Hector, like everyone else in the company, came into the game which she played with Roger, as well. That young man had not fallen under the spell of Valentine Rich’s personality, as everyone else connected with the production had done in some degree. There was between them one of those unaccountable antipathies which occasionally occur, and which nothing can be done to remedy. Roger admitted that Valentine was an unusually capable director, but he did not like her; he set her down as a Bossy Woman; perhaps this was because he knew that she could never be influenced by his sort of charm. Valentine considered Roger a godsend as a juvenile lead in an amateur play, but she did not like him; he was a type which she had met many times in the theatre, and which, except for theatrical purposes, she could not endure. And although she was fully as tactful in her dealings with him as with the rest of the company, he sensed her dislike beneath her courtesy, just as she sensed his dislike beneath his compliance. Shut out from the group which was warmed and enspirited by Valentine, he made fun of it to Griselda.
She was quickly attracted by anything which savoured of sophistication, and to the young the easy, ill-founded cynicism which finds everybody and everything just a little second-rate is a kind of fool’s gold. It was flattering that Roger should make fun of the others to her; to be chosen as the confidante of a superior spirit is always flattering. Griselda was very far from being a fool; she had what Dr Johnson called “a bottom of good sense”, but she was not quite nineteen, and she had never met anyone like Roger before.
He, in his turn, was delighted that he had so quickly found a way to attract her. She was not, he recognized, like any girl upon whom he had tried his skill before. She was wealthy, which meant that he must be very careful, for one does not lightly seduce rich girls; they have too many powerful relatives, and are too much accustomed to getting the better of all things. He seriously questioned whether he could proceed to the usual conclusion of his plan with Griselda. Indeed, he marvelled dimly that gold, which could make an attractive girl so much more attractive, should also protect her so thoroughly. And as well as money, Griselda had the manners and the conversation of a well-bred girl who has read a great many books of the easier sort, and these qualities Roger mistook for worldly wisdom and unusual intelligence. For the first time in his life Roger had met a girl with whom he felt that a “nice”—well, fairly nice—relationship was worth cultivating. Griselda was capable of giving him something which he valued even more than physical satisfaction; she could give him class. The other thing he could find elsewhere when he wanted it. Never any shortage of that.
Thus they struck up an amused conspiracy against the rest of the company. Nobody cared except Valentine, who thought it bad for the play; except Hector, who did not understand it but who saw that Griselda was too often laughing in a corner with Tasset; except Pearl Vambrace, who had fallen as much in love with Roger as it is possible to fall in love with a man who never speaks to you except in lines written by Shakespeare, lines charged with a noble love which is nothing but play-acting.
Bad for the play—yes, Valentine thought that. But she knew that she was nettled by anything which gave Roger satisfaction, and she was angry with herself for being so petty. She could not keep up her accustomed tact one day at rehearsal when Roger repeatedly fluffed his lines in a scene with Pearl.
“Roger, it’s far past the time when you should know this scene,” said she.
“Sorry,” said Roger, in a tone which suggested that he thought she was being wearisome and must be humoured.
“It’s useless to say that you are sorry if you have no intention of improving,” she said; “you have said ‘Sorry’ in very much that tone at the last four rehearsals. I am growing tired of it.”
Pearl, moved by the desire for self-sacrifice which is one of the most dangerous characteristics of unwanted lovers, spoke:
“It’s really my fault, Miss Rich,” said she; “I make a move there which puts him off, I think.”
“No, you don’t do anything of the kind,” said Valentine crossly; “you are perfectly all right and you would be much better if you had something to act against.”
“If I am really such a nuisance, Miss Rich,” said Roger, “perhaps it isn’t too late to reconsider the casting.”
“Oh, don’t talk like an idiot,” said Valentine, angrily conscious that she was growing red in the face. “You are the best person for the part, and you know it. You can do it very well, and you will do it very well. If you drop out now you will make all sorts of difficulties for everybody. But I want you to work at rehearsals, and spend less time giggling in the background with Griselda. You are both of you behaving like children. A production like this depends on everybody’s good work and good will. It simply is not fair to behave as you are doing.”
Roger was very angry. That he, a man who had got the better of so many women should be spoken to in that tone by a woman, and in front of a lot of nincompoops! He turned to leave the stage.
“Go back to your place, Roger, and finish your scene,” said Valentine in the voice which had caused two London critics to call her the best Lady Macbeth among the younger generation of actresses.
To Roger’s intense astonishment, he did so, and under the stress of anger, he acted quite well. But as he looked into Pearl’s eyes he saw pity and love there, and he hated her for it until the rehearsal was over, when he promptly forgot her.
At eleven o’clock that night Griselda sat at her window, studying her lines. She had been alarmed and shamed by Valentine’s words; she was also angry. If that was the way Valentine thought about her, she would show that she could behave in any way she pleased, and act Ariel too. She looked out of her window at the upper lawn; there was the spot, there by that tree, where Solly had kissed her. She remembered it with pleasure. But what a mess he had turned out to be! Afraid of his mother! Griselda, who had forgotten what it was like to have a mother, and who could not know what the relationship between a man and his mother can be, was scornful. Roger wasn’t such a softy. It was only since she had met Roger that she had really known how silly most people are.
Was she in love with Roger? She didn’t really know, but she half suspected that she was. Anyhow, she knew who did love Roger, and that was that stupid Pearl Vambrace, whose hems were always uneven, and whose hair looked as if it needed a good wash. But Pearl wasn’t going to get Roger until Griselda had quite made up her mind about him. Yes, very likely she was in love with Roger.
The fact was that Griselda’s notions about love, allowing for differences of sex, were no more clear-cut than those of Hector Mackilwraith. But as she leaned out of her window and took a long breath of the warm spring night, she felt that it was a very fine thing to be eighteen and in love.
On the other side of the house Freddy crept to the window of a darkened closet and looked out. Yes; there it was; just what she had expected to see. A dark shape standing among the trees, not easy to make out, but apparently with its head thrown back and its eyes raised, undoubtedly in worship, toward the windows of her father’s bedroom.
Putting half a walnut shell in her mouth she popped her head out of the window and shouted in her deepest voice: “Who’s that down there?”
There was a wild trampling of shrubbery, and a thickset figure rushed toward the road.
Five
As the time of the opening performance drew nearer there were rehearsals in the grounds of St Agnes’ three or four times a week, and after many of these Griselda offered the actors what she liked to call “a bite”. Roger said that he could not understand why she did it, and it seemed to herself that it was not in her new character as an amused observer of the human comedy. But although the flame of hospitality within her was not a bonfire, it was steady and bright, and it appeared to her to be wrong that people should come to her home and go away again without having received food or drink. Therefore she worked out a plan for giving the Little Theatre bread and cheese and fruit and coffee; she even insisted upon paying for these things herself and serving them herself, so as not to put her father to expense or to make extra work for the servants. The facts that her father did not care about such expenses and that the servants had not enough to do did not enter into the matter; she felt that the Little Theatre was at St Agnes’ because of her doing and that she ought to take care of at least some of their wants. So contradictory is human nature that she could think sneeringly of her fellow-actors while taking considerable pains on their behalf. As Freddy said in her more sentimental moments, Griselda was not a half-bad old boob in her way.