Broken Away

Chapter I

" Are those women gone yet ? " It was the voice of the master of the house. The deep well of the staircase, over which he leaned, carried his words in a sepulchral whis per down to the hall below. Another whisper, thinner in tone, came up from the spot, three stories beneath, where a white cap and apron gleamed through the dusk. There was broad daylight everywhere outside, but the hall was always in semi-darkness. "No, sir. Just going, sir" — hastily, as a door opened on an intervening landing. A smell of tea and hot cakes floated up to Stuart Rivington's nose as he cautiously pro jected it over the banisters ; a gush of chatter and laughter, and a rustle of skirts, swept aloft on the draught caused by the open door. l "... Not a word of truth in it, of course. I only mention it to show how uncharitable . . .

Poplin ? never, my dear woman ! Every new Vice-Queen tries to bring it in for the good of the country, but it does n't look value for the money it costs, so . . . Paying her great attention, no doubt, but we all know he 's what you call a Toy ! . . . Second and fourth Thursdays ; don't forget. . . . All really dying to see Mr. Rivington's new book ; when is it to . . ." The cackle died away on the lowest flight of stairs ; the door banged, and the parlourmaid ascended towards the drawing-room to clear away the debris of half a dozen relays of tea. " Kate ! " called the master of the house once more, shouting boldly over the banisters this time, as one unashamed aud free. "Tell your mistress to come up to the smoking-room at once ; I want her. And tell her to bring me up a cup of tea, — a decent cup, — and some of the company cake ; not the other, mind !

" " Yes, sir," replied the imperturbable young person addressed, — she had lived long enough in the house of " the leading Irish novelist " to work out in her own mind a kind of theory as to literary men, which classified them among semi-responsible beings ; arriving, in fact, at the conclusion that " Great genius is to madness close allied," although she had never heard of that wise saying. Therefore, nothing Mr. Riv ington chose to do ever astonished her. Eva Rivington, who had been expecting the message, filled a huge ornamental china cup from the mantelpiece with the contents of the last-brewed pot of tea, added generous cream and sugar, and cut several wedges off her most elaborate chocolate cake. There was a cloud on her pretty face as she collected her load on a tray, and prepai'ed to ascend the stairs ; and she glanced anxiously into a mirror on the landing, as she reached the top.

" I really look pale ! " she murmured to her self. " Oh, poor Stuart ! how will he take it ? I won't say a word until he has had his tea ; he will be cross waiting for it. . . . This thing on my 'at home' day, of all days!" She set down the tray for a minute, and arranged the fair curls on her forehead be comingly, frowning at the dark shade of anxiety she noticed under her brown eyes. Then she opened the door of the attic smoking-room, and went quickly in. The room was low-ceiled and long, quaintly shaped into many corners, and pierced down one side with three large dormer windows, over looking the green tree-tops of the square out side. It was furnished in the semi-Oriental style common to modern smoking-rooms, and possessed a big leather-covered divan, on which Rivington was reclining as his wife entered.

A sturdy square table, covered with papers, in one of the windows, spoke of recent work ; the pens were lying about still wet, and the blotting paper supported a pile of numbered sheets. Rivington, lying just where he had pitched himself loosely down like a collie, his grey tweed arms and legs sprawling widely, and his ruffled brown head falling almost over the edge of thc couch, looked most unlike a bookworm or a scribbler of any sort. His pleasant grey eyes neither wore nor needed glasses ; his face was tanned with the sun ; his strong shoulders had not the suspicion of a stoop. Only something a little dreamy and far-away about the expres sion of the eyes and forehead marked him out from the successful young stockbroker of Dame Street, or the hunting and cricketing country squire. He sat up at sight of his wife, and, possessing himself of the tea-tray, began to eat, drink, and talk with equal rapidity.

" Good girl, Eva ; that 's the sort of cake — you 're too thrifty with that company stuff of yours, mostly ; and I never can find your keys. This is a decent cup of tea — three-quarters of a pint at least. I 've been dying for some this two hours ; thought those old tabbies of yours would never go. That beast of a publisher wrote by the 4.30 post again, ' Oliver asking for more ' — I should think he cleared enough out of my last to do him for some time. I did another chapter this afternoon ; but June 's not the best weather for sticking in the house to write. . . . What 's the row with you ? You 're very quiet." Eva was sitting on the floor, her head leaning on the couch. She let it sink still further back, as she answered wearily : — ■ " I 'm tired, Stuart. Tired of everything, — housekeeping, and shopping, and visiting, and seeing callers, and getting dresses tried on, and — and — everything !

