenly, “I’ll never see her again. In fact, even now I am sueing for a divorce. In a few months I expect to be a free man.”
“My dearest friend, you have my sympathy.”
Under the cover of our rugs I felt her strong capable hand steal to meet mine. Here was a fine, lofty soul who could solace and understand me. This big, handsome woman, with the cool, crisp voice, with the clear, calm eye, with the features of confidence and command, was surely one on whom a heart-broken world-weary man could lean a little in his hour of weakness and trouble. I returned the pressure of that large firm hand, and, moved by an emotion I could no longer suppress, I turned and dived below.
There is no matchmaker like the Atlantic Ocean; and so as the days went on I grew more and more taken with the idea of espousing Boadicea. As we sat there in our steamer chairs and watched the shrill wind whip the billow peaks to spray, and the sudden rainbows gleam in the silvery spendrift I listened to her arguments in favour of the Suffrage and they seemed to me unanswerable. I, too, became inspired with a fierce passion to devote my life to the Cause, to enter and throw myself in the struggle of sex, to play my humble part in the Woman’s War. And in Boadicea I had found my Joan of Arc.
So as we shook hands on the New York pier we had every intention of seeing one another again.
“You have helped me greatly with your noble sympathy,” I said.
“You have cheered me greatly with your splendid understanding,” she answered.
“We are comrades.”
“Yes, we are good comrades—in the Cause.”
She had to go West on a lecturing tour, and it was some months before I saw her again. When I did, my first words were:
“Boadicea, I’m a free man.”
“Are you? How does it feel?”
“Not at all natural. I don’t believe I’ll ever be satisfied till I’m chained to the car again. Boadicea, do you remember those words you spoke that day we met on the Garguantuan? Does your proposition still hold good?”
“What proposition?”
“Let us unite our forces. Let us fight side by side. Boadicea, will you not change your name to Madden? You know my sad history. Here then I offer you the fragments of my heart.”
“Oh, don’t. You make me feel like a cannibal.”
“Here then I offer you my hand and name. I will try to make you the most devoted of husbands.”
“I am sure you will. Horace, we will work together for the good of the Cause.”
A month after we were married and spent our honeymoon in London, chiefly in attending Suffragette meetings. Very soon I began to discover that being wedded to a woman who is wedded to a Cause is like being the understudy of your wife’s husband. And if that rather militant suffragette happens to be a millionairess then one’s negligibility is humiliatingly accentuated. I was only a millionaire in francs, while Boadicea was a millionairess in dollars, and the disparity of values in national currency began to become more and more a painful fact to me.
I was not long, too, in discovering that my sympathy with the Cause was only skin-deep. Indeed, my suddenly discovered enthusiasm had surprised even myself. It was unlike me to become so interested in real, vital questions, that more than once I suspected myself of being a hypocrite. At long distance the idea of Woman finding herself fascinated me just as socialism fascinated me. I could dream and idealise and let my imagination paint wonderful pictures of a woman’s world, but once the matter became concrete, my enthusiasm took wings. Then it was I had my first tiff with Boadicea.
“Boa, I don’t want to march in the demonstration on Sunday,” I said peevishly.
“Why not, Horace?” demanded Boadicea with displeasure.
“Oh, well, I don’t like the male suffragettes. They look so like fowls. They remind me of vegetarians or temperance cranks. Some of the fellows in the club chaffed me awfully the last time I marched with them.”
“Oh, very well, Horace. Please yourself. Only I’m just a little disappointed in you.”
“I wouldn’t mind so much,” I went on, “if the women were inspiring, but they’re not. In the last demonstration I couldn’t help remarking that nearly all the women who marched were homely and unattractive, while those who watched the procession were often awfully pretty and interesting. Now, couldn’t you reverse the thing—let the homely ones line up and let the pretty ones march? Then I’d venture to bet you’d convert half the men on the spot.”
Boadicea stared. This was appalling heresy on my part; but I went on bravely.
“Another thing: why don’t they dress better? Do they think that the inspiration of a great cause justifies them in being dowdy? I tell you, well-fitting corsets and dainty shoes will do more for the freedom of woman than all the argument in the world. Coax the Vote from the men; don’t bully them. You’ll get it if you’re charming enough. Therein lies your real strength—not in your intellect, but in your charm.”
“Don’t tell me, Horace, you’re like all the rest of the men. A woman with a pretty face can turn you round her finger!”
“I’m sadly like most men, I find. I prefer charm and prettiness to character and intellect; just as in my youth I preferred bad boys to good. But, in any case, I refuse to march any more with these ‘vieux tableaux.’ Remember I have a sense of humour.”
“But all your enthusiasm? Your boiling indignation? Your thought of our wrongs?”
