He missed the bachelor evenings of former days—the whisky and water, the pipes, and the literary discussion; and as the days went by he began to think of London; his thoughts turned affectionately towards the friends he had not seen for so long, and at the end of July he announced his intention of running up to town for a few days. So one morning breakfast was hurried through; Emily was sure there was plenty of time; Hubert looked at the clock and said he must be off; Julia ran after him with parcels which he had forgotten; farewell signs were waved; the dog-cart passed out of sight, and, after lingering a moment, the women returned to the drawing-room thoughtfully.
'I wonder if he'll catch the train,' said Emily, without taking her face from the window.
'I hope so; it will be very tiresome for him if he has to come back. There isn't another train before three o'clock.'
'If he missed this train he wouldn't go until to-morrow morning.... I wonder how long he'll stay away. Supposing something happened, and he never came back!' Emily turned round and looked at Julia in dreamy wonderment.
'Not come back at all? What nonsense you are talking, Emily! He won't be away more than a fortnight or three weeks.'
'Three weeks! that seems a very long while. How shall we get through our evenings?'
Emily had again turned towards the window. Julia did not trouble to reply. She smiled a little, as she paused on the threshold, for she remembered that no more than a few weeks ago Emily had addressed to her passionate speeches declaring her to be her only friend, and that they would like to live together, content in each other's companionship, always ignoring the rest of the world. Although she had not mistaken these speeches for anything more than the nervous passion of a moment, the suddenness of the recantation surprised her a little. Three or four days after, the girl was in a different mood, and when they came into the drawing-room after dinner she threw her arms about Julia's neck, saying, 'Isn't this like old times? Here we are, living all alone together, and I'm not boring myself a bit. I never shall have another friend like you, Julia.'
'But you'll be very glad when Hubert comes back.'
'There's no harm in that, is there? I should be very ungrateful if I wasn't. Think how good he has been to us.... I'm afraid you don't like him, Julia.'
'Oh, yes, I do, Emily.'
'Not so much as I do.' And raising herself—she was sitting on Julia's knees—Emily looked at Julia.
'Perhaps not,' Julia replied, smiling; 'but then I never hated him as much as you did.'
A cloud came over Emily's face. 'I did hate him, didn't I? You remember that first evening? You remember when you came up-stairs and found me trembling in the passage—I was afraid to go to bed. ... I begged you to allow me to sleep with you. You remember how we listened for his footstep in the passage, as he went up to bed, and how I clung to you? Then the dreams of that night. I never told you what my dreams were, but you remember how I woke up with a cry, and you asked me what was the matter?'
'Yes, I remember.'
'I dreamt I was with him in a garden, and was trying to get away; but he held me by a single hair, and the hair would not break. How absurd dreams are! And the garden was full of flowers, but every time I tried to gather them, he pulled me back by that single hair. I don't remember any more, only something about running wildly away from him, and losing myself in a dark forest, and there the ground was soft like a bog, and it seemed as if I were going to be swallowed up every moment. It was a terrible sensation. All of a sudden I woke with a cry. The room was grey with dawn, and you said: "Emily dear, what have you been dreaming, to cry out like that?" I was too tired and frightened to tell you much about my dream, and next morning I had forgotten it. I did not remember it for a long time after, but all the same some of it came true. Don't you remember how I met Hubert next morning on the lawn? We went into the garden and spent the best part of the morning walking about the lake.... I don't know if I told you—I ran away when I heard him coming, and should have got away had it not been for this tiresome dog. He called after me, using my Christian name. I was so angry I think I hated him then more than ever. We walked a little way, and the next thing I remember was thinking how nice he was. I don't know how it all happened. Now I think of it, it seems like magic. It was the day that my old donkey ran away with the mowing machine and broke the flower-vase, the dear old thing; we had a long talk about "Jack." And then I took Hubert into the garden and showed him the flowers. I don't think he cares much about flowers; he pretended, but I could see it was only to please me. Then I knew that he liked me, for when I told him I was going to feed the swans, he said he loved swans and begged to be allowed to come too. I don't think a man would say that if he didn't like you, do you?'