" " All of us do get tired of everything some times," said Stuart, wisely. " Especially people in society, if I 'm any judge of the faces I see about me every day. If I wrote society novels, from which the Lord preserve me — that reminds me ; where 's my manuscript ? " " Here," said his wife, holding up a roll of paper, and sitting upright. " Take a cushion ; take two or three," said Stuart, amiably, " if you will sit there. Now, go ahead. Moliere's housemaid was nothing to you, Eva — ' you'retheguidingstarofmyexistence,' as Henry Esmond said when he was drunk. I am only drunk on your excellent tea, but — " " I really think you might know it was David Copperfield, not ' Henry Esmond,' " interrupted Eva, a little sharply. Her nerves were wound up to a high pitch, and she snatched at the relaxation.

" All the same a hundred years hence, — Thackeray or Dickens or I," observed Stuart, with charming modesty. " Well, you 've read those twenty chapters; what's the demd total?" The words were light, but the tone somehow did not match them. Eva did not answer im mediately ; the room grew suddenly still, till the man on the divan could hear the ticking of the watch in his waistcoat, and the faint rustle of his wife's silken tea-gown, as it rose and fell rapidly over her bosom. His hands shut tightly, with the instinctive gesture of one who faces a crisis, as he turned and looked at her. She was fumbling at the elastic band that tied up the roll of papers, but she raised her head and met his eyes at once. What was there — what could there be — in her look that carried him back to Scotland and last autumn, when they two had been staying together in a little Highland village ?

A half forgotten scene flashed back to his memory like lightning ; a morning when he had contrived to drive a fish-hook deeply into his hand, and when, after hours of searching, it became manifest that no doctor could be found that day. The hand had swollen terribly ; something had to be done — and Eva — Eva., who hated the sight of blood, and could not bear to witness the execution of a marauding wasp — had solved the difficulty by cutting out the hook with her own hands. The operation was not an easy one ; and Stuart remembered well how her lips had quivered, though her fingers were perfectly steady ; and how she had looked up once in the midst of her work, hearing him suddenly catch his breath, and mutely asked pardon with her eyes for the pain she was giving. That look was in her eyes again to-day ; and the author's heart felt heavy when he saw it ; for the experience of several years had taught him the accuracy of his wife's judgments.

" Stuart — we have always told each other the truth," she said, with the quietness that comes of repressed emotion. " This book won't do." And she turned away those pitying eyes of hers, and looked out at the fiery sunset, which did not interest her at all. Stuart pulled himself together, and asked coolly, — " Quite certain ? " " Yes." She was looking at the floor now, and speaking rapidly. " It is good, of course, — you could n't do bad work, — but it is a step back. You are losing your grip. Your mannerisms have increased, and your characters are getting misty. It is clever, and interesting, but it is not worthy of you, and if you publish it, everyone will say you are getting written out." There was silence for a moment. Rivington mechanically finished his cup of tea — which might have been water, or wormwood, for all that he tasted — and set it down.

His wife, glancing at him under her long-lashed eyelids, saw that his face had whitened as if with phys ical pain, and knew that her words had struck hard. The knowledge was not easy to bear ; but she refrained — • as a weaker woman could not have done — from rushing into consoling sophistries and flatteries. Truth to tell, the manuscript, at first perusal, had startled her with its weakness, and her resolve not to let her love blind her judgment held fast ; although she would not have been a woman had she not longed to undo her words as soon as they were fairly spoken. In silence she watched the war of emotions on her husband's face, thinking, for the thousandth time, how good a man he was to look on, even now, with that cloud of pain and confusion darkening his countenance. There were people who said that Stuart Rivington's eyes were too blue, and too quick of motion, for the eyes of a strong man, and that it was well his narrow mouth was shaded by its thick curl ing moustache.

But to Eva's sight her hero was as handsome as he was famous, as strong in soul as he was pleasant in character, and the distinct falling off in his work displayed by that last book struck her as not only terrible, but unnatural. Crash ! went the cup on the floor. Eva started, but said nothing ; what was the loss of a porcelain cup, in this crisis that had come upon the house ? Rivington did not appear to notice that it had fallen ; he stared absently at the pieces as he spoke : — " I did guess something of this, Eva, — I 'm not quite a fool, — but you know I 'm always down in the mouth about my books at first, and then they turn out all right afterwards, and so — Well, you 've never been mistaken yet ; I believe you 're right. ' The Purpose of Philip ' is damned rubbish (don't mind my swearing, child, it does me so much good ! ) as far as it goes.

