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Title: The Talk of the Town, Volume 2 (of 2)
Author: Payn, James
Language: English
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[Illustration: ‘BEGONE!’ HE CRIED; ‘BEGONE! BOTH OF YOU.’]
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
BY
JAMES PAYN
AUTHOR OF ‘BY PROXY’ ETC. ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II.
_SECOND EDITION_
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1885
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAP. PAGE
XIX. ANOTHER DISCOVERY 1
XX. A TRUE LOVER 13
XXI. A TIFF 30
XXII. A BARGAIN 46
XXIII. AN UNEXPECTED ALLY 63
XXIV. MANAGERS 81
XXV. TWO DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 99
XXVI. TWO ACTRESSES 113
XXVII. A ROYAL PATRON 134
XXVIII. THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER 154
XXIX. THE CYPHER 172
XXX. THE PLAY 185
XXXI. THE MESSENGER OF DISGRACE 207
XXXII. THE FEET OF CLAY 223
XXXIII. BREAKING IT 239
XXXIV. A COMFORTER 252
XXXV. FAREWELL 266
_ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II._
‘BEGONE!’ HE CRIED; ‘BEGONE! BOTH OF YOU.’ _Frontispiece_
‘THEN, IF YOU PLEASE, SIR, I WILL TAKE
MARGARET.’ _to face p._ 54
THE OTHER, INSTEAD OF TAKING HIS HAND,
DREW HIMSELF UP ” 100
‘THAT’S MUCH BETTER,’ SMILED MRS. JORDAN
APPROVINGLY ” 128
‘I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE COME FOR. YOU
ARE COME FOR THIS LETTER.’ ” 172
THE NEXT MOMENT THE CORRIDOR WAS FULL
OF AN EXCITED RABBLE ” 194
‘SO GOOD OF YOU; SO LIKE YOU, MARGARET,’
HE MURMURED ” 274
THE TALK OF THE TOWN.
CHAPTER XIX.
ANOTHER DISCOVERY.
[Illustration]
WHEN folks are not in accord, and especially if there is fear on one
side, communication of all kinds is difficult enough, but personal
companionship is well-nigh unendurable. Often and often in evenings
not so long ago William Henry had hesitated to come in on his father’s
very doorstep, and turned away into the wet and wind-swept streets
rather than thrust his unwelcome companionship upon him. Not seldom,
in the days between the death of his wife and Margaret’s coming to
Norfolk Street, Mr. Erin had left the supper table without a word, and
sought his own chamber an hour before his time, rather than endure the
sight of the boy whose very existence was a reproach to him, who had
had the ill taste to survive his own beloved child, and who had not
a pleasure or pursuit in common with him. Now, however, all this was
changed; and nothing was more significant of the alteration in the old
man’s feelings towards William Henry than the satisfaction he took
in his society. So close an attachment the young man might well have
dispensed with, since it kept him sometimes from his Margaret; but he
nevertheless was far from discouraging it, since he knew that such
familiarity tended in the end to ensure her to him.
It was the antiquary’s whim—or perhaps he thought that association of
ideas might help to incline the young man’s heart towards him—to read
at night Shakespeare’s plays with him, as they had been wont to do
when William Henry was yet a child and no coldness had as yet sprung
up between them. At times the young fellow’s attention would flag a
little; his thoughts would fly after his heart, which was upstairs in
Margaret’s keeping; but as a rule he shared, or seemed to share, the
old man’s enthusiasm. His comments and suggestions on the text were
always received with a respect which, considering what would have been
their fate had they been hazarded six months ago, was almost ludicrous.
Such illogical changes in personal estimation are not unexampled; even
in modern times there have been instances where the sudden acquisition
of wealth, or the unexpected succession to a title, have invested
their astonished possessors with attributes in no way connected with
either rank or riches; in the present case the admiration expressed
was, however, remarkable, because the very qualities of literary
judgment and the like, which were now acknowledged, had been of old
contemptuously ignored. William Henry, who had never himself ignored
them, was content to find them recognised at last by whatever means,
and exchanged his views upon the character of Hamlet with the antiquary
with cheerful confidence and upon equal terms.
One night they were reading ‘Lear’ together, and had come to those
lines wherein the Duke offers Kent half the administration of the
kingdom. To this Kent replies—
I have a journey, sir, shortly to go:
My master calls me; I must not say ‘No.’
‘Do you not think, sir,’ observed William Henry, ‘that such a couplet
is somewhat inappropriate to the occasion?’
‘How so?’ inquired the antiquary. It was noteworthy that he took the
objection with such mildness. The notion of anything in Shakespeare
being inappropriate was like suggesting to a fire-worshipper that there
were spots on the sun.
‘Well, sir, it strikes me as somewhat too brief and trivial,
considering the subject on which he speaks. Now what do you think of
this by way of an emendation?’ He drew from his pocket a slip of paper
on which the following lines were written in his own handwriting:—
Thanks, sir; but I go to that unknown land
That chains each pilgrim fast within its soil,
By living men most shunned, most dreaded.
Still my good master this same journey took:
He calls me; I am content and straight obey.
Then farewell, world; the busy scene is done:
Kent lived most true; Kent died most like a man.
The antiquary’s face was a study. A few months ago it is doubtful
whether anything from William Henry’s pen would have obtained so much
as patient consideration. Of his son’s genius Mr. Erin had always
thought very little; he esteemed him indeed no more worthy of the
title of man of letters than his friend Mr. Talbot himself; but his
productions were now on a very different plane. They demanded his best
attention and such admiration as it was possible to give.
‘Still my good master this same journey took:
He calls me; I am content and straight obey,’
he murmured. ‘That is harmonious and natural; a certain simplicity
pervades it: yes, my lad, that is creditable.’
‘I venture to think,’ said the young man deferentially, ‘that the
opening lines—
Thanks, sir; but I go to that unknown land, &c—
are not devoid of merit.’
‘Devoid? No, certainly not devoid. Courteous in expression and—um—to
the point, but somewhat modern in tone.’
Without speaking, but with a smile full of significance, the young man
produced a roll of paper and laid it before his companion.
‘Great heavens! what is this?’ exclaimed Mr. Erin, straightening out
the manuscript with trembling fingers, while he devoured it with his
eyes.
‘It is something that you hoped to find at Stratford—at Clapton
House,’ returned William Henry, quietly. ‘How often have you told me
that some manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays must needs be in existence
somewhere! You were right; this is the original, or at all events a
very early manuscript, of “Lear.”’
‘“Lear”? Shakespeare’s “Lear”? My dear Samuel, you take my breath
away. And yet the handwriting seems incontestable; and here is the jug
watermark, a clear proof at least of its antiquity. You have read it,
of course: does it differ from the quartos?’
‘Yes, materially.’
‘Thank Heaven!—I mean, how extraordinary! One can hardly, indeed, wish
a line of Shakespeare’s to differ from what is already engraven in our
hearts; but still to get his first thoughts! Truly a rapturous day!’
‘I rather think, sir,’ said William Henry, ‘that after investigation
you will acknowledge that these were not only his first thoughts but
his best thoughts. There is a polish on the gem that has heretofore
been lacking. The manuscript will, if I am not mistaken, prove
Shakespeare to have been a more finished writer than has been hitherto
imagined. There are many new readings, but once again to refer to
that speech of Kent’s: you admired it in its modern form, into which
I purposely cast it, confident that its merits would not escape you
even in that guise; out in its proper and antique dress just be so good
as to reperuse it; perhaps you will give it voice, the advantage of a
trained utterance.’
Thus advised, Mr. Erin, nothing loth, repeated the lines aloud:—
Thanks, Sir; butte I goe toe thatte unknowne land
That chaynes each Pilgrime faste within its soyle.
He read sonorously and with a somewhat pompous air, but effectively;
the dignity of the subject sustained him; moreover the sight of the old
spelling and quaint calligraphy stirred him as the clang of the trumpet
moves the war-horse to exhibit his best paces.
‘It is certainly very fine,’ was his verdict upon his own performance.
‘Who does not pronounce that speech replete with pathos and energy must
resign all pretensions to poetical taste.’
‘But as an emendation on the received version,’ persisted William
Henry—
‘I have a journey, sir, shortly to go—
will you not admit that it compares favourably with _that_?’
‘I consider it, my dear Samuel,’ was the solemn reply, ‘a decided
improvement.’
He spoke in a tone of conviction, which admitted of no question; sudden
as his conversion was (for in praising what in fact he had believed
to be his son’s composition he had gone to the extreme limit that his
conscience would permit), it was perfectly genuine.
There are only a very few people in the world who form an independent
judgment on anything upon its intrinsic merits. Most of us are the
slaves of authority, or what is supposed to be authority, in matters of
opinion. In letters men are almost as much victims to a name as in art.
The scholar blind to the beauties of a modern poem can perceive them
in an ancient one even where they do not exist. He cannot be persuaded
that Æschylus was capable of writing a dull play; the antiquary prefers
a _torso_ of two thousand years old to a full-length figure by Canova.
This may not be good sense, but it is human nature.
‘I need not ask you,’ continued Mr. Erin, after a pause, during which
he gazed at the manuscript like Cortez, on his peak, at the Pacific,
‘whether this precious document came from the same treasure house as
the rest?’
‘Yes, sir; it almost seems as if there were no end to them. I have not
yet explored half the curious papers on which my patron seems to set so
little store.’
The antiquary’s eyes sparkled under his shaggy brows; if the young
man had read his very heart he could not have replied to its secret
thoughts more pertinently. An hour before he had hardly dreamt of the
existence of such a prize, but, now that it had been found, it at once
began to suggest the most magnificent possibilities. This was the
first, but why should it be the last? If the manuscript of the ‘Lear’
had survived all the accidents of time and chance, why not that of
the ‘Hamlet’ also—the ‘Hamlet,’ with its ambiguous utterances, so
differently rendered by the Shakespearean oracles, and which stood so
much in need of an authoritative exponent?
When a man (for no merit of his own beyond a little bribery at
elections) is made a baronet, he is not so enraptured but that he
beholds in the perspective a peerage, and even dreams that upon a
somewhat ampler waistcoat (but still his own) may one day repose the
broad riband of the Garter.
‘What is very remarkable in the present manuscript,’ continued William
Henry, ‘is that it is free from the ribaldry which but too often
disfigures the plays of Shakespeare.’
‘The taste of the time was somewhat coarse,’ observed Mr. Erin. It
was almost incredible even to himself, but he felt that his tone was
deprecatory; he was actually making apologies for the Bard of Avon to
this young gentleman of seventeen.
‘Nevertheless I cannot believe that Shakespeare pandered to it,’
observed William Henry gravel. ‘These things are in my opinion
introduced by the players of the period, and afterwards inserted in
the stage copies of the plays from which they were literally printed;
and thus the ear of England has been abused. If the discovery of this
manuscript should clear Shakespeare’s memory from these ignoble
stains, it will be a subject of national congratulation.’
‘Very true,’ assented Mr. Erin. He felt that the remark was
insufficient, wanting in enthusiasm, and altogether upon a lower level
than the other’s arguments; but the fact was his mind was dwelling
upon more personal considerations. He was reflecting upon his own high
position as the proprietor of this unique treasure and on what Malone
would say _now_.
These reflections, while they filled him with self-complacency,
made him set a higher value upon William Henry than ever; for, like
the magician in the Arabian story, he could do nothing without his
Aladdheen to help him.
CHAPTER XX.
A TRUE LOVER.
IF Mr. Erin imagined that ‘what Malone would say _now_’—i.e. after
the discovery of the ‘Lear’ manuscript—must needs be in the way of
apology and penitence, he was doomed to disappointment. So far from
the circumstance carrying conviction to the soul of that commentator,
and making him remorseful for his past transgressions, it seemed to
incite him to the greater insolence, just as (so Mr. Erin expressed
it) the discovery of a new Scripture might have incited the Devil not
only against it, but against the old ones. He reiterated all his old
objections and fortified them with new ones; he refused to accept the
testimony of the Hemynge note of hand, which had satisfied his friend
and ally Mr. Wallis; he repeated his horrid suggestions that the
Shakespeare lock was a girl’s ringlet, and, in a word, ‘raged’ like
the heathen. Having declined to look at the ‘Lear’ upon the ground of
‘life being too short for the examination of such trash,’ he pronounced
it to be ‘plain and palpable forgery.’ ‘Three words,’ he said, ‘would
suffice for the matter,’ and published ‘An Inquiry into Certain Papers
Attributed to Shakespeare,’ extending to four hundred pages quarto.
Whereto Mr. Erin responded at equal length, with ‘a studious avoidance
of the personality which Mr. Malone had imported into the controversy,’
but at the same time taking the liberty to observe that in acting his
various parts on the stage of life, Fortune had denied that gentleman
every quality essential to each, inasmuch as he was a critic without
taste, a poet without imagination, a scholar without learning, a wit
without humour, an antiquary without the least knowledge of antiquity,
and a man of gallantry, in his dotage. This was a very pretty quarrel
as it stood; but, far from being confined to two antagonists, it was
taken up by scores on each side: it was no longer ‘a gentle passage of
arms,’ as the combat _à outrance_ used to be euphoniously called, but a
mêlée. Only the ancient rules of a fair fight were utterly disregarded;
both parties went at it hammer and tongs, and hit one another anywhere
and with anything. One would have almost imagined that instead of a
disagreement among scholars it had been a theological controversy.
To the statement that no one who was not a fool or a knave believed
in the Shakespearean manuscripts, Mr. Samuel Erin, scorning to make
any particular rejoinder, replied by simply publishing a list of those
who had appended their names to his certificate. To this he added a
footnote stating the opinion which Dr. Parr had expressed concerning
the Profession—namely, that there were many beautiful things in
the liturgy of the Church of England, but all inferior to it, which
produced a vehement disavowal from that hot-tempered cleric; he
mentioned that he had never stated anything so foolish, and that the
words in question had been used by Dr. Warton, an observation which
caused some coolness between the two learned divines.
To say that William Henry, the football between these two opposing
parties, enjoyed it, would be an exaggeration; he liked being in the
air—and indeed he was lauded by many persons to the very skies—but
did not so much relish the being knocked and trodden under foot below.
As a popular poet once remarked of the reviewers, ‘I like their
eulogies well enough, but d—n their criticisms,’ so the young man
would have preferred his notoriety to have been without this alloy; but
on the whole it pleased him vastly.
Margaret was almost angry with him for taking men’s hard words so
coolly, but comforted herself by reflecting that her Willie must have a
heavenly temper.
‘As for me,’ she would say, ‘I could scratch their eyes out. It drives
me wild to listen to what uncle sometimes reads aloud out of their
horrid pamphlets.’
To which the young fellow would gallantly reply, ‘To have such a
partisan, who would not compound for fifty such detractors? And, after
all, these good people have a right to their own opinions, though it
must be confessed they express them with some intemperance. I have
given them the “Lear“ manuscript, but I cannot give them the taste and
poetic feeling necessary to appreciate it.’
What of course had wounded Margaret was not their antagonistic
criticism, nor even their supercilious contempt, but the accusations
they had not scrupled to make against William Henry’s good faith. One
does not talk of the ‘poetic feeling’ of a hostile jury. But love
has as many causes of admiration as Burton in his ‘Anatomy’ finds
for melancholy; and the young fellow’s very carelessness about these
charges was, in Margaret’s eyes, a feather in his cap, and proved,
for one thing, their absolute want of foundation. If she did not
understand all the niceties of the points of difference between the
‘Lear’ manuscript and the ‘Lear’ as it was printed in her uncle’s
quarto edition of the play, it was not for want of instruction. There
was little else talked of in Norfolk Street, which was perhaps one of
the reasons which made the visits of Frank Dennis still more rare.
It was clear that the whole subject of the Shakespearean discoveries
was distasteful to him; and it must be confessed that he did not even
affect that interest in them which good breeding, and indeed good
nature, would have seemed to suggest. As to the comparative merits of
the old and new readings, or rather, as Mr. Erin maintained, of the
accepted and the original text, he had no opinion to offer one way or
the other. ‘I am no critic,’ he would say; ‘so that while my differing
from you might give you some annoyance, my agreement with you could
afford you no satisfaction’—a remark that did not by any means content
the antiquary.
When one’s friends have no opinions of their own it cannot surely hurt
them to adopt _our_ opinions, and it is only reasonable that they
should do so. It was quite a comfort (because not wholly looked for)
to find that when pushed home on a subject within his own judgment
Mr. Dennis’s heart in these matters was at least in the right place.
Thus, when referring one day to the onslaughts of his opponents, Mr.
Erin instanced as an example of their microscopic depravity a certain
objection that had been made to the Hemynge’s note of hand. ‘You know,
of course, my good fellow, how it has been proved beyond all dispute
that there were two John Hemynges.’
‘I was here when Mr. Albany Wallis came and the other deed was found,’
was the young man’s reply.
‘Tut! tut! why, that of course; but, dear me, how behindhand you are.
One would really have thought as an old friend, however little interest
you take in these matters for their own sake, that you would have
kept abreast with us so far. Why, this receipt here has been found
since then, with a memorandum in the bard’s own hand, “_Receipt forre
moneyes givenne me bye the talle Hemynge onne accounte o’ the Curtain
Theatre_.”’
‘I did not happen to have heard of it,’ said Dennis, regarding the
new-found treasure, if not with indifference, certainly with some lack
of rapture.
‘Well, now you see it,’ continued Mr. Erin with irritation. ‘Of course
it disposes of all doubt in that direction. But now, forsooth, the note
of hand is objected to upon the ground of its seals.’
‘Good heavens!’ ejaculated Dennis, and this time it was evident that he
was really moved.
‘No wonder you are indignant. I now remember that I drew your
particular attention to the document in question. Well, it is almost
incredible that their accusation has shrunk to the puny charge that
a note of hand, even in Shakespeare’s time, would not have had seals
appended to it. Is it not amazing that human nature can stoop to such
detraction? If it had been Malone—a mere reptile—who makes a point
of the Globe being a theatre instead of a playhouse—but this is some
lawyer it seems, a child of the Devil, I’ll warrant, like the rest of
his craft.’
Considering that William Henry, now Mr. Erin’s ‘dear Samuel,’ had been
articled to a conveyancer with the idea of becoming a lawyer himself
when full grown, this was a somewhat sweeping as well as severe remark;
but, carried away by the torrent of his wrath, the speaker was wholly
unconscious of this little inconsistency.
‘As if every one did not know,’ he continued—’not to mention the fact
that in Malone’s own prolegomena the Curtain Theatre is so called in
Stackwood’s sermon, A.D. 1578—that in the Elizabethan times every one
not only spelt as he liked, and differently at different times, but
appended seals to their documents or did without them, as opportunity
served. Is it not even probable that Hemynge, being a player and
knowing little of business, may have been particularly solicitous of
every form of law being observed, however superfluous, and in even so
small a matter? Is it not in accordance, I ask, with what we know of
human nature that it should be so?’
It was clear that this was no extempore speech, nor even a discourse
the claims of which could be satisfied by pen and ink, but one
very evidently intended to be printed. Its deliverance gave Frank
Dennis time to recover from a certain dismay into which Mr. Erin’s
communication had thrown him.
‘Just so,’ he said; ‘you are right, no doubt. The objection as to its
being contrary to custom to append seals seems frivolous enough.’
‘And the ground has been cut away from the first, you see, in all other
directions,’ exclaimed the antiquary triumphantly. ‘Margaret,’ he
continued in high good humour as his niece entered the room, ‘permit
me to introduce to you a convert. Mr. Frank Dennis has been hitherto
little better than a sceptic, but the light of truth is beginning to
dawn upon him through crannies. He has been moved to confess that the
note of hand at least is genuine. I have a letter to write before the
post goes out, so will leave him in your hands to continue the work of
conversion.’
The door closed behind him before Frank Dennis, always slow of speech,
could form his reply; but he gave Margaret the benefit of it.
‘I never told your uncle,’ he said in a grave pained voice, ‘that I
believed the note of hand to be genuine.’
[Illustration]
‘What _does_ it matter?’ exclaimed Margaret reproachfully. ‘I cannot
tell you how these miserable disagreements distress me; of themselves,
indeed, they are of no consequence, but they irritate my uncle, and
have a still worse effect, Frank, upon you. I can ascribe it to no
other cause, indeed, that you have almost entirely ceased to visit us.’
This was not quite true; moreover, it was a dangerous assertion to
make, likely to draw upon her the very reproach she had always feared,
and which she felt was not undeserved. She trembled lest he should
reply, ‘No, that was not the reason; it is because you have preferred
William Henry’s love to mine.’
It was to her relief, therefore, though also to her great surprise,
that he answered in his habitual quiet tone, ‘Perhaps it is, Margaret.’
[Illustration]
She did not believe it was, and was convinced that in saving so he had
laid a burthen upon his conscience for her sake. His nature, she well
knew, was so honest and simple that it shrank from even an evasion of
the truth, and the very fact of his having thus evaded it to spare her
showed her the depth of his affection. If he, then, still loved her,
was it not cruel, she reflected, to ask him to her home to witness her
happiness with another? She would miss his company, for that was always
pleasant to her as that of a tender and faithful friend; but was it not
selfish of her to invite it? It was obvious that he came unwillingly,
and only in obedience to her behest. If she ceased to importune him he
would certainly cease to come, but she would not lose his friendship.
When—that is, if—Willie and she were married, it would be different
with him; he would then come and see them as the friend of both.
‘Of course it’s very unfortunate,’ she stammered, with her eyes fixed
on the ground, ‘but since my uncle is so thin-skinned about these
manuscripts, and you, as he says, are so dreadfully sceptical, it would
perhaps be better—until the whole affair has subsided——’
She looked up for a moment in her embarrassment of speech and met
Frank’s face; it was gazing at her with an expression of pain and pity
and patience which she did not understand and which increased her
perplexity.
‘Yes, Margaret, you are right,’ he said: ‘I am better away from here
for the present. My coming can do no good, and, as you have surmised,
it gives me pain.’
At this the blood rushed to her cheeks, but he went on in the same
quiet, resolute tone, as though he had made no reference to his love
for her at all.
‘When one cannot say what one will, even when nature dictates it, it
is clear that one is in a false position. I shall not come to Norfolk
Street any more.’
‘But you are not going away—I mean from your home?’ exclaimed the
girl, alarmed by an expression in his face which seemed to forebode
some worse thing than his words implied.
‘No, Margaret; I shall be at home, where a word from you will find me
at your service always—_always_.’
He spoke with such a tender stress upon the word that she felt a
great remorse for what she had done to him, though indeed it had been
no fault of hers. It is impossible, under the present conditions of
society at least, that a young woman should make two young men happy
at once; one of them must go to the wall. Perhaps if this one had put
himself forward instead of the other matters might have been otherwise;
the peach falls to the hand that is readiest. There are men that never
win the woman they love till she becomes a widow; for my part, in
the meantime—but I am writing of Frank Dennis. He was of a patient
disposition, and had a very moderate opinion of himself. And yet his
love for Margaret was great, and so genuine that he could have been
content to see her happy with another man. Why he was not now content
was because he did not think she would be happy; but he did not tell
her so, for, though honesty might suggest his doing so, honour forbade
him. There is an honour quite different from that of the fanfaronnading
sort, one which has nothing to do with running a fellow-creature
through for a hasty word, or with ruining some one else to pay our card
debts—a delicate, scrupulous sense of what is becoming even in our
relations with our enemies, a flower of a modest colour which grows in
the shade. This was the sort of honour that Frank Dennis possessed,
and which prompted him now to keep silence, when he might have said
something which would have been much to his own advantage.
‘Good-bye, Margaret,’ was all he said, as he took her hand in his. He
would, if he could, have even eliminated a certain tenderness from his
tone, because he knew it gave her pain; but he could not so utterly
conquer nature.
‘Good-bye, Frank,’ was all she said in reply, or dared to say.
She was thinking of him and not of herself at all. It was pity for him
which made her voice falter and her soul quail within her, lest at that
supreme moment he should have demanded from her, once for all, another
sort of dismissal.
As to love, her heart was loyal to her Willie; and yet, though she
would not have confessed it even to herself, she had a secret sense as
the door closed upon this other one that she had burned her boats.
CHAPTER XXI.
A TIFF.
WHEN one is not _en rapport_ with one’s friends about any particular
subject, in which for the time they are interested, it is better to
leave them, for it is certain they would rather have our room than our
company. If you happen to be at Bullock Smithy, for example, during a
contested election, when your host at the Hall and all his family are
looking forward to the regeneration of the species—conditional upon
the return of Mr. Brown—and you don’t much care about it yourself
(or even doubt of its being accomplished that way), you had better
for the present leave the Hall and revisit it under less exciting
circumstances. They will politely lament your departure, but privately
be very glad to get rid of you. You may be (you _are_) a charming
person, but just now you are a little in the way. They resent your
presence as spirit-rappers resent that of ‘the sceptic,’ as they call
every one endowed with reason and common-sense. The common harmony is
disturbed by it as by a false note.
Thus it happened that the withdrawal of Frank Dennis from his friends
in Norfolk Street was upon the whole a relief to them. They could
talk unreservedly among themselves of the subject that lay next their
hearts, and which was really assuming great importance for all of them.
If the mere amount of the Shakespearean manuscripts could have
assured, as it undoubtedly made more probable, their authenticity, the
voice of detraction ought to have been silenced; for there was some
new discovery made in that wonderful treasure chamber of the Temple
almost every day. Contracts and mortgages, theatrical disbursements,
miscellaneous letters, deeds of gift, all immediately relating to
Shakespeare, if not in his very hand, were constantly being found.
Records which a few months ago would have filled Mr. Erin’s heart with
rapture were now, indeed, welcomed by him, but almost as a matter of
course. ‘The gentleman of considerable property in the Temple,’ as the
antiquary had been wont to vaguely term him, had now grown as familiar
to him as though he had had a name as well as a local habitation.
‘Well, what news from our friend to-day, Samuel?’ was the cheery
question he would address to his son on his return home every evening,
and it was very seldom that there was no news.
Mr. Erin indeed had cause to be grateful to this unknown person,
since he had (though not without reluctance) given permission for
the publication of the papers, which had accordingly been advertised
to appear in a handsome quarto at two guineas. They included all
the documents, the ‘Lear’ (of which unfortunately three leaves were
missing) and a few pages of ‘Hamlet.’ These last differed but little
from those of the accepted text, a circumstance which did not escape
the notice of the enemy, who did not hesitate to aver that the forger,
whoever he was, had found ‘Hamlet’ too difficult a nut to crack.
The best reply, as Mr. Erin wisely concluded, to so coarse a sarcasm
was the publication of Shakespeare’s Deed of Trust, conveying the
‘Lear’ to John Hemynge, in which he said, ‘Should this bee everre
agayne Impryntedd, I doe order tyhatt itte bee so doun from this mye
true written Playe, and nott from those now prynted’—an injunction
which, had there been an entire copy extant, would doubtless have
included the ‘Hamlet’ also.
To the ‘Miscellaneous papers and legal instruments, under the hand
and seal of William Shakespeare, including the tragedy of “King Lear“
and a small fragment of “Hamlet,”’ was prefixed a preface by Mr. Erin
himself, setting forth the circumstances under which they had come
into his possession, challenging criticism and defying inquiry. This
publication was of course the crucial test. While our opinions are
expressed _viva voce_, or even with pen and ink, they are of little
consequence to the world at large, however much they may affect our
little circle of friends and enemies. I know many persons who might
have remained in possession of great works of genius in manuscript had
they not been so indiscreet as to print them; the annalist’s sarcasm of
_nisi imperasset_ applies to authors as well as kings.
The book evoked a storm of censure. ‘My eyes will scarcely permit me
to read it,’ wrote Malone (’posturing as a sick lion,’ sneered Mr.