“Has all been overwhelmed by my sense of humour. One can only afford to take trivial things seriously, and serious things trivially.”
“So you are going to throw us over?”
“Not at all. I believe in the Cause, but I won’t march. The cause of woman would be all right if there were no women—I mean the chief enemy to women’s suffrage is the suffragette. No woman has more influence than the French woman. It is all the more powerful because it is indirect. It is based on love. A Frenchwoman knows that to coax is better than to bully.”
“Oh, you’re always praising up the French women. Why don’t you go over to Paris to live, if you are so fond of them?”
“I never want to set foot in Paris again.”
“But what about me? I’ve never been there. Am I never to see it?”
“No; I don’t think you would like it.”
“I think I would. I think we’d better go over there for the Spring.”
Any opposition on my part made her determined, so that if I wanted a thing very much I had to pretend the very opposite. On the other hand, if I had expressed a keen wish to go to Paris she would have objected strenuously. Her nature was very antagonistic. I admired her greatly for her intellect, for her character; but she was one of those self-possessed, logical, clear-brained women who get on your nerves, and every day she was getting more and more on mine.
We took an Italian Palace near the Parc Monceau, bought a limousine, kept a dozen servants, moved in the Embassy crowd and had our names in the Society column of the New York paper nearly every day. Life became one beastly nuisance after another—luncheons, balls, dinners, theatre parties. I, who had a Bohemian hatred of dressing, had to dress every evening. I, who dreaded making an engagement because it interfered with my liberty, found myself obliged to keep a book in which I recorded my too numerous engagements. I, who had so strenuously objected to the constraints of company, was obliged to force smiles and stroke people the right way for hours on end. Was there ever such a slavery? It seemed as if I never had a moment in which I could call my soul my own. I was bored, heart-sick, goaded to rebellion.
“Why can’t we be simple, even if we are rich?” I remonstrated. “It would be far less trouble and we’d be far happier. I’m tired of trying to live up to my valet. Let’s cut out this society racket and live naturally.”
“We can’t. We must live up to our position. It’s our duty. Besides, I like this ‘society racket’ as you so vulgarly call it. It gives me an opportunity to impress people with my views. And really, Horace, I think you’re too ungrateful. You should be glad of the opportunity of meeting so many nice people.”
“Like Hades I should! Do you call that Irish countess we had for lunch nice? She had a long face like a horse, blotched and covered with hair, and spoke with the accent of a washerwoman. And that stiff Englishman—”
“You can’t deny Sir Charles is awfully good form.”
“Good form be hanged! I think he’s a pig-headed ass. I couldn’t open my mouth without treading on his traditional corns. American Spread-eagleism isn’t in it with British Lionrampantism. We have a sense of humour that makes us laugh at our weaknesses, but the Englishman’s are sacred. That Englishman actually believed that the masses were being educated beyond their station, believed that they should be kept in the place they belonged.”
“Really you’re disgustingly democratic. What’s the use of having money if it doesn’t make one better than other people who haven’t? As for Sir Charles; I think he’s perfectly charming.”
“Oh, yes, of course. You’re aping the English, like all the Americans who come over here. Everything’s perfectly charming, or perfectly dreadful. You’ll soon be ashamed of your own nationality. Bah! of all snobs the Anglo-American one’s the most contemptible. Of all poses the cosmopolitan one’s the most disgusting.”
“Really your language is rather strong.”
“It’s going to be stronger before I’m finished. I’ve been sitting quiet in my little corner taking notes on you and your friends, and I’ve got the stuff for a book out of our little splurge in society. There’s a good many of your friends in it, Madam. I fear they’ll cut you dead after they read it.”
“If you publish such a work I’ll get a divorce.”
“Go and get one.”
“Oh, you’re a brute, a brute!”
Here Boadicea stamped a number six shoe furiously on the floor.
“Yes, and I’m glad of it. To woman’s duplicity let us men oppose our brutality. When the worst comes to the worst we can always fall back on the good old system of ‘spanking.’”
“Oh! Oh! You dare not. You are not physically capable.”
“Is that so? You’re a strong woman, Boa; but I still think I could use the flat of a nice broad slipper on you.”
She was speechless with wrath. Then, with another exclamation of “brute,” she marched from the room. Soon after I heard her order the car and go out.
“Yes,” I murmured bitterly to my cigarette, “seems like you’d caught a Tartar this time. Aren’t you sorry you ever married again? How different it was before. Let’s see. What’s on to-night?”
My little book showed me that I was due to dine with an ambassador.