And this is as far as it will go ! " He took the manuscript from her, and tore up the chapters one by one. The work took some time, and he was quite warm before it was done. When the room was strewn with white fragments, he got up from the divan, and began walking up and down with his hands behind him, kicking the paper like autumn leaves as he went. " Don't interrupt me. I 'm thinking," he said. After about five minutes he stopped, pulled the disconsolate little figure up off the floor with a mighty swing, and dropped her on the divan. " Look here, Eve ! " he exclaimed, catching her by the shoulders and swaying her about in his excitement. " I 've got it ! I have it ! Now listen here — what do you think is the meaning of my failure ? " " Well, the story seemed artificial, somehow," answered Eva, dubiously.

" That 's all I can say. It did n't ring right." " Good girl ; just hit the nail on the head," declared the author, who looked quite cheerful now. " Listen here ! What were you doing all to-day?" " Seeing visitors. What has that — " " Never mind. And I was at the club, talking about — oh, the newest plays, and the latest yacht races. What are you engaged for to morrow ? " " Lady Le Smythe's ' at home ' — and so are you, please — opera in the evening ; the da)' after, there 's a dinner party, and a heap of calls, and — oh, I forget what ! " " And you 're dead tired of it all, so you said. I'm sick of it ten times over, I know. Now look here, Eve — why do we do it at all?" " Stuart ! everyone does, and must." "Why?" "Well, because — because — I don't quite know. To make friends for their children, mostly."

" Only we have n't any." " Well, then, because you would n't keep your own friends if you did n't." " How many visiting acquaintances have we, at a guess — about four hundred ? Yes ? and how many do you care about ever seeing again ? Thirty ? that 's above the mark, I think. Very well. Now, Eva, my idea is just this — that those four hundred people, all as like as peas (on the surface, of course), and this wretched round of society life that we can't escape from, are eating all the reality and force out of me. If I 'm not to be a ' has-been ' before I 'm thirty five, we must do something. Let 's run away ! " " Stuart — if you would mind not shaking me quite so much ; you never know what you 're do ing when you get excited, and you 're pinching me. Run away ? where to ? how ? when ? and — oh, Stuart — what will your mother and mine say?" " Something unparliamentary. Anyway, I did n't marry Mrs. Burke, and you did n't marry Mrs. Rivington, senior. Now just listen till I explain."

Chapter II

But before the explanation could be spoken, a knock sounded at the door. " Come in ! " cried Rivington, savagely. He detested interruptions of all kinds. At twenty eight, this man had not yet learned to bear patiently with the smaller ills of life. The loss of his entire private fortune, or the trial of some serious personal accident, he could have faced with composure if necessary ; and he had taken the hard blow which his wife's unwilling hand had been forced to deal him that morning, as a brave man should. But that breakfast or dinner should be five minutes late when he was hungry, — that the rain should come down and spoil a projected excursion to Howth or Bray, — that some unexpected interruption should break him off for a moment from an interesting conversation, — these were the things that Stuart Riv ington found " very tolerable, and not to be endured."

" Hang the woman ; what does she want now ? " he muttered quite audibly, as the par lourmaid presented her expressionless face at the door, concealing behind a faultlessly respectful demeanour her unholy joy in the surmise that " Master and Missus had been havin' a row." " If you please, sir, Mr. Moore is downstairs." " Eva, you are n't going down ! Tell him we 're not at home, Kate ! " " If you please, sir, it 's the mistress's ' at home ' day." " Then I suppose you '11 have to go ; but I 'm not going to stir. You can tell him I 've got a bad attack of divine afflatus, and must work it off at once. Moore ought to know all about that — I don't know, though ! Say, Eva — don't you think his last was rather below the mark ? " — confidently. " Decidedly," said Eva, looking after Kate's departing form.

" He got a terrible slating from the critics, did n't he ? And, you see, Stuart, I did not want you to go any further along that road. To be sure, Mr. Moore is ten years older than you, and has written much more — but I look on him as a warning. He has gone over the same old ground again and again till the public are getting tired out, and he never had your wonderful gift of plot. There 's something gone very wrong with him, too, of late, or I 'm much mistaken ; he has evidently a weight on his mind." " Speculation," suggested Stuart, " or a girl." " I must go down, now, I suppose. It really is n't fair to call so late on an ' at home ' day. We can finish our talk later on " — and Mrs. Rivington's sea-green train slid across the polished wood of the door-sill, and rustled down the stairs. There is something just a little desolate in the aspect of a drawing-room recently deserted by guests.