Erin), ‘but I have read enough to convince me that the whole production
is a forgery.’ Others fell foul of the style, the ideas, the very
punctuation of the discovered manuscripts. They acknowledged that the
phraseology was simple, but added that ‘it was that sort of simplicity
that belongs to the fool.’ As it was some time before the advocates of
the discovery could get out their rejoinders—with which many of those
who had signed the certificate were busy—Mr. Samuel Erin had for the
present a pretty time of it. He was like a man caught in a downpour
of hailstones without an umbrella. He never blenched, however, for a
single instant; one would have thought that waterproofs and overalls
had been invented before his time for his especial behalf. But poor
Margaret trembled and shivered. How could people be so wicked as to
say such things of Willie! She would not have been so distressed had
she not seen that he shrank from these stings himself. Womanlike, she
concealed her own pain and strove to comfort him.
‘As for these imputations upon your honour, Willie, they are not worth
thinking of; it is as though they called you a negro, when every one
who has ever seen you knows you to be a white man. Still less need you
trouble yourself about their criticisms; for what can it matter to you
whether the manuscript, or the printed copy, of Shakespeare’s works has
the greater worth?’
‘That’s true,’ assented the young fellow; but by his knitted brows and
downcast looks she knew that it did matter to him nevertheless.
‘This is what I have always feared for you, should you publish a book
of your own,’ she went on earnestly. ‘You are so sensitive, darling.
How thankful I am that Shakespeare (who can afford to smile at it) is
bearing the brunt of all this, and not you!’
Then came the ‘rejoinders,’ like sunshine after storm. ‘There was
not an ingenuous character or disinterested individual in the whole
circle of literature,’ wrote one enthusiastic partisan, ‘to whom
the manuscripts had been subjected who was not convinced of their
authenticity.’ They had ‘not only convinced the scholar and the
antiquary, but the paper-maker.’ As to the secrecy observed with
respect to their origin and possessor, ‘what becomes of the acumen of
the critic if such details are necessary to establish the genuineness
of such a production? His occupation is gone.’ As to the intrinsic
merits of the ‘Lear,’ the seal of Shakespeare’s genius was stamped
upon it. ‘A wit so pregnant, an imagination so unbounded, a knowledge
so intuitive of the weakness of the human heart as was here exhibited
could belong to no other man. If it was not his, it was inspiration
itself.’
‘Here, indeed,’ thought William Henry, ‘is something like criticism.
This is an independent opinion with which the carping of prejudice or
personal malevolence is not to be mentioned in the same breath.’
And, indeed, if these eulogies had been the products of the best minds
in the most perfect state of equilibrium they could scarcely have
given him a more exquisite gratification. He had a sensation about his
forehead as though a wreath of laurels rested there, or even a halo.
He touched the stars with his head, and if he moved upon the earth at
all it was on wings. It was delightful to Margaret to see him thus.
She hardly recognised in him, exultant and self-conscious, the same
young fellow whom she had known depressed and obscure. She was proud
beyond measure of the position he had made for himself in the world of
letters, but happier still because it seemed to make him hers, to put
her uncle’s consent to their union beyond all question. Yet, as love’s
fashion is, she still pictured to herself at times delays, opposition,
and even obstacles.
‘We must not be too sure, my darling,’ she said to him lovingly one
day, ‘though all things seem to smile on us. It is but the promise
after all, the bud but not the flower, the blossom but not the fruit’.
‘True,’ he answered thoughtfully; ‘all this is but a mock engagement;
the battle has yet to come. It is something, however, that the fighting
will be on the same field; one at least knows the ground.’
She stared at him, in doubt as to what he meant; then, as if alarmed by
her wondering looks, he stammered out, ‘I was thinking of Mr. Erin; we
now know him thoroughly, or rather he has become another man from what
he was.’
‘My uncle has changed, no doubt, and for the better,’ she said.
‘There is change everywhere and for the better,’ he answered, smiling.
He took from his pocket one of the printed cards which were now
formally issued to purchasers of the lately published volume for leave
to examine the manuscripts.
SHAKESPEARE.
Admit Albany Wallis, a subscriber, to view
the papers.
‘Think of Mr. Wallis having bought the book! Malone and he have
quarrelled about it, it seems.’
‘Not about the book,’ put in Margaret quietly; ‘I am afraid he is not
even yet a true believer, but I like him better for having bought the
book than even if he were. He felt he had behaved badly to us when he
came here with that wretched Mr. Talbot, and his purchase of it was
by way of making some amends. Where he differed from Mr. Malone was
about the John Hemynge deed you brought from the Temple; Mr. Malone
has had the malevolence to stigmatise even that as a forgery; but, as
Mr. Wallis points out, since you were away from Norfolk Street only
three-quarters of an hour, such a fraud was impossible and out of the
question. He is a just man with a mind open to conviction, and he has
had the courage to confess himself in the wrong.’
‘Whoever told you all this?’ inquired William Henry in amazement.
‘A person who is no friend of his, but, like him, has a generous
nature.’
‘Methinks you do protest too much,’ observed the young man drily. ‘No
one was saying anything against your informant, who it was easy to
perceive was Mr. Frank Dennis. I thought he had literally withdrawn his
countenance from us of late, as he has done long ago in another sense.’
‘No one can control his own opinions, Willie,’ said Margaret gently.
‘I have heard you yourself say a hundred times, concerning this very
matter, that every one had a right to them, but, since the very
knowledge of Frank’s entertaining certain views (though he never
expressed them except upon compulsion) was an annoyance to my uncle, he
thought it better to absent himself.’
‘But still you meet him elsewhere?’
‘I met him in the street the other day by accident. He gave me, it
is true, the information I have just given to you, but he did not
volunteer it. It was I who spoke to him first about Mr. Wallis.’
‘It seems he took great care to undeceive you as to that gentleman’s
having any belief in me.’
‘In _you_, Willie? We never even spoke of _you_.’
This was very true: he had become a subject to which, for Frank’s sake,
she never alluded in Frank’s presence.
‘Well, of course I am not responsible for the manuscripts; but do you
suppose that Dennis was thinking of them, for which he does not care
one farthing, even if he was talking of them? He was thinking of _me_.
When he depreciates them to you he depreciates me; when he quotes the
opinion of Mr. Wallis or of any one else he is quoting it against me.
You need not blush, Margaret, as if my mind had just awakened to a
suspicion of the truth. Do you suppose I don’t know what Mr. Frank
Dennis has been after, all along?’
‘I will not pretend to be ignorant of what you mean, Willie,’ said
Margaret firmly, ‘but you are quite mistaken if you imagine that Frank
Dennis has ever breathed a word to me, or, as I believe, to any one, to
your disadvantage: he has a loyal heart and is a true friend.’
‘A friend, indeed!’ said William Henry scornfully.
‘Yes, indeed and in need. I will lay my life on it, Willie. A man
who detests all falsehood and deceit, and even if he entertained an
unworthy thought of a rival would hold his peace about him.’
‘That is why, no doubt, he did not speak of me,’ put in the young man
bitterly. ‘Detraction can be conveyed by silence as well as by a forked
tongue.’
‘You are both unjust and unkind, Willie.’
‘Still the fact remains that, whenever you see this gentleman, I do not
rise—I will not say by comparison, because I believe you love me—but
I do not rise in your opinion. You cannot deny it; your face confesses
it. Under these circumstances you can hardly think me unreasonable if I
ask you for the present not to meet Mr. Frank Dennis, even “by accident
in the street.”’
‘I will not speak to him, Willie, if you object to it,’ said Margaret
in a low voice. She was the more distressed at what he had said because
she had a secret consciousness that it was not undeserved. He did not
indeed sink in her opinion after her talks with Frank, and certainly
did not suffer by contrast; but, on the other hand, he did not rise,
while her confidence in the genuineness of the Shakespearean documents
did sink.
Thence arose misgivings as to the future, doubts whether Willie would
be permitted to win her, and a certain unsteadiness, not indeed of
purpose but of outlook.
‘Of course you must speak to him if you meet him, Maggie,’ continued
William Henry in a tone from which all irritation had disappeared;
‘only for the present do not seek his society. You will not long have
to deny yourself the pleasure, since in a few weeks—that is, I intend
very shortly to ask Mr. Erin to give you to me for my very own.’
‘Oh, Willie! He will never do it,’ she returned, not however with much
conviction, but as one who toys with doubt. ‘I am sure he does not
dream of your having such an intention.’
‘Then he must be as blind as Gloster, Maggie.’
This allusion to the ‘Lear’ was somehow—it would have been difficult
to say why—unwelcome to her. Love no doubt depends upon very small and
comparatively mundane matters, but still that her hopes of marriage
with her lover should hang upon the general belief in the genuineness
of an old manuscript seemed a little humiliating. She would have far
preferred, had it been possible, that William Henry should have won
his way to a modest competence by his own pen. Perhaps he had hopes of
this, and some surprise in store for her; or why should he have used
that phrase ‘in a few weeks’? It was true that he had substituted for
it a more vague expression, but she could not help thinking that he had
some definite plan in his mind to precipitate events. What _could_ it
be?
CHAPTER XXII.
A BARGAIN.
‘THE book goes bravely, Samuel,’ observed Mr. Erin, as father and
son were sitting together one evening with Margaret between them.
William Henry’s hand was resting on the back of her chair, and at
times he addressed her in tones so low that his words must needs have
had no more meaning for a third person than if they had been in a
foreign tongue. Yet both his contiguity and his confidences remained
unreproved. Perhaps among other recently developed virtues in the young
man it was put down by Mr. Erin (who himself had a quick eye for the
main chance) to William Henry’s credit that he never questioned his
father’s right to treat the Shakespearean papers as his own, or to
demand any account of his stewardship with respect to them.
The antiquary, however, had scruples of his own, which, if they did not
compel him to part with hard money, induced him to look upon his milch
cow with very lenient and indulgent eyes.
It was surely only natural that these two young people should
entertain a very strong mutual attachment; through long familiarity
they doubtless seemed more like brother and sister to one another
than cousins. It could not be said, in short, that Mr. Erin winked
at their love-making, but he shut his eyes to it. It would have been
very inconvenient to have said ‘No’ to a certain question, and quite
impossible to say ‘Yes.’ It was better that things should take their
own course, even if it was a little dangerous, than to make matters
uncomfortable by interference.
‘From first to last, my lad,’ he continued in a cheerful voice, ‘we
shall make little short of 500_l._, I expect.’
‘Indeed,’ said William Henry indifferently. To do him justice he cared
little for money at any time, and just now less than usual. His
appetite, even for fame, had for the present lost its keenness. Love
possessed him wholly; he cared only for Margaret.
‘To think that a new reading of an old play—though to be sure it
is Shakespeare’s play—should produce so much!’ went on Mr. Erin
complacently. ‘Good heavens! what would not the public give for a new
play by the immortal bard?’
‘The question is,’ observed William Henry, ‘what would _you_ give, Mr.
Erin?’
The remark was so unexpected, and delivered in such a quiet tone, that
for a moment the antiquary was dumbfounded, and between disbelief and
expectancy made no reply.
‘My dear Samuel,’ he murmured presently, ‘is it possible you can be
serious, that you have in your possession——’
‘Nay, sir,’ interrupted the young man smiling; ‘I never said that. I
do not possess it, but within the last few days I have known of the
existence of such a manuscript.’
‘You have known and not told me!’ exclaimed the antiquary
reproachfully; ‘why, I might have died in the meantime!’
‘Then you would have seen Shakespeare, and he would have told you all
about it,’ returned William Henry lightly.
‘Do not answer your father like that,’ said Margaret in low, reproving
tones.
It was plain, indeed, that Mr. Erin was greatly agitated. His eyes were
fixed upon his son, but without speculation in them. He looked like one
in a trance, to whom has been vouchsafed some wondrous vision.
‘I know what is best,’ returned the young man under his breath,
pressing Margaret’s shoulder with his hand. His arm still hung over her
chair; his manner was studiously unmoved, as becomes the master of a
situation.
‘Where is it?’ gasped the old man.
‘In the Temple. I have not yet obtained permission to bring it away.
Until I could do that I felt it was useless to speak about the
matter—that I should only be discredited. Even you yourself, unless
you saw the manuscript, might hesitate to believe in its authenticity.’
‘The manuscript?’ exclaimed Mr. Erin, his mind too monopolised by the
splendour of the discovery to descend to detail; ‘you have really seen
it, then, with your own eyes? An unacted play of Shakespeare’s!’
‘An unpublished one, at all events. I have certainly seen it, and
within these two hours, but only in my patron’s presence.’
‘He said that whatever you found was to be yours,’ exclaimed Mr. Erin
petulantly.
‘Well, up to this time he has been as good as his word,’ said William
Henry smiling.
‘Indeed he has,’ remarked Margaret. ‘We must not be ungrateful, uncle.’
‘Nevertheless, people should perform what they, promise,’ observed the
antiquary severely.
For the second time Margaret felt a gentle pressure upon her shoulder;
it seemed as though Willie had whispered, ‘You hear that.’
‘The play is called “Vortigern and Rowena,”’ continued the young man.
‘An admirable subject,’ murmured the antiquary ecstatically.
‘It is, of course, historical; there are Hengist and Horsus.’
‘Horsa,’ suggested Mr. Erin.
‘Shakespeare writes it Horsus; Horsa was perhaps his sister.’
‘Perhaps,’ admitted the antiquary with prompt adhesion. ‘And the
treatment? How does it rank as regards his other productions?’
‘Nay, sir, that is for you to judge; I am no critic.’
‘But you tell me that your patron will not part with it.’
‘I have not yet persuaded him to do so; but I by no means despair of
it, and in the meantime I have a copy of it.’
‘My _dear_ Samuel!’
‘At first I tried to commit it to memory, but found the task beyond my
powers. It is a very long play.’
‘The longer the better,’ murmured the antiquary.
‘But not when one has to get it by heart,’ observed William Henry
drily. His tone and manner were more in contrast to those of the elder
man than ever; as one grew heated the other seemed to grow cooler and
cooler. There was no question as to which of them, just at present, was
likely to prove the better hand at a bargain.
‘But why do you talk thus, Samuel? The play, the play’s the thing;
since you have it why do you not produce it? You cannot imagine that
delay—indeed, that anything—can enhance the interest I feel in this
most marvellous of our discoveries.’
William Henry’s face grew very grave.
‘It is true that whatever is mine is yours, in a sense,’ he said; ‘but
still you must pardon me for remarking that they are _my_ discoveries.’
Margaret started in her chair; if she had not felt William Henry’s
grasp upon her wrist—for he had shifted his position and was
confronting the antiquary face to face—she would have risen from it.
She had never given her cousin credit for such self-assertion, and she
trembled for its result. She did not even yet suspect it had a motive
in which she herself was concerned; but the situation alarmed her.
It was like that of some audacious clerk who demands of his master a
partnership, with a certain difference that made it even graver.
‘What is it you want?’ inquired the antiquary. He too had become
conscious that the relations between William Henry and himself were
about to enter on a new phase; nevertheless his tone was conciliatory,
like that of a man who, though somewhat tried, cannot afford to quarrel
with his bread-and-butter.
‘I am the last man, I hope, to be illiberal,’ he continued. ‘If I were
dealing with a stranger I should frankly own that what you have, or
rather, hope to have, to dispose of is a valuable commodity; to me,
indeed, as you know, it is more valuable than to any mere dealer in
such wares. Nevertheless I hope you will be reasonable; after all it is
a question of what the thing will fetch. I suppose you will not ask a
fancy price?’
William Henry smiled. ‘Well, some people might think it so, Mr. Erin,
but it is not money at all that I require of you.’
‘Not money?’ echoed the antiquary in a voice of great relief. ‘Well,
that indeed shows a proper spirit. I am really pleased to find that
we are to have no haggling over a matter of this kind, which in truth
would be little short of a sacrilege. If you have fixed your mind upon
any of my poor possessions, though it should even be the “Decameron,“
the earliest edition extant, and complete except for the title-page——’
‘It is not the “Decameron,“ sir.’
‘Or the quarto of 1623, with marginal notes in my own hand. But no;
that is a small matter indeed by comparison with this magnificent
discovery. I hardly know what I have which would in any way appear to
you an equivalent; but be assured that anything at my disposal is very
much at your service.’
‘Then if you please, sir, I will take Margaret.’
‘Margaret!’ Mr. Erin repeated the name in tones of such supreme
amazement as could not have been exceeded had the young man stipulated
for his wig. Perhaps his surprise was a little simulated, which was
certainly not the case with Margaret herself; she sat in silence,
covered with blushes, and with her eyes fixed on the table before her,
very much frightened, but by no means ‘hurt.’ While she trembled at
Willie’s audacity she admired it.
[Illustration: ‘THEN, IF YOU PLEASE, SIR, I WILL TAKE MARGARET.’]
Mr. Erin shot a glance at her which convinced him that he would get
no help from that quarter. If she had not been cognisant of the young
fellow’s intention it was clear that the proposal he had made was not
displeasing to her. The antiquary ransacked his mind for an objection
that would meet the case; there were plenty of them there, but none of
them fit for use and at the same time strong enough. A very powerful
one at once occurred to him in the question, ‘What do you propose
to live upon?’ but unhappily the answer was equally obvious, ‘Upon
_you_!’ A most intolerable suggestion, but one which—on the brink of a
bargain—it was not convenient to combat.
For a moment, too, the objection of consanguinity occurred to him,
that they were cousins; an admirable plea, because it was quite
insurmountable; but though this might have had its weight with
Margaret, he doubted of its efficacy in William Henry’s case, inasmuch
as he probably knew that they were _not_ cousins. To have this question
raised in the young lady’s presence—or indeed at all—was not to be
thought of. In the end he had to content himself with the commonplace
argument of immaturity, unsatisfactory at the best, since it only
delays the evil day.
‘Margaret? You surely cannot be serious, my dear lad. Why, your united
ages scarcely make up that of a marriageable man. This is really too
ridiculous. You are not eighteen.’
The rejoinder that that was an objection which time could be relied on
to remove was obvious, but William Henry did not make it. He was not
only playing for a great stake; it was necessary that it should be paid
in ready money.
‘I venture to think, Mr. Erin,’ he said respectfully, ‘that our case is
somewhat exceptional. We have known one another for a long time, and
very intimately; it is not a question of calf love. Moreover, to be
frank with you, my value in your eyes is now at its highest. You may
learn to esteem me more; I trust you may; but as time goes on I cannot
hope commercially to be at such a premium. Now or never, therefore, is
my time to sell.’
Though he spoke of himself as the article of barter he was well aware
that Mr. Erin’s thoughts were fixed upon another purchase, which, as it
were, included him in the same ‘lot.’
‘But, my dear Samuel, this is so altogether unexpected.’
‘So is the discovery of the manuscript,’ put in the young fellow with
pitiless logic.
‘It is like springing a mine on me, my lad.’
‘The “Vortigern and Rowena“ is also a mine, or I hope will prove so,’
was the quick rejoinder.
Whatever might be urged against William Henry Erin, it could not be
said that he had not his wits about him.
‘You have only the copy,’ objected the antiquary, though he felt the
argument to be inadequate, since it was liable to be swept away.
‘Nay,’ returned the young man, smiling, ‘what becomes of the acumen
of the critic, if internal evidence is insufficient to establish
authenticity? His occupation is gone.’
This was Mr. Erin’s favourite quotation from the ‘Rejoinder;’ to use it
against him was like seething a kid in its mother’s milk, and it roused
him for the first time to vigorous opposition. It is possible that he
also saw his opportunity for spurring the other on to gain possession
of the precious document.
‘That is all mighty fine, young sir, but this is not a question of
sentiment. I must see this play in Shakespeare’s own handwriting before
I can take your most unlooked-for proposal into consideration at all.
At present the whole affair is in the air.’
‘You shall see the play,’ said William Henry composedly.
‘Moreover,’ continued the antiquary with equal firmness, ‘it will not
be sufficient that I myself should be convinced of its authenticity.
It must receive general acceptance.’
‘I can hardly promise, sir, that there will be no objectors,’ returned
the young man drily; ‘Mr. Malone, for example, will probably have
something to say.’
The mention of ‘that devil,’ as the antiquary, in moments of
irritation, was wont to call that respectable commentator, was most
successful.
‘I speak of rational beings, sir,’ returned Mr. Erin, with quite what
is called in painting his ‘early manner.’ ‘What Malone may take into
his head to think is absolutely indifferent to me. I speak of the
public voice.’
‘As heard, for instance, at the National Theatre,’ suggested William
Henry earnestly. ‘Suppose that “Vortigern and Rowena“ should be acted
at Drury Lane or Covent Garden, and be received as the _bona fide_
production of Shakespeare? Would that test content you?’
That such an ordeal would be of a sufficiently crucial nature was
indubitable, yet not more so than the confidence with which it was
proposed. If the least glimmer of doubt as to the genuineness of the
Shakespearean MSS. still reigned in the antiquary’s mind the voice
and manner of his son as he spoke those words would have dispelled
it. The immaturity of the two young people was not much altered for
the better since Mr. Erin had cited it as a bar to their union, but,
under the circumstances now suggested, their position would be very
materially improved. A play at Drury Lane in those days meant money
in pocket; a successful play was a small fortune, and might even be a
large one. He would have greatly preferred to have this precious MS.,
like the others, for nothing, but, after all, what was demanded of him
was better than being asked to give hard cash for a pig in a poke. It
was only a promise to pay upon conditions which would make the payment
comparatively easy.
‘If “Vortigern and Rowena“ is successful,’ continued William Henry with
the quiet persistence of a carpenter who strikes the same nail on the
head, ‘it must be understood that I have permission to marry Margaret
as soon as she pleases.’
Poor Mr. Erin looked appealingly at his niece. ‘You will surely not be
so indelicate,’ his glance seemed to say, ‘as to wish to precipitate a
matter of this kind?’ But he looked in vain. She did not, it is true,
say, ‘I will though;’ there was even a blush on her cheek, which might
have seemed to flatter his expectations: but she kept silence, which in
such a case it was impossible to construe otherwise than as consent.
Some old gentlemen would have hereupon felt themselves justified in
saying that ‘young women were not so forward in their time,’ or ‘that
such conduct was in their experience unprecedented,’ a reflection,
to judge by the frequency with which it is indulged in under similar
circumstances, that would seem to give some sort of consolation; but
the antecedents of Mr. Samuel Erin were unhappily, as we have hinted,
not of a sufficiently ascetic nature to enable him to use this solace.
‘Perhaps you would like to read the play?’ suggested William Henry.
‘Very much,’ replied the antiquary with eagerness.
‘Just as you please, Mr. Erin. It is yours of course, upon the
understanding, supposing it to realise expectation, that we have your
consent to our marriage.’
‘Very good,’ replied the antiquary, without any eagerness at all, and
in a tone which (had such a substitution been feasible) would have
better suited with ‘Very bad.’
CHAPTER XXIII.
AN UNEXPECTED ALLY.
[Illustration]
ALL THAT had gone before as regarded the Shakespeare MSS. sank into
almost insignificance as compared with the stir made by the ‘Vortigern
and Rowena.’ The superiority of new lamps over old ones has, with that
well-known exception in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ been pretty generally
acknowledged in all climes and times. If a scrap of writing from
the great genius, who had left nothing of himself behind him, save,
as had been hitherto supposed, a couple of signatures, had had its
attractions; if the original drafts of a well-known play or two had set
the town by the ears; one may imagine the excitement produced by the
discovery of a brand-new drama in the master’s hand. Mr. Samuel Erin’s
door in Norfolk Street was positively besieged by applicants to view
the wonder.
That gentleman, however, declined for the present to gratify the public
curiosity. Conscious as he was of the importance of his own position,
he was also fully aware of the necessity of strengthening it against
all comers, among whom must necessarily be many foes. William Henry
had been as good as his word. He had, though with great difficulty,
persuaded his patron to part with the precious manuscript, which
had been duly placed in the antiquary’s hands. Both by external and
internal evidence he was fully satisfied with its authenticity; but
it was necessary that the world without should share his conviction.
Mahomet, it seems, was for a considerable time content with a single
believer; nor when we consider that that believer was his wife, is it
discreditable to his claims. If he could only have converted his _valet
de chambre_ also, he ought to have been well satisfied. Mr. Erin,
as we are aware, was in a much better position as to followers, but
then he wanted so much more. Mahomet, so far as we know, had not just
then a two-guinea edition of the Koran in hand, the sale of which was
beginning to slacken. It was doubtful whether the immediate publication
of the ‘Vortigern’ might not injure its predecessor, unless its
genuineness could be better authenticated.
To this end, Mr. Erin took the bold step of convening a committee of
commentators and critics to report upon the MS. A selection was made
from those who had signed the certificate, and who were therefore
favourable; but others were invited who had not so compromised
themselves, and even who might be supposed to be hostile, including
Mr. Albany Wallis. No one could say that it was a hole-and-corner
business, far less that the assembly was packed. It would, without
doubt, have been much more agreeable to Mr. Erin if it had been,
for he had to listen to some very unpleasant things. These, for the
most part, it was true, were said by small men. Just as in the great
railway meetings of the present day, the shareholder who has just put
enough in the undertaking to qualify him to speak at all is always
the most loquacious, so the second-rate critics, who had not much
chance of being listened to in the world without, were, if not the
most sceptical, the most vituperative; and poor Mr. Erin was not a
chairman who could ignore them. The style, the matter, the calligraphy
of the ‘Vortigern,’ nay, even the very paper on which it was written,
underwent the sharpest scrutiny and evoked some very bitter remarks.
Dr. Parr and Dr. Warton, the two great cards of the certificate, were
strongly in favour of the play, and carried many with them, including
the laureate Pye, and his brother poet, Sir James Burgess. But there
were also many adversaries.
The fact was, notwithstanding that famous dictum about the occupation
of the critic being gone if the intrinsic merit of a work was not
sufficient to establish its genuineness, and though the excellence of
the ‘Vortigern’ was on the whole admitted, the story of how it came
into William Henry’s hands was the real obstacle to its acceptance. His
patron of the Temple was too much wrapped in mystery to be satisfactory
to the minds of most.
The committee was to sit for two days, and then decide by vote upon the
all-important question, was there or was there not sufficient evidence
before them of the authenticity of the play? William Henry was always
present, a witness whose examination was always proceeding, but, as
it were, in a circle. The keenest expert could get nothing out of him
beyond what had been already got. He had nothing to tell, save what he
had already told. His manner was cool and collected, and produced a
favourable impression. Sir James Burgess said, ‘If this young man is
not speaking the truth, he is a marvellous actor, and we are informed,
upon authority which in this case can certainly not be disputed, that
he is but seventeen.’ The authority was not quite so good as Sir James
imagined, but the fact was as he stated it.
Alone with Mr. Erin and Margaret, the young fellow was even more
self-reliant; he was hopeful. Whatever decision the committee might
arrive at, there was still, he would say, the appeal to the public; and
in that he expressed his confidence. In this Mr. Erin could not agree;
if the play was discredited by those who had been so solemnly convened
to judge of it, he doubted of its acceptance out of doors. On the
second and all-important day there was even a fuller attendance than
on the first. Among the new-comers was the Bishop of St. Andrews, a
good-natured divine enough, but who produced an unfavourable impression
by quoting Porson’s ‘Iambics,’ ‘Three children sliding on the ice,’
which the great professor pretended to have found in an old trunk
among some manuscript plays of Sophocles—an obvious satire upon the
Shakespearean discoveries. Greek wit is never so mirth-provoking as to
endanger life, but at this specimen it was difficult for Mr. Samuel
Erin to force a smile. What even more depressed him was the unexpected
arrival of Mr. Reginald Talbot. How this young man had gained
admittance he could not understand; but at such a time the real ground
of objection to him could not, of course, be stated. Public opinion had
been challenged, and on the brink of its decision it would have been
madness indeed to have any altercation with one who had evinced his
scepticism.
