Mrs Bassett took the whole contents of the writing-case, and locked them in her own cabinet, then hurried to Reggie's tutor. Here she discovered that what she already suspected was true. She went home again, and called the upper servants. It humiliated her enormously that she must catechize them on the conduct of her son, but now she had no scruples. At first they would say nothing, but by dint of promise and threat she extracted from them the full story of how Reggie had lived during the last two years. At length, as a final blow, came an epistle from Reggie himself.
371, Vauxhall Bridge Road
MY DEAR MATER,
You will have seen in this morning's Post that I was married at the end of last month to Miss Higgins, professionally known as Lauria Galbraith, and we are now staying at the above address. I am sure you will like Lauria, who is the best woman in the world, and has saved me from going to the dogs. You might let us have a line to say when we can come and see you. Lauria is most anxious to make your acquaintance. I should tell you that I have decided to chuck the Bar, and I am going on the stage. Lauria and I have got an engagement for the autumn tour of The Knave of Hearts, and we have come up to town for rehearsals. I am sure this will meet with your approval, because law is a rotten profession, awfully overcrowded, and as Lauria says, on the stage there is always room for talent. I know I shall get on, and Lauria and I hope in a few years to run our own company. I am working very hard, for although I'm only walking on in this drama (I wouldn't have accepted the offer, only Lauria has a ripping part, and, of course, as I hadn't been on the stage before, I had to take what I could get) I am learning Hamlet. Lauria and I think of giving some recitations of that and Romeo and Juliet in town next spring.
Your affectionate son,
REGGIE
P.S. – You needn't worry about the money, because on the stage I can earn far more than I ever should have done at the Bar. An actor-manager simply makes thousands.
Mrs Bassett burst into tears, for she had never imagined that Reggie could be so callous, so inanely flippant; but rage succeeded all other emotions in her breast, and she wrote angrily, telling her son never again to show his face at her house, or the servants would throw him into the street – telling him that no farthing of her money should ever be his; then silence seemed more dignified, and she determined merely to leave unanswered that impudent letter. But it was necessary to express her indignation to someone, and she sent an urgent note to Miss Ley, begging her at once to come.
When the good lady, obedient to the summons, arrived, she found Mrs Bassett in a very hysterical condition, walking up and down the room excitedly; and in the disorder of her majestic manner she reminded her somewhat of a middle-aged bacchante.
'Thank God you've come!' she cried. 'Reggie's married an actress, and I've disinherited him. I won't ever see him again, and for all I care he may starve.'
Miss Ley made no movement of surprise, merely noting the fact that herself was a woman of prevision. All she had expected was come about.
'I've been utterly deceived in him. He's not passed a single examination, and the servants have told me that he often came home at night tipsy. He's lied to me systematically; he's deceived me in every possible way; and all the time I flattered myself he was a good, honest boy, he's been leading the life of a rip and a libertine.'
Her words were interrupted by a fit of crying, while Miss Ley watched her reflectively. Presently Mrs Bassett recovered herself.
'I confess the marriage surprises me,' murmured Miss Ley. 'Your daughter-in-law must be a woman of character and tact, Emily; but all the rest has been known to your friends for the last year.'
'D'you mean to say you knew he was a drunken sot, and little better than a thief and a liar?'
'Yes.'
'Why didn't you tell me?'
'I thought you'd find out quite soon enough; and really, Emily, you're such a fool you would probably have only made things worse.'
Mrs Bassett was too much crushed to resent this plain speech.
'But you don't know everything. I've found a lot of letters from women. It's they who've led him astray. And d'you know whose are the worst?'
'Mrs Castillyon's?'
'Did you know that, too? Did everyone know my shame, and that my boy was being ruined, and did no one warn me? But I'm going to pay her out. I shall send every one to her husband. It's she who's done the mischief.'
She took from a drawer the bundle of letters, and excitedly gave them to Miss Ley.
'Is this all?' she asked.
'Yes.'
Miss Ley had with her a black satin bag, in which she kept her handkerchief and her purse, and swiftly opening it, she put the letters in.
'What are you doing?'
'My dear, don't be a fool! You're not going to send these letters to anyone, and as soon as I get home I mean to burn them. Reggie was a dissolute rip before ever he met Grace Castillyon, and the only woman who ruined him is – yourself! You were very angry when I told you once that the greatest misfortune which could befall a man was to have a really affectionate mother, but I assure you, except for your bad influence, Reggie would have been no worse a boy than any other.'
Mrs Bassett turned livid.
'I think you must be mad, Mary. I've done all I could by example and precept to make him a gentleman. I've devoted my life to his education, and I've sacrificed myself to him absolutely from the day he was born. I can honestly say that I've been a good mother.'
