Vain Fortune | Page 5

Annie with a note, reminding him of his
promise to read her what he had written. As she had only a bedroom,
the reading had to take place in his sitting-room. He read her the first
and second acts. She was all enthusiasm, and begged hard to be
allowed to study the part--just to see what she could do with it--just to
let him see that he was not mistaken in her. Her interest in his work
captivated him, and he couldn't refuse to lend her the manuscript.

II
Rose often came to see Hubert in his rooms. Her manner was
disappointing, and he thought he must be mistaken in his first judgment
of her talents. But one afternoon she gave him a recitation of the
sleep-walking scene in Macbeth. It was strange to see this little
dark-complexioned, dark-eyed girl, the merest handful of flesh and
bone, divest herself at will of her personality, and assume the tragic
horror of Lady Macbeth, or the passionate rapture of Juliet detaining
her husband-lover on the balcony of her chamber. Hubert watched in
wonderment this girl, so weak and languid in her own nature, awaking
only to life when she assumed the personality of another. There she lay,
her wispy form stretched in his arm-chair, her great dark eyes fixed, her

mind at rest, sunk in some inscrutable dream. Her thin hand lay on the
arm of the chair: when she woke from her day-dream she burst into
irresponsible laughter, or questioned him with petulant curiosity. He
looked again: her dark curling hair hung on her swarthy neck, and she
was somewhat untidily dressed in blue linen.
'Were you ever in love?' she said suddenly. 'I don't suppose you could
be; you are too occupied with your play. I don't know, though; you
might be in love, but I don't think that many women would be in love
with you.... You are too good a man, and women don't like good men.'
Hubert laughed, and without a trace of offended vanity in his voice he
said, 'I don't profess to be much of a lady-killer.'
'You don't know what I mean,' she said, looking at him fixedly, a maze
of half-childish, half-artistic curiosity in her handsome eyes.
Perplexed in his shy, straightford nature, Hubert inquired if she took
sugar in her tea. She said she did; stretched her feet to the fire, and
lapsed into dream. She was one of the enigmas of Stageland. She
supported herself, and went about by herself, looking a poor, lost little
thing. She spoke with considerable freedom of language on all subjects,
but no one had been able to fix a lover upon her.
'What a part Lady Hayward is! But tell me,--I don't quite catch your
meaning in the second act. Is this it?' and starting to her feet, she
became in a moment another being. With a gesture, a look, an
intonation, she was the woman of the play,--a woman taken by an
instinct, long submerged, but which has floated to the surface, and is
beginning to command her actions. In another moment she had slipped
back into her weary lymphatic nature, at once prematurely old and
extravagantly childish. She could not talk of indifferent things; and
having asked some strange questions, and laughed loudly, she wished
Hubert 'Good-afternoon' in her curious, irresponsible fashion, taking
her leave abruptly.
The next two days Hubert devoted entirely to his play. There were
things in it which he knew were good, but it was incomplete. Montague

Ford would not produce it in its present form. He must put his shoulder
to the wheel and get it right; one more push, that was all that was
wanted. And he could be heard walking to and fro, up and down, along
and across his tiny sitting-room, stopping suddenly to take a note of an
idea that had occurred to him.
One day he went to Hampstead Heath. A long walk, he thought, would
clear his mind, and he returned home thinking of his play. The sunset
still glittering in the skies; the bare trees were beautifully distinct on the
blue background of the suburban street, and at the end of the long
perspective, a 'bus and a hansom could be seen coming towards him.
As they grew larger, his thoughts defined themselves, and the
distressing problem of his fourth act seemed to solve itself. That very
evening he would sketch out a new dramatic movement around which
all the other movements of the act would cluster. But at the corner of
Fitzroy Square, within a few yards of No. 17, he was accosted by a
shabbily-dressed man, who inquired if he were Mr. Price. On being
answered in the affirmative, the shabbily-dressed man said, 'Then I
have something for ye; I