"Well," he said, "I have no doubt it is an excellent piece of literary work--a satire I suppose you would call it--and I must congratulate you upon its complete success. I don't mind running the theatre at a financial loss, but I have a distinct objection to being made a laughing stock of. I suppose this paper appeared about two hours ago, and already I can't move a yard without having to suffer the condolences of some sympathizing a.s.s. I shall close the theatre next week."

"That is naturally," Matravers said, "a matter of complete indifference to me. In the cause of art I should say that you will do well, unless you can select a play from a very different source. What I wrote of the performance last night, I wrote according to my convictions. You," he added, turning to Berenice, "will at least believe that, I am sure!"

"Most certainly I do," she a.s.sured him, holding out her hand. "Must you really go? You will come and see me again--very soon?"

He bowed over her fingers, and then their eyes met for a moment. She was very pale, but she looked at him bravely. He realized suddenly that Mr. Thornd.y.k.e's threat was a serious blow to her.

"I am very sorry," he said. "You will not bear me any ill will?"

"None!" she answered; "you may be sure of that!"

She walked with him to the open door, outside which the servant was waiting to show him downstairs.

"You will come and see me again--very soon?" she repeated.

"Yes," he answered simply, "if I may I shall come again! I will come as soon as you care to have me!"

CHAPTER V

Matravers pa.s.sed out into the street with a curious admixture of sensations in a mind usually so free from any confusion of sentiments or ideas. The few words which he had been compelled to exchange with Thornd.y.k.e had grated very much against his sense of what was seemly; he was on the whole both repelled and fascinated by the incidents of this visit of his. Yet as he walked leisurely homewards through the bright, crowded streets, he recognized the existence of that strange personal charm in Berenice of which so many people had written and spoken. He himself had become subject to it in some slight degree, not enough, indeed, to engross his mind, yet enough to prevent any feeling of disappointment at the result of his visit.

She was not an ordinary woman--she was not an ordinarily clever woman.

She did not belong to any type with which he was acquainted. She must for ever occupy a place of her own in his thoughts and in his estimation. It was a place very well defined, he told himself, and by no means within that inner circle of his brain and heart wherein lay the few things in life sweet and precious to him. The vague excitement of the early morning seemed to him now, as he moved calmly along the crowded, fashionable thoroughfare, a thing altogether unreal and unnatural. He had been in an emotional frame of mind, he told himself with a quiet smile, when the sight of those few lines in a handwriting then unknown had so curiously stirred him. Now that he had seen and spoken to her, her personality would recede to its proper proportions, the old philosophic calm which hung around him in his studious life like a mantle would have no further disturbance.

And then he suffered a rude shock! As he pa.s.sed the corner of a street, the perfume of Neapolitan violets came floating out from a florist's shop upon the warm sunlit air. Every fibre of his being quivered with a sudden emotion! The interior of that little room was before him, and a woman's eyes looked into his. He clenched his hands and walked swiftly on, with pale face and rigid lips, like a man oppressed by some acute physical pain.

There must be nothing of this for him! It was part of a world which was not his world--of which he must never even be a temporary denizen.

The thing pa.s.sed away! With studious care he fixed his mind upon trifles. There was a crease in his silk hat, clearly visible as he glanced at his reflection in a plate-gla.s.s window. He turned into Scott's, and waited whilst it was ironed. Then he walked homewards and spent the remainder of the day carefully revising a bundle of proofs which he found on his table fresh from the printer.

On the following morning he lunched at his club. Somehow, although he was in no sense of the word an unpopular man, it was a rare thing for any one to seek his company uninvited. The scholarly exclusiveness of his Oxford days had not been altogether brushed off in this contact with a larger and more spontaneous social life, and he figured in a world which would gladly have known more of him, as a man of courteous but severe reserve.

To-day he occupied his usual round table set in an alcove before a tall window. For a recluse, he always found a singular pleasure in watching the faces of the people in that broad living stream, little units in the wheeling cycle of humanity of which he too felt himself to be a part; but to-day his eyes were idle, and his sympathies obstructed. Although a p.r.o.nounced epicure in both food and drink, he pa.s.sed a new and delicate _entree_, and not only ordered the wrong claret, but drank it without a grimace. The world of his sensations had been rudely disturbed. For the moment his sense of proportions was at fault, and before luncheon was over it received a further shock. A handsomely appointed drag rattled past the club on its way into Piccadilly. The woman who occupied the front seat turned to look at the window as they pa.s.sed, with some evident curiosity--and their eyes met. Matravers set down the gla.s.s, which he had been in the act of raising to his lips, untasted.

"Berenice and her Father Confessor!" he heard some one remark lightly from the next table. "Pity some one can't teach Thornd.y.k.e how to drive! He's a disgrace to the Four-in-hand!"

It was Berenice! The sight of her in such intimate a.s.sociation with a man utterly distasteful to him was one before which he winced and suffered. He was aware of a new and altogether undesired experience.

To rid himself of it with all possible speed, he finished his lunch abruptly, and lighting a cigarette, started back to his rooms.

On the way he came face to face with Ellison, and the two men stood together upon the pavement for a moment or two.

"I am not quite sure," Ellison remarked with a little grimace, "whether I want to speak to you or not! What on earth has kindled the destructive spirit in you to such an extent? Every one is talking of your attack upon the New Theatre!"

