IF Edmund Airey had a good deal to think about in Norway, Harold Wynne was certainly not without a subject for thought in Scotland.
It was with a feeling of exultation that he had sat in the bows of the cutter Acushla on her return to her moorings after that seal-hunt which everyone agreed had been an extraordinary success. Had this expression of exultation been noticed by Lady Innisfail, it would, naturally, have been attributed by her to the fact that he had been in the boat that had made the largest catch of seals. To be sure, Miss Craven, who had observed at least a change in the expression upon his face, did not attribute it to his gratification on having slaughtered some seals, but then Miss Craven was more acute than an ordinary observer.
He felt that he did well to be exultant, as he looked at Beatrice Avon standing by the side of Lord Innisfail at the tiller. The wind that filled the mainsail came upon her face and held her garments against her body, revealing every gracious curve of her shape, and suggesting to his eyes a fine piece of sculpture with flying drapery.
And she was his.
It seemed to him when he had begun to speak to her in the solemn darkness of the seal-cave, that it was impossible that he could receive any answer from her that would satisfy him. How was it possible that she could love him, he had asked himself at some agonizing moments during the week. He thought that she might possibly have come to love him in time, if she had not been with him in the boat during that night of mist, when the voice of Helen Craven had wailed round the cliffs. Her arrival at the Castle could not but have revealed to her the fact that she might obtain an offer of marriage from someone who was socially far above him; and thus he had almost lost all hope of her.
And yet she was his.
The course adopted by his friend Edmund Airey had astonished him. He could not believe that Airey had fallen in love with her. It was not consistent with Airey’s nature to fall in love with anyone, he believed. But he knew that in the matter of falling in love, people do not always act consistently with their character; so that, after all, Airey might be only waiting an opportunity to tell her that he had fallen in love with her.
The words that he had overheard Airey speak to her upon the night of the tableaux in the hall—words that had driven him out into the night of rain and storm to walk madly along the cliffs, and to wonder if he were to throw himself into the waves beneath, would he be strong enough to let himself sink into their depths or weak enough to make a struggle for life—those words had cleared away whatever doubts he had entertained as to Edmund’s intentions.
And yet she was his.
She had answered his question so simply and clearly—with such earnestness and tenderness as startled him. It seemed that they had come to love each other, as he had read of lovers doing, from the first moment that they had met. It seemed that her love had, like his, only increased through their being kept apart from each other—mainly by the clever device of Miss Craven and the co-operation of Edmund Airey, though, of course, Harold did not know this.
His reflections upon this marvel—the increase of their love, though they had few opportunities of being together and alone—would have been instructive even to persons so astute and so ready to undertake the general control of events as Mr. Airey and Miss Craven. Unfortunately, however, they were as ignorant of what had taken place to induce these reflections as he was of the conspiracy between them to keep him apart from Beatrice to secure his happiness and the happiness of Beatrice.
The fact that Beatrice loved him and had confessed her love for him, though they had had so few opportunities of being together, seemed to him the greatest of all the marvels that he had recently experienced.
As he gave a farewell glance at the lough and recollected how, a fortnight before, he had walked along the cliffs and had cast to the winds all his cherished ideas of love, he could not help feeling that he had been surrounded with marvels. He had had a narrow escape—he actually regarded a goodlooking young woman with several thousands of pounds of an income, as a narrow escape.
This was the last of the reflections that came to him with the sound of the green seas choked in the narrows of the lough.
The necessity of preserving himself from sudden death—the Irish outside car on which he was driving was the worst specimen he had yet seen—absorbed all his thoughts when he had passed through the village of Ballycruiskeen; and by the time he had got out of the train that carried him to the East Coast—a matter of six hours travelling—and aboard the steamer that bore him to Glasgow, the exultation that he had felt on leaving Castle Innisfail, and on reflecting upon the great happiness that had come to him, was considerably chastened.
He was due at two houses in Scotland. At the first he meant to do a little shooting. The place was not inaccessible. After a day’s travelling he found himself at a railway station fifteen miles from his destination. He eventually reached the place, however, and he had some shooting, which, though indifferent, was far better than it was possible to obtain on Lord Innisfail’s mountains—at least for Lord Innisfail’s guests to obtain.
The second place was still further north—it was now and again alluded to as the North Pole by some visitors who had succeeded in finding their way to it, in spite of the directions given to them by the various authorities on the topography of the Highlands. Several theories existed as to the best way of reaching this place, and Harold, who knew sufficient Scotch to be able to take in the general meaning of the inhabitants without the aid of an interpreter, was made aware while at the shooting lodge, of these theories. Hearing, however, that some persons had actually been known to find the place, he felt certain that they had struck out an independent course for themselves. It was incredible to him that any of them had reached it by following the directions they had received on the subject. He determined to follow their example; and he had reached the place—eventually.