Talbot had come in alone and taken his seat rather apart from the rest:
his face looked less florid than usual, but resolute enough; after one
glance round the room he fixed his eyes upon the ground. Every moment
the antiquary expected to hear his blatant voice giving utterance to
some offensive imputation; but he remained silent, listening to the
pros and cons of his seniors, with no particular interest, as it
seemed, in the matter.
William Henry had seen him enter, of course—there were few things that
escaped his observation—but had shown no sign of concern, far less of
apprehension. He either did not fear him, or had screwed his courage
to the sticking place. Now and then, indeed, he glanced nervously at
the door; but from no fear of an enemy. He had some misgiving lest
Margaret’s anxiety upon his account might compel her to come and hear
for herself how matters were going on; a very groundless apprehension,
for nothing could have been more foreign to her retiring and modest
nature than to have intruded herself upon such an assembly.
After all who wished to speak had had their say, the Laureate rose
and addressed the meeting. He had listened very attentively, he said,
to the opinions that had been advanced on both sides upon the subject
of controversy; and if he could not say that he had himself come to
a definite conclusion, he thought that he had at least gathered the
general view of those present. The play before them was undoubtedly
a remarkable one; he could not take upon himself to say from internal
evidence whether it was, or was not, written by William Shakespeare,
but, on the whole, he believed it to have been so. Persons better
qualified than himself to judge of such matters had expressed
themselves for and against the other proofs of its authenticity. Again,
on the whole, these seemed to him to be in its favour. But what, after
all, was their great stumbling-block was the mystery—and as it seemed
to him the unnecessary mystery—that hung about its discovery.
Here there were audible expressions of assent. Mr. Erin, pale and
trembling, but much more with anger than with fear, was about to
rise, but the Laureate waved him back. He was not going to have his
peroration spoilt by any man. There was a general murmur of ‘Pye, Pye,’
which under any other circumstances, would have sounded exquisitely
humorous; it was like a bread riot of the upper classes. ‘Under these
circumstances,’ continued the orator, ‘if anyone can be found who has
seen the MS. as it were _in situ_, and has met the unknown patron of
the Temple in the flesh, so as to corroborate so far the testimony of
this young gentleman’ (here he pointed to William Henry), ‘I, for one,
shall have no hesitation in acknowledging myself a believer; but in the
absence of such a witness I must take leave, at least, to reserve my
judgment.’
There was a long and significant silence. If the speaker had not
expressed the views of the majority, he had done so for many of those
present; while the want of corroborative testimony, such as he had
indicated, was felt by all. Even Mr. Erin, perhaps for the first time,
understood how evidence which had been, and was, perfectly conclusive
to himself, might well fail, thus unsupported, to satisfy the public
mind. He felt like the young blood who had recently been endeavouring
for a bet to dispose within five minutes of a hundred sovereigns to
as many persons on London Bridge for a penny apiece. His MSS. were
genuine, but if he could not persuade people to believe it, where
would be his profit?
‘Well,’ continued the Laureate in self-satisfied tones, for he was
pleased with the impression his eloquence had produced, and especially
that he had reduced the antiquary—in whose mind he had created a
desert and called it peace—to silence: ‘Well! the question is, Is
there such a witness as I have described?’
‘Yes, there is.’
These words fell upon the general ear like a bombshell, but no one was
more utterly astounded by them than Mr. Samuel Erin himself. He could
hardly believe his ears, and when he looked to the quarter from which
they proceeded—and to which every one else was looking—he could not
believe his eyes; for the man that had uttered them was Mr. Reginald
Talbot.
The young man was not, indeed, in appearance quite the sort of
witness whom one would have chosen to establish the authenticity of
an ancient literary document; though at a police court, in some case
of assault (provided the victim was respectable, and he had been for
the prosecution), he might have been passable enough. His dress was
that of a young man of fashion, but not of good fashion; his manner was
suggestive less of confidence than of swagger, and his face spoke of
indulgence in liquor. On the other hand, this impression may have been
partly caused by his contrast with these learned pundits, most of them
in wigs, and some of them in shovel hats; he scarcely seemed to belong
to the same race. The very eye-glass, which headed the cane he carried
so jauntily in his hand, was out of keeping with _their_ eye-glasses,
and looked like some gay young lens who had refused to be put into
spectacles, and was winking at life on its own hook.
‘Does any one know this young gentleman?’ inquired Mr. Pye, with
significant hesitation.
‘Yes, I know him,’ observed Mr. Albany Wallis. ‘I have, it is true,
but slight acquaintance with his personal character, but he comes of
respectable parentage.’
‘You may add that he has two hundred a year of his own, good money,’
observed Mr. Talbot with some complacency, and a strong Irish accent.
Mr. Pye looked at him very dubiously, and in spite of this assurance of
his financial solvency, addressed himself to the previous speaker.
‘In the case before us, Mr. Wallis—and I need not say how your opinion
will weigh with us,—do you consider this gentleman as a dependable
witness?’
Mr. Reginald Talbot turned very red, and, not having a retort on hand
suitable to bestow on a poet laureate, very wisely held his tongue.
‘I am bound to say,’ said Mr. Wallis gravely, ‘that Mr. Talbot has
given some attention to the authenticity of the Shakespeare MSS., and
up to this time he has expressed himself, and with somewhat unnecessary
vehemence, to their discredit; any evidence he may therefore have to
offer in their favour will have some weight with me.’
Then all the company awaited in expectant silence for Mr. Reginald
Talbot’s narrative.
‘What Mr. Wallis has said is quite right,’ said that young gentleman,
with unnecessary affability. ‘I did use to think that there was
something amiss with those Shakespeare papers. I had an idea that Mr.
William Henry Erin yonder was playing tricks, so I made it my business
to watch him. I hung about his chambers in the New Inn—they are on the
ground floor, though pretty high up—and with a short ladder I have
made shift to see what was going on when he was alone in his room, and
little suspected it.’
William Henry, standing apart with folded arms, listened to this
confession of his former friend with a contemptuous smile. If it was a
revelation to him, he displayed the indifference of a North American
Indian.
‘For days and days I watched him and discovered nothing. Then I dogged
his steps to the city, where he went every afternoon; on two occasions
he turned, as if to see whether he was followed, and I think he saw me.’
William Henry shook his head.
‘Well, at all events I thought he did, and gave it up. The third time,
walking on the other side of the street, and very careful to leave a
safe distance between us, I tracked him to a staircase in the Temple.
He stopped at a door on the first floor, and entered without knocking.
I waited a bit and then followed him. An old gentleman was seated in
the room alone, in an armchair, reading; he looked up from his book in
great astonishment, and inquired very curtly who I was.
‘I said that I came upon business of importance, after young Mr. Erin.
He rose, and opening an inner door, exclaimed: “Here is a friend of
yours, sir: what is the meaning of his intrusion here?“ He spoke very
angrily, but I felt that he had some reason for it, and when Erin came
out and said, “Talbot, you have ruined me,“ I felt sorry for what I
had done. There was nothing for it but to make a clean breast of it,
and with many apologies, of which not the slightest notice was taken,
I explained that curiosity, and a suspicion that the world was being
gulled by these pretended discoveries, had induced me to look into the
matter myself.
‘“You are a spy, then,“ cried the old gentleman. I thought for a moment
that he was going to throw me out of the window; but his rage instantly
subsided. “Take him into the next room, Erin, and show him all,“ he
said. He took me accordingly, and there I saw an immense quantity of
old manuscripts strewed about the floor; I should say whole cartfuls of
them. I was so sorry and so ashamed of myself that I never spoke a word
till Erin let me out again.
‘“I am sorry I came,“ I said; “but I am quite satisfied, sir, that Erin
spoke the truth.”
‘“I don’t care a farthing, sir, whether you are satisfied or not,“
replied the old gentleman; “you have taken a mean advantage of your
friend, and an unpardonable liberty with me.”
‘Then I told him upon my honour, and as I hoped to be saved, that I
would never reveal his name to any human being.’
‘He waved his hand contemptuously, and observed that my word and my
oath together were not worth sixpence; but if I had any feeling for my
friend, or any remorse for the baseness I had committed, I had better
hold my tongue, since, if by my means his secret should be discovered,
Erin should never darken his doors again, nor receive from him any of
the benefits which it had been his intention to confer upon him. Erin
himself did not speak to me at all; he has never spoken to me from that
day to this; but hearing by accident of this meeting, I resolved to
come here, and do what I could for him by way of reparation. That is
all I have got to say.’
This narrative made an immense impression. Mr. Samuel Erin sighed a
great sigh of relief, and looked around him with triumphant exultation.
He had not needed any confirmation of his son’s story for himself,
but he felt how opportune with respect to others was this young man’s
testimony—that in him, in fact, he had entertained an angel very much
unawares. A murmur of satisfaction ran round the company, and the faces
of even the most sceptical relaxed their severity. William Henry alone
looked totally unmoved; like one who had all along been conscious
that his character would be cleared, one way or another, and was
indifferent in what way. Some questions were put to Talbot, but nothing
was elicited to shake his evidence; indeed, since he had by his own
showing taken his oath that he would not reveal the name of the Templar
unknown, there was little more to be extracted from him.
The Laureate, in a short but dignified speech, observed that after
the very testimony he had stated was the only thing wanting to his
conviction had been forthcoming, he could not, in reason, offer any
further objection to the authenticity of the play, and that for his
part he admitted it.
To this the whole company, with hardly a dissentient voice, expressed
their agreement, and the committee dispersed, after passing an all but
unanimous resolution that the ‘Vortigern and Rowena’ was a genuine play
of William Shakespeare’s.
CHAPTER XXIV.
MANAGERS.
THE last two days had been very trying ones for the little household in
Norfolk Street, and, though success had crowned their hopes, they bore
marks of the struggle that evening. Even young William Henry, who, like
the antiquarian Duchess (but with a difference), seemed to have been
born before nerves had come into fashion, showed signs of the terrible
ordeal through which he had passed; he was tender-footed, after the
red-hot ploughshares.
The antiquary himself was almost in a state of collapse; while
Margaret, as sensible and self-contained a girl as was to be found on
either side of the Thames, between gratitude to Heaven and love to man,
became for the first time in her life hysterical. All was well for her
Willie at last, but she doubted; and with reason, whether, exposed
to the brunt of the battle, and fighting for what was dearer to him
than life itself, his honour, he had suffered as much as she had done,
sitting in her little room apart from the _mêlée_ and picturing to
herself the terrors of defeat.
She listened to their narrative of the proceedings with a fearful joy,
deemed at first Mr. Pye the basest, and presently the best of men, and
felt a secret gratitude to Mr. Albany Wallis that she would have found
it difficult to explain: she had an impression that he was not their
ally, but that a strong sense of justice, mingled perhaps with remorse
for the part he had on a former occasion taken against them, had made
him something more than neutral. Remorse, too, she herself felt as
regarded the person to whom the final triumph was after all mainly
owing.
‘Where is Mr. Talbot, Willie?’ she said excitedly. ‘I should like to
tell him, not only how much indebted I am to him, but how wrong was the
judgment I had previously formed of him.’
‘To be sure,’ observed the antiquary naïvely; ‘where _is_ Talbot?’ When
the city has been preserved, as the Scripture says, nobody remembers
the name of the obscure individual who saved it, and in the glow of
victory Mr. Erin had clean forgotten his young Irish ally. ‘I suppose
his modesty prevented him from waiting to receive our acknowledgments.’
‘No doubt it was his modesty,’ said William Henry drily. ‘But as for
your gratitude, Maggie, I think it is somewhat misplaced; if he has now
done us good, he once did his best to do us harm, and thus far we are
only quits.’
‘That was a dirty trick his following Samuel to the Temple,’ observed
Mr. Erin; ‘though, as it happened, it has turned out to our advantage.’
‘Still, it is not every one who is ready to make reparation for an
error,’ said Margaret gravely.
To this there was no reply from her uncle. Margaret hardly expected
any. He was a man who took the gifts which Heaven vouchsafed him
without any excess of fervour; but from Willie she had looked for more
generosity of spirit; on the other hand, he might be a little jealous
(she had a vague impression that the young Irish gentleman had made
some clumsy attempt in confederation with his eye-glass to recommend
himself to her attention), in which case of course Willie was forgiven.
‘At all events,’ she continued smiling, for this idea amused her, ‘I
shall not be considered forward if I thank Mr. Talbot on my own account
when he next pays us a visit.’
‘I shall not have the least objection,’ returned William Henry in
the same light tone—though his taking it upon himself to say so was
significant enough of his confidence in his position—’but I am afraid
you will not have an early opportunity of relieving your mind of its
weight of gratitude. Talbot goes home to-morrow by the Irish packet.’
‘Then you saw him after all, before he left this afternoon,’ cried
Margaret. ‘Why, I understood that he had fled to avoid your thanks.’
‘That was my father’s view,’ said William Henry, ‘and such a touching
one that I had not the heart to combat it; but as a matter of fact I
did see Talbot for one moment, and of course I thanked him.’
‘Oh! Willie, Willie, why will you always make yourself out worse than
you are?’ exclaimed Margaret reproachfully.
‘I think we had better say nothing about it,’ observed the antiquary
thoughtfully. Margaret looked up rather sharply at him; she thought
his words had reference to William Henry’s modest concealment of his
own virtues, and that he was disputing the fact; but, strange to say,
though that estimable young man was before his eyes, Mr. Erin was not
thinking of him at all. ‘We will leave others to say what they like,’
continued he, ‘and fight it out among themselves. In twenty-four hours
the whole town will be talking of nothing else.’
‘You mean about the play, sir?’ suggested William Henry.
‘Well, of course; what the devil else should I mean?’ returned the
antiquary with irritation. It was disgusting that these two young
people—for his niece looked as much at sea as his son—should be so
wrapped up in one another and their commonplace affairs as to have
forgotten ‘Vortigern and Rowena’ already. ‘I think it will be better to
rest on our oars and wait events.’
‘Shut our eyes and open our mouths,’ said William Henry, ‘and see what
Heaven will send us.’
The remark was flippant, but the sense of it was in accordance with Mr.
Erin’s views. In his exaltation of spirit he even condescended to reply
in the same vein.
‘I shall open my mouth pretty wide, I can tell you, when the managers
come; but we must not go to them.’
‘You of course know best,’ said William Henry modestly. If left to
himself the impetuosity of youth would have led him on the morrow, cap
(and MS.) in hand, to the stage-door of the nearest theatre.
‘Fortunately, you see, we can afford to wait,’ said Mr. Erin
composedly.
William Henry glanced at Margaret, and Margaret dropped her eyes; Mr.
Erin’s sentiments, though intended to be comforting and even exultant,
were, strange to say, not shared by these young people.
They had not, however, to wait long. As Mr. Erin had predicted, the
news that the committee appointed to investigate the claims of the
‘Vortigern’ MS. had decided in its favour flew swiftly over the town.
‘From the palace to the cottage,’ said Mr. Erin in his enthusiasm,
though probably it only reached the cottage _orné_. Letters of
congratulation poured in from every quarter. Even Malone was reported
to have said that if it could have been done _incognito_ he should
have liked to see the manuscript. (What he really said was, ‘I wish
that Steevens had found it,’ meaning that he should have taken a
real pleasure in eviscerating _him_.) The opinion of antiquaries was
divided; and if Reid and Ritson denounced the play, Garter-King-at-Arms
was enthusiastic in its favour, and gave it more supporters than
Heraldry ever dreamt of.
Before a week was over came Mr. Harris, proprietor of Covent Garden
Theatre, to Norfolk Street in person. The announcement of his name
set William Henry’s heart beating more quickly than it had done even
on that fateful afternoon in Anne Hathaway’s garden. For the first
time he shrank from the customary ordeal of investigation, and Mr.
Erin interviewed the manager alone. As it happened, the young man need
have been under no apprehension of a brow-beating. Mr. Harris was a
practical man, of an expansive mind, which did not stoop to details.
‘The committee, I hear, sir, have decided in favour of this play of
yours,’ was his first remark; it was delivered with quite unnecessary
abruptness, but it was not the tone alone which grated upon Mr. Erin’s
ears.
‘This play of mine, as you have thought proper to term it, Mr. Harris,’
he replied with dignity, ‘is Shakespeare’s play.’
‘So you say, and, indeed, so many other people say, or I should not
be here,’ was the cool rejoinder. ‘Between ourselves, Mr. Erin,
and, speaking as one man of the world to another, I don’t care a
farthing—certainly not a Queen Anne’s farthing—whether it is
Shakespeare’s play or not. The question that concerns _me_ is, “Do the
public believe it to be such?”’
‘Am I to understand, then, that you do not wish to examine the MS.?’
‘Examine it? Certainly not. My time is very much occupied—it is in
five acts, is it not?’
‘It is in five acts,’ assented the antiquary; he could hardly
trust himself to reply, except in the other’s words. Mr. Harris’s
indifference, notwithstanding that it promised to facilitate matters,
was most offensive to him. ‘Mr. Pye has been so good as to promise us a
prologue for the play.’
‘That’s good; “Prologue by the Poet Laureate“ will look well in the
bill. We must have an epilogue ready, even though’—here he smiled
grimly—’we never get so far as that.’
The suggestion of such a contingency—which, of course, meant total
failure—in cold blood, filled up the cup of the antiquary’s
indignation. He almost resolved, whatever this man offered, to decline
his proposition to bring out the play.
‘Mr. Merry will write the epilogue,’ he replied icily.
‘A very good man—for an epilogue,’ replied the manager drily. ‘Well,
we must strike while the iron’s hot, or not at all. We must not give
the public time to flag in its enthusiasm, or, what will be worse,
perhaps, to alter its opinion. There is risk of this even now, but I am
ready to run it, and I’ll take the play.’
‘The devil you will!’ said Mr. Erin.
‘Yes, I will,’ continued the manager calmly, taking, or pretending to
take, this explosion of his companion as an expression of admiration of
his own courage; ‘it will cost a good bit of money, but I’ll take it
and never charge you a farthing for placing it on the boards. It’s an
offer you are not likely to get again, I promise you.’
‘I’ll take your word for that,’ said the antiquary quietly; he had
passed the glowing stage of indignation, into that white heat which
looks almost like coolness. ‘I don’t think any other human being would
venture to make so audacious a proposal. Have you really the impudence
to ask me to give you a play of Shakespeare’s for nothing?’
‘For nothing? What, do you call the advertisement nothing? How is an
author’s name established? How does he acquire fame and fortune but
through the opportunity of becoming known? And how could he get a
better one than having his play acted at Covent Garden?’
‘I was not aware that Shakespeare stood in need of an advertisement,
Mr. Harris,’ returned the antiquary grimly. ‘And even supposing that,
thanks to you, he becomes popular, he is not a rising young author;
should “Vortigern and Rowena“ be ever so successful, that would not
enable us to find another of his plays.’
‘It would be a great encouragement to do it,’ answered the manager
impudently. ‘However, there’s my offer!’
‘And there’s my door, Mr. Harris.’ And Mr. Erin pointed to it with
unmistakable significance.
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said the manager. ‘What do you want? How do you
suppose plays are brought out, man? Come, what do you say to half
profits?’
‘No!’
‘Then, look here—now, this is your last chance, as I’m a Christian
man.’
‘Then I shall have another,’ said Mr. Erin. It was the first approach
to an epigram he had ever made in his life. Anger is a short madness,
genius is a kind of madness, and so, perhaps, it came about that fury
suggested to him that lively sally.
‘A hundred pounds down, and half profits: that is my last word,’ cried
the manager.
‘No!’ thundered the antiquary. He was still upon his legs, with his
outstretched arm pointing to the door like a finger-post.
The manager walked into the passage, opened the front door, and held it
in his hand.
‘A hundred and fifty, and half profits.’
‘No.’
‘Very good; more than a hundred and fifty pounds for the play of a
Shakespeare who spells _and_ with a final _e_ I will not give.’
The door closed behind him with a great bang, which sounded, however,
less like a thunder-clap to Mr. Erin than that concluding sarcasm. He
was not aware that a pamphlet had been published that very morning,
which pointed out that the spelling of _and_ with an _e_, a practice
pursued throughout the ‘Vortigern,’ had been utterly unknown, not only
to Elizabethan times, but to any other.
When Mr. Erin rejoined his two young people, who were waiting for him
with no little anxiety in the next room, there was no need to ask his
news. His face told it.
Nevertheless, Margaret said, ‘Well, uncle?’ before she could stop
herself.
‘It is not well,’ he answered passionately; ‘it is devilish bad.’
‘But surely Mr. Harris was not uncivil?’
‘Uncivil? Who wants his civility? Who but a fool would expect it in a
theatrical manager? Bring me the play—the “Vortigern.”’
‘What is the matter now?’ inquired William Henry.
His manner, as usual, was imperturbable. Mr. Erin—so great was the
revolution wrought in him by recent circumstances—seemed at once to
derive comfort from it. ‘Well, it’s very unfortunate, but it seems that
an objection has been discovered—insignificant in itself—but which
seriously affects its genuineness.’
‘Indeed? There have been a good many not insignificant objections—and
yet it has been generally accepted,’ said the young man smiling.
‘It’s nothing to smile at, I do assure you, if what that fellow said is
correct.’
He had the manuscript before him, and was examining it with nervous
eagerness through his glasses. ‘Yes, here’s one, and here’s another
_and_ with an _e_. Why should Shakespeare spell _and_ with an _e_?’
He looked up sharply at his son, as if asking a riddle of one who has
the answer to it.
‘I am sure I don’t know, sir,’ replied William Henry quietly. ‘He spelt
things pretty much as he pleased.’
‘That’s true, that’s true. But just now it’s certainly most
disappointing that there should be any hitch. The very stars in their
courses seem to fight against us.’
‘It is an unfortunate conjunction, that is all,’ said the young man,
smiling again. ‘The objection of which Mr. Harris speaks may be new,
but not the spelling: _and_ was so spelt in the Profession of Faith,
for example.’
‘Indeed! That had escaped my recollection. Come, that is satisfactory.
All those, then, who signed the certificate will be with us. It was
foolish of me to be so discouraged.’
‘And did Mr. Harris decline the play on the ground of _and_ being
written with the final _e_?’
‘Well, no, he didn’t decline it.’
‘He only used that argument, perhaps, in order to get it at a cheap
rate?’ suggested William Henry.
This, as we know, had not been the case; he had pretty broadly hinted
that he did not believe it to be Shakespeare’s play at all, and even
that there might be plenty more where the ‘Vortigern’ came from, but so
bound up in these wondrous discoveries had Mr. Erin’s mind become, that
it was distressing and humiliating to have to confess as much, even to
his son and niece.
‘Why, yes; he wanted it cheap, and therefore of course depreciated it.
He only offered one hundred and fifty pounds for it and half profits.’
William Henry looked up amazed. For the first time his self-control
deserted him. In his heart he thought the antiquary a fool for having
refused such terms; but it was not the rejection of the terms that
annoyed him so much as the rejection of the chance of having the play
produced at a theatre like Covent Garden. His feelings, in fact, were
precisely the same as those on which Mr. Harris had counted—without
his host.
‘The money in hand may be small, sir, but the half profits—in case the
play were successful—as I feel it must have been, might have been
well worth having.’
Mr. Erin began to think so too by this time. After all, what did it
matter whether the manager were a believer in the play or not, had his
theatre been only made the channel of its introduction to the public?
He sat in moody silence, thinking whether it would be possible, after
what had passed, ‘to win that tassel gentle,’ Mr. Harris, ‘back again.’
It was certain that he (Mr. Erin) would have to swallow a very large
leek first.
The servant-girl entered, bringing a slip of paper upon a salver, the
name, no doubt, of one of those thousand and one persons who were now
always coming to ask permission to see the MS.
‘Two gentlemen to see you, sir,’ said the maid.
The antiquary glanced at the name, and then, as high as a gentleman of
sixty _can_ leap, he leapt from his chair.
Margaret, thinking her uncle had been seized with some
malady—presumably ‘the jumps’—uttered a little scream of terror.
‘Good heavens! what is it?’
‘Sheridan!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘There are more fish in the sea,
Samuel, than have come out of it, and better ones; see, lad, it’s in
his own handwriting; he is here in person—”Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
favoured by Dr. Parr.”’
CHAPTER XXV.
TWO DISTINGUISHED VISITORS.
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN—
The pride of the palace, the bower, and the hall,
The orator, dramatist, minstrel who ran
Through each mode of the lyre and was master of all—
was a very great man in those days in many ways; but what made him
just now of especial importance to Mr. Samuel Erin was that he was the
manager of Drury Lane Theatre.
That Mr. Harris, of Covent Garden, should have snapped at the
‘Vortigern’ bait had been a satisfactory circumstance enough (though
indeed he had only ‘sucked it’ and got off the hook), but the coming
of Sheridan was quite another matter. Compared with him, all other
managers were small fry.
It was with a less assured demeanour, therefore, than usual, and with
an expectancy somewhat tempered with awe, that Mr. Samuel Erin repaired
to the parlour. Even the MS. in his hand had lost some of its virtue
in view of the authority who was about to pronounce upon it; it was
almost as if he had been a young author with his own play; a work of
immense original genius, but which he was about to submit for the first
time to a leading publisher. It was some relief to him to feel that Dr.
Parr would be present, who was well known to him, and a believer in the
Shakespearean manuscripts.
As he entered the room the great man came forward to shake him
frankly by the hand. His manner was more than gracious, it was
genial, and seemed to put him at his ease in a moment. His appearance
was not imposing—a man of forty-five inclined to corpulency, with
a loose-fitting coat secured by one button over the chest, and a
carelessly knotted white neck-cloth—he wore his own hair, already very
grey, tied behind with a black riband. His face was puffy, and evinced
signs of what was even then called ‘free living. What redeemed it,
however, and invested the whole man with marvellous attraction were
his bright and sparkling eyes, which glittered with merriment and good
humour. The antiquary was so fascinated with them that for the moment
he took no notice of the other person in the room, till Sheridan called
his attention to him.
[Illustration: THE OTHER, INSTEAD OF TAKING HIS HAND, DREW HIMSELF
UP.]
‘You have doubtless seen our friend here pretty often before, Mr.
Erin?’ he said smiling.
The antiquary turned round and held out his hand mechanically. The
other, however, instead of taking it, drew himself up to his full
height (which was a good way), put his hands behind him, and bowed
stiffly; it was not Dr. Parr but John Kemble.
Mr. Erin, as a playgoer, had of course seen him ‘pretty often before,’
but generally in royal robes or in armour, attired as a king or a
warrior; as it happened he had never before seen him in plain clothes.
He had a noble figure and a handsome face—though, strange to say,
not a very mobile one—and, so far, was in strong contrast to his
companion; the difference in expression was even greater. Mr. Kemble
had a sternness of demeanour that was almost forbidding, and which
reminded Mr. Erin on the instant that he was an intimate friend of
Malone’s.
‘I did not expect the honour of a visit from Mr. Kemble,’ said the
antiquary drily.
‘I did not come, sir, of my own free will,’ was the uncompromising
reply, delivered in deep tragic tones. ‘I am here at the request of my
friend Mr. Sheridan.’
‘Quite true,’ observed that gentleman, his eyes dancing with laughter
at the antagonistic attitude of his two companions; the tragedian
like a stately St. Bernard with stiff tail, who resents the attention
of some half-breed of no insignificant stature, and that ventures to
entertain a very tolerable opinion of itself.
‘I dragged him here, Mr. Erin, like iniquity, with cart-ropes. The
quarrels of commentators, I know, are like the bars of a castle;
they’ll be shot rather than open their arms to one another. For my
sake, however, I hope you will, both of you, make a truce while this
little matter of business is under discussion; then to it again hammer
and tongs with all my heart.—Now, where’s this play?’
Mr. Erin produced it from his breast-pocket, into which he had
hurriedly thrust it.
‘Oh, that’s it, is it? Gad! he carries it about with him as a mother
carries a newborn babe, whose paternity has never been questioned.’
Kemble smiled, as Coriolanus might have done at the mention of
gratitude.
