Part 26

Several of the men shook Mark's hand. Glasses were replenished, fresh cigars lighted. Mark laughed as gaily as any, delightfully aware that he was receiving something--so to speak--on account, a few pieces of silver, cash down to bind a bargain. Some of his companions were celebrities. It seemed to him that for the first time he was of them as well as with them. These Olympians asked for his opinion, laughed at his jokes, approved his suggestions. The hours passed swiftly and pleasantly.

But walking home to Hampstead, beneath the stars, in an air purged by frost, his triumph dwindled to mean proportions. He considered the events of the day. Out of these, now become shadows for the most part, the face of Sybil Perowne stood out substantially: a fact to be reckoned with. He asked himself if he liked her. Was he attracted by her beauty and cleverness? No; these had not touched him. Yet he was attracted--and by what? A vision of the Japanese room revealed the fascination, so mysterious, so alluring to the imagination, of the occult. The sorceress beguiled the fancy of a man who had only cared for good women. He found himself speculating in regard to her. Doubtless the Sphinx-faced butler could tell some tales--an he would!

If he saw much of her, would he forget Betty? The child of the Moorish dancer gave poppy and mandragora to those who sought her.

He had made an appointment with Mrs. Perowne in the afternoon, but in the morning, having nothing to do, he thought he would like to see Pynsent. Pynsent owned a queer old-fashioned house in Kensington. Mark rang the bell, which was answered by a delightful French _bonne_, who made the best omelette in the world and worshipped Pynsent. Certainly, Monsieur would be charmed to see his friend. Alas! yes; the dear studio in Paris had been abandoned. She, Francine, was desolated, but what would you? Monsieur Pynsent made gold in this detestable London instead of silver in enchanting Paris! So chattering, she conducted Mark to the big studio, which was found to be empty. The master had slipped out for a minute. Would Monsieur Mark sit down? Before he had time to smoke a tiny cigarette, his friend would be shaking both his hands. She gave Mark the cigarettes, the potent Caporal cigarettes, handed him the latest Paris paper, popped a log on to the fire, and bustled away.

Mark looked about him. The studio, simply furnished, bare of those tapestries and properties which most painters buy as soon as they begin to earn money, was, in short, a workshop full of ingenious appliances for obtaining curious effects of colour, light and shade. In the middle of it stood a huge oak easel. Several large canvases were turned to the wall. An open paint-box, a palette, a bowl full of the coarse, broad brushes which Pynsent used, told Mark that work was about to begin. Pynsent took few holidays. Work had become to him not a means to an end, but the end itself. But then such work as his was an end, an accomplishment, a victory. Finality distinguished every touch. Mark lit one of the French cigarettes, because he knew the fumes of it would bring back the pleasant days in the _Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie_. He wondered whether Pynsent--the least sentimental of men--smoked Caporal tobacco for the same reason. Possibly. But more probably because he was a man in a groove. One could not conceive of Pynsent with a butler and footmen. He lived now as he had always lived, regardless of Mrs. Grundy, who said tartly that the great painter was a pincher.

After a whiff or two, the _Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie_ revealed itself as it appeared one morning when a couple of brother students were removing themselves and their belongings from one studio to another. Mark had lent two willing hands and a tongue which outwagged a terrier's tail. The students possessed a chest full of costumes. In these their friends had arrayed themselves. From several adjoining studios came other students and their models, all anxious to help--or hinder. Every article was carried in procession down the narrow street to the sounds of loud laughter, of banjo and mandoline, of drum and cornet, and of various songs. A diminutive Frenchman, beardless as a baby, had taken off most of his clothes and was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a large flat bath, which four of his friends were carrying, arm-high, down the street. The little man had robed himself in a rough towel; he wore a sponge-bag on his head; and he hugged to his bare chest an enormous sponge. All down the street, windows were flung up. Everybody joined in the fun.

"_Une petite surprise pour Monsieur--et Madame_."

The voice of the good Francine put to flight the joyous procession. Mark rose up, flung away the half-smoked cigarette, and saw Betty advancing into the studio. Francine hobbled away. She knew that Betty had married Mark's brother.