It was when he had been for three days following a stag, that he began to think of his own matters in a dispassioned way. Crawling on one’s stomach along a mile or two of boggy land and then wriggling through narrow spaces among the rocks—sitting for five or six hours on gigantic sponges (damp) of heather, with one’s chin on one’s knees for strategical purposes, which the gillies pretend they understand, but which they keep a dead secret—shivering as the Scotch mist clothes one as with a wet blanket, then being told suddenly that there is a stag thirty yards to windward—getting a glimpse of it, missing it, and then hearing the gillies exchanging remarks in a perfectly intelligible Gaelic regarding one’s capacity—these incidents constitute an environment that tends to make one look dispassionately upon such marvels as Harold had been considering in a very different spirit while the Irish lough was yet within hearing.
On the third day that he had been trying to circumvent the stag, Harold felt despondent—not about the stag, for he had long ago ceased to take any interest in the brute—but about his own future.
It is to be regretted (sometimes) that an exchange of sentiments on the subject of love between lovers does not bring with it a change of circumstances, making possible the realization of a scheme of life in which those sentiments shall play an active part—or at least as active a part as sentiments can play. This was Harold’s great regret. Since he had found that he loved Beatrice and that Beatrice loved him, the world naturally appeared lovelier also. But it was with the loveliness of a picture that hangs in a public gallery, not as an individual possession.
His material circumstances, so far from having improved since he had confessed to Edmund Airey that it was necessary for him to marry a woman with money, had become worse; and yet he had given no thought to the young woman with the money, but a great many thoughts to the young woman who had, practically, none. He felt that no more unsatisfactory state of matters could be imagined. And yet he felt that it would be impossible to take any steps with a view of bringing about a change.
He had received several letters from Beatrice, and he had written several to her; but though in more than one he had told her in that plain strain which one adopts when one does not desire to be in any way convincing, that it was a most unfortunate day for her when she met him, still he did not suggest that their correspondence should cease.
What was to be the end of their love?
It was the constant attempt to answer this question that gave the stag his chance of life when, on the afternoon of the third day, Harold was commanded by his masters the gillies to fire into that thickening in the mist which he was given to understand by an unmistakable pantomime, was the stag.
While the gillies were exchanging their remarks in Gaelic, flavouring them with very smoky whiskey, he was thinking, not of the escape of the stag, but of what possible end there could be to the love that existed between Beatrice and himself.
It was the renewed thinking upon this question that brought about the death of that particular stag and two others before the next evening, for he had arrived at a point when he felt that he must shoot either a stag or himself. He had arrived at a condition of despair that made pretty severe demands upon him.
The slaughter of the stags saved him. When he saw their bodies stretched before him he felt exultant once more. He felt that he had overcome his fate; and it was the next morning before he realized the fact that he had done nothing of the sort—that the possibility of his ever being able to marry Beatrice Avon was as remote as it had been when he had fired blindly into the mist, and his masters, who had carried the guns, exhausted (he believed) the resources, of Gaelic sarcasm in comment.
IT was the first week in October when Harold Wynne found himself in London. He had got a letter from Beatrice in which she told him that she and her father would return to London from Holland that week. Mr. Avon had conscientiously followed the track of an Irish informer in whom he was greatly interested, and who had, at the beginning of the century, found his way to Holland, where he was looked upon as a poor exile from Erin. He had betrayed about a dozen of his fellow-countrymen to their enemies, and had then returned to Ireland to live to an honoured old age on the proceeds of the bargain he had made for their heads.
The result of Harold’s consideration of the position that he occupied in regard to Beatrice, was this visit to London. He made up his mind that he should see her and tell her that, like Mrs. Browning’s hero, he loved her so well that he only could leave her.
He could bring himself to do it, he felt. He believed that he was equal to an act of heroic self-sacrifice for the sake of the girl—that was how he put the matter to himself when being soaked on the Scotch mountain. Yes, he would go to her and tell her that the conclusion to which he had come was that they must forget one another—that only unhappiness could result from the relationship that existed between them. He knew that there is no more unsatisfactory relationship between a man and a woman than that which has love for a basis, but with no prospect of marriage; and he knew that so long as his father lived and continued selfish—and only death could divide him from his selfishness—marriage with Beatrice was out of the question.
