Armorel of Lyonesse: A Romance of To-day

CHAPTER XII
TO MAKE THAT PROMISE SURE

There are few instincts and impulses of imperfect human nature more deeply rooted or more certain to act upon us than the desire to 'have it out' with some other human creature. Women are especially led or driven by this impulse, even among the less highly civilised to the tearing out of nose- and ear-rings. You may hear every day at all hours in every back street of every city the ladies having it out with each other. In fact there is a perpetual court of Common Pleas being held in these streets, without respite of holiday or truce, in which the folk have it out with each other, while friends – sympathetic friends – stand by and act as judges, jury, arbitrators, lawyers, and all. Things are reported, things are said, things are done, a personal explanation is absolutely necessary, before peace of mind can be restored, or the way to future action become clearly visible. The two parties must have it out.

In Armorel's case she found that before doing anything she must see that member of the conspiracy – if, indeed, there was a conspiracy – who was her own friend: she must see Roland. She must know exactly what it meant, if only to find out how it could be stopped. In plain words, she must have it out. Those who obey a natural impulse generally believe that they are acting by deliberate choice. Thus the doctrine of free will came to be invented: and thus Armorel, when she took a cab to the other studio, had no idea but that she was acting the most original part ever devised for any comedy.

As before, she found the artist in his dingy back room, alone. But the picture was advancing. When she saw it, a fortnight before, it was little more than the ghost of a rock with a spectral sea and a shadowy girl beside the sea. Now, it was advanced so far that one could see the beginnings of a fine painting in it.

Roland stepped forward and greeted his old friend. Why – he was already transformed. What had he done to himself? The black bar was gone from his forehead: his eyes were bright: his cheeks had got something of their old colour: his hair was trimmed, and his dress, as well as his manner, showed a return to self-respect.

'What happy thought brings you here again, Armorel?' he asked, with the familiarity of an old friend.

'I came to see you at work. Last time I came only to see you. Is it permitted?'

'Behold me! I am at work. See my picture – all there is of it.'

Armorel looked at it long and carefully. Then she murmured unintelligibly, 'Yes, of course. But there never could have been any doubt.' She turned to the artist a face full of encouragement. 'What did I prophesy for you, Roland? That you should be a great painter? Well, my prophecy will come true.'

'I hope, but I fear. I am beginning the world again.'

'Not quite. Because you have never ceased to work. Your hand is firmer and your eye is truer now than it was four years ago, when you – ceased to exhibit. But you have never ceased to work. So that you go back to the world with better things.'

'They refused to buy my things before.'

'They will not refuse now. Nay, I am certain. Don't think of money, my old friend: you must not – you shall not think of money. Think of nothing but your work – and your name. What ought to be done to a man who should forget his name? He deserves to be deprived of his genius, and to be cast out among the stupid. But you, Roland, you were always keen for distinction – were you not?'

He made no reply.

'How well I know the place,' she said, standing before the picture. 'It is the narrow channel between Round Island and Camber Rock. Oh! the dear, terrible place. When you and I were there, you remember, Roland, the water was smooth and the sea-birds were flying quietly. I have seen them driven by the wind off the island and beating up against it like a sailing ship. But in September there are no puffins. And I have seen the water racing and roaring through the channel, dashing up the black sides of the rocks – while we lay off, afraid to venture near. It was low tide when you made your sketch. I remember the long, yellow fringing sea-weed hanging from the rock six feet deep. And there is your girl sitting in the boat. Oh! I remember her very well. What a happy time she had while you were with her, Roland! You were the very first person to show her something of the outer world. It seemed, when you were gone, as if you had taken that girl and planted her on a high rock so that she could see right across the water to the world of men and Art. You always keep this girl in your pictures?'

'Always in these pictures of coast and rock.'

'Roland, I want you to make a change. Do not paint the girl of sixteen in this picture. Let me be your model instead. Put me into the picture. It is my fancy. Will you let me sit for you again?'

'Surely, Armorel, if I may. It will be – oh, but you cannot – you must not come to this den of a place.'

'Indeed, I think it is not a nice place at all. But I shall stipulate that you take another and a more decent studio immediately. Will you do this?'

