Part 2

Outside the stage door, in the alley leading to the street, several idlers waited idly for an opportunity for outrage. In the street itself a crowd had gathered at the theatre entrance. A mob of vacant faces stood under the light, staring at the doors. They stared without noise and without intelligence, under the spell of that mesmerism which binds common intellects so easily. Policemen moved through the mob, moving little parts of it, more by example than by precept. The starers moved because others moved. In the road was a glare of cab lights. Light gleamed on harness, on the satin of cloaks, on the hats of footmen.

"When did the age of polish begin?" said Roger.

"When the age of gilt ended," said John. "It's a base age; you can't even be a decent corpse without polish on your coffin. Here we are at the Masquers; shall we sup here, or at the Petits Soupers?"

II

What, do we nod? Sound music, and let us startle our spirits... Ay, this has waked us. _The Poetaster_.

The act of sitting to table changed John's mood. The lightness and gaiety passed from him. It seemed to Roger that he grew visibly very old and haggard, as the merry mood, stimulated by the excitement of the theatre, faded away. At times, during supper, John gave his friend the impression that the spiritual John was on a journey, or withdrawn into another world. He spoke little, chiefly in monosyllables, making no allusion to the play. He was become a shell, almost an unreal person. He gave no sign of possessing that intellectual energy which made his talk so attractive to young men interested in the arts. Roger's fancy suggested that John was a kind of John the Baptist, a torch-bearer, sent to set other people on fire, but without real fire of his own. He felt that John had lighted an entire city, by some obscure heap of shavings in a suburb, and had now dashed out his torch, so that the night hid him. He realised how little he knew this man, intimate as they had been.

Nobody knew him. Nobody knew what he was. There were some who held that John was the Wandering Jew, others that he was a Nihilist, a Carlist, a Balmacedist, a Jacobite, the heir to France, King Arthur, anti-Christ, or Parnell. All had felt the mystery, but none had solved it. Here was this strange, enigmatic, brilliant man, an influence in art, in many arts, though he practised none with supreme devotion. He had wandered over most of the world; he spoke many tongues; he had friends in strange Asian cities, in Western mining towns, in rubber camps, in ships, in senates. No one had ever received a letter from him. But his rooms were always thronged with outlandish guests from all parts of the world. Looking at him across the table, Roger felt small suddenly, as though John really were a spirit now suddenly lapsing back into the night, after a spectral moment of glowing. He felt the man's extraordinary personality, and his own terrible pettiness in apprehending so little of it. Something was wrong with him, something was the matter with the night. Or had the whole unreal evening been a dream? Or were they all dead, and was this heaven or hell? for life seemed charged with all manner of new realities. He had never felt like this before. Something was changing in his brain. He was realising his own spiritual advances, in one of those rare moments in which one apprehends truth. It occurred to him, with a sudden impulse to violent laughter, that John, sitting back in his chair, mesmerised by the fantasy of the smoke from his cigarette, was also in a mood of spiritual crisis, attaining long-desired peace.

John watched his cigarette till the ash fell, when the truth seemed fully attained, the soul's step upward made good. He glanced up at Roger like a man just waking from a dream, like a man, long puzzled, at last made certain.

"What are your plans?" he asked suddenly. "You'll go on writing?"

"Yes. I shall go on writing," Roger answered. He was puzzled by the abruptness and detachment of John's manner. "I've got that Louis Quatorze play finished. I shall start on another in a day or two. I've a novel half finished; I told you the fable, I think. I've not done much since the rehearsals began."

"You'll have a great success some day," said John, half to himself. "You'll be all that Wentworth might have been had he lived. You know Wentworth's work?"

"Yes," Roger said. The question surprised him. John was speaking to him as though he were a stranger. They had discussed Wentworth's work a score of times. "What sort of man was he?" he added.

"A great genius in himself. In his work I don't think he was that, though of course he did wonderful things. You told me once that you were in love. How does that go on?"

"I see her sometimes. I can't ask her to marry me. My prospects--well--I live by writing."

"She is rich, I think you said? She lives in Ireland?"

"Yes."

"Love is the devil!" said John abruptly. "I'm going abroad to-morrow, on account of my lungs. I was wondering if I should see you settled before I left."

"Good Lord! You never told me."

"Wentworth used to say that, socially, the body does not exist. I thought of telling you. But there, there were other reasons. Things which I can't tell you about."

"But where are you going?"

"To a place in South Spain. I can't tell you more. Listen. I believe that I am on the verge of discovering a great secret. It is an amazing thing; I've been working at it with Centeno, that young Spaniard who comes to my rooms. I am going to Spain so that I may work with him in a warm climate."

He rose from his seat excited by the thought of the discovery. He gulped the last of his wine, as though in a sudden fever to be at work. He flung on hat and coat in the same feverish preoccupation.