It was with this resolution upon him that he drove to the address in the neighbourhood of the British Museum, where Beatrice said she was to be found with her father.
It was one of those mansions which at some period in the early part of the century had been almost splendid; now it was simply large. It was not the house that Harold would have cared to occupy, even rent free—and this was a consideration to him. But for a scholar who had a large library of his own, and who found it necessary to be frequently in the neighbourhood of the larger Library at the Museum, the house must undoubtedly have had its advantages.
She was not at home. The elderly butler said that Mr. Avon had found it necessary to visit Brussels for a few days, and he had thus been delayed on the Continent beyond the date he had appointed for his return. He would probably be in England by the end of the week—the day was Wednesday.
Harold left the gloom of Bloomsbury behind him, feeling a curious satisfaction at having failed to see Beatrice—the satisfaction of a respite. Some days must elapse before he could make known his resolution to her.
He strolled westward to a club of which he was a member—the Bedouin, and was about to order dinner, when someone came behind him and laid a hand, by no means gently, on his shoulder. Some of the Bedouins thought it de rigueur to play such pranks upon each other; and, to do them justice, it was only rarely that they dislocated a friend’s shoulder or gave a nervous friend a fit. People said one never knew what was coming from the moment they entered the Bedouin Club, and the prominent Bedouins accepted this statement as embodying one of the most agreeable of its many distinctive features.
Harold was always prepared for the worst in this place, so when the force of the blow swung him round and he saw an extremely plain arrangement of features, distorted by a smile of extraordinary breadth, beneath a closely-cropped crown of bright red hair, he merely said, “Hallo, Archie, you here? I thought you were in South Africa lion-hunting or something.”
The smile that had previously distorted the features of the young man, was of such fulness that it might reasonably have been taken for granted that it could not be increased; the possessor showed, however, that that smile was not the result of a supreme effort. So soon as Harold had spoken he gave a wink, and that wink seemed to release the mechanical system by which his features were contorted, for in an instant his face became one mouth. In plain words, this mouth of the young man had swallowed up his other features. All that could be seen of his face was that enormous mouth flanked by a pair of enormous ears, like plantain leaves growing on each side of the crater of a volcano.
Harold looked at him and laughed, then picked up a menu card and studied it until he calculated that the young man whom he had addressed as Archie should have thrown off so much of his smile as would enable him to speak.
He gave him plenty of time, and when he looked round he saw that some of the young man’s features had succeeded in struggling to the surface, as it were, beneath the circular mat of red hair that lay between his ears.
“No South Africa for me, tarty chip,” said Archie. (“Tarty chip” was the popular term of address that year among young men about town. Its philological significance was never discovered.)
“No South Africa for me; I went one better than that,” continued the young man.
“I doubt it,” said Harold. “I’ve had my eye on you until lately. You have usually gone one worse. Have you any money left—tell the truth?”
“Money? I asked the tarty chips that look after that sort of thing for me how I stood the other day,” said Archie, “and I’m ashamed to say that I’ve been spending less than my income—that is until a couple of months ago. I’ve still about three million. What does that mean?”
“That you’ve got rid of about a million inside two years,” said Harold.
“You’re going it blind,” said Archie. “It only means that I’ve spent fifty decimals in eighteen months. I can spare that, tarty chip.” (It may possibly be remembered that in the slang of the year a decimal signified a thousand pounds.) “That means that you’ve squandered a fortune, Archie,” said Harold, thinking what fifty thousand pounds would mean to him.
“There’s not much of a squander in the deal when I got value for it,” said Archie. “I got plenty of value. I’ve got to know all about this world.”
“And you’ll soon get to know all about the next, if you go on at this rate,” said Harold.
“Not me; I’ve got my money in sound places. You heard about my show.”
“Your show? I’ve heard about nothing for the past year but your shows. What’s the latest? I want something to eat.”
“Oh, come with me to my private trough,” cried the young man. “Don’t lay down a mosaic pavement in your inside in this hole. Come along, tarty chip; I’ve got a chef named Achille—he knows what suits us—also some ‘84 Heidsieck. Come along with me, and I’ll tell you all about the show. We’ll go there together later on. We’ll take supper with her.”
“Oh! with her?”
“To be sure. You don’t mean to say that you haven’t heard that I’ve taken the Legitimate Theatre for Mrs. Mowbray? Where on God’s footstool have you been for the past month?”
“Not further than the extreme North of Scotland. It was far enough. I saw a paragraph stating that Mrs. Mowbray, after being a failure in a number of places, had taken the Legitimate. What has that got to say to you?”
