The Romances of Sandy McGrab/The Critic's Wife
Sandy McGrab, a young tailor, one day reciting his beloved Shakespeare, in the hills above his native Kirkhumphries, is overheard by a young actress, one of a company of obscure traveling players. She recognizes his genius, and announces herself as a fellow professional, Sandy's denial that he is an actor leads her to think that he is the “laird,” while he takes her for a famous actress who is expected in the neighborhood. When the truth finally comes out, it serves only to deepen their growing love. Sandy sells his shop to enable her to get to London to keep an engagement upon which her future depends, promising to meet her there to play Romeo to her Juliet. Then he starts after her on foot. She, meanwhile, makes a great success, but is pursued by the jealousy of her leading man, Rolf Derwent. Sandy arrives in time to frustrate a plot to deprive her of her engagement, and at the same time makes a chance for himself to appear with her.
V.—THE CRITIC'S WIFE
MISS MARY ELIOT bent over Sandy McGrab's chair, and kissed Sandy McGrab gently on the cheek.
“I suppose I oughtn't to,” she admitted, “but then I oughtn't to do such a lot of things, For instance, I oughtn't to be here in your flat with the chaperon outside in the car perfectly helpless and useless; and I certainly oughtn't to let you know how fond I am of you. I'm told it's the worst possible beginning to marriage. And we are to be married. You haven't forgotten, have you?”
Sandy McGrab referred to an appointment book.
“It's this day three months,” he announced solemnly.
“How wise of you to have made a note of it! When do you think we ought to start rehearsing?”
“Must we rehearse?”
“I think it extremely necessary. On the stage you may be a very excellent actor, Mr. McGrab, but in real life you are appalling. I know, when you walk up the aisle, you will look the most miserable of men.”
“Which surely shows that I can act anywhere. For,” said Sandy McGrab slowly and portentously, “I shall be feeling vurry happy.”
Mary Eliot laughed.
“That was really quite pretty, and most delicately expressed. As a reward, we will defer rehearsals for the present. Let me look at next week's program instead.” She bent forward and took the proofs out of his hand, holding them at a distance for a critical inspection. Then she read aloud:
- “The Avonia Theater. Tuesday, February first, Mr. Hadley presents 'Antony and Cleopatra.' Cleopatra—Miss Mary Eliot. Antony—Sandy McGrab
“Oh, my dear, how dreadful and incongruous it does sound! Why wouldn't you let yourself be called Reginald Vernon, or something pretty like that?”
“My name is Sandy McGrab,” was the firm answer. “I canna be called by anything else.”
“Dear me, and, when I'm married, shall I have to act Cleopatra as Mrs. Sandy McGrab?”
“You chose the name, ye maun stick to it,” said McGrab pleasantly.
“Well, that's too bad! Who could be fascinating and Mrs. Sandy McGrab at the same time?”
“You could.”
“Oh!”
She found no immediate retort, and a minute later the door opened, revealing a discreet and apologetic manservant.
“If you please, sir, the lady in the car wants to know if Miss Eliot will be coming soon. She says she has waited an hour, and it's getting cold. And there's a gentleman to see you, sir. He says he has an appointment.”
“Oh, yes; that's Meredith. You can show him up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Miss Eliot drew her furs over her shoulders
“I suppose I shall have to go. An hour is rather a long time to keep the poor, dear thing in a bitter east wind. Who is the visitor, Sandy McGrab?”
“Alec Meredith. Ye maun hae heard of him. He wrote grand plays once, but now he's tired out—finished. He gave me a play of his to read and pass on to Hadley.”
“I see.” She looked at him mockingly. “I suppose he thought if the public swallowed Sandy McGrab, Scotch accent and all, it would swallow anything. What's your verdict?”
He got up with a short sigh, and began to arrange his papers, with an absent-minded orderliness.
“It's a puir play—I canna tell him otherwise. But I'm' sorry. He has a wife. I think sometimes—they're no so far from starving. And if only he could hae a chance, a rest, he might do good work again.”
“Oh, Sandy!” She came quickly back and laid her hand on his arm. “Sandy, I didn't mean to laugh! It's all so sad. Can't you help them?”
“I canna make a bad play into a guid one, can I, princess?”
“No, I suppose not. Well, I mustn't keep you. And if I am caught here, I shan't have even a rag of a reputation left me. Good-by, dear.”
“Good-by, princess.”
But she was already too late. On the threshold, she stumbled against the visitor, who drew back with a muttered apology. He even waited until she had disappeared round a bend in the stairs before he entered. His action seemed less the result of interest than of an utter apathy. He carried himself like a man exhausted by weeks of overwork, his head bent, his shoulders rounded, his eyes—which must once have been brilliantly handsome—lackluster, and heavy with discontent. Yet he was still young. There was, indeed, nothing old about him save his clothes and the lines of almost savage bitterness that inclosed the corners of his mouth. He bowed to Sandy McGrab with a stiff courtesy.