"Betty!"

"Mark!"

"Don't go," said Mark, as she paused irresolute. "Pynsent is painting you, I suppose. He will be here in a minute. I'll go."

"You never wrote," she faltered.

"Was it likely? How is the boy?"

"I expected a word of--forgiveness. The boy is very well."

"Is he like you?"

"Everybody says so."

He was silent and very pale, whereas Betty's face was suffused with delicate colour. He was trying to resist an overmastering impulse to take her in his arms, when he heard Pynsent's step, and a moment afterwards his clear incisive voice.

"I am ashamed that I was not here to receive you, Mrs. Samphire. But I know you'd sooner talk to Mark than me. I'm painting her, Mark. You shall give us your opinion. I've not seen you for a coon's age. What? Nonsense, my dear fellow. I can paint just as well while you're here. You must stay as long as you possibly can. Mustn't he, Mrs. Samphire?"

"Of course," said Betty in her ordinary voice. Pynsent dragged a canvas across the studio and placed it on the easel.

"There," said he, "what do you think of that?"

Mark approached the easel, as Betty turned to remove her hat and jacket. The portrait, almost completed, was three-quarters length: a daring study in what at first glance seemed to be black-and-white. As a matter of fact, black, as pigment, was not used at all. The effect of it was produced by the admixture and contrast of colour. Looking into the translucent shadows the eye detected brilliant tints.

"It's one of the best things I've done," said Pynsent. "It's kept me awake nights, this portrait. I got that shadow under the chin by a trick I learnt in Florence. You lay three colours one on top of the other. It's great. The fellow who discovered it can't draw; he'd be a wonder if he could----"

Pynsent went on talking, unaware of what was passing in the minds of his friends. Betty sat down on the model's dais, and Pynsent arranged her hands, still talking volubly of light and colour effects. Mark remained staring at the picture. "You haven't said what you think of it," concluded Pynsent, as he picked up his palette.

"For whom are you painting it?"

"It's an open secret, isn't it?" said the painter, glancing sideways at his model. "The grateful Vauxhall wishes to give it to your brother. But I had difficulty in persuading Madame to sit."

"Vauxhall," repeated Mark stupidly.

"Archie, they say, has put thousands into his pocket. He boomed the price of all bricks and mortar within a mile radius of the Basilica. Well--your opinion, my dear fellow."

Mark still hesitated. Pynsent was famous for his delineation of character. He had the power of seizing and transferring to canvas those delicate shades of expression which reveal the real man and woman. In pourtraying Betty, he had emphasised the mother in her at the expense, possibly, of the wife. The portrait was hardly flattering in the generally received sense. The face was troubled; lines and shadows lay on it. Betty's youth and beauty were subdued, as if beneath the touch of suffering rather than time. But the general effect remained that of a grace and loveliness independent of colour and texture. The admirable contours, the delicate modelling of cheek and brow and chin, indicated a noble maturity not yet attained but certain to be attained. Not at that moment, however, did Mark realise that Pynsent's portrait was an incomparable likeness of the Betty who had failed to keep tryst because the higher nature had overcome the lower and baser. But he did grasp a part of the truth. He told himself that if Betty had not suffered, Pynsent would have painted another and a different portrait.

"The face is strange to me," said Mark.

"What?" Pynsent exclaimed, staring at the speaker. "You, you say that? Why of all men, I----" He broke off abruptly, sensible of some psychological disturbance, puzzled and distressed. Mark laughed harshly. He had almost betrayed himself. Then he glanced at Betty. Her likeness to the picture was extraordinary.

"You m-m-misunderstand me," he stammered. "I meant to say that you had painted a woman who has changed. We all change. I hardly recognise my own f-face. This picture is, as you say, the b-b-best thing you've done, and I congratulate you warmly. I'd like to see it again. But now I must r-r-run away. I d-dropped in to tell you that my play is accepted."

This piece of news effectively cloaked his nervousness. Pynsent and Betty expressed their pleasure and congratulation. Mark shook hands and escaped.