“Not much, but I’ve got a good deal to say to it. Oh, come along, and I’ll tell you all about it. I’m building a monument for myself. I’ve got the Legitimate and I mean to make Irving and the rest of them sit up.”
ARCHIE BROWN was the only son of Mr. John Brown, the eminent contractor. Mr. John Brown had been a man of simple habits and no tastes. When a working navvy he had acquired a liking for oatmeal porridge, and up to the day of his death, when he had some twenty thousand persons in his employment, each of them earning money for him, he never rose above this comestible. He lived a thoroughly happy life, taking no thought about money, and having no idea, beyond the building of drinking fountains in his native town, how to spend the profits realized on his enormous transactions.
Now, as the building of even the most complete system of drinking fountains, in a small town in Scotland, does not produce much impression upon the financial position of a man with some millions of pounds in cash, and making business profits to the extent of two hundred thousand a year, it was inevitable that, when a brick one afternoon fell on Mr. John Brown’s head and fractured his skull so severely as to cause his death, his only son should be left very well provided for.
Archie Brown was left provided with some millions in cash, and with property that yielded him about one hundred pounds a day.
Up to the day of his father’s death he had never had more than five hundred a year to spend as pocket-money—he had saved even out of this modest sum, for he had scarcely any more expensive tastes than his father, though he had ever regarded sole à la Normande as more palatable than oatmeal porridge as a breakfast dish.
He had never caused his father a moment’s uneasiness; but as soon as he was given a bird’s eye view, so to speak, of his income, he began to ask himself if there might not be something in the world more palatable even than sole à la Normande.
In the course of a year or two he had learned a good deal on the subject of what was palatable and what was not; for from the earliest records it is understood that the knowledge of good and the knowledge of evil may be found on the one tree.
He began to be talked about, and that is always worth paying money for—some excellent judges say that it is the only thing worth paying money for. Occasionally he paid a trifle over the market price for this commodity. But then he knew that he generally paid more than the market price for everything that he bought, from his collars, which were unusually high, down to his boots, which were of glazed kid, so that he did not complain.
He found that, after a while, the tradespeople, seeing that he paid them cash, treated him fairly, and that the person who supplied him with cigars was actually generous when he bought them by the thousand.
People who at first had fancied that Mr. Archibald Brown was a plunger—that is, a swindler whom they could swindle out of his thousands—had reason to modify their views on the subject after some time. For six months he had been imposed upon in many directions. But with all the other things which had to be paid for, the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil should, he knew, be included. Imported in a fresh condition this was, he knew, expensive; but he had a sufficient acquaintance with the elements of fruit-culture to be well aware of the fact that in this condition it is worth very much more than the canned article.
He bought his knowledge of good and evil fresh.
He was no fool, some people said, exultantly.
These were the people whose friends had tried to impose on him but had not succeeded.
He was no fool, some people said regretfully.
These were the people who had tried to impose on him but had not succeeded.
Harold had always liked Archie Brown, and he had offered him much advice—vegetarian banquets of the canned fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The shrewd outbursts of confidence in which Archie indulged now and again, showed Harold that he was fast coming to understand his position in society—his friends and his enemies.
Harold, after some further persuasion, got into the hansom which Archie had hailed, and was soon driving down Piccadilly to the spacious rooms of the latter—rooms furnished in a wonderful fashion. As a panorama of styles the sitting-room, which was about thirty feet square, with a greenhouse in the rear, would have been worth much to a lecturer on the progress or decadence of art—any average lecturer could make the furniture bear out his views, whether they took one direction or the other.
Two cabinets which had belonged to Louis XV were the finest specimens known in the world. They contained Sèvres porcelain and briar-root pipes. A third cabinet was in the purest style of boarding house art. A small gilt sofa was covered with old French tapestry which would have brought five pounds the square inch at an auction. Beside it was the famous Four-guinea Tottenham Armchair in best Utrecht velvet—three-nine-six in cretonne, carriage paid to any railway-station in the United Kingdom.
A chair, the frame of which was wholly of ivory, carved in Italy, in the seventeenth century, by the greatest artist that ever lived, apparently had its uses in Archie Brown’s entourage, for it sustained in an upright position a half-empty soda-water bottle—the bottle would not have stood upright but for the high relief in the carving of the flowing hair of the figure of Atalanta at one part of the frame. Near it was an interesting old oak chair that was for some time believed to have once belonged to King Henry VIII.
