Book: The Foolish Lovers

S >> St. John G. Ervine >> The Foolish Lovers




"What scares you!"

"Your selfishness scares me. You are selfish. You're frightfully
selfish. You think of nothing and no one but yourself!..."

"Amn't I always thinking of you?"

"Oh, yes, but only because you want me to marry you. That's all!"

He was very puzzled by this statement. "What other reason would a man
have for thinking of a woman?" he asked.

"That's just it," she replied. "You can't think of any other reason for
thinking about a woman ... and I can think of a whole lot of reasons.
But I shall marry you in spite of your selfishness because I know
you're as good as I'm likely to get!..."

"That's a queer reason for marrying a man!"

"I suppose it is. You're really rather a dear, John, and I daresay I
shall get to love you quite well ... but I don't now. Why should I? I
haven't known you very long ... and you've rather pestered me, haven't
you?"

"No, I haven't!"

"Yes, you have. But I don't mind that. Being pestered by you is somehow
different from being pestered by other men...."

"Have any other men bothered you?" he interrupted.

They were walking towards Tottenham Court Road as they spoke, and her
arm was securely held in his.

"Of course they have," she answered. "Do you think a girl can walk
about London without some man pestering her. Old men!..." She shuddered
and said "Oh!" in tones of disgust. "Why are old men so beastly?"

"Are they?"

"Oh, yes, of course they are. Beastly old things. I think old men ought
to be killed before they get nasty ... but never mind that. Being
pestered by you is very different from that sort of thing. I know very
well that you won't stop asking me to marry you until I either say I
will or I run away from London altogether and hide myself from you; and
I don't want to do that. So I'll marry you!"

He glanced at her in a wrathful manner.

"Is that what my mother told you to say?" he asked.

"Your mother? She never said anything at all about it!"

John laughed. "I told her about it," he said. "That's what she came
over about. She wanted to have a look at you!"

"Yes, I suppose I ought to have guessed that. I did in a way, but I
didn't know you'd said anything definite about it!"

"I'm always definite," said John.

"Yes. M' yes, I suppose you are!"

They walked down Tottenham Court Road and caught a 'bus going along
Oxford Street.

"You don't seem very pleased now that I've said I'll marry you," she
murmured, as they sat together on the back seat on top of the 'bus.

"I believe you're only marrying me to get away from that club you're
living in!" he replied.

"That's one reason, but it isn't the only reason. I _do_ like you,
John. Really, I do!"

"I want you to love me, love me desperately, the way I love you."

"But you've no right to expect that. Women don't love men for a long
time after men love them ... and sometimes they never love them.
There's a girl in our club ... well, she's not a girl, but she's
unmarried, so, of course we call her a girl ... and she says that most
of us can live fairly happily with quite a number of people. She says
that a person has one supreme love affair ... which may not come to
anything ... and enough liking for about a hundred people to be able to
marry and live happily with anyone of them. I think that's true. I've
known plenty of men that I think I could have married and been happy
enough with. You're one of them!..."

"This is a nice thing to be telling me when my heart's bursting for
you. I tell you, Eleanor, I love you till I don't know what I'm doing
or thinking, and all you tell me is that I'm one out of a hundred and
you like me well enough to put up with me!..."

"You don't want me to tell you that I'm in love with you ... like
that ... when I'm not?"

"No, of course not ... only!..."

"Perhaps you don't want to marry me now!"

He put his arm round her and pressed her so tightly that she gave a
little cry of rebuke. "I love you so much," he said, "that I'm thankful
glad for the least bit of liking you have for me. I wish I'd known
sooner. I'd have told my mother before she went back to Ballyards!"

"I'll write and tell her myself," said Eleanor. "I'd like to tell her
myself!"



V

"I'm going to be married," John said to Hinde that night.

"I thought as much," Hinde replied.

"Why?"

"Well, when a man does one dam-fool thing, he generally follows it up
with another. You lose your job on the _Sensation,_ and then you
get engaged to be married. I daresay your wife'll have a child just
about the time you've spent every ha'penny you possess. I suppose that
was her at the station to-night?" John nodded his head. "Well, you're a
lucky man!"