Emily's mind seemed to contain nothing but memories of Hubert. What he had said on this occasion, how he had looked at her on another. The conversation paused and Emily sunned herself in the enchantment of recollection, until at last breaking forth again, she said—
'Have you noticed how Ethel Eastwick goes after him? And the odd part of it is, that she can't see that he dislikes her. He thinks nothing of her singing; he remained talking to me in the conservatory the whole time. I asked him to come into the drawing-room, but he pretended to misunderstand me, and asked me if I felt a draught. He said, "Let me get you a shawl." I said, "I assure you, Hubert, I don't feel any draught." But he would not believe me, and said he could not allow me to sit there without something on my shoulders. I begged of him not to move, for I knew that Ethel would never forgive me if I interrupted her singing; but he said he could get me a wrap without interrupting any one. He opened the conservatory door, ran across the lawn round to the front door, and came back with—what do you think? With two wraps instead of one; one was mine, and the other belonged to—I don't know who it belonged to. So I said, "Oh, what ever shall we do? I cannot let you go back again. If any one was to come in and find me alone, what ever would they think!" Hubert said, "Will you come with me? A walk in the garden will be pleasanter than sitting in the conservatory." I didn't like going at first, but I thought there couldn't be much harm.'
It seemed to Emily very terrible and very wonderful, and she experienced throughout her numbed sense a strange, thrilling pain, akin to joy, and she sat, her little fragile form lost in the arm-chair, her great eyes fixed in ecstasy, seeing still the dark garden with the great star risen like a phantom above the trees. That evening had been to her a wonder and an enchantment, and her pausing thoughts dwelt on the moment when the distant sound of a bell reached their ears, and the bell came nearer, clanging fiercely in the sonorous garden. Then they saw a light—some one had come for them with a lantern—a joke, a suitable pleasantry, and amid joyous laughter, watching the setting moon, they had gone back to the tiled house, where dancers still passed the white-curtained windows. Hubert had sat by her at supper, serving her with meat and drink. In the sway of memory she trembled and started, looking in the great arm-chair like a little bird that the moon keeps awake in its soft nest. She no longer wished to tell Julia of that night in the garden; her sensation of it lay far beyond words; it was her secret, and it shone through her dreamy youth even as the star had shone through the heavens that night. Suddenly she said—
'I wonder what Hubert is doing in London? I wonder where he is now?'
'Now? It is just nine. I suppose he's in some theatre.'
'I suppose he goes a great deal to the theatre. I wonder who he goes with. He has lots of friends in London—actresses, I suppose; he knows them who play in his plays. He dines at his club——'
'Or at a restaurant.'
'I wonder what a restaurant is like; ladies dine at restaurants, don't they?'
As Julia was about to make reply, the servant brought her a letter. She opened the envelope, and took out a long, closely-written letter; she turned it over to see the signature, and then looking toward Emily, she said, with a pleasant smile—
'Now I shall be able to answer your questions better; this letter is from Mr. Price.'
'Oh, what does he say? Read it.'
'Wait a moment, let me glance through it first; it is very difficult to read.' A few moments after, Julia said, 'There's not much that would interest you in the letter, Emily; it is all about his play. He says he would have written before if he had not been so busy looking out for a theatre, and engaging actors and actresses. He hopes to start rehearsing next week.
"I say I hope, because there are still some parts of the play which do not satisfy me, particularly the third act. I intend to work steadily on the play till, next Thursday, five or six hours every day; I am in perfect health and spirits, and ought to be able to get the thing right. Should I fail to satisfy myself, or should any further faults appear when we begin to rehearse the piece, I shall dismiss my people, pack up my traps, and return to Ashwood. There I shall have quiet; here, people are continually knocking at my door, and I cannot deny my friends the pleasure of seeing me, if that is a pleasure. But at Ashwood, as I say, I shall be sure of quiet, and can easily finish the play this autumn, and February is a better time than September to produce a play."'
'Then he goes on,' said Julia, 'to explain the alterations he contemplates making. There's no use reading you all that.'
'I suppose you think I should not understand.'
'My dear Emily, if you want to read the letter, there it is.'
'I don't want to see your letter.'
'What do you mean, Emily?'
'Nothing, only I think it rather strange that he didn't write to me.'
Some days after, Emily took up the book that Julia had laid down. '"Shakespeare's Plays." I suppose you are reading them so that you'll be able to talk to him better.'
'I never thought of such a thing, Emily.' At the end of a long silence Emily said—
'Do you think clever men like clever women?'
'I don't know. Some say they do, some say they don't. I believe that really clever men, men of genius, don't.'
'I wonder if Hubert is a man of genius. What do you think?'
'I really am not capable of expressing an opinion on the matter.'
Another week passed away, and Emily began to assume an air of languor and timid yearning. One day she said—
'I wonder he doesn't write. He hasn't answered my letter yet. Has he answered yours?'
'He has not written to me again. He hasn't time for letter-writing. He is working night and day at his play.'
'I suppose he'd never think of coming down by the morning train. He'd be sure to come by the five o'clock.'
'He won't come without writing. He'd be sure to write for the dog-cart.'