In achieving this striking contrast to the carved ivory, Mr. Brown thought that he had proved his capacity to appreciate an important element in artistic arrangement. He pointed it out to Harold without delay. He had pointed it out to every other person who had visited his rooms.
He also pointed out a picture by one Rembrandt which he had picked up at an auction for forty shillings. A dealer had subsequently assured him that if he wanted a companion picture by the same painter he would not guarantee to procure it for him at a lower figure than twenty-five guineas—perhaps it might even cost him as high as thirty; therefore—the logic was Archie’s—the Rembrandt had been a dead bargain.
Harold looked at this Burgomaster’s Daughter in eighteenth century costume, and said that undoubtedly the painter knew what he was about.
“And so does Archie, tarty chip,” said his host, leading him to one of the bedrooms.
“Now it’s half past seven,” said Archie, leaving him, “and dinner will be served at a quarter to eight. I’ve never been late but once, and Achille was so hurt that he gave me notice. I promised that it should never occur again, and it hasn’t. He doesn’t insist on my dressing for dinner, though he says he should like it.”
“Make my apologies to Achille,” said Harold.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” said Archie seriously—“at least I think it won’t.”
Harold had never been in these rooms before—he wondered how it had chanced that he came to them at all. But before he had partaken of more than one of the hors d’ouvres—there were four of them—he knew that he had done well to come. Achille was an artist, the Sauterne was Chateau Coutet of 1861, and the champagne was, as Archie had promised it should be, Heidsieck of 1884. The electric light was artfully toned down, and the middle-aged butler understood his business.
“This is the family trough,” said Archie. “I say, Harry, isn’t it one better than the oatmeal porridge of our dads—I mean of my dad; yours, I know, was always one of us; my dad wasn’t, God bless him! If he had been we shouldn’t be here now. He’d have died a pauper.”
Harold so far forgot himself as to say, “Doesn’t Carlyle remark somewhere that it’s the fathers who work that the sons—ah, never mind.”
“Carlyle? What Carlyle was that? Do I know him?” asked Archie.
“No,” said Harold, shaking his head.
“He isn’t a tarty chip, eh?”
“Tart, not tarty.”
“Oh. Don’t neglect this jelly. It’s the best thing that Achille does. It’s the only thing that he ever repeats himself in. He came to me boasting that he could give me three hundred and sixty-five different dinners in the year. ‘That’s all very well,’ said I, ‘but what about Leap Year?’ I showed him there that his bluff wouldn’t do. ‘Pass’ said I, and he passed. But we understand one another now. I will say that he has never repeated himself except in this jelly. I make him give it to me once a week.”
“You’re right,” said Harold. “It is something to think about.”
“Yes, while you’re in front of it, but never after,” said Archie. “That’s what Achille says. ‘The true dinner,’ says he, ‘is the one that makes you think while you’re at it, but that never causes you a thought afterwards.’”
“Achille is more than an artist, he is a philosopher,” said Harold. “What does he call this?” he glanced at the menu card. “‘Glace à la chagrin d’Achille’ What does he mean by that? ‘The chagrin of Achilles’? Where does the chagrin come in?”
“Oh, he has some story about a namesake of his,” said Archie. “He was cut up about something, and he wouldn’t come out of the marquee.”
“The tent,” cried Harold. “Achilles sulked in his tent. Of course, that’s the ‘chagrin d’Achille.’”
“Oh, you heard of it too? Then the story has managed to leak out somehow. They always do. There’s nothing in it. Now I’ll tell you all about the show. Try one of these figs.”
Harold helped himself to a green fig, the elderly butler placed a decanter of claret on the table, and disappeared with the noiselessness of a shadow.
WHEN the history of the drama in England during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century comes to be written, the episode of the management of the Legitimate Theatre by Mrs. Mowbray will doubtless be amply treated from the standpoint of art, and the historian will, it may be confidently expected, lament the want of appreciation on the part of the public for the Shakespearian drama, to which the closing of the Legitimate Theatre was due.
There were a considerable number of persons, however, who showed a readiness to assert that the management of the Legitimate by Mrs. Mowbray should be looked upon as a purely—only purely was not the word they used—social incident, having no basis whatever in art. It failed, they said, not because the people of England had ceased to love Shakespeare, but because Mr. Archie Brown had ceased to love Mrs. Mowbray.
However this may be, there were also people who said that the Legitimate Theatre under the management of Mrs. Mowbray could not have been so great a financial failure, after all; for Mrs. Mowbray, when her season came to an end, wore as expensive dresses as ever, and drove as expensive horses as ever; and as everyone who had been associated with the enterprise had been paid—some people said overpaid—the natural assumption was that Shakespeare on the stage was not so abhorrent to the people of England as was generally supposed.