"Thank you," said John.

"I don't know whether she's a lucky woman or not!"

"_Thank_ you," said John. "If you've no more compliments to pay,
I'll go to my bed!"

"Good-night. Cream's coming back to-morrow. Miss Squibb had a letter
from him this evening!"

But John took no interest in the Creams.

"If I were you, I wouldn't fall out with the Creams," said Hinde. "Now
that you're going to get married, the money he'll pay you for a sketch
will be useful. I suppose you'll begin to be serious when you're
married?"

"I'm serious now," John replied.

"At present, Mac, you're merely bumptious. I was like that when I first
came to London. I had noble ideals, but I very soon discovered that the
other high-minded men were not quite so idealistic as I was. I know one
high-souled fellow who went into a newspaper office and asked to be
allowed to review a novel with the express intention of damning it
because he had some grudge against the author. Half the exalted
scribblers in London are busily employed scratching each other's backs,
and if you aren't in their little gang, you either are not noticed at
all in their papers or you are unfairly judged or very, very faintly
praised. You've either got to be in a gang in London or to be so
immeasurably great or lucky that you can disregard gangs ... otherwise
there's very little likelihood of you getting a foothold in what you
call good papers. I know these papers. Mr. Noblemind is editor of one
paper and Mr. Greatfellow is a regular contributor to another and Mr.
PraisemeandI'llpraiseyou is the literary editor of a third, and they
employ each other; and Mr. Noblemind calls attention to the beauty of
his pals' work in his paper, and they call attention to the beauty of
his in theirs. My dear Mac, if you really want to know what dishonesty
in journalism is, worm yourself into the secrets of the highbrow Press
and the noble poets. I'm a Yellow Journalist and a failure, but by
heaven, I'm an honest Yellow Journalist and an honest failure. I'm not
an indifferent journalist pretending to be a poet!..."

"I don't see what all this has got to do with me," John said.

"No," Hinde replied in a quieter tone. "No, I suppose it hasn't
anything to do with you. You're quite right. I'm in a bad temper
to-night. I'm glad you're engaged to that girl. She looks a sensible
sort of woman. Heard any more about your book?"

"Yes. It's been returned to me!..."

"Oh, my dear chap, I'm very sorry!"

"I've sent it out again. It's sure to be printed by someone," John
said.

"I hope so. I wish you'd let me read it!"

"Yes, I'd like you to read it. I wish I'd kept it back a while. But
you'll see it some day. Good-night!"

"Good-night, Mac!"



VI

The Creams returned to Miss Squibb's on the following evening, and
Cream came to see Hinde and John soon after they arrived. Dolly, he
said, was too tired after her journey to do more than send a friendly
greeting to them.

"I wanted to have a talk to you about that sketch," he said to John.
"It's very good, of course, quite classy, in fact, but it wants
tightening up. Snap! That's what it wants. And a little bit of
vulgarity. Oh, not too much. Of course not. But it doesn't do to
overlook vulgarity, Mac. We've all got a bit of it in us, and
pers'nally, I see no harm in it, _pro_-vided ... _pro-vided_,
mind you ... that it's comic. That's the only excuse for vulgarity ...
that it's comic. Now, the first thing is the title!"

Mr. Cream took the MS. of John's sketch from his pocket and spread
it on the table. "This won't do at all," he said, pointing to the
title-page of the play. "_Love's Tribute!_ My dear old Mac, what the
hell's the good of a title like that? Where's the snap in it? Where's
the attraction, the allurement? Nowhere. A title like that wouldn't
draw twopence into a theatre. _Love's Tribute!_ I ask you!..." His
feelings made him inarticulate and he gazed round the room in a
helpless manner.

"Well, what would you call it?" John demanded.