“I hope I have not come at an inopportune moment, Mr. McGrab.”
“By no means. I was expecting you. My future wife, Miss Eliot, has just left me a message about—about next week's performance. Will ye no be seated?”
Alec Meredith accepted the proffered chair. He did not, apparently, observe his host's ingenuous blush of embarrassment, but sat with his hands clenched between his knees, staring sightlessly in front of him. Sandy McGrab took up his position on the other side of the table, and involuntarily turned over the pages of a bulky manuscript.
“It's about the play you've come?” he asked slowly.
Meredith nodded.
“Yes. Have you read it?”
“I finished it this morning.”
There was a moment's silence. Sandy McGrab looked quickly at his visitor, and their eyes met. Something like a spasm passed over the man's gaunt face, then he stiffened, throwing back the drooping shoulders with a movement of defiance.
“Well?” he asked.
“I canna give it on to Mr. Hadley.”
“Why not?”
“Because he wouldna read it unless I advised him to—and—I canna do that, either.”
“Why not?”
“Because it's a vurry bad play, Mr. Meredith.”
The visitor sat back, with a short laugh.
“I see. I expected as much. I'm immensely obliged to you for having bothered. I'm still more obliged to you for your frankness. You mean—it's no good, no good whatever?” Suddenly the cynical amusement passed from his manner, leaving a piteous, unguarded agony of appeal. “You see, it's life or death to me, Mr. McGrab. I don't mean to hide the fact. Every one knows I am on the rocks. It's no secret. Things have been going wrong with me for a long time, and this—this play is my last chance.” He pulled himself together with an effort. “Mr. McGrab, I know you are a great actor, and I believe you are an honest man. You've seen hard times yourself—you'll deal fairly with an unlucky devil. Tell me the honest truth—hasn't my play a chance?”
Sandy McGrab looked him squarely in the face.
“Why shouldn't I be honest with you?”
“I don't know. You must forgive me. I have so many enemies. Every man who has had a measure of success must be dogged down by the envy of others. And I was successful—once.” He glanced up quickly. “It's the same with you, Mr. McGrab. You have your enemies, like the rest of us. The public adores you, but there are men who'd be glad to tear you headlong from your high place. There's Rolf Derwent, for instance”
Sandy McGrab smiled a contemplative recollection.
“Mon, I think I settled with Rolf Derwent.”
“Yes, yes, no doubt. But, anyhow, he's a scamp no decent man would deal with. At the same time, I warn you”
“And I thank you for the warning. But it willna make the play a good one, Mr. Meredith.”
The tense look of eagerness died out of Meredith's eyes, his clenched hands relaxed.
“No, no, of course not. I was only explaining my own fears, as it were. One gets to suspect the best and most honest of men. Well, I accept your verdict, though it finishes me. It was, as I have said, my last hope.” He got up. “Good-by—and thank you.”
“Mr. Meredith, you wrote good plays once.”
“Yes, years ago. I was fresh and young, then. Now I am old—old in work, and worn out. And I'm married. That makes a difference. Literary men shouldn't marry. Women don't understand.” He laughed, with a note of his first angry cynicism. “Some of them don't understand even their own affairs. And they hamper one—God knows how they hamper one!”
Sandy McGrab smiled.
“Not all,” he said.
“Perhaps not. May you keep your illusions longer than I have kept mine. That is my best wish.”
He picked up his manuscript, and, with a curt bow, turned to the door. He ignored Sandy McGrab's outstretched hand. The bitterness of failure blinded him, and drove him from the house with a dull, reasonless hatred of all things gnawing at his brain. It was not Sandy McGrab whom he hated in that first moment, but himself, and his own tortured, exhausted brain, his own wasted energies.
As he stood on the curb of the narrow, unfashionable thoroughfare, he looked back on the brilliant days of the past, on an acclaiming, praising world; then on the hasty, improvident marriage, on the slow awakening, and the quicker dwindling of his overtaxed powers. It was a cruel panorama of memories, made the more bitter by the prosaic fact that he had neither breakfasted nor dined. For Joan Meredith could not even cook. She had once been pretty. Now she was not even that.
He stifled his desire to laugh again. He knew it to be an hysterical impulse, born of physical weakness. And suddenly he thought of Sandy McGrab, tall, straight-shouldered, with the free, splendid carriage of a man who has mastered life. In a vivid mental picture he saw himself, a kind of shadow of what had been; and the contrast was as bitter as gall. A biting east wind tore round the corner of the street, and cut through his thin, summer coat, which was his last decent article of apparel. It reminded him acutely of the room he had just left, with its carefully regulated warmth, its atmosphere of ease and refinement.