'I suppose so. There's no use in looking out for him.'
But, notwithstanding her certitude on the point, Emily could not help choosing five o'clock as the time for a walk, and Julia noticed that the girl's feet seemed to turn instinctively towards the lodge. Often she would leave the flowers she was tending on the terrace, and stand looking through the dim, sun-smitten landscape toward the red-brown spot, which was Southwater, in the middle of the long plain.
XIII
Hubert felt called upon to entertain his friends, and one evening they all sat dining at Hurlingham in the long room. The conversation, as usual, had been about books and pictures.
It was the moment when strings of lanterns were hoisted from tree to tree. In front of a large space of sky the coloured globes were crude and trivial; but in the shadows of the trees by the river, where the mist rose into the branches, they had begun to awaken the first impression of melancholy and the sadness of fête. It was the moment when the great trees hung heavy and motionless, strangely green and solemn beneath a slate-coloured sky; and the plaintive waltz cried on Hungarian fiddle-strings, till it seemed the soul of this feminine evening. The fashionable crowd had moved out upon the lawn; the white dresses were phantom blue, and the men's coats faded into obscure masses, darkening the gathering shadows. It was the moment when voices soften, and every heart, overpowered with yearning, is impelled to tell of grief and disillusion; and every moment the wail of the fiddles grew more unbearable, tearing the heart to its very depths.
Author and actor-manager walked up the lawn puffing at their cigars. The others sat watching, knowing that the opportunity had come for criticism of their friend.
'He does not change much,' said Harding. 'Circumstances haven't affected him. A year ago he lived in a garret re-writing his play Divorce. He now rewrites Divorce in a handsome house in Sussex.'
'I thought he had finished his play,' said Thompson. 'I heard that he was going to take a theatre and produce it himself.'
'But did you not hear him say at dinner that he was re-writing as he rehearsed? I met one of the actors yesterday. He doesn't know what to make of it. He gets a new part every week to learn.'
'Do you think he'll ever produce it?'
'I doubt it. At the last moment he'll find that the third act doesn't satisfy him, and will postpone the production till the spring.'
'What do you think of his work?'
'Very intelligent, but a little insipid—like himself. Look at him. Il est bien l'homme de ses ouvres. There is something dry about him, and his writings are like himself—hard, dry and wanting in personal passion.'
'Yet he talks charmingly, with vivacity and intelligence, and he is so full of appreciation of Shakespeare, Goethe, and such genuine love for antiquity.'
'I've heard him talk Shakespeare, Goethe, and Ibsen,' said Harding, 'but I never heard him say anything new, anything personal. It seems to me that you mistake quotation for perception. He assimilates, but he originates nothing. He has read a great deal; he is covered with literature like a rock with moss and lichen. He's appreciative, I will say that for him. He would make a capital editor, or a tutor, or a don, an Oxford don. He would be perfectly happy as a don; he could read up the German critics and expound Sophocles. He would be perfectly happy as a don. As it is, he is perfectly miserable.'
'There was a fellow who had a studio over mine,' said Thompson. 'He had been in the army and used to paint a bit. The academy by chance hung a portrait, so he left the army and turned portrait-painter. One day he saw a picture by Velasquez, and he understood how horrid were the red things he used to send to the academy. He used to come down to see me; he used to say, "I wish I had never seen a picture, by Gad, it is driving me out of my mind." Poor chap, I wanted him to go back to the army. I said, Why paint? no one forces you to; it makes you miserable; don't do so any more. When you have anything to say, art is a joy; when you haven't, it is a curse to yourself and to others.'
Philipps, the editor of The Cosmopolitan, turned towards Harding, and he said—
'I cannot follow you in your estimate of Hubert Price. I don't see him either mentally or physically as you do. It seems to me that you distort the facts to make them fit in with your theory. He is tall and thin, but I do not think that his nature is hard and dry. I should, on the contrary, say that he was of a soft rather than a hard nature. The expression of his face is mild and melancholy. I do not detect the dry, hard, rocky basis of which you speak. I should say that Price was a sentimental man.'
'I have never heard of him being in love,' said Harding. 'I should say that he had been entirely uninfluenced by women.'
'But love of women is only one form of sentimentality and not the highest, nor the deepest,' said Philipps. 'I can imagine a man being exceedingly sentimental and not caring about women at all.'