"Something snappy. I often say a title's half the play. Now, take a
piece like _The Girl Who Lost Her Character_ or _The Man With
Two Wives_ ... there's a bit of snap about that. Titles like those
simply haul 'em into the theatre. _Snap! Go! Ginger!_ Something
that sounds 'ot, but isn't ... that's the stuff to give the British
public. You make 'em think they're going to see something ... well,
_you_ know ... and they'll stand four deep in the snow waiting to
get into the theatre. If you were to put the Book of Genesis on the
stage and call it _The Girl Who Took The Wrong Turning_, people
'ud think they'd seen something they oughtn't to ... and they'd tell
all their friends. Now, how about _The Guilty Woman_ for your
sketch, Mac?"

John looked at him in astonishment. "But the woman in it isn't guilty
of anything," he protested.

"That doesn't matter. The title needn't have anything to do with it.
Very few titles have anything to do with the piece. So long as they're
snappy, that's all you need think about. Pers'nally, I like _The
Guilty Woman_ myself; but Dolly's keen on _The Sinful Woman_.
And that just reminds me, Mac! Here's a tip for you. Always have
_Woman_ in your title if you can. _A Sinful Woman_'ll draw
better than _A Sinful Man_. People seem to expect women to be more
sinful than men when they are sinful ... or p'raps they're more used to
men being sinful than women. I dunno. But it's a fact ... _Woman_
in the title is a bigger draw than _Man_. And you got to think of
these little things. If you want to make a fortune out of a piece, take
my advice and think of a snappy adjective to put in front of
_Woman_ or _Girl!_ Really, you know, play-writing's very
simple, if you only remember a few tips like that!..."

"But my play isn't about sin at all," John protested.

"Well, what's the good of it then?" Cream demanded. "All plays are
about sin of some sort, aren't they? If people aren't breaking a rule
or a commandment, there's no plot, and if there's no plot, there's no
play. Of course, Bernard Shaw and all these chaps, they don't believe
in plots or climaxes or anything, and they turn out pieces that sound
as if they'd wrote the first half in their Oxford days and the second
half when they were blind drunk. You've got to have a plot, Mac, and if
you've got to have a plot, you've got to have sin. What 'ud Hamlet be
without the sin in it? Nothing! Why, there wasn't any drama in the
world 'til Adam and Eve fell! You take it from me, Mac, there'll be no
drama in heaven. Why? Because there'll be no sin there. But there'll be
a hell of a lot in hell! Now, I like _The Guilty Woman_. It's not
quite so bare-faced as _The Sinful Woman_, but as Dolly likes it
better ... she's more intense than I am ... we'll have to have it, I
expect!"

"I don't like either of those titles," John said, gulping as he spoke,
for he felt that there was a difference of view between Cream and him
that could not be overcome.

"Well, think of a better one then," Cream good-naturedly answered.
"There's another thing. As I said, the piece wants overhauling, but you
can leave that to me. When I've had a good go at it!..."

"But!..."

"Now, look here, Mac," Cream firmly proceeded, "you be guided by me.
You're a youngster at the game, and I'm an old hand. I never met a
young author yet that didn't imagine his play had come straight from
the mind of God and mustn't have a word altered. The tip-top chaps
don't think like that. They're always altering and changing their plays
during rehearsal ... and sometimes after they've been produced, too.
Look at Pinero! He's altered the whole end of a play before now. He had
a most unhappy end to _The Profligate_ ... the hero committed
suicide in the last act ... but the public wouldn't have it. They said
they wanted a happy end, and Pinero had the good sense to give it to
them. In my opinion the public was right. The happy end was the right
end for that piece!..."

"But artistically!..." John pleaded.

"Artistically!" Cream exclaimed in mocking tones to Hinde. "I ask you!
Artistically! What's Art? Pleasing people. That's what Art is!"

"Oh, no," John protested. "Pleasing yourself, perhaps!..."

