Vain Fortune by George Moore

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Vain Fortune

A Novel

By

George Moore

_With Five Illustrations By__Maurice Greiffenhagen_

New Edition

Completely Revised

London: Walter Scott, Ltd. Paternoster Square

1895

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

Prefatory Note

I hope it will not seem presumptuous to ask my critics to treat this new
edition of _Vain Fortune_ as a new book: for it is a new book. The first
edition was kindly noticed, but it attracted little attention, and very
rightly, for the story as told therein was thin and insipid; and when
Messrs. Scribner proposed to print the book in America, I stipulated that I
should be allowed to rewrite it. They consented, and I began the story with
Emily Watson, making her the principal character instead of Hubert Price.
Some months after I received a letter from Madam Couperus, offering to
translate the English edition into Dutch. I sent her the American edition,
and asked her which she would prefer to translate from. Madam Couperus
replied that many things in the English edition, which she would like to
retain, had been omitted from the American edition, that the hundred or
more pages which I had written for the American edition seemed to her
equally worthy of retention.

She pointed out that, without the alteration of a sentence, the two
versions could be combined. The idea had not occurred to me; I saw,
however, that what she proposed was not only feasible but advantageous. I
wrote, therefore, giving her the required permission, and thanking her for
a suggestion which I should avail myself of when the time came for a new
English edition.

The union of the texts was no doubt accomplished by Madam Couperus, without
the alteration of a sentence; but no such accomplished editing is possible
to me; I am a victim to the disease of rewriting, and the inclusion of the
hundred or more pages of new matter written for the American edition led me
into a third revision of the story. But no more than in the second has the
skeleton, or the attitude of the skeleton been altered in this third
version, only flesh and muscle have been added, and, I think, a little
life. _Vain Fortune_, even in its present form, is probably not my best
book, but it certainly is far from being my worst. But my opinion regarding
my own work is of no value; I do not write this Prefatory Note to express
it, but to ask my critics and my readers to forget the original _Vain
Fortune_, and to read this new book as if it were issued under another
title.

G.M.

I

The lamp had not been wiped, and the room smelt slightly of paraffin. The
old window-curtains, whose harsh green age had not softened, were drawn.
The mahogany sideboard, the threadbare carpet, the small horsehair sofa,
the gilt mirror, standing on a white marble chimney-piece, said clearly,
'Furnished apartments in a house built about a hundred years ago.' There
were piles of newspapers, there were books on the mahogany sideboard and on
the horsehair sofa, and on the table there were various manuscripts,--_The
Gipsy_, Act I.; _The Gipsy_, Act III., Scenes iii. and iv.

A sheet of foolscap paper, and upon it a long slender hand. The hand traced
a few lines of fine, beautiful caligraphy, then it paused, correcting with
extreme care what was already written, and in a hesitating, minute way,
telling of a brain that delighted in the correction rather than in the
creation of form.

The shirt-cuff was frayed and dirty. The coat was thin and shiny. A
half-length figure of a man drew out of the massed shadows between the
window and sideboard. The red beard caught the light, and the wavy brown
hair brightened. Then a look of weariness, of distress, passed over the
face, and the man laid down the pen, and, taking some tobacco from a paper,
rolled a cigarette. Rising, and leaning forward, he lighted it over the
lamp. He was a man of about thirty-six feet, broad-shouldered, well-built,
healthy, almost handsome.

The time he spent in dreaming his play amounted to six times, if not ten
times, as much as 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 sheep-farming and
investments in land. He had seemed to be greatly taken with his nephew, and
for many years it was understood that he would leave him the greater part,
if not the whole, of his fortune. But Mr. Burnett had come under the
influence of some poor relations, some distant cousins, the Watsons, and
had eventually decided to adopt their daughter Emily and leave her his
fortune. He did not dare intimate his change of mind to his sister; but the
news having reached Mrs. Price in various rumours, she wrote to her brother
asking him to confirm or deny these rumours; and when he admitted their
truth, Mrs. Price never spoke to him again. She was a determined woman, and
the remembrance of the wrong done to her son never left her.

While the other children had been a torment and disgrace, Hubert had been
to his parents a consolation and a blessing. They had feared that he too
might turn to betting and drink, but he had never shown sign of low tastes.
He played no games, nor did he care for terriers or horses; but for books
and drawing, and long country walks. Immediately on hearing of his
disinheritance he had spoken at once of entering a profession; and for many
months this was the subject of consideration in the Rectory. Hubert joined
in these discussions willingly, but he could not bring himself to accept
the army or the bar. It was indeed only necessary to look at him to see
that neither soldier's tunic nor lawyer's wig was intended for him; and it
was nearly as clear that those earnest eyes, so intelligent and yet so
undetermined in their gaze, were not those of a doctor.