'What you say is true,' said Harding. His face showed that he felt the observation to be true and was interested in it. 'But I think I described him truly when I said he was like a rock overgrown with moss and lichen. There is not sufficient root-hold for any idea to grow in him, it withers and dies. Examine his literature, and you'll see it is as I say. He has written some remarkable plays, I don't say he hasn't. But they seem to be better than they are. He gets a picturesque situation, but there is always something mechanical about it. There's a human emotion somewhere, but it's never really there; it might have been, but it is not.... It is very well done, it is very intelligent; but it does not seem to live, to palpitate.... In like manner there are men who have read everything, who understand everything, who can theorise; they can tell you all about the masterpiece, but when it comes to producing one, well, they're not on in that scene.'
'What an excellent character he would make in a novel! A drama of sterility,' said Phillips.
'Or the dramas which they bring about,' said Harding.
'Yes, or the dramas they bring about. But what drama can Price bring about—he shuts himself up in a room and tries to write a play,' said Phillips. 'I don't see how he can dramatise any life but his own.'
'All deviations from the normal tend to bring about drama,' said Harding.
'Then, why don't you do a Hubert Price in a book? It would be most interesting. Do you think you ever will?'
'I don't think so.'
'Why not? Because he is a friend of yours, and you would not like——'
'I never allow my private life to interfere with my literature. No; for quite other reasons. I admit that he represents physically and mentally a great deal of the intellectual impotence current in our time. But it would be difficult, I think, to bring vividly before the reader that tall, thin, blonde man, with his pale gentle eyes and his insipid mind. I should take quite a different kind of man as my model.'
'What kind of man?' said Phillips, and the five or six writers and painters leaned forward to listen to Harding.
'I think I should imagine a man about the medium height. A nice figure, light, trim, neat. Good-looking, straight nose, eyes bright and intelligent. I think he would have beard, a very close-cut beard. The turn of his mind would be metaphysical and poetic—an intense subtility of mind combined with much order. He would be full of little habits. He would have note-books of a special kind in which to enter his ideas. The tendency of his mind would be towards concision, and he would by degrees extend his desire for concision into the twilight and the night of symbolism.'
'A sort of constipated Browning,' said Phillips.
'Exactly,' said Harding.
'And would you have him married?' asked John Norton.
'Certainly. I imagine him living in a tiny little house somewhere near the river—Westminster or Chelsea. His wife would be a dreadful person, thin, withered, herring-gutted—a sort of red herring with a cap. But his daughter would be charming, she would have inherited her father's features. I can imagine these women living in admiration of this man, tending on him, speaking very little, removed from worldly influences, seeing only the young men who come every Tuesday evening to listen to the poet's conversation—I don't hear them saying much—I can see them sitting in a corner listening for the ten thousandth time to aestheticisms not one word of which they understand, and about ten o'clock stealing away to some mysterious chamber. Something of the poet's sterility would have descended upon them.'
'That is how you imagine un génie raté,' said Phillips. 'Your conception is clear enough; why don't you write the book?'
'Because there is nothing more to say on the subject. It is a subject for a sketch, not for a book. But of this I'm sure, that the dry-rock man would come out more clearly in a book than the soft, insipid, gentle, companionable, red-bearded fellow.'
'If Price were the dry, sterile nature you describe, we should feel no interest in him, we should not be discussing him as we are,' said Phillips.
'Yes, we should—Price suffers; we're interested in him because he suffers—because he suffers in public—"I never was happy except on those rare occasions when I thought I was a great man." In that sentence you'll find the clew to his attractiveness. But in him there is nothing of the irresponsible passion which is genius. There's that little Rose Massey—that little baby who spends half her day dreaming, and who is as ignorant as a cod-fish. Well, she has got that something—that undefinable but always recognisable something. It was Price who discovered her. We used to laugh at him when he said she had genius. He was right; we were wrong. The other night I was standing in the wings; she was coming down from her dressing-room—she lingered on the stairs, looking the most insignificant little thing you can well imagine; but the moment her cue came a strange light came into her eyes and a strange life was fused in her limbs; she was transformed, and went on the stage a very symbol of passion and romance.'
The slate colour of the sky did not seem to change, and yet the night grew visibly denser in the park; and there had come the sensation of things ended, a movement of wraps thrown over shoulders and thought of bedtime and home. The crowd was moving away, and nearly lost in the darkness Hubert came towards his friends. He had just knocked the ash from his cigar, and as he drew in the smoke the glow of the lighted end fled over his blonde face.
XIV
One day a short letter came from Hubert, asking Mrs. Bentley to send the dog-cart to the station to fetch him. He had decided to come home at once, and postpone the production of his play till the coming spring.
