Complete Works of George Moore, page 199
‘What an excellent character he would make in a novel! A drama of sterility,’ said Phillips.
‘Or the dramas which they bring about,’ said Harding.
‘Yes, or the dramas they bring about. But what drama can Price bring about — he shuts himself up in a room and tries to write a play,’ said Phillips. ‘I don’t see how he can dramatise any life but his own.’
‘All deviations from the normal tend to bring about drama,’ said Harding.
‘Then, why don’t you do a Hubert Price in a book? It would be most interesting. Do you think you ever will?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Why not? Because he is a friend of yours, and you would not like — —’
‘I never allow my private life to interfere with my literature. No; for quite other reasons. I admit that he represents physically and mentally a great deal of the intellectual impotence current in our time. But it would be difficult, I think, to bring vividly before the reader that tall, thin, blonde man, with his pale gentle eyes and his insipid mind. I should take quite a different kind of man as my model.’
‘What kind of man?’ said Phillips, and the five or six writers and painters leaned forward to listen to Harding.
‘I think I should imagine a man about the medium height. A nice figure, light, trim, neat. Good-looking, straight nose, eyes bright and intelligent. I think he would have beard, a very close-cut beard. The turn of his mind would be metaphysical and poetic — an intense subtility of mind combined with much order. He would be full of little habits. He would have note-books of a special kind in which to enter his ideas. The tendency of his mind would be towards concision, and he would by degrees extend his desire for concision into the twilight and the night of symbolism.’
‘A sort of constipated Browning,’ said Phillips.
‘Exactly,’ said Harding.
‘And would you have him married?’ asked John Norton.
‘Certainly. I imagine him living in a tiny little house somewhere near the river — Westminster or Chelsea. His wife would be a dreadful person, thin, withered, herring-gutted — a sort of red herring with a cap. But his daughter would be charming, she would have inherited her father’s features. I can imagine these women living in admiration of this man, tending on him, speaking very little, removed from worldly influences, seeing only the young men who come every Tuesday evening to listen to the poet’s conversation — I don’t hear them saying much — I can see them sitting in a corner listening for the ten thousandth time to aestheticisms not one word of which they understand, and about ten o’clock stealing away to some mysterious chamber. Something of the poet’s sterility would have descended upon them.’
‘That is how you imagine un génie raté,’ said Phillips. ‘Your conception is clear enough; why don’t you write the book?’
‘Because there is nothing more to say on the subject. It is a subject for a sketch, not for a book. But of this I’m sure, that the dry-rock man would come out more clearly in a book than the soft, insipid, gentle, companionable, red-bearded fellow.’
‘If Price were the dry, sterile nature you describe, we should feel no interest in him, we should not be discussing him as we are,’ said Phillips.
‘Yes, we should — Price suffers; we’re interested in him because he suffers — because he suffers in public— “I never was happy except on those rare occasions when I thought I was a great man.” In that sentence you’ll find the clew to his attractiveness. But in him there is nothing of the irresponsible passion which is genius. There’s that little Rose Massey — that little baby who spends half her day dreaming, and who is as ignorant as a cod-fish. Well, she has got that something — that undefinable but always recognisable something. It was Price who discovered her. We used to laugh at him when he said she had genius. He was right; we were wrong. The other night I was standing in the wings; she was coming down from her dressing-room — she lingered on the stairs, looking the most insignificant little thing you can well imagine; but the moment her cue came a strange light came into her eyes and a strange life was fused in her limbs; she was transformed, and went on the stage a very symbol of passion and romance.’
The slate colour of the sky did not seem to change, and yet the night grew visibly denser in the park; and there had come the sensation of things ended, a movement of wraps thrown over shoulders and thought of bedtime and home. The crowd was moving away, and nearly lost in the darkness Hubert came towards his friends. He had just knocked the ash from his cigar, and as he drew in the smoke the glow of the lighted end fled over his blonde face.
XIV
ONE DAY A short letter came from Hubert, asking Mrs. Bentley to send the dog-cart to the station to fetch him. He had decided to come home at once, and postpone the production of his play till the coming spring.
