by Grant Allen
“Very nicely said, John,” I replied, dropping my admired curtsey. (John is famous for these formal old-fashioned compliments. They have a distinct flavour of Oxford donnishness.) “But that pleasure was reciprocal. Fair exchange will not cover the outstanding debt. We have still the ducats to reckon with.” Since I had been relieved from the necessity for marrying John, I really began quite to like him.
He smiled at me most agreeably. John has excellent manners. “But I do not expect repayment immediately,” he went on. “You might give me a bill — to be met, let us say, on the Greek calends.”
“I could meet it sooner,” I replied demurely. “In fact, I think I might begin to meet it on the calends now next ensuing.”
“The first of next month? My dear Rosalba, impossible!”
“Mariana earns her living — and more — on the stage. I am Mariana’s sister.”
“Mariana! ah, yes, but her voice! her training! Mariana has genius. Don’t deceive yourself, my dear child. It is not easy to earn money in London nowadays.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I answered lazily, as though it mattered little. “If one has the artistic temperament, you understand — Twenty guineas a week — that’s a capital offer!”
“Twenty guineas a week! Only stars earn so much. And you, to put it mildly, are a star of as yet uncertain magnitude. Shall we say the tenth — provisionally?”
“My dear John! your astronomy is ungallant!”
“This is a question of business.”
“But surely Mr. Burminster must know best,” I exclaimed with my most provoking smile. “He puts me down at twenty guineas.”
“Politeness! His way of making himself agreeable to the Lupari’s sister. It is one thing, Rosalba, to do these things as an amateur for the occasional amusement of one’s private circle; quite another thing to appear as a candidate for the suffrages of the cold, critical public. Most amateurs find that out to their cost when they try to earn their living by their art. Burminster’s praise was mere blague — a casual opinion dropped hastily in some drawing-room where you met him. The wicked old creature said it to be pleasant.”
“Then why did he put it on a stamped agreement?” I asked, pulling it out and looking at it as if it were something to which I attached the very slightest importance.
John’s colour changed at once. “An agreement?” he cried with a start. “Let me see it!”
I handed it to him. “I have followed your advice, you observe,” I said sweetly. “I have had the thing stamped. I can’t tell you, John, how many things I have learned from you!”
He read it from end to end with a face growing more and more serious at each clause, as he plodded on through its business-like provisions. He saw Burminster meant it. Austerity! I never knew what the word meant before. His lips grew hard; his chin grew adamant. He handed the document back to me without a word of comment, but with a pained expression on his face that pained me.
“Splendid terms, aren’t they?” I observed, playing with my chatelaine, but with a mist in my eyes — John was so genuinely shocked.
“Splendid terms — well, ye-es,” he answered slowly at last “And so they ought to be — a music-hall!” His tone became grave. “It is much you have to sell, Rosalba — a young girl’s life — a young girl’s happiness — perhaps” — he winced at saying it, but he said it like a man, and I respected him for his frankness—” a young girl’s innocence!” He took my hand in his and leant over towards me anxiously. “I have no right, dear,” he went on, in quite a fatherly voice, “to interfere with your life now; it is your own; dispose of it. But — I have been your guardian for some years, and I am still deeply interested in you. For your own sake, therefore, I beg you to reconsider this question before it is too late. You have left yourself a loophole of escape, I observe; avail yourself of it. I should never cease to regret it if you accepted this hateful, this odious offer. Above all, if you accepted it in order to repay me, Rosalba, I could not take the money so earned. I could not take it. It would be the price of a soul — of a pure soul, tainted. It might be the price of your life — it must be the price of that first bloom of your innocent girlhood which we all so admire. Do not, do not destroy it. For your own sake, I implore you, decline this specious proposal. Decline it, dear child! Your future is dear to so many of us!”