'Pardon me,' answered Miss Ley coolly, 'you've been a very bad mother, a very selfish mother, and you've systematically sacrificed him to your own whims and fancies.'
'How can you talk to me like that when I want sympathy and help? Haven't you any pity for me?'
'None! All that has happened you've brought entirely on yourself. You made him a liar by compelling him to tell you his most private affairs, you drove him to deception by expecting from him an impossible purity, you warned him of temptation so as to make it doubly attractive. You never let him have a free will or a natural instinct, but insisted on his acting and feeling like a middle-aged and rather ill-educated woman. You thwarted all his inclinations, and forced upon him yours. Good heavens! you couldn't have been more selfish, cruel, and exacting if you'd detested the boy!'
Mrs Bassett stared at her, overwhelmed.
'But I only asked common honesty and truthfulness. I only wanted to keep him from spot and stain, and I only expected the morality which religion and everything else enforces upon us.'
'You starved his instincts – the natural desire of a boy for gaiety and amusement, the natural craving of youth for love. You applied to him the standards of a woman of fifty. A wise mother lets her son go his own way, and shuts her eyes to youthful peccadillos; but you made all these peccadillos into deadly sins. After all, moralists talk a deal of nonsense about the frailty of mankind. When you come to close quarters with vice, it's not really so desperately wicked as all that. A man may be a very good fellow though he does sit up late and occasionally drink more than is discreet, gamble a little and philander with ladies of doubtful fame. All these things are part of human nature, when youth and hot blood are joined together, and for some of them foreign nations, wiser than ourselves, have made provision.'
'I wish I'd never had a son!' cried Mrs Bassett. 'How much luckier you are than I!'
Miss Ley got up, and a curious expression came over her face.
'Oh, my dear, don't say that! I tell you, that even though I know Reggie to be idle and selfish and dissolute, I would give all I have in the world if he were only mine. There's not a soul on this wide earth that cares for me – except Frank, because I amuse him – and I'm so dreadfully lonely. I'm growing old. Often I feel so old I wonder how I can continue to live, and I want someone so badly to whom it's not a matter of absolute indifference if I'm well or ill, dead or alive. Oh, my dear, thank God for your son!'
'I can't now I know he's wicked and vicious.'
'But what is vice, and what is wickedness?
Are you sure we know? I suppose I have been a virtuous woman. I've done nobody any harm; I've helped a good many; I've done the usual moral things that women do; and when anything was possible that I particularly wanted, I've withstood because it was ingrained in me that nice things were naughty. But sometimes I think I've wasted my life, and I dare say I should be a better woman if I hadn't been so virtuous. When I look back now it's not the temptations I fell to that I regret, but the temptations I resisted. I'm an old woman, and I've never known love, and I'm childless and forsaken. Oh, Emily, if I had my time over again I promise you I wouldn't be so virtuous. I would take all the good that life offered, without thinking too much of propriety. And above all things I would have a child.'
'Mary, what are you saying?'
Miss Ley shrugged her shoulders, and was silent; her voice was broken, and she could not trust herself to speak. But Mrs Bassett's thoughts went back to the injury which Reggie had done her, and she gave Miss Ley his letter to read.
'There's not a word of regret in it. He seems to have no shame and no conscience. He was married on the very day of my operation, when I might have died any moment. He must be absolutely heartless.'
'D'you know what I would do if I were you?' asked Miss Ley, pleased to get away from her own emotions. 'I would go to him, and ask forgiveness for all the harm you've done him.'
'I? Mary, you must be mad! What need have I for forgiveness?'
'Think it over. I have an idea that presently it will occur to you that you never gave the boy a chance. I'm not sure whether you don't owe him a good deal of reparation; anyhow, you can't undo the marriage, and it's just possible it may be the saving of him.'
'You're not going to ask me to receive an actress as my daughter-in-law!'
'Fiddledidee! She'll make your son a much better wife than a duchess.'
When Mrs Barlow-Bassett showed her friend Reggie's letter, Miss Ley carefully noted the address, and next day, in the afternoon, proceeded to call upon the new-married couple. They lived in a somewhat shabby lodging-house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road – that long, sordid street – and Miss Ley was shown into an attic which served as sitting-room. It was barely fitted with tawdry furniture, much the worse for wear, but to give a homelike air photographs were pinned on the wall, each with a sprawling flourish for a signature, of persons connected with the stage, but unknown to fame. When Miss Ley entered, Reggie, dressed in a suit of somewhat pronounced pattern, with a Homburg tweed hat on his head, was reading the Era, while his wife stood in front of the glass doing her hair. Notwithstanding the late hour, she still wore a dressing-gown of red satin, covered with inexpensive lace, which was certainly neither very new nor very clean. Miss Ley's appearance caused some embarrassment, and it was not without awkwardnesss that Reggie made the necessary introduction.