“Damn him!” Meredith muttered, with the sudden, unreasonable rage of envy.
And at that moment some one touched him on the shoulder. He turned. The man who stood beside him was almost as shabby as he himself. Possibly he had once been good looking, but poverty and ill fortune had played a curious trick with his boldly cut features. They had coarsened him, had loosened the skin under the rather full eyes, creating an unhealthy pouchiness, such as sometimes results from unbounded dissipation. For an instant Meredith stiffened, then shrugged his shoulders as if at some unspoken, involuntary protest.
“Derwent!” he said. “Where did you spring from? I hardly recognized you!”
The actor smiled satirically.
“I am not surprised. It's remarkable what the cut of a man's coat does for the eyesight of his friends. Well, for that matter, I should hardly have recognized you if I had not been on the look-out. Your wife told me that you would be in these parts.”
“My wife? Have you been home, then?”
“Yes, I ventured to visit you. I'm afraid I disturbed your charming wife in the midst of much weighty correspondence, but I was anxious to see you—on business. Would you have any objection to my accompanying you home?”
Meredith did not move. It was again an instinctive reluctance. There had been a time when he would not have been seen in Rolf Derwent's company. That time, when he had cared intensely for his self-respect, seemed far off, but enough of its influence was left to make him hesitate.
“Is it anything of importance?” he asked curtly.
Derwent did not answer. Instead he glanced at the manuscript that Meredith carried under his arm.
“Your new play?” he asked, in turn.
“Yes.”
“I'll make a guess. You've been offering it to our Scotch friend.”
“And if I have?”
“And he refused it.”
Meredith started, and involuntarily turned his face to his companion. “How did you know that?”
“I know your plays—and I know Mr. McGrab. You've never created a part that McGrab could act to save his life, and I don't suppose you've done so now. You don't think, my friend, that your play was judged by any other standard than that of its value to McGrab himself?”
“He is an honest man,” Meredith broke in.
“Do you think so?”
“If I did not think so” He stopped short, his mouth set in an ugly line, and Derwent smiled to himself.
“That sounds threatening. Well—I could tell you things. But not out here in the street. And I have other business to discuss. It concerns you—it concerns our respective futures—and, perhaps, the future of our honest Scotchman, May I”—he hesitated, and his smile widened—“may I accompany you home?”
Meredith glanced back at the windows of the house he had just left. Then he made an abrupt gesture, and the two men turned and walked side by side down the quiet street toward the noisy thoroughfare beyond,
II.
As they entered the little flat on the sixth story of a Bloomsbury “mansion,” it seemed to them that the place was deserted. There was not even a trace of the pungent aroma of cooking that hung in the atmosphere on the staircase. No lights were lit, and a kind of drear resignation seemed to stare down at them from the blank walls.
Meredith pushed open a door.
“Joan!” he called sharply. “Joan!”
Something stirred, and there was the click of an electric switch. The next moment the room was filled with light, by which the two men saw a woman who had sprung to her feet, and now stood gazing dazedly at them. Evidently she had been writing until the light had failed her, for the table was littered with papers. Or perhaps she had fallen asleep. She was as untidy, as down at the heels, as the comfortless room itself. Her fair hair hung over her small, tired-looking face, the lace at her collar was obviously torn, and the hand that she raised to brush aside a disordered strand of hair was ink-stained like a schoolboy's.
“I didn't know you had come in, Alec,” she stammered. “I wasn't expecting you so early. It's not supper time, is it?”
“Apparently not.” He glanced with cold significance at the empty table. “It's past seven o'clock, though.”
“Is it—as late as that? I—I'm so sorry. I was day dreaming. Shall I get you some tea?”
Alec Meredith glanced away from her.
“I should prefer something more substantial. Mr. Derwent, here, has come to talk business with me. Perhaps, in the meantime, you would be so good as to prepare a meal of sorts for us—if it is not too much trouble.”
His tone was elaborately sarcastic, and Derwent saw her wince. He saw, too, the first faint color die from her cheeks, leaving her white and childishly fragile looking. He made a movement of overcourteous protest.
“Mrs. Meredith must not disturb herself on my account,” he said suavely.
She shook her head, but made no answer, and slipped noiselessly from the room. Meredith followed her, closing the door after him, and, for an instant, husband and wife faced each other in the dimly lit hall. The man's features were hardened with bitterness, and involuntarily she made a little gesture, half protesting, half appealing.
“I'm sorry, Alec. I know how you hate to come home and find things—like that. But I was so tired—and—really and truly, I forgot.”