I am not concerned to deny that tears stood in my eyes. I had not looked for this. Contrary to my expectation, John had transcended himself. I thought he would have been struck with horror at the idea that the girl whom he had designed for the honour of becoming Mrs. Stodmarsh should perform at a music-hall — a common, low London music-hall. I thought he would think of himself and the blow to his own dignity. Instead of that, he thought of me — the danger of it, the unworthiness. I felt it was sweet of him. After all, John was a kind, good fellow!
Not but that I detected some faint undercurrent of the other feeling in him as he went on; but sense of the degradation for me was uppermost. It touched me to the heart. I saw how much he liked me. At last, I burst out laughing — to keep back my tears. “John,”
I cried, “you are a dear! I will not trick you longer. I am not going to accept this offer. I never meant to accept it. It is all a little comedy. I went to see Mr. Burminster because I felt sure I could earn money that way if I tried; and I wanted to show you I could really earn it But I am not going on the stage — not even on the regular stage of the theatre; I feel there are sufficient reasons in my case to keep me off it. It is one of my métiers — but not the only one; and there I should be poaching on Mariana’s preserves; I prefer to rear my own pheasants. Even if I do not take to music-halls, some other sphere of usefulness will be open to me, I am certain. When I signed this agreement, I took care to make it binding on Mr. Burminster, but not on me. That was because I never meant to avail myself of it. And one of the reasons why I did not mean to avail myself of it was because I felt it would be a bad return for all your endless kindness to me if I were to let the world see that the girl who was so long engaged to be your wife had gone to the music-halls. You are a proud man, John, and I should shrink from so humiliating you. I never meant to go; I only wished to prove to you that if I went, I could repay you.”
John wrung my hand hard. “Thank you, Rosalba,” he answered; “thank you! You have relieved my mind — for your own sake most. Do you know, now we stand on different terms, I think I like you better than ever.”
“I am sure I like you better, John.”
“And I believe you will repay me. I do not want the repayment. I can never use it myself. But I see you mean it, and I honour you for meaning it. Rosalba, you are a gentlewoman.”
“John, you are so kind, I almost feel as if I need not repay you.”
He bowed with his stately, antique courtesy. “I am glad we have had this interview, my child. It sets things on a pleasanter basis between us. We can meet henceforth more frankly in society, with no sense of an estrangement.”
“Estrangement! On the contrary, this is our first rapprochement.”
“My dear little girl, how nice of you to say so! I have undervalued your good qualities.”
He looked quite handsome as he stood there, with his close-shaven face relaxed, his uncompromising chin less square than was its habit, and the doctrinaire corners of his official mouth unwontedly softened. I took a step forward. “John,” I burst out, “I declare I am quite fond of you! You were my guardian once, and I owe you a great deal — no, not the ducats” — for he made a little gesture of deprecation—” not the ducats, but gratitude. For the last time in my life — there can be no harm in it just this once as between ward and guardian — I am going to kiss you — spontaneously to kiss you.”
And I kissed him.
The third person to whom I showed the agreement was Dudu. He happened to drop in at Auntie’s unexpectedly that evening. He happened to drop in unexpectedly most evenings, indeed — and I expected the unexpected. To say the truth, I waited for him.
His countenance fell when I showed him the document with great joy; and he fingered his moustache dubiously. “O Dru!” he cried, in a voice of unspoken remonstrance.
“It is a lot of money,” I observed obliquely. “Yes, I know; a lot of money; but still—”
“And I have to repay John for all that he has spent on me.”
“But, Dru! A music-hall!”
“Why not?” I tantalised him.
“Well, it’s not quite the places—”
“The place — ?”
“For you — a tender little wayside flower to wither in that odious atmosphere!”
“And what claim have you to object, sir?”
“Surely I must guard my future wife from all hateful influences!”
I tore up the agreement and clasped my hands above him, laughing. “I did it to show John I could repay him if I would,” I cried—” and to tease my future husband!”
He caught me in his arms. And that was the only way Dudu ever proposed to me, or I accepted him.