The groups of chairs drawn closely to gether, where some interesting piece of gossip has evidently been in progress ; the armchair and the little ottoman away in a corner by them selves, suggesting ille et ilia; the uncompromis ing row of five or six seats facing all one way, where visitors who were strangers to one another have evidently sat — all these suggest in a minor way " the banquet hall deserted," and are rather depressing in their effect. And Alfred Moore, sitting in the midst of Mrs. Rivington's dis ordered drawing-room, and meditatively leaning forward on his stick, looked like the very spirit of melancholy. He was a big brown man, with very dark untransparent eyes, and a heavy beard, which made him look older than his thirty-seven years. His dress was almost obtrusively perfect — unlike the happy-go-lucky Stuart's free-and easy attire — ■ and his boots were the envy of every young man of his acquaintance.

" How do you do, Mr. Moore ? " asked his little hostess, favouring him with a most gra cious smile, which the amiable hypocrite thought to be less of a falsehood than the conventional " So glad to see you ! " forbidden by her conscience. Mr. Moore resumed the seat he had vacated on her appearance, and remarked, staring blankly at the wall, that the day was warm, but one expected heat at that time of the year; that everyone was going out of town ; and that the strawberries were ripe up the Liffey already. Then he subsided into silence, and Mrs. Riving ton was fain to sustain the conversation in a jerky and catechetical manner, wondering some- 2 what wrathfully the while what on earth the man had come for. By-and-by, however, he brightened up, and began to lead the direction of the talk himself, in a manner that caused Mrs. Rivington — who was certainly no fool, if she did idolise her own captured genius rather beyond the bounds of reason — first to wonder vaguely, and then to choke with inward laughter at the obviousness of the device ; tempering her amusement with the reflection that all men, no matter how clever, were just such fools as this one.

As the unfortunate author's conversation had been carefully selected, and prepared with a regard for natural effect that had caused him no little trouble, it were surely a sin to let it be lost to an admiring world. We therefore report it in extenso, leaving out the answers, which were of no account until the climax was reached. " Yes, it is rather a noisy street. But don't you thiuk this extreme sensitiveness to noise is one of the strongest signs of national deca dence ? Shows a loss of nervous force, you know." . . . " And I have always imagined, for my part, that we suffer as a nation from want of system atic outdoor exercise." . . . " Yes, but we really do not take so much as the English, though we are very energetic once in a while. It is systematic exercise we want. Golf is certainly a great boon ; and tennis was a still greater one, in its prime.

I am glad to see the increase of golf-playing." . . . " Certainly it does — every age and every de gree of strength. But it is a bit expensive, you know, for anyone who is at all hard up. And it is just the hard-up, hard-worked people who need it most. Now take the young shopman, or clerk, for example, when he gets an afternoon off — how can he afford subscriptions, and rail way fares, and caddie's fees, and balls, and clubs, and so forth ? Or indeed one might say the shopgirl, for she wants the exercise still more. Working girls get so little exercise. Now, look at the daily governess, for example — what a life she leads! white slavery, nothing less." . . . "Exactly; their employers are very hard. No wonder they are delicate, as a class." . . . Then the profound and astute Alfred Moon: turned off the tap of his fluent conversation, and waited for results.

Mrs. Rivington glanced at his dark massive face eagerly watching her, and choked back the laughter in her throat ; strangling also thc malicious little demon that bade her turn the subject off, and see the blank ness of defeat gather on the face before her. Like a good-hearted little woman, she said what she had been led on to say, and did not even smile ; — " Yes ; that nice little May Miller who was staying with me this spring — you remember her, I suppose ? — was quite broken down with overwork when she first came. Poor child ! it is hard on a gentlewoman born and bred to have such work, and among such people ! But she is a plucky little soul." "Yes," agreed Mr. Moore, with an air of elaborate indifference, " she seemed a nice sort of girl. And her employers, you said, were very vulgar people ?