"And aren't you most pleased when you feel that people are pleased with
you, I ask you! What do you publish books for if you only want to
please yourself? Why don't you keep your great thoughts to yourself if
you don't want to please anybody else? Yah-r-r, this Art talk makes me
feel sick. You'd rather sell two thousand copies of a book than two
hundred, wouldn't you? Of course, you would. I've heard these highbrow
chaps talking about the Mob and the Tasteful Few. I acted in a play
once by a fellow who was always bleating about the Tasteful Few ... and
you should have heard the way he went on when his play only drew the
Tasteful Few to see it. If his piece had had a chance of a long run, do
you think he'd have stopped it at the end of a month because he
objected to long runs as demoralizing to Art? Not likely, my lad!...
Now, this piece of yours, Mac, has too much talk in it and not enough
incident, see! You'll have to cut some of it. The talk's good, but in
plays the talk mustn't take the audience off the point, no matter how
good it is. See! You don't want long speeches: you want short ones. The
talk ought to be like a couple of chaps sparring ... only not too much
fancy work. I've seen a lot of boxing in my time. There's boxers that
goes in for what's called pretty work ... nice, neat boxing ... but
the spectators soon begin to yawn over it. What people like to see
is one chap getting a smack on the jaw and the other chap getting a
black eye. And it's the same with everything. Ever seen Cinquevalli
balancing a billiard ball on top of another one? Took him years to learn
that trick, but he'll tell you himself ... he lives round the corner from
here ... that his audiences take more interest in some flashy-looking
thing that's dead easy to do. When he throws a cannon-ball up into the
air and catches it on the back of his neck ... they think that's
wonderful ... but it isn't half so wonderful as balancing one billiard
ball on top of another one. See? So it's no good being subtle before
simple people. They don't understand you, and they just get up and walk
out or give you the bird!..."

"I'm going to tell you something," he continued, as if he had not said
a word before. "I've noticed human nature a good deal, and I think I
know something about it. There was a sketch we did once, called _The
Twiddley Bits_. It was written by the same chap that did _The Girl
Who Gets Left_ ... he had a knack, that chap ... only he took to
drink and died. There was a joke in _The Twiddley Bits_ that went
down everywhere. Here it is. I played the part of a comic footman, and
I had to say to the villain, 'What are you looking at, guv'nor?' and he
replied, 'I'm wondering what on earth that is!' and then he pointed to
my face. That got a laugh to start with. Then I had to say, 'It's my
face. What did you think it was? A sardine tin?' That got a roar.
Brought the house down, that did. We played that piece all over the
world, Mac, and that joke never failed once. Not once. We played it in
England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, America, New Zealand, South Africa
and Australia, and it never missed once. Fetched 'em every time. Human
nature's about the same everywhere, once you get to understand it, Mac,
and if you like you can put that joke in your play. It'll help it out a
bit in the middle!..."



VII

"Well?" said Hinde to John when Cream had left them.

"I'd rather sell happorths of tea and sugar than write the kind of play
he wants," John replied.

Hinde paused for a few moments. Then he said, "Why don't you sell tea
and sugar. You've got a shop, haven't you?"

"Because I'm going to write books," John answered tartly.

"I see," said Hinde.




THE EIGHTH CHAPTER


I

Three months after Mrs. MacDermott departed from London, Eleanor and
John were married. They walked into St. Chad's Church in the Bayswater
Road, accompanied by Mr. Hinde and Mrs. MacDermott (who had come
hurriedly to London again for the ceremony) and Lizzie and a cousin of
Eleanor's who excited John's wrath by using the marriage ceremony for
propaganda purposes in connexion with Women's Suffrage; and there,
prompted by an asthmatic curate, they swore to love and cherish each
other until death did them part. Mrs. MacDermott had begged for a
Presbyterian marriage in Ballyards ... "where your da and me were
married"... but there were difficulties in the way of satisfying her
desire, and she had consented to see them married in what, to her mind,
was an imitation of a Papist church. Eleanor had stipulated for at
least a year's engagement, partly so that they might become more
certain of each other and partly to enable John to prove that he could
earn enough money to maintain a home, but John had worn down her
opposition to an immediate marriage by asserting repeatedly that he
could easily earn money for her, would, in fact, be better able to do
so because of his marriage which would stimulate him to greater
activity, and, finally, by his announcement that his tragedy had been
accepted for production by the Cottenham Repertory Theatre. The manager
had written to him to say that the Reading Committee were of opinion
that his interesting play should be performed, and he enclosed an
agreement which he desired John to sign and return to him at his
convenience. He had not been able to restrain his joy when he received
the letter, and he had hurried to the nearest post office so that he
might telephone the news to Eleanor.