Every rehearsal had revealed new and serious faults of construction. These he had attempted to remove when he went home in the evening, but though he often worked till daybreak, he did not achieve much. The very knowledge that he must come to rehearsal with the re-written scene seemed to produce in him a sort of mental paralysis, and, striking the table with his fist, he would get up, and a thought would cross his mind of how he might escape from this torture. After one terrible night, in which he feared his brain was really giving way, he went down to the theatre and dismissed the company, for he had resolved to return to Ashwood and spend another autumn and another winter re-writing The Gipsy. If it did not come right then, he would bother no more about it. Why should he? There was so much else in life besides literature. He had plenty of money, and was determined in any case to enjoy himself. So did his thoughts run as he leaned back on the cushions of a first-class carriage, glancing casually through the evening paper. Presently his eye was caught by a paragraph narrating an odd calamity which had overtaken a scene carpenter, an honest, respectable, sober, hard-working man, who had fulfilled all social obligations as perfectly as the most exacting could desire, until the day he had conceived the idea of a machine for the better exhibition of advertisements on the hoardings. His system was based on the roller-towel. The roller was moved by clockwork, and the advertisements went round like the towel. At first he spent his spare time and his spare money upon it, but as the hobby took possession of him, he devoted all his time and all his money to it; then he pawned his clothes, and then he raised money on the furniture; the brokers came in, and finally the poor fellow was taken to a lunatic asylum, and his wife and family were thrown on the parish. The story impressed Hubert strangely. He saw an analogy between himself and the crazy inventor, and he asked himself if he would go on re-writing The Gipsy until he went out of his mind. 'Even if I do,' he thought, 'I can hurt no one but myself. No one else is dependent on me; my hobby can hurt no one but myself.' These forebodings passed away, and his mind filled up with schemes of work. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he looked forward to doing it. He wanted quiet, he wanted long days alone with himself. Such were his thoughts in the dog-cart as he drove home, and it was therefore vaguely unpleasant to him to meet the two ladies waiting for him at the lodge gate. Their smiles of welcome irritated him; he longed for the solitude of his study, the companionship of his work; and instead he had to sit with them in the drawing-room, and tell them how he liked London, what he had done there, whom he had seen there, and why he had been unable to finish his play to his satisfaction.
In the morning Emily or Mrs. Bentley was generally about to pour out his coffee for him and keep him company. One day Hubert noticed that it was no longer Mrs. Bentley but Emily who met him in the passage, and followed him into the dining-room. And while he was eating she sat with her feet on the fender, talking of some girls in the neighbourhood—their jealousies, and how Edith Eastwick could not think of anything for herself, but always copied her dresses. Dandy drowsed at her feet, and very often she would take him to the window and make him go through all his tricks, calling on Hubert to admire him.
She had a knack of monopolising Hubert, and since his return from London, her desire to do so had become almost a determination. Hubert showed no disinclination, and after breakfast they were to be seen together in the gardens. Hubert was a great catch, and there were other young ladies eager to be agreeable to him; but he did not seem to desire flirtation with any. So they came to speak of him as a very clever man, no doubt; but as they knew nothing about plays, he very probably did not care to talk to them. Hubert was not attractive in general society, and he would soon have failed to interest them at all had it not been for Emily. She was proud of her influence over him, and for the first time showed a desire to go into society. Day by day her conversation turned more and more on tennis-parties, and she even spoke about a ball. He consented to take her; and he had to dance with her, and she refused nearly every one, saying she was tired, leading Hubert away for long conversations in the galleries and on the staircases. Hubert had positively nothing to say to her; but she seemed quite happy as long as she was with him. And as they drove through the dawn Emily chattered of a hundred trifles,—what Edith had said, what Mabel wore, of the possibility of a marriage, and the arrival of a detachment of some cavalry regiment. Hubert found it hard to affect interest in these conversations. His brain was weary with waltz tunes, the shape of shoulders, and the glare and rustle of silk; but as she chattered, rubbing the misted windows from time to time, so as to determine how far they were from home, he wondered if he should ever marry, and half playfully he thought of her as his wife.
But without warning his dreams were broken by a sudden thought, and he said—
'Another time, I think it will be better, my dear Emily, that Mrs. Bentley should take you out.'
'Why should you not take me out?... I suppose you don't care to—I bore you.'
'No; on the contrary, I enjoy it—I like to see you amused; but I think you should have a proper chaperon.'