Derry, or Lurgan, or some where of that sort they lived, did n't they ? " But Eva Rivington could endure no more with a sober countenance. Six years of Stuart's society — Stuart, who knew not the meaning of reserve or finesse, but plunged head-first into every social mystery, tore every Gordian knot in pieces, and banged open every shut door — had not been without their influence on her originally shy and silent nature ; and it might have been her husband himself who broke out at this point with : — " Mr. Moore, if you ask me straight out what you want to know about Miss Miller I shall be only too glad to tell you. But don't leap in the dark, and undermine me as if I were a hostile camp ! I am not quite such a Gorgon ! " After which beautifully feminine confusion of metaphor, she burst out laughing.

Moore, who was naturally a secretive man, and really liked plotting and " undermining " — as Mrs. Rivington had called it — in search of information, better than asking plain questions, was somewhat taken aback. He chewed his beard for a minute before answering, and shot an unfriendly look at the bright little figure opposite him. But he was hungering and thirst ing for news of blue-eyed May Miller, who had shaken him out of himself so suddenly, that spring, during her three weeks' visit, and then vanished northward out of his sight, leaving him with a strangely heavy spirit, and a pen that seemed to creep on a broken wing. He had tried for a month, with gradually decreasing resolution, to forget all about her — and the net result of his efforts was this visit to Mrs. Rivington, the sole link between his inamorata and himself.

He would have preferred to get the girl's address in an accidental manner, if possible, but as it seemed this was not to be, he must get it in any way he could. So he answered Mrs. Rivington's question after only a brief pause. " I would like to know who Miss Miller's em ployers are, and where they live." " The address is Mrs. Mulvaney, 5 Chatsworth Villas, Shambles Road, Portadown," replied Mrs. Rivington, writing it down for him on a slip of paper. " And now, Mr. Moore, won't you tell me why you want it ? " Mr. Moore would much rather have done nothing of the sort ; but the circumstances hardly permitted of a refusal. And then, every one knew that you could trust Eva Rivington — all the more because she never told anyone so. And the thing had been weighing on his mind for so long, and spoiling his work, and — and — Out it all came, in a burst of rapid speech, — the old story that looks so bald in print, that seems so exquisitely ludicrous to all the world, save those most concerned, — that causes nods and giggles, and nudges and winks, wherever it is met with, — that makes a young man look absurd, and an old one idiotic, — the story-telling of the most sacred and solemn feeling known to human nature, that marks the life it touches with either a crown of sunlight or a scar of fire.

Mr. Moore's language was not eloquent ; not nearly so expressive and touching as the words he put into the mouths of his own fictitious characters — he was celebrated for the vivid ness of his love scenes, and the masterly ana lysis of passion which they displayed. It is a strange thing, by the way, that one never seems in real life to meet those wonderful people who are roused to eloquence by a thrill ing or trying crisis. Most of us ordinary mor tals find our natural eloquence — if we have any — a minus quantity on such occasions. Do you remember, reader, how you carried your self in that crisis to which you can hardly look back even now without a serrement de cœur? By all the laws of fiction you should have spoken fluently and well, while keeping complete command of yourself ; you should have said exactly what you wanted to say, in the most appropriate manner, and "the other person " should have chimed in at precisely the right moment, with precisely the right answer or remark.

As it was — well, you did not know theu, and you hardly know now, what was said or done. The nicely prepared speeches, some how or other, never saw the light at all, their place being taken by short, bald, ill-constructed remarks, that in some manner got to the point, but that would look exceedingly poor in print. And ever after that you knew, what you did not know before, that the fire of strong feeling, whether sorrow, joy, anger, or fear, dissolves in its flame the formal frames of sentences, and leaves only their intangible essences behind — essences that cannot be reproduced in cold type, or with pen and paper. Even so, Alfred Moore's story was but ill told ; yet Eva Rivington knew, as she listened, that it was very sober earnest with him, about this little governess girl. She did not like the man, and her husband, with characteristic un reasoning vehemence, had cordially hated him from the first day they met.

But she was woman enough thoroughly to enjoy the prospect of putting her finger into a love affair ; and that was evidently just what Mr. Moore required her to do. " You see," he ended, after nearly a quarter of an hour's explanation of a fact that was suffi ciently obvious from the beginning — "I — I 'm just as bad as I can be ; it 's no use arguing. And if you really think she did give me en couragement," — Mrs. Rivington had not said so, but she smiled assentingly, — " why, I don't see why it is n't — why I should n't, well, write to her, don't you know, and try and wake her interest up a bit." "Why not?" asked his hearer, who could not quite understand the doubtful tone in his voice. " And then, next time I ask her down here — " " That 's just it," broke in Moore, discon solately. " I can't say anything to her.