Leonard Merrick

“ We're all children, we artists—up in the skies, or down in the dumps. No medium with us! She must recite to you one of these days, Heriot; I want you to hear her."
"Will you, Miss Cheriton?"
"If you like," she said.
"Dear Mamie must recite to me," murmured Mrs. Baines; "I'm quite looking forward to it. What sort of pieces do you say, dear? Nice pieces?"
"She knows the parts of Juliet, and Rosalind, and Pauline by heart," said Cheriton, ignoring his sister. "I think you'll say her Balcony Scene is almost as fine a rendering as you've ever heard. ”

“ To me your profession seems the most fascinating one there is. If I were a man, I'd rather be called to the Bar than anything. You'd be astonished if you knew how many biographies of eminent lawyers I've read—they enthralled me as a child. I don't know any career that suggests such power to me as the Bar. Don't smile: sometimes, when we're talking and I remember the tremendous influence you wield, I tremble."
She lifted her eyes to him, deprecating her enthusiasm, which was too palpably a pose, and again Heriot was conscious that the opportunity was with him, if he could but grasp it. ”

“ The days are drawing in fast, Mr. Heriot, aren't they? We shall soon have winter again. Do you like the long evenings, or the long afternoons best? Just about now I always say that I can't bear to think of having to begin lighting up at five or six o'clock—it seems so unnatural; and then, next summer, somehow I feel quite lost, not being able to let down the blinds and light the lamp for tea. Mamie, dear, shut the window, and let down the blinds before I light the lamp—somebody might see in! ”

“ Mamie murmured.
"I hope you're well?" said Mrs. Baines.
"Not very. I——Won't you sit down?"
"I never thought I should see you like this, Mamie!" said the widow half involuntarily, shaking her head.
The girl made no answer in words. She caught her breath, and stood passive. If the lash fell she would suffer silently.
"We always see sin punished, though." She believed we always did; she retained such startling optimism. "It's not for me to reproach you."
"Thank you. I'm not too happy, Aunt Lydia."
"I daresay, my dear. I haven't come to make it worse for you." ”

“ Don't think me impertinent, but it can't be very lively for you in that house."
"It isn't a whirl of gaiety, and Aunt Lydia is not ideal. But—but I was just the same in Duluth."
"Duluth!" he echoed; "it was dreary in Duluth, too."
"At all events I had my father there."
"What does he write?" asked Heriot. "Have you had a letter since I saw you?"
"He gives no news. The news is to come from me."
"I think there's a little," he said; "I can tell it by your tone."
"It's cheerful to be with some one who can tell things by one's tone. ”

“ I am not the only girl who has to begin. And ... Whatever they are, it can't be helped! Remember, I'm in earnest! I talked at first wildly; I see how childish I was. What should I be if I faltered because the path isn't strewn with roses? An actress must be satisfied to work."
"It isn't decreed that you need be an actress," answered Heriot. "After all, there is no necessity to fight for your bread-and-butter. If you were compelled——"
"There are more compelling forces than poverty. Can't you recognise ambition?" ”

“ The building is a motor garage now; it lies beneath the cliffs of Queen Anne's Mansions; aeroplanes may discover its queer round roof. And it was in an ageing past too—for architectural ages veritably flash by in New York—that Broadway could be said to spread into the "brightness of Union Square." To-day there is but a chaos of dingy decay owning to that name. Soon it will be smart skyscrapers, no doubt; when the tide of business has covered it, as now the tide of fashion leaves it derelict. Duluth, too, with its "storekeepers spitting on wooden sidewalks"! ”

“ It is even possible—though a clever man cannot dispense with the fiddle and the trumpet—for the fiddle and the trumpet to be played so dexterously that he may dispense with cleverness. I do not go to such lengths myself——"
"You have no need to do so," she said coldly.
"I have no need to do so—thank you. But I can quite conceive that, say, violets and maraschino, worked for all they were worth, might alone make a man famous. A mouse liberated a lion, and things smaller than a mouse have created one before now. ”