'I will do anything – anything – that you command.'

'You know what I want. The return of my old friend. He is on his way back already.'

'I know – I know. But whether he ever can come back again I know not. A shade or spectre of him, perhaps, or himself, besmirched and smudged, Armorel – dragged through the mud.'

'No. He shall come back – himself – in spotless robes. Now you shall take a studio, and I will come and sit to you. I may bring my little friend, Effie Wilmot, with me? That is agreed, then. You will go, Sir, this very morning and find a studio. Have you gone back to your old friends?'

'Not yet. I had very few friends. I shall go back to them when I have got work to show. Not before.'

'I think you should go back as soon as you have taken your new studio. It will be safer and better. You have been too much alone. And there is another thing – a very important thing – the other night you made me a promise. You tore up something that looked like a cheque. And you assured me that this meant nothing less than a return to the old paths.'

'When I tore up that accursed cheque, Armorel, I became a free man.'

'So I understood. But when one talks of free men one implies the existence of the master or owner of men who are not free. Have you signified to that master or owner your intention to be his bondman no longer?'

'No. I have not.'

'This man, Roland,' she laid her hand on his, 'tell me frankly, has he any hold upon you?'

'None.'

'Can he injure you in any way? Can he revenge himself upon you? Is there any old folly or past wickedness that he can bring up against you?'

'None. I have to begin the world again: that is the outside mischief.'

'All your pictures you have sold to this man, Roland, with me in every one?'

'Yes, all. Spare me, Armorel! With you in every one. Forgive me if you can!'

'I understand now, my poor friend, why you were so cast down and ashamed. What? You sold your genius – your holy, sacred genius – the spirit that is within you! You flung yourself away – your name, which is yourself – you became nothing, while this man pretends that the pictures – yours – were his! He puts his name to them, not your own – he shows them to his friends in the room that he calls his studio – he sends them to the exhibition as his own – and yet you have been able to live! Oh, how could you? – how could you? Oh! it was shameful – shameful – shameful! How could you, Roland? Oh, my master! – I have loaded you with honour – oh, how could you? – how could you?'

The vehemence of her indignation soon revived the old shame. Roland hung his head.

'How could I?' he repeated. 'Yes, say it again – ask the question a thousand times – how could I?'

'Forgive me, Roland! I have been thinking about it continually. It is a thing so dreadful, and yesterday something – an unexpected something – brought it back to my mind – and – and – made me understand more what it meant. And oh, Roland, how could you? I thought, before, that you had only idled and trifled away your time; but now I know. And again – again – again – how could you?'

'It is no excuse – but it is an explanation – I do not defend myself. Not the least in the world – but … Armorel, I was starving.'

'Starving?'

'I could not sell my pictures. No one wanted them. The dealers would give me nothing but a few shillings apiece for them. I was penniless, and I was in debt. A man who drops into London out of Australia has no circle of friends and cousins who will stand by him. I was alone. Perhaps I loved too well the luxurious life. I tried for employment on the magazines and papers, but without success. In truth, I knew not where to look for the next week's rent and the next week's meals. I was a Failure, and I was penniless. Do you ask more?'

'Then the man came – '

'He came – my name was worth nothing – he asked me to suppress it. My work – which no one would buy – he offered to buy for what seemed, in my poverty, substantial prices if I would let him call it his own. What was the bargain? A life of ease against the bare chance of a name with the certainty of hard times. I was so desperate that I accepted.'

'You accepted. Yes… But you might have given it up at any moment.'

'To be plunged back again into the penniless state. For the life of ease, mark you, brought no ease but a bare subsistence. Only quite lately, terrified by the success of the last picture, my employer has offered to give me two thirds of all he gets. The cheque you saw me tear up and burn was the first considerable sum I have ever received. It is gone, and I am penniless again – '

'And now that you are penniless?'

'Now I shall pawn my watch and chain and everything else that I possess. I shall finish this picture, and I will sell it for what the dealers will give me for it. Too late, this year, for exhibition. And so … we shall see. If the worst comes I can carry a pair of boards up and down Piccadilly, opposite to the Royal Academy, and dream of the artistic life that once I hoped would be my own.'