“What a nuisance! I’ve got to dress. I’ve got to stoke my physical machine with food that isn’t suited to it. I’ve got to murmur inanities to some under-dressed female. How I hate it all! There was my old grandfather now. He died leaving a million, but up to his death he lived as simply as the day he began working for wages. Ah! there was a happy man. I remember when he used to come home for supper at night they would bring him two bowls, one full of hot mashed potatoes, the other of sweet, fresh milk. He would eat with a horn spoon, taking it half full of potatoes, then loading up with milk. And how he enjoyed it! What a glorious luxury it would be to sit down to-night to a bowl of potatoes and a bowl of milk!”
I stared drearily round the great room which we had sub-let from the mistress of a Grand Duke. Such lavish luxury of mirror and marble, of silk and satin-wood, furnished by an artist to satisfy an epicure! Sumptuous splendour I suppose you would call it. But oh, what would I not give to be back once more in the garret of the rue Gracieuse! Ay, even there with its calico curtains and its home-made furniture. Or sitting down to a dinner of roast chicken and Veuve Amiot with.... Oh, I can’t bear to mention even her name! The thought of her brings a choke to my throat and a mist to my eyes.... How happy I was then, and I didn’t know it! And how good she was! just a good little girl. I didn’t think half enough of her. What a mistake it’s all been!
I stared at the burnt-out cigarette, reflecting bitterly.
“I should never have come back to this Paris. It just makes me unhappy. At every turn of the street I expect to suddenly come face to face with her. I can’t bear to visit the rive gauche. It’s haunted for me. I see myself as I was then, swinging my old cherry-wood cane as I strode so buoyantly along the quays. Every foot of that old Latin Quarter has its memory. I can’t go there again. It’s too painful.”
I rose and paced up and down the room.
“God! wasn’t I happy though! Remember the afternoons in the Luxembourg and the Bal Bullier, and the Boul’ Mich’. How I loved it all! How I used to linger gazing at the old houses! How I used to dream, and thrill, and gladden! Oh, the wonder of the Seine by night, the work, the struggle, the visits to the Mont-de-Piété, the careless God-given Bohemian days! It hurts me now to think of them.... It hurts me....”
Going over to the mantelpiece I leaned one elbow on it, looking down drearily at the fire.
“Ah, Little Thing! How glad she always was when I came home! I can feel her arms round my neck as she welcomed me, feel her soft kisses, see the little room all bright and cheery. Oh, if these days would only come again! Where is she now, I wonder? Poor, poor Little Thing.”
As I stood there like a man stricken, miserable beyond all words, suddenly I started. All the blood seemed to leave my heart. Some one was talking to the butler in the hall.
“Is Madam in please? I have bring some leetle hem-broderie she want see. She tell me to come now.”
Just a tired, quiet, colourless voice, interrupted by a sudden cough, yet oh, how sweet, how heaven-sweet to me! Again I listened.
“Oh, she have gone out. I am so sorry. She have made appointment wiz me for now and I have not much time. I will leave my hem-broderie for Madam to regard. Then I will call again to-morrow.”
She was going, but I could not restrain myself.
“Thomas,” I said to the man, “call her back. I will make a selection of her work for Madam.”
As I stood there by the mantelpiece with head bent, waiting, I saw in the mirror the crimson curtains parted, and there stood a little, grey figure, shrinking, shabby, surprised. Then I turned slowly and once again we were face to face.
“Little Thing!”
She started. Her hand in its shabby, cotton glove went up to her throat, and she made a step as if she would throw herself in my arms.
“You?”
“Yes,” I said miserably. “I never thought to see you again.”
“And I did not, sink I evaire see you. It would have been better not.”
“It would; but I’m glad, I’m glad.”
“Yes, I am glad too, for I want to say how sorry I am I leave you like that. I was mad wiz jealousy. I could not help it. After, I want very much keel myself, but I have promised you I do not.”
“No, no, it was my fault. I could have explained everything so easily. But after all, it’s too late. What does it matter now?”
“No, it does not mattaire much now. I am so glad for you you have got divorce from me. I am very bad womans. Please excuse me.”
“Yes, yes; but forgive me. I never cared enough for you—or at least I never showed I cared. Now I know.”
“You care now. Oh, that will make me so happy. You know there is not much longer for me. The doctor tell me so. I am poitrinaire.”
She shrugged her shoulders with a resigned little grimace.
“But,” she went on, “now I shall be so glad. I don’t care for myself. You remember for laughing you used to call me ‘Poor leetle Sing,’ and I say: ‘No, I am not poor leetle sing, I am very, very, ’appy leetle sing.’ Ah! but now I am poor leetle sing indeed.”
“Can I not help you? I must.”
“No, I will take nussing from you. And anyway it would not help much. I make enough from my hem-broderie to leeve, and I don’t want any pleasure some more. Just to leeve. The sisters at the convent are very good to me. I see them often, and when I am sick at the last I know they will care for me. Really I am very well. Now I must go; I must work; I lose time.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, let me do something!”
