Part 2

‘My Gracie knows her husband would disdain to use the knowledge in his possession. Of all blackguards the blackmailer is the lowest. But there are certainly delicate means of working things, called wire-pulling in diplomatic circles, which have a certain charm--a sensation between that of a spider weaving its web and the pleasure of exercising skill experienced by the consummate chess-player. This is a feeling not ignoble; it is one shared by all great statesmen. It is the exercise of this power that evolved the Conqueror of Europe from the Corsican soldier. My wife must learn that all success is the result of carefully adjusted combinations. She must learn to know that to help her husband, and herself, she must exercise inviolable secrecy and enduring self-control.’

‘O George, can I help you? Will you trust me? Oh, how happy, how happy you make me!’

‘You can and shall; but at first secretly, and in a way which would make an ordinary woman quail.’

‘I can endure anything, anything for you. Only tell me, you shall see. I seemed so useless in your real life; it seemed as if I wasn’t really necessary to you; now I shall be the happiest woman in the world.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you my plan. When I go down to Windsor, I want you to live in the little cottage belonging to The Oaks, and to save you from scandal you must pretend to be a poor relation of Guaschaci’s. You shall have a little girl to wait on you; no real hard work. Then at night, when the house is locked up and the servants are gone to bed, I shall steal down to you and we will adorn you with silks and jewels and lace, and you shall be my beautiful transformed bride.’

‘But, dearest, why?’

‘For two reasons. One is that, to work my present plans, I must not be supposed to be married, least of all must I be supposed to have married an actress; and the second is, that that foolish boy whom you met me walking with the other day has never forgotten you. He is constantly asking who you were. I said you came from the country, so that he will not be surprised to find you down at Windsor when he comes next week. He is quite a boy, and very easy to manage. It will lead to no unpleasantness for you, my dearest, or you know I should not propose it. He is the Marquis of Kirkdale, only twenty-one, and by means of his family, who are in the best set, I propose to get really into the swim; once there, the rest is easy.’

‘I thought we should have such a lovely time down there, boating and lying about on the lawn; and all the servants to wait on us.’

‘It would have been ideal, but, under the circumstances, what am I to do? I must either make my fortune in society, or out of it. I am not born to be poor; I have no talent for it. In society all things are possible, out of it all things are possible; but out of society diplomacy is called lying; statesmanship, cheating; gallantry, seduction; a fine taste in champagne, drunkenness. No, Gracie, you must not ask me to give up society. I am made for it, and it for me. Besides, am I not providing you with the means of gratifying your taste for acting?’

‘But what will the servants think?’

‘A gentleman’s servants know that their first duty is not to think,’ said Travers, kissing her.

‘Dear George,’ she murmured, ‘I am a nasty, bad-tempered creature. I have always been teasing you to let me go back to the stage, and after all this will be great fun, and I shall have the leading part at last!’

‘Yes, the leading part, Gracie. The other women will only be walking ladies. They will come on, speak a few words to explain the plot, and be seen no more.’

‘Who are the other ladies, George?’

‘Only Kirkdale’s mother and sister, Lady Kirkdale and Lady Geraldine Fitzjustin. They are coming down with him on Wednesday; but if you play your cards properly he will find The Oaks sufficiently attractive to come down without them in future.’

‘George, do you think it is quite right, all this deception? Wouldn’t it be better to say you were married, but your wife would never, never interfere with you?’

‘Dear little baby-wife, no. Don’t you see what fun we’re all going to have? Women never have scruples about anything on their own account, but they are always full of them when they think their husbands are risking the purity of their moral characters.’

‘Now you are laughing at me, George, but really----’

‘No more buts. I’m dead tired,’ and he yawned as he turned out the light.

* * * * *

‘He is a delightful man,’ said Lady Kirkdale, as she leaned back in the corner of the railway carriage after making a charming bow to George Travers, who stood on the platform watching their departure from Datchet station. ‘And the house is a perfect gem of exquisite taste.’

‘He is much nicer than I thought at first,’ said Geraldine. ‘It was too bad of you, Stephen, to stay behind, and let him do all the work. Punting two women about must be most wearisome.’