'You will do better than that, Roland,' said Armorel, moved to tears. 'Oh! you will make a great name yet. But this man – don't tell me his name. Roland, promise me, please, not to tell me his name. I want you – just now – to think that it is your own secret – to yourself. If I should find it out, by accident, that would be – just now – my secret – to myself. This man – you have not yet broken with him?'

'Not yet.'

'Will you go to him and tell him that it is all over? Or will you write to him?'

'I thought that I would wait, and let him come to me.'

'I would not, if I were you. I would write and tell him at once, and plainly. Sit down, Roland, and write now – at once – without delay. Then you will feel happier.'

'I will do what you command me,' he replied meekly. He had, indeed, resolved with all his might and main that the rupture should be made; but, as yet, he had not made it.

'Get paper, then, and write.'

He obeyed, and sat down. 'What shall I say?' he asked.

'Write: "After four years of slavery, I mean to become a man once more. Our compact is over. You shall no longer put your name to my works; and I will no longer share in the infamy of this fraud. Find, if you can, some other starving painter, and buy him. I have torn up your cheque, and I am now at work on a picture which will be my own. If there is any awkwardness about the subject and the style, in connection with the name upon it, that awkwardness will be yours, not mine." So – will you read it aloud? I think,' said Armorel, 'that it will do. He will probably come here and bluster a little. He may even threaten. He may weep. You will – Roland – are you sure – you will be adamant?'

'I swear, Armorel! I will be true to my promise.'

Armorel heaved a sigh. Would he stand steadfast? He might have much to endure. Would he be able to endure hardness? It is only the very young man who can be happy in a garret and live contentedly on a crust. At twenty-six or twenty-seven, the age at which Roland had now arrived, one is no longer quite so young. The garret is dismal: the crust is insipid, unless there are solid grounds for hope. Yet he had the solid grounds of improved work – good work.

'Should you be afraid of him?' she asked.

'Afraid of him?' Roland laughed. 'Why, I never meet him but I curse him aloud. Afraid of him? No. I have never been afraid of anything but of becoming penniless. Poverty – destitution – is an awful spectre. And not only poverty but – I confess, with shame – '

'Oh! man of little faith' – she did not want to hear the end of that confession – 'you could not endure a single hour. You did this awful thing for want of money.'

'I did,' said Roland, meekly.

'The Way of Pleasure and the Way of Wealth. I remember – you told me long ago – they draw the young man by ropes. But not the girl. Why not the girl? I have never felt this strange yearning for riot and excess. In all the poetry, the novels, the pictures, and the plays the young men are always being dragged by ropes to the Way of Pleasure. Are men so different from women? What does it mean – this yearning? I cannot understand it. What is your Way of Pleasure that it should attract you so? Your poetry and your novels cannot explain it. I see feasting in the Way of Pleasure, drinking, singing, dancing, gambling, sitting up all night, and love-making. As for work, there is none. Why should the young man want to feast? It is like a City Alderman to be always thinking of banquets. Why should you want to drink wine perpetually? I suppose you do not actually get tipsy. If you can sing and like singing, you can sing over your work, I suppose. As for love-making' – she paused. The subject, where a young man and a maiden discuss it, has to be treated delicately.

'I have always supposed' – she added, with hesitation, for experience was lacking – 'that two people fall in love when they are fitted for each other. But in this, your wonderful Way of Pleasure, the poets write as if every man was always wanting to make love to every woman if she is pleasant to look at, and without troubling whether she is good or bad, wise or silly. Oh! every woman! any woman! there is neither dignity of manhood nor self-respect nor respect to woman in this folly.'

'You cannot understand any of it, Armorel,' said Roland. 'We ought all of us to be flogged from Newgate to Tyburn.'

'That would not make me understand. Flora, Chloe, Daphne, Amaryllis – they are all the same to the poet. A pretty girl seems all that he cares for. Can that be love?'

' – And back again,' said Roland.