But if his eyes failed to predict his future, his hands told the story of
his life distinctly enough--those long, white, languid hands, what could
they mean but art? And very soon Hubert began to draw, evincing some
natural aptitude. Then an artist came into the neighbourhood, the two
became friends, and went together on a long sketching tour. Life in the
open air, the shade of the hedge, the glare of the highway, the meditation
of the field, the languor of the river-side, the contemplation of wooded
horizons, was what Hubert's pastoral nature was most fitted to enjoy; and,
for the sake of the life it afforded him, he pursued the calling of a
landscape painter long after he had begun to feel his desire turning in
another direction. When the landscape on the canvas seemed hopelessly
inadequate, he laid aside the brush for the pencil, and strove to interpret
the summer fields in verse. From verse he drifted into the article and the
short story, and from the story into the play. And it was in this last form
that he felt himself strongest, and various were the dramas and comedies
that he dreamed from year's end to year's end.

While he was in the midst of his period of verse-writing his mother died,
and in the following year, just as he was working at his stories, he
received a telegram calling him to attend his father's death-bed. When the
old man was laid in the shadow of the weather-beaten village church, Hubert
gathered all his belongings and bade farewell for ever to the Shropshire
rectory.

In London Hubert made few friends. There were some two or three men with
whom he was frequently seen--quiet folk like himself, whose enjoyment
consisted in smoking a tranquil pipe in the evening, or going for long
walks in the country. He was one of those men whose indefiniteness provokes
curiosity, and his friends noticed and wondered why it was that he was so
frequently the theme of their conversation. His simple, unaffected manners
were full of suggestion, and in his writings there was always an
indefinable rainbow-like promise of ultimate achievement. So, long before
he had succeeded in writing a play, detached scenes and occasional verses
led his friends into gradual belief that he was one from whom big things
might be expected. And when the one-act play which they had all so heartily
approved of was produced, and every newspaper praised it for its literary
quality, the friends took pride in this public vindication of their
opinion. After the production of his play people came to see the new
author, and every Saturday evening some fifteen or twenty men used to
assemble in Hubert's lodgings to drink whisky, smoke cigars, and talk
drama. Encouraged by his success, Hubert wrote _Divorce_. He worked
unceasingly upon it for more than a year, and when he had written the final
scene, he was breaking into his last hundred pounds. The play was refused
twice, and then accepted by a theatrical speculator, to whom it seemed to
afford opportunity for the exhibition of the talents of a lady he was
interested in.

The success of the play was brief. But before it was withdrawn, Hubert had
sold the American rights for a handsome sum, and within the next two years
he had completed a second play, which he called _An Ebbing Tide_. Some of
the critics argued that it contained scenes as fine as any in _Divorce_,
but it was admitted on all sides that the interest withered in the later
acts. But the failure of the play did not shake the established belief in
Hubert's genius; it merely concentrated the admiration of those interested
in the new art upon _Divorce_, the partial failure of which was now
attributed to the acting. If it had only been played at the Haymarket or
the Lyceum, it could not have failed.

The next three years Hubert wasted in various aestheticisms. He explained
the difference between the romantic and realistic methods in the reviews;
he played with a poetic drama to be called _The King of the Beggars_, and
it was not until the close of the third year that he settled down to
definite work. Then all his energies were concentrated on a new play--_The
Gipsy_. A young woman of Bohemian origin is suddenly taken with the
nostalgia of the tent, and leaves her husband and her home to wander with
those of her race. He had read portions of this play to his friends, who at
last succeeded in driving Montague Ford, the popular actor-manager, to
Hubert's door; and after hearing some few scenes he had offered a couple of
hundred pounds in advance of fees for the completed manuscript. 'But when
can I have the manuscript?' said Ford, as he was about to leave. 'As soon
as I can finish it,' Hubert replied, looking at him wistfully out of pale
blue-grey eyes. 'I could finish it in a month, if I could count on not
being worried by duns or disturbed by friends during that time.'

Ford looked at Hubert questioningly; then he said 'I have always noticed
that when a fellow wants to finish a play, the only way to do it is to go
away to the country and leave no address.'

