"But the managers seem inclined to cut their cavendish very fine just at present," she said. "If I don't get a part soon," she announced, "I shall ask Mitchell to put me down on the list for recitations at evening parties.""That seems a desperate revenge," said the American; "and besides, I don't want you to get a part, because some one might be idiotic enough to take my comedy, and if he should, you must play Nancy.""I would not ask for any salary if I could play Nancy," Miss Cavendish answered.
They spoke of a great many things, but their talk always ended by her saying that there must be some one with sufficient sense to see that his play was a great play, and by his saying that none but she must play Nancy.
The Lion preferred the tall girl with masses and folds of brown hair, who came from America to paint miniatures of the British aristocracy. Her name was Helen Cabot, and he liked her because she was so brave and fearless, and so determined to be independent of every one, even of the lodger--especially of the lodger, who it appeared had known her very well at home. The lodger, they gathered, did not wish her to be independent of him and the two Americans had many arguments and disputes about it, but she always said, "It does no good, Philip; it only hurts us both when you talk so. I care for nothing, and for no one but my art, and, poor as it is, it means everything to me, and you do not, and, of course, the man I am to marry, must." Then Carroll would talk, walking up and down, and looking very fierce and determined, and telling her how he loved her in such a way that it made her look even more proud and beautiful. And she would say more gently, "It is very fine to think that any one can care for like that, and very helpful. But unless I cared in the same way it would be wicked of me to marry you, and besides--" She would add very quickly to prevent his speaking again--" I don't want to marry you or anybody, and I never shall. I want to be free and to succeed in my work, just as you want to succeed in your work. So please never speak of this again." When she went away the lodger used to sit smoking in the big arm-chair and beat the arms with his hands, and he would pace up and down the room while his work would lie untouched and his engagements pass forgotten.
Summer came and London was deserted, dull, and dusty, but the lodger stayed on in Jermyn Street. Helen Cabot had departed on a round of visits to country houses in Scotland, where, as she wrote him, she was painting miniatures of her hosts and studying the game of golf. Miss Cavendish divided her days between the river and one of the West End theatres. She was playing a small part in a farce-comedy.
One day she came up from Cookham earlier than usual, looking very beautiful in a white boating frock and a straw hat with a Leander ribbon. Her hands and arms were hard with dragging a punting pole and she was sunburnt and happy, and hungry for tea.
"Why don't you come down to Cookham and get out of this heat?"Miss Cavendish asked. "You need it; you look ill.""I'd like to, but I can't," said Carroll. "The fact is, I paid in advance for these rooms, and if I lived anywhere else I'd be losing five guineas a week on them."Miss Cavendish regarded him severely. She had never quite mastered his American humor.
"But five guineas--why that's nothing to you," she said.
Something in the lodger's face made her pause. "You don't mean----""Yes, I do," said the lodger, smiling. "You see, I started in to lay siege to London without sufficient ammunition. London is a large town, and it didn't fall as quickly as I thought it would.
So I am economizing. Mr. Lockhart's Coffee Rooms and I are no longer strangers."Miss Cavendish put down her cup of tea untasted and leaned toward him "Are you in earnest?" she asked. "For how long?""Oh, for the last month," replied the lodger; "they are not at all bad--clean and wholesome and all that.""But the suppers you gave us, and this," she cried, suddenly, waving her hands over the pretty tea-things, "and the cake and muffins?""My friends, at least," said Carroll, "need not go to Lockhart's.""And the Savoy?" asked Miss Cavendish, mournfully shaking her head.
"A dream of the past," said Carroll, waving his pipe through the smoke. "Gatti's? Yes, on special occasions; but for necessity, the Chancellor's, where one gets a piece of the prime roast beef of Old England, from Chicago, and potatoes for ninepence--a pot of bitter twopence-halfpenny, and a penny for the waiter. It's most amusing on the whole. I am learning a little about London, and some things about myself. They are both most interesting subjects.""Well, I don't like it," Miss Cavendish declared helplessly.
"When I think of those suppers and the flowers, I feel--I feel like a robber.""Don't," begged Carroll. "I am really the most happy of men--that is, as the chap says in the play, I would be if I wasn't so damned miserable. But I owe no man a penny and I have assets--Ihave L?0 to last me through the winter and two marvellous plays; and I love, next to yourself, the most wonderful woman God ever made. That's enough.""But I thought you made such a lot of money by writing?" asked Miss Cavendish.
"I do--that is, I could," answered Carroll, "if I wrote the things that sell; but I keep on writing plays that won't.""And such plays!" exclaimed Marion, warmly; "and to think that they are going begging." She continued indignantly, "I can't imagine what the managers do want.""I know what they don't want," said the American. Miss Cavendish drummed impatiently on the tea-tray.
"I wish you wouldn't be so abject about it," she said. "If Iwere a man I'd make them take those plays."
"How?" asked the American; "with a gun?"
"Well, I'd keep at it until they read them," declared Marion.
"I'd sit on their front steps all night and I'd follow them in cabs, and I'd lie in wait for them at the stage-door. I'd just make them take them."Carroll sighed and stared at the ceiling. "I guess I'll give up and go home," he said.