'Still I should not understand. In the poetry I think that love-making comes first, and eating and drinking afterwards. As for love-making,' she spoke philosophically, as one in search of truth, 'as for love-making, I believe I could wait contentedly without it until I found exactly the one man I could love. But that I should take a delight in writing or singing songs about making love to every man who was a handsome fellow – any man – every man – oh! can one conceive such a thing? There is but one Way of Pleasure to such as you, Roland. If I could paint so good a picture as this is going to be, it would be a life-long joy. I should never, never, never tire of it. I should want no other pleasure – nothing better – than to work day after day, to work and study, to watch and observe, to feel the mastery of hand and eye. Oh! Roland – with this before you – with this' – she pointed to the picture – 'you sold your soul – you – you – you! – for feasting and drinking and – and – perhaps – '

'No, Armorel: no. Everything else if you like, but not love-making.'

CHAPTER XIII
THE DRAMATIST

If Mrs. Elstree was Armorel's official and authorised companion, her private unpaid companion was Effie Wilmot. The official companion was resident in the chambers, and was seen with her charge at the theatres and concerts. The private unpaid companion went about with her all day long, sat with her in her own room, knew what she thought, and talked with her of the things she loved to discuss. So that, though the representative of Order and Propriety had less to do, the unpaid attachée had a much more lively time. Fortunately, the official companion was best pleased when there was nothing to do. In those days, when London was as yet an unknown land to both of them, the girls went together to see things. Nobody knows what a great quantity of things there are to see in London when you once set yourself seriously to explore this great unknown continent. Captain Magalhaens himself, crossing the Pacific Ocean for the first time, did not experience a more interesting and exciting time than these two girls in their walks in and about the great town, new to both. They were as ravenous as American tourists beginning their European round. And, like them, they consulted their Baedeker, their Hare, and their Peter Cunningham. Pictures there are, all in the West-End; museums, with every kind of treasure; historic houses – alas! not many; libraries; art galleries of all kinds; cathedrals, churches, ancient and modern; old streets, whose paving-stones are inscribed in the closest print with the most wonderful recollections; old sites, broken fragments, even. Every morning the two girls wandered forth, sometimes not coming home until late in the afternoon. Then Effie went back to her lodging, and spent the evening working at her verses; while Armorel practised her violin, or read and dreamed away the time opposite her companion, who sat for the most part in silence, gazing into the firelight, lying back in her easy-chair beside the fire.

These ramblings belong to another book – the Book of the Things Left Out. I could show you, dear reader, many curious and interesting places visited by these two pilgrims, but one must not in this place write these down, because Armorel's story is not Armorel's history. Let us always be careful to distinguish. Besides, the events which have to be related destroyed, as you will see, the calm and tranquillity necessary for the proper enjoyment of such ramblings. First, this discovery concerning the pictures. Who can visit old churches and museums with a mind full of wrath and bitterness? So wrathful was Armorel in considering the impudence of the fraud she had discovered: so bitter was she in considering the cowardice of her old hero: that she even failed to observe the unmistakable signs of trouble which at this time showed themselves in her friend's face. If not a beautiful face, it was expressive. When the projecting forehead showed a thick black line: when the deep-set eyes were ringed with dark circles: when the pale cheeks grew paler and more hollow: and when the girl, who was generally so bright and animated, became silent and distraite, something was wrong.

'What is it, Effie?' Armorel asked, waking up. 'I have asked you three questions, and have received no answer. And you are looking ill. Has anything gone wrong?'

'Oh!' cried Effie, 'it is horrid! You are in troubles of your own, and you want me to add to them by telling you about mine.'

'I am in trouble, dear. And it makes me selfish and blind. You know partly what it is about. It is about the Life that has gone wrong. I have found out why and how. But I can never tell you or anybody. Never mind. Tell me about yourself.'

'It is more about my brother than myself. You know that Archie has been writing a play?'

'Yes. You write verses which you have never shown me; and your brother writes plays. I shall see both some day, perhaps.'

'Whenever you like. But Archie has now finished his play.'

'Yes?'

'That means to him more than I can possibly tell you. He has been living for that play, and for nothing else. It has filled his brain day and night. Never was so much trouble given to a play before, I am sure. It is himself.'

'I understand.'

'Well – then – you will understand also what he feels when he has been told that his play is utterly worthless.'

'Who told him that?'

'A great authority – a writer of great reputation – the only living writer whom we have ever known.'

'Well – but – Effie, if a great authority says this, it is frightful.'