‘I think, Mr. Sheridan,’ said the antiquary in an offended tone, ‘if
you will be so good as to glance at yonder certificate, including
among other authorities your friend Dr. Parr, you must admit that the
legitimacy of “Vortigern and Rowena“ is tolerably well established.
Herbert Croft, Dr. Walton, the Poet Laureate, Sir James Bland Burgess,
are vouchers——’
‘Weighty enough, indeed,’ interposed the manager impatiently; ‘anything
ought to go down with such names attached to it. But the play, the
play’s the thing. Let’s look at it.’
It was a detail, if report spoke true, that Sheridan did not always
insist upon. He had offered to accept a comedy from the authoress of
‘Evelina’ unread, and to put it on the boards of Drury Lane. Even now,
when the manuscript was spread out before him, he seemed to shrink from
the task he had imposed upon himself.
‘Gad!’ he exclaimed, ‘there seems a good lot of it!’
‘There are two thousand eight hundred lines in all,’ explained Mr. Erin
gravely.
‘Fourteen hundred lines are deemed sufficient for an acting drama,’
observed Mr. Kemble acidly.
‘The dramas of William Shakespeare, sir, with which I happen to have
some acquaintance,’ returned the antiquary with bitter significance,
‘extend in more than one case to a greater length than the “Vortigern.”’
‘Come, come, Kemble,’ said the manager good-naturedly. ‘Surplusage is
no error, and one can hardly complain because one gets two plays for
the price of one. Now, Mr. Erin, would you prefer to be present at our
investigation or not? Mothers generally shrink from an inquest upon
even a foster-child, but there have been Roman matrons——’
‘I make it an invariable rule, Mr. Sheridan,’ put in the antiquary
hastily, ‘though on the present occasion there is no ground, of course,
for its being put in practice, never to permit the literary offspring
of which you speak to leave my hands.’
‘Afraid of body-snatching, eh? Think of you and me wanting to steal a
play, Kemble! Why, Drury Lane is a perfect foundling hospital for them.
However, just as you please, sir.’
Then, while Mr. Erin sat apart affecting to be immersed in a folio (but
with his ears wide open), the two sat down to the manuscript, from
which Kemble now and then read aloud in deep sonorous tones, which were
not always so sarcastic as he intended them to be.
There was a certain rhythmical roll in many lines like the thunder
of the surf, and also (as in its case) a head of foam which gave the
impression of strength. For example:—
Full fifty breathless bodies struck my sight;
And some with gaping mouths did seem to mock me;
Whilst others, smiling in cold death itself,
Scoffingly bade me look on that which soon
Would wrench from off my brow this sacred crown,
And make me too a subject like themselves.
From Kemble’s mouth at least such lines were not wanting in majestic
vigour, though he lent it to them involuntarily. It was evident enough,
indeed, that he was adverse to the acceptance of the play, while
Sheridan was in favour of it. What doubtless furthered Mr. Erin’s hopes
was that Sheridan had notoriously no very high opinion of Shakespeare
himself; he thought his genius exaggerated. Presently Kemble came to
the three best lines in the tragedy—
Give me a sword,
I have so clogged and badged this with blood
And slippery gore, that it doth mock my grasp;
A sword I say!
A speech he delivered with fine emphasis.
‘Come, that is better than “Titus Andronicus,” anyway,’ said Sheridan
slily.
‘An echo, sir, a mere echo of “Richard the Third,”’ growled the
tragedian.
‘Let us hope it will answer with “Richard the Fourth,”’ was the
laughing rejoinder.
Their disagreement was like the conflict between the whale and a
sword-fish, and could have but the same end.
‘I don’t mean to say that some things here are not better than others,’
said Kemble doggedly, ‘though perhaps I may be permitted to add that
you hear them to the best advantage; but to me the whole thing has a
false ring.’
‘Perhaps it’s my want of ear,’ returned the manager; ‘but do you think,
Mr. Kemble,’ here he sank his voice to a whisper, ‘that many people
_have_ good ears?’
The drollery and even roguishness of his face as he hazarded this
inquiry was indescribable. The tragedian ‘put the question by’ and
pursued his argument.
‘Whatever you think of Shakespeare, Mr. Sheridan, you must allow that
he at least always wrote poetry. Now, much of what I have had the
honour to read to you is not poetry.’
‘But let us suppose Shakespeare was drunk.’
‘Sir!’ exclaimed the tragedian in an offended tone.
‘Sir!’ echoed the antiquary, dropping the folio with a crash.
‘Good Heavens! gentlemen, may not one even put a postulate? Even
Euclid, a writer of little imagination, permits that much. It is not
such a very impossible supposition. Have you never heard of a man of
genius with a turn for the bottle?’
As he looked very hard at the tragedian, that gentleman felt called
upon to reply. ‘I have no personal experience of anything of that
kind,’ he said loftily.
‘Well, of course not; how should you?’ returned Sheridan blandly, but
with a curve of the lip that seemed to say, ‘We are talking of men of
genius.’ Perhaps his reference to his own weakness made him bitter.
If it was so, the feeling was very transitory; it was with his most
winning smile that he presently addressed his friend, ‘Come, Prester
John, we can do nothing without you in this affair; surely you will
not fail us.’
‘I will have no responsibility in the matter,’ was the haughty reply.
‘I will not append my name to yonder list; I will not have it go forth
to the world that I admit the genuineness of this production; I will
not stamp it with my warranty; I will not——’
‘Tut, tut, man,’ broke in the manager impatiently; ‘but you’ll act,
you’ll act.’
‘Well, yes, I will play Vortigern.’
‘And Mrs. Siddons will play Edmunda?’
‘Nay, sir, that is a question for herself. I cannot answer for Sarah;
she always takes her own way.’
‘To hear you talk one would think she was your wife instead of your
sister,’ said the manager laughing. ‘Then the Country Girl’ (so Mrs.
Jordan was called from her first success, which had been made in that
piece) ‘shall be Flavia, who has to appear in man’s clothes; she loves
to wear the breeches, as the poor Duke has long discovered. Well, we’ll
take your friend Shakespeare’s play, Mr. Erin.’ And the manager rose
from his chair with a yawn, like one who has concluded a distasteful
business.
‘But, ahem! nothing has been said about terms,’ suggested the antiquary.
‘Terms? Does he mean money?’ said the manager, looking towards the
tragedian with an air of extreme astonishment, as though he would say,
‘Can I believe my ears?’
‘I am almost inclined to believe he does,’ replied the other, smiling
for the first time.
‘But surely not money down; not ready money, he can’t mean that.’
The antiquary’s face unmistakably implied that he did.
‘Good heavens, Mr. Erin, who _has_ any ready money? I was just talking
of the Duke of Clarence, has _he_ any ready money? Not a guinea—though
you should threaten to drown him, like his namesake, in a butt of
malmsey—to save his life.’
‘The money might be paid out of the profits of the first night, and
then half profits,’ suggested Mr. Erin.
‘Mere details—business,’ cried the manager disdainfully. ‘You must see
Albany Wallis about all that. That’s a pretty face,’ he added, stopping
abruptly beneath a picture on the wall and pointing to it—’a charming
face.’
‘It is the portrait of my niece, Margaret.’
‘Aye, aye; love, faith, a pure soul in a fair body; a true heart, I am
sure of it.’
His voice, freighted with genuine feeling, seemed to melt away in music.
‘She is in truth a good girl, Mr. Sheridan: the light of my poor house.’
‘Take care of her, sir; be kind to her, lest, when it is too late, you
rue it.’
He was gone in a flash, and the door closed behind him.
Mr. Erin looked at the tragedian in amazement.
‘Some likeness to his late wife, I fancy,’ observed that gentleman in
grave explanation. ‘Her death was a matter of much regret to him.’
He seemed to be about to hold out his hand, but something restrained
him; his eye had lit by chance on the certificate. ‘Good morning, Mr.
Erin,’ he said with a stiff bow.
‘Good morning, Mr. Kemble.’
CHAPTER XXVI.
TWO ACTRESSES.
THE arrangements made between Mr. Samuel Erin, on behalf of his son
William Henry, ‘an infant,’ with Mr. Albany Wallis, for the production
of the play were eminently satisfactory. Mr. Erin was to receive three
hundred pounds on the morning after the first night of representation,
and half profits for the next sixty nights. Shakespeare himself had
probably never made so good a bargain.
The news of the acceptance of the ‘Vortigern’ by the management of
Drury Lane Theatre immensely increased the public excitement concerning
it. In those days ‘Old Drury’ (though indeed it was then far from old)
was the national theatre; and the fact of a play being played upon its
boards (independently of Sheridan having chosen it) gave it a certain
imprimatur. It was not unreasonable, therefore, in William Henry that
he already saw himself half way to fortune, while his success in love
might be said to be assured; there are but few of us in truth who,
at his age, are in a position so enviable. For, as when we grow old,
prosperity, if it does come, comes but too often too late for its
enjoyment, so the sunshine of youth is marred by the uncertainty of its
duration, and by the clouds that overhang its future. Of the reception
of the ‘Vortigern’ the young fellow had but little doubt; he believed
it would run a long and successful course, as most people do believe in
the case of the hare of their own finding. And yet the manifestation of
his joy was by no means extravagant. The gravity and coolness of his
demeanour, which had characterised him throughout the discoveries, did
not now desert him. At times, indeed, even when Margaret’s arms were
about his neck, he looked anxious and distrait; but when she rallied
him about it he had always an explanation, natural enough and not
unwelcome to her.
‘I feel,’ he said, ‘as you once told me you felt in looking at that
fair scene near Stratford, that it seemed almost too beautiful to be
real, and that you had a vague fear that it would all melt. When I look
on you, dear, I feel the same: such happiness is far too high for me; I
have not deserved it, and I fear lest it should never be mine.’
‘But you _have_ deserved it, Willie,’ she would lovingly reply. ‘Not
even my uncle questions that. He spoke of you in the highest terms, he
told me, to the Regent himself.’
For Mr. Erin had been sent for to Carlton House, and had shown the
precious Shakespearean manuscripts to the future ruler of the realm,
who had expressed himself as ‘greatly interested.’ He had been unable,
he said, to resist the weight of evidence which had been adduced
in favour of their authenticity, and had especially admired the
‘Vortigern.’ The old man’s head was almost turned with the royal
praises; and it was not to be wondered at that he had expressed his
satisfaction with the youth by whose means he had been introduced into
so serene an atmosphere.
‘I do not think I am without desert, Madge, though there was a
time when you used to think so [an allusion, of course, to her old
scepticism as to his genius]; but I do not deserve _you_,’ was William
Henry’s grave reply.
A modest rejoinder, which, we may be sure, secured its reward.
Margaret thought that there never had been, and never would be, so
deserving a youth as her Willie, or one who, having received his
deserts, bore his honours so unassumingly.
Nevertheless—for, in spite of the proverb, ‘It never rains but it
pours,’ good fortune seldom befalls us mortals without alloy—there
were drops of bitterness in his full cup. The Poet Laureate Pye had
been reminded of his promise to write a prologue for the ‘Vortigern,’
and had performed it, but by no means in a satisfactory manner.
It had come to them one morning at breakfast, and had been received
with rapture by Mr. Erin—till he came to read it. It commenced as
follows:—
If in our scenes your eyes, delighted, find,
Marks that denote the mighty master’s mind;
If at his words the tears of pity flow,
Your hearts with horror fill, with rapture glow,
Demand no other proof;
But if these proofs should fail, if in the strain
Ye seek the drama’s awful sire in vain,
Should critics, heralds, antiquaries, join
To give their fiat to each doubtful line,
Believe them _not_.
‘Curse the fellow!’ cried the antiquary, throwing down the manuscript
in disgust; ‘why, this is worse than useless. What the devil does he
mean by his “ifs“ and “nots”?’
‘I fancy Mr. Malone could tell us,’ observed William Henry quietly.
‘No doubt, lad, no doubt,’ said Mr. Erin, eagerly catching at this
solution of the Laureate’s change of front. ‘That man would drop his
poison into the ear of an archangel. Not that Pye is an archangel, nor
anything like it.’
‘Archangels must write very indifferent poetry if he is,’ remarked
William Henry smiling.
‘Just so—a deuced bad poet!’ rejoined Mr. Erin. ‘His prologue, even
without an “if“ in it, would damn any play; I’ll write to Burgess—Sir
James will do it, I’ll warrant.’
And Sir James did it accordingly, and in a fashion much more agreeable
to ‘Vortigern’s’ sponsors.
No common cause your verdict now demands,
Before the court immortal Shakespeare stands;
* * * * *
Stamp it your own, assert your poet’s fame,
And add fresh wreaths to Shakespeare’s honoured name.
There was no doubt in Mr. Erin’s mind as to Sir James Bland Burgess
being a better poet than Mr. Pye.
There were other hitches—nay, absolute breaks-down—which could not be
so easily mended. Mrs. Siddons, who it was hoped would play the chief
female character, Edmunda, had a severe cold, which was suspected by
many people, and known by her friends, to be a stage cold—a malady
which actors and actresses assume at pleasure as a pretext for
declining any objectionable part. When a barrister refuses a brief, it
is naturally concluded that his client’s cause is precarious—a lawyer,
it is argued, would never send money away from his doors except for
the gravest reasons; and similarly the ‘Vortigern’ suffered in public
estimation when the news of Mrs. Siddons’s indisposition got abroad.
Her reason, as Malone and Company averred, was that ‘the whole play
was an audacious imposition.’ In this case that flattering unction of
‘There are as good fish in the sea,’ &c., could hardly be laid to Mr.
Erin’s soul; it was unquestionably a bitter disappointment; the part
had to be given to Mrs. Powell, a much prettier and younger woman,
but not the queen of the stage. His sister’s conduct, too, seemed to
have an unfavourable effect on Kemble, whose interest in the play was
already at the best but lukewarm, and it was felt absolutely necessary
to conciliate him.
Mr. Erin wrote to him to say that, notwithstanding the circumstance of
‘Vortigern and Rowena’ being the production of the immortal bard, the
great tragedian was at liberty to use his own excellent judgment in
preparing it for the stage.
A cold reply was received, to the effect that it should be acted
faithfully from the copy sent to the theatre.
These were bitter drops; but where is the cup of human prosperity
without them? In reading the record of even the most fortunate man’s
career, we may be sure that, though it appears to run with such
unbroken smoothness, there is many a hitch. We hear the triumphant
pæans, but not the deep low notes of chagrin and disappointment that
to the hero’s own ear accompany them and turn his blood to gall. The
shining shield, bossed with victories, appears to be of solid gold,
but there is but a thin coating of it, and underneath lies rusted and
corroding iron. It is something, however, to show gold at all; and
Margaret was prompt with her comfort.
‘When, my dear Willie, was good fortune without its drawbacks? These
are but spots in the sun of our prosperity, and we should have only
room in our hearts for gratitude. Think how much sunshine we have had
of late, and how far beyond our expectations. When you first chanced
upon these wonderful discoveries, how great a thing it would have
seemed to you to light on such a treasure trove as the “Vortigern,“ and
then to have it accepted by Sheridan for Drury Lane! Think of that!’
‘Quite true, my darling; and yet you have not mentioned the highest
gift that Fortune has vouchsafed me, compared with which all her other
favours are mere gilt and tinsel—your dear self.’
‘Tut, tut; you are a born actor, sir, and should offer your services to
Mr. Kemble.’
He looked at her with troubled eyes, gravely, almost sorrowfully, then
folded her to his breast without a word.
It was clear, she thought, that Mrs. Siddons’s refusal to play her part
had disappointed him cruelly.
One day two ladies called to see Mr. Erin. The antiquary, as it
happened, was out: upon hearing which, they expressed a wish to see his
son. William Henry, who no more went to the office in the New Inn, but
transacted his father’s business for him at home (not so much that he
was necessary to it as because the old gentleman preferred to keep the
lad about him), was neither mounting drawings nor cataloguing prints,
but exchanging pretty nothings with Margaret, when the servant came
with her message.
‘Ladies to see _you_, Willie,’ said she, laughing. ‘I am almost
inclined to be jealous; I wonder what can be their business?’
‘They want to see the MSS., I suppose,’ he said indifferently. ‘Well,
at all events I can’t get at them; your uncle has taken the key of the
chest with him.’
Margaret shook her head.
‘They have come about the play,’ she said; ‘they are actresses.’
This was a conclusion to which William Henry had already arrived,
though he had not thought it worth while to mention it. His heart,
indeed, had leapt up within him at the news in question, not that he
was the least inclined to play the gay Lothario, but that everything
connected with the representation of the ‘Vortigern’ immensely
interested him. Hitherto he had been kept out of it; the whole affair
had been carried on up to this point without his interference, as
indeed was natural enough; it was not as if the ‘Vortigern’ had been
_his_ play.
‘It is very unlikely,’ said William Henry diplomatically; ‘but it is
possible they want Mr. Erin’s opinion about some reading, and since I
know his views I had perhaps better see them.’
His tone was interrogative, but he did not wait to hear her opinion
on the subject, but at once repaired to the parlour. That apartment,
hallowed by so many antiquarian associations, was now tenanted by two
persons of a very different stamp from those who generally visited it.
‘If critics and commentators indeed were beings like these,’ was the
young rogue’s reflection, ‘“cherished folios“ would be things to be
envied.’
Both ladies were young, though an expert in such matters, which William
Henry was not, might have come to the conclusion that they were not
quite so young as they looked. It is true they were neither painted nor
powdered; but besides being very fashionably and becomingly dressed,
there was that brightness of expression in their lively faces which
makes more head against time than all the cosmetics in the world. It is
always a matter of surprise among dull people that actresses, even of a
high type, should be so popular, and often make such good matches with
men of culture and good breeding. The reason is, I think, that if they
are not natural, they at least do their best to appear so; they do not
stifle nature, as is the habit of some of their sex who are much more
highly placed. Languor and studied indifference are not of themselves
attractive, and they are suspected, and with reason, of being very
convenient cloaks for stupidity.
The intelligence of these ladies shone in their eyes, which also
twinkled with amusement. They had both had a very hard time of it
during one portion of their lives, but it had extinguished neither
their good-nature nor their sense of humour. The appearance of William
Henry, who looked all youth and simplicity, instead of the snuffy old
antiquary whom they had expected to see, tickled them excessively. The
fact that he was very good-looking also aroused their interest. If they
had come upon business, in short, they remained for pleasure; and the
sense of this (for it was unmistakable) embarrassed not a little their
involuntary host.
By sight he knew both the ladies; the younger was Mrs. Powell, a
handsome woman, very tall and elegant, who had of late stepped into a
much higher rank of her profession, as, indeed, was clear enough from
her having been made the substitute of Mrs. Siddons in the forthcoming
tragedy. Just now, however, she was undertaking comedy, and her
melodious tones and speaking face made a harmony like ‘the voice and
the instrument.’
The other lady was Mrs. Jordan, who, without enjoying so high a
dramatic reputation, was a still greater favourite with the public.
She, too, was tall and comely, but her beauty was of a simpler type—it
would be better described as loveliness. The charms which had carried
all before them when she made her fame as ‘The Country Girl’ were
more mature, but not less attractive. The world of play-goers was
at her feet, the knowledge that an eminent personage had gained her
affections, and even, it was said, contracted a private marriage with
her, aroused the envy of many a gilded flutterer, and had driven
at least one of them to despair. Her tenderness of disposition and
generosity to the distressed were notorious, and could be read in her
smile.
‘We have ventured to call upon you, Mr. Erin, as you may perhaps guess,
with reference to “Vortigern and Rowena,”’ said Mrs. Powell.
‘I am so sorry, but my father is not at home,’ stammered William Henry.
‘Well, really!’ returned the lady reproachfully.
‘At all events, _we_ are not sorry,’ said Mrs. Jordan slily.
‘I did not mean—you know what I mean,’ pleaded William Henry with a
blush that they probably envied. ‘I am so sorry to be so awkward, but I
am very young.’
‘Does he mean to say that we are _not_?’ ejaculated Mrs. Powell with a
majestic air. ‘Great heavens!’
‘I think, sister, since he has thrown himself upon the mercy of the
court,’ interposed Mrs. Jordan good-naturedly, ‘that we should not be
hard upon him.’
‘Youth and inexperience,’ exclaimed Mrs. Powell judicially, ‘are no
excuses for crime; but since my learned sister—— You have seen her as
Portia, no doubt, young man, and a very pretty lawyer she makes—don’t
you think so?
It was like two people speaking from the same mouth—the one all
gaiety, the other all merriment.
‘Of course I have seen her, who has not?’ said William Henry, plucking
up his courage, though with such desperation that it almost came away
by the roots.
‘That’s much better,’ smiled Mrs. Jordan approvingly.
‘I am not sure,’ returned her companion. ‘Do you not also remember
_me_, sir?’
‘Who could forget you who remembers “Juliet,“ madam?’ returned the
young gentleman, with his hand (as he thought) upon his heart.
‘Left side, sir, the next time,’ observed his tormentor encouragingly;
‘anatomy has not been a special study with you, but you improve in
manners. We are here to test your gallantry, to sue for favours.’
‘Whatever lies within my humble power to do for you, madam, may be
considered as done.’
‘Did I say “improves”? Why, he’s perfect,’ said Mrs. Powell, with a
laughing glance at her companion. ‘But it’s all for love of Portia,’
she added with a sigh.
[Illustration: ’THAT’S MUCH BETTER,’ SMILED MRS. JORDAN, APPROVINGLY.]
‘No, of Juliet,’ returned Mrs. Jordan, with another shake of her pretty
head.
There was a gentle tap at the door; a face, a very charming one, looked
in, and with a murmured apology withdrew as suddenly as it had come.
‘Curiosity,’ said Mrs. Jordan softly, her eyes twinkling like two stars.
‘Jealousy,’ answered Mrs. Powell derisively. ‘I do not ask _which_ was
it, but _who_ was it, sir?’
‘I don’t know,’ said William Henry boldly; ‘I had my back to the door.’
At this both ladies burst out laughing, if an expression so coarse can
be applied to as musical mirth as ever rippled from the lips of woman.
‘He _doesn’t know_,’ cried Mrs. Powell; ‘and this is the young
gentleman we took for all simplicity. How dare you, sir? As if her
fairy footfall was not evidence enough to your throbbing ears, as if
her coming here at all to see how you were getting on with two wicked
young women from Drury Lane, was not sufficient proof of her identity?’
Then turning to her companion, ‘How dreadful to contemplate is his
depravity! So young in years, and yet so versed in duplicity.’
‘You are engaged to be married to her, of course,’ said Mrs. Jordan
softly.
‘Well, yes, madam,’ admitted William Henry; he could not help thinking
how charming she would look as the page, Flavia.
‘Don’t be ashamed of it, young gentleman,’ said Mrs. Jordan gravely.
‘It is to your credit, remember, if not to hers,’ interpolated Mrs.
Powell ambiguously.
‘And does this pretty creature live in the house?’ continued Mrs.
Jordan with tender interest.
‘Yes, madam; she is my cousin, Margaret Slade.’
‘How nice! I never had a cousin when I was so young as that. How I envy
her!’
‘“This shall to the Duke,”’ quoted Mrs. Powell menacingly. Then they
both laughed again.
William Henry was dazzled, delighted, and a little uncomfortable.
‘We must not take up his time,’ said Mrs. Jordan rising and consulting
her watch.
‘Now that we know that he is so very much _engaged_,’ assented Mrs.
Powell slily.
‘But you have not told me your business ladies,’ observed William Henry
naïvely.
Then they both laughed again, as they well might, for the truth was
that, having something so very much more pleasant in hand, they had
forgotten all about it; they were not bees, but butterflies.
‘The fact is—only your company is so delightful it put our business
out of our heads—we want to go over the play with you.’
‘There is but one copy in the house, ladies, in yonder safe, and I am
sorry to say my father has the key.’
‘Then you must bring it to the theatre to-morrow morning, sir,’ said
Mrs. Powell imperiously.
William Henry shook his head. ‘That is the original Shakespeare MS.,
madam; I could not venture on such a step.’
‘What ridiculous scruples!’ cried Mrs. Powell impatiently, beating her
pretty foot upon the floor.
‘But we can use the acting copy,’ suggested Mrs. Jordan, ‘and—if this
young gentleman will be so good as to come himself.’ Anything sweeter
or more seductive than her tone it was impossible to imagine; even the
very pause and break in the sentence had literally an unspeakable charm.
‘I will come with the greatest pleasure,’ said William Henry.
There was indeed no reason why he should not do so, but if there had
been it would have been all the same. He was fascinated.
‘To-morrow, then, at eleven o’clock,’ she said, and held out her hand;
he pressed it, and she returned the pressure, but with mirthful eyes.
Mrs. Powell shook hands with him too, and shook her head as she did so.
‘Poor young man!’ she said; ‘poor Margaret!’
Then they both laughed again: they laughed in the parlour, they laughed
in the passage, they laughed on the very doorstep. As Margaret said of
them after their departure, somewhat severely, ‘They seemed to be a
pair of very frivolous young women.’
CHAPTER XXVII.
A ROYAL PATRON.
WILLIAM HENRY performed his promise punctually, and presented himself
next morning at Drury Lane. He had never been inside a theatre by
daylight before, and the contrast of the scene to that to which he
had been accustomed struck him very forcibly. If any young gentleman
belonging to me were stage-struck, I should ask the permission of the
lessee of one of our National Theatres to allow me to introduce him
into its auditorium some dullish morning. If his enthusiasm survived, I
will believe that the passion for the sea will still remain in a boy’s
breast after a visit to a ship’s cockpit. The spectacle of those draped
galleries, those empty seats and ill-lit space, where all was wont to
be light and laughter, is little short of ghastly. William Henry indeed
only caught glimpses of it here and there, through the eye-holes over
the doors, as he was led through the echoing passages to the back of
the stage; but they were sufficient. He in vain attempted to picture
to himself the very different appearance the place would bear when
probably he should see it next, at the representation of ‘Vortigern and
Rowena.’
His imagination was chilled. The object of his visit, even though it
might well have done so, since it was to be interviewed by two of the
most charming women on the English stage, did not fill him with the
pleasurable anticipation which he had experienced when he had received
their invitation. There was no harm in it, of course, but he had come
without Margaret’s knowledge, and his conscience reproached him for so
doing. It was, no doubt, her own fault; she had shown such unmistakable
feelings of jealousy on the previous day, and had expressed such
uncharitable views on the character of actresses in general, that
he had shrunk from telling her of the appointment he had made for
to-morrow. It was a pity that the dear girl was so unreasonable; for,
though she had entirely agreed with him that Mrs. Powell’s conduct,
of which he had given her an amusing version, had been pert, she had
failed to understand what a contrast that of Mrs. Jordan afforded,
or how distinctly it bespoke a simple and ingenuous nature. He had
never dreamt, of course, of repeating Mrs. Powell’s parting remark
about ‘poor Margaret;’ but if such a notion had entered his mind, the
manner in which the dear girl had received other details of the little
interview would have forbidden it. He felt quite certain that she was
capable of believing that Mrs. Jordan was ready to fall in love with
him, or even had already done it. The very idea of such a thing, when
she knew he was engaged to somebody else, was, of course, ridiculous.
He thought that it would have set Margaret’s mind at ease to tell her
that he had given that piece of information to the ladies, whereas
it had aroused her indignation, not indeed against him but against
them. ‘What right had they to ask such questions? It was impertinent,
forward, and indelicate; and she did hope that those young women would
never commit the impropriety of calling in Norfolk Street and asking to
see a young gentleman, with whom they could have no earthly business,
again.’
And now, unknown to Margaret, he was going to see _them_. The
conscience at seventeen is tender, and it was no wonder William
Henry’s smote him. At that age, however, the memory (for some things)
is unfortunately short, and when a door suddenly opened from a
labyrinthine passage, into a prettily furnished room, where Mrs.