CHAPTER XXVII
OF THE NATURE OF AN EPILOGUE
NEVERTHELESS, my resolve stood firm not to marry Dudu while that weight of debt to John still clung round my neck, a moral millstone. In a new and strictly commercial sense, I must be off with the old love before I was on with the new. John was a distinguished political economist; I felt bound to treat him on economic principles. Though our last interview made me quite sensible that I might take my own time about it. Still, I was by no means despondent. Despair, you may have observed, is an emotion with which the gods have endowed me but poorly. “I shall earn it somehow, Dudu,” I said, looking up at him with confidence in Auntie’s drawing-room. “I have the artistic temperament — and a testimonial from Ernest Renan.”
He laughed at me. “Optimist!”
“It needs one optimist in a house,” I answered. “One way or other I shall succeed. So I mean at once to set about it” I may add that the event has justified my rash prophecy.
You will think I refer to my musical comedies. That is not quite true. I did not begin by writing for the stage, though of course the theatre in one form or another was a foregone conclusion. It was not till some years later that I produced The Snake-Charmer.
I had long been writing, of course, and the first thing I did was to try some of my tentative short stories on magazines — a plan which costs only the postage, and gives trouble to nobody except the editor — and he no doubt is paid for it To my immense delight, my first venture turned out successful. The editor not only printed my contribution — a feeble little tale, Cecca’s First Lover — but also paid for it; he not only paid for it, but also asked for more. I gave him more; and as the French proverb says, “his appetite grew with eating.” This was a good omen. I followed Cecca up, with Dudu’s aid, and tried my fledgeling flight in the open.
Of course I had written a novel. Every girl writes a novel. She writes about herself — how “she is not like other girls”; and about her sisters and other pet aversions. Mine was a novel of art, with an artist for hero — which was odd, I felt now, for ’twas written while I was still engaged to John Stodmarsh. The hero ought therefore, in the fitness of things, to have been a political economist. But I doubt whether even Mrs. Humphry Ward could make political economy engaging in a hero. While I was John’s betrothed, too, I had felt a certain natural delicacy about submitting this novel for Dudu’s correction. I cannot think why, but there was something about my hero which remotely suggested certain traits of Dudu’s; his talk about art, for example, resembled singularly the talk about art I had heard and mimicked in the studio near Auntie’s. No doubt it was coincidence. But now that Dudu and I had arrived at an Understanding, there remained no reason why I should be shy of showing it to him. I did show it to him; and Dudu said it was “droll and melancholy.” He and I sat up half the night for many weeks after, burning the midnight electric light — I will not stoop to the base subterfuge of oil; I will tell the truth at all hazards — in altering and correcting that gawky, angular little maiden effort It needed a master, for it was limp and lank, like a schoolgirl of “the awkward age.” However, Dudu undertook to drape and strengthen it: he revised the artistic descriptions; and he also supplied not a few felicities of expression. In fact, when Dudu’s hand had touched the pages, I quite fell in love with my own novel. It had a quality of mystery, like twilight on a moor. The studio talk, I know, too, was as real as life; while the young artist’s aspirations — well, I may as well admit, they were simply Dudu’s.
We sent the manuscript to an enterprising young publisher in fear and trembling. The publisher’s reader was faintly appreciative; he “thought it might do,” but “in the present depressed condition of the book-market” declined to commit himself. He recommended me to print it at my own expense — which was absurd. However, the publisher was a man of spirit and plunged. I could have kissed that publisher. You disapprove? Set it down to my southern temperament The novel came out — under a prudent pseudonym. I thought so much was due to Mariana — at least for a first venture. She had fairly made her artistic name; it would be mean of me to trade upon it. My book burst upon the world at a dull moment. But it succeeded, for all that — mildly, modestly succeeded. I do not say that it set the Thames ablaze from Kew to Greenwich. These are crowded days — John had fully impressed that economic fact upon me; you need not only wit, but opportunity as well, to emerge in our time head and shoulders high above the common ruck of divine geniuses. I did not so emerge. The best that I can say for myself is that a firm of photographers in Regent Street offered to take my portrait for nothing, and that Men and Women of the Time sent me a printed circular requesting me to fill up the blank with my name, place of birth, and “claims to distinction.” These are the substitutes for Fame in our century. Nevertheless, my book brought in money — not thousands, I admit, but an adequate return. I could pay Auntie easily for my board and lodging, and put aside a small sum towards my debt to John Stodmarsh.