"I thought he was not himself," said Pynsent, picking up his palette. "This will make up for a good deal, won't it? I know exactly how he feels. Great Scott! It seems only yesterday that I had my first picture hung in the Salon. I was skied, but I was the happiest man in Paris. All the same, Mark did not strike me as looking happy--eh?"

She answered his sharp "eh" and still sharper glance with a constrained "N-n-no."

*CHAPTER XXXVIII*

*GONZALES*

Mark plunged into the obscurity of the underground railway, cursing the impulse which had taken him to Pynsent's studio. Betty had suffered, but what was her suffering compared with his?

He repeated this to himself again and again, as the train bore him eastward. Then he remembered Jim's phrase: "Our Betty is out of sight."

Thinking of Jim, he got out at the Mansion House and walked to the Stock Exchange. Five minutes with Jim might blow some cobwebs out of his mind. He reached the huge building and called for James Corrance. The porter bade him wait near some glass swinging-doors through which hatless men were continually passing. Whenever these opened a dull roar of many voices fell on Mark's ear, a menacing growl as of an angry beast. In his present mood Mark welcomed any strange noise as a distraction from the buzzing of his own thoughts. This beast of the markets made itself heard. Mark wondered vaguely whether it drowned, to such men as Jim, all other sounds.

While he stood, peering through the glass doors, a sharp thud, as of a mallet striking a panel of wood, smote his ears. In an instant, as if some wizard had waved a wand, silence fell upon the crowd within the building, a silence inexpressibly strange and awe-inspiring. Again the thud was heard, louder and more articulate. Mark guessed what was happening. A member of the Stock Exchange was about to be "hammered." The silence, Mark noted, was partially broken by a shuffling of innumerable feet, as men pressed forward to catch the name of the man who had failed. The hammer struck for the third and last time. Mark could see that every face was turned in one direction; upon each lay a grim expression of anxiety. Then a hoarse voice said in a monotone: "Mr. Caxton Bruno is unable to comply with his bargains." A roar of voices succeeded the announcement, as the crowd resumed the business of the minute. The glass doors swung open; and Jim Corrance appeared.

"You heard poor Bruno hammered," he said. "Dramatic--eh? It always thrills, because one never knows. That cursed hammer may sound the death knell of a dozen firms. I _am_ glad to see you----"

Talking volubly, he insisted that Mark must lunch with him, although Mark protested that he had no appetite. But Jim, when he heard that _Fenella_ was accepted by Mrs. Perowne, declared that a bottle of champagne must be cracked. He carried Mark off to his City club, where scores of men were eating, drinking, and talking. Jim pointed out the celebrities.

"That fellow is a famous 'bear,'" he indicated a short, thick-set, rather unctuous-looking Jew. "In the long run the 'bears' have the best of it."

"He doesn't look clever," said Mark.

"Clever? He's stupid as an owl outside his own special business. It isn't the clever ones who arrive. I know men with all the qualities essential to success, but the luck goes against 'em every time. They ought to get there with both feet, but they don't. You must have a glass of that old cognac, Mark. A play is not accepted every day, by Jove! I tell you what I'll do, my boy. I'll give a dinner in honour of the event. We'll get Pynsent, and Tommy Greatorex, and the rest of 'em. Why not nip over to Paris for it? Eh? What are you mumbling? All take and no give. What infernal rot! Well, I won't take no. As if it wasn't an honour to entertain so distinguished a gentleman."

Mark's spirits began to rise. After all, the world was not such a bad place. And the luck which Jim spoke about had certainly changed. The play would be produced within the year. Thoroughly warmed by Jim's hospitality, and promising that he would reconsider his refusal to dine in Paris, he left the City to keep his appointment with Mrs. Perowne. But the atmosphere of the underground railway, raw, fetid, thick with smoke, brought back the misery and despair of the morning. He found himself reflecting that life after thirty was an underground procession, a nauseating vagabondage in semi-obscurity, stopping now and again at stations artificially illumined, garishly decorated, reeking with abominable odours, crowded with pale, troubled strangers jostling each other in their wild efforts to hurry on to some other place as detestable as the one they were leaving....