Jordan, reclining in an arm-chair, was reading with rapt attention a
certain manuscript he recognised, he thought he had never seen anyone
so beautiful before.
She arose with a pleasant smile, and a natural coquettish air which
became her charmingly, and bade him welcome.
‘Pray come in,’ said she, for he stood at the door entranced; ‘it is
not everyone that is admitted into my dressing-room, but I shan’t bite
you.’
It was not the least like a dressing-room except that it had a
multiplicity of mirrors, but her calling it so discomposed him (he
could not help thinking to himself how very much more, if she had but
known it, it would have discomposed Margaret); his knees had a tendency
to knock together, and he felt that he looked like a fool.
‘You need not be afraid,’ continued the lady smiling, not displeased
perhaps to see the effect she had produced in him, the symptoms
of which were not unfamiliar to her; ‘Mrs. Powell will be here
directly—she is not so punctual as you are.’
‘She has not so much reason to be, madam,’ said William Henry. The
words had occurred to him as if by inspiration, but directly they were
uttered he repented of them. He had intended them to be very gallant,
but they now struck him as exceedingly foolish.
‘He is certainly a very amusing young man,’ said the lady, as if
addressing a third person. ‘Pray sit down, sir. I saw your father after
I had the pleasure of seeing you yesterday. You are not in the least
alike. You should have seen Kemble and him together; it was as good
as any play. They don’t hit it off together so well as you and I do.
Perhaps you will say again they have not so much reason.’
‘It was a very unfortunate remark of mine,’ said William Henry
penitently.
‘I don’t know that; you needn’t be so hard upon yourself. I think you
had an idea that you were somehow paying me a compliment. For my part,
however, I have enough of compliments, and prefer a little honesty for
a change.’
William Henry bethought him of saying something about the genuineness
of some compliments, but by the expression of her face, which had
suddenly become grave, he judged that she had had enough of the
subject, and remained silent.
‘And how is Margaret?’
The young man blushed to the roots of his hair, and blushed the more
because he felt himself blushing.
‘I have heard of the young lady from your father, and nothing but good
of her. I hope’—this with great severity—’that you are not ashamed of
her, sir.’
‘No, madam.’
‘And I hope, sir’—this with an angry flash of her bright eyes—’that
you are not ashamed of _me_.’
‘Madam!’
‘Then why did you not tell her that you were coming here?’
William Henry bit his lip, and was about to stammer something he knew
not what, when fortunately there was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ said Mrs. Jordan.
The knocking was continued very loudly, but the permission was not
repeated. Mrs. Jordan began to laugh, and at every recurrence of the
summons laughed more and more. Then the door was opened a very little
way. ‘Are you sure that I may come in, Dorothy? Are you sure I don’t
intrude?’ inquired a musical voice in accents of pretended anxiety.
And then Mrs. Powell entered.
‘You are late,’ observed Mrs. Jordan reprovingly; ‘that is not like
your usual habits.’
‘I thought you might like to have a little time to yourselves, my
dear,’ replied the other with great simplicity. ‘I am quite sorry to
trouble you with business matters, Mr. Erin, but the fact is it’s
pressing. I must have Edmunda altered; she is heavy in hand.’
‘But, my dear madam, what has that to do with _me_?’
‘With you? Why, everything; to whom else can I come? Kemble won’t
listen to me; your father, a most respectable man no doubt, is quite
impracticable, and only raves about the Immortal Bard.’
‘But I cannot alter Shakespeare’s play, madam.’
‘Why not? He’s dead, isn’t he? Besides, his plays have been often
enough altered before. Garrick did it for one.’
‘Perhaps, madam; but then I am not Garrick. I can no more alter a play
than write one.’
‘Upon my word, my dear,’ interposed Mrs. Jordan, ‘there is a good deal
in what Mr. Erin says. I want to have things altered in my own part,
but if, as he tells us——’
‘Pooh! nonsense,’ broke in the other; ‘you have nothing to complain of
in Flavia. She is in man’s clothes, which fit you to a nicety, and that
is all you need care about.’
‘If he takes my advice he won’t touch the play,’ said Mrs. Jordan,
fairly trembling with rage.
‘There you see the Country Girl,’ said Mrs. Powell, pointing to her
friend with a little hand that trembled too. ‘Her temper is only so
long’ (she indicated the twentieth part of an inch). ‘Nobody can say
that she has not a natural manner, or does not know how to blush.’
‘Nobody can say of Mrs. Powell,’ retorted the other, ‘when she tries to
blush, that her beauty is only skin deep.’
It was certainly a most terrible scene, and most heartily did William
Henry wish himself back in Norfolk Street. At that very moment,
however, when he expected to see them dig their nails into one another,
both ladies burst out laughing. He began to think that either their
rage or their laughter must needs be artificial, whereas, in fact,
while they lasted they were both real enough. Mirth with them was
the natural safety valve of all their passions, and a very excellent
mechanical contrivance too.
‘But won’t you just lighten my Edmunda a little, Mr. Erin,’ persisted
Mrs. Powell; ‘a touch here and a touch there?’
‘My dear madam, supposing even I were capable of doing such a thing
(which I am not), just consider what people would say if I touched the
play. Even now our enemies attack its authenticity, and what a handle
must such a proceeding needs afford them.’
‘That is surely reasonable,’ observed Mrs. Jordan for the second time.
‘I don’t know about reasonable,’ returned Mrs. Powell with a most
bewitching pout; ‘but I know if you were not here I could persuade him.’
‘Shall I leave you?’ said Mrs. Jordan, making a feint of retiring from
the room.
‘Oh no,’ pleaded William Henry involuntarily.
‘Well, upon my life,’ cried Mrs. Powell, ‘you are a most complimentary
young man! However, I’ll leave _you_, which considering the company you
are in, will be quite revenge enough.’ She stood at the door, drawn up
to her full height like a tragedy queen; then suddenly altering her
tone, her air, her voice, and becoming as if by magic the very picture
of pity, she added ‘Poor Margaret!’ and was gone.
‘She is a queer mad creature, but means no harm,’ said Mrs. Jordan
consolingly. ‘She was angry at your refusal to alter her part for her,
and when she is angry she will say anything. You must not mind her.
Now, I’ve taken a fancy to you, Master——. By the bye, what is your
name?’
‘Erin.’
‘Chut! I mean your Christian name?’
‘William Henry.’
‘And what does Margaret call you?’
‘Willie.’
‘Very good; then since I have no wish to poach on Margaret’s preserves,
I shall call you “Henry.“ I have taken a fancy to you, Master Henry,
and mean to do you a service; a gentleman of influence, with whom I
have some interest, wants to look at these Shakespeare manuscripts, and
has directed them to be at his house this morning.’
‘I am afraid they will not be there,’ said William Henry. ‘My father
has never permitted them to leave Norfolk Street except once, at the
personal request of the Prince Regent.’
‘Nevertheless, I think the gentleman I speak of will have his way,’
said the actress, smiling. ‘Now I wish him, in case he sees the
manuscripts, to see their discoverer also. Perhaps he may give him a
helping hand.’
‘You are very kind,’ said William Henry gently: it was not gratitude
for the favour to come that moved him, for he had no suspicion how it
was to be realised, but her evident warmth of feeling towards him. Her
manner had not only an exquisite grace, but an unmistakable tenderness;
and then she was so exceedingly handsome. A young man’s heart is
like the tinder, which in those days, with flint and steel, was the
substitute for our lucifer matches; away from its box it is liable to
danger from every spark. ‘You are very good and kind,’ repeated William
Henry mechanically; he felt an impulse, hard to be withstood, to add
‘and very beautiful.’
‘I am not good,’ said his companion, gravely, ‘but I suppose I am kind
enough. It is much easier, my young friend, to be kind than good. Well,
now I am going to take you to this gentleman.’
She put on her cloak and bonnet, and led the way to the stage door of
the theatre. A closed carriage, well appointed, was at the door, in
waiting for her, and they took their seats. In a few minutes they were
whirled to their destination—a huge red house set in a courtyard, with
which William Henry was unacquainted, or which in the perturbation
of his mind he failed to recognise. They passed through certain
corridors into a large room looking on a garden. It was handsomely
furnished; a harp stood in one corner, a piano in the other; the walls
were hung with beautiful pictures. But what aroused William Henry’s
amazement, and prevented him from giving his attention elsewhere, was
the circumstance that on a table by the window were arranged the whole
collection of the Shakespeare papers.
‘You are looking for your father’s blood upon them,’ said Mrs. Jordan,
smiling; ‘you are thinking to yourself that he must surely have been
cut to pieces ere he would have permitted them to leave his hands. But
the fact is—— Hush, here comes your future patron.’
William Henry was used to a patron, and for that matter to a
sufficiently mysterious one; but for the moment he was devoured by
curiosity, mingled with a certain awe. The appearance of the new-comer,
if he had expected to see anyone very magnificent, must have been a
disappointment to him, for it certainly was not of an imposing kind.
There entered the room, so rapidly that he almost seemed to run, a
young man of thirty, somewhat inclined to corpulence, with a cheery
good-natured face, but decidedly commonplace in its expression.
‘Well, well, Dorothy, you see I’m here,’ he said, without taking
the least notice of the stranger’s presence. ‘Now let us see these
manuscripts—wonderful manuscripts—and get it over.’ He spoke with
great volubility, and plumped down on a chair by the table as if in a
great hurry. ‘What funny writing, and what queer ink and paper! and
what great seals! Shakespeare was never Lord Chancellor, was he?’
‘I don’t think he was, sir,’ said Mrs, Jordan, laughing. ‘It was the
fashion in those days for deeds to wear fob and watch and chain.’
‘Fobs, fobs? I see no fobs. So this is “Lear;“ I’ve seen “Lear.“ The
play where everybody has their eyes put out. So he wrote it like this,
did he? I wonder how anybody could read it. Hambllett, Hambllett; I
never heard of him. Notes of hand. Gad! I know _them_ pretty well.’
‘This is the young gentleman, sir, to whom we owe the discovery of all
these manuscripts,’ said Mrs. Jordan, drawing his attention to William
Henry.
‘Aye, aye,’ said the new comer, wheeling his chair round to get a good
view of William Henry’s face. ‘You found them, did you; those that hide
can find; that’s what people tell me, you know.’
The speech was such a rude one, that it might have been uttered by the
first Gentleman in Europe, nor indeed was William Henry by any means
certain that he was not standing in his august presence; but there
was a good-natured twinkle in the stranger’s eye which mitigated the
harshness of his words. Never, indeed, before had the doubts concerning
the genuineness of the manuscripts been expressed in a manner so
personally offensive to the young fellow, and notwithstanding his
conviction that the speaker was a man of very high rank, he might not
have hesitated to resent it, but for a certain appealing look which
Mrs[.] Jordan cast at him. He remembered that it was for his own sake
that she had asked him to meet this man, and that if he offended him
she herself might be the sufferer. He therefore only answered with a
forced smile, ‘I should think no one but Mr. Malone could have told you
that.’
‘And who the deuce is Mr. Malone?’ was the contemptuous rejoinder; a
question that put the coping-stone on the young fellow’s embarrassment
and, indeed, utterly discomfited him. He felt transported into strange
regions, with a new atmosphere; a world that had never heard of Mr.
Malone the commentator was unintelligible to him. It is one of the
lessons that can only be taught by years, and of which the ‘Montys’ and
‘Algys’ of high life are as ignorant as the ‘Jacks’ and ‘Harrys’ of
low, that our respective horizons are limited.
As William Henry stood tongue-tied, a sudden burst of melody filled
the room. Mrs. Jordan had sat down to the piano, and was singing with
exquisite pathos a song that was very familiar to him.
Detraction strove to turn her heart
And sour her gentle mind;
But Charity still kept her part,
And meekness to her soul did bind.
‘Very nice, and very true,’ murmured the strange gentleman approvingly,
keeping time with head and hand to the tune. His irritation had
departed like an evil spirit exorcised; into his coarse countenance
had stolen an expression of pure enjoyment; his eyes were full of
gentleness and even affection. Such power have the voice and the
instrument (when accompanied by a pretty face) even on the most
commonplace natures.
‘Now what is that, what is that?’ he exclaimed excitedly, when the song
was done. ‘And why have I never heard it before, my dear?’
‘Because it is brand-new, sir,’ said Mrs. Jordan, with a bewitching
curtsey. ‘I sing it as Flavia in this new play of “Vortigern and
Rowena,“ which is to be performed next month at Drury Lane, and which I
hope you will come to see.’
‘Certainly, certainly. Why shouldn’t I?
Detraction strove to turn her heart
And sour her gentle mind.
But it didn’t succeed, did it, Dorothy?’
‘I hope not, sir,’ returned the lady modestly. ‘Then I may take it as a
promise, sir, that you will honour this performance with your presence;
it will be on the second of April.’
‘Yes, yes; tell Sherry to keep a box—a box. And now I’m off to the
Privy Council. Sorry I can’t take you with me, Dorothy, but you’re not
sworn in yet—not sworn in.’
And off he shambled; his walk and talk were very like one
another—rapid, irregular, and fitful.
‘There,’ cried Mrs. Jordan triumphantly, ‘I have got what I wanted for
you, Master Harry; the play will now have the Royal patronage.’
‘Then that gentleman is——’
‘His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, _my husband_.’
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER.
A DROLL rogue of my acquaintance, whom (one tried to think) the force
of circumstance, rather than any natural disposition, had driven from
the pavement of integrity into the gutter, used to maintain that it was
better to confess one’s peccadilloes, with such colourable excuses as
might suggest themselves, than to conceal them. In the former case you
might, with a struggle, get out of the scrape and have done with it; in
the latter case you were never safe from discovery, and when it came
there was sure to be a catastrophe.
There was, it is true, no peccadillo in William Henry’s keeping that
appointment we wot of with those two charming ornaments of Drury Lane
Theatre, but since he had an impression that Margaret might not like
it, he ought, according to my friend’s philosophy, to have told her
all about it. After his interview with his Royal Highness (which could
not be concealed) he felt that this straightforward course was the
right one, and as he returned home in the hackney carriage with the
precious manuscripts, amused himself with the thoughts of the pleasure
Margaret would exhibit on hearing of the greatness that had been thrust
upon him. When her mind had been dazzled by visions of Royalty, he had
intended it to slip out in a casual way that he had been indebted for
his introduction to his Royal Highness to one of those professional
persons who had called in Norfolk Street the previous day on business,
and whom he had been compelled to receive in place of his father—a
Mrs. Jordan. The whole thing ran as smoothly and naturally in his own
mind as could be. It was like some well-oiled mechanical machine, which
the inventor (though of course it was no invention, only an adaptation)
feels confident will do all he expects of it, only somehow in practice
it doesn’t act. He found Margaret not in the least interested about
his Royal Highness, and very much excited about the lady who had been
the mere medium of his introduction, and whose part in the matter he
had taken, it must be confessed, some pains to minimise.
‘You have not been frank with me, William Henry,’ she said with some
severity.
He had it upon his lips to say that since he was William Henry he
could hardly be Frank, but he felt she was in no mood for banter; and,
moreover, with that name there naturally occurred to him the thought of
Frank Dennis, which made his heart stand still. It was not her anger
that he feared, nor even the diminution of her love, which had been
indicated very significantly by the mention of his double name (which
she had not used for months) instead of ‘Willie,’ but the possible
diversion of her love to another object. Perhaps she was already making
a comparison in her mind between himself and a certain other person
who, whatever his faults, would, she knew, never have deceived her.
It was not impossible that love could stray, for had it not done so
but a few hours ago, within his own experience, and with no such
provocation? It was very different, of course, in his case; there is a
certain latitude given to men, and the handsomest man on the stage, or
off it, would, he was well aware, not have caused Margaret to forget
her Willie even for an instant. But then women, when they are jealous,
are capable of anything, and from pique will not only ‘be off’ with
those they love, but sometimes ‘be on’ with another.
‘I am very sorry, Margaret,’ he stammered, ‘but I really don’t know
what you mean.’
‘Then your face belies your words,’ was the cold reply. ‘Why did you
not tell me yesterday that you were going to meet that woman at Drury
Lane this morning?’
‘There were two of them,’ said William Henry eagerly, urged, as he
felt, by some fortunate inspiration to tell the whole truth.
‘Oh, there were two, were there?’ Though she strove to keep her tone
the same, there was a relaxation in her severity that did not escape
him; the reflection that there was safety in numbers had no doubt
occurred to her. ‘You omitted that circumstance, sir, in your previous
narrative, with, no doubt, many others.’
‘Indeed, Margaret, I have told you all; that is, all that I thought
could have any interest for you. I ought to have said, of course, that
the invitation to the theatre came from both the ladies; they wanted to
have some alteration made in the play for them (which of course was out
of the question). Mrs. Powell was very angry about it; I should think
that she had a temper of her own.’
‘I don’t want to hear about Mrs. Powell.’
There was once a young gentleman who was endeavouring to make himself
agreeable as a _raconteur_ in the presence of Royalty. When he had done
his story the Royal lips let fall these terrible words: ‘We are not
amused.’ Poor William Henry found himself in much the same position.
His reminiscences of Mrs. Powell were, as it were, cut off at the
main. Margaret’s instinct had eliminated that factor from the sum of
the matter as insignificant; there was another person to talk about, it
was true, but he was averse to enter upon that subject. Unhappily it
was suggested to him as a topic.
‘Who, may I ask, is this Mrs. Jordan?’
‘Well, she was the other lady, of course, who called here,’ said
William Henry (he felt that he was turning a lively red, and it was so
important to him that he should keep his colour). ‘She is to perform
Flavia in the play.’
‘The person in man’s clothes?’ observed Margaret icily.
‘Well, she plays the Page; you can hardly expect her to play him in
petticoats. It was not a dress rehearsal,’ stammered the young man, ‘if
you mean that. They simply asked me—both of them—to step round to
the theatre this morning and render them some professional assistance,
which, as it happened, I am unable to do. I cannot for the life of me
see what harm there was in that.’
‘Then why did you not tell me you were going?’
It was the same dreadful question over again. Of course he ought to
have told her, and if he had had any idea that she would have come to
know of it he certainly would have done so. He looked so sorry (not to
say silly) that Margaret’s heart melted a little.
‘You know how I hate anything clandestine and underhand, William Henry.’
‘I know it,’ he answered, with a deep sigh. His face was one of such
abject misery, that one would have said, whatever he had done, he was
sufficiently punished for it. Her heart melted more and more; he went
on penitently:
‘Of course I ought to have told you, Margaret, but I did not conceal
it because there was anything to be ashamed of. Only I knew you would
not like it, that you would think there was harm in it—as you do,
it seems—where there is no harm. It was surely a great piece of
goodnature on their part, after I had disappointed them about the
play, to offer to do their best for it, and to get the Duke——’
‘Did they both go with you to St. James’s Palace?’ she put in drily.
He was on the point of saying that there had been only room for two in
the coach, but fortunately he was a young gentleman who thought before
he spoke. It would certainly not have been a satisfactory explanation,
and the very idea that he had been about to make it turned him scarlet.
‘No wonder you are ashamed of yourself, sir,’ said she, perceiving his
confusion. ‘Why do you talk to me about “they“ and “them,” when you
know that only one of these women had anything to do with the matter?’
‘Well, naturally, my dear, Mrs. Jordan was the person to introduce me
to his Royal Highness, since she has been privately married to him.’
‘I don’t believe one word of it.’
‘I can only say she told me so,’ said William Henry simply.
Margaret did not give much credit to the assertion of this lady, but
she believed what William Henry said. After all, the poor young fellow
had probably meant no harm, nor even dreamt of the meshes into which
this designing female would have drawn him. He had only been indiscreet
and a little surreptitious, and had been rated enough.
‘You don’t know what these actresses are, Willie,’ she said gravely,
‘nor what pleasure they take in making misery and estrangements between
honest people. Nothing this woman would like better, I’m sure of it,
than to come between you and me.’
‘My dear Margaret, how can you say such things? If you had only seen
her!’
‘I don’t want to see her,’ interpolated Margaret quickly.
‘A person entirely devoted to her profession, in which she is justly
held in the highest esteem.’
‘I don’t deny that she is a good actress,’ returned Margaret
significantly; ‘indeed I have no doubt of it.’
‘And she spoke of you so kindly.’
‘Of me? How dared she speak of me?’ cried Margaret with flashing eye.
‘What does she know of me?’
‘Well, she saw you just for a moment when you looked in by accident
yesterday, and she said how beautiful and kind you looked, and
congratulated me——’
‘It was shameful of you to tell those women of our engagement,’ she put
in.
‘Why not? What was there to be ashamed of? Am I not proud of it? Why
should I not have told them?’
His simplicity was very touching. If there had been such a thing as a
male _ingénue_ upon the stage, the speaker would have been the very man
to play it.
‘How they must have laughed at you in their sleeves, my poor Willie!’
she answered pityingly.
He did not think it necessary to state that they _had_ laughed at him,
and by no means in their sleeves.
‘I will never see them again if you don’t wish it,’ said William
Henry, still sticking to the plural number. ‘Only I suppose when the
“Vortigern“ comes to be acted it will be necessary to do so just for a
night or two.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind your seeing them at the play, Willie. We shall, of
course, be there together.’
He had meant that his assistance would probably be required behind
the scenes. Indeed Mrs. Jordan had taken it for granted that he
would be a constant visitor at the theatre while the play was in
preparation, and he had very willingly acquiesced in that arrangement,
but he had not the courage to say so. He was only too thankful that
Margaret’s suspicions were at last set at rest. He knew that she was
of a jealous disposition, and also that she abhorred deceit, and he
loved her none the less on either account, but there were reasons why
her manifestation of such excessive displeasure on so small a matter
alarmed him, and made his heart heavy within him. However, in a month
or two they would be married. He would then be her very own, and she
would have no misgivings about him; and as to deceit, there would be
no further cause for it, and what was past and gone would surely be
forgiven. But still his heart was heavy.
Considering Margaret’s youth and her middle-class position in life,
the irritation and annoyance she had exhibited may seem unnatural as
well as uncalled for. Young women of her age and rank are not nowadays
supposed to know so much about the temptations of the stage, but in
her time matters were different. The charms of this and that popular
actress, and even their mode of life, were topics of common talk, and
there was none of them more talked about than Mrs. Jordan. It is not,
therefore, to be wondered at that Margaret regarded her as a syren
attracted by the notoriety (not to mention the innocence and beauty) of
her Willie, who designed to wile him from the quiet harbour of domestic
love into the stormy seas of passion. Moreover, it must be said for
Margaret that her jealousy was not like that of some people who, while
resenting the interference of others with their private property, do
not lavish on it any especial kindness of their own. She had always
been the friend and defender of William Henry, even before he became
her lover, and had long-established claims on his fidelity, and it
galled her that one glimpse of a pretty face should have so worked with
him as to induce him to renew acquaintance with it, under what seemed
to her such suspicious circumstances, and especially in so secret
and clandestine a fashion. It had always been a complaint of hers in
the old days that William Henry was inclined to deception. It was in
relation, however, to Mr. Erin only that she had observed it, and in
that case there had been, certainly, excuses for the young man; but
that he should have deceived _her_—if, at least, concealment could be
called deception—she justly considered to be less pardonable. However,
she had now said her say, and with a vigour that the circumstances
scarcely called for; indeed, she felt that she had been somewhat hard
upon him. However wrong he had been to try to hoodwink her, that had
been the extent of his offending. He could hardly have declined to
go to the theatre; and, indeed, she confessed to herself that while
the play was in progress it was not reasonable to expect him to hold
no communication with those who were to perform in it. The matter
interested him very much, nor did she forget that it was mainly on her
own account, for did not her uncle’s consent to their union depend upon
the play’s success?
When Mr. Erin presently announced the first rehearsal at the theatre,
and suggested that William Henry should be present to witness it,
Margaret made no opposition; her objections, in short, to the young
man’s renewing his acquaintance with the fair Flavia were tacitly
withdrawn. She acknowledged to herself that things could scarcely be
otherwise, and that, after all, there could be no possible harm in the
matter; and from that moment, whenever her Willie was out of her sight,
she was more tormented with the fires of jealousy than ever.
She knew that he saw Mrs. Jordan constantly, and was yet compelled to
ignore it; she burned to know what passed between them, yet scorned to
inquire. The news William Henry brought back with him of the prospects
of the play seemed hardly of any consequence to her compared with
matters on which he never spoke at all. What was it to her that Kemble
was unsympathetic, dogged, and studiously apathetic in his rendering
of Vortigern; that Phillimore as Horsus was more like a buffoon than
a hero? What was it to her, on the other hand, that Mrs. Powell as
Edmunda surpassed Mrs. Siddons herself? What she wished to know, and
could not ask, was how that hussey Mrs. Jordan was behaving herself,
not as Flavia in tights (though that idea was far from consolatory),
but in her own proper person. Of one thing she felt convinced, that not
content with seeing her Willie every day, this woman corresponded with
him; that he received letters from her under that very roof. Else how
was it that when the post now brought him missives in a hand that was
strange to her, he would slip them into his pocket without a word of
comment, and with an air of indifference that did not impose upon her
for an instant? William Henry had now a little sitting-room of his
own, and she noticed that when these letters arrived he remained in it
longer alone than usual; reading them, no doubt, over and over, perhaps
replying to them in the same fervid style in which (she felt sure)
they were written, and possibly (for Margaret, though no poet like her
Willie, had a lively imagination of her own) even kissing them.
One morning the Epilogue to ‘Vortigern and Rowena’ arrived from Mr.
Merry, and was discussed at breakfast-time word by word, as befitted so
important a document. An hour afterwards, when William Henry had gone
out, as Margaret was only too well convinced, to Drury Lane, Mr. Erin
returned to the subject.
‘I don’t much like those concluding lines in the first part,’ he said—
The scattered flowers he left, benignly save,
Posthumous flowers; the garland of the grave.
‘It ran “benignly save,“ did it not, Madge?’
‘I am not sure, uncle.’
‘Then just go and get the thing out of Samuel’s room.’
Margaret went and looked about her for the manuscript in question. It
was nowhere to be found. But in her researches she came upon another
document spread out in the half-opened drawer of the writing-table; it
was written in a delicate hand on large letter-paper, and it was almost
impossible that she could avoid reading the commencement of it.
‘My dear W. H.,’ it began, and then followed a mass of heterogeneous
words without sense or meaning, as if they had been taken at random out
of some dictionary. It is probable that Margaret had never heard of a
cryptogram, but she had heard of communications written in cypher, and
it flashed upon her mind at once that she was looking at some letter
of that nature. It was bad enough that this abandoned hussey of Drury
Lane, who dwelt but a mile away from them, and saw her Willie five days
out of six, should nevertheless have the audacity to correspond with
him; but that she should write such things as could not bear the light
and had to be concealed in cypher was indeed intolerable. Granting her
premises, there was certainly ample cause for the indignation that
mantled to her very forehead, and the bitterness that took possession
of her very soul.
As she stood with one hand on the table, for her limbs trembled with
the agitation that shook her mind, she heard the front door softly
closed, and a hurried footstep in the passage. It was William Henry,
who had remembered no doubt—too late—that he had left the letter
exposed to view, and had returned to place it in some safer receptacle.
The next moment he was face to face with her.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE CYPHER.
‘I KNOW what you are come for,’ said Margaret in a broken voice, which
had yet no touch of tenderness in it. ‘You are come for this letter.’
She snatched it from the drawer and held it before him. ‘It is no use
to lie to me; your face tells me the truth.’
William Henry’s face was indeed white to the lips; his eyes returned
her gaze with a confused and frightened stare. He stammered out
something, he knew not what, and sank into a chair.
‘What,’ continued the girl, in harsh, pitiless tones, ‘have you nothing
to say for yourself? Has your ready tongue no excuse to offer for this
new duplicity?’
‘Have you read the letter?’ he inquired hoarsely.
[Illustration: ‘I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE COME FOR. YOU ARE COME FOR THIS
LETTER.’]