‘I fancy Travers likes punting; he knows he has a good figure. I didn’t want to spoil the effect,’ rejoined Stephen.

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you speak a word against him,’ said Lady Kirkdale.

‘One stands up for a fellow as long as he’s being abused by one’s people, of course, but when they begin to appreciate him one can slack off a little.’

‘What is the matter with you, Stephen?’

‘Oh, nothing--I’m tired, that’s all.’

In the meantime George Travers rebalanced the dogcart, fondled the horse, lighted a cigar, and drove slowly back to The Oaks. It certainly had been a successful day for him. His was one of those natures which delighted in gorgeous dreams. He felt realities to be most inadequate, he hated them. Just as he had mounted the winged steed of his imagination, some dirty little fact was always seizing the reins, and dragging him down to earth; but to-day everything had gone smoothly.

His father had been a successful actor in the ’sixties, named Swanwick. Now there are two kinds of bad parents: the parent who looks upon a child as a machine capable of perfect rectitude if its moral principles are manufactured on a certain plan, and the parent whose only notion of a child is that it is a sort of toy sent by Providence for his amusement. Now it amused old Swanwick to see his little son imitating the manners behind the footlights, lounging at bars, patronising pretty girls, advising them as to their costumes, for the actresses soon discovered that it pleased his father to see him taken notice of, and pleasing old Swanwick went a long way towards success. It made all the difference between the smooth and the seamy side of theatrical life. Blind admiration for him, and his, was all that was necessary; but woe to any one who suggested an alteration in his arrangements. He would turn on his most favoured fair one the moment she overstepped the bounds with which his vanity entrenched him, saying, ‘Am I the stage manager of this theatre or are you, madam?’ This outburst would be followed by language unfit for publication, and days of sullen anger, the clouds only departing after the most complete self-humiliation of the offending one. Now old Swanwick loved his profession; he loved trotting along the Strand and turning in to ‘have a drink’ with all the cronies he met in his progress. He also loved racing. Whenever, by hook or by crook, he could escape rehearsals, which were much less intermittent in those days than now, off he would go with his friend Travers, to Newmarket, Epsom, Sandown, anywhere. Driving for choice, and making a day of it, getting back to the theatre in a state of robust hilarity, putting his head in a basin of cold water, and coming out ‘fresh as a daisy,’ as he put it--at any rate capable of giving a capital performance of the tender, good-hearted fellow he delighted in portraying. When he died, his friend Travers adopted the little orphan boy. He was a man of old family, and felt the necessity, which old Swanwick had ignored, of doing something more for the boy than sending him to a day-school. Accordingly he talked seriously to the small precocious person whom he had taken under his protection; told him he intended to make him his heir, and that to learn to keep up his position he must acquire some knowledge of the life led in the world on this side of the footlights. He spoke in a way which appealed to the lively imagination of the boy; and when he had stayed for a few months with Travers in his house in Piccadilly, and had been taken down to the place in Gloucestershire for the shooting season, he was completely prepared to ignore his previous experiences; and could treat them lightly as the excursions of a gentleman’s son into Bohemia. Travers got very fond of the boy as time went on, and by the time he was thirteen made up his mind to do his very best for him. He sent him to Harrow and afterwards to Oxford, but the City of Spires was rather too much for young Travers, as he was everywhere called now, and he was sent down after one term.

However, he had got all he thought necessary out of the university. He could talk about it, and that was all _he_ wanted. He then was put in a crack regiment; but unfortunately for him, he had not been there a year before his patron unexpectedly died, having made no will, and George Travers was thrown on the world with very little but a thorough knowledge of the ropes, some talent for backing the right horse, and a very considerable talent for winning at poker; and it was not a duel but a card scandal that brought his early career in London society to an untimely end. He was obliged to leave England, although circumstances necessitated the hushing up of the scandal. He joined a theatrical company in America, and made a somewhat substantial success out there. He returned to England with some money and the intention of continuing his stage career under his father’s name. While waiting for a chance, unaccountably to himself, he fell in love with Grace Lovell; we all have our moments of weakness, and in one of these he married this child, who was full of dreams, full of ambition, full of hopes, wild as only those of a young actress who has made her first success can be. She had been engaged as understudy for one of London’s favourite soubrettes, had been called upon to play the part at a moment’s notice. She had done so with such dainty freshness, and had made her points with such innocent piquancy, that she had attracted public notice to a very considerable extent. She played the part three weeks, and during those weeks George Travers came to the theatre, saw, and conquered. When her engagement was over she married him at a registry office, and disappeared from the stage.