“ I mayn't paint any more, but an artist by nature I shall always be. I don't say it in any bragging spirit, Heriot; I should be happier if I didn't feel it. The commonplace man may be contented in the commonplace calling: he fills the rôle he was meant for. It's the poor devil like myself, who knows what he might have been, who suffers. ”

“ Heriot betook himself there on the following day with a curious eagerness. If the girl he had noticed should prove to be Cheriton's daughter, how odd it would be! He at once hoped for the coincidence, and found the possibility a shade pathetic. It emphasised his years to think that the ill-kept child of the dirty studio might have become the girl he had admired. His progress during the interval appeared momentarily insignificant to him; he felt that while a brat became a woman he ought to have done much more. ”

“ It was the sort of semi-disreputable folly that a man a decade or so younger might commit and describe as a "lark." No doubt many men a decade or so younger would commit it. He could conceive that a freshly-painted balcony, displaying a pretty girl for an hour or two every afternoon, might serve to extend the clientèle of a boarding-house enormously, and wondered that more attention had not been paid to such a form of advertisement. ”

“ As the cab sped down Victoria Street, his excitement increased, and in imagination he already clasped her and felt the warmth of her cheek against his face.
The hansom slackened, jerked to a standstill; and he leapt out and hurried to the booking-office. A train was at the point of starting. The sentiment of the bygone was quick in him as he found that he must pass through a yellow barrier on to the same platform to which he used to hasten when he went to see her in Lavender Street, Wandsworth. ”

“ But I shall leave my girl in London. I've brought her with me, and she'll remain."
"Of course," said Heriot, "you have a child—of course you have! I remember a little thing tumbling about in Howland Street. She must be a woman, Cheriton?"
"Mamie is twenty-one. I want to see if I can do anything for her before I go back. She loathes Duluth; and she has talent. She'll live with my sister. I don't think you ever saw my sister, did you? She's a widow, and stagnates in Wandsworth—Mamie will be company for her."
"Your daughter paints?"
"No, not paints; she wants to be an actress. ”

“ Here's a nice girl, a girl who will certainly have a good settlement, a girl who's undeniably handsome, ready to say 'yes' at the asking, and you grumble—I'm hanged if you don't grumble!—because you see she is to be depended on. What the devil do you want?"
"I want to be fond of her," answered Heriot. "I admit all you've said of her; I want to like her more."
"So you ought to; but what does it matter if you don't? All women are alike to the men who've married them after a year or two. She'll make an admirable mother, and that's the main thing, I suppose?" ”

“ See the girl with her simple passion for the theatre—so apt a channel for her happy ambition as it appears—and that baulked, her very life baulked. To-day, this war-day, and most surely for the immediate enfranchised to-morrow breaking so close, the same girl will turn her back light-heartedly on the glamour of that little tinselled world to many another prospect of self-fulfilment. ”

“ Merrick implies the quite wholesome truth that he always was. Through books and bookish dreams—beautiful, wise dreams—lies the passage to life of many boys and girls. But the healthiest instincts in them are seeking still a real world in which it will be both sane and fine to live. Their dreams are mostly a hard test of it when it is found; and, oh, the pity if the finding it quite breaks their dream!
In sum, then, it was Mamie's tragedy to seek her realities during a phase of art and letters which, in their utter unreality, seemed to deny the very existence of any real world at all. ”

“ When five years had passed after the divorce, the Liberal Party came into power again, and George Heriot, Q.C., M.P., was appointed Solicitor-General. His work and ambitions had not sufficed to mend the gap in his life; but it had been in work and ambition that he endeavoured to find assuagement of the wound. Perhaps eagerness had never been so keen in him after his wife went as while he was contesting the borough that he represented now; perhaps he had never realised the inadequacy of success so fully as he did to-day when one of the richest prizes of his profession was obtained. ”

