‘ah, love, there is no better life than this.’
justina had made a success at the royal albert theatre. the newspapers were tolerably unanimous in their verdict. the more ?sthetic and critical journals even gave her their approval, which was a kind of cachet. the public, always straightforward and single-minded in their expression of satisfaction, had no doubt about her. she was accepted at once as one of the most popular and promising young actresses of the day—natural yet artistic—free from all trick, unaffected, modest, yet with the impulsive boldness of a true artist, who forgets alike herself and her audience in the unalloyed delight of her art.
a success so unqualified gave the girl extreme pleasure, and elevated matthew elgood to a region of bliss which he had never before attained. for the first time in his life he found himself supplied with ample means for the gratification of desires which, at their widest, came within a narrow limit. the manager of the royal albert theatre had made haste to be liberal, lest other managers, ever on the watch for rising talent, should attempt to lure justina to their boards by offers of larger reward. he sprang his terms at once from the weekly three guineas, which matthew had gladly accepted at the outset, to double that amount, and promised further increase if miss elgood’s second part were as successful as the first.
‘with a very young actress one can never be sure of one’s ground,’ he said, diplomatically. ‘the part in “no cards” just fits your daughter. i’ve no idea what she may be in the general run of business. i’ve seen so many promising first appearances lead to nothing.’
‘my daughter has had experience, and tuition from an experienced actor, sir,’ replied matthew, with dignity. ‘she has a perfect knowledge of her art, and the more you call upon her the better stuff you will get from her. such a part as that in “no cards” is a mere bagatelle for her. fits her, indeed! it fits her too well, sir. her genius has no room to expand in it!’
six guineas—by no means a large income in the eyes of a paterfamilias with a wife, and a servant or two, and a nest-full of small children to provide for, to say nothing of the rent of the nest to pay—seemed wealth to mr. elgood, whose ideas of luxury were bounded by a bloomsbury lodging, a hot dinner every day, and his glass of gin and water mixed with a liberal hand. he expanded himself in this new sunshine, passed his leisure in spelling through the daily papers, escorting his daughter to and from the theatre, and hanging about the green-room, where he told anecdotes of macready, bragged of justina’s talents when she was out of the room, and made himself generally agreeable.
that bloomsbury lodging of mr. elgood’s, though located in the shabbier quarter of the parish, seemed curiously near that highly respectable street where maurice clissold had his handsome first-floor chambers, so little account did mr. clissold make of the distance between the two domiciles. he was always dropping in at mr. elgood’s, bringing justina fresh flowers from the glades of covent garden, or a new book, or some new music. she had improved her knowledge of that delightful art during the last two years, and now played and sang sweetly, with taste and expression that charmed the poet.
before justina had been many weeks at the albert theatre, it became an established fact that mr. clissold was to drink tea with miss elgood every afternoon. the gentle temptations of the kettledrum, which he had resisted so bravely in eton square, beguiled him here in bloomsbury, though the simple feast was held on a second floor, with a french mechanic working sedulously at his trade below. many an hour did maurice clissold waste in careless happy talk in that second-floor sitting-room, with its odour of stale tobacco, its shabby old-fashioned furniture, its all-pervading air of poverty and commonness. the room was glorified for him somehow, as he sat by the sunny window sipping an infusion of congou and pekoe out of a blue delft teacup.
one day it struck him suddenly that justina ought to have prettier teacups, and a few days afterwards there arrived a set of curious old dragon-china cups and saucers. he had not gone to a china-shop, like a rich man, and ordered the newest and choicest ware that minton’s factory had produced. but he had walked half over london, and peered into all manner of obscure dens in the broker’s shop line, till he found something to please him. old red and blue sprawling monsters of the crocodile species, on thinnest opalescent porcelain, cups and saucers that had been hoarded and cherished by ancient housekeepers, only surrendered when all that life can cling to slipped from death’s dull hand. the old fragile pottery pleased him beyond measure, and he carried the cups and saucers off to a cab, packed in a basket of paper shavings, and took them himself to justina.
‘i don’t suppose they are worth very much now-a-days when oriental china is at a discount,’ he said, ‘and they cost me the merest trifle. but i thought you’d like them.’
justina was enraptured. those old cups and saucers were the first present she had ever received—the first actual gift bestowed out of regard for her pleasure which she could count in all her life; except the same donor’s offerings of books and music.
‘how good of you!’ she said, more than once, and with a look worth three times as many words. maurice laughed at her delight.
‘it was worth my perambulation of london to see you so pleased,’ he said.