'It would be, but for one thing, which you shall hear afterwards. However, he did confess that some of the situations were fine. But the dialogue, he said, was unfitted for the stage, and no manager would so much as look at the play.'

'Poor Archie! What a dreadful blow! What does he say?'

'He is utterly cast down. He sits at home and broods. Sometimes he swears that he will tear up the thing and throw it into the fire; sometimes he recovers a little of his old confidence in it. He will not eat anything, and he does not sleep; and I can find nothing to say that will comfort him. If I knew anyone who would give him another opinion – the play cannot be so bad. Armorel, will you read the play?'

'But, my dear, I am no critic. What would be the good of my reading it?'

'I would rather have your criticism than' – she hesitated – 'than anybody's. Because you can feel – and you have the artist's soul; and everybody has not – though he may paint such beautiful pictures,' she added rather obscurely.

'Well, I will read the play, or hear him read it, if you think it will do him any good, Effie. I will go with you at once.'

'Oh! will you, really? Archie will be shy at first. The last criticism caused him so much agony that he dreads another. But yours will be sympathetic, at least. You will understand what he meant, even if he has not succeeded – poor boy! – in putting on the stage what was in his heart. When he sees that you do feel for him, it will be different. Oh! Armorel!' – the tears rose to her eyes – 'you cannot know what that play has been to both of us. We have talked over every situation: we have rehearsed all the dialogue. I know it by heart, I think. I could recite the whole of it, straight through. We have cried over it, and laughed over it. I have dressed dolls for all the parts, and one of us made them act while the other read the play. And, after all, to be told that it is worthless! Oh! It is a shame! It is a shame! And it isn't worthless. It is a great, a beautiful play. It is full of tenderness, and of strength as well.'

'Let us go at once, Effie.'

'What a good thing it was for me that the Head of the Reading Room sent me to you! I little thought I was going to make such a friend' – she took Armorel's hand – 'We had no friends – yes, there was one, but he is no true friend. We have had no friends at all, and we thought to make our way without any.'

'You came to London to conquer the world – such a great giant of a world – you and your brother, Jack the Giant Killer.'

'Ah! But we had read, somewhere, that the world is a good-natured giant. He only asks to be amused. If you make him laugh or cry, and forget, somehow, his own troubles – the world is full of troubles – he will give in at once. Archie was going to make him laugh and cry; I was going to tickle him with pretty rhymes. But you may play for him, act for him, dance for him, paint for him, sing for him, make stories for him – anything that you will, and he will be subdued. That is what we read, and we kept on repeating this assurance to each other, but as yet we have not got very far. The great difficulty seems to make him look at you and listen to you.'

'My dear, you shall succeed.'

The young dramatist was sitting at his table, as melancholy as Keats might have been after the Quarterly Review's belabouring. He looked wretched: there was no pretence at anything else: it was unmitigated wretchedness. Despair sat upon his countenance, visible for all to see: his hair had not apparently been brushed, nor his collar changed, since the misery began: he seemed to have gone to bed in his clothes. Trouble does thus affect many men. It attacks even their clothes as well as their hair and their minds. The manuscript was lying on the table before him, but the pen was dry: he had no longer any heart to correct the worthless thing. It was the hour of his deepest dejection. The day before he had plucked up a little courage: perhaps the critic was wrong: to-day all was blackness.

'Here is Armorel, Archie!' cried Effie, with the assumption of cheerfulness.

'I have come to ask a favour,' said Armorel, taking the hand that was mechanically extended. 'I hear that your play is finished, and I am told that it is a beautiful play.'

'No – it isn't,' said the author.

'And that an unkind critic has said horrid and unkind things about it. And I want to read it, if I may. Oh! I am not a great critic, but, indeed, Archie, I have some feeling for Art and for things beautiful. May I read it?'

'The play is perfectly worthless,' he replied sternly, but with signs of softening. 'It is only waste of time to read it. Better throw it behind the fire!' He seized the manuscript as he spoke, but he did not throw it behind the fire.

'Is your critic a dramatist?'

'No. He has never written a play that I know of. But he is a great authority. Everybody would acknowledge that.'