The people who took this view of the matter were people who had never heard the name of Mr. Archie Brown—people who regarded Mrs. Mowbray as a self-sacrificing lady who had so enthusiastic a desire to make the public acquainted with the beauties of Shakespeare, that she was quite content to spend her own fortune (wherever that came from) in producing “Cymbeline” and other masterpieces at the Legitimate.
There were other people who said that Archie Brown was a young ass.
There were others who said that Mrs. Mowbray was a harpy.
There were others still—they were mostly men—who said that Mrs. Mowbray was the handsomest woman in England.
The bitterest—they were mostly women—said that she was both handsome and a harpy.
The truth regarding the difficult question of the Legitimate Theatre was gathered by Harold Wynne, as he swallowed his claret and ate his olives at the dining table at Archie Birown’s rooms in Piccadilly.
He perceived from what Archie told him, that Archie had a genuine enthusiasm in the cause of Shakespeare. How he had acquired it, he might have had considerable difficulty in explaining. He also gathered that Mrs. Mowbray cared very little for Shakespeare except as a medium for impressing upon the public the fact—she believed it to be a fact—that Mrs. Mowbray was the most beautiful woman in England.
“Cymbeline” had, she considered, been written in the prophetic instinct, which the author so frequently manifested, that one day a woman with such shapely limbs as Mrs. Mowbray undoubtedly possessed, might desire to exhibit them to the public of this grand old England of Shakespeare’s and ours.
Mrs. Mowbray was probably the most expensive taste that any man in England could entertain.
All this Harold gathered from the account of the theatrical enterprise, as communicated to him by Archie after dinner.
And the best of it all was, Archie assured him, that no human being could say a word against the character of Mrs. Mowbray.
“I never heard a word against the character of her frocks,” said Harold.
“It’s a big thing, the management of the Legitimate,” said Archie, gravely.
“No doubt; even when it’s managed, shall we say, legitimately?” said Harold.
“I feel the responsibility, I can tell you,” said Archie. “Shakespeare has never been given a proper chance in England; and although she’s a year or two older than me, yet on the box seat of my coach she doesn’t look a day over twenty-two—just when a woman is at her best, Harry. What I want to know is, shall it be said of us that Shakespeare—the immortal Shakespeare, mind you—Stratford upon Avon, you know—”
“I believe I have his late address,” said Harold.
“That’s all right. But what I want to know is, shall it be said that we are willing to throw our Shakespeare overboard? In the scene in the front of the cave she is particularly fine.”
In an instant Harold’s thoughts were carried back to a certain scene in front of a cave on a moonlight night; and for him the roar of life through Piccadilly was changed to the roar of the Atlantic. His thoughts remained far away while Archie talked gravely of building himself a monument by his revival of “Cymbeline”, with which the Legitimate had been opened by Mrs. Mowbray. Of course, the thing hadn’t begun to pay yet, he explained. Everyone knew that the Bicycle had ruined theatrical business in London; but the Legitimate could fight even the Bicycle, and when the public had the beauty of Mrs. Mowbray properly impressed upon them, Shakespeare would certainly obtain that recognition which he deserves from England. Were Englishmen proud of Shakespeare, or were they not? that was what Archie wished very much to know. If the people of your so-called British Islands wish to throw Shakespeare overboard, just let them say so. But if they threw him over, the responsibility would rest with them; Mrs. Mowbray would still be the handsomest woman in England. At any rate, “Cymbeline” at the Legitimate would be a monument.
“As a lighthouse is a monument,” said Harold, coming back from the Irish lough to Piccadilly.
“I knew you’d agree with me,” said Archie. “You know that I’ve always had a great respect for your opinion, Harry. I don’t object so much as some tarty chips to your dad. I wish he’d see Mrs. Mowbray. There’s no vet. whose opinion I’d sooner take on the subject than his. He’d find her all right.”
Harold looked at the young man whose plain features—visible when he did not smile too broadly—displayed the enthusiasm that possessed him when he was fancying that his devotion to the beauty of Mrs. Mowbray was a true devotion to Shakespeare. Archie Brown, he was well aware, was very imperfectly educated.
He was not, however, much worse than the general run of people. Like them he knew only enough of Shakespeare to be able to misquote him now and again; and, like them, he believed that. Darwinism meant nothing more than that men had once been monkeys.