‘what, did you take so much trouble to get them?’
‘i walked a good long way. the only merit my offering has is that i took some pains to find it. i am not a rich man, you know, justina.’
he called her by her christian name always, with a certain brotherly freedom that was not unpleasant to either.
‘i am so glad of that,’ she exclaimed, na?vely.
‘glad i’m not rich? why, that’s scarcely friendly, justina.’
‘isn’t it? but if you were rich you wouldn’t come to see us so often, perhaps. rich people have such hosts of friends.’
‘yes, cr?sus has generally a wideish circle—not the best people, possibly, but plenty of them. but i don’t think all the wealth of the indies—the peacock throne of the great mogul, and so on—would make any difference in my desire to come here. no, justina, were the chief of the rothschilds to transfer his balance to my account to-morrow i should drop in all the same for my afternoon refresher, as regularly as five o’clock struck.’
they had talked of literature and poetry, and fully discussed that new poet whose book justina had wept over, but by no word had maurice hinted at his identity with the writer. he liked to hear her speculate upon that unknown poet—wondering what he was like—setting up her ideal image of him. one day he made her describe what manner of man she imagined the author of ‘a life picture;’ but she found it difficult to reduce her fancies to words.
‘i cannot compliment you on the clearness of your delineation,’ he said. ‘i haven’t yet arrived at the faintest notion of your ideal poet. if you could compare him to any one we know, it might help me out. is he like mr. flittergilt, the dramatist?’
‘mr. flittergilt,’ she cried, contemptuously. ‘mr. flittergilt, who is always making bad puns, and talking of his own successes, and telling us that clever remark he made yesterday!’
‘not like flittergilt? has he any resemblance to me, for instance?’
justina laughed, and shook her head—a very positive shake.
‘no, you are too light-hearted for a poet. you take life too easily. you seem too happy.’
‘in your presence, justina. you never see me in my normal condition,’ remonstrated maurice, laughing.
‘no, i cannot fancy the author of that poem at all like you. he is a man who has suffered.’
maurice sighed.
‘and you think i have never suffered?’
‘he must be a man who has loved a false and foolish woman, and who has been stung to the quick by remorse for his own weakness.’
‘ah, we are all of us weak once in our lives, and apt to be deceived, justina. happy the man who knows no second weakness, and is not twice deceived.’
he said this gravely enough for poet and thinker. justina looked at him with a puzzled expression.
‘now you seem quite a different person,’ she said. ‘i could almost fancy you capable of being a poet. i know there are glimpses of poetry in your talk sometimes.’
‘when i talk to you, justina. some people have an influence that is almost inspiration. all manner of bright thoughts come to me when you and i are together.’
‘that cannot be true,’ she said. ‘it is you who bring the bright thoughts to me. consider how ignorant i am, and how much you know—all the great world of poetry, of which so many doors are barred against me. you read goethe and schiller. you go into that solemn temple where the greek poets live in their strange old world. when you took me to the museum the other day, you pointed out all the statues, and talked of them as familiarly as if they had been the statues of your own friends. while i, who have hardly a schoolgirl’s knowledge of french, cannot even read that alfred de musset of whom you talk so much.’
‘you know the language in which shakespeare wrote. you have all that is noblest and grandest in human literature in your hand when you take up that calf-bound, closely printed, double-columned volume yonder, from the old chiswick press. i think an english writer who never read anything beyond his bible and his shakespeare would have a nobler style than the man of widest reading, who had not those two books in his heart of hearts. other poets are poets. that one man was the god of poetry. but we will read some of de musset’s poems together, justina, and i will teach you something more than a schoolgirl’s french.’
after this it became an established thing for maurice and justina to read together for an hour or so, just as it was an established thing for maurice to drop in at tea-time. he made his selections from de musset discreetly, and then passed on to victor hugo; and thus that more valuable part of education which begins when a schoolgirl has been ‘finished’ was not wanting to justina. never was a pupil brighter or more intelligent. never master more interested in his work.
matthew elgood looked on, not unapprovingly. in the first place, he was a man who took life lightly, and always held to the gospel text about the day and the evil thereof. he had ascertained from good-natured mr. flittergilt that maurice clissold had an income of some hundreds per annum, and was moreover the scion of a good old family. about the good old family matthew cared very little; but the income was an important consideration, and assured of that main fact, he saw no harm in the growing intimacy between justina and maurice.