My future was now assured. I had no doubt about that. Auntie’s position helped me soon got plenty of magazine work, column to write weekly for a ladies’ paper about “Art and Artists.” It was mainly the gossip of the studios; but it paid. Wiser and abler writers than myself ten thousand times over have gambled for years with Fate against a bare subsistence; Fortune treated me better, with unblushing favouritism: at twenty-one I was already earning a more than modest competence. I walked about with my feet on the clouds, like the quaint little people in the old Flemish pictures of the New Jerusalem.
When the first cheque from the ladies’ paper came in, Dudu gazed at it wistfully. “It makes me sad to see it, Dru,” he said, handling it with itching fingers, as though he longed to destroy it “Why so, dear boy?”
“Because — because I should like to earn everything for you; and as things go, if I marry you now, it will be you who will win the daily bread, not I. I hate your working!”
“It is not work,” I answered. “It is pleasure; the gratification of an artistic play-faculty. Besides, it will be years before I have paid off John. By that time, no doubt, you will have attained the Academy—’ Arthur Wingham, R.A.’ Sounds well, doesn’t it?”
“Heaven forefend! Not so low! — But I don’t want it to be years, Dru. I want you now — this very instant, second, minute!”
“Then you must wait, my dear boy.” I looked as wise as an owl “John Stodmarsh has claims upon me.”
He paused and mused. A bright idea struck him. “Dru, I have a reversionary interest in my Aunt Emily’s property in Italy,” he broke in—” that property near Vicenza, you know, that I went out to look after when first I met you on the Monti Berici.”
“So I have heard you say,” I answered, “But your aunt, dear good soul, has twenty years yet to live, I hope. She is health incarnate, like a patent-medicine advertisement. Don’t let us reckon on that. I hate these calculations.”
“Yes, but a reversion is a reversion. If I insu
red my life, I might borrow money upon it; and I might lend you the money to repay John Stodmarsh; and then — don’t you see? what a glorious idea! — we might marry instantly.”
“And I to owe you the money?”
“Yes, darling — nominally, since you will be business-like. You are sure to earn it; and you could repay me if you wished. Though repayment, from you to me, would make no difference.”
I shook my head, not too firmly. “But — that would be to repeat the same old blunder over again — to put myself under an obligation to you, as I have already put myself to John Stodmarsh.”
“No, no, Dru, darling; quite, quite different — because — you love me!”
I jumped at him with a kiss. “Dudu,” I cried “that is real logic! John knows his Stuart Mil and his Jevons by heart, I believe; but he never strikes out a profoundly logical idea like that one. While you—” I let him hold me.
It was not till a few years later that I wrote The Snake-Charmer — that strange play of the land east of the sun and west of the moon, which made our fortune.
“So, after all,” you say, “he was the man you were going to marry! And all this time you have been trying to deceive us!”
Not to deceive you, exactly, but to conceal things from you till the proper moment. Perhaps by now it may begin to dawn upon you that that is my Method.
THE END
Hilda Wade
Hilda Wade originally appeared in The Strand magazine between March 1899 and February 1900. Allen was dying of liver cancer at his home on Hindhead, Haslemere, Surrey, in 1899. Arthur Conan Doyle, Allen’s friend and neighbour, records in his biography Memories and Adventures (1930) that when Allen was on his death-bed, ‘he was much worried because there were two numbers of his serial, Hilda Wade which was running in ‘The Strand’ magazine, still uncompleted. It was a pleasure for me to do them for him, and so relieve his mind, but it was difficult collar work, and I expect they were pretty bad.’ Doyle’s precise contribution to the novel’s end remains unclear. Alan died before finishing Hilda Wade and Doyle is believed to have added, “The Episode of the Dead Man Who Spoke” himself.