'Excuse me being in such a state,' said Mrs Reggie, gathering up her hairpins, 'but I was just going to dress.'
She was a little woman, plainly older than her husband, and to Miss Ley's astonishment, by no means pretty; her eyes were handsome, used with full knowledge of their power, and her black hair very fine; but chiefly noticeable was a singular determination of manner, a shrewishness about the mouth, which suggested that if she did not get her own way someone would suffer. She looked rather suspiciously at Miss Ley, but treated her with sufficient cordiality to indicate a readiness to be friendly if the visitor did not prove hostile.
'I only heard you were married yesterday,' Miss Ley hastened to say as affably as possible, 'and I was anxious to make your wife's acquaintance, Reggie.'
'You've not come from the mater?' he asked.
'No.'
'I suppose she's in a hell of a wax.'
'Reggie, don't swear; I don't like it,' said his wife.
Miss Ley shrugged her shoulders and smiled vaguely. Since she was not offered a chair, she looked round for the most comfortable, and sat down. Mrs Reggie glanced uncertainly from her husband to Miss Ley, and then at her own disarranged dress, hesitating whether to leave the pair alone or to sacrifice her appearance.
'I am untidy,' she said.
'Good heavens! it's so refreshing to find someone who doesn't dress till late in the day. When I take off my dressing-gown I put on invariably a sense of responsibility. Do sit down and tell me all about your plans.'
Miss Ley had the art of putting people at their ease, and the bride succumbed at once to the elder woman's quiet but authoritative way. She glanced at her husband.
'Reggie, take off your hat,' she said peremptorily.
'Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot.'
When he removed his headgear Miss Ley noticed that his hair was very long, worn with a dramatic flamboyance. His speech was deliberate, with a certain declamatory enunciation which vastly amused his old friend; his nails were none too clean, and his boots needed polish.
'What does the mater think of my going on the stage?' he asked, passing his hand with a fine gesture through his raven locks. 'It's the best thing I could do, isn't it, Lauria? I feel that I've found my vocation. Nature intended me for an actor. It's the only thing I'm fit for – an artistic career. Tell my mother that I will sacrifice everything to my art. I hope you'll come and see me play.'
'It will give me great pleasure.'
'Not in this piece. I only – walk on, don't you know. But in the spring Lauria and I are going to give a series of recitations.'
He rose to his feet, and standing in front of the fireplace, stretched out one dramatic hand.
'To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?'
He bellowed the words at the top of his voice, uttering each syllable with profound and dramatic emphasis.
'By Jove!' he said, 'what a part! They don't write parts like that now. An actor has no chance in a modern play, where there's not a speech more than two lines long.'
Miss Ley looked at him with astonishment, for it had never occurred to her that such a development could possibly be his; then, glancing quickly at Lauria, she fancied that a slight ironical smile trembled on her lips.
'I tell you,' said Reggie, beating his chest, 'I feel that I shall be a great actor. If I can only get my chance, I shall just stagger creation. I must go and see Basil Kent, and ask him to write a play for us, Lauria.'
'And are you going to stagger creation too?' asked Miss Ley, blandly turning to Mrs Reggie.
The young woman restrained her merriment no longer, but burst into such a hearty peal of laughter that Miss Ley began to like her.
'Will you stay to tea, Miss Ley?'
'Certainly; that is why I came.'
'That's fine. I'll make you some tea in less than no time. Reggie, take the can, and go out and get half a pint of milk.'
'Yes, my dear,' he replied obediently, putting on his tweed hat with a rakish swagger, and taking from a table littered with papers, articles of apparel, and domestic utensils a small milk-can.
'How much money have you got in your pocket?'
He pulled out some coppers and one silver coin.
'One and sevenpence halfpenny.'
'Then, you'll have one and sixpence halfpenny when you come home. You can buy a packet of straighters for threepence, and mind you're back in ten minutes.'
'Yes, dear.'
He walked out meekly, and closed the door behind him. Mrs Reggie went to the door and looked out.
'His mother brought him up very badly,' she explained, 'and he's not above listening at keyholes.'
Miss Ley, shaking with inward laughter, had listened to the scene with amazement. Lauria continued her apologetic explanations.
'You know, I have to keep a sharp eye on his money because he's rather inclined to tipple. I've got him out of it, but I'm always afraid he'll drop into a pub if I don't look out. His mother must be about the biggest fool you'v
e met, isn't she?'
Mrs Reggie glanced at a box of cigarettes, and the other, noticing the yellow on her forefinger, concluded she was an eager smoker; it was easy to put her in comfort.