“ Would you, if I sent?"
"Why," said Heriot labouredly, after another pause, "why would it mean so much?"
They were leaning over the taffrail; and suddenly her head was bent, and she broke into convulsive sobs that tore his breast.
"Mamie!" he exclaimed. "Mamie, tell me!" He glanced round and laid a trembling touch on her hands. "Tell me, dear!" he repeated hoarsely. "Do you love me, then?" ”

“ Heriot laughed.
"It would be very delightful to me to make the voyage in your company. But I might bore you frightfully; a week at sea must be a severe test. I should be afraid of being found out."
"We are promised other passengers," observed Miss Pierways, looking down with a faint smile. Her archness was a shade stiff, but her neck was one of her chief attractions.
"Why don't you go, George?" said Lady Heriot cheerfully. "You'd much better go by Mrs. Van Buren's boat than any other; and you've been talking of making a trip to America 'next year' ever since I've known you!" ”

“ I've been cooped among storekeepers without an idea in their heads; I've never seen a man or woman of talent in my life, excepting my father; I've never heard anybody speak who knew what art or ambition meant. ”

“ A third-rate suburban villa was stamped upon her; he could imagine her making hideous antimacassars for forbidding armchairs, and that a visit to an Eastbourne boarding-house was the event of her life. She wore jet earrings, and stirred her tea with vast energy. With the circulation of the tea, strangers drifted into the room, and the conversation was continued in undertones.
"Have you been talking to Mamie about her intentions?" ”

“ I'd rather she'd had a gift for something else."
"Was it necessary for her to have a gift at all?" asked Heriot, a shade sarcastically. "Couldn't she stop at home?"
"Well," said Cheriton, "she tried it, but it's a hard thing for a girl like Mamie to content herself with the life in Duluth. There isn't much art in that, Heriot; there isn't much anything. There's the lake, and Superior Street, and the storekeepers lounging in the doorways and spitting on the wooden sidewalks. And there's a theatre of a sort—which made her worse. For a girl panting to be famous, Duluth is a hell. ”

“ Not the stage—your hope of the stage is over; not your ambition in itself—you can be ambitious as my wife. You lose nothing, and you give—a heaven. Mamie, won't you stay?"
She leant on the mantelpiece without speaking. In the pause, Mrs. Baines' voice reached them distinctly, as she said, "Put the brawn on a smaller dish." ”

“ Van Buren begged him to excuse her. He rose to leave, but was pressed to remain.
"I want to talk to you when they've gone," she said; "I haven't half exhausted my list of messages to London."
Heriot resumed his seat, and Miss Pierways smiled.
"Poor mamma wishes she were going herself, if she told the truth! Now that we're here, it is I who like New York, not she."
"We're creatures of custom," he said; "your mother has lived in London too long to accustom herself to America very easily... Of course you'll be over next season?"
"Oh yes. Shall you ever come to America again, Sir George?" ”

“ You would rather grow potatoes than roses, eh?"
"You are an enthusiast," said Heriot; "I see!" He pitied her for being Dick Cheriton's daughter. She was inevitable: the pseudo-artist's discontent with realities—the inherited tendencies, fanned by thinly-veiled approval! He understood.
Cheriton came in after a few minutes, followed by the aunt, to whom Heriot was presented. He found her primitive, and far less educated than her brother. She was very happy to see dear Dick again, and she was sorry that she must lose him again so soon. Dear Mamie, though, would be a consolation. ”

“ A woman is nowhere so dangerous, and nowhere is a man so susceptible, as at sea. The interminable days demand flirtation, if one is not to perish of boredom. Moonlight and water are notoriously potent, even when viewed for only half an hour; and at sea, the man and the girl look at the moonlight on the water together regularly every evening. And it is very becoming to the girl. Miss Pierways' face was always a disappointment to Heriot at breakfast. ”