Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Hubert.

  ‘Well, yer see them boys was a-hawking their cheap toys in the neighbourhood, and when they got wind of my success they comes round to see, and they remains on account of the crowd. Pockets was picked, I don’t say they wasn’t, and the perlice turned rusty, and then a pious old gent comes along, and ‘earing the remarks of them boys, which I admit wasn’t nice, complains to the hauthorities, and I was put down! Now, what I wants to know is why my art should be made to suffer for the beastly-mindedness of them ’ere boys.’

  Hubert admitted that there seemed to be an injustice somewhere, and asked the artist if he had never tried again.

  ‘Try again? Should think I did. When once a man ‘as tasted of ‘igh art, he can’t keep his blooming fingers out of it. It was impossible after the success of my bathers to go back to the bacon, so I thought I would circumvent the hauthorities. I goes to the National Gallery, makes a sketch, ’ere it is,’ and after some fumbling in his breast pocket, he produced a greasy piece of paper, which he handed to Hubert. ‘S’pose yer know the picture?’ Hubert admitted that he did not. ‘Well, that is a drawing from Gainsborough’s celebrated picture of Medora a-washing of her feet.... But the perlice wouldn’t ‘ave it any more than my original, ’e said it was worse than the bathers at Margaret, and when I told the hignorant brute wot it was, ’e said he wanted no hargument, that ’e wouldn’t ‘ave it.’

  Hubert had noticed, during the latter part of the narrative, a look of dubious cunning twinkling in the pale eyes; but now this look died away, and the eyes resumed their habitual look of vague reverie.

  ‘I’ve been ‘ad up before the Beak: from him I expected more enlightenment, but he, too, said ’e wouldn’t ‘ave it, and I got a month. But I’ll beat them yet, the public is on my side, and if it worn’t for them ’ere boys, I’d say that the public could be helevated. They calls me “the genius,” and they is right.’ Then something seemed to go out like a flame, the face grew dim, and changed expression. ‘It is ’ere all right,’ he said, no longer addressing Hubert, but speaking to himself, ‘and since it is there, it must come out.’

  IV

  HUBERT AT LAST found himself obliged to write to Ford for an advance of money. But Ford replied that he would advance money only on the delivery of the completed manuscript. And the whole of one night, in a room hardly eight feet long, sitting on his bed, he strove to complete the fourth and fifth acts. But under the pressure of such necessity ideas died within him. And all through the night, and even when the little window, curtained with a bit of muslin hardly bigger than a pocket-handkerchief, had grown white with dawn, he sat gazing at the sheet of paper, his brain on fire, unable to think. Laying his pen down in despair, he thought of the thousands who would come to his aid if they only knew — if they only knew! And soon after he heard life beginning again in the little brick street. He felt that his brain was giving way, that if he did not find change, whatever it was, he must surely run raving mad. He had had enough of England, and would leave it for America, Australia — anywhere. He wanted change. The present was unendurable. How would he get to America? Perhaps a clerkship on board one of the great steamships might be obtained.

  The human animal in extreme misery becomes self-reliant, and Hubert hardly thought of making application to his uncle. The last time he had applied for help his letter had remained unanswered, and he now felt that he must make his own living or die. And, quite indifferent as to what might befall him, he walked next day to the Victoria Docks. He did not know where or how to apply for work, and he tired himself in fruitless endeavour. At last he felt he could strive with fate no longer, and wandered mile after mile, amused and forgetful of his own misery in the spectacle of the river — the rose sky, the long perspectives, the houses and warehouses showing in fine outline, and then the wonderful blue night gathering in the forest of masts and rigging. He was admirably patient. There was no fretfulness in his soul, nor did he rail against the world’s injustice, but took his misfortunes with sweet gentleness.

  He slept in a public-house, and next day resumed his idle search for employment. The weather was mild and beautiful, his wants were simple, a cup of coffee and a roll, a couple of sausages, and the day passed in a sort of morose and passionless contemplation. He thought of everything and nothing, least of all of how he should find money for the morrow. When the day came, and the penny to buy a cup of coffee was wanting, he quite naturally, without giving it a second thought, engaged himself as a labourer, and worked all day carrying sacks of grain out of a vessel’s hold. For a large part of his nature was patient and simple, docile as an animal’s. There was in him so much that was rudimentary, that in accepting this burden of physical toil he was acting not in contradiction to, but in full and perfect harmony with, his true nature.

  But at the end of a week his health began to give way, and, like a man after a violent debauch, he thought of returning to a more normal existence. He had left the manuscript of his unfortunate play in the North. Had they destroyed it? The involuntary fear of the writer for his child made him smile. What did it matter? Clearly the first thing to do would be to write to the editor of The Cosmopolitan, and ask if he could find him some employment, something certain; writing occasional articles for newspapers, that he couldn’t do.