As for the play upon which so much was staked, was he not a sanguine fool to take a woman's word that it would be produced? And production did not mean success. But here he paused. Production to him did mean success. It was good, good, good! It had thrilled two persons who knew. Greatorex, the cynic, the reader of innumerable plays, and the actress, the woman of genius.

On this occasion Mrs. Perowne received him in her drawing-room: a conventional room, white-and-yellow, filled with absurd knick-knacks and too many flowers, principally exotics of overpowering perfume. She was wearing a large hat which overshadowed her face. Her dress and jacket of the plainest cloth and cut were trimmed with sable. Mark had passed her brougham, drawn up a few yards from the entrance of the building, and guessed that she was going out. She began to speak about _Fenella_.

"Alfred Gonzales has read it."

"What does he say?"

"He finds it too serious. He says there's no money in it."

Mark gasped.

"But Alfred is not infallible," she added. "I mean to produce _Fenella_. It may be wise to throw it first to the dog." This meant a first performance in the provinces. Mark burst into excited speech.

"Then you d-d-don't mean to ch-chuck me. You've raised me to the heights, Mrs. Perowne. Don't drop me! I m-m-mean that I'd sooner know the worst now. You said you were an impulsive woman. Perhaps your impulse overstepped the b-b-bounds of prudence, you know. And, if so, we'll call the thing off. But don't drop me later. I couldn't stand that. Am I speaking out too plainly? You've been very kind, very kind indeed; I shall always be grateful, b-b-but I can face disappointment better now than l-l-later."

"Sit down," she said, smiling. "Why, what a boy you are. I-I like boys."

He sat down, trembling, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.

"You are as emotional as I am," she murmured in a caressing voice. "Now, I've an appointment which I must keep. You can believe that I'd sooner spend the afternoon with you. I really mean it. I have to recite at a bazaar. Which bores me horribly. Now do you believe that I am your friend, that I like you, that you interest me? And will you be furious if I add that I like you better than your play--good though it is? I prefer the man to his work, the artist to his art."

She paused, glancing at him through half-closed eyes. There was something feline about her expression and pose. Her voice had a purr in it. Mark did not know what to say or do.

"I should like to help you to a real success," she continued. "And why not? Your play might be made into a masterpiece. At present it is uneven, amateurish, crude in parts. Alfred put his finger on the weak spots. He says that the fourth act ought to be rewritten. Shall we rewrite it together? I mean, will you let me help you to make it just what it ought to be?"

"Why, of course," said Mark eagerly. "I am not fool enough to suppose that the thing can't be improved. Your help, your hints, your experience would be invaluable. I was counting on them at rehearsal."

"But we haven't come to that yet. I don't hold with altering plays at rehearsals. After the first night or two, revision may be expedient. One never knows. Scenes may drag, or they may be too short. We needn't go into that now. But my point is that the thing should be as perfect as the author can make it, before it is read to the company. You agree with me--_hein_?"

The foreign word of interrogation had a soothing sound. Mark placed himself in her hands unreservedly.

"I trust you," he said simply.

She nodded, showing her lovely teeth in a smile. Then she pointed out that nothing could be done till the piece in which she was acting had been taken off. She expected to be quite free in a fortnight's time. After Easter she would appear in a role which required little preparation. During Lent she might go abroad. But all details could be settled later. Would he drink tea with her and talk everything over the day after to-morrow?

He saw her into her brougham.

"Your play is in Alfred's hands," she said, as she bade him good-bye. "He is going to make some notes for us. Have you met him? Go and see him. He's at the theatre now."

She murmured something he did not catch, as the brougham rolled silently away. She was right. He ought to see Gonzales. The business connected with the play, the contract and so forth, must be done through him. Doubtless that was what she meant when she urged him to go to the theatre. He took a 'bus to the Alcazar and sent up his card. Presently word came down through a tube that Mr. Gonzales would be disengaged in less than ten minutes. Mr. Samphire might care to look over the house? Mark assenting to this, a youth connected with the manager's department escorted him through the building, which had been built for Mrs. Perowne "regardless of expense," as the youth said, and "replete with every modern appliance." Mark wondered at the beauty of the decorations in parts of the theatre other than the auditorium, where lavishness was to be expected. The stage was already set, and the youth told Mark that the "Empire" furniture had adorned the palace of one of Napoleon's marshals.