“You are always tired,” he retorted. “Heaven knows why! You never do anything, as far as I know. Well, I've grown accustomed to it all. There's only one thing I demand of you—not to try to look more like the wife of a failure than you can help. Spare me that humiliation, at least.”
“Alec” The tears sprang to her tired eyes, but he pushed her impatiently aside.
“There, for pity's sake, don't cry! You are always crying. Let me alone and try to get us something to eat”
“I can't”
“Why not?”
“There is nothing. I—I had no money. I was hoping you might bring something back. Oh, Alec, it's not all my fault” Her hands were clasped now in piteous despair, and her voice had broken. It had broken on a top note and had become a curiously aggravating plaint. “It's not all my fault,” she repeated helplessly.
“No, I dare say not. It's mine—for being tired out, used up. It's my fault for having married—recklessly, as I did. I didn't realize how little you could understand the needs and temperament of a man of my profession. It's been my fault right through. There's nothing for you to cry about.”
He turned away from her, but suddenly she blocked his path. The tears had dried on her cheeks.
“You mean”—she began breathlessly—“you mean you've made a mistake? I know you think I am foolish and stupid and useless. But if I had been clever—cleverer than you are—you'd have hated me, Alec.”
He stared at her, for the moment utterly dumfounded.
“I didn't ask for a clever wife,” he answered; then, with increased frigidity, “I asked for a companion, a loyal companion.”
“And wasn't I that—at the beginning?”
“While I was successful, you managed excellently,” he retorted.
Her hands dropped listlessly to her sides.
“That means—now—you don't care any more?”
“When you have given me proof of your affection, it will be time enough for us to talk of mine,” he answered. “For the present—do the best you can.”
He turned, and went back into the sitting room. Derwent had taken up his position by the empty hearth, and Meredith did not ask him to be seated. He himself stood upright by the empty table, his hands clenched in the effort to crush down the biting sense of humiliation.
“You see how things are,” he said. “You see the circumstances under which my inspiration is produced. I can't offer you any hospitality, Derwent. It appears that I haven't any to offer. If you have any business with me, let's get it over.”
Derwent nodded.
“I won't keep you long, and perhaps the circumstances, as you call them, will help me. We'll be quite frank with each other, Meredith. You're in low water—so am I. You're a bit of a genius. You're fagged and worn out, but given a decent chance to recover, and you'd do big things yet. I've come to offer you that chance.”
“You?”
“Yes, it doesn't seem likely, does it? But I have my influence. I've come to offer you a post. You know Austin, of the Evening Chronicle? He's been dramatic critic for twenty years, and now he's resigning. They want a big man to fill his place. I know Richards, the editor, and I have put you forward. He has taken to the idea, and if I push, it's a safe thing. What do you say?”
Meredith remained silent for a moment, then he came quietly across the room.
“Look here,” he said. “I'd like to know why you suggest this. You're no particular friend of mine. I don't care much for you, and you know it. This isn't a matter of friendship. You had better explain.”
“I have not the least objection. I'll be quite frank with you. You know what the Evening Chronicle is. It's a strong paper, and, in the theatrical world, has the first and last word. It makes and unmakes a career as it fancies. Austin fairly managed things as he liked. A man with as keen a pen as yours could manage them even better.”
“And if I accepted—what's your share to be?”
Derwent laughed.
“I'd like you to put in a friendly word for me now and then.”
“Is that all?”
“And I'd like you to pull down that arrogant Scotch devil, and make him wish he'd never been born. You could if you wanted to. You, with your pen, could ruin him and everything he touches. So far, the public adores him. They've taken a weird fancy to the sheer unusualness of him. But once make them laugh at him—make them see the absurdity of everything about him—from his kilts and his Scotch accent to his absurd name—and his hour as matinée lion is over. Take my word for it.”
“Why do you want this done?”
Derwent shrugged his shoulders.
“Never mind that. It belongs to ancient history.”
“Why should I do it?”
“Because your chance for the future depends on it.”
“You're bribing me to do a damnably mean thing. He's a great actor, for all his absurdities—you know it as well as I do. You're asking me to sell my professional integrity, my very soul as a man of letters”
Derwent burst out laughing.
“Did he consider his professional integrity when he told you your play was rubbish, just because it didn't give him a 'star' part?”
Meredith uttered a stifled exclamation.
“If that were true”
“You can be sure it is true. It's each man for himself, and the devil take the hindermost—in our profession as in every other.”
Both men were silent. The door had been softly opened, and now Joan Meredith crept in. She laid a tray on the table, and gathered up the loose sheets of paper that she had left behind her. As she did so, she glanced up timidly into her husband's face.
“It's only my diary, Alec. I won't disturb you again.”
He scarcely noticed her. But he looked at the wretched meal that she had produced, and a wave of passion rushed the blood into his sunken cheeks.