  Hubert had saved twelve shillings. He would therefore be able to pay his landlady: he smiled — one of his landladies! The earlier debt was now hopelessly out of his reach, and seemed to represent a social plane from which he had for ever fallen. If he had succeeded in getting that play right, what a difference it would have made! He would have been able to do a number of things he had never done, things which he had always desired to do. He had desired above all to travel — to see France and Italy; to linger, to muse in the shadows of the world’s past; and after this he had desired marriage, an English wife, an English home, beautiful children, leisure, the society of friends. A successful play would have given him all these things, and now his dream must remain for ever unrealised by him. He had sunk out of sight and hearing of such life.

  Rose was another; she might sink as he had sunk; she might never find the opportunity of realising her desire. How well she would have played that part! He knew what was in her. And now! What did his failure to write that play condemn him to? Heaven only knows, he did not wish to think. Strange, was it not strange?... A man of genius — many believed him a genius — and yet he was incapable of earning his daily bread otherwise than by doing the work of a navvy. Even that he could not do well, society had softened his muscles and effeminised his constitution. Indeed, he did not know what life fate had willed him for. He seemed to be out of place everywhere. His best chance was to try to obtain a clerkship. The editor of The Cosmopolitan might be able to do that for him; if he could not, far better it would be to leave a world in which he was out of place, and through no fault of his own — that was the hard part of it. Hard part! Nonsense! What does Fate know of our little rights and wrongs — or care? Her intentions are inscrutable; she watches us come and go, and gives no sign. Prayers are vain. The good man is punished, and the wicked is sent on his way rejoicing.

  In such mournful thought, his clothes stained and torn, with all the traces of a week’s toil in the docks upon them, Hubert made his way round St. Paul’s and across Holborn. As he was about to cross into Oxford Street, he heard some one accost him, —

  ‘Oh, Mr. Price, is that you?’ It was Rose. ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  She seemed so strange, so small, and so much alone in the great thoroughfare, that Hubert forgot all his own troubles in a sudden interest in this little mite. ‘Where have you been hiding yourself?... It is lucky I met you. Don’t you know that Ford has decided to revive Divorce?’

  ‘You don’t mean it!’

  ‘Yes; Ford said that the last acts of The Gipsy were not satisfactorily worked out, and as there was something wrong with that Hamilton Brown’s piece, he has decided to revive Divorce. H
e says it never was properly played ... he thinks he’ll make a hit in the husband’s part, and I daresay he will. But I have been unfortunate again; I wanted the part of the adventuress. I really could play it. I don’t look it, I know ... I have no weight, but I could play it for all that. The public mightn’t see me in it at first, but in five minutes they would.’

  ‘And what part has he cast you for — the young girl?’

  ‘Of course; there’s no other part. He says I look it; but what’s the good of looking it when you don’t feel it? If he had cast me for Mrs. Barrington, I should have had just the five minutes in the second act that I have been waiting for so long, and I should have just wiped Miss Osborne out, acted her off the stage.... I know I should; you needn’t believe it if don’t like, but I know I should.’

  Hubert wondered how any one could feel so sure of herself, and then he said, ‘Yes, I think you could do just what you say.... How do you think Miss Osborne will play the part?’

  ‘She’ll be correct enough; she’ll miss nothing, and yet somehow she’ll miss the whole thing. But you must go at once to Ford. He was saying only this morning that if you didn’t turn up soon, he’d have to give up the idea.’

  ‘I can’t go and see him to-night. You see what a state I’m in.’

  ‘You’re rather dusty; where have you been? what have you been doing?’

  ‘I’ve been down at the dock.... I thought of going to America.’

  ‘Well, we’ll talk about that another time. It doesn’t matter if you are a bit dusty and worn-out-looking. Now that he’s going to revive your play, he’ll let you have some money. You might get a new hat, though. I don’t know how much they cost, but I’ve five shillings; can you get one for that?’

  Hubert thanked her.

  ‘But you are not offended?’

  ‘Offended, my dear Rose! I shall be able to manage. I’ll get a brush up somewhere.’

  ‘That’s all right. Now I’m going to jump into that ‘bus,’ and she signed with her parasol to the conductor. ‘Mind you see Ford to-night,’ she cried; and a moment after he saw a small space of blue back seated against one of the windows.

  V

  THERE WAS MUCH prophecy abroad. Stiggins’ words, ‘The piece never did, and never will draw money,’ were evidently present in everybody’s mind. They were visible in Ford’s face, and more than once Hubert expected to hear that — on account of severe indisposition — Mr. Montague Ford has been obliged to indefinitely postpone his contemplated revival of Mr. Hubert Price’s play Divorce. But, besides the apprehension that Stiggins’ unfavourable opinion of his enterprise had engendered in him, Ford was obviously provoked by Hubert’s reluctance to execute the alterations he had suggested. Night after night, sometimes until six in the morning, Hubert sat up considering them. Thanks to Ford’s timely advance he was back in his old rooms in Fitzroy Street. All was as it had been. He was working at his play every evening, waiting for Rose’s footsteps on the stairs. And yet a change had come into his life! He believed now that his feet were set on the way to fortune — that he would soon be happy.