'A critic who has never written a play may very easily make mistakes,' said Armorel. 'You have only to read the critiques of pictures in the papers written by men who cannot paint. They are full of mistakes.'

'This man would not make a mistake, would he, Effie?'

'Well, dear, I think he might, and besides, remember what he said at the conclusion.' Armorel sat down. 'Now,' she said, 'tell me first what the play is about, and then read it, or let Effie read it. I am sure she will read it a great deal better than you.'

He hesitated. He was ashamed to show his miserable work to a second critic. And yet he longed to have another opinion, because, when he came to think about it, he could not understand why the thing could be called worthless.

He yielded. He read, with faltering accents, the scenario which he had prepared with so much pride. Now it was like unrolling a canvas daubed for the scenery of Richardson's Show. He took no more pride in it.

'Oh!' cried Armorel, interrupting. 'This seems to me a very fine situation.'

'My critic said that some of the situations were fine.'

He went on to the end without further interruption.

'Now, Effie,' said Armorel, 'you will read it aloud while your brother plays it with his dolls. Then I am sure to catch the points.'

Archie sat up, and began to place his dolls while Effie read. He was so expert in manipulating his puppets that he made them actually represent the piece, changing the groups every moment, while Effie, dropping the manuscript, folded her arms and recited the play, watching Armorel's face.

This was quite another kind of critic. It was such a critic as the playwright loves when he sits in his box and watches the people in the house – a face which is easily moved to laughter or to tears, which catches the points and feels the story. There are thousands of such faces in every theatre every night. It is for them that the play is written, and not for the critic, who comes to show his superiority by picking out faults and watching for slips. For two hours, not pausing for the division of the acts, Effie went on, her soft voice rising and falling, the passion indicated but repressed; and Archie watched, and moved his groups, and the audience of one sat motionless but not unmoved.

'What?' she cried, springing to her feet and clasping her hands. It is easy for this fine gesture to become theatrical and unreal, but Armorel was never unreal. 'He dared to call this splendid play – this glorious play – oh, this beautiful, sweet, and noble play!' – here Archie's eyes began to fill, and his lips to quiver: he was but a young dramatist, and of praise he had as yet had none – 'he dared to call this worthless?'

'He said it was utterly worthless,' said Effie.

'He said,' Archie added, 'that the language was wholly unfitted for the stage. And then – then – after he'd said that, he offered to give me fifty pounds for it.'

'Fifty pounds for a play quite worthless?'

'On the condition that he was to bring it out himself if he pleased, under his own name.'

'Oh! but this is monstrous! Can there be,' asked Armorel, thinking of the pictures, 'two such men in London?'

'If I would let him call it his own! He wants to take my play – mine – to do what he likes with it – to bring it out as if it was his own! Never! Never! I would rather starve first.'

'What did you tell him?'

'He said that he would wait for an answer. I have sent him none as yet.'

'When you do,' said Armorel, 'let there be no hesitation or possibility of mistaking. Oh! If I could tell you a thing that I know!'

'I will put it quite plainly. Effie, am I the same man? I feel transformed. What a difference it makes only to think that, perhaps, after all one is not such a dreadful failure!' In fact, he looked transformed. The trouble had gone out of him – out of his face – out of his hair – out of his clothes – out of his attitude. Armorel even fancied that his limp, day-before-yesterday's collar had become white and starched again. That may have been mere fancy, but joy certainly produces very strange effects.

'I would have sent an answer before,' he said, 'but it is so unlucky for Effie. This great man – this critic – is the only editor who would ever take her verses. And now, of course, he will be offended, and will never take any more.'

'He shall not have any more,' said Effie, with red cheeks.

'Oh! But that would be horribly mean. Well, Archie, I will begin by taking advice. I know a dramatic critic – his name is Stephenson. I will ask him what you should do next, and I will ask him about your verses, Effie, too – those verses which you are always going to show me.'

'I tell her,' said her brother, 'that she will easily find another editor. You would say so too, if you were to see her verses. I am always telling her she ought to show them to you.'

The poet blushed. 'Some day, perhaps, when I am very courageous.'

'No – to-day.' Archie opened a drawer and took out a manuscript book bound in limp brown leather. 'I will read you one,' he said.