Vain Fortune, etc. L.P

Front matter

VAIN FORTUNE Only One Hundred a?id Fifty Copies of this Large Paper Edition have been Printed, of which this is No. "THE GREAT CRITICS HAD EACH A SEPARATE AUDIENCE." [Page 68. Frontispiece,] VAIN FOETUNE BV GEORGE MOORE, Author of "A Mummer's Wife," "Impressions and Opinvtns," "Confessions of a Young Man," " A Modern Lover," etc. WITH ELEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS BT MAURICE GREIFFENHAGEN. LONDON: HENRY AND CO., BOUVEKIE STREET, E.C. Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Ayleebury. The Author has to express his thanks to the Editor qf the " Lady's Pictorial " for his kind permission to reproduce in this volume Mr. Greiff'enhagen's illus trations. -■* VAIN FORTUNE. — ♦- —

Chapter I

rj^HE lamp had not been wiped, and the room smelt slightly of paraffin. The old window cnrtains, whose harsh green age had not softened, were drawn. The mahogany sideboard, the thread bare carpet, the small horsehair sofa, the gilt mirror, standing on a white marble chimney-piece, said clearly. " Furnished apartments in a house bnilt about a hundred years ago." There were piles of newspapers, there were books on the mahogany sideboard and on the horsehair sofa, and on the table there were various manuscripts, — The Gipsy, Act I.; The Gipsy, Act III., Scenes iii. and iv. A sheet of foolscap paper, and upon it a long slender hand. The hand traced a few lines of fine, beautiful caligraphy, then it paused, correcting with extreme care what was already written, and in a hesitating, minute way, telling of a brain that delighted in the correction rather than in the creation of form.

The shirt cuff was frayed and dirty. The coat was thin and shiny. A half-length figure of a man drew out of the massed shadows between the window and sideboard. The red beard caught the light, and the wavy brown hair brightened. Then a look of weariness, of distress, passed over the face, and the man laid dovra the pen, and, taking some tobacco from a paper, rolled a cigarette. Rising, and leaning forward, he lighted it over the lamp. He was a man of about thirty — six feet, broad-shouldered, well-built, healthy, almost handsome. The time he spent in dreaming his play amounted to six times, if not ten times, as much as he devoted to trying to write it'; and he now lit cigarette after cigarette, abandoning himself to every meditation, — the unpleasantness of life in lodgings, the charm of foreign travel, the beauty of the south, what he would do if his play succeeded.

He plunged into calculation of the time it would take him to finish it if he were to sit at home all day, working from seven to ten hours every day. If he could but make up his mind concerning the beginning and the middle of the third act, and about the end, too, — the solution, — he felt sure that, Avith steady work, the play could be completed in a fortnight. In such reverie and such consideration he lay immersed, oblivions ofthe present moment, and did not stir from his chair until the postman shook the frail walls Avith a violent double knock. He hoped for a letter, for a newspaper — either would prove a welcome distraction. The servant's footsteps on the stairs told him the post had brought him something. His heart sank at the thought, that it was probably only a bill, and he glanced at all the bills lying one above another on the table.

It was not a bill, nor yet an advertisement, but a copy of a weekly review. He tore it open. An article about himself ! After referring to the deplorable condition of the modern stage, the writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing about " striking situations," were noticeable, not only in the newspaper criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the audience. He admitted, how ever, that hitherto the attempts made by younger writers in the direction of new subject-matter and new treatment had met Avith little success. But this, he held, was not a reason for discouragement.

Did those who believed in the old formulas imagine that the new formula would be discovered straight away, -without fadures preliminary ? Besides, these attempts were not utterly despicable ; at least one play written on the new lines had met Avith some measure of success, and that play was Mr. Hubert Price's Divorce. But Mr. Hubert Price had kept silence too long, they were waiting for him to speak. By his admir able play Divorce he had made himself Chef d'Ecole. The time had come ; the opportunity was ripe ; the [niblic was ready to applaud a masterpiece. " Yes, the fellow is right. The public is ready for a good play : it wasn't when Divorce was given. I must finish lhe Gipsy. There are good things in it ; that I know. But I wish I could get that third act right. The public will accept a masterpiece, but it Avdl not accept an attempt to write a masterpiece.