As fate would have it, almost the moment he had taken this step George Travers made the acquaintance of Lord Kirkdale at the Junior Carlton, whither he had been taken by Charles Melton, an owner of racehorses. The two got on very well; the next day they lunched together, and, strolling along Pall Mall afterwards, encountered Mrs. George Travers. She looked at them expectantly; George smiled, nodded, and gave her a little sign to pass on without speaking. She did so, but not before Kirkdale’s curiosity had been vividly aroused. However, Travers vouchsafed no information, but that she lived in the country and he supposed she was up in town shopping for the day.

A week or two later, just as he was changing his last fiver, he encountered an Italian, Count Guaschaci, whose life he had saved in a tap-room free fight, out in the Western States. Guaschaci listened to his troubles sympathetically, and as he was leaving England for six months, told him he should be really obliged if he would look after his establishment at Old Windsor; all he asked of him was to keep things going until his return.

Then Travers saw his opportunity had come. Ten years had passed since the old scandal. A new generation ruled; all was forgotten, or could be explained away. The trustful Count gave him a cheque for two hundred pounds, and left all his affairs in his hands. It must be noted here that Travers had many most endearing qualities. He could not bear to see animals suffer; he got on splendidly with children. He treated women as if he was their father, and men as if he was their redeemer. He took a favour as if he were bestowing a benediction. He had discovered the art of living upon other people with as much grace as if he belonged to the highest circles; none of the bourgeois arrogance of the parvenu or the middleman was perceptible; he took other people’s money, their property, and their affections, with equal grace and admirable cordiality.

Grace peeped timidly out of her cottage door as he drove by. He whispered, ‘All right, little woman, I will be over directly.’ Then he drove the cart into the stable-yard, threw the reins to the groom, and strolled into the house through the back way, calling out as he passed the kitchen, ‘Just bring me a whisky and Seltzer in the grey-room; I shall want nothing more to-night.’

He lighted another cigar and threw himself full length on the white bear-skin which covered the canopied divan at the upper end of the room. The walls were hung with dull grey material, and decorated with strips and borders of faded Eastern embroidery. Guaschaci certainly knew how to do things well. There was not another man in England for whose decorations Travers felt he could have brought himself to take the responsibility. Certainly this place positively did even him credit; he felt no hesitation whatever in saying that it was his own. A middle-aged woman brought in the whisky, then courtesying gravely she asked if the master would speak to her little boy, he cried to see the master before he went to bed.

‘Bring him in, certainly, bring him in.’

‘I put him to bed, sir; but I can’t get him to sleep; perhaps you will excuse me bringing him down in his little dressing-gown.’

‘Certainly, I’ll put him to sleep in no time; don’t you trouble, Madame Kudner.’

The housekeeper went and fetched her little boy. As she carried him in he held out his arms to Travers, who lay back on the white divan laughing gaily.

‘Want a romp, little man?’ he cried. ‘All right, you shall have one. It is a shame. I haven’t seen him all day. Come and look in the cupboard, and see if we can find anything nice there.’

And the boy, who was a miracle of baby prettiness, with little brown curls dancing round his rosy cheeks, and bright eyes, was carried off in triumph to the old oak chest in which the stores were kept.

‘There, figs won’t hurt him, will they, Madame Kudner? Now, we’ll take in the dish; come along. Why, you’ve got no shoes on! Well, jump upon my back,’ and he raced round the room with the child, carrying the piece of massive church plate which did duty for a dessert dish in their curious establishment.

Little Pierre sat gravely in the corner of the divan with his feet stretched out straight in front of him, munching the green figs and gazing with rapture at the purple lusciousness which each fresh bite discovered. Travers promised to bring him upstairs when he appeared sleepy, and soon the whole house was still.

