Part 7 (1/2)
”I have thought of that,” Matravers said. ”Will you lunch with me at my rooms on Sunday and meet her? that is, of course, if she is able to come.”
”I shall be delighted,” Fergusson answered. ”About two, I suppose?”
Matravers a.s.sented, and the two men parted. The actor, with a little shrug of his shoulders and the air of a man who has an unpleasant task before him, turned southwards to interview the lady who certainly had the first claim to play ”Bathilde.” He found her at home and anxiously expecting him.
”If you had not come to-day,” she remarked, ”I should have sent for you. I want you to contradict that rubbish.”
She threw the theatrical paper across at him, and watched him, whilst he read the paragraph to which she had pointed. He laid the paper down.
”I cannot altogether contradict it,” he said. ”There is some truth in what the man writes.”
The lady was getting angry. She came over to Fergusson and stood by his side.
”You mean to tell me,” she exclaimed, ”that you have accepted a play for immediate production which I have not even seen, and in which the princ.i.p.al part is to be given to one of those crackpots down at the New Theatre, an amateur, an outsider--a woman no one ever heard of before.”
”You can't exactly say that,” he interposed calmly. ”I see you have her novel on your table there, and she is a woman who has been talked about a good deal lately. But the facts of the case are these.
Matravers brought me a play a few days ago which almost took my breath away. It is by far the best thing of the sort I ever read. It is bound to be a great success. I can't tell you any more now,--you shall read it yourself in a day or two. He was very easy to deal with as to terms, but he made one condition: that a certain part in it,--the princ.i.p.al one, I admit,--should be offered to this woman. I tried all I could to talk him out of it, but absolutely without effect. I was forced to consent. There is not a manager in London who would not jump at the play on any conditions. You know our position.
'Her Majesty' is a failure, and I haven't a single decent thing to put on. I simply dared not let such a chance as this go by.”
”I never heard anything so ridiculous in my life,” the lady exclaimed.
”No, I'm not blaming you, Reggie! I don't suppose you could have done anything else. But this woman, what a nerve she must have to imagine that she can do it! I see her horrid Norwegian play has come to utter grief at the New Theatre.”
”She is a clever woman,” Fergusson remarked. ”One can only hope for the best.”
She flashed a quiet glance at him.
”You know her, then,--you have been to see her.”
”Not yet,” Fergusson answered. ”I am going to meet her to-morrow.
Matravers has asked me to lunch.”
”Tell me about Matravers,” she said.
”I am afraid I do not know much. He is a very distinguished literary man, but his work has generally been critical or philosophical,--every one will be surprised to hear that he has written a play. You will find that there will be quite a stir about it. The reason why we have no plays nowadays which can possibly be cla.s.sed as literature, is because the wrong cla.s.s of man is writing for the stage. Smith and Francis and all these men have fine dramatic instincts, but they are not scholars. Their dialogue is mostly beneath contempt; there is a dash of conventionality in their best work. Now, Matravers is a writer of an altogether different type.”
”Thanks,” she interrupted, ”but I don't want a homily. I am only curious about the man himself.”
Fergusson pulled himself up a little annoyed. He had begun to talk about a subject of peculiar interest to him.
”Oh, the man himself is rather an interesting personality,” he declared. ”He is a recluse, a dilettante, and a very brilliant man of letters.”
”I want to know,” the lady said impatiently, ”whether he is married.”
”Married! certainly not,” Fergusson a.s.sured her.
”Very well, then, I am going there to luncheon with you to-morrow.”