Roger, who had seen him thus before, knew that he was forgotten. His friend was already in those secret rooms at the top of a house in Queen Square. His spirit was there, bowed over the work with the Spanish scholar; the earthly part of him was a parcel left behind in a restaurant to follow as it might. Words from nowhere floated into Roger's mind. It was as though some of John's attendant spirits had whispered to him: "Your friend is busy with some strange doctrine of the soul," said the whisperer. "This world does not exist for him. You are nothing to him; you are only a little part of the eternal, dragging a caddis-worm's house of greeds. He is set free."

He looked up quickly to see John deep in thought, with a waiter, standing beside him, offering an unnoticed bill. Roger paid the bill. In another minute they were standing in the glare of the Circus, amid tumult and harsh light. Something in the unrhythmical riot broke the dreamer's mood. He looked at Roger absently, as though remembering an event in a past life. A fit of coughing shook him, and left him trembling.

"Your play is a fine thing," he said weakly, as he hailed a hansom. "You are all right. I can't ask you to come round to my rooms; for I am working there with Centeno. I work there far into the night, and I am in rather a mess with packing to-night."

He seemed to pass into his reverie again; for he did not notice Roger's hand. He was muttering to himself, "This is an unreal world; this is an unreal world," between gulps of cigarette smoke. A sudden burst of energy made him enter the cab. Roger gave the cab-man the address, and closed the cab's aprons. His friend lifted a hand languidly and sank back into the gloom. The last that Roger saw of him was a white, immobile mask of a face, rising up from the black pointed beard, which looked so like the beard of an Assyrian king. The cab was hidden from sight among a medley of vehicles before Roger realised that his friend was gone.

It struck Roger then that the evening had brought him very near to romance. He had seen his soul's work shouted down, by the minotaur. Now the man whom he had worshipped was going away to die. More than the pain of losing the friend was the sharpness of jealousy; for why could not he, instead of Centeno, help that spirit in the last transmutation, in the last glory, when the cracking brain cell let in heaven? He felt himself judged, and set aside. For an instant an impulse moved him to creep in upon the secret, up the stairs, through the corridor piled with books, to the dark room, hung with green, where the work went forward. He longed to surprise those conspirators over their secret of the soul, and to be initiated into the mystery, even at the sword's point. He put this thought from him; but the shock of John's parting brought it back again. His spirit seemed to flounder in him. He felt stunned and staggered.

He crossed Shaftesbury Avenue wondering how life was to go on with no O'Neill. He had no thought for his play's failure; this sorrow filled his nature. He paused for an instant on the western sidewalk of the avenue so that he might light a cigarette. As he bent over the flame, some one struck him violently between the shoulders. He turned swiftly, full of anger, to confront a half-drunken man whose face had the peculiar bloated shapelessness of the London sot. The man unjustly claimed, with many filthy words, that Roger had jostled against him, and that he was going to--well, show him different. A little crowd gathered, expecting a fight. When the man's language was at its filthiest, a policeman interfered, bidding the drunkard go home quietly. The man asked how any one could go home quietly with ---- toffs running into him. The policeman turned to Roger.

Roger was sickened and disgusted. Charging the man, and causing him to be imprisoned or fined, was not to be thought of. The man was not sober; he had passed into a momentary fury of passion, and had butted blindly like an enraged bull. The mistake, and the foul talk, and the sudden attentions of the crowd at such a moment when he hoped to be alone, gave Roger a feeling of helpless hatred of himself and of modern life. He turned abruptly. His enemy dogged him for a few steps, dropping filthy names, one by one, while some of the crowd followed, hoping that there would be an assault. The pursuit ended with a snarl. The drunkard turned diagonally across the street, so nearly under two motor-cabs that the crowd lost interest in Roger from that instant.

Roger remembered that a few yards away there was a German restaurant, where some of his friends used to play dominoes over steins of lager. He entered the restaurant, hoping to meet some one; hoping, too, that the kindly foreign feeling which made the place restful and delightful might help him to forget his sorrow and distaste for life. He ordered coffee and cognac, and sat there, sorrowfully smoking, scanning those who entered, but seeing no friend among them.