“I'll do it,” he said quietly. “I can't go on like this. It's killing everything in me. A week or two more of this and I should break loose. All I want is breathing space. I'll do anything for it—anything. I'd tear my best friend to ribbons”
“You don't need to do that,” Derwent interrupted. “Confine yourself to our mutual enemies. It's settled, then?”
“As far as I am concerned.”
“Well, I'll fix up things for you. You won't be able to begin for a month or two, but I dare say I could get you an advance, and you'll be on the paper in time to dismember McGrab's next effort. Good night.”
“Good night.”
Meredith accompanied his visitor to the door. On the step, Derwent glanced back at him.
“McGrab is to marry Mary Eliot some time in the spring,” he said. “I shouldn't mind dishing that, too, if I could.”
“That, at least, is no concern of mine,” Meredith answered coldly.
“No, perhaps not. Well, good-by again.”
Meredith closed the door, and went back slowly to the sitting room. Already he carried himself with a new ease. A crushing burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He would be free now, when and how he chose. A new period of activity was opening up for him. All that he needed was rest and freedom from anxiety. Poverty had crushed the genius out of him. It had made him sour and bitter and unjust. He looked at the poor little supper waiting on the table, and smiled pityingly.
“Joan!” he called. “Joan!” He thought he heard her answer from the kitchen, and held the door wide open. “Joan, come in, and let's feast together as we used to in the old days. I'm sorry I was cross. It was just the worry of everything. Poor little girl, of course I'm fond of you—of course I am! Joan, aren't you coming?”
No answer. He went to the kitchen, but she was not there, or in any of the other rooms. A sudden chill descended on his rising self-content. He called her again by name mechanically, knowing that there would be no answer. He remembered now that she was often out. He wondered, for the first time, where she went, what she did with herself the livelong day. Of course he had neglected her. He had not been able to help himself. A man of genius had exceptional responsibilities. All the same, she should have been there when he wanted her.
“Joan!” he repeated, almost angrily.
There was a torn scrap of paper lying on the table. Evidently it belonged to the diary of which his wife had spoken. He remembered now that in the old days she had “scribbled” a good deal, and that he had laughed at her for her childish imitation of him. He picked up the slip of paper with idle fingers. Not till he had passed the first lines did he realize that it was part of a letter he was reading—a passionate love letter:
- I can't live without you. My life here is utter emptiness and loneliness. I must see you to-night, if it is only to gather strength to endure this existence. Heaven knows he will not miss me
The paper slipped from Meredith's fingers. He turned and stumbled to his wife's empty chair, with his face buried in his hands.
III.
At eight o'clock, Mr. Sandy McGrab entered his flat as an elegant gentleman of fashion. He had tipped his taxi driver with an Anglo-Saxon liberality, and bidden him good night with scarcely the suggestion of a Highland accent. Half an hour later he was seated before his fire in the shabbiest of shabby kilts, talking broad Scotch to a bewildered, but sympathetic English retainer.
“Ye ken, it's guid to be a reel mon again,” said McGrab, rubbing his bare knees with genial contentment. “It's just wonderful what the kilts can do for one. Ye should try them, laddie. It would put a little backbone into ye. If I could act Antony in me native garb, James, I should make Willy Shakespeare wish more than ever he had been born on the right side o' the border.”
“I believe the hancient Romans did wear sort o' kilts, didn't they, sir?” James suggested mildly.
“Ye may weel say so. It was part o' their greatness, James. But it was no quite the right thing—not full enough, ye ken. But for that there might hae been no fall of the Roman empire.” He chuckled boyishly to himself. “James, there's the bell. Remember, if any one wants Mr. McGrab, he's gone up to the Highlands for the evening.”
“Yes, sir.”
James retired. Sandy McGrab lay back in his chair, and built castles in the glowing embers of the fire. It must be confessed that he forgot all about Antony and Will Shakespeare. He skipped three months of his life, and carried himself and a much-loved lady to a little Highland village, where every one, from the laird downward, turned out to welcome them. He transported the whole party into the familiar kirk, and was actually rehearsing the marriage service when the door opened again.
“If you please, sir,” said James apologetically, “there's a lady to see you. She says she has a message from Miss Eliot. I thought perhaps”
McGrab rose quickly to his feet.
“Show her in!” he commanded.
He did not know what to expect, or what to fear. She had never sent him a message like that before. If anything had happened to her If she were ill He expected to see her maid enter, and suppressed an movement of surprise and alarm as James ushered the unexpected visitor. He did not recognize her. She was small and shabbily dressed, and, as she pushed back her heavy veil, he saw a small, tired face lit by a pair of eager, rather frightened eyes. She looked at him in timid wonder, and he bowed gravely.
“Mr. McGrab?” she asked.