"I was sent," Matravers answered, "with a free hand to write an honest criticism--and I did it. Istein's work may have some merit, but it is unclean work. It is not fit for the English stage."

"It is exceedingly unlikely," Ellison remarked, "that the English stage will know him any more! No play could survive such an onslaught as yours. I hear that Thornd.y.k.e is going to close the theatre."

"If it was opened," Matravers said, "for the purpose of presenting such work as this latest production, the sooner it is closed the better."

Ellison shrugged his shoulders.

"It is a large subject," he said, "and I am not sure that we are of one mind. We will not discuss it. At any rate, I am very sorry for Berenice!"

"I do not think," Matravers said in measured tones, "that you need be sorry for her. With her gifts she will scarcely remain long without an engagement. I trust that she may secure one which will not involve the prost.i.tution of her talent." Ellison laughed shortly. He had an immense admiration for Matravers, but just at present he was a little out of temper with him.

"You admit her talent, then?" he remarked. "I am glad of that!"

"I am not sure," Matravers said, "that talent is the proper word to use. One might almost call it genius."

Ellison was considerably mollified.

"I am glad to hear you say so," he declared. "At the same time I am afraid her position will be rather an awkward one. She will lose some money by the closing of the theatre, and I don't exactly see what London house is open for her just at present. These actor-managers are all so clannish, and they have their own women."

"I am sorry," Matravers said thoughtfully; "at the same time I cannot believe that she will remain very long undiscovered! Good afternoon!

I am forgetting that I have some writing to do."

Matravers walked slowly back to his rooms, filled with a new and fascinating idea which Ellison's words had suddenly suggested to him.

If it was true that his pen had done her this ill turn, did he not owe her some reparation? It would be a very pleasant way to pay his debt and a very simple one. By the time he had reached his destination the idea had taken definite hold of him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: At half-past four his servant brought in a small tea-equipage]

For several hours he worked at the revision of a certain ma.n.u.script, polishing and remodelling with infinite care and pains. Not even content with the correct and tasteful arrangement of his sentences, he read them over to himself aloud, lest by any chance there should have crept into them some trick of alliteration, or juxtaposition of words not entirely musical. In his work he gained, or seemed to gain, a complete absorption. The cloudy disquiet of the last few hours appeared to have pa.s.sed away,--to have been, indeed, only a fugitive and transitory thing.

At half-past four his servant brought in a small tea-equipage--a silver tray, with an old blue Worcester teapot and cup, and a quaintly cut gla.s.s cream-jug. He made his tea, and drank it with his pen still in his hand. He had scarcely turned back to his work, before the same servant re-entered carrying a frock coat, an immaculately brushed silk hat, and a fresh bunch of Neapolitan violets. For a moment Matravers hesitated; then he laid down his pen, changed his coat, and once more pa.s.sed out into the streets, more brilliant than ever now with the afternoon sunshine. He joined the throng of people leisurely making their way towards the Park!

CHAPTER VI

For nearly half an hour he sat in his usual place under the trees, watching with indifferent eyes the constant stream of carriages pa.s.sing along the drive. It seemed to him only a few hours since he had sat there before, almost in the same spot, a solitary figure in the cold, grey twilight, yet watching then, even as he was watching now, for that small victoria with its single occupant whose soft dark eyes had met his so often with a frank curiosity which she had never troubled to conceal. Something of that same perturbation of spirit which had driven him then out into the dawn-lit streets, was upon him once more, only with a very real and tangible difference. The grey half-lights, the ghostly shadows, and the faint wind sounding in the tree-tops like the rising and falling of a midnight sea upon some lonely sh.o.r.e, had given to his early morning dreams an indefiniteness which they could scarcely hope to possess now. He himself was a living unit of this gay and brilliant world, whose conversation and light laughter filled the sunlit air around him, whose skirts were brushing against his knees, and whose jargon fell upon his ears with a familiar and a kindly sound. There was no possibility here for such a wave of pa.s.sion,--he could call it nothing else,--as had swept through him, when he had first read that brief message from the woman, who had already become something of a disturbing element in his seemly life.

Yet under a calm exterior he was conscious of a distinct tremor of excitement when her carriage drew up within a few feet of him, and obeying her mute but smiling command, he rose and offered his hand as she stepped out on to the path.

"This," she remarked, resting her daintily gloved fingers for a moment in his, "is the beginning of a new order of things. Do you realize that only the day before yesterday we pa.s.sed one another here with a polite stare?"

"I remember it," he answered, "perfectly. Long may the new order last."

"But it is not going to last long--with me at any rate," she said, laughing. "Don't you know that I am almost ruined? Mr. Thornd.y.k.e is going to close the theatre. He says that we have been losing money every week. I shall have to sell my horses, and go and live in the suburbs."

"I hope," he said fervently, "that you will not find it so bad as that."

"Of course," she remarked, "you know that yours is the hand which has given us our death-blow. I have just read your notice. It is a brilliant piece of satirical writing, of course, but need you have been quite so severe? Don't you regret your handiwork a little?"

"I cannot," he answered deliberately. "On the contrary, I feel that I have done you a service. If you do not agree with me to-day, the time will certainly come when you will do so. You have a gift which delighted me: you are really an actress; you are one of very few."