“No, I am very good. I sink at you always, and I bless you. You see I have the good souvenirs.”
From the breast of her threadbare jacket she took a worn silver locket and showed me a little snapshot of myself.
“There, I have the souvenir of happy days. Now I must go.”
She looked very frail, and of a colour almost transparent. She tried hard to smile. Then she swayed as if she would faint, but recovered herself by clutching at a chair.
“Little Thing,” I said, “it’s too late, but we must at least shake hands.”
She pulled off a grey cotton glove and held out a hand all toilworn and needle-warped.
“Good-bye,” she said wearily.
I seized the little thin hand, conscious that my hot tears were falling on it. Looking up, I saw that her eyes too were a-stream with tears.
“Good-bye,” I said chokingly.
“Good-bye, darleen, good-bye for evaire....”
That was all. She turned and left me standing there. I heard her coughing as she went downstairs. Sinking down I sobbed as if my heart would break....
“What’s the mattaire, darleen?”
It seemed as if some one was shaking me violently. My pillow was wet with tears and the sobs still convulsed me. I opened staring eyes, eyes that fell on a dressing-table of walnut, an armoire with mirror doors, and cretonne curtains, with a design of little roses. Yet I stared more, for Anastasia, fresh and dainty, but with a face of great concern, was bending over me.
“What’s the mattaire, darleen? For ten minutes I try to wake you up. You have been having bad dream. You cry dreadful.”
“Dream! Dream! Am I mad?... Where am I now?... Tell me quick.”
“Oh, darleen, what’s the mattaire? You affrighten me....”
“No, no; what’s the address of this house?”
“Passage d’Enfer.”
“And the date...? What’s the date?”
“The twelve Novembre.”
“But the year, the year?”
“Why the year is Nineteen hundred thirteen.”
“Thank God! I thought it was nineteen fourteen.” Then the whole truth flashed on me. Prince of Dreamers! In a night I had dreamed the events of a whole year of life. Yesterday was the day of my accident, and this morning—why, I had to pass my examination for a chauffeur’s licence; this morning at nine o’clock, and it was now eleven. Too late.
Yet I did not care then for a thousand Inspectors. I was not married to Boadicea. I still had Little Thing. I vow I was the happiest man in the world.
“Pack everything up,” I said. “We leave for America to-morrow.”
Once more I sat in the favourite chair of my favourite club, surveying the incredible bank-book. Figures! Figures! More formidably than ever they loomed up. Useless indeed to try and cope with this flood of fortune.
And now that I had two reputations to keep up, the flood was more insistent than ever. Not only were there the best-sellers of Norman Dane to bargain with, but also the best-sellers of Silenus Starset. And for my own modest needs, with Anastasia’s careful management, my little patrimony more than sufficed. What then was I going to do with these senseless figures that insisted so in piling up, and yet meant nothing to me? Suddenly the solution flashed on me, and as if it were an illuminated banner I saw the words:
James Horace Madden, Philanthropist.
That was it. This wonderful gift of mine that made the acquisition of money so easy, what should I do with it but exercise it for the good of humanity?
Yes, I would be a philanthropist; but on whom would I philanthrope?
The answer was easy. Who better deserved my help than my fellow-scribes who had failed, those high and delicate souls who had scorned to commercialise their art, who were true to themselves and fought, for all that was best in literature? Even as there was a home for old actors, so I would found one for old authors, battered, beaten veterans of the pen, who in their declining years would find rest, shelter, sympathy under a generous roof.
Yes, writing popular fiction had become a habit with me, almost a vice. I was afraid I could never give it up. But here would be my extenuation. The money the public gave me for pleasing them I would spend on those others who, because they were artists, failed to please. And in this way at least I would indirectly be of some use to literature.
Then again; what a splendid example it would be to my brother best-seller makers, turning out their three books a year and their half dozen after they are dead. Let them, too, show their zeal for literature by devoting the bulk of their ill-gotten gains to its encouragement.
The club had changed very little. I saw the same members, looking a little more mutinous about the waist line. There was Vane and Quince, qualifying perhaps for my home. I greeted them cordially, aglow with altruism. After all, it was a day of paltry achievement. We were all small men, and none of us weighed on the scale. I felt very humble indeed. Quince had been right. I would never be one of those writers whom all the world admires—and doesn’t read. Truly I was one of the goats.
But that night at dinner in the Knickerbocker I threw back my head and laughed. And Anastasia in a new evening gown looked at me in surprise and demanded what was the matter. I surveyed her over a brimming glass of champagne.
“Extraordinary thing,” I thought; “isn’t it absurd? I’m actually falling in love with my own wife.”
THE END