A Duel Part 22

"It's not good of me. It's a simple statement of a simple fact.

If it were rubbish I should tell you so plainly--if you were the dearest friend I have in the world. On such matters I have no hesitation; and I think you will confess that this is a matter on which I do know something. Your play's first-rate. If we can agree about terms it shall have an immediate production."

"I hardly know what to say to you."

He did not. On that play he had founded more hopes than he would have cared to mention to that friendly lady. Its success would mean so much to him, and to the woman he loved. It had gone the usual round of the untried dramatist's play. Hope deferred again and again had made his heart sick. He had begun almost to despair that it would ever see the light. Yet now that he was told that if there was only an agreement about terms--as if there was any likelihood of a disagreement!--it should have an immediate production, he was not at all sure that his feelings were what, under the circ.u.mstances, he had supposed they would have been. It was perfectly true, he did not know what to say to her. She was glib enough.

"Say?--say nothing. Let's talk business, and stick to that. I mean to. You understand that this is purely a business proposition which I am about to make to you, and absolutely nothing else. If I go into this matter it will be on strictly commercial grounds, and on those only."

"I wish I were sure of it."

"It's not nice of you to doubt my word, Mr. Talfourd; before I have finished you will be sorry for having done so. Before entering into negotiations for the production of your play, do you know what would be one of the preliminary conditions I should be disposed to make?"

"I have not a notion."

"That I should be your leading lady."

"Mrs. Lamb!"

"Mr. Talfourd! I presume you are aware that I can act?"

"I know that you have made some successful appearances in--in amateur theatricals."

"Mr. Winton will inform you that those amateur theatricals were not greatly below the standard of any professional representations you have seen. Apart from that--this is strictly between ourselves--I may mention that once upon a time I was professionally connected with the stage." She did not think it necessary to mention with what branch of it. "Your heroine, Lady Glover----"

"Lady Glover is hardly my heroine."

"She is the leading feminine character--the pivotal character; the one about whom the whole thing turns. To my mind the one creature of real flesh and blood."

"I had hoped that Agnes Eliot was a character of some importance."

"Agnes Eliot?--pooh!--namby-pamby, bread-and-b.u.t.ter miss! She's not bad in her way, and, I suppose, in a pit-and-gallery sense, she's the heroine--and not an ineffective one either; but I a.s.sure you I have not the slightest wish to play Agnes Eliot.

Susan Stone, who becomes Lady Glover, is a woman who, in the face of all obstacles, achieves success; continually confronted by difficulties, she treats them as so many Gordian knots; she cuts them and walks straight on. Quite indifferent as to the means she employs, she always gets there. Considering the present craze among actresses for what they are pleased to call sympathetic parts, I think you will agree that that is not a character which would appeal to every one."

"Certainly. Winton is of opinion that in casting the play the chief difficulty would be to find an adequate representative. As you say, many actresses don't like to act wicked women."

"I don't know about an adequate representative, but I'm quite willing to act Lady Glover, and, although I say it myself, I think you'll find that I shall be equal to the occasion. Indeed, I am ready to make a sporting bet with you that, in my hands, Lady Glover will take the town by storm. There's a popular fallacy that people don't like wicked women--it is a fallacy.

When they're of the right brand, they love 'em--especially men.

Give me a chance, and I'll prove it. I'll guarantee that seventy-five per cent, of masculine playgoers shall fall in love with Lady Glover--if I play her. What do you say?"

"I don't understand why you should wish to play her."

"How's that?"

"The answer seems so obvious. You--a lady of position, of fortune, with troops of friends!"

"Change, Mr. Talfourd, is the salt of life. I'm very fond of salt. Before I read your play I had no more idea of doing anything of the kind than I had of flying to the moon. But Lady Glover went straight to my heart. I saw at once what magnificent fun it would be to give to the stage a really adequate representation of the naughty feminine. I knew I could do it--and I can. So why shouldn't I?"

"You understand that Mr. Winton has the refusal of the play, and that I should first have to consult him."

"Of course I understand that Winton has the refusal of the play, and of course I understand that you will have to consult him.

I'm not afraid of Winton. He shall be the leading man, and cast the other parts as he pleases. I'll be Lady Glover, and find the money. I'll be an ideal Lady Glover. I believe in your heart you know it. Winton and I between us will make of the play a monstrous success, and so your fortune will be made, and a few s.h.i.+llings added to my own. I should dearly like to make your fortune, if only for one reason--because you don't like me."

"Mrs. Lamb!"

"Which is the more odd, because men generally do. Do you remember our first meeting?"

"I'm never likely to forget it."

"You don't say that in a tone which suggests an unsophisticated compliment. I had read that thing of yours in the _Cornhill_.

Frank Staines said that he had the honour of your acquaintance; that you were clever on quite unusual lines--as he put it, 'a cut above the market'--and that in consequence you'd been having a pretty rough time. You recollect that it was at an early stage of our acquaintance that I offered you the post of private secretary."

"I wonder if, when you did so, you knew that I'd nearly reached my last s.h.i.+lling?"

"I'd an inkling. If you hadn't you'd have said no." This was so literally the truth that he was silent. She understood him so much better than he did her. He had an irritating feeling that she was treating him as if he were some plastic material, which she was gradually fas.h.i.+oning into the shape she desired. "I've done you nothing else than good turns----"

"I know it, quite well."

"And yet, actually, I believe, on that account, you seem to dislike me more and more."

"I do a.s.sure you, Mrs. Lamb, that you are wrong. I do hope I'm not the blackguard you seem to imagine."

"I am not wrong, Mr. Talfourd--in a matter of that sort I seldom am. And you're not a blackguard; you're altogether the other way. It's a case of Dr. Fell--the reason why you don't like me you cannot tell. It's not your fault at all--it's sort of congenital. Don't worry! But that being so, since I have already done you one or two good turns, it would be delightful to be able to do you a crowning good turn--to make your fortune; to make you the most successful man of the day--you, the only man I ever met who really did, and does, dislike me.

"Mrs. Lamb, I--I can't tell you how you make me feel."

"I wouldn't try."

He did not. She looked at him and smiled, while he stood before her, with flushed cheeks and downcast eyes, like some shamefaced schoolboy.

CHAPTER XVI

MARGARET IS PUZZLED

Miss Dorothy Johnson, balancing herself on the edge of the table, was playing catch-ball with a pair of gloves.

"Margaret Wallace, you're one of the sillies!"

"Evidently you are not the only person who is of that opinion."

"That's right--put the worst construction on everything I say, and think yourself smart."

"It's just as well that some one should think so. Dollie, sometimes I'm very near to the conviction that it's no good--that nothing's any good, and, especially, that I'm no good; that I might as well own myself beaten right away."

"Well, you are beaten this time, that's sure. What ought to be just as sure is that you don't mean to be beaten every time--there's the whole philosophy of life for you in a nutsh.e.l.l."