The Better Sort (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903)/Broken Wings/Chapter 3
III
The first night of The New Girl occurred, as everyone remembers, three years ago, and the play is running yet, a fact that may render strange the failure to be widely conscious of which two persons in the audience were guilty. It was not till afterward present either to Mrs. Harvey or to Stuart Straith that The New Girl was one of the greatest successes of modern times. Indeed if the question had been put to them on the spot they might have appeared much at sea. But this, I may as well immediately say, was the result of their having found themselves side by side in the stalls and thereby given most of their attention to their own predicament. Straith showed that he felt the importance of meeting it promptly, for he turned to his neighbour, who was already in her place, as soon as her identity had come distinct through his own arrival and subsidence. "I don't quite see how you can help speaking to me now."
Her face could only show him how long she had been aware of his approach. "The sound of your voice, coming to me straight, makes it indeed as easy for me as I could possibly desire."
He looked about at the serried rows, the loaded galleries and the stuffed boxes, with recognitions and nods; and this made between them another pause, during which, while the music seemed perfunctory and the bustle that, in a London audience, represents concentration increased, they felt how effectually, in the thick, preoccupied medium, how extraordinarily, they were together.
"Well, that second afternoon at Mundham, just before dinner, I was very near forcing your hand. But something put me off. You're really too grand."
"Oh!" she murmured.
"Ambassadors," said Stuart Straith.
"Oh!" she again sounded. And before anything more could pass the curtain was up. It came down in due course and achieved, after various intervals, the rest of its movements without interrupting, for our friends, the sense of an evening of talk. They said when it was down almost nothing about the play, and when one of them toward the end put to the other, vaguely, "Is—a—this thing going?" the question had scarce the effect of being even relevant. What was clearest to them was that the people about were somehow enough taken up to leave them at their ease—but what taken up with they but half made out. Mrs. Harvey had, none the less, mentioned early that her presence had a reason and that she ought to attend, and her companion had asked her what she thought of a certain picture made at a given moment by the stage, in the reception of which he was so interested that it was really what had brought him. These were glances, however, that quickly strayed—strayed, for instance (as this could carry them far), in its coming to one of them to say that, whatever the piece might be, the real thing, as they had seen it at Mundham, was more than a match for any piece. For it was Mundham that was, theatrically, the real thing; better for scenery, dresses, music, pretty women, bare shoulders, everything—even coherent dialogue; a much bigger and braver show, and got up, as it were, infinitely more "regardless." By Mundham they were held long enough to find themselves, though with an equal surprise, quite at one as to the special oddity of their having caught each other in such a plight. Straith said that he supposed what his friend meant was that it was odd he should have been there; to which she returned that she had been imputing to him exactly that judgment of her own presence.
"But why shouldn't you be?" he asked. "Isn't that just what you are? Aren't you, in your way—like those people—a child of fortune and fashion?"
He got no more answer to this for some time than if he had fairly wounded her. He indeed that evening got no answer at all that was direct. But in the next interval she brought out with abruptness, taking no account of some other matter he had just touched, "Don't you really know———?"
She had paused. "Know what?"
Again she went on without heeding. "A place like Mundham is, for me, a survival, though poor Mundham in particular won't, for me, have survived that visit—for which it's to be pitied, isn't it? It was a glittering ghost—since laid!—of my old time."
Straith, at this almost gave a start. "Have you got a new time?"
"Do you mean that you have?"
"Well," said Straith, "mine may now be called middle-aged. It seems so long, I mean, since I set my watch to it."
"Oh, I haven't even a watch!" she returned with a laugh. "I'm beyond watches." After which she added: "We might have met more—or, I should say perhaps, have got more out of it when we have met."
"Yes, it has been too little. But I've always explained it by our living in such different worlds."
Mrs. Harvey had an occasional incoherence. "Are you unhappy?"
He gave her a singular smile. "You said just now that you're beyond watches. I'm beyond unhappiness."
She turned from him and presently brought out: "I ought absolutely to take away something of the play."
"By all means. There's certainly something I shall take."
"Ah, then you must help me—give it me."
"With all my heart," said Straith, "if it can help you. It's my feeling of our renewal."
She had one of the sad, slow head-shakes that at Mundham had been impressive to Lady Claude. "That won't help me."
"Then you must let me put to you now what I should have tried to get near enough to you there to put if I hadn't been so afraid of the Ambassador. What has it been so long—our impossibility?"
"Well, I can only answer for my own vision of it, which is—which always was—that you were sorry for me, but felt a sort of scruple of showing me that you had nothing better than pity to give."
"May I come to see you?" Straith asked some minutes after this.
Her words, for which he had also awhile to wait, had, in truth, as little as his own the appearance of a reply. "Are you unhappy—really? Haven't you everything?"
"You're beautiful!" he said for all answer. "Mayn't I come?"
She hesitated.
"Where is your studio?"
"Oh, not too far to reach from it. Don't be anxious; I can walk, or even take the bus."
Mrs. Harvey once more delayed. Then she answered: "Mayn't I rather come there?"
"I shall be but too delighted."
It was said with promptness, even precipitation; yet the understanding, shortly after, appeared to have left between them a certain awkwardness, and it was almost as if to change the subject and relieve them equally that she suddenly reminded him of something he had spoken earlier. "You were to tell me why in particular you had to be here."
"Oh yes. To see my dresses."
"Yours!" She wondered.
"The second act. I made them out for them—drew them."
Before she could check it her tone escaped. "You?"
"I." He looked straight before him. "For the fee. And we didn't even notice them."
"I didn't," she confessed. But it offered the fact as a sign of her kindness for him, and this kindness was traceably what inspired something she said in the draughty porch, after the performance, while the footman of the friend, a fat, rich, immensely pleased lady, who had given her a lift and then rejoined her from a seat in the balcony, went off to make sure of the brougham. "May I do something about your things?"
"'Do something'?"
"When I've paid you my visit. Write something—about your pictures. I do a correspondence," said Mrs. Harvey.
He wondered as she had done in the stalls. "For a paper?"
"The Blackport Banner. A 'London Letter.' The new books, the new plays, the new twaddle of any sort—a little music, a little gossip, a little 'art.' You'll help me—I need it awfully—with the art. I do three a month."
"You—wonderful you?" He spoke as Lady Claude had done, and could no more help it again than Mrs. Harvey had been able to help it in the stalls.
"Oh, as you say, for the fee!" On which, as the footman signalled, her old lady began to plunge through the crowd.