Emily did not answer; and a little cloud came over her face. Hubert thought she looked even prettier in her displeasure than she had done in her joy; and he went to sleep thinking of her. Never had he thought her so beautiful—never had she touched him with so personal an interest; and next morning, when he lounged in his study, he was glad to hear her knock at the door; and the half-hour he spent with her there, yielding to her pleading to come for a walk with her, or drive her over to Southwater in the dog-cart, was one of unalloyed pleasure. But a few days after, as he lay in bed, a new idea came to him for his third act. So he said he would have breakfast in his study. He dressed, thinking the whole time how he could round off his idea and bring it into the act. So clear and precise did it seem in his mind that he sat down immediately after breakfast, forgetting even his matutinal cigar, and wrote with a flowing pen. He had left orders that he was not to be disturbed; and was annoyed when the door opened and Emily entered.
'I am very sorry, but you must not be cross with me; I do so want you to come and see the Eastwicks with me.'
'My dear Emily, I could not think of such a thing this morning. I am very busy—indeed I am.'
'What are you doing? Nothing very important, I can see. You are only writing your play. You might come with me.'
'My play is as important to me as a visit to the Eastwicks is to you,' he answered, smiling.
'I have promised Edith.... I really do wish you would come.'
'My dear Emily, it is quite impossible: do let me get on with my work!'
Emily's face instantly changed expression; she turned to leave the room, and Hubert had to go after her and beg her to forgive him—he really had not meant to be rude to her.
'You don't care to talk to me. I am not clever enough for you.'
Then pity took him, and he made amends by suggesting they should go for a walk in the park, and she often succeeded in leading him even to dry, uninteresting neighbours. But the burden grew heavier, and soon he could endure no longer the evenings of devotion to her in the drawing-room, where the presence of Mrs. Bentley seemed to fill her with incipient rebellion. One evening after dinner, as he was about to escape up-stairs, Emily took his arm, pleading that he should play at least one game of backgammon with her. He played three; and then, thinking he had done enough, he took up a novel and began to read. Emily was bitterly offended. She sat in a corner, a picture of deep misery; and whenever he spoke to Mrs. Bentley, he thought she would burst into tears. It was exasperating to be the perpetual victim of such folly; and, pressed by the desire to talk to Mrs. Bentley about the book he was reading, he suggested that she should come with him to the meet. The Harriers met for the first time that season at not five miles from Ashwood. Mrs. Bentley pleaded an engagement. She had promised to go over to tea at the rectory.
'Oh, we shall be back in plenty of time; I'll leave you at the rectory on our way home.'
'Thank you, Mr. Price; but I do not think I can go.'
'And why, may I ask?'
'Well, perhaps Emily would like to go.'
'Emily has a cold, and it would be folly of her to venture a long drive on a cold morning.'
'My cold is quite well.'
'You were complaining before dinner how bad it was.'
'If you don't want to take me, say so.' Tears were now streaming down her cheeks.
'My dear Emily, I am only too pleased to have you with me; I was only thinking of your cold.'
'My cold is quite gone,' she said, with brightening face; and next morning she came down with her waterproof on her arm, and she had on a new cloth dress which she had just received from London. Hubert recognised in each article of attire a sign that she was determined to carry her point. It seemed cruel to tell her to take her things off, and he glanced at Mrs. Bentley and wondered if she were offended.
'I hope the drive won't tire you; you know the meet is at least five miles from here.'
Emily did not answer. She looked charming with her great boa tied about her throat, and sprang into the dog-cart all lightness and joy.
'I hope you are well wrapped up about the knees,' said Mrs. Bentley.
'Oh yes, thank you; Hubert is looking after me.'
Mrs. Bentley's calm, statuesque face, whereon no trace of envy appeared, caught Hubert's attention as he gathered up the reins, and he thought how her altruism contrasted with the passionate egotism of the young girl.
'I hope Julia was not disappointed. I know she wanted to come; but——'
'But what?'
'Well, no one likes Julia more than I do, and I don't want to say anything against her; but, having lived so long with her, I see her faults better than you can. She is horribly selfish! It never occurs to her to think of me.'
Hubert did not answer, and Emily looked at him inquiringly. At last she said, 'I suppose you don't think so?'
'Well, Emily, since you ask me, I must say that I think she took it very good-humouredly. You said you were ill, and it was all arranged that I should drive her to the meet; then you suddenly interposed, and said you wanted to go; and the moment you mentioned your desire to go, she gave way without a word. I really don't know what more you want.'
'You don't know Julia. You cannot read her face. She never forgets anything, and is storing it up, and will pay me out for it sooner or later.'
'My dear Emily, how can you say such things? I never heard—— She is always ready to sacrifice herself for you.'
'You think so. She has a knack of pretending to be more unselfish than another; but she is in reality intensely selfish.'
'All I can say is that it does not strike me so. I never saw any one give way more good-humouredly than she did to-day.'
'I don't think that that is so wonderful, after all. She is only a paid companion; and I do not see why she should go driving about the country with you, and I be left at home.'