"My dear!" she said proudly over the telephone.

"Didn't I tell you I could do it," he exclaimed. "Didn't I?"

"Yes, darling, you did!"

"Wait till Hinde conies back! This'll be one in the eye for him. He
thought the play was a very ordinary one, but this proves that it
isn't, doesn't it, Eleanor?"

"Yes, dear!"

"It's a well-known theatre, the Cottenham Repertory. One of the best-known
in the world. Can you get off for the day, do you think, and we'll
go out and celebrate it?..."

"Don't be silly, John!..."

"Well, we'll have lunch together. We'll have wine for lunch!... Oh, my
dear, I'm nearly daft with joy. We ought to make enough money out of
the play to set up house at once. I don't know how much you make out of
plays, but you make a great deal. We'll get married at once!..."

"But we can't!..."

"Och, quit, woman! This makes all the difference In the world. Aren't
you just aching for a wee house of your own, the same way that I
am!..."

And after a struggle for time to think, Eleanor had consented to be
married much sooner than she had ever meant to be. They were married in
June, and the play was to be performed at the Cottenham Repertory
Theatre in the following September. The manager had written to John,
after the business preliminaries were settled, to say that if the play
were successful in Cottenham, he would include it in the Company's
repertoire of pieces to be performed in London during their annual
season. "And of course, it'll be successful," said John when he had
read the letter to Eleanor. "I should think we'd easily make several
hundred pounds out of the play ... and there's always the chance that
it may be a popular success!" His high hopes were dashed by the return
of his novel from Messrs. Gooden and Knight who regretted that the
novel was not suitable for publication by them; but he recovered some
of them when he reflected that the fame he would achieve with his play
would cause Messrs. Gooden and Knight to feel exceedingly sorry that
they had not jumped at the chance of publishing his book. Hinde had
read it and thought it was as good as most first novels. "Nothing very
great about it," he said, "but it isn't contemptible!" That seemed very
chilly praise to John, and he was grateful to Eleanor for her
enthusiasm about the book. "Of course, it has faults," she admitted. "I
daresay it has, but then it's your _first book_. You wouldn't be
human if you could write a great book at the first attempt, would you?"

That had consoled him for much, and very hopefully he sent the book on
its third adventure, this time to Mr. Claude Jannissary, who called
himself "The Progressive Publisher."



II

On the night before he was married, John, vaguely nervous, left his
mother at Miss Squibb's and went for a walk. All day, he had been "on
pins and needles," and now, although it was nine o'clock, he could not
remain in the house any longer. He felt that his head would burst if he
stayed indoors. The house seemed to be unusually stuffy, and the
spectacle of Lizzie gazing at him with mawkish interest, made him wish
to rise up and assault her. He had fidgetted about the room, taking a
book from its shelf and then, without reading in it, replacing it,
until his mother, observing him with cautious eyes, proposed that he
should go for a walk. "I won't wait up for you," she said, "so you
needn't hurry back!"

"Very well, ma!" he said, getting ready to go out.

He left the house and started to walk towards Streatham, but before he
had gone very far, he felt drawn away from Streatham, and he turned and
walked past his home and on towards Kennington. At the Horns, he paused
indecisively. There were more light and stir towards the Elephant and
Castle than there was in the Kennington Road, and light and stir were
attractive to him, but to-night he ought to be in quiet places and in
shadows. He was beginning to feel dubious about himself. Marriage,
after all, was a very serious business, but here he was thrusting
himself into it with very little consideration. Eleanor had protested
all along that they were insufficiently acquainted with each other and
had pleaded for a long engagement, but he had overruled her: they knew
each other well enough. The best way for a man and woman to get to know
each other, he said, was to marry. Eleanor had exclaimed against that
doctrine because, she said, if the couple discovered that they did not
care for each other, they could not get free without misery and
possibly disgrace.