‘No; how could I?’
The colour rushed back to his cheeks, and into his eyes there came a
gleam of hope.
‘No,’ she went on, ‘it is you who shall read it to me. If you decline
to do so, I shall conclude that this vile creature has written you
what is not fit for anyone, save women like herself, to hear, and your
refusal will be the last words that you will ever address to me with my
consent, so help me Heaven.’
Mrs. Powell herself, when personating some heroine of the stage, never
looked or spoke with greater earnestness of purpose than on this
occasion did simple Margaret Slade out of the simplicity of her nature.
‘I will read you the letter, Margaret,’ was William Henry’s quiet reply.
His words, and still more his tone, staggered Margaret not a little.
The change in his face and manner within the last few minutes had
indeed been most remarkable. At first he had seemed so struck with the
consciousness of guilt, and so hopeless of forgiveness, that he had not
dared to throw himself upon her mercy. Then he had appeared to recover
himself a little; and now he was quite calm and composed as though all
apprehension had passed away from him.
His voice as he said ‘I will read you the letter, Margaret,’ had even
a tender reproach in it, as though he, and not she, were the injured
party.
‘Read it,’ she said; but her tone was no longer stubborn and imperious.
It was plain that this woman’s letter was not a love-letter, or he
would not have consented to read it; and if it was not a love-letter,
what cause had she for anger? And yet, if it was not so, why had he
exhibited such confusion—nay despair?
‘I will read it, since you wish it,’ he went on, ‘though it is a breach
of confidence. It is better to break one’s word than to break one’s
heart.’
The morality of this aphorism was somewhat questionable, but Margaret
nodded assent. She took it, no doubt, in a particular sense. It was
certainly better that she should know the worst than that any proviso
of a designing woman, made for her own wicked convenience, should be
respected.
‘It is well to begin at the beginning,’ continued William Henry. ‘Be so
good as to look at the address of that letter.’
She did so with an indifferent air. She could almost have said that
she had seen it before, for she recognised it at once as one of those
missives of which he had received so many of late.
‘Let me draw your attention to the postmark.’
It was ‘Mallow: Ireland.’
The letter fell from her hand. Self-humiliation mastered for the
moment the happiness of discovering that he had not been false to her
after all. It was certainly not with Mrs. Jordan that he was secretly
corresponding, and probably with no one of her sex. If Margaret had
been an older woman, with a larger experience of the ways of men,
she might have regretted her misplaced indignation as ‘waste;’ it
might have even struck her that the present mistake might weaken her
position if on some future occasion she should have better reason for
her reproaches, but she had no thought except for the injustice she had
done her lover. She stood before him with downcast head, stupefied and
penitent.
‘Oh, Willie, I am so sorry.’
‘So am I, dear; sorry that you should have so little confidence in
me; sorry that you should have thought me capable of carrying on,
under the roof that shelters you, an intrigue with another woman. This
letter—and I have received others like it—is from Reginald Talbot.’
‘But, Willie, what _could_ I think?’ she pleaded humbly, ‘and why
should you write to Mr. Talbot in cypher? And why when I charged you
falsely—with—what—you have mentioned—did you look so—so guilty?’
‘Say rather so hurt and shocked, Margaret,’ he answered gravely. ‘It
was surely only natural that I should be shocked at finding the girl I
loved so distrustful of me.’
‘I was wrong, oh, very, very wrong; and yet,’ she pleaded, ‘I erred
through love of you, Willie. If I had not cared for you so much—so
very much—I should not have been so unreasonable.’
‘You mean so wild with jealousy,’ he replied smiling. ‘However, it’s
all over now,’ and he held out his hand for the letter which she still
retained.
‘Please to read it to me,’ she said; ‘a few words will do.’
His face grew pale again, as she thought with anger.
‘Why so?’ he replied. ‘Are you not satisfied even now?’
‘Yes, yes; it was foolish of me, I know, but I said “So help me
Heaven.”’
‘Oh, I see. For your oath’s sake. That is what Herod said to the
daughter of Herodias. It is not a good example to follow.’
He spoke stiffly, but she shook her head.
‘I only ask for a few words, Willie.’
‘But Talbot writes to me in confidence; about matters that only affect
him and me. There is not a word that concerns you in it.’
Still she shook her head. The girl was truth itself, not only in the
spirit but in the letter. She had sworn not to speak with him unless
he did a certain thing, and though the reason for his doing so no
longer existed, her oath remained. Her stubbornness evidently annoyed
him. Their parts in the little drama had as it were become reversed.
The wrongdoer had become the injured person, and _vice versâ_.
‘The facts are these,’ he said slowly. ‘Talbot and I, as you know,
have a secret in common. He is the only person save myself, who has
seen my patron. What he writes of him and his concerns—that is of the
manuscripts—we do not wish others to see. We have therefore hit upon a
device to keep our communications secret.’
He took out of the drawer a piece of cardboard exactly the shape
and size of ordinary letter-paper, full of large holes neatly cut
at unequal distances. He placed it on blank paper, and through the
interstices wrote these words:
‘Margaret has done you the honour to take your finnikin hand-writing
for that of Mrs. Jordan.’
Then he took off the cardboard and filled in the spaces with a
number of inconsequent words, so that the whole communication became
meaningless.
‘Talbot has another piece of cardboard exactly similar to this,’ he
continued, ‘and has only to place it over this rubbish for my meaning
to become apparent.’
‘It is very ingenious,’ said Margaret. It was the highest praise she
could afford. Such arts were distasteful to her. They seemed to suggest
a natural turn for deception, and she secretly hoped that the invention
lay at Talbot’s door.
‘Yes, I think the plan does me some credit,’ said William Henry
complacently. ‘Well, I have only to lay the cardboard over this letter
that so excited your indignation, to get at the writer’s meaning.’
Her eyes were turned towards him, but with no fixity of expression, she
was bound to listen and to look, but her interest was gone.
‘“Why do you not send me a copy of the play?”’ he rapidly read. “One
would think it was you only who had any stake in it;“ and so on,
and so on. I suppose you have no wish to pry further into our little
secret?’ he added, folding up the letter at the same time.
‘I did not wish to pry into it at all, Willie,’ she answered
sorrowfully; ‘I again repeat I am sorry to have mistrusted you.’
‘Well, well, let us say no more about it. Let us forgive and forget.’
‘It is you who have to forgive, Willie, not I.’
‘I don’t say that,’ he answered gravely; ‘but if you think so, keep
your forgiveness, Maggie, for next time. Be sure I shall have need of
it.’
Here the voice of Mr. Erin was heard calling for Margaret.
‘Why do you not bring me the play?’
William Henry held up his finger in sign that she should not reveal his
presence in the house to Mr. Erin, and taking the manuscript from a
cupboard placed it in her hand.
‘Take it him,’ he whispered, with a tender kiss.
She kissed him again without a word; the tears stood in her eyes, as,
the very image of penitence and self-reproach, she made her mute adieu.
It was certainly an occasion on which some men, not unconscious of
errors, might have congratulated themselves.
The expression on William Henry’s face, however, was very far from one
of triumph; it was white and worn and weary.
‘Another such a victory,’ he murmured with a haggard smile, ‘and I
shall be undone.’
He locked the door and threw himself into a chair with an exhausted
air, like an actor who, having played his part successfully, is
conscious of having done so with great effort, and also that he owed
more to good luck than to good guidance. ‘Great heaven!’ he muttered,
‘what an escape! Suppose she had found the key for herself and read the
letter, or even if she had compelled me to do so. She must have heard
it all. I could not have invented a syllable to save my life——. What
a millstone is this fellow about my neck,’ he presently continued, as
he tore the letter along and across, and threw the fragments under his
feet. ‘A copy of the play! No, that he shall never see till the time is
past for harm to come of it. A few days more, and all will be safe. I
will be pestered no longer with his cursed importunities.’
Then he took the perforated cardboard and tore that likewise into small
pieces. ‘Now I have burnt my boats with a vengeance,’ he added grimly.
Then he rose and paced up and down the room, first rapidly, then slower
and slower.
‘I am afraid I have been hasty, after all,’ he murmured; ‘this Talbot
is ill to deal with, and suspicious as the devil. If I tell him in
what peril his communications have placed me, and that therefore I
have destroyed his cypher, he will not believe me, though it is the
truth. I must tell him that it has been destroyed by accident, and that
therefore I dare not write him what he wishes, and that he will not
believe either. If incredulity were genius, then indeed he would be a
very clever fellow, but not otherwise. Great heavens! what rubbish
he writes and calls it poetry. No, no, no,’ he muttered with knitted
brows, ‘not _that_, Master Reginald, at any price. And yet how mad
it will make him to find it is not so. He will do me a mischief if
he can, no doubt. However, he will know nothing till it is too late.
Next Saturday will put me out of the reach of harm. Would it were
Saturday, and all were well. That’s Shakespeare, by the bye, save that
he says supper time. A bad augury—a bad augury. The Ides of March are
come, but they have not yet gone.’ Here he took another turn up and
down the room. ‘I wonder whether, with all his knowledge of humanity,
Shakespeare ever knew a man who suffered like me. I wonder whether he
sees me now, and knows about it. A strange thought indeed, and yet it
may be so. Perhaps his great soul, which understands it all, has pity
on me. Will _she_ pity me? A still more momentous question. Pity is
akin to love, he says, when love comes last. If love comes first, will
pity follow it? What thoughts could I set down this moment were I in
the mood for it; and yet they say I am no more a poet than this Talbot.
He a poet! The vain drivelling fool; curse his false heart and prying
eyes! I hate him.’
CHAPTER XXX.
THE PLAY.
THE first night of one new play is much the same as that of another,
I suppose, all the world over. The opening and shutting of doors, the
rustling of silks and satins, the murmur of expectancy, cannot hush
the beating of the young author’s breast, as he sits at the back of
the box and longs, like the sick man, for the morning. Everybody who
is anybody (a charming phrase indicating about one billionth of the
human race) is there. Men of fashion and women of wit: gossips and
critics; playwriters who have been damned and hope for company in their
Inferno; playwriters who have succeeded, with no love for a new rival;
the fast and the loose. Lights everywhere, but as much difficulty in
finding places as though it were dark; mute recognitions, whispered
information (’A dead failure, they tell me.’ ‘The best thing since
the “School for Scandal”’); fashionable titters; consumption with her
ill-bred cough. These are things peculiar to all first nights, but the
first night of ‘a newly discovered play by William Shakespeare’ was, as
one may imagine, something exceptional.
Malone, of course, had been at work. The public had been warned against
‘an impudent imposture’ in ‘a Letter to Lord Charlemont’ (surely the
longest ever written) of which Edmund Burke had been so good as to say
‘that he had got to the seventy-third page before he went to sleep.’ It
had been necessary to issue a counter-handbill and to distribute it at
the doors.
‘VORTIGERN.
‘A malevolent and impudent attack on the Shakespeare Manuscript
having appeared on the eve of representation of this play, evidently
intended to injure the proprietor of the Manuscript, Mr. Erin feels
it impossible, within the short space of time between the publishing
and the representation, to produce an answer to Mr. Malone’s most
ill-founded assertions in his “Inquiry.“ He is therefore induced to
request that “Vortigern and Rowena“ may be heard with that candour
which has ever distinguished a British audience.’
Opposition handbills were also in circulation, headed ‘A Forgery.’
The public interest in the play was unprecedented. The doors of Drury
Lane were besieged. Within, the excitement was even more tremendous.
The house was crammed to the very roof. Many paid box prices though
they knew no seats were to be obtained there, for the purpose of
getting down into the pit. ‘The air was charged with the murmurs of
the contending factions.’ Nothing was ever heard or seen like it
within the walls of a playhouse. In a centre box sat Samuel Erin and
Margaret. The antiquary had thought it right that they should occupy a
conspicuous position and show a bold front to the world, and she had
consented to this arrangement without a murmur, for was it not for
her Willie’s sake? She looked very pale, however, and when addressed
had hardly voice to answer. The vast assemblage in such commotion, the
shouts and cries from the gallery, the satirical cries of ‘Author!
Author!’—though the overture had not commenced—appalled her.
In a small box on the opposite side of the house, sat alone a tall
handsome man, as pale as she. He had drawn the little curtain forward,
so as to conceal himself from the occupants of the house, and kept his
face, which wore a look of great distress, turned towards the stage.
Through the folds of the curtain he had stolen one glance at her as
she took her seat; but afterwards he had looked no more at her. In the
next compartment was another and younger man, who also seemed to have
a personal interest in Margaret Slade. His box was full of spectators,
but he sat at the back of them, and unseen by her, fixed his eyes
upon her from time to time with a searching expression. When the play
began, however, he listened to it with the most rapt attention—not a
word escaped him—and with every word his face grew darker and more
malevolent.
Behind the curtain opinion was almost as much divided as before it.
Kemble was in his grimmest humour; disinclined, as many said, both then
and afterwards, to give his Vortigern fair play. Some of the inferior
actors, taking their tune from him, certainly abstained from exerting
themselves, and even made no secret beforehand of their design to
abstain. It was a play cumbrous in construction, and even in the very
names of the dramatis personæ, such as Wortimerus and Catagrinus; but
it had been accepted by the management, and the company, as it was
afterwards urged, and with justice, should have done their best for
it. Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Jordan vied with one another in encouraging
William Henry, who remained all the evening behind the scenes. The
former made a magnificent Edmunda; the latter, of whom the greatest
of our dramatic critics writes, ‘Delightful Mrs. Jordan, whose voice
did away with the cares of the whole house before they saw her come
in,’ surpassed herself. If beauty and vivacity could have saved the
piece she would have saved it, single-handed. There was a great deal
of opposition, but at first the play went fairly well. The swell and
roll of its sonorous lines hid their lack of ideas, and in a fashion
supported themselves unaided.
‘We are safe now, the “Vortigern“ will succeed, Henry,’ said Mrs.
Jordan cheerfully, as she left the stage at the close of the second act.
William Henry did not answer; his face, pale and haggard as it had been
throughout the evening, had suddenly assumed a look of horror.
‘What is the matter with you, lad?’ exclaimed Mrs. Powell. ‘You would
make a good actor, but a very bad author; you could not look more
desponding if the play was your own. It is going all right; you must
not mind a hiss or two.’
‘I fear him,’ whispered William Henry, hoarsely. ‘That is his hateful
voice; it is all over.’
The two ladies looked at one another significantly; they had seen young
fathers of promising plays on first nights before, but here was a mere
godfather worse than any of them. They thought that the young fellow
had taken leave of his wits.
‘I tell you it is all over,’ continued the wretched youth; ‘he has come
here to damn me.’
‘If you mean the Devil, that is nothing new,’ said Mrs. Powell; ‘he is
always, so we are told, in the play-house.’
She spoke very sharply; she thought it the right remedy to apply under
the circumstances, just as she might have recommended bending back the
fingers in an extreme case of hysterics.
‘Come here,’ said Mrs. Jordan, leading the young man to a spot where,
through a chink in the curtain, they could get a view of the box where
his father and cousin sat. ‘Look at your Margaret yonder; she is not a
coward like you.’ Indeed, the more the people hissed, the calmer and
the more indifferent Margaret seemed to be, though under that unmoved
exterior she suffered agonies. She was thinking of her Willie, though
she could not see him, and love enhanced her beauty.
It was a frightful scene of turmoil, though up till now a good-natured
one. The actor who had last left the stage (or rather who was left upon
it, for he had been killed in combat) had had, by some mismanagement,
the curtain dropped upon his legs, and had jumped up and rubbed them
before the audience in a manner very unbecoming a corpse. At this they
screamed with laughter, to which his Highness the Duke of Clarence,
in the royal box, contributed his full share. Their good humour was,
therefore, for the present, assured, though such mirth was hardly
conducive to the success of a tragedy. But at the commencement of the
next act there were signs of ill-nature. There were cries set agoing
from a box on the upper tier, of ‘Forgery! forgery!’ and even of ‘Thief
Erin! Thief Erin! look at Thief Erin!’
Kemble’s magnificent voice alone could make itself heard above these
sounds of displeasure. He was apostrophising the King of Terrors:—
Oh sovereign Death,
Who hast for thy domain this world immense.
Churchyards and charnelhouses are thy haunts,
And hospitals thy sumptuous palaces;
And when thou wouldst be merry thou dost choose
The gaudy chamber of a dying king.
And then thou dost ope wide thy monstrous jaws,
And with rude laughter and fantastic tricks
Thou clapp’st thy rattling fingers to thy side;
And when this solemn mockery is o’er——
Here he was suffered to proceed no further; that unfortunate line,
uttered in the most sepulchral tone, was the signal for the most
discordant howl that was ever heard within the walls of a theatre.
He repeated the line with his own peculiar emphasis, and even, as a
spectator tells us, ‘with a solemn grimace.’ It was the death-blow
of the piece. A scene of confusion ensued which beggars description.
Suddenly, and as the newspapers of the day said, ‘without any
premonition,’ a rush was made for the box occupied by the Erins.
Fortunately, however, one man at least had premonition of it. He was
the one who has been mentioned as occupying a box by himself. He had
been silent all the evening, taking no part either with the partisans
or the opponents of the play, but with eyes ever attentive to what
was going on. The voice of the young fellow in the next compartment
had attracted him above all others; it had malevolence in it which
was wanting in the other cases, and, though he did not recognise it,
sounded not unfamiliar to him. It had been the first to raise the cry
of ‘Forger!’ and the only one which had mentioned the name of Erin. As
he repeated the words for the third or fourth time, some drunken fellow
hiccuped ‘Where are they?’ To which the malevolent voice replied, ‘I’ll
show you. The young scoundrel is hiding behind the curtain, but we’ll
have him out.’
[Illustration: THE NEXT MOMENT THE CORRIDOR WAS FULL OF AN EXCITED
RABBLE.]
The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble, led by
Reginald Talbot. They ran in their stupid fury at full speed, but not
so fast as Frank Dennis would have run could he have got free of them.
He had dashed from his box the instant he had heard Talbot’s vengeful
cry, but it had already raised the wilder spirits of the house, and
they had rushed out from this door and that, and interposed themselves
between him and their leader. He beheld already Margaret surrounded by
this wild and wanton crew, the old man maltreated, and William Henry,
evidently the object of this fellow’s hatred, torn to pieces. He ran
with the impetuous crowd, parting them like water left and right with
his broad shoulders, till he gained a place among the foremost. Talbot,
leading by a few paces, had reached a spot where two staircases met;
the one a narrow one, leading straight down to a few boxes, in one of
which Margaret was seated, the other a broader flight, which led to one
of the exits of the house. Talbot, wild with haste and rage, cast a
glance behind him to point out to his followers the right direction to
take, when he met Dennis’ eye, and strove to turn and speak. But ere he
could do so, Frank’s strong fingers were on his neck, and impelled him
forward, like the wind, to the top of the broader stair. The others,
who knew not what had happened, thought that they were still following
their leader to their destination, and ran on full pelt behind them.
Ere the third step was reached, half a dozen had fallen headlong, and
half a score came toppling over these. Oaths and groans mingled with
the cries of those who still pushed on behind, but Reginald Talbot
neither spoke nor fell. The fingers that had closed about his neck
clutched his throat also, while at the same time they kept him up,
though his legs used a speed which they had never before attained to;
they took their four and even five steps at a time. Fortunately for
him, and perhaps for his custodian also, the great door at the foot of
the staircase was open to the street, and when they reached it Frank
simply let his companion go, who, bereft of sense, though by no means
of motion, fell face foremost, with the most frightful violence, into
a mud heap. A friendly pillar brought Dennis himself to anchorage, who
then quietly turned and entered the theatre by another way.
Thanks to his presence of mind and strength of body, the house was now
freed of its more dangerous elements, and an attempt was being made
to finish the play, though almost in dumb show. Mrs. Jordan, though
greatly agitated, had even the courage to speak the epilogue, and for
the first time found her graces and witcheries of no avail. Margaret
would have stayed to say a few words of love and confidence to William
Henry, but Mr. Erin hurried her away.
‘It was a planned thing,’ he kept murmuring on the way home in the
hackney-coach. ‘There was a plot to damn the play; that devil Malone
was at the bottom of it.’
But Margaret was not thinking of Malone, nor even of the play,
concerning which, though she heard them not, there were reports,
besides its failure, of misadventure and even death. She was thinking
of Willie, and why he did not come home to be comforted. The two sat
down alone to supper, of which neither could touch a mouthful; the
antiquary full of woeful thoughts, the girl with only one question in
her mind, ‘Why does he not come?’
The maid thought she had seen him at the door when her mistress got
out of the carriage; there was certainly some young man with his hat
pulled over his eyes, who had watched her into the house, and having,
as it seemed, assured himself of her safety, had walked away. It was
possible of course that this might have been Willie, but whither had he
gone?
‘It is no use your waiting for William Henry,’ said the antiquary
roughly; ‘why don’t you eat?’
She noticed that her uncle no longer spoke of ‘Samuel,’ and the change
jarred upon her feelings, already strained and tried. It was no fault
of Willie’s that the play had not succeeded, and it was cruel to visit
such a misfortune upon his innocent head.
‘It is only natural that I should be anxious about him,’ she returned
with some touch of resentment.
‘Pooh, pooh! why should you be anxious? He is no doubt supping with one
of the players.’
His indifferent words struck her like a blow at random. Was it
conceivable, after what had happened that evening, that Willie should
prefer the society of another to her own? Above all, was it possible
that that one should be Mrs. Jordan? She could not but notice how
Flavia had fought for the play, and had hardly known whether to admire
or detest her for it. If she had been in her place, and could have
done it, she would have fought for it too, but then she would have an
adequate motive. Why should that woman have dared so much for it when
the others had performed their parts in so sluggish and perfunctory
a manner? It must have been because she had her heart in it. And who
could have their heart in a mere stage-play, a thing at the best full
of fictitious woes and imaginary heroes? There must have been human
love—or what such creatures took for love—to have enlisted her in its
cause. Oh, why did not Willie come?
As the night wore on apprehensions for her lover’s personal safety
took the place of these jealous fears. What might not despair and
disappointment have induced him to do? In her wretchedness and need of
sympathy and consolation, she ventured to hint at this to Mr. Erin.
‘It is surely very odd, uncle. Willie ought to be home by this time at
all events. Should we not send somewhere?’
‘What nonsense! Whither should we send, and why? The lad is old enough
to take care of himself.’
‘But perhaps in his dejection and—and—misery, uncle, he might not
have any care of himself.’
‘Tush! he is not of that sort. He has much too high an opinion of his
own value to throw himself away—into the river, for instance. That
such an idea should have entered your mind, however, shows what an
unstable fellow you think him; and in some ways—though not in that
way—he _is_ unstable. He is but a boy, after all, and a spoilt boy. I
take blame to myself that I suffered him to entertain the delusion that
he was fit to take to himself a wife. It was conditional indeed upon
certain contingencies which have not taken place, so that the whole
affair is null and void.’
‘Uncle!’ Margaret rose from her chair, and with white face and
flashing eyes confronted the old man.
‘Of course it’s null and void,’ he went on, flattening the tobacco
in his pipe with its stopper, and affecting an indifferent air. ‘A
bargain’s a bargain, though indeed, as I have said, it is one that
I should never have entered into in any case, but the mere vulgar
question of ways and means now puts an end to the matter. Of course he
looked for material results from the “Vortigern.“ It will now not keep
the stage another night, while the publication of the play is rendered
worthless. It is not his fault, of course; I don’t blame him. It is
not in mortals to command success. There is nothing for him now but to
return to the conveyancing business; and in ten years or so there is no
knowing but that he may step into old Bingley’s shoes.’
‘And I?’ cried Margaret bitterly. ‘What am I to do? To wait for him?’
‘Certainly not; that would be hopeless indeed. The best thing you can
possibly do just at present is to—I shall make arrangements for his
lodging elsewhere out of harm’s way—is to begin to forget all about
him.’
‘Forget him—forget Willie? How can I?’
‘By thinking of somebody else,’ returned the antiquary coolly: ‘that I
have heard is the best way. At all events it will have to be done.’
‘Do you think then a woman’s heart is like a seal, uncle, on which an
image is impressed, and which, held to some fierce flame—as mine seems
to be, Heaven help me, this moment—it straightway becomes a blank
ready for the reception of another image? Oh, no, no, I will wait ten
years for Willie, if it be necessary, but I will never forget him.’
‘He’ll forget _you_ in half the time,’ was the dry rejoinder.
‘You speak falsely as well as cruelly, uncle,’ said Margaret
passionately.
There had been a time when even passion could not have nerved her to
speak so boldly to the antiquary; and there had been a time when if she
had dared to do so the old man would have put down his foot upon such
passion and crunched the sparks out. But just now Margaret was too full
of her misery and the sense of wrong to care what she said, while her
uncle on his part, though he was fully resolved to put an end to his
niece’s engagement with William Henry, could not at once resume the
relative position to her he had occupied before it was mooted.
‘As to my speaking falsely concerning William Henry’s fidelity,’
he answered quietly, ‘time alone can prove that: and there will be
certainly plenty of time; while as to cruelty I really cannot accuse
myself of having been cruel.’
‘What! when you have allowed the mutual love between your son and me
for months to ripen without censure? When you have heard him call me
his own ten times a day, and never reproved him for it. When you have
thrown us together and left us together? And now because something has
not succeeded, of the success of which you made sure, do you wish to
tear us asunder and bid us forget one another. And then, oh shame, do
you dare to say you are not cruel?’
The old man made her no reply, perhaps his conscience pricked him in
the matter, or perhaps he perceived that it was useless to argue with
her in her present excited state.
‘Have you any fault to find with Willie?’ she continued reproachfully.
‘Has he not done all he could do in this unfortunate affair? What
has happened to the “Vortigern“ that he could help or hinder? Do you
suppose he has deceived you because it has not succeeded?
‘Of course not,’ put in the antiquary testily; ‘the boy is honest
enough, no doubt; but one must look at things from a reasonable point
of view. Come, come, we can talk of these things to-morrow. It is
getting late. Let us to bed.’
She answered not a word, but sat with her face bowed down on the table
and hidden in her hands, while he took up his candle and left her. She
remained in the same position for many minutes, when suddenly there
came a gentle knock, a mere tap, at the front door. She was on her
feet in a moment, with her long hair loose behind her ears, listening.
It was not Willie’s knock, she knew, but it might be news of Willie.
The clock on the mantelpiece had just struck two. Then came the tap
again; this time a little more distinct. It was evident that her uncle
had not heard it, and the servant had long gone to bed. There were many
bad characters abroad in the street in those times, restrained by a
very inefficient constabulary, but Margaret did not hesitate to obey
this second summons. She went to the door and undid the fastenings
without making the least noise.
A woman stood on the step, to judge by her figure a young one, but her
face was hidden in her hood.
‘You are Margaret?’ she said, in clear sweet tones mingled with an
ineffable pity.
‘I am,’ she answered, with a dreadful fear at her heart. She felt that
some messenger of evil tidings stood before her.
‘I thought so; I felt sure that you would be sitting up for him,’
murmured the other softly.
‘Where is he? Is he ill? Why does he not come home?’ gasped Margaret.
‘He is not ill, but he cannot come home. Let me in, and I will tell you
all.’
With a gentle pressure, for Margaret’s instinct was to oppose her, the
visitor made her way into the house. ‘Let me see you quite alone,’ she
said; ‘somewhere where we cannot be interrupted. I have news for your
private ear—I am sorry to say, bad news.’
‘And who are you?’ Margaret’s voice was antagonistic, almost defiant.
She resented this woman’s coming beyond all measure, but the fear
within her compelled her to listen to what she might have to say.
‘I am Mrs. Jordan,’ was the quiet reply.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE MESSENGER OF DISGRACE.