Hubert was somewhat shocked. The conversation paused.
'She gets on very well with men,' Emily said at last, breaking an irritating silence somewhat suddenly. 'They say she is very good-looking. Don't you think so?'
'Oh yes, she is certainly a pretty woman—or, I should say, a good-looking woman. She is too tall to be what one generally understands as a pretty woman.'
'Do you like tall women?'
At that moment the hunt appeared in the field at the bottom of the hill. A grey horse had just got rid of his rider, and after galloping round and round, his head in the air, stopped and began to graze. The others jumped the hedge, and the greater part of the field got over the brook in capital style. Emily and Hubert watched them with delighted eyes, for the sight was indeed picturesque this fine autumn day. Even their horse pricked up his ears and began neighing, and Hubert had to hold him tight in hand, lest he should break away while they were enjoying the spectacle. At that moment a poor little animal, with fear-haunted eyes, and in all the agony of fatigue, appeared above the crest of the hill, and immediately after came the straining hounds, one within a dozen yards of the poor little beast, now running in a circle, uttering the most plaintive and pitiful cries.
'Oh, they are not going to kill it!' cried Emily. 'Oh, save it, save it, Hubert!' She hid her face in her hands. 'Did it escape? is it killed?' she said, looking round. 'Oh, it is too cruel!' The huntsman was calling to the hounds, holding something above them, and at every moment horses' heads appeared over the brow of the hill.
There was more hunting; and when the October night began to gather, and the lurid sunset flared up in the west, Hubert got out another wrap, and placed it about Emily's shoulders. But although the chill night had drawn them close together in the dog-cart, they were as widely separated as if oceans were between them. So far as lay in his power he had hidden the annoyance that the intrusion of her society had occasioned him; and, to deceive her, very little concealment was necessary. So long as she saw him she seemed to live in a dream, unconscious of every other thought.
They rolled through a gradual effacement of things, seeing the lights of the farmhouses in the long plain start into existence, and then remain fixed, like gold beetles pinned on a blue curtain. The chill evening drew her to him, till they seemed one; and full of the intimate happiness of the senses which comes of a long day spent in the open air, she chattered of indifferent things. He thought how pleasant the drive would be were he with Mrs. Bentley—or, for the matter of that, with any one with whom he could talk about the novel that had interested him. They rolled along the smooth wide road, watching the streak of light growing narrower in a veil of light grey cloud drawn athwart the sky. Overpowered by her love, the girl hardly noticed his silence; and when they passed through the night of an overhanging wood her flesh thrilled, and a little faintness came over her; for the leaves that brushed her face had seemed like a kiss from her lover.
XV
One afternoon, about the end of September, Hubert came down from his study about tea-time, and announced that he had written the last scene of his last act. Emily was alone in the drawing-room.
'Oh, how glad I am! Then it is done at last. Why not write at once and engage the theatre? When shall we go to London?'
'Well, I don't mean that the play could be put into rehearsal to-morrow. It still requires a good deal of overhauling. Besides, even if it were completely finished, I should not care to produce it at once. I should like to lay it aside for a couple of months, and see how it read then.'
'What a lot of trouble you do take! Does every one who writes plays take so much trouble?'
'No, I'm afraid they do not, nor is it necessary they should. Their plays are merely incidents strung together more or less loosely; whereas my play is the development of a temperament, of temperamental characteristics which cannot be altered, having been inherited through centuries; it must therefore pursue its course to a fatal conclusion. In Shakespeare—— But no, no! these things have no interest for you. You shall have the nicest dress that money can buy; and if the play succeeds——'
The girl raised her pathetic eyes. In truth, she cared not at all what he talked to her about; she was occupied with her own thoughts of him, and just to sit in the room with him, and to look at him occasionally, was sufficient. But for once his words had pained her. It was because she could not understand that he did not care to talk to her. Why did she not understand? It was hard for a little girl like her to understand such things as he spoke about; but she would understand; and then her thoughts passed into words, and she said—
'I understand quite as well as Julia. She, knows the names of more books than I, and she is very clever at pretending that she knows more than she does.'
At that moment Mrs. Bentley entered. She saw that Emily was enjoying her talk with her cousin, and tried to withdraw. But Hubert told her that he had written the last act; she pretended to be looking for a book, and then for some work which she said had dropped out of her basket.
'If Emily would only continue the talking,' she thought, 'I should be able to get away.' But Emily said not a word. She sat as if frozen in her chair; and at length Mrs. Bentley was obliged to enter, however cursorily, into the conversation.