But the country was always so full of pleasure for him, that he doubted his
power to remain indoors with the temptation of fields and rivers before his
eyes, and he thought that to escape from dunning creditors it would be
sufficient to change his address. So he left Norfolk Street for the more
remote quarter of Fitzroy Street, where he took a couple of rooms on the
second floor. One of his fellow-lodgers, he soon found, was Rose Massey, an
actress engaged for the performance of small parts at the Queen's Theatre.
The first time he spoke to her was on the doorstep. She had forgotten her
latch-key, and he said, 'Will you allow me to let you in?' She stepped
aside, but did not answer him. Hubert thought her rude, but her strange
eyes and absent-minded manner had piqued his curiosity, and, having nothing
to do that night, he went to the theatre to see her act. She was playing a
very small part, and one that was evidently unsuited to her--a part that
was in contradiction to her nature; but there was something behind the
outer envelope which led him to believe she had real talent, and would make
a name for herself when she was given a part that would allow her to reveal
what was in her.

In the meantime, Rose had been told that the gentleman she had snubbed in
the passage was Mr. Hubert Price, the author of _Divorce_.

'Oh, it was very silly of me,' she said to Annie. 'If I had only known!'

'Lor', he don't mind; he'll be glad enough to speak to you when you meets
him again.'

And when they met again on the stairs, Rose nodded familiarly, and Hubert
said--

'I went to the Queen's the other night.'

'Did you like the piece?'

'I did not care about the piece; but when you get a wild, passionate part
to play, you'll make a hit. The sentimental parts they give you don't suit
you.'

A sudden light came into the languid face. 'Yes, I shall do something if I
can get a part like that.'

Hubert told her that he was writing a play containing just such a part.

Her eyes brightened again. 'Will you read me the play?' she said, fixing
her dark, dreamy eyes on him.

'I shall be very glad.... Do you think it won't bore you?' And his wistful
grey eyes were full of interrogation.

'No, I'm sure it won't.'

And a few days after she sent 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 have been a-watching for ye for the
last three days, but ye didn't come out; missed yer this morning: 'ere it
is;' and he thrust a folded paper into Hubert's hand.

'What is this?'

'Don't yer know?' he said with a grin; 'Messrs. Tomkins & Co., Tailors,
writ--twenty-two pound odd.'

Hubert made no answer; he put the paper in his pocket, opened the door
quietly, stole up to his room, and sat down to think. The first thing to do
was to examine into his finances. It was alarming to find that he was
breaking into his last five-pound note. True that he was close on the end
of his play, and when it was finished he would be able to draw on Ford. But
a summons to appear in the county court could not fail to do him immense
injury. He had heard of avoiding service, but he knew little of the law,
and wondered what power the service of the writ gave his creditor over him.
His instinct was to escape--hide himself where they would not be able to
find him, and so obtain time to finish his play. But he owed his landlady
money, and his departure would have to be clandestine. As he reflected on
how many necessaries he might carry away in a newspaper, he began to feel
strangely like a criminal, and while rolling up a couple of shirts, a few
pairs of socks, and some collars, he paused, his hands resting on the
parcel. He did not seem to know himself, and it was difficult to believe
that he really intended to leave the house in this disreputable fashion.
Mechanically he continued to add to his parcel, thinking all the while that
he must go, otherwise his play would never be written.

He had been working very well for the last few days, and now he saw his way
quite clearly; the inspiration he had been so long waiting for had come at
last, and he felt sure of his fourth act. At the same time he wished to
conduct himself honestly, even in this distressing situation. Should he
tell his landlady the truth? But the desire to realise his idea was
intolerable, and, yielding as if before an irresistible force, he tied the
parcel and prepared to go. At that moment he remembered that he must leave
a note for his landlady, and he was more than ever surprised at the
naturalness with which lying phrases came into his head. But when it came
to committing them to paper, he found he could not tell an absolute lie,
and he wrote a simple little note to the effect that he had been called
away on urgent business, and hoped to return in about a week.

He descended the stairs softly. Mrs. Wilson's sitting-room opened on to the
passage; she might step out at any moment, and intercept his exit. He had
nearly reached the last flight when he remembered that he had forgotten his
manuscripts. His flesh turned cold, his heart stood still. There was
nothing for it but to ascend those creaking stairs again. His already
heavily encumbered pockets could not be persuaded to receive more than a
small portion of the manuscripts. He gathered them in his hand, and
prepared to redescend the perilous stairs. He walked as lightly as
possible, dreading that every creak would bring Mrs. Wilson from her
parlour. A few more steps, and he would be in the passage. A smell of dust,
sounds of children crying, children talking in the kitchen! A few more
steps, and, with his eyes on the parlour door, Hubert had reached the rug
at the foot of the stairs. He hastened along, the passage. Mrs. Wilson was
a moment too late. His hand was on the street-door when she appeared at the
door of her parlour.

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