THOSE words, ‘I am Mrs. Jordan,’ were not unexpected by Margaret. There
was no need for her visitor to speak them or to throw back her hood;
she had known her from the first. Whatever evil news there was to tell,
it was made ten times worse by the messenger that brought it. She
felt like Antony’s wife in the presence of Cleopatra. ‘You have been
his ruin,’ were the words that trembled on her lips. But there was
something in the other’s tone that prevented their utterance. That it
was a beautiful face was nothing; she detested and abhorred its beauty.
That it was full of sympathy and compassion was nothing; she resented
its compassion as an insult. But there was also sorrow in it, genuine
and unmistakable sorrow. Whatever wrong this woman had done her—so
Margaret reasoned—she had repented of; perhaps had come to confess,
when it was too late, but still to confess. There were tears in her
eyes; she was an actress it is true, but they were real tears.
‘Well, what is it you want, madam?’
‘Nothing. I am here on your account, not on my own.’
‘And Willie sent you?’
She uttered this with great bitterness, experiencing the same sort
of satisfaction in the humiliation it cost her, as some persons in
physical pain derive from the self-infliction of another pain.
‘He did not send me: he does not even know that I am here.’
‘But you come from him. You have been with him after he left the
theatre?’
‘Yes, for hours; two long miserable hours.’
‘And you dare to tell me that?’
‘Yes. Oh, Margaret—for that is the only name I know you by—put away
from you, I beseech you, all thoughts that wrong him. He has sins
enough—Heaven help him—to answer for, but not such as you would
impute to him. He is faithful to you and despairing.’
‘What do you mean? Why should he despair?’ The other’s words had
somewhat disarmed her, the gentleness and pity in her companion’s
looks had won upon her in spite of herself. The woman was certainly
not there to exult over her. It was a bitter reflection that her lover
had not come straight to her; that he had sought a go-between (and
such a go-between!) to speak for him. But that sad word ‘despairing’
altered matters in other respects. What Willie in his modesty and
self-denunciation doubtless feared, was not only that Mr. Erin would
stick to the letter of his agreement respecting his consent to his
son’s marriage (which, indeed, he had just announced his intention to
do), but that she herself would assent to his change of views; that the
idea of waiting, probably for years, until William Henry should have
made sufficient means upon which to marry, would be abhorrent to her;
that, in a word, her love for him did not comprehend hope and patience.
It was possible indeed that his omission to come in person arose from
delicacy of mind, and the disinclination to embarrass her by a personal
appeal; and as for his choice of an intermediary he had perhaps but
poured out his woes into the ears of the first person who had professed
to sympathise with them, and who, it must be confessed, had shown him
kindness. And yet how mistaken the dear lad had been in supposing for
a moment that mere misfortune—the ill success of the play—could cut
the bonds that bound her heart to his! It had had an effect indeed, but
it was only to strengthen them, for when the object of a woman’s love
is in adversity, he becomes the more dear to her in proportion to the
difficulties by which he is surrounded. Since his love was as genuine
as her own, he ought indeed to have known as much. And that he should
despair of her! Well, indeed, might she ask with much amazement, ‘What
do you mean? Why should he despair?’
But Mrs. Jordan’s pretty face only grew more grave and sad.
‘I wish to heaven, my dear girl,’ she said, ‘that I could use another
word. If you knew the pain it costs me to come here and see you face to
face, and tell you what I have to tell, you would pity me—if you shall
presently have any pity to spare, save for your unhappy self and your
still more wretched Willie.’ The earnestness and fervour of her tone,
and its solemnity, which seemed to prepare the way for the revelation
of some overwhelming misfortune, made Margaret’s blood run cold.
‘You said that he was not ill,’ she murmured hoarsely, ‘and yet he has
not come home. He is not dead? Oh, tell me that my Willie is not dead?’
‘He is not dead, Margaret, but there are worse things that happen to
those we love than death. Worse things than even when you thought the
worst of your Willie and of me.’
‘Great heaven, how you terrify me! Tell me what has happened in one
word.’
‘That is impossible, or, if it were possible, you would never,
without proof, believe it. I must begin at the beginning. You know
what happened to-night—the failure of the play; the peril only just
averted, that threatened your uncle and yourself.’
Margaret shook her head, not so much in denial as in indifference.
‘What mattered anything that had threatened herself, even though the
menace had been carried out?’
‘Is it possible that you are unaware of your escape to-night? How the
rioters, led by an enemy of you and yours, were rushing to your box,
when some young fellow threw himself between it and them; how he seized
their leader by the throat, at risk of his own life, and threw him down
the stairs, and how all the rest of them came tumbling after him?’
If the actress hoped to lead her companion’s mind into other channels,
to interest her for one instant in any subject save that supreme one in
which her whole soul was wrapped, her endeavour failed.
‘But Willie?’ murmured Margaret impatiently. ‘Why do you speak of
anything save Willie?’
‘That will come soon enough. Too soon, dear girl. I must needs tell you
it as it all happened. He was behind the scenes, you know, throughout
the evening. At first, things seemed to be going pretty well in spite
of the opposition; but he was never very hopeful, even then, as he
afterwards told me. The greatness of the reward which would be his in
case of the success of the play—that is, his claiming you for his
own—oppressed him; it seemed too high a fortune even though he had
felt himself to be deserving of it.’
‘He _is_ deserving of it, and of better fortune,’ put in Margaret
quietly.
Mrs. Jordan took no notice of the interruption. ‘He seemed depressed
and downhearted from the first,’ she continued, ‘though Mrs. Powell
and myself said all we could to encourage him. Presently, amid the
tempest of disapprobation, he recognised a particular voice—the voice
of an enemy; of the same person, I have no doubt, who urged on the mob
to your box. From that moment he seemed to give up all hope. “That man
is come to ruin me!“ he said; and he spoke the truth.’
‘It was Reginald Talbot,’ exclaimed Margaret suddenly. ‘Frank always
warned Willie against him. The vile, treacherous wretch!’
‘Yes, it was Reginald Talbot—a base creature enough, no doubt; but
honest people, Margaret, are not ruined by anything the base can say or
shout. We must be base ourselves to enable them to ruin us.’
Margaret rose from her chair. ‘I do not understand you, Mrs. Jordan. I
thought that you were speaking of my Willie.’
‘Listen, Margaret. Keep calm and listen; I would give half of what I
have in the world to spare you, but it must be told.’
‘I will hear no evil of Willie.’
‘You shall hear, at least, nothing that has not fallen from his own
lips. When he showed such fear of his enemy, I reproached him for his
lack of courage, and through a gap in the stage curtain pointed you out
to him as you sat in your box, exposed to all those shouts and jeers,
and apparently unmoved by them. But the sight of you only seemed to
depress him still more.’
‘“That is the last I shall see of my Margaret,” he said; “I have lost
her for ever.” And again he spoke the truth.’
‘He did not,’ cried Margaret vehemently; ‘he only thought he spoke it.
He imagined because the play had failed that I should give him back his
troth. But what is the play to me? My heart is his; I can wait for him.
We are still very young; what need is there for despair?’
‘That is what I thought, that is what I said,’ returned Mrs. Jordan
pitifully, ‘because I was in the dark, as you are. I said, “It will
matter nothing to Margaret, if she really loves you; you will still be
the same to her.”
‘“No, I shall not,“ he answered; “I can never be the same to her. If
not to-night, to-morrow, if not to-morrow, the next day, that villain
yonder will unmask me; she will know me for what I am, and loathe me.”
‘I had to leave him then, to speak the epilogue, and when I returned,
he looked like one who had utterly lost heart and hope. No one troubled
himself about him. Mrs. Powell had gone away, and the others departed,
cursing the play and all who had had any hand in its production. I
dared not leave him to himself, and besought him to go home at once. “I
have no home,“ he said; then I took him to my own house.’
‘That was good of you,’ murmured Margaret, pale as death.
Then Mrs. Jordan knew that the worst was over; that what she had to
tell, however sad and terrible, would fall upon ears prepared to hear
it. And yet even now she could not tell her right out, ‘Your Willie is
a cheat and a liar.’
‘In the carriage the poor fellow sat like a dead man, huddled in one
corner, without speech and motion; but once within doors, I insisted
on his taking some wine, which revived him a little. “You cannot stop
here,“ I said, speaking to him as severely as I could, for kindness
only seemed to unnerve him; “I will send out and get you a bed at some
inn. But if it will be any comfort to you to relieve your mind, I am
ready to hear whatever you have to say.“ He made a movement towards
his breast-pocket which filled me with apprehensions. “If you have a
pistol there,“ I said, “give it to me at once. Whatever you may have
done, however you may have wronged Margaret, you will surely not add
self-slaughter to your other sins? You will not break her heart by
killing yourself?”
‘“No, no,“ he murmured; “it is not that.”
‘I found it was impossible to get any connected narrative out of him,
so I put a question or two.
‘“Who is this enemy of yours, and why should it be in his power to harm
you?”
‘“Because he knows my secret—my shameful secret. His name is Reginald
Talbot, and he was at one time my friend. We quarrelled about some
poems of his, and from that moment he has done his best to ruin me.
He tried to prove that I had forged one of the Shakespeare papers,
and failed in it; he pretended to be satisfied at the time with the
evidence in the matter, as the others were, but from that moment he
dogged my footsteps. He is a sneaking, prying hound.
‘“One day, when I was at work in my chambers, forging manuscripts,
I saw his face at my window; he had climbed up to it by a ladder,
and perceived what I was about. There was no hope of concealment any
longer, so I unlocked the door and let him in. I told him all—it
is a long story, but it is written here (again he touched his
breast-pocket), and besought him to have mercy upon me. His heart
was like the nether millstone, as I knew it would be. He asked me
with a sneer what I should do now, and whether I had any new treasure
of Shakespeare’s with which to enrich the world. I told him of the
‘Vortigern,’ which I was then projecting, but which, of course, it was
now in his power to put a stop to. Then he proposed a compromise. He
was very vain of his verses, and he undertook, upon condition that he
was allowed to write some portion of the play himself, to keep silence
upon the matter. He had the same mad desire that I had, that the world
should take his poetry to be from Shakespeare’s pen. I consented of
course, for I had no choice. All his wrath against me seemed to have
evaporated at once. He was intensely pleased; and from that time we
worked together. Moreover, when the committee appointed to decide upon
the genuineness of the Shakespeare manuscripts hesitated to accept them
because there was no other witness to their discovery save myself,
Talbot came forward, as we had agreed that he should do, and deposed
that he had seen my patron from the Temple, and the collection from
which the paper had been taken. His evidence carried the day and
assured me of my position. On the other hand, Talbot wrote so feebly
that I felt convinced not a line of his would survive criticism,
and, unknown to him, I composed the whole play independently of his
assistance.
‘“He had to leave London for Ireland, so I had no difficulty in
deceiving him in this matter. We corresponded in cipher about it, and I
led him to imagine that the ‘Vortigern,’ as accepted in Drury Lane, was
the play that we had composed together. I thought if it were successful
that I should be in a position to defy him, and that only those who
were already my enemies would believe his story. He had told me that
it was impossible for him to be in London the first night of its
performance, and I flattered myself that I was quite safe. The instant
I recognised his voice in the theatre, I felt that all was over with
me. He would find out the absence of his own rhapsodies from the drama;
and that I had deceived him, as indeed I had—whom have I not deceived?
From that moment my fate was sealed.”
‘“Unhappy boy!“ cried I; “is it possible, then, that you acknowledge
yourself to be a forger and a cheat?”
‘“I do,“ he answered; “here is the record of my transgression.”
‘He took from his breast-pocket this paper, his confession, which, it
appears, he always carried about with him; an imprudence which would
have been unintelligible in any one else, but to him who had trodden,
as it were, every day on the crust of a volcano, it mattered little.
I felt sure at once that this was written for your eye, Margaret,
in case of discovery; thus, to the very last, some will say, the
straightforward course was the one he was disinclined to take. But let
us rather believe that to tell you of his own unworthiness to your face
was an ordeal beyond his strength. In vain I represented to him the
anxiety and apprehensions which his absence must be exciting at home.
‘“I have no home,“ was his reply. “But think of your father!“ “I have
no father,“ was his miserable rejoinder. “But Margaret; have you no
pity for Margaret?“ “I cannot see her. I dare not see her,“ was his
pitiful cry. So I have come to you instead of him.’
Margaret answered nothing, She sat with the confession in her hand,
without sign or word, looking straight before her.
‘I must go now,’ continued her companion tenderly. ‘If I can be of any
use, if I can say anything for you; a word of forgiveness with your
farewell—he is but seventeen, remember—well, another time, perhaps.’
She had reached the door when Margaret called her back with a pitiful
cry.
‘Kiss me! kiss me!’
As their lips met, the touch of sympathy, like Moses’ wand, drew the
tears from that face of marble, whereby, even though she left no hope
and the bitter conviction of a wasted love behind her, the messenger of
pity knew that she had not come altogether in vain.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE FEET OF CLAY.
IT is a terrible thing to be left alone with one’s dead, and this might
in some sort be said to have been Margaret’s case when Mrs. Jordan had
departed. Her Willie had become as dead to her; all that was left of
him was the shameful record that lay upon the table before her. Never
more—save once—was she to see his face again in this life, nor did
she desire to do so. She would have shrunk from his hand had he offered
it to her, and the touch of his lips would have been contamination.
He had obtained her kisses as it were under false pretences, and she
flushed with shame when she thought of them. She did not conceal from
herself that his behaviour up to the very last had been in keeping with
his whole career. He should have come in person, whatever it had cost
him, and confessed his guilt, and not have left her a prey to unfounded
terrors. It was cowardly and base and selfish. Miserable as she had
been on his account an hour ago, she was now infinitely more wretched.
It was better to have thought him dead—and honest, than to know he
was alive and a cheat. ‘He is only seventeen, remember,’ had been Mrs.
Jordan’s words in appeal to her charity and pity, but they found no
response in Margaret’s bosom. ‘One can forgive anything at seventeen,’
was her reflection, ‘save hypocrisy and deceit.’ She forgave him as a
very charitable person might forgive a cardsharper; there was no malice
nor hatred in her heart against him, but she could never take him to
her heart again.
Was it possible, she wondered, that he could have been always base?
When he had made that passionate protestation in Anne Hathaway’s
garden, for example, and besought her only to keep her heart free for
him for a little time, to give him a chance of proving himself worthy
of her; had he had this hateful plan of fraud and falsehood in his mind
even then? If he was not to be believed _then_, if what he said then
was not the utterance of genuine love and honesty, what word of man was
to be credited? And if he was honest then, when did he begin to lie?
It had been her intention not to read this hateful paper; to commit it
to the flames; but a sort of terrible curiosity now urged her to peruse
it. She had no expectation of finding in it any mitigation of her lost
lover’s conduct; any plea for pardon or even for pity. She had no wish
to hear what he had to say for himself; only a certain morbid interest
in it.
Yet as she opened the manuscript and her eyes fell on the well-known
handwriting, they filled with unbidden tears. Great heavens! how
she had believed in him, how she had loved him! Nay, how she had
sympathised unwittingly with his very frauds, and longed and prayed
for their success. _Prayed_ for it—the thought of this especially
appalled her. She found herself, for the first time, face to face
with the mystery of life; with the difficulties of spiritual things.
It is strange enough (what happens often enough), that we should fall
on our knees and implore the divine assistance to avert misfortunes
from our dear ones that (if we did but know) have already happened; but
that we should implore it (if we did but know) on behalf of falsehood,
fraud—with the intent to prosper wickedness! This man, among his other
villanies, almost made her doubt of the goodness of God!
The manuscript was voluminous. It was written in the form of a diary,
but interspersed with reflections and protestations.
‘I protest,’ it began, ‘that I had no premeditated design or the
idea of any continued course of duplicity when my first error—the
production of the Hemynge note of hand—was committed.’
‘He calls it “an error,”’ thought Margaret with a moan, and indeed the
opening remark was the keynote of the whole composition, significant
of all that was to come. He had been weak, it avowed, but never
wicked; the victim not so much of temptation, but of overwhelming
circumstances. ‘You know, Margaret——’
This unexpected personal appeal came upon her like a thunderclap; it
was as though in that solitary room and in that solemn hour when night
and morning were about to meet, his very voice had addressed her. ‘You
know, Margaret, what sort of relations existed at that time between Mr.
Erin and myself: how, though he permitted me to pass as his son, he
was far from having any paternal feelings towards me; that he had no
sympathy with my tastes, no interest in my doings, and that he grudged
me the cost of my very maintenance. Was it so very reprehensible that,
having attempted in vain to gain his affection by the usual road to a
father’s heart, by diligence and duty, that I looked about me for some
other way? Knowing his passion for any reliques of Shakespeare, it
struck me that I might conciliate him by affecting to discover that of
which he was always in search. I do not seek to justify what I did, but
there was surely some extenuation for it.
‘To show you how little of settled purpose there was in the matter,
I took that note of hand, before presentation to your uncle, to Mr.
Lavine, the bookseller, in New Inn Passage, and showed him the document
for his opinion. He said it seemed to him to have been written a good
many years ago (taking for granted that it was an imitation), but that
the ink was not what it should be. He told me that he could give me
a mixture much more like old ink if it was my humour to produce the
semblance of antiquity, and immediately mixed together in a bottle
three different liquids used by book-binders in marbling covers, and
this I always henceforth used. I have applied to him again and again
for more ink: a circumstance I mention not only to show the simplicity
of the means employed in these so-called forgeries of mine, but also
the everyday risks I ran of discovery. Do you think I could have
endured such a position, had I been merely actuated by the motive I
have mentioned? Could human nature have borne it? No, Margaret, I was
sustained by a far higher ambition, for a man may strive for a reward
unworthily, and even though he is aware that he does not deserve it.’
The calmness of this reasoning appalled Margaret even more by its
speciousness than by its falseness. Her instinct, though she knew
nothing of these abstract matters, told her that such philosophy was
rotten at the core.
‘The imitation of that note of hand was a false step I admit,’
continued the writer, ‘but it succeeded beyond my most sanguine
expectations. It altered my relations with Mr. Erin entirely, which of
itself encouraged me to new deceptions; but above all it became a basis
on which to build my hopes of your becoming my wife. Hitherto I had
loved you, Margaret, passionately, devotedly indeed, but with little
hopes of ever winning you. When I obtained that promise from your dear
lips in the garden at Shottery, it was not merely with the selfish
intention of excluding for a few months from your heart the rival whom
I feared; I believed, as I still believe, that my talents were of a
high order, and I thought that at no distant date they would meet
with public recognition; that some of that praise, in short, which I
have gained under false pretences would have been accorded to my own
legitimate efforts. The time during which you promised to keep yourself
free for me, however, was now drawing to a close, and I felt that I had
not advanced a single step on the road to either fame or fortune. I was
madly in love with you. I felt that you were slipping out of the reach
of my arms, and the terrible temptation suggested itself to secure you
by the means that had already gained me so much in so unlooked-for
a manner. If I could only make myself necessary to your uncle by
ministering to his ruling passion, perhaps he would give his consent
(which otherwise I well knew could never be obtained) to our immediate
union. Not greed, I swear it, no, nor even the desire of recognition
(though only as it were by proxy) for my genius, were my inducements to
persevere in my course—
Love only was my call,
And if I lost thy love, I lost my all.’
It was terrible to Margaret to read such words; they almost made her
feel as though she had been a confederate in the delinquencies of
this unhappy boy. Terrible, too, was the appearance, under dates, of
his particular acts of forgery, each set down in a matter-of-fact and
methodical manner, and concerning which the total absence of penitence
and self-reprobation was less painful to her than the fallacious
self-justification in which he had indulged elsewhere.
‘Nov. 2nd.—Love-letter and verses to Anne Hathaway. Five stanzas and
a braid of hair. Hair a _gage d’amour_ from a young playmate; the silk
that bound it had attached the seals to some old deed. It was thickly
woven and twisted in some peculiar manner, which I judged would suggest
antiquity.
‘Nov. 7th.—Playhouse receipts. String for them, some worsted thread
taken out of some old tapestry in the waiting-room of the House of
Lords, where I went to hear his Majesty’s speech with Mr. Erin.
‘Dec. 2nd.—The Profession of Faith. My most ambitious performance
(except the play). I solemnly affirm that but for the praises bestowed
upon my good fortune (as it was held) on the previous occasions, I
should have hesitated to compose this document. On the other hand,
you know, Margaret, how earnestly desirous Mr. Erin always was that
Shakespeare should be proved to have been a Protestant; if I could
please him in this I thought that my way to his heart would be made
easy indeed. Moreover, I had myself the most rooted objection to
anything like bigotry or superstition. In penning the Profession I
formed the twelve letters contained in the Christian and surname of
Shakespeare as much as possible to resemble those in his original
autographs, but as for the rest I was only careful to produce as many
doubleyous and esses as possible. It was a most simple performance,
and executed with so little prudence that (as you remember) the word
“leffee“ was introduced instead of “leafless.” Nor did I take much
more trouble with the composition itself. When, therefore, I heard Dr.
Warton pronounce such an eulogium upon it—”Sir, we have many fine
things in our Church Service, and our Litany abounds with beauties;
but here, sir, is a man who has distanced us all”—it is hardly to be
wondered at that I was intoxicated with so unexpected a success. It
corroborated very strongly the high estimation in which I had always
held my talents, and I resolved, since the world would not recognise
them in my proper person, to compel it to acknowledge them under
another name. If I was not so great as Shakespeare—and indeed I have
sometimes believed myself to be so—I had at all events a soul akin to
him.’
The inordinate and monstrous vanity of this remark did not escape
Margaret’s notice, but it did not give her the pain that his other
reflections had done; it even afforded some palliation of his
deplorable conduct. The approbation of so many learned men, deceived
by a great name, had been evidently taken by him as an involuntary
recognition of his own genius, and in a manner turned his head. She
tried to persuade herself that he henceforth at least became in some
degree irresponsible for his own actions.
‘It was about this time,’ the confession continued, ‘that I was almost
ruined by the treachery and malignity of Reginald Talbot, for it was
he, you remember, who induced Mr. Albany Wallis to confront me with
a genuine signature of John Hemynge. I look upon that as the most
dangerous peril I had yet encountered, and, at the same time, the
cause of my greatest triumph. It seemed incredible, and no wonder,
that I should have produced within the space of one hour and a quarter
(including the time spent in going and coming, as was supposed, to the
Temple, but in reality to my own rooms at the New Inn), a facsimile
of the other John Hemynge’s handwriting, unless it had been a genuine
document. By that time I had become an adept in imitation, and could
also retain in my recollection the form of letters in any autograph
which I had once beheld. I brought back a deed sufficiently similar
to the original to set all Mr. Wallis’s doubts at rest. It did not,
however, satisfy my own mind, and that very evening I executed another
deed more carefully, which I substituted for the former one, and which
stood the test of all future examinations. From that moment indeed,
save those who had been my enemies from the first, and who probably
never would have believed in the Shakespeare manuscripts, even though
they had been really genuine, I had no serious opponent, with one
exception, and for some reason or another of his own, he has never
shown himself antagonistic to me.’
There was much more of it; the whole composition of the ‘Vortigern’
was described, with Talbot’s connection with it, just as it had been
narrated by Mrs. Jordan. But what chiefly engaged Margaret’s thoughts,
and caused her to refer to it again and again, was that allusion of
William Henry’s to that one person who, not belonging to the Malone
faction, had all along discredited his statements, though, ‘for some
reason or another of his own, he had not shown himself antagonistic.’
This was certainly not Talbot, who had shown himself antagonistic
enough, nor was it evidently any confidant of the unhappy boy’s.
It could, therefore, only have been Frank Dennis; he had, she well
remembered, always kept silence when the question of the manuscripts
was mentioned, and had even incurred Mr. Erin’s indignation by doing
so. But his nature was so frank and open that she could not understand
how he could have tacitly countenanced such a fraud had he been really
convinced that it was being enacted. It was curious, considering
the great distress and perturbation of her mind, that a matter so
comparatively small should have thus intruded itself; but it did so.
Otherwise, as may well be imagined, her thoughts had bitter food
enough provided for them. That whole night long Margaret never sought
her couch. The revelation of the worthlessness of her lover, made by
his own hand, and, what was worse, made in no spirit of penitence
or remorse, put sleep far from her eyes, and filled her soul with
wretchedness. If the thought that things might have been worse can
afford consolation, that indeed she had, for William Henry might have
married her. If the play had been successful, and if Reginald Talbot
had held his tongue, and indeed if he had not held it—for she would
never have disbelieved in her Willie had he not torn the mask from his
face with his own hand—she might have become William Henry’s wife! The
very idea of it chilled her blood. Bound to a liar, a cheat, a forger,
by an indissoluble bond for life! Vowed to love, revere, and honour a
man the baseness of whose nature she would have been certain to have
discovered sooner or later, but in any case too late! She had been
saved from that at least; and yet how terrible was the blow that had
been inflicted upon her!
Sad it is to be left alone with our dead, how much sadder to be left
alone, after they have died, with the revelation of their baseness,
to find our love has been wasted on an unworthy object, our reverence
paid to a false god. In Margaret’s case matters were still worse, for
she could not even keep the revelation to herself; she had not the
miserable satisfaction that some bereaved ones have when they chance
upon the proof of a once loved one’s shame, of concealing it. It was
necessary that she should tell Mr. Erin, and in revealing the fraud of
which he had been the victim, what misery was she about to inflict upon
him! How the whole fabric of the old man’s pride would be shattered to
the dust, and how triumphantly would his enemies trample upon it.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
BREAKING IT.
AS Margaret and her uncle sat at breakfast the next morning—later than
usual, as was their wont on Sundays—scarce a word was interchanged
between them. Her pale face and haggard eyes evoked no remark from him,
who, indeed, himself looked pale and worn enough. If he had spoken upon
the subject of the play it might have been made easier to her to tell
him her dreadful tidings. But as it was, she felt herself unequal to
the task; she could not break in upon his gloomy thoughts with such
black news. She almost hoped, from his set lips and knitted brow, that
he suspected something of the truth; otherwise surely, surely, she
thought, he would express some anxiety concerning the continued absence
of William Henry.
She was, however, mistaken. Where affection is not concerned, even the
catastrophes that happen to others (and much less the apprehensions of
them) do not concern us so much as our own material interests.
After a mere pretence of a meal, the antiquary produced pen and ink,
and proceeded to make some calculations.
In the middle of them arrived Mr. Albany Wallis. His face was even
graver than usual, which his host, however, thought natural enough.
He took it for granted that he had come upon business connected with
the play, the failure of which was sufficient to account for his
depression; or his melancholy, perhaps, might have been put on with
a view of cheapening the terms that had been agreed upon with his
employers. But Margaret felt, the first instant she caught sight of the
visitor’s face, that he knew all, and did not need that dumb assurance
of human sympathy, the close, lingering pressure of his hand, to
convince her of it.
‘This is a bad job,’ said Mr. Erin, with a pretence of briskness. ‘I
suppose Sheridan will not give the play another chance?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Wallis decisively. ‘Almeyda is on the bill
for to-morrow.’
‘Then there is nothing for it but to settle, and have done with it. It
is quite as great a disappointment to me as to the management, I do
assure you, and eventually will be as great a loss. I have ordered the
paper for the publication of the play, and must needs go on with it. I
cannot break faith with the public.’
‘You are a man of honour, I know,’ said Mr. Wallis gently; ‘but for
that very reason you must not print this play.’
‘And why not, sir?’
‘Because it is spurious.’
‘That was not your opinion yesterday, Mr. Wallis, nor is it mine
to-day. What, because a few scoundrels have bespattered it, and done
their best to make it a failure, and succeeded, you call it spurious!’
‘Mr. Erin, I entreat you to be calm. I am as sorry for what has
happened as you can be, though not, perhaps’ (here he stole a tender
look at Margaret), ‘for the same reason.’
‘It needs no ghost from the grave to assure me of that much,’ replied
the antiquary derisively. ‘You have your own interests, and those
of your employers, to look to, and I have mine. You are here, as I
conclude, to pay me the three hundred pounds agreed upon for the play
and half the profits of the first night. The house was full enough, at
all events.’