But this time there'll be no falling off in the last acts. The scene between the gipsy lover and the young lord will fetch 'em." Taking up the review, Hubert glanced over the article a second time. " How anxious the fellows are for me to achieve a success ! How they believe in me ! They desire it more than I do. They believe in me more than I do in myself. They want to applaud me. They are hungry for the masterpiece." At that moment his eye was caught by some letters written on blue paper. His face resumed a wearied and hunted expression. " There's no doubt about it, money I must get somehow. I am running it altogether too fine. There isn't twenty pounds be tween me and the deep sea. Great Scott ! it is awful to thiuk of it. Here am I, a London celebrity, — I suppose I am a London celebrity, — living in a garret on the verge of starvation, whde my genius is being discussed in caf6, club, and drawing-room.

I must do something to earn a little money. Journalism ! there is journalism ; but how I hate it ! how incapable I am of the facde commonplaces it demands ! " In his oavu soul every man's life is a romance, pro saic though the outward facts may be ; and Hubert's life was a psychological romance of intense interest, although the facts of his existence were so few and simple that Avithout compression or undue brevity they can be told in a few pages. He was the son of the Rev. James Price, a Shrop shire clergyman. The family was of Welsh extraction, but in Hubert none of the physical cliaracteristics of the Celt appeared. He might have been selected as a typical Anglo-Saxon. The face was long and pale, and he wore a short reddish beard ; the eyes were light blue, verging on grey, and they seemed to speak a quiet, steadfast soul — an impersonal soul, one would have said.

But Hubert Price's impersonality was only apparent. In truth he was morbidly personal ; and to escape from an overwhelming self-consciousness he often simulated an interest in others which was hardly genuine. " I stand so much in need of your sympathy that to gain it I must sympathise -with you." When a child, Hubert had been shy, meditative, iUusive, — his mother's favourite, and the scorn of his elder brothers, two rough boys, addicted in early youth to robbing orchards, and later on to gambling and drinking. The elder, after having broken his father's heart with debts and disgraceful living, had gone out to the Cape. News of his death came to the Rectory soon after; but James's death did not turn Henry from his evd courses, and one day his father and mother had to go to London on his account, and they brought him back a hopeless invalid.

Hubert was twelve years of age when he followed his brother to the grave. It was at his brother's funeral that Hubert met for the first time his uncle, Mr. Burnett. Mr. Bur nett had spent the greater part of his life in New Zealand, where he had made a large fortune by sheep farming and investments in land. He had seemed to be greatly taken with his nephew, and for many years it was understood that he would leave him the greater part, if not the whole, of his fortune. But Mr. Burnett had come under the influence of some poor relations, some distant cousins, the Watsons, and had eventually decided to adopt their daughter Emily and leave her his fortune. He did not dare intimate his change of mind to his sister ; but the news having reached Mrs. Price in various rumours, she wrote to her brother asking him to confirm or deny these rumours ; and when he admitted their truth, Mrs. Price never spoke to him again.

She was a determined woman, and the remembrance of the wrong done to her son never left her. While the other children had been a torment and disgrace, Hubert had been to his parents a consolation and a blessing. They had feared that he too might turn to betting and drink, but he had never shown sign of low tastes. He played no games, nor did he care for terriers or horses ; but for books and dra-wing, and long country walks. Immediately on hearing of his disinheritance he had spoken at once of entering a profession ; and for many months this was the sub ject of consideration in the Rectory. Hubert joined in these discussions willingly, but he could not bring himself to accept the army or the bar. It was indeed only necessary to look at him to see that neither soldier's tunic nor laAvyer's Avig was intended for him ;• and it was nearly as clear that those earnest eyes, so intelligent and yet so undetermined in their gaze, were not those of a doctor.

But if his eyes failed to predict his future, his hands told the story of his life distinctly enough — those long, white, languid hands, what could they mean but art ? And very soon Hubert began to draw, evincing some natural aptitude. Then an artist came into the neighbourhood, the two became friends, and went together on a long sketching tour. Life in the open air, the shade of the hedge, the glare of the highway, the meditation of the field, the languor of the riverside, the contemplation of wooded horizons, was what Hubert's pastoral nature was most fitted to enjoy ; and, for the sake of the life it afforded him, he pursued the calling of a landscape painter long after he had begun to feel his desire turning in another direction. When the landscape on the canvas seemed hopelessly inadequate, he laid aside the brush for the pencil, and strove to interpret the summer fields in verse.