"You have to run the risk of that," said John.

That always had been his determining argument: that one must take
risks. Now, on this night before his marriage, the risk he was about to
take alarmed him. The fidgettiness, the nervous irritability which had
been characteristic of him all day now concretely became fright. Who
was this woman he was about to marry? What did he know of her? She was
a pleasant, nice-looking girl and she had an extraordinary power over
him ... but what did he _know_ of her? Nothing. Nothing whatever.
He liked kissing her and holding her in his arms, but he had liked
kissing Maggie Carmichael and holding her in his arms; and now he was
very thankful he had not married Maggie. How was he to know that he
would feel any more for Eleanor in six months' time than he now felt
for Maggie ... for whom he had once felt everything? Eleanor had told
him that she only liked him ... was not in love with him ... that he
was one of a hundred men, anyone of whom she might have married and
lived with in tolerable happiness!...

A cold shiver ran through his body as he thought that he might be about
to make the greatest mistake that any man could make ... marry the
wrong woman. Ought he to postpone the marriage so that Eleanor and he
should have more time in which to consider things? Postponement would
mean terrible inconvenience to everybody, but it would be better to
suffer such inconvenience than to enter into a dismal marriage because
one was reluctant to upset arrangements. This marrying was a terrible
affair!... He walked steadily along the Kennington Road and presently
found himself in Westminster Bridge Road, and then he crossed the river
and turned on to the Embankment. There was a cool breeze blowing from
the sea, and he took his hat off and let the air play about his head.
He leant against the parapet and gazed across the water to the dark
warehouses on the Lambeth side and wondered why they were so beautiful
at night when they were so hideous by day. Even the railway bridge at
Charing Cross seemed to be beautiful in the dusk, and when a train
rumbled across it, sending up clouds of lit smoke from the funnel of
the engine and making flickering lights as the carriages rolled past
the iron bars of the bridge-side, it seemed to him to be a very
wonderful and appealing spectacle. His fidgettiness fell from him as he
contemplated the swift river and the great dark shapes of warehouses
and the black hulks of barges going down to the Pool and the immutable
loveliness of Waterloo Bridge. He had walked along the Embankment past
Hungerford Bridge, and then had stopped to look at Waterloo Bridge for
a few moments. Even the moving lights of the advertisements of tea and
whiskey on the Lambeth side of the river made beauty for him as they
were reflected in the water. There were little crinkled waves of green
and red and gold on the river as the changing lights of the
advertisements ran up and down.... He had seen articles in the
newspapers protesting against these illuminated signs ... "the ugly
symbols of commercialism" ... but to-night they had the look of
loveliness in his eyes. Very often since he had come to London had he
found himself in disagreement with the views of men who wrote as if
Almighty God had committed Beauty to their charge ... he had never been
able to understand or agree with their arguments against great engines
and the instruments of power and energy ... and it seemed to him that
many of these writers were querulous, fractious people who had not the
capacity to make themselves at ease in a striving world. That poet
fellow ... what was his name? ... whom he had met at Hampstead ...
Palfrey, that was the man's name ... had sneered at Commerce! John had
not been able to make head or tail of his arguments against Commerce,
and he had found himself defending it against the Poet ... "the very
word is beautiful!" he had asserted several times ... mainly on his
recollection of his Uncle William. Palfrey had had the best of the
argument, because Palfrey could use his tongue more effectively,
but John had felt certain that the truth was not in Palfrey, and here
to-night, in this place where Commerce was most compactly to be seen, he
knew that there was Beauty in the labours of men, that bargaining and
competition and striving energies and rivalry in skill were elements of
loveliness. "These little poets sitting in their stuffy attics
scribbling about the moon!... Yah-rr-r!" he said, putting his hat on to
his head again.

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