‘Yes, it was a good house. Your share of the adventure is a hundred and
five pounds exactly. I have therefore to pay you four hundred and five
pounds.’
‘Very good; I cannot permit any deductions. If it was worth while to
discuss the matter, I might on my part reasonably make complaint of the
manner in which the play was acted. Kemble never gave it a fair chance.
At Covent Garden it would have had more justice done to it, and might
have met with a better fate.’
‘Then it would have met with a fate that it did not deserve, Mr. Erin.’
‘I do not wish to discuss the subject,’ said the antiquary curtly.
His reply would probably have been much less courteous but for the
production of the bills—Mr. Sheridan paid everything in bills—for the
amount in question. Bills and banknotes are the best ‘soft answers’ for
the turning away of wrath.
‘You misunderstand me altogether, Mr. Erin,’ continued the other with
dignity. ‘I had no intention, as you seem to have apprehended, of
disturbing your business arrangements with Mr. Sheridan, which may be
taken as concluded. I am sorry to say I am come here upon a much more
unpleasant errand. I am here at the request of your son, William Henry.’
‘Ah! I see,’ broke in the antiquary with bitterness; ‘his professional
adviser. He shall not have one penny more than the share—one-third of
the profits—that has been agreed upon.’
Then he turned to Margaret.
‘So you have told him my determination of last night, have you, and
he meets it by a declaration of war? Let him do as he pleases; but I
warn you, hussey, that if once you throw in your lot with his, I have
done with you. The money that is his by rights is not much, as you will
find, to keep house upon.’
Margaret strove to speak, but her tongue clove to the roof of her
mouth. It was shocking to see the old man’s rage, and none the less
so because it was so misdirected. If his passion was so aroused by
the mere opposition (as he supposed it to be) to his will, how would
he take the destruction of his hopes, and the knowledge that he had
been made a public laughing-stock? Whatever he had been to others,
he had been kind to her; and, abhorrent to her as was the crime of
ingratitude, she would have been willing to rest under its imputation
if by so doing she could have spared him the revelation of the truth.
‘Dear uncle,’ she presently murmured, with faltering voice, and laying
her little hand upon the old man’s arm, ‘you wrong me in your thoughts;
but that is nothing as compared with the wrong which has been done to
_you_. All between William Henry and me is over; for the rest of my
life I will endeavour to supply his place with you, and to remedy, as
far as in me lies, the evil that he has committed against you.’
‘What is it? What is she saying? I do not understand,’ inquired the
antiquary in trembling tones.
‘She is telling you the truth, sir,’ said Mr. Wallis impressively.
‘Heaven send you the strength to bear it!’
‘Dear uncle, you have been deceived,’ said Margaret with tender
gravity. ‘From first to last you have been deceived, as we all have
been. The Shakespeare manuscripts, of which you thought so much, are
forgeries—every one of them. William Henry has confessed it.’
‘You lie, you baggage, you lie!’ he cried with fury.
‘I wish I did,’ sighed Margaret bitterly.
He did not hear her; there was a singing in his ears that shut out all
other sounds.
‘So this is the last card you have to play, you two, is it? I am
to be frightened into compliance with your wishes; frightened into
annihilating common sense, and making two beggars happy! And you,
_you_, sir!’ he added, turning to Mr. Wallis; ‘you are not ashamed
to be a confederate in such a scheme as this? These two young fools
think it is for their sake, but I know better. You are one of Malone’s
creatures. Having already failed by fair means to disprove the
genuineness of these manuscripts, you have bought over this ungrateful
lad to your side. “If you will perjure yourself,“ you have said to him,
“and admit yourself to be a forger, we will see that you do not lose by
it; we will give you money—since the old man will not—upon which you
and yours can subsist together.“ Oh, liars and villains!’
It was pitiful to see and hear him. King Lear himself, deserted by his
own flesh and blood and invoking heaven’s vengeance on them, could
hardly have been a more dreadful spectacle.
‘Mr. Erin,’ said Mr. Wallis gravely, ‘if you see me in no way moved by
the infamous accusation you have made against me, and even restraining
a still more natural indignation at the dishonour your words have
cast upon that innocent girl, it is not because I do not feel it; it
is because I pity you from the bottom of my heart. That you have been
duped and fooled by the falsehood of this unhappy young man is only
what has happened to others, myself amongst them; but in your own case
the reflection must be infinitely more bitter, since he who wrought the
wrong was your own flesh and blood—one who has taken your bread, and
bitten the hand that fed him. If you do not believe us, Miss Margaret
has his own words for it in black and white.’
Here Margaret drew the confession from her bosom, and laid it on the
table beside her uncle; his fingers were grasping the arms of his
chair, and his face was fixed full upon his visitor in hate and rage.
‘If you will read it at your leisure,’ continued the lawyer gently,
‘you will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that, with one
exception, no one has had any hand in this shameful fraud save the
miserable lad himself; that your niece was as innocent of any knowledge
in it, from first to last, as you were; so much even those who have
been inclined to suspect you of any connivance in it must needs
acknowledge when they read that paper——’
Mr. Erin leaped from his chair, with an inarticulate cry of fury, and
seizing the confession before him, tore it from left to right, and from
right to left, into a hundred pieces.
‘Begone,’ he cried, ‘begone, both of you! Take her with you, I say,
lest I do her a mischief; take her to the Perjurer, send her to the
devil for all I care; but never let me see her false face again!’
With that he threw himself out of the room like one demented, and after
the door had clanged behind him they heard his heavy step at first at a
speed beyond his years, but presently with the tread of exhaustion and
old age, creep up to his own room.
‘Is it safe to leave him, think you?’ inquired Mr. Wallis in a hushed
voice. ‘Once convinced of the truth, his reflections must be terrible.
To be deceived by one’s own flesh and blood!’
‘William Henry is not his son,’ said Margaret quietly; in a time
of anguish and distress it is easy to speak of matters which under
ordinary circumstances we should shrink from mentioning.
‘Thank heaven for that!’ ejaculated the lawyer; ‘there is no fear,
then, that he will not get over it. What I took for paternal resentment
is partly, no doubt, exasperation at the exposure of his own credulity.
The only reason for your remaining here after his express commandment
to the contrary no longer therefore exists. Your doing so for the
present at least will only remind him of his misfortune and aggravate
its bitterness. I have a sister who keeps my house for me, and who will
welcome you as a mother; I entreat you to accept of her hospitality,
not only for your own sake, but for that of your uncle. Indeed, after
the threat he has made use of, I must insist upon your accompanying
me.’
‘I am not afraid for myself; I am sure he will never harm me. Indeed,
Mr. Wallis, I cannot leave him in his solitude and wretchedness.’
‘He will not be solitary, Miss Margaret. I will drop a hint to Mr.
Dennis, whose intention I know it is to call upon him this afternoon,
to take up his quarters with him for a while.’
At the mention of Frank Dennis’s name Margaret changed colour; the idea
of meeting him had suddenly become intolerable.
‘If your sister will give me an asylum for a few days,’ she hurriedly
replied, ‘I think I will take advantage of your most kind offer.’
In a few minutes she had made her preparations for departure; she
trembled lest there should come a knock at the front door while she
was yet in the house. She glanced apprehensively up the little street,
as she sallied forth on Mr. Wallis’s arm, lest some one with eyes that
spoke reproof, without intending it, should come across her before she
had gained the shelter of another roof. Some one whom she had never
estimated at his true worth, or treated as he deserved; some one she
had blamed for his coldness and incredulity, but who had suspected all
along—she was as convinced of it as of the fraud itself—the deception
which had been practised upon her, but whom the nobleness of a nature
that shrank from the exposure of a rival had kept silent.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
A COMFORTER.
THERE is nothing more astonishing in the history of mankind than the
high estimation in which credulity—under the form of belief—has been
held by all nations who have had the least claim to be civilised. Yet
the vast majority of the human race, mere slaves as they are to custom
and convention, imbibing their faith with their mother’s milk, and as
disinclined to change as a wheel that has found its rut, are absolutely
unable to be sceptical. This is probably why persecution has been so
lightly permitted—even among Christians, whose connivance at it is
otherwise unintelligible; those who suffered for their scepticism were
comparatively so few that their martyrdom was disregarded. It is an
immense recommendation to a creed, that the mere fact of accepting
it is accounted the highest virtue, since ninety-nine persons out of
a hundred who have been brought up in it, find no sort of difficulty
in fulfilling its chief obligation. With the same ease with which the
doctrines of Mahomet or of Buddha are embraced by their disciples,
had the story of the discovery of the Shakespeare manuscripts been
accepted by Mr. Samuel Erin. Nay, he had not been only a disciple but a
devotee. He had been looking forward all his life to some revelation of
a similar kind, and it had been manifested under circumstances that not
only corroborated his views, but flattered his _amour propre_. A member
of his own house had been the discoverer of the MSS., and he himself
their apostle and exponent. To confess, even to himself, that he had
been preaching a false faith, and been the dupe of a lying boy, seemed
impossible. The very idea of it was wormwood to him. Even the discovery
that Margaret had taken him at his word and left his roof did not at
first shake him. It even strengthened his suspicion that the whole
affair was a trick to catch his consent to her marriage with William
Henry. It was only done to frighten him into submission.
But as the solitary hours went by, this obstinate conviction began to
slacken; as his indignation grew and grew against the author of his
calamity, he began to admit that such a scoundrel might be capable
of anything, even sacrilege. It was the affront to the Immortal Bard
that he put first, and the offence to himself afterwards. Perhaps
William Henry was aware that he was not his son, but he was also aware
of the greatness of Shakespeare. And yet, what rankled more, was the
consciousness that his own intelligence had been trifled with—that he
had been made a fool of. It was a subject terrible to think about, and
worse to talk about, and yet he longed for sympathy; the solitude of
his own thoughts was intolerable to him.
In the afternoon, at the same time he had been wont to appear in the
days that seemed to be long past, Frank Dennis arrived. The antiquary
seized his hand with a warmth that he had never before exhibited,
though he had loved him well, and bade him be seated. The only thing
that had ever come between them was this man’s disinclination to accept
the very facts which he himself was beginning to doubt, and at first
this rendered the meeting embarrassing; on the other hand, when once
the ice was broken, it smoothed matters.
‘Have you heard the new story about William Henry?’ he asked in
hesitating tones.
‘Yes; I wish I could think of it as I did of the old story. It is true,
sir, every word of it.’
‘You think so?’ returned the antiquary with a forced smile of
incredulity.
‘I am sure of it,’ was the quiet reply.
There was a long silence.
‘What proof have you to substantiate your assertion?’
The irony of fate had caused this question to be asked in the very room
where proof used to be so constantly in view, and on the wall of which
the ‘certificate’ of the believers in the Shakespeare documents still
hung suspended.
It was met by another question. ‘Have you not seen his confession?’
Mr. Erin pointed to the carpet on which the fragments of the document
still remained. ‘It was placed in my hands,’ said he in a hoarse dry
voice, ‘but I never read it.’
‘No matter; it would only have given you pain. I have seen the unhappy
lad and heard the truth from his own lips.’
‘The truth!’ echoed the old man bitterly.
‘Yes, the truth at last. Here is a copy of an affidavit it is his
intention to make to-morrow morning before a magistrate. There are
things in it which one regrets; the tone of it is unsatisfactory. He
does not seem so penetrated with the sense of his misconduct as would
be becoming, but at all events he is careful to absolve everyone
from complicity in his crime, and particularly yourself. “I solemnly
declare,” he says, “that my father was totally unacquainted with the
whole affair, believing most firmly the papers to be productions of
Shakespeare.”’
The antiquary’s brow grew very dark. ‘I will never see that young
man’s face if I can help it,’ he said solemnly, ‘or speak one word to
him again, so help me Heaven!’
‘He does not expect it,’ answered the other quietly. ‘Henceforward he
will take his own way in the world. After “expressing regret for any
offence he may have given the world or any individual, trusting at the
same time they will deem the whole the act of a boy without any evil
intention, but hurried on by vanity and the praise of others,“ he goes
on to say, “Should I attempt any other play, or work of imagination,
I shall hope the public will lay aside all prejudice my conduct may
have deserved, and grant me their indulgence.” I suppose, therefore, he
intends to live by his pen.’
‘You mean to starve by it,’ answered the old man bitterly. The style
of the composition he had just heard struck him as fustian: he had
heard it before and expressed another opinion of it, but then the
circumstances were different. In Art and Literature the views of most
people are less affected by the work itself than by the name under
which it is presented to their notice.
There was a long pause. As in a reservoir, when once its contents have
begun to percolate drop by drop through the dam, the drops soon become
a stream, and the stream a torrent, and the dam is swept away, so it
was with Mr. Erin’s obstinacy. The dam was gone by this time, and the
bitter waters of conviction rolled in upon his mind like a flood. There
was no longer a dry place on it to afford a perch for the mocking-bird
of incredulity.
‘When was it, Frank,’ he inquired in an altered voice, ‘when you
yourself began to suspect this—this infamous deception?’
‘From the very first. You remember giving me the document with the
seals attached, that had the quintin upon them? It accidentally fell
from my hands, when a portion of the back of one of the seals broke
off, and disclosed the inside, which was made of new wax! The—the
forger—though he had contrived to cut the old seal without breaking,
found it had lost its moisture, so that the slip of parchment which
he had introduced into it could only be held by new wax. The next day
I perceived that the two parts had been bound together by black silk,
which, if anyone had given himself the trouble to untwist, would have
made him as wise as I.’
‘And yet you held your peace, Dennis,’ groaned the old man
reproachfully.
‘In the first place you would have disbelieved had the proofs of
imposture been twice as strong; and secondly—well, there were
other reasons into which it is not necessary now to enter. You are
quite aware that I never lent my countenance to the deception, and
believe me, Mr. Erin, if I could have saved you from your present
humiliation—with honour—I would have done so. It was not possible. I
am come here to-day to make what amends are in my power for the wrong
my silence may have done you. William Henry’s affidavit will acquit
you of all blame in this matter in the eyes of unprejudiced persons,
but you have your enemies, and many persons who were your friends,’ he
pointed to the certificate, ‘will now join their ranks. For some time,
at least, residence in London must needs be painful to you. I had taken
a cottage near Bath, intending for the present to dwell there; but
circumstances’ (here the colour came into the young man’s cheeks) ‘have
altered my intention. I shall now reside in town, and my little country
home is at your service; there, out of the reach of malicious tongues,
you may reside in peace and quiet as long as you think proper.’
For the first time throughout the interview something like satisfaction
came into the old man’s face. The notion of escaping from the flouts
and jeers of his acquaintances, and from their equally galling silence,
was very welcome to him.
‘I thank you,’ he said, ‘with all my heart, Dennis.’
‘There is only one condition, sir,’ hesitated the other. ‘I think the
proposition would be more acceptable to—to Miss Margaret—if she did
not know that she was accepting any hospitality of mine. You will be
so good as to conceal from her that fact.’
‘Yes, yes,’ assented the old man. He did not like to confess that
Margaret was elsewhere; that she had been driven from his roof by his
own insensate anger. His companion’s offer had touched him and turned
the current of his thoughts from their accustomed groove—himself and
his own affairs—into other channels. He recognised the patience and
forbearance of this young fellow, and the temptation to unmask a rival
which he had resisted and left to other hands to do. He was curious to
know the full extent to which this self-sacrifice would have extended.
‘But suppose matters had gone still further, Dennis? If the play had
been successful, and its genuineness acknowledged, and Margaret——?’
‘It was not possible,’ broke in the other, with a flush. ‘No one could
have read the “Vortigern”—I mean could have seen it acted,’ he added,
hurriedly, ‘and believed it to be a play of William Shakespeare’s. I
felt confident of that.’
‘Still, some of us were deceived,’ insisted the antiquary, with a
melancholy smile, ‘and why not more? Suppose the play had succeeded,
the contingency on which, as you know, my niece’s marriage with this
scoundrel depended, what would you have done then?’
‘I should have still kept silence. I only suspected, remember. I was
not quite sure. Moreover, Margaret herself might have been spared the
knowledge of the truth, and it was not for me to undeceive her.’
‘You would have permitted her, then, for a delicate scruple, to entrust
her happiness to a scoundrel?’
‘You press me hard, sir, though I do not say you have not a right to
do so,’ replied Dennis, greatly agitated. ‘I have thought of this
a thousand times; it has cost me days and nights of misery, Heaven
knows. But on the whole I have satisfied my conscience. When one
has lost all hope in a matter that has once concerned one to the
uttermost, one takes a clear view of it. The young man of whom you
speak has, doubtless, many faults; he is weak and vain, and greedy
of applause, however gained; he is to some extent unprincipled, he
has even committed a serious crime; but he is not altogether what you
have called him, a scoundrel. He is not unkind; under less adverse
circumstances than those in which, from the very first, he has been
placed, he would have shown himself a better man. An exceptional
temptation assailed him, and he succumbed to it. He would not
necessarily—or I have tried to think so—have made a bad husband.’
This speech was uttered with grave deliberation, and the manner
of it was most impressive; the speaker might have stood for some
personification of Justice, weighing his words with equal hand. Indeed
this man was more than just, he was magnanimous.
The antiquary could not withhold his admiration from his companion,
though with his sentiments he was wholly unable to sympathise.
‘You are throwing good feeling away, Frank Dennis,’ he said, ‘upon a
thankless cur. If you think to move me to compassion for him, you are
pleading to deaf ears. He is henceforth as a dead man to me and mine.’
‘You will act as you think right, no doubt,’ said the young man
quietly, ‘and I am only doing the same.’
He felt that whatever his own wrongs had been, the wrongs of his
companion were far greater. Cajoled, deceived, and stricken in years,
his reputation smirched, if not destroyed; humiliated in his own eyes,
degraded in those of others; if he did not do well to be angry, it
could hardly be said, being human, that he did ill.
Dennis gave the antiquary the address of his cottage, and the necessary
information for reaching the spot, and bade him adieu with much emotion.
‘But you will not desert us?’ said Mr. Erin imploringly. ‘If you
stand apart from us——’ His voice trembled and he left the sentence
unfinished. He not only, as the other guessed, meant to imply that
in such a case they would be friendless indeed, but that Dennis’s
withdrawal from his society would be construed as condemnation.
‘If you write to me to come,’ he answered, ‘if you are quite sure that
my presence will be acceptable to you and yours——’ and in his turn he
hesitated.
‘I understand,’ said the antiquary gently. ‘I shall think of others for
the future, as well as of myself, if only’ (here he gave a mournful
smile) ‘to distract my thoughts from what is painful.’
‘There is sunshine still behind the clouds,’ said Dennis, as he shook
hands.
‘True, true,’ replied the other; then added to himself with a deep sigh
as he closed the door after his visitor, ‘for _you_, but not for me.’
CHAPTER XXXV.
FAREWELL.
NOT a single night did Margaret sleep away from her uncle’s roof. He
went in person to Mr. Wallis’s house and claimed her. The apology he
had schooled himself to make to that gentleman was stayed upon the
threshold of his lips.
‘Your face, Mr. Erin, tells me all that I need and more than I wish to
hear,’ said the kindly lawyer. ‘Pray spare yourself and me.’
One unfortunate remark, however, Mr. Wallis made, for which he bitterly
blamed himself, though as it turned out, unnecessarily.
The antiquary paid him over that portion of money received from the
Theatre which was due to William Henry, and requested him to place it
in his hands.
‘I will do so,’ said the lawyer, ‘though, were I in his place, I had
rather starve than take it.’
Directly the words were uttered, he perceived their application to the
antiquary himself, who was quietly pocketing his own share of the wages
of iniquity.
But though we have the same skin, it is of various degrees of thickness.
‘He will take it,’ said the other drily, ‘and starve afterwards.’
Notwithstanding this deviation of Mr. Erin’s from the straight path, it
is well to state here that Mr. Albany Wallis never consented—although
they were his friends and allies—with those who laid the sins of
William Henry upon his father’s shoulders. When Bishop Percy, on the
authority of the commentator Steevens, observed that the whole house
in Norfolk Street was ‘an elaborate workshop,’ Mr. Wallis contradicted
the statement point-blank; and when another traducer went the length
of including Margaret in the indictment by the assertion that a female
relative of Mr. Erin’s performed the more delicate work of the
(forged) autographs, he gave him the lie direct.
The storm, indeed, that burst upon the heads of the antiquary and his
belongings was terrible, and fortunate it was for them that they had
found an asylum afar off. Most of the ‘hailstones and coals of fire’
fell short of it; and those that reached them, through the malice of
enemies or the officiousness of good-natured friends, were fended off
from the old man by Margaret’s watchful care. Upon the whole, indeed,
it is doubtful whether those seemingly evil days were not good for her.
Her solicitude upon her uncle’s account prevented her from dwelling
over much upon her private grief, just as the heartbreak of the widower
is sometimes stayed by the cry of the children.
It was many a day, however, before she could look her own misfortune
in the face, and scrutinise its lineaments, for when we come to gauge
our sorrows it is a sign that the deep waters that have gone over
our soul have begun to shallow. Notwithstanding her horror of her
Willie’s crime, she could not forget what he had once been to her,
even though she was well aware, from a sure source, that matters were
not so with him. Mrs. Jordan had written to her, out of the fulness of
one of the kindest hearts that ever beat in woman’s breast, to allay
her apprehensions about him on material grounds. Though poor enough,
he was not in want, nor likely to be so. Without a word of ill-nature,
she had also contrived to make her understand that the boy was not
inconsolable; he was busy with his pen, and if his genius did not
soar, his conceit was upborne on lusty pinions. ‘All is Vanity,’ said
the preacher in disparagement of that attribute; yet he was an author
himself, and ought to have known the consolation of such a gift.
One of Mrs. Jordan’s letters enclosed a little note from William Henry,
which for months Margaret could not bring herself to read. She knew
that it required no reply, and must needs bruise the wound that had not
yet healed within her; so it lay in her desk like some mystic jewel
which its possessor keeps in her case because it brings ill-luck to the
wearer. But when, after long waiting, and without importunity, Frank
Dennis obtained permission to visit his own house, she felt it to be
her duty to read or burn that note. It was not a case of being off with
the old love before she was on with the new, so far as William Henry
was concerned, for she had long done with him; but she was conscious of
a certain tender curiosity, which, as circumstances were now turning
out, might become disloyalty to another, and therefore she resolved to
allay it.
She took the folded paper in her trembling hand, like one who takes
up earth to scatter on the coffin lid; it was the very last sight
she would ever have of aught belonging to him. There was a certain
solemnity about those farewell words of his, even though they could not
matter much. Perhaps they were not words of farewell; perhaps, in his
wild, boyish fashion, they were about to tell her that in spite of his
ruin and disgrace, he still loved her, and how, knowing that her heart
had once been his, he defied her to cast him out of it. That would be
cruel indeed, though it would not alter the course she had marked out
for herself. Would it not be better after all to burn the letter?
The next moment she had torn it open and read it. It was dated months
ago, within a week, indeed, of the discovery of his shame. ‘I have done
you a grievous wrong, Margaret; let me now do you one good service. It
is but a little word of advice, yet if you knew what it cost me to give
it, you would hold it of some value. Frank Dennis is worth a thousand
of me and loves you—I cannot bring myself to write with a truer love
than mine, for that is impossible—but with a love more worthy of you.
Marry him, Margaret, and forget me!’
It could not have mattered much, as has been said. The man was a
bankrupt; but still he had given her all he had to give, a quittance.
With Aunt Margaret’s fortunes, as apart from the misguided youth who in
so strange a manner had almost linked her lot with his, our story has
little to do. My own impression is that she was a happy wife; and it is
quite certain that Frank Dennis was the best of husbands. Mr. Erin did
not long survive his day of humiliation, though it was not, I think,
distress of mind that hastened his end so much (as often happens) as
the relinquishment of his old pursuits and favourite studies. When we
have ridden a hobby-horse all our lives, it is no wonder that when it
is suddenly taken from us we find that we have lost the use of our legs.
Some embers of his old taste for antiquities must still, indeed, have
glowed within him, for in those last days he wrote a ‘History of the
Inns of Court,’ with New Inn among them; but it is plain his heart was
not in it. Henceforth his favourite volume was a sealed book to him;
there were two names—once so frequent on his tongue—to which he never
alluded, William Henry Erin and William Shakespeare.
With respect to the former, Frank Dennis maintained a similar reticence
for no less than five-and-twenty years. At the expiration of that
time, Aunt Margaret received a certain letter, which she placed in her
husband’s hands without a word.
‘Poor fellow!’ was his remark when he had read it. ‘Well! we must, of
course, go up to town.’
William Henry had written from his sick bed to ask to see Margaret once
more before he died.
They had lived in the country ever since their marriage, but they set
out for London at once.
It was summer-time, the very month in which they had journeyed to
Stratford-on-Avon more than a quarter of a century ago, and they talked
of that time together without any reserve.
‘I think if it had not been for that visit to Bristol,’ said Frank
thoughtfully, ‘that none of this sad business would have happened; it
was Chatterton’s story that put it into his head.’ Margaret nodded
sorrowful assent. She remembered well how the unhappy lad had defended
his prototype’s conduct.
‘It was a miserable crime,’ she said, ‘and miserably has he suffered
for it.’
‘That is all we need think of now, Margaret; of that, and of his
temptation,’ he added tenderly, ‘which, as I can witness, was
excessive.’
Here was, indeed, a husband to thank heaven for, and she knew it. And
yet—and yet—the tears were in her eyes upon another’s account. How
bright and handsome had her Willie looked as he took his seat by her
side at the inn table, on that other journey. How eager had been his
face when he had first pressed his suit in Anne Hathaway’s garden. In
the mist of memory the will-of-the-wisp looms large and twinkles like a
very star.
When they reached London, Margaret went alone to the lodging he had
indicated; a poor place enough, but with no signs of want about it
as she had feared, nor did the sick man lack due tendance. He was
very near his end; but his eyes—all that was left of him that she
recognised—flashed grateful recognition.
[Illustration: ’SO GOOD OF YOU, SO LIKE YOU, MARGARET,’ HE MURMURED.]
‘So good of you, so like you, Margaret,’ he murmured.
She sat by him a long time, overwhelmed with pity, but not seldom
distressed by his worldly talk. The ruling passion was strong in death.
He spoke of his works—of which he had written many in his own name,
and of the recognition which he felt assured they would one day meet
with; he even told her, with a smile of triumph, that Malone himself
had bidden one hundred and thirty guineas for the forged Shakespeare
documents. He seemed unable to take a just view of his own behaviour
in that transaction, though as to others, he was not only just but
generous.
‘Dear Margaret,’ were his last failing words to her: ‘I once gave you
a piece of advice, the only thing I had to give—which you did well
to follow. I have nothing but the thanks of a dying man to offer you
for your having come to bid me farewell, save what I have now to
say—which I well know will be news to you. I have been an unfortunate,
as well as a misguided, man; my talents have never been acknowledged,
and if I had had to live by my wits alone, I should have starved—yes,
starved!’ His sharp face darkened, and he raised his feeble hands as
if in protest against the judgment of the world. ‘There was one man,
Margaret, one among all these millions, and he the very last to whom
I should have looked for aid, who caused me to be sought out and gave
me help. I have lived more or less upon his bounty ever since. He has
never told you of it, Margaret; and now there is no need to tell you;
you who know him can guess who it is.’
Margaret’s tears fell fast; it was touching indeed to hear of her
husband’s goodness from the lips of his dying rival.
‘Frank is very good to me, dear Willie,’ she sobbed.
‘Yes, yes, I knew it would be so,’ he murmured; ‘honest and true. What
is the breath of the world to him who will not even let it know of
his good deeds. Yes, yes—kiss me, kiss me for the last time—worth a
thousand of me, Margaret, though he was never the Talk of the Town.’
THE END.
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