From verse he drifted into the article and the short story, and from the story into the play. And it was in this last form that he felt himself strongest, and various were the dramas and comedies that he dreamed from year's end to year's end. While he was in the midst of his period of verse writing his mother died, and in the folloAving year, just as he was working at his stories, he received a telegram calling him to attend his father's death-bed. When the old man was laid in the shadow of the weather-beaten village church, Hubert gathered all his belongings and bade farewell for ever to the Shropshire rectory. Sitting in the railway carriage, he watched the long line running on to London — London, beginning in the fields, a line of lamps stretching behind the sleeping cattle, houses, then fields again, gardens, then a bridge, and the street below freckled with yellow lights.

The train shook, springing from rail to rail — there was the immense Thames, its grey indefinite perspectives ! In London Hubert made few friends. There were some two or three men with whom he was frequently seen — quiet folk like himself, whose enjoyment con sisted in smoking a tranqud pipe in the evening, or going for long walks in the country. He was one of those men whose indefiniteness provokes curiosity, and his friends noticed and wondered why it was that he was so frequently the theme of their conversation. His simple, unaffected manners were fall of suggestion, aud in his writings there was always an indefinable rainbow-like promise of ultimate achievement. So, long before he had succeeded in writing a play, detached scenes and occasional verses led his friends into gradual belief that he was one from whom big things might be expected.

And when the one-act play which they had all so heartily approved of was produced, and every newspaper praised it for its literary quality, the friends took pride in this public vindication of their opinion. After the production of his play people came to see the new author, and every Saturday evening some fifteen or twenty men used to assemble in Hubert's lodgings to drink whisky, smoke cigars, and talk drama. Encouraged by his success, Hubert wrote Divorce. He worked unceasingly upon it for more than a year, and when he had written the final scene he was breaking into his last hundred pounds. The play was refused twice, and then accepted by a theatrical speculator, to whom it seemed to afford opportunity for the exhibition of the talents of a lady he was interested in. It was bitterly assailed and passionately defended.

A certain section of the Press spoke of " foul psycho logy " ; another said, " At last a literary play can be witnessed in London ! " The success of the play was brief. In something like fifty representations its audience — the few thousands who are capable of appreciating literature, and the few thousands who would have it believed that they are capable of appreciating literature — was ex hausted, and the play had to be Avithdrawn. But before this happened, Hubert had sold the American rights for a handsome sum, and -within the next two years he had completed a second play, which he called An Ebbing Tide. The production of An Ebbing Tide was the theatrical event of the season. Some of the critics argued that it contained scenes as fine as any in Divorce, but it was admitted on all sides that the interest withered in the later acts.

But the failure of the play did not shake the established belief in Hubert's genius ; it merely concentrated the admiration of those interested in the new art upon Divorce, the partial failure of which was now attributed to the acting. If it had only been played at the Haymarket or the Lyceum, it could not have failed. The next three years Hubert wasted in various æstheticisms. He explained the difference between the romantic and realistic methods in the reviews; he played Avith a poetic drama to be called The King of the Beggars, and it was not untd the close of the third year that he settled do-wn to definite work. Then all his energies were concentrated on a new play — The Gipsy. A young woman of Bohemian origin is suddenly taken with the nostalgia of the tent, and leaves her husband and her home to wander Avith those of her race.

He had read portions of this play to his friends, who looked upon it as his masterpiece. Innumerable paragraphs had appeared in the newspapers concerning it, ancl as Hubert's fortunes grew narrower his fame grew -wider in the world. At last the newspapers succeeded in driving Mon tague Ford, the popular actor-manager, to Hubert's door ; and after hearing some few scenes he had offered a couple of hundred pounds in advance of fees for the completed manuscript. "But when can I have the manuscript ? " said Ford, as he was about to leave. " As soon as I can finish it," Hubert replied, looking at him Avistfully out of pale blue-grey eyes. " I could finish it in a month, if I could count on not being worried by duns or disturbed by friends during that time." Ford looked at Hubert questioningly ; then he said, " I have always noticed that when a fellow wants to finish a play, the only way to do it is to go away to the country and leave no address."

But the country was always so full of pleasure for him, that he doubted his power to remain indoors Avith the temptation of fields and rivers before his eyes, and he thought that to escape from dunning creditors it would be sufficient to change his address. So he left Norfolk Street for the more remote quarter of Fitzroy Street, where he took a couple of rooms on the second floor. One of his fellow-lodgers, he soon found, was Rose Massey, an actress engaged for the per formance of small parts at the Queen's Theatre. The first time he spoke to her was on the doorstep. She had forgotten her latch-key, and he said, " Wdl you allow me to let you in ? " She stepped aside, but did not answer him. Hubert thought her rude, but her strange eyes and absent-minded manner had piqued his curiosity, and, having nothing to do that night, he went to the theatre to see her act.