He bowed again.
“I understand you have a message for me from Miss Eliot?”
“Yes—that is to say”—she glanced at James, and James instantly withdrew—”that is to say, Mr. McGrab, I want to see you.”
“About Miss Eliot?”
“No.”
He looked at her steadily.
“You mean,” he said, “that you found your way in here by a trick?”
“Yes,” she answered, with an unexpected simplicity. He moved toward the door, but though she made no gesture, uttered no sound, the desperate, compelling appeal in her eyes arrested him. “I had to,” she went on in the same quiet tones. “There was no other way. If I had told you the truth, you would have refused to see me, and I must see you. You're just my last chance, Mr. McGrab. I want you to read this.”
She laid a bundle of manuscript on the table, and faced him with a defiant resolution that sat strangely on her faded, dollish prettiness. Sandy McGrab came slowly back.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A play.”
“Whose play—yours?”
“I can't tell you. But you must read it, and judge for yourself.”
“I can't promise”
“I don't want you to promise anything. I am tired of promises that are never kept. I want you to read it now—while I am here. I want your answer to-night.” She made her first gesture, a curiously pathetic one. “Mr. McGrab, I'm asking something unusual, but not an impossibility. You can, if you only will. They say you're good and generous. I can't tell you what depends on it—my happiness and the happiness of others. They say you fought a big battle for your first success, and that you, too, did unusual things to win it. Won't you do the unusual to help another? Indeed, I wouldn't ask it of you if I thought I was wasting your time—but I'm so sure of it—so sure of myself”
“Lassie” he began.
She broke in with an unsteady little laugh.
“Aye, it's guid to be called lassie again,” she said. “For I'm fra Kirkhumphries, too!”
“You!” he exclaimed. “You—fra the Highlands?”
She nodded triumphantly at him.
“Ye dinna remember Joan Allen, Sandy McGrab, but she played with you once—away up there in Glen Every. And she danced with you at the gathering. But Sandy McGrab has danced with so many lassies sin' then. He's forgotten. But you'll read my play, Mr. McGrab?”
He took it from her outstretched hand.
“Not now,” he said.
“For auld lang syne,” she persisted earnestly.
He looked at her. A faint color had dawned in her sallow cheeks. Almost he began to recognize the gay, laughter-loving child whose very name he had forgotten. She must have been pretty once—up there in her native moors, breathing her native air.
“I'll do it,” he said. “Will ye no sit down, lassie?”
She obeyed, and he sat opposite her with the manuscript on his knees. For a time neither spoke, and there was no sound save the rustle of the pages, as he turned them over. Then he began to ask her questions and explanations with a curt eagerness to which she replied with quiet precision.
It was close on eleven when he turned the last page, and looked up at her.
“It's guid,” he said simply. “It's guid.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes, I do mean it. If ye will trust it to me”
“That's what I want to do. But on one condition.”
“And that is?”
“Ye maun trust me, too, Sandy McGrab. I want you to promise me not to tell my name to any one, not to ask who wrote that play—not to ask or tell anything.”
“And when they're calling for the author?” he asked, smiling.
“Then I'll tell you.”
“I'll give it to Hadley, then. It's a promise. But ye maun gi' me your address.”
She shook her head.
“Not even that. I'll come again to-day week, and you can tell me.”
“Ye be trusting me with a lot, Joan Allen.”
“We always trusted Sandy McGrab—even in the school days,” she answered, and smiled wistfully up at him. “Good night—and thank you.”
She gave him her hand, and at that moment the door opened. McGrab turned quickly to meet the unexpected intrusion, and saw Mary Eliot standing on the threshold. She laughed at him joyously, triumphantly.
“It's all right, Mr. McGrab; I've brought the chaperon with me. She's climbing the stairs at this very moment. I wanted to tell you about”
She stopped short. She had caught sight of the other woman, and there was a moment's startled silence. Then, without a word, but with a last hunted glance of appeal at Sandy McGrab, his first visitor slipped past and out of the room.
Sandy McGrab said nothing. He held himself stiffly, like a man preparing to meet a sudden as yet only half-realized catastrophe. Mary Eliot came slowly forward.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“An old friend.”
“Won't you tell me her name?”
“I canna do it.”
Another heavy little silence. They could hear the chaperon plowing her way heavily up the stairs.
“Won't you tell me what she wanted from you—so late?”
“I canna do it,” he repeated doggedly.
She was watching him intently. The color had brightened in her cheeks, and there was a new light in her eyes which was not that of laughter.
“Sandy, doesn't it all need a little explaining?”
“Canna ye trust me?” he flashed back.
“I do trust you—absolutely. But there is no incident in my life that I am not glad to share with you. And, when we marry, it must be on equal terms. I am not prepared to marry a man who 'canna tell me things,' Sandy!”