‘it’s on the cards for her to do better, of course,’ reflected mr. elgood; ‘actresses have married into the peerage before to-day, and no end of them have married bankers and heavy mercantile swells. but, after all, justina isn’t the kind of beauty to take the world by storm; and this success of hers may be only a flash in the pan. i haven’t much confidence in the duration of this blessed new school of acting, these drawing-room comedies, with their how-d’ye-do, and won’t-you-take-a-chair dialogue. the good old heavy five-act drama will have its turn by and by, when the public is tired of this milk and water. and justina has hardly physique enough for the five-act drama. it might be a good thing to get her comfortably married if i was quite clear about my own position.’
that was an all-important question. justina single and on the stage meant, at a minimum, six guineas a week at mr. elgood’s disposal. the girl handed her salary over to the paternal exchequer without a question, and was grateful for an occasional pound or two towards the replenishment of her scanty wardrobe.
mr. elgood lost no time in trying to arrive at maurice’s ideas upon this subject.
‘it’s a hard thing for a man when he outlives his generation,’ he remarked, plaintively, one sunday evening when maurice had dropped in and found the comedian alone, justina not having yet returned from evening service at st. pancras. ‘here am i, in the prime of life, with all my faculties in their full vigour, laid up in port, as useless a creature as if i were a sheer hulk, like poor tom bowling—actually dependent upon the industry of a girl! there’s something degrading in the idea. if it were not for justina, i’d accept an engagement for the heavies at the lowest slum in london, roar my vitals out in three pieces a night, rather than eat the bread of dependence. but justina won’t have it. “i want you to bring me home from the theatre of a night, father,” she says. and that’s an argument i can’t resist. the streets of london are no place for unprotected innocence after dark, and cabs are an expensive luxury. yet it’s a bitter thing to consider that if justina were to marry i should have to go to the workhouse.’
‘hardly, if she married an honest man, mr. elgood,’ replied maurice. ‘no honest man would take your daughter away from you without making some provision for your future.’
‘well, i have looked at it in that light,’ said matthew, reflectively, as if the question had thus dimly presented itself before him. ‘i think an honest man wouldn’t feel it quite the right thing to take away my bread-winner, and leave me to spend my declining days in want and misery. yet, as shakespeare has it, “age is unnecessary.” “superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.” “to have done is to hang—
“quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail,
in monumental mockery.”’
‘be assured, mr. elgood, that if your daughter marries a man who really loves her, your age will not be uncared for.’
‘i do not wish to be a burden upon my child,’ pursued the actor, tearfully.
his second tumbler of gin and water was nearly emptied by this time.
‘a hundred and four pounds per annum—two pounds a week—secured to me, would give me all i ask of luxury; my lowly lodging, say in may’s court, st. martin’s lane, or somewhere between blackfriars bridge and the temple; my rasher or my bloater for breakfast, my beefsteak for dinner; and my modest glass of gin and water hot, to soothe the tired nerves of age. these, and an occasional ounce of tobacco, are all the old man craves.’
‘your desires are very modest, mr. elgood.’
‘they are, my dear boy. i would bear the pang of severance from my sweet girl, if i saw her ascend to a loftier sphere, and keep my lowly place without repining. but i should like the two pounds a week made as certain as the law of the land could make it.’
this was a pretty clear declaration of his views, and having thus expressed himself, mr. elgood allowed life to slip on pleasantly, enjoying his comfortable little two o’clock dinners, and his afternoon glass of gin and water, and dozing in his easy chair, while maurice and justina read or talked, only waking at five o’clock when the dragon teacups made a cheerful clatter, and justina was prettily busy with the task of tea-making.
even the old common lodging-house sitting-room began by and by to assume a brighter and more homelike air. a vase of choice flowers, a row of books neatly arranged on the old-fashioned sideboard, a bohemian glass inkstand, clean muslin covers tacked over the faded chintz chair-backs—small embellishments by which a woman makes the best of the humblest materials. the dragon china tea-service was set out on the chiffonier top when not in use, and made the chief ornament of the room. composition statuettes of shakespeare and dante, which maurice had bought from an itinerant image-seller, adorned the chimney-piece, whence the landlady’s shepherd and shepherdess were banished.
in a scene so humble, in a circle so narrow, maurice spent some of the happiest hours of his life. he remembered cavendish square sometimes with a pang, the shadowy drawing-room at twilight, the flower-screened balcony, so pleasant a spot to linger in when the lamps were lighted in the square below, and the long vista of wigmore street converged to a glittering point, and the moon rose above the gloomy roof of cavendish house—hours of happiness as unalloyed—dreams that were over, days that were gone. and he asked himself whether this second birth of joy was a delusion and a snare like the first.
