Vain Fortune | Page 2

he devoted to trying to write it; and he now lit
cigarette after cigarette, abandoning himself to every meditation,--the
unpleasantness of life in lodgings, the charm of foreign travel, the
beauty of the south, what he would do if his play succeeded. He
plunged into calculation of the time it would take him to finish it if he
were to sit at home all day, working from seven to ten hours every day.
If he could but make up his mind concerning the beginning and the
middle of the third act, and about the end, too,--the solution,--he felt
sure that, with steady work, the play could be completed in a fortnight.
In such reverie and such consideration he lay immersed, oblivious of
the present moment, and did not stir from his chair until the postman
shook the frail walls with a violent double knock. He hoped for a letter,
for a newspaper--either would prove a welcome distraction. The
servant's footsteps on the stairs told him the post had brought him
something. His heart sank at the thought that it was probably only a bill,
and he glanced at all the bills lying one above another on the table.
It was not a bill, nor yet an advertisement, but a copy of a weekly
review. He tore it open. An article about himself!
After referring to the deplorable condition of the modern stage, the
writer pointed out how dramatic writing has of late years come to be
practised entirely by men who have failed in all other branches of
literature. Then he drew attention to the fact that signs of weariness and
dissatisfaction with the old stale stories, the familiar tricks in bringing
about 'striking situations,' were noticeable, not only in the newspaper
criticisms of new plays, but also among the better portion of the
audience. He admitted, however, that hitherto the attempts made by
younger writers in the direction of new subject-matter and new

treatment had met with little success. But this, he held, was not a reason
for discouragement. Did those who believed in the old formulas
imagine that the new formula would be discovered straight away,
without failures preliminary? Besides, these attempts were not utterly
despicable; at least one play written on the new lines had met with
some measure of success, and that play was Mr. Hubert Price's
Divorce.
'Yes, the fellow is right. The public is ready for a good play: it wasn't
when Divorce was given. I must finish The Gipsy. There are good
things in it; that I know. But I wish I could get that third act right. The
public will accept a masterpiece, but it will not accept an attempt to
write a masterpiece. But this time there'll be no falling off in the last
acts. The scene between the gipsy lover and the young lord will fetch
'em.' Taking up the review, Hubert glanced over the article a second
time. 'How anxious the fellows are for me to achieve a success! How
they believe in me! They desire it more than I do. They believe in me
more than I do in myself. They want to applaud me. They are hungry
for the masterpiece.'
At that moment his eye was caught by some letters written on blue
paper. His face resumed a wearied and hunted expression. 'There's no
doubt about it, money I must get somehow. I am running it altogether
too fine. There isn't twenty pounds between me and the deep sea.'
* * * * *
He was the son of the Rev. James Price, a Shropshire clergyman. The
family was of Welsh extraction, but in Hubert none of the physical
characteristics of the Celt appeared. He might have been selected as a
typical Anglo-Saxon. The face was long and pale, and he wore a short
reddish beard; the eyes were light blue, verging on grey, and they
seemed to speak a quiet, steadfast soul. Hubert had always been his
mother's favourite, and the scorn of his elder brothers, two rough boys,
addicted in early youth to robbing orchards, and later on to gambling
and drinking. The elder, after having broken his father's heart with
debts and disgraceful living, had gone out to the Cape. News of his
death came to the Rectory soon after; but James's death did not turn

Henry from his evil courses, and one day his father and mother had to
go to London on his account, and they brought him back a hopeless
invalid. Hubert was twelve years of age when he followed his brother
to the grave.
It was at his brother's funeral that Hubert met for the first time his uncle,
Mr. Burnett. Mr. Burnett had spent the greater part of his life in New
Zealand, where he had made a large fortune by