She was playing a very small part, and one that was eAidently unsuited to her — a part that was in contradiction to her nature ; but there was something behind the outer envelope which led him to believe she had real talent, and would make a name for herself when she was given a part that would allow her to reveal what was in her. In the meantime, Rose had been told that the gentleman she had snubbed in the passage was Mr. Hubert Price, the author of Divorce. " Oh, it was very silly of me," she said to Annie. " If I had only known ! " " Lor', he don't mind ; he'll be glad enough to speak to you when you meets him again." And when they met again on the stairs, Rose nodded familiarly, and Hubert said, — " I went to the Queen's the other night." " Did you like the piece ? " " I did not care about the piece ; but when you get a wild, passionate part to play, you'll make a hit.

The sentimental parts they give you don't suit you." A sudden light came into the languid face. " Yes, I shall do something if I can get a part like that." Hubert told her that he was writing a play con taining just such a part. Her eyes brightened again. " Will you read me the play ? " she said, fixing her dark, dreamy eyes on him. " I shall be very glad. ... Do you think it won't bore you ? " And his wistful grey eyes were full of interrogation. " No, I'm sure it won't." And a few days after she sent Annie with a note, reminding him of his promise to read her what he had written. As she had only a bedroom, the reading had to take place in his sitting-room. He read her the first and second acts. She was all enthusiasm, and begged hard to be allowed to study the part — just to see what she could do with it — just to let him see that he was not mistaken in her. Her interest in his work captivated him, and he couldn't refuse to lend her the manuscript.

Chapter II

"OOSE often came to see Hubert in his rooms. Her manner was disappointing, and he thought he must be mistaken in his first judgment of her talents. But one afternoon she gave him a recitation of the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth. It was strange to see this little dark-complexioned, dark-eyed girl, the merest handful of flesh and bone, divest herself at wdl of her personality, and assume the tragic horror of Lady Macbeth, or the passionate rapture of Juliet detaining her husband-lover on the balcony of her chamber. Hubert watched in wonderment this girl, so weak and languid in her own nature, awaking only to life when she assumed the personality of another. There she lay, her Avispy form stretched in his arm-chair, her great dark eyes fixed, her mind at rest, sunk in some inscrutable dream.

Her thin hand lay on the arm of the chair : when A' AIN FORTUNE. she woke from her day-dream she burst into irresponsible laughter, or questioned him Avith petulant curiosity. He looked again : her dark curling hair hung on her swarthy neck, and she was somewhat untidily dressed in blue linen. " Were you ever in love ? " she said suddenly. " I don't suppose you could be ; you are too occupied with your play. I don't know, though ; you might be in love, but I don't think that many women would be in love with you. . . . You are too good a man, and women don't like good men." Hubert laughed, and Avithout a trace of offended vanity in his voice he said, " I don't profess to be much of a lady-killer." " You don't know what I mean," she said, looking at him fixedly, a maze of half-childish, half-artistic curiosity in her handsome eyes.

Perplexed in his shy, straightforward nature, Hubert inquired if she took sugar in her tea. She said she did ; stretched her feet to the fire, and lapsed into dream. She was one of the enigmas of Stageland. She supported herself, and went about by herself, looking a poor, lost little thing. She spoke with con siderable freedom of language on all subjects, but no one had been able to fix a lover upon her. " What a part Lady Hayward is ! But tell me, — I don't quite catch your meaning in the second act. Is this it ? " and starting to her feet, she became in a moment another being. With a gesture, a look, an intonation, she was the woman of the play, — a woman taken by an instinct, long submerged, but which has floated to the surface, and is beginning to command her actions. In another moment she had slipped back into her weary lymphatic nature, at once prematurely old and extravagantly childish.

She could not talk of indifferent things ; and having asked some strange questions, and laughed loudly, she -wished Hubert " Good-afternoon " in her curious, irresponsible fashion, taking her leave abruptly. The next two days Hubert devoted entirely to his play. There were things in it which he knew were good, but it was incomplete. Montague Ford would not produce it in its present form. He must put his shoulder to the wheel and get it right ; one more push, that was all that was wanted. And he could be heard walking to and fro, up and down, along and across his tiny sitting-room, stopping suddenly to take a note of an idea that had occurred to him. One day he went to Hampstead Heath. A long walk, he thought, would clear his mind, and he returned home thinking of his play. The sunset still glittered in the skies ; the bare trees were beautifully distinct on the blue background of the suburban street, and at the end of the long perspective a 'bus and a hansom could be seen coming towards him.