As he smoked the memories of the evening assailed him. He saw his work hooted from the stage, and John passing from his life, and the sot's bloated mouth babbling filth at him. His nerves were all shaken to pieces by the emotional strain of the past fortnight. He was in a child's mood; the mood of the homesick boy at school. He was as dangerously near hysteria as the drunkard. He longed to be over in Ireland, in the house of that beautiful woman whom he loved, to be in the presence of calm and tenderness and noble thought, away from all these horrors and desolations. The thought of Ottalie Fawcett calmed him; for he could not think of that beautiful woman and of himself at the same time. Memories of her gave his mind a sweet, melancholy food. One memory especially, of the beautiful lady, in her beautiful, early Victorian dress, with great hat, grey gauntlets, and old pearl earrings, bending over a mass of white roses in the garden, recurred again and again. To think of her intently, and to see her very clearly in a mind acutely excited, was like communion with her. Her image was so sharply outlined in his heart that he felt an exultation, as though their hearts were flowing into each other. One tingling thought of her was like her heart against his. It made him sure that she was thinking of him at that instant, perhaps with tenderness. He tried to imagine her thoughts of him. He tried to imagine himself her, looking out under that great hat, through those lively eyes, a beautiful, charming woman, exquisite, guarded, and infinitely swift of tact. It ended with a passionate longing to get away to Ireland to see her, cost what it might. His heart turned to her; he would go to her. He could not live without love.

The play had ended before ten o'clock. It was now half-past eleven. Roger paid his bill, and turned into Shaftesbury Avenue, thinking that within thirty-six hours he would be set free. This dusty tumult would be roaring to other ears. He would be by the waters of Moyle, among magical glens, knocking at his love's door, walking with her, hearing her voice, sitting with her over the turf fire, in that old house on the hills, looking over towards Ailsa. That would be life enough. It would give him strength to begin again after his failure and the loss of his friend. His mind was full of her. He turned, as he had so often turned, late at night, to look at the windows of the little upper flat which his love shared with her friend Agatha Carew-Ker. They were seldom in town to use the flat. They came there for flying visits generally in the spring and winter, when passing through London to the Continent. It was a tiny flat of four living-rooms, high up, on the south side of Shaftesbury Avenue; a strange place for two ladies to have chosen, but it was near the theatres and shops. As Roger walked towards it he recalled the last time he had been there, seven months before. He had had tea alone with Ottalie, one misty October evening. For nearly half an hour they were alone in the flat, sitting together by the fire in the dusk, talking intimately, even tenderly; for there was something magical in the twilight, and the companionship was too close, during that rare half-hour, for either to light the lamp. He had known Ottalie since childhood; but never before like this. Her tenderness and charm and grave beauty had never been so near to him. Two minutes more in that dusk would have brought him to her side. He would have taken her hands in his. He would have asked her if life could go back again, after such communion, to the old frank comradeship. Then Agatha came in, with her hardness and bustle and suspicion. The spell had been broken. Agatha rated them for sitting in the dark. When he lighted the lamp, he was conscious of Agatha's sharp critical eye upon him, and of a certain reproachful jealousy in her tone towards Ottalie. There were little hard glances from one face to the other; and then some ill-concealed feminine manoeuvring to make it impossible for him to stay longer. He stayed until Agatha became pointed. That was the last time he had seen Ottalie. He had heard from her from time to time. He had sent her his last novel and his book of tales. She had sent him a silver match-box as a Christmas present. Agatha, in a postscript, had conveyed her "love" to him.

He paused on the north side of the avenue to look at the flat windows high up on the opposite side. He was startled to see a light in Ottalie's bedroom, a long gleam of light where the curtains parted, a gleam dimmed momentarily by some one passing. For five seconds he saw the light, then it was blown out. Some one was in the flat, possibly Ottalie herself. He might, perhaps, see her early the next morning. She might be there, just across the road. She might have been within three hundred yards of him for this last miserable hour; but it was strange that she had not written to tell him that she was coming to town. It could hardly be Ottalie. It might be Agatha, or some friend to whom they had lent the flat for the season. He was eager now for the next day to dawn, so that he might find out. He was utterly weary. He hailed a cab and drove to his rooms in Westminster. The cabman, thinking him an easy subject, demanded more than the excess fare given to him. Roger told him that he would get no more, and entered the house. The cabman, becoming abusive, climbed down and battered at the knocker, till the approach of a policeman warned him that any further attempts might lead to a summons. He drove away growling.

Roger lived in chambers in one of the old houses of Westminster. He rented a little panelled sitting-room, a bedroom, also panelled, rather larger, and a third room so tiny that a clothes-press and a bath almost filled it. He lit his lamp to see what letters had come for him. There were five or six, none of them from Ottalie. A telegram lay on the table. It was from an evening paper asking for the favour of an interview early the next morning. The row at the theatre was bearing fruit. He opened his letters; but, seeing that they were not amusing, he did not read them. He went into his bedroom to undress. On the mantelpiece was a rehearsal call card, which had given him a thrill of pleasure a fortnight before. Now it seemed to grin at him with a devilish inanimate malice. An etched portrait of O'Neill looked down mournfully from the wall. A photograph of Ottalie on the dressing-table was the last thing noticed by him as he blew out the lamp.