Every rehearsal had revealed new and serious faults of construction. These he had attempted to remove when he went home in the evening, but though he often worked till daybreak, he did not achieve much. The very knowledge that he must come to rehearsal with the re-written scene seemed to produce in him a sort of mental paralysis, and, striking the table with his fist, he would get up, and a thought would cross his mind of how he might escape from this torture. After one terrible night, in which he feared his brain was really giving way, he went down to the theatre and dismissed the company, for he had resolved to return to Ashwood and spend another autumn and another winter re-writing The Gipsy. If it did not come right then, he would bother no more about it. Why should he? There was so much else in life besides literature. He had plenty of money, and was determined in any case to enjoy himself. So did his thoughts run as he leaned back on the cushions of a first-class carriage, glancing casually through the evening paper. Presently his eye was caught by a paragraph narrating an odd calamity which had overtaken a scene carpenter, an honest, respectable, sober, hard-working man, who had fulfilled all social obligations as perfectly as the most exacting could desire, until the day he had conceived the idea of a machine for the better exhibition of advertisements on the hoardings. His system was based on the roller-towel. The roller was moved by clockwork, and the advertisements went round like the towel. At first he spent his spare time and his spare money upon it, but as the hobby took possession of him, he devoted all his time and all his money to it; then he pawned his clothes, and then he raised money on the furniture; the brokers came in, and finally the poor fellow was taken to a lunatic asylum, and his wife and family were thrown on the parish. The story impressed Hubert strangely. He saw an analogy between himself and the crazy inventor, and he asked himself if he would go on re-writing The Gipsy until he went out of his mind. ‘Even if I do,’ he thought, ‘I can hurt no one but myself. No one else is dependent on me; my hobby can hurt no one but myself.’ These forebodings passed away, and his mind filled up with schemes of work. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he looked forward to doing it. He wanted quiet, he wanted long days alone with himself. Such were his thoughts in the dog-cart as he drove home, and it was therefore vaguely unpleasant to him to meet the two ladies waiting for him at the lodge gate. Their smiles of welcome irritated him; he longed for the solitude of his study, the companionship of his work; and instead he had to sit with them in the drawing-room, and tell them how he liked London, what he had done there, whom he had seen there, and why he had been unable to finish his play to his satisfaction.
In the morning Emily or Mrs. Bentley was generally about to pour out his coffee for him and keep him company. One day Hubert noticed that it was no longer Mrs. Bentley but Emily who met him in the passage, and followed him into the dining-room. And while he was eating she sat with her feet on the fender, talking of some girls in the neighbourhood — their jealousies, and how Edith Eastwick could not think of anything for herself, but always copied her dresses. Dandy drowsed at her feet, and very often she would take him to the window and make him go through all his tricks, calling on Hubert to admire him.
She had a knack of monopolising Hubert, and since his return from London, her desire to do so had become almost a determination. Hubert showed no disinclination, and after breakfast they were to be seen together in the gardens. Hubert was a great catch, and there were other young ladies eager to be agreeable to him; but he did not seem to desire flirtation with any. So they came to speak of him as a very clever man, no doubt; but as they knew nothing about plays, he very probably did not care to talk to them. Hubert was not attractive in general society, and he would soon have failed to interest them at all had it not been for Emily. She was proud of her influence over him, and for the first time showed a desire to go into society. Day by day her conversation turned more and more on tennis-parties, and she even spoke about a ball. He consented to take her; and he had to dance with her, and she refused nearly every one, saying she was tired, leading Hubert away for long conversations in the galleries and on the staircases. Hubert had positively nothing to say to her; but she seemed quite happy as long as she was with him. And as they drove through the dawn Emily chattered of a hundred trifles, — what Edith had said, what Mabel wore, of the possibility of a marriage, and the arrival of a detachment of some cavalry regiment. Hubert found it hard to affect interest in these conversations. His brain was weary with waltz tunes, the shape of shoulders, and the glare and rustle of silk; but as she chattered, rubbing the misted windows from time to time, so as to determine how far they were from home, he wondered if he should ever marry, and half playfully he thought of her as his wife.
But without warning his dreams were broken by a sudden thought, and he said —
‘Another time, I think it will be better, my dear Emily, that Mrs. Bentley should take you out.’
‘Why should you not take me out?... I suppose you don’t care to — I bore you.’
‘No; on the contrary, I enjoy it — I like to see you amused; but I think you should have a proper chaperon.’
Emily did not answer; and a little cloud came over her face. Hubert thought she looked even prettier in her displeasure than she had done in her joy; and he went to sleep thinking of her. Never had he thought her so beautiful — never had she touched him with so personal an interest; and next morning, when he lounged in his study, he was glad to hear her knock at the door; and the half-hour he spent with her there, yielding to her pleading to come for a walk with her, or drive her over to Southwater in the dog-cart, was one of unalloyed pleasure. But a few days after, as he lay in bed, a new idea came to him for his third act. So he said he would have breakfast in his study. He dressed, thinking the whole time how he could round off his idea and bring it into the act. So clear and precise did it seem in his mind that he sat down immediately after breakfast, forgetting even his matutinal cigar, and wrote with a flowing pen. He had left orders that he was not to be disturbed; and was annoyed when the door opened and Emily entered.
‘I am very sorry, but you must not be cross with me; I do so want you to come and see the Eastwicks with me.’
‘My dear Emily, I could not think of such a thing this morning. I am very busy — indeed I am.’
‘What are you doing? Nothing very important, I can see. You are only writing your play. You might come with me.’
‘My play is as important to me as a visit to the Eastwicks is to you,’ he answered, smiling.
‘I have promised Edith.... I really do wish you would come.’
‘My dear Emily, it is quite impossible: do let me get on with my work!’
Emily’s face instantly changed expression; she turned to leave the room, and Hubert had to go after her and beg her to forgive him — he really had not meant to be rude to her.
‘You don’t care to talk to me. I am not clever enough for you.’