As they grew larger, his thoughts defined themselves, and the distressing problem of his fourth act seemed to solve itself. That very evening he would sketch out a uew dramatic movement around which all the other move ments of the act would cluster. But at the corner of Fitzroy Square, within a few yards of No. 17, he was accosted by a shabbily-dressed man, who inquired if he were Mr. Price. On being answered in the affirma tive, the shabbily dressed man said, " Then I have something for ye ; I have been a-watching of ye for the last three days, but ye didn't come out; missed yer this morning : 'ere it is ; " and he thrust a folded paper into Hubert's hand. "What is this?" " Don't yer know ? " he said with a grin ; " Messrs. Tomkins & Co., Tailors, writ — twenty-two pound odd." Hubert made no answer ; he put the paper in his pocket, opened the door quietly, stole up to his room, and sat down to think.

The first thing to do was to examine into his finances. It was alarming to find that he was breaking into his last five-pound note. True that he was close on the end of his play, and when it was finished he would be able to draw on Ford. But a summons to appear in the county court could not fail to do him immense injury. He had heard of avoiding service, but he knew little of the law, and wondered what power the service of the writ gave his creditor over him. His instinct was to eseape — hide himself where they would not be able to find him, and so obtain time to finish his play. But he owed his landlady money, and his departure would have to be clandestine. As he reflected on how many necessaries he might carry away in a newspaper. ne began to feel strangely hke a criminal, and while rolling up a couple of shirts, a few pairs of socks, and some collars, he paused, his hands resting on the parcel.

He did not seem to know himself, and it was difficult to believe that he really intended to leave the house in this disreputable fashion. Mechanically he continued to add to his parcel, thinking all the whde that he must go, otherwise his play would never be written. He had been working very well for the last few days, and now he saw his way quite clearly; the inspiration he had been so long waiting for had come at last, ancl he felt sure of his fourth act. At the same time he wished to conduct himself honestly, even in this dis tressing situation. Should he tell his landlady the truth? But the desire to realise his idea was intolerable, and, yielding as if before an irresistible force, he tied the parcel and prepared to go. At that moment he remembered that he must leave a note for his landlady, and he was more than ever surprised at the naturalness Avith which lying phrases came into his head.

But when it came to committing them to paper, he found he could not tell an absolute lie, and he wrote a simple little note to the effect that he had been called away on urgent business, and hoped to return in about a week. He descended the stairs softly. Mrs. Wilson's sitting-room opened on to the passage; she might step out at any moment, and intercept his exit. He had nearly reached the last flight when he remembered that he had forgotten his manuscripts. His flesh turned cold, his heart stood still. There was nothing for it but to ascend those creaking stairs again. His already heavdy encumbered pockets could not be persuaded to receive more than a small portion of the manuscripts. He gathered them in his hand, and prepared to re-descend the perilous stairs. He walked as lightly as possible, dreading that every creak would bring Mrs. Wdson from her parlour.

A few more steps, and he would be in the passage. A smell of dust, sounds of children crying, children talking in the kitchen ! A few more steps, and, with his eyes on the parlour door, Hubert had reached the rug at the foot of the stairs. He hastened along the passage. Mrs. Wilson was a moment too late. His hand was on the street-door when she appeared at the door of her parlour. " Mr. Price, I want to speak to you before you go out. There has " " I can't wait — running to catch a train. You'll find a letter on my table. It will explain." Hubert slipped out, closed the door, and ran down the street, and it was not until he had put two or three streets between him and Fitzroy Street that he relaxed his pace, and could look behind him without dreading to feel the hand of the " writter " upon his shoulder.

Chapter III

rHHEN he wandered, not knowing where he was going, still in the sensation of his escape, a little amused, and yet Avith a shadow of fear upon his soul, for he grew more and more conscious of the fact that he was homeless, if not quite penndess. Suddenly he stopped walking. Night was thickening in the street, and he had to decide where he would sleep. He could not afford to pay more than five or six shdlings a week for a room, and he thought of Holloway, as being a neighbourhood where creditors would not be able to find him. So he retraced his steps, and, tired and footsore, entered the Tottenham Court Road by the Oxford Street end. There the omnibuses stopped. A conductor shouted for fares, with the light of the public-house lamps on his open month. There was smell of mud, of damp clothes, of bad tobacco, and where the lights of the costermongers' barrows broke across the footway the picture was of a group of three coarse, loud-voiced girls, followed by boys.