In the next house a member of Parliament lived. His wife was musical, in a hard, accomplished way. She sang cleverly, though her voice was not good. She sang as her excellent masters had taught her to sing. She had profited by their teaching to the limits of her nature. In moments of emotion, when she recognised her shortcomings, she quoted to herself a line from Abt Vogler, "On the earth a broken arc, in the heaven a perfect round." She was an irregular, eccentric lady, fond of late hours. This night some wandering devil caused her to begin to play at midnight, when Roger, utterly exhausted by the strain of the evening, was falling to a merciful sleep. A few bars was enough to waken Roger. The wall between them was not thick enough to dull the noise. The few melancholy bars gathered volume. She began to sing with hard, metallic, callousness, with disillusion in each note. Poor lady, the moment was beautiful to her. She could not know that she, in her moment of delight, was an instrument of the malevolent stars next door. Roger sat up in bed with a few impatient words. He knew the lady's song; he had heard Ottalie sing it. Hearing this other lady sing it was instructive. It confirmed him in a theory held by him, that refinement was a quality of the entire personality; that delicacy of feeling, beauty of nature, niceness of tact, were shown in the least movement, in the raising of a hand, in the head's carriage, in the least sound of the voice. Ottalie sang with all the beauty of her character, giving to each note an indescribable rightness of value, verbal as well as musical, conveying to her hearers a sense of her distinction of soul, a sense of the noble living of dead generations of Fawcetts; a sense of style and race and personal exquisiteness. This lady sang as though she were out in a hockey field, charging the ball healthily, in short skirts, among many gay young sprigs from the barracks. She sang like the daughter of a _nouveau riche_. Her song was a brief liaison between Leipzig and a vulgar constitution.

Two minutes of her song put all thought of sleep from Roger's mind. He lit his lamp and searched for some cigarettes. Something prompted him to take down Wentworth's _Tragedy of Poppaea_. He would read it over until the lady's muscles tired. He lit a cigarette. Propping himself up with pillows he began to read, admiring the precise firmness of the rhythms, and that quality in the style which was all fragrance and glimmer, a fine bloom of beauty, never too much, which marked the artist. The choruses moved him by their inherent music. They were musical because the man's mind, though sternly muscular and manly, was full of melody. They were unlike most modern verse, which is reckoned musical when it shows some mechanical compliance with a pattern of music already in the popular ear. Roger, as a writer not yet formed, was curious in all things which showed personal distinction and striving. This exquisite verse, this power of fine, precise intellectual conception, was reward enough, he thought, for the misery which this poet had suffered from his fellows. Roger wondered how many ladies like the singer on the other side of the wall had asked poor Wentworth to their "At Homes" for any but a vulgar reason. He remembered how Wentworth, a strict moralist soured by a life of suffering, had spoken to one lady. "You will buy my books and lay them on your tables. You will ask me to dinner to amuse yourself with my talk. You have won a reputation for wit by repeating my epigrams. And for which of my ideas do you care two straws, for which would you sacrifice one least vanity, for which would you outrage one convention? I will come to your 'At Home.'"

The cigarette was smoked out. The lady, having finished some four songs, now toyed with a little Grieg, a little Bach, a little Schumann, like a delicate butterfly flying by the finest clockwork. Roger, who was now in no mood for sleep, found the music of some value as an accompaniment to _Poppaea_. It was like the light and excitement of a theatre, added to the emotion of the poetry. He read through to the end of the second act, when his eyes began to trouble him. Then he rose, hurriedly dressed, wrapped himself in a Chinese robe, embroidered with green silk dragons, and passed through his sitting-room window on to the balcony above the street. It was a narrow, old-fashioned balcony, big enough for three people, if the people were fond of each other. Structurally it was a part of the balcony of the member's house, but an old straw trellis-work divided the two tenancies at the party wall. Roger placed a deck-chair with its back against the trellis, which shut off the member's balcony from his. He was sheltered from above by a green verandah canopy, and from the street by another trellis about five feet high. He would not sleep now, until four; he knew his symptoms of old. He could not read. It was useless to lie tossing in bed. He sat in the deck-chair mournfully munching salted almonds. He was in a state of unnatural nervous excitement. The music came through the house delicately to him, softened by two walls, one of them honestly built in the late seventeenth century. He thought that John O'Neill would be distant music to him henceforth. Perhaps the dead look on the living souls as notes in a music, and play upon them, making harmony or discord, according to the power of their wills and the quality of their nature. He could imagine John, who had stricken so many living souls to music, playing on in death, not hampered by the indifference of any one note, but playing upon it masterly, rousing it to music, by striking some kindred note, reaching it through another, as perhaps our dead friends can. But life would be terrible without John. He remembered how Lamb walked about muttering "Coleridge is dead." A great spirit never expresses herself perfectly. She needs many lesser spirits to catch those glittering crumbs and fiery-flung manna seeds. When the bread passes, the disciples serve scraps and preach bakery.