Harold looked at Archie, and felt that Mrs. Mowbray was a fortunate woman in having met with him. The monument was being raised, Harold felt; and he was right. The management of the Legitimate-Theatre was a memorial to Vanity working heart, and soul with Ignorance to the praise and glory of Shakespeare.
B EFORE Archie had completed his confidences, a visitor was announced.
“Oh, it’s only old Playdell,” said Archie. “You know old Playdell, of course.”
“I’m not so certain that I do,” said Harold.
“Oh, he’s a good old soul who was kicked out of the Church by the bishop for doing something or other. He’s useful to me—keeps my correspondence in order—spots the chaps that write the begging letters, and sees that they don’t get anything out of me, while he takes care that all the genuine ones get all that they deserve. He’s an Oxford man.”
“Playdell—Playdell,” said Harold. “Surely he can’t be the fellow that got run out for marrying people without a licence?”
“That’s his speciality,” said Archie. “Come along, chippie Chaplain. Chip in, and have a glass of something.”
A middle-aged man, wearing the coat and the tie of a cleric, entered the room with a smile and a bow to Harold.
“You’ve heard of Mr. Wynne, Play?” said Archie. “The Honourable Harold Wynne. He’s heard of you—yes, you bet your hoofs on that.”
“I dare say you’ve heard of me, Mr. Wynne,” said the man. “It’s the black sheep in a flock that obtain notoriety; the colourless ones escape notice. I’m a black sheep.”
“You’re about as black as they make them, old Play,” remarked Archie, with a prompt and kindly acquiescence. “But your blackness doesn’t go deeper than the wool.”
“You say that because you are always disposed to be charitable, Archie,” said Mr. Playdell. “Even with you I’m afraid that another notorious character is not so black as he’s painted.”
“Neither he is,” said Archie. “You know as well as I do that the devil is not so black as he used to be—he’s turning gray in his old age.”
“They treated me worse than they treated the Fiend himself, Mr. Wynne,” said Playdell. “They turned me out of the Church, but the Church still retains the Prince of Darkness. He is still the most powerful auxiliary that the Church knows.”
“If you expressed that sentiment when in orders,” said Harold, “I can quite easily understand how you find yourself outside the Church.”
“I was quite orthodox when in the Church, Mr. Wynne. I couldn’t afford to be otherwise,” said Playdell. “I wasn’t even an Honest Doubter. I felt that if I had begun to doubt I might become a Dissenter before I knew what I was about. It is only since I left the Church that I’ve indulged in the luxury of being unorthodox.”
“Take a glass of wine for your stomach’s sake,” said Archie.
“That lad is the son of a Scotch Nonconformist,” said Mr. Playdell to Harold; “hence the text. Would it be unorthodox to say that an inscrutable Providence did not see fit to preserve the reply of Timothy to that advice? For my own part I cannot doubt for a moment that Timothy inquired for what other reason his correspondent fancied he might take the wine. I like my young patron’s La Rose. It must have been something very different from this that the person alluded to when he said ‘my love is better than wine.’ Yes, I’ve always thought that the truth of the statement was largely dependent on the wine.”
“I’ll take my oath that isn’t orthodox,” said Archie. “You’d better mind what you’re about, chippie Chaplain, or I’ll treat you as the bishop did. This is an orthodox household, let me tell you.”
“I feel like Balaam’s ass sometimes, Mr. Wynne, in this situation,” said Mr. Playdell. “In endeavouring to avoid the angel with the sword on one hand—that is the threatening orthodoxy of the Church—I make myself liable to a blow from the staff of the prophet—our young friend is the prophet.”
“I will say this for you, chippie Chaplain,” said Archie, “you’ve kept me straight. Not that I ever did take kindly to the flowing bowl; but we all know what temptations there are.” He looked into his glass and spoke solemnly, shaking his head. “Yes, Harry, I’ve never drunk a thimbleful more than I should since old Play here lectured me.”
“If I could only persuade you—‘’commenced Mr. Playdell.
“But I’m not such an ass,” cried Archie, interrupting him. Then he turned to Harold, saying, “The chippie Chaplain wants to marry me to some one whose name we never mention. That has always been his weakness—marrying tarty chips that he had no right to marry.”
“If I don’t mistake, Mr. Playdell, it was this little weakness that brought you to grief,” said Harold.
“It was the only point that the bishop could lay hold of, Mr. Wynne,” said Playdell. “I held, and I still hold, that the ceremony of marriage may be performed by any person who has been ordained—that the question of a licence is not one that should come forward upon any occasion. Those who hold other opinions are those who would degrade the ordinance into a mere civil act.”
“And you married without question every couple who came to you, I believe?” said Harold.