The two had a long serious conversation, and Pierre was instructed in full detail how to make himself a little paper punt, which he was to float down the river next evening with a wax taper in it; it was to be saturated with oil, so that when the taper had burnt down the whole boat would flare up splendidly and go down the stream like a real burning ship. Just as this exciting point was reached, a gentle tap was heard outside the window.

Travers listened for a moment, then he hurried off his _protégé_, popped him down on his bed, told him he must go to sleep at once, kissed him on both cheeks, and ran downstairs. He opened the verandah windows, at which the taps had become more and more persistent.

Grace entered in a loose white dress.

‘Why have you come here? I told you not to on any account.’

Grace stopped short, it was the first time he had spoken to her in that hard voice.

‘You said you were coming down to the cottage. I saw all the servants’ lights put out here. I was tired of waiting.’

‘I was playing with Pierre.’

‘Pierre, at this time of night! You prefer anything to me; even a child.’

‘Even a child! That’s good. Children are the only perfectly satisfactory companions in the world. They never seriously reproach you, and as for beauty, no woman can touch them.’

‘George, let me go away. Let me go back to London, to my old life.’

‘I tell you once for all, I can’t allow my wife to go on the stage.’

‘It is too hard, too hard. You make life a perfect torture to me. Why won’t you let me try to forget you, and my love, my unhappy love for you?’ she sobbed.

‘Don’t be ridiculous; and for Heaven’s sake don’t make such a row. How do I make you miserable?’

‘I wouldn’t mind if I never saw you at all. When you were quite away at Boulogne the other day, I could set to work at things I wanted to do quite happily; but when I know you are near me, and I am hoping to see you come in at any moment, my hope tortures me. They say hope is a pleasant feeling, I think it is the keenest form of torture the devil ever dressed up as an angel. I sit there in that cottage and wait, and as time goes on all my love turns sick; I get to hate you for causing me such pain. I feel as if I could kill you sometimes, to put an end to it, once for all.’

‘Oh dear! oh dear! How absurd, how absolutely ridiculous all this is! If you had just come out of the schoolroom I could have understood it, but any woman who has led the life you have must surely have grasped a few of the elementary realities of life. You appear to think what people say on the stage is real life, and what you see behind the scenes is play-acting.’

‘So it is. Behind the scenes of a theatre nobody is the same as they are in their own homes; we all play our parts there, but we put all the reality we have in us into our acting.’

‘Silly child! I am saying the absurd notions you have about love appear to have come out of plays. Of course, people always say beforehand that eternity will not be long enough for their raptures. The curtain falls on this situation; if it was to rise again, they would have to own ignominiously that half an hour had been found ample.’

‘My God! and I believed you when you told me you could not live without me. In six weeks I see you flirting with another woman.’

‘Oh, is that it? Well, I suppose if I had cared to play the spy, I should have seen you flirting with another man.’

‘How dare you! how dare you speak like that, when you know you asked me to be your decoy! You needn’t deny it; that is the long and short of it, and I refuse, I will not submit to this. I will go away, and you can get a divorce if you like. The whole thing is a miserable, degrading, horrible dream. Now I am awake, and will escape.’ She rushed to the door; he reached it first, and caught her in his arms.

‘I never saw you look so beautiful.’ He covered her face with kisses. She struggled; he murmured, ‘My own dear love, I was only teasing; don’t let us remember a word we have said.’

‘But you were flirting with that Lady Geraldine!’

‘Never mind her; she is the sort of woman men always imagine they are in love with, except when they are alone with her.’

‘When were you alone with her?’

‘I haven’t been alone with her, but I can read women like books; you needn’t be afraid that curiosity about the sex will lead me astray.’

‘And you really meant it when you said I was the only woman you ever really loved?’

‘You know it well enough, my darling. When a man like me marries, he has been shot straight through the heart.’

After a pause, she said, ‘Well, shall we go back to the cottage?’

‘No, we’ll stay here and have a little feast. Come along, we will forage about and get up a bottle of champagne. You get the things out of this cupboard, while I go down to the cellar.’

* * * * *