“Mary!” he began, and then suddenly flung back his head with a movement of deep resentment. “And I canna marry a woman who does not trust me,” he added.
“Then—we must agree to differ.” She laid something on the table, and turned away. A stout lady wrapped in furs had made her appearance at the open door. Mary Eliot motioned her back. “It's all right, Mrs. Sanders. I've told Mr. McGrab everything I want to. We—we can go now.” She looked back for an instant at the defiant, upright figure beneath the light. “Unless” she added sadly, tentatively.
But Sandy McGrab made no sign. He stood there like a graven statue till the door had closed. Then he bent forward and picked up the little diamond ring that she had placed on the table. It lay in the palm of his hand, like a bright, sparkling eye of light. A minute before it had been on her finger. It had all happened in a flash; it was all over.
Sandy McGrab went back to the fireside. He sat there with the ring in his hand, staring sightlessly where he once had built his castles, and where was now nothing but gray ash and darkness.
IV.
The performances of “Antony and Cleopatra,” at the Avonia Theater, came to an end sooner than the run on the seats seemed to justify. There was a rumor that Miss Eliot had accepted an engagement in America, and that Hadley had “discovered” a new and remarkable play that he wished to produce before the close of the season. Sandy McGrab was to take the leading part. But Miss Mary Eliot was not in the cast. Those who had witnessed her obstinate refusal, and McGrab's silent acceptance of her decision, shook their heads and wondered. Perhaps some of them saw in the breaking up of the famous partnership the first signs of a waning glory.
And now the first night of “His Wife” had come.
Alec Meredith stood beside his fire, warming his hands and watching his wife as she moved restlessly about the room. For three months he had watched her with the silent, dogged persistence of a jealousy that is embittered by a savage sense of personal guilt. He had ill-treated her, and she had retaliated with a covert disloyalty. If he could have found the man, he would have killed him. As it was, he watched and waited for the inevitable moment of her self-betrayal.
To-night she seemed excited more than was her wont. He felt her hands tremble as she helped him into his coat, and suddenly she clung to him, crying.
“What's the matter?” he asked curtly.
“Nothing—I don't know—I'm so afraid.” She lifted her tear-stained face to his. “Alec, I want you to promise me something. I want you to be fair to-night—to deal justly with the play. You are sometimes so harsh, and I know you don't love Mr. McGrab. Think that perhaps—for some one—much depends on to-night—all a life's happiness. Be fair and generous, Alec. Promise me!”
He shook her off.
“I shall deal justly—never fear,” he said, and laughed.
Half an hour later he was in the stalls of the Avonia Theater. The place was filled to the last seat. The fact that the season's favorite, Sandy McGrab, was acting, and that nothing was known either of the play or of its nameless author, had added an unusual interest to this particular first night. Rolf Derwent occupied a stall on Meredith's right, and the two men exchanged a curt greeting.
“You've sharpened your claws well, I hope,” Derwent whispered. “It's your big chance. Make him and the whole thing ridiculous. You can if you want to. You know what the dear British public is—it waits for some one else to make up its mind for it.”
Meredith nodded. Throughout the first half of the first act. he was coining phrases of biting criticism. He thought of his own rejected play; of the masterpiece he would write when his mind was rested; of how he would win back the lost ground. Then, gradually, unconsciously, he ceased to think of himself. Sandy McGrab was on the stage. He hated Sandy McGrab. He hated his breadth, his power, his convincing sincerity, but he was no less enthralled. And suddenly it flashed upon him that it was not alone Sandy McGrab that enthralled him, but the play. It was a great play—a rough-hewn block taken from life itself. All that was genuine in him—the true artist's admiration for art and inspiration—responded to it. But he knew that his power of destruction had been redoubled.
“It's a great success or a great failure,” Derwent commented, as the curtain fell on the last act. “It's too good for popularity unless the press backs it. And if you give the lead”
Meredith rose to his feet: There were cries of “Author!” from every part of the house, but the voices sounded like the roar of the ocean in his ears.
“I can't!” he said hoarsely. “I can't! It would be like killing some one. It's good—it's almost genius. I should be perjuring my own soul. I can't do it”
“Can't you? Then McGrab's established for good and all. He's made this play, and the play will make him. And he's stolen your wife. You know that, don't you?'
“Derwent—take care!”
“It's true. Every one knows. She's with him every day—here in this theater. She's with him now behind the scenes. I saw her come in. If you don't believe me, go home and find out.”
Meredith turned and looked into his companion's face. For the moment there seemed to be a dead silence all around him.
“Yes,” he said deliberately. “I will go home and find out.”