“I did, Mr. Wynne. And I will be happy to marry any other couples who come to me for that purpose now.”
“But, you are no longer in the Church, and such marriages would be no marriages in the eyes of the law.”
“Nothing can be more certain, Mr. Wynne. But I know that there are many persons in this country who hold, with me, that the ordinance is not one that should be made the subject of a licence bought from a bishop—who hold that the very act of purchase is a gross degradation of the ordinance of God.”
“I say, chippie Chaplain, haven’t we had enough of that?” said Archie. “You’ve pegged away at that marriage business with me for a good many months. Now, I say, pass the marriage business. Let us have a fresh deal.”
“Mr. Wynne, I merely wished to explain my position to you,” said Playdell. “I’m on the side of the angels in this question, as a great statesman but a poor scientist said of another question.”
“Pass the statesman as well,” cried Archie.
“What do tarty chips like us care for politics or other fads? He told me the other day, Harry, that instead of introducing a bill for the admission of ladies as members of Parliament, it would soon be necessary to introduce a bill for the admission of gentlemen as members—yes, you said that. You can’t deny it.”
“I don’t,” said Mr. Playdell. “The result of the last General Election—”
“Pass the General Election,” shouted Archie. “Mr. Wynne hates that sort of thing. Now give an account of yourself. What have you done to earn your screw since morning?”
“This is what I have come to, Mr. Wynne,” said Playdell. “Think of it; a clergyman and M.A. Oxon, forced to give an account of his stewardship to a young cub like that!” He laughed after a moment of seriousness.
“You don’t seem to feel deeply the degradation,” remarked Harold.
“It’s nothing to the depths to which I have fallen,” said Mr. Playdell. “I was never more than a curate, but in spite of the drawback of being privileged to preach the Gospel twice a week, the curacy was a comfortable one. I published two volumes of my sermons, Mr. Wynne. They sold poorly in England, but I believe that in America they made the fortune of the publishers that pirated them. It is perfectly well known that my sermons achieved a great and good purpose in the States. They were practical. I will say that for them. The leader of the corner in hogs who ran the prices up last autumn, sold out of the business, I understand, after reading my sermon on the text, ‘The husks that the swine do eat.’ Several judges also resigned, admitting that they were converted. It was freely stated that even a Congressman had been reformed by one sermon of mine, while another was known to have brought tears to the eyes of a reporter on the New York Herald. And yet, with all these gratifying results, I never got a penny out of the American edition. Just think what would happen on this side of the Atlantic if, let us say, a Royal Academician were to find grace through a sermon, or—to assume an extreme case—a member of the Stock Exchange? Why, the writer would be a made man. I had thoughts of going to America, Mr. Wynne. At any rate, I’m going to deal with the publishers there directly. A firm in Boston is at present about to boom a Bowdlerized edition of the Bible which I have prepared for family reading in the States—not a word in it that the purest-minded young woman in all Boston might not see. It should sell, Mr. Wynne. I’m also translating into English a volume of American humour.”
“I’ll give you a chance of going to America, before you sleep if you don’t dry up about your sermons and suchlike skittles,” said Archie. “The decanter’s beside you. Fill your glass. Mr. Wynne is coming to my show to-night.”
Mr. Playdell passed the decanter without filling his glass. “You know that I never take more than one glass of La Rose,” said he. “I have found out all about your house painter who fell off the ladder and broke all his ribs—he is the same as your Clergyman’s Orphan, and he lives in the same house as your Widow of a Naval Officer whose little all was invested in a fraudulent building society—he is also ‘First Thessalonians seven and ten. P.O.O. or stamps’.”
“Great Godfrey!” cried Archie; “and I had already written out a cheque for twenty pounds to send to that swindler! Do you mean to tell me, Play, that all those you’ve mentioned are impostors?”
“All? Why, there’s only one impostor among the lot,” said Mr. Playdell. “He is ‘First Thessalonians,’ and he has at least a dozen branch establishments.”
“It’s enough to make a tarty chip disgusted with God’s footstool,” said Archie. “Before old Play took me in hand I used to fling decimals about right and left, without inquiry.”
“He was the sole support of several of the most notorious swindlers in the country,” said Mr. Playdell. “I’ve managed to whittle them down considerably. Shakespeare is at present the only impostor that has defied my efforts,” he added, in a whisper to Harold.
Harold laughed. He was beginning to feel some remorse at having previously looked on Archie Brown as a good-natured fool. He now felt that, in spite of Mrs. Mowbray, he would not wreck his life.