  He stared at the bright flame of the lamp, he listened to the silence. The clock chimed sharply, and the windows were growing grey. Hubert had begun to drowse in his chair; but he had promised to rewrite the young girl’s part, Ford having definitely refused to intrust Rose with the part of the adventuress. He was sorry for this. He believed that Rose had not only talent, but genius. Besides, they were friends, neighbours; he would like to give her a chance of distinguishing herself — the chance which she was seeking. All the time he could not but realise that, however he might accentuate and characterise the part of the sentimental girl, Rose would not be able to do much with it. To bring out her special powers something strange, wild, or tragic was required. But of what use thinking of what was not to be? Having made some alterations and additions he folded his papers up, and addressed them to Miss Massey. He wrote on a piece of paper that they were to be given to her at once, and that he was to be called at ten. There was a rehearsal at twelve.

  On the night of the first performance, Hubert asked Rose to dine in his rooms. Mr. Wilson proposed that they should have a roast chicken, and Annie was sent to fetch a bottle of champagne from the grocer’s. Annie had been given a ticket for the pit. Mrs. Wilson was going to the upper boxes. Annie said, —

  ‘Why, you look as if you was going to a funeral, and not to a play. Why don’t ye laugh?’

  In truth, Hubert and Rose were a little silent. Rose was thinking how she could say certain lines. She had said them right once at rehearsal, but had not since been able to reproduce to her satisfaction a certain effect of voice. Hubert was too nervous to talk. There was nothing in his mind but ‘Will the piece succeed? What shall I do if it fails?’ He could give heed to nothing but himself, all the world seemed blotted out, and he suffered the pain of excessive self-concentration. Rose, on the other hand, had lost sight of herself, and existed almost unconsciously in the soul of another being. She was sometimes like a hypnotised spectator watching with foolish, involuntary curiosity the actions of one whom she had been bidden to watch. Then a little cloud would gather over her eyes, and then this other being would rise as if out of her very entrails and recreate her, fashioning her to its own image and likeness.

  She did not answer when she was spoken to, and when the question was repeated, she awoke with a little start. Dinner was eaten in morbid silence, with painful and fitful efforts to appear interested in each other. Walking to the theatre, they once took the wrong turning and had to ask the way. At the stage door they smiled painfully, nodded, glad to part. Hubert went up to Montague Ford’s room. He found the comedian on a low stool, seated before a low table covered with brushes and cosmetics, in front of a triple glass.

  ‘My dear friend, do not trouble me now. I am thinking of my part.’

  Hubert turned to go.

  ‘Stay a moment,’ cried the actor. ‘You know when the husband meets the wife he has divorced?’

  Hubert remembered the moment referred to, and, with anxious, doubting eyes, the comedian sought from the author justification for some intonations and gestures which seemed to him to form part and parcel of the nature of the man whose drunkenness he had so admirably depicted on his face.

  ‘“This is most unfortunate, very unlucky — very, my dear Louisa; but — —”

  ‘“I am no longer obliged to bear with your insults; I can now defend myself against you.”

  “In the third row Harding stood talking to a young man.”

  ‘Now, is that your idea of the scene?’

  A pained look came upon Hubert’s face. ‘Don’t question me now, my dear fellow. I cannot fix my attention. I can see, however, that your make-up is capital — you are the man himself.’

  The actor was satisfied, and in his satisfaction he said, ‘I think it will be all right, old chap.’

  Hubert hoped to reach his box without meeting critics or authors. The serving-maids bowed and smiled, — he was the author of the play. ‘They’ll think still more of me if the notices are right,’ he thought, as he hurried upstairs, and from behind the curtain of his box he peeped down and counted the critics who edged their way down the stalls. Harding stood in the third row talking to a young man. He said, ‘You mean the woman with the black hair piled into a point, and fastened with a steel circlet. A face of sheep-like sensuality. Red lips and a round receding chin. A large bosom, and two thin arms showing beneath the opera cloak, which she has not yet thrown from her shoulders. I do not know her — une laideur attirante. Many a man might be interested in her. But do you see the woman in the stage-box? You would not believe it, but she is sixty, and has only just begun to speak of herself as an old woman. She kept her figure, and had an admirer when she was fifty-eight.’

  ‘What has become of him?’

  ‘They quarrelled; two years ago he told her he hoped never to see her ugly old face again. And that delicate little creature in the box next to her �
�� that pale diaphanous face?’

  ‘With a young man hanging over her whispering in her ear?’

  ‘Yes. She hates the theatre; it gives her neuralgia; but she attends all the first nights because her one passion is to be made love to in public. If her admirer did not hang over her in front of the box just as that man is doing, she would not tolerate him for a week.’

  At that moment the conversation was interrupted by a new-comer, who asked if he had seen the play when it was first produced.