He pushed his way through the eager, expectant audience and hurried from the theater. During the rapid drive homeward, he was unconscious of any connected thought or plan. He was going home “to find out.” Afterward he would see what had to be done. He kept the taxi waiting outside his door, and ran swiftly up the stairs. Darkness and silence greeted him. He knew then that what Derwent had said was all true.
And from that moment his thoughts became clear and connected. The revolver that he had snatched from a drawer in the first impulse of passion he dropped back into its place with a laugh of contempt at his own little touch of melodrama. He was going to kill Sandy McGrab—but in a modern way, equally effective and more painful.
He drove then to Mary Eliot's flat. It so chanced that he met her returning from the theater, and, yielding to his urgency, she led him into her softly lighted study. She motioned him to be seated, but he stood up, facing her in a kind of rage and cruel satisfaction.
“I'll come straight to the point, Miss Eliot,” he said. “I understand that you are to marry Mr. McGrab.”
“What is that to you?” she answered coldly.
“This much—that it is my duty to tell you he has betrayed you as utterly and as basely as—as my wife has betrayed me.”
She looked at him without flinching, but he saw her ashy pallor, and triumphed.
“He was with her to-night, and has been with her every day these last two months. That's what I've come to tell you.”
“Why to-night?” she asked.
“Because—I'm going to pay back. I won't be the only one to suffer. Maybe I'm mad, mad with jealousy, if you like. I loved my wife—in my own way—though I was driven crazy by my bad luck. But I loved her—and the man who's stolen her has got to pay for it. That's why I've told you.”
“Is that paying him back?” she asked.
He smiled savagely.
“Isn't it?” he asked back. “Will you marry him now?”
“No!”
“I thought not. And here's something else” He threw a batch of papers on the table. “Those are my notes of this evening's performance. Just look at them—they're rather smart, some of them. They'll make all London rock with laughter—they'll make him and that play impossible. I've torn them both to rags. Isn't that paying back? Doesn't that satisfy you?”
There was something desperate in his voice. He was laughing, but there was misery in his sunken, blazing eyes. Mary Eliot took a sudden step forward. She laid her hand on the papers, but she did not look at them. The color had come back into her face, and a new energy and dignity into her bearing.
“I'm glad you've come,” she said. “I'm glad you've told me what you have. I hadn't understood before—myself, or any one. We're both wrong in our different ways. You can't do what you've set out to do. It doesn't matter what Sandy McGrab has done. He's a great actor, and the play is a great one. You know that as well as I do. And you're an artist above everything else. You daren't stain your honor with a mean crime like that.”
“I dare!” he said sullenly.
“Then—then you'll never be able to write a great play again!” she answered. She took his notes and flung them into the fire. “Now go and write the truth!” she said.
“Miss Eliot!” he stammered. “Don't you realize what he has done to us”
“No, I don't! I won't—I can't believe anything but the best. I'll trust him because I love him, and you'll deal fairly by him because you dare not be personal in your judgment of a man's greatness—not unless you choose to sully your own. I was wrong”
She stopped short with a smothered exclamation. The door of the sitting room had opened, and Sandy McGrab stood on the threshold. And Alec Meredith's wife leaned on his arm. The four looked at one another in blank silence. Then Mary Eliot held out her hand.
“Sandy McGrab,” she said clearly and firmly, “I've been mean and disloyal to you. I'm sorry. If you still want to marry me—marry me!”
“Princess,” he answered, smiling at her, “I've come to tell ye the truth. This lady is Mr. Meredith's wife. It was her husband's play that she brought to me that night, and that has just been produced.” He turned to Meredith. “They hae been calling for you at the theater, sir,” he added.
“For me? I never wrote that play!”
Joan Meredith ran to him. She clung to him in a passion of relief.
“But it's yours, dear—yours for all that. I wrote it for you, but I kept it secret. If it had failed, no one would have known—but when I saw that it was to succeed, I gave it you. What is fame to me? I wanted you to be happy—to have a fresh start and a fresh chance. It's yours now. You'll be free to rest—you'll be famous again. That's all that matters.”
He scarcely listened to her.
“Then it was your play I found—not a letter? Joan, I have been a cur to you—a most blind, suspicious, cruel cur! Can you forgive?”
“I can forgive everything, dear. I knew to-night—when you promised to be just, even to a man you unjustly hated—I knew then how great you were. And I loved you enough to forgive anything. Won't you take my gift, Alec?”
He held her to him, and his eyes rose to meet Mary Eliot's steady gaze.
“If she wishes it!” she said softly. “Don't you owe her that much, Mr. Meredith?”
She did not see his silent answer. Sandy McGrab had crossed over to her side, and placed something in her hand. She saw that it was the little diamond ring.
“Will ye no take it back, princess?” he asked gently. “Don't you owe me that much, too?”