Then pity took him, and he made amends by suggesting they should go for a walk in the park, and she often succeeded in leading him even to dry, uninteresting neighbours. But the burden grew heavier, and soon he could endure no longer the evenings of devotion to her in the drawing-room, where the presence of Mrs. Bentley seemed to fill her with incipient rebellion. One evening after dinner, as he was about to escape up-stairs, Emily took his arm, pleading that he should play at least one game of backgammon with her. He played three; and then, thinking he had done enough, he took up a novel and began to read. Emily was bitterly offended. She sat in a corner, a picture of deep misery; and whenever he spoke to Mrs. Bentley, he thought she would burst into tears. It was exasperating to be the perpetual victim of such folly; and, pressed by the desire to talk to Mrs. Bentley about the book he was reading, he suggested that she should come with him to the meet. The Harriers met for the first time that season at not five miles from Ashwood. Mrs. Bentley pleaded an engagement. She had promised to go over to tea at the rectory.
‘Oh, we shall be back in plenty of time; I’ll leave you at the rectory on our way home.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Price; but I do not think I can go.’
‘And why, may I ask?’
‘Well, perhaps Emily would like to go.’
‘Emily has a cold, and it would be folly of her to venture a long drive on a cold morning.’
‘My cold is quite well.’
‘You were complaining before dinner how bad it was.’
‘If you don’t want to take me, say so.’ Tears were now streaming down her cheeks.
‘My dear Emily, I am only too pleased to have you with me; I was only thinking of your cold.’
‘My cold is quite gone,’ she said, with brightening face; and next morning she came down with her waterproof on her arm, and she had on a new cloth dress which she had just received from London. Hubert recognised in each article of attire a sign that she was determined to carry her point. It seemed cruel to tell her to take her things off, and he glanced at Mrs. Bentley and wondered if she were offended.
‘I hope the drive won’t tire you; you know the meet is at least five miles from here.’
Emily did not answer. She looked charming with her great boa tied about her throat, and sprang into the dog-cart all lightness and joy.
‘I hope you are well wrapped up about the knees,’ said Mrs. Bentley.
‘Oh yes, thank you; Hubert is looking after me.’
Mrs. Bentley’s calm, statuesque face, whereon no trace of envy appeared, caught Hubert’s attention as he gathered up the reins, and he thought how her altruism contrasted with the passionate egotism of the young girl.
‘I hope Julia was not disappointed. I know she wanted to come; but — —’
‘But what?’
‘Well, no one likes Julia more than I do, and I don’t want to say anything against her; but, having lived so long with her, I see her faults better than you can. She is horribly selfish! It never occurs to her to think of me.’
Hubert did not answer, and Emily looked at him inquiringly. At last she said, ‘I suppose you don’t think so?’
‘Well, Emily, since you ask me, I must say that I think she took it very good-humouredly. You said you were ill, and it was all arranged that I should drive her to the meet; then you suddenly interposed, and said you wanted to go; and the moment you mentioned your desire to go, she gave way without a word. I really don’t know what more you want.’
‘You don’t know Julia. You cannot read her face. She never forgets anything, and is storing it up, and will pay me out for it sooner or later.’
‘My dear Emily, how can you say such things? I never heard —— She is always ready to sacrifice herself for you.’
‘You think so. She has a knack of pretending to be more unselfish than another; but she is in reality intensely selfish.’
‘All I can say is that it does not strike me so. I never saw any one give way more good-humouredly than she did to-day.’
‘I don’t think that that is so wonderful, after all. She is only a paid companion; and I do not see why she should go driving about the country with you, and I be left at home.’
Hubert was somewhat shocked. The conversation paused.
‘She gets on very well with men,’ Emily said at last, breaking an irritating silence somewhat suddenly. ‘They say she is very good-looking. Don’t you think so?’
‘Oh yes, she is certainly a pretty woman — or, I should say, a good-looking woman. She is too tall to be what one generally understands as a pretty woman.’
‘Do you like tall women?’
At that moment the hunt appeared in the field at the bottom of the hill. A grey horse had just got rid of his rider, and after galloping round and round, his head in the air, stopped and began to graze. The others jumped the hedge, and the greater part of the field got over the brook in capital style. Emily and Hubert watched them with delighted eyes, for the sight was indeed picturesque this fine autumn day. Even their horse pricked up his ears and began neighing, and Hubert had to hold him tight in hand, lest he should break away while they were enjoying the spectacle. At that moment a poor little animal, with fear-haunted eyes, and in all the agony of fatigue, appeared above the crest of the hill, and immediately after came the straining hounds, one within a dozen yards of the poor little beast, now running in a circle, uttering the most plaintive and pitiful cries.
‘Oh, they are not going to kill it!’ cried Emily. ‘Oh, save it, save it, Hubert!’ She hid her face in her hands. ‘Did it escape? is it killed?’ she said, looking round. ‘Oh, it is too cruel!’ The huntsman was calling to the hounds, holding something above them, and at every moment horses’ heads appeared over the brow of the hill.