'If you have written out The Gipsy from end to end, I should advise you to produce it without further delay. Once it is put on the stage, you will be able to see better where it is wrong.'
'Then it will be too late. The critics will have expressed their opinion; the work will be judged. There are only one or two points about which I am doubtful. I wish Harding were here. I cannot work unless I have some one to talk to about my work. I don't mean to say that I take advice; but the very fact of reading an act to a sympathetic listener helps me. I wrote the first act of Divorce in that way. It was all wrong. I had some vague ideas about how it might be mended. A friend came in; I told him my difficulties; in telling them they vanished, and I wrote an entirely new act that very night.'
'I'm sorry,' said Mrs. Bentley, 'that I am not Mr. Harding. It must be very gratifying to one's feelings to be able to help to solve a literary difficulty, particularly if one cannot write oneself.'
'But you can—I'm sure you can. I remember asking your advice once before; it was excellent, and was of immense help to me. Are you sure it will not bore you? I shall be so much obliged if you will.'
'Bore me! No, it won't bore me,' said Mrs. Bentley. 'I'm sure I feel very much flattered.' The colour mounted to her cheek, a smile was on her lips; but it went out at the sight of Emily's face.
'Then come up to my study. We shall have just time to get through the first act before dinner.'
Mrs. Bentley hesitated; and, noticing her hesitation, Hubert looked surprised. At that moment Emily said—
'May I not come too?'
'Well, I don't know, Emily. You see that we wish to see if there is anything in the play that a young girl should not hear.'
'Always an excuse to get rid of me. You want to be alone. I never come into the room that you do not stop speaking. Oh, I can bear it no longer!'
'My dear Emily!'
'Don't touch me! Go to her; shut yourself up together. Don't think of me. I can bear it no longer!' And she fled from the room, leaving behind her a sensation of alarm and pity. Hubert and Mrs. Bentley stood looking at each other, both at a loss for words. At last he said—
'That poor child will cry herself into her grave. Have you noticed how poorly she is looking?'
'Not noticed! But you do not know half of it. It has been going on now a long time. You don't know half!'
'I have noticed that things are not settling down as I hoped they would. It really has become quite dreadful to see that poor face looking reproachfully at you all day long. And I am quite at a loss to know what's the right thing to do.'
'It is worse than you think. You have not noticed that we hardly speak now?'
'You—who were such friends—surely not!'
Then she told him hurriedly, in brief phrases, of the change that had taken place in Emily in the last three months. 'It was only the other night she accused me of going after you, of having designs upon you. It is very painful to have to tell you these things, but I have no choice in the matter. She lay on her bed crying, saying that every one hated her, that she was thoroughly miserable. Somehow she seems naturally an unhappy child. She was unhappy at home before she came here; but then I believe she had excellent reasons,—her mother was a very terrible person. However, all that is past; we have to consider the present now. She accused me of having designs on you, insisting all the while that every one was talking about it, and that she was fretting solely because of my good name. Of course, it is very ridiculous; but it is very pitiful, and will end badly if we don't take means to put a stop to it. I shouldn't be surprised if she went off her head. We ought to have the best medical advice.'
'This is very serious,' he said. And then, at the end of a long silence, he said again, 'This is very serious—perhaps far more serious than we think.'
'Not more serious than I think. I ought to have spoken about it to you before; but the subject is a delicate one. She hardly sleeps at all at night; she cries sometimes for hours; she works herself up into such fits of nervousness that she doesn't know what she is saying,—accuses me of killing her, and then repents, declaring that I am the only one who has ever cared for her, and begs of me not to leave her. I do assure you it is becoming very serious.'
'Have you any proposal to make regarding her? I need hardly say that I'm ready to carry out any idea of yours.'
'You know what the cause of it is, I suppose?'
'I do not know; I am not certain. I daresay I'm mistaken.'
'No, you are not; I wish you were—that is to say, unless—— But I was saying that it is most serious. The child's health is affected; she is working herself up into an awful state of mind; she is losing all self-control. I'm sure I'm the last person who would say anything against her; but the time has come to speak out. Well, the other day, when we were at the Eastwicks, you took the chair next to mine when she left the room. When she returned, she saw that you had changed your place, and she said to Ethel Eastwick, "Oh, I'm fainting. I cannot go in there; they are together." Ethel had to take her up to her room. Well, this morbid sensitiveness is most unhealthy. If I walk out on the terrace, she follows, thinking that I have made an appointment to meet you. Jealousy of me fills up her whole mind. I assure you that I am most seriously alarmed. Something occurs every day—trifles, no doubt; and in anybody else they would mean nothing, but in her they mean a great deal.'
'But what do you propose?'