Further details, setting forth the thousands lavished upon scenery and costumes, gave Mark a dismal impression that the play itself was the least part of a modern theatrical performance; this impression was deepened when he met the manager, whom he disliked at the first glance. Gonzales, it was said, had lured Mrs. Perowne from her husband, holding out the bait of fame. She first appeared in one of his adaptations from the French, a melodrama built about a head of red hair. Mrs. Perowne's red hair had been the feature of posters six yards long, designed by Cheret. In America, the yellow press had asserted that Gonzales was in the habit of dragging his pupil across her room by her flaming locks. Her screams echoed from Maine to California, and filled every theatre with curious crowds, who believed the stories when they saw the red hair.

Gonzales was big and burly, with a close-clipped black beard, through which protruded a red lower lip. His face indicated power, cruelty, and a brutal self-assurance. He was smoking a very thick cigar, which he held, when he spoke, between white, fat fingers. His voice, however, was charming; melodious, persuasive, with the intonations and inflections characteristic of the Latin races; and his eyes, heavily lidded, were finely formed and of a clear umber in colour. He began to praise Mark's play with an insincerity which revolted. Mark, sensible of an overpowering desire to escape, listened to interminable phrases.

"You are soaping the ways," he said, when Gonzales paused. "I understood from Mrs. Perowne that you saw no m-money in the thing. You can tell me frankly what you think of it. I am not thin-skinned, and I hope you d-don't take me for a f-fool."

Gonzales showed his teeth.

"One has to be careful with authors," he said. "I write myself, trifles," he shrugged his shoulders, "adaptations, as you know, which have had a measure of success. And I can't bear to have them criticised, these adopted children of mine. I think them perfect, perfect. But you--you are of colder blood--and you say you prefer the truth which I speak sometimes," he smiled disagreeably. "Well, then, in my opinion, you have just missed a big thing. There's dramatic power in every line of _Fenella_, and in Paris it might catch on, but here tragedy is played--out. Still, I don't say that with judicious cutting, and a slight strengthening of the love interest, and--in short I told Mrs. Perowne that we could make something of it, if you gave us a free hand. Oh, there's plenty of action, and a freshness of treatment, but look here----" He made a couple of suggestions, so admirable, so luminous of his insight into dramatic possibilities, that Mark admitted at once the man's cleverness and knowledge of what was good work. But when he had, so to speak, given this sample of his ability, he added with an odious sneer: "After all the public, our public, asks for something absolutely different. For example, I am in treaty now for a comedy in four acts. Mrs. Perowne will wear eight dresses, furnished by the four leading dressmakers of Paris. _Entre nous_, these confections will cost us nothing, not a _sou_. They will be an immense 'ad' for the dressmakers and for us. The comedy must be constructed round these dresses. As an artist I deplore such methods, but a successful manager is forced to employ them."

Mark curtly stated the object of his visit. Gonzales shrugged his shoulders.

"The contract? Is it not early to talk of that?"

Words flowed like a stream of milk from his mouth. In the "profession," he explained, one could not move in haste. Mrs. Perowne had engagements to be filled. It was absurd to talk of producing a play on a certain day. It was bad business to take off a paying piece. And Rejane might lease the Alcazar. No, no, he gave Mr. Samphire credit for a certain delicacy. He was dealing, remember, with a lady, whose judgment--the truth was best--he had taken by storm. As her manager, he had implored her again and again to read no plays till he, the speaker, had looked them over. Finally, Mark took his leave, conscious that he had been defeated, that this man of many words could warp him to his will. He carried away with him, moreover, a conviction that Gonzales was his enemy, and that the stories about him and Mrs. Perowne were true.

*CHAPTER XXXIX*

*AT THE MIRAFLORES*