The Man Who Was Good — Text and Context

Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you."

There is a rare refreshment in the works of Leonard Merrick; gracious yet distinctive, his style has a polished leisure seldom enjoyed these days when perfection of literary form is at a discount. His art is impossible of label; almost alone amongst the writers of to-day he has the insight and the courage at once to admit the pitiless facts of life and to affirm despite them--through hunger and loneliness, injustice and disappointment--the spirit can and does remain unbroken; that if there be no assurance of success, neither is there certainty of failure.

There is no sentimental weakness in the method he employs. A rare genius for humour tempers all his work; he can record the progressive starvation of an actor out of work in an economy of phrase that leaves no room for gratuitous appeal, trace the long-drawn efforts to outpace persistent poverty of pence with a simplicity that enforces conviction. His pen is never so poignant or restrained as when he shows us a woman sharpened and coarsened by cheap toil. But throughout the tale of struggle and triumph, defeat and attainment, there persists that sense of eternal quest which shortens the hardest road. Do you starve to-day? Opportunity of plenty may wait at the street corner, the chance of a lifetime alight from the next bus; for Leonard Merrick is not concerned with people of large incomes and small problems; the men and women of whom he writes earn their own living.

His most marked successes deal with stage life, indeed he is one of the very few authors who convince one of the actuality of theatrical folk. He shows us the chorus girl in her lodgings, in the Strand bars, at the dramatic agency; we understand her ambitions, become familiar with her unconquerable pluck and capacity for comradeship, even acquire a liking for the smell of grease-paint. We meet the same girl out of an engagement, follow her pilgrimage from Bloomsbury to Brixton seeking an ever cheaper lodging; we watch the mud and wet of the streets soak her inadequate boots, endure with her the pangs of hunger ill-allayed by a fugitive bun. We accompany her to the pawnbroker's, and experience the joys of combat with a recalcitrant "uncle" who refuses to lend more than eighteenpence on a silk blouse. And still the sense of adventure persists, the reality of romance endures, the joy of laughter remains. We realise the compensation of precarious tenure on sufficiency, appreciate the great truth that the adversity of to-day is lightened by the uncertainty of to-morrow, that no matter how grim the struggle, how sharp the hardship--and the hunger--the sense of adventure companions and consoles. Authors who concern themselves only with men and women of assured position and regular incomes have forgotten the truth which Leonard Merrick so triumphantly affirms. Romance is no respecter of persons. The freedom of the open road, its promise, its pitfalls, sudden ecstasies and fugitive glamours is not a preserve of the rich but the heritage of the people.

His psychological methods allure one by their seeming simplicity; quietly, with a delicate deliberation, he emphasises the outline of his characters until with sudden swift decision, in the utterance of a phrase, the doing of some one of those small things that are life's real revelations, he shows you the soul of the man or woman whose externals he has so carefully portrayed. Half-forgotten words and acts crowd in on the memory, as in _The Man who was Good_ when Carew appeals to Mary to save his child--and her rival's. It needed the genius of Merrick to make one realise that the high-water mark of betrayal was reached not by the man's desertion of the woman who loved him, but by his pitiful exploitation of that love.

I know of no author with a more subtle understanding of woman, her generosity and meanness, her strange reticence, amazing candours. Mary Brettan, that tragedy of invincible fidelity, could only have been portrayed by a man able to sense feminine capacity for dumb fortitude. One feels that had she made even a gesture of revolt, Mary would have been freed of the paralysis of sterile constancy; and one knows that women of her type can never make the ultimate defiance.

Leonard Merrick has the inimitable gift of inducing his readers to experience the emotions he portrays. The zest of adventure grips you, as it grips the hero of _Conrad in Quest of his Youth_, perhaps the greatest of his triumphs. We share with that perfect lover his mellow regrets and his anticipatory ardours; we wait in tremulous expectancy outside the little restaurant in Soho for his delightful Lady Parlington, falling, with him-from light-hearted confidence to sickening uncertainty as time wears on and still she does not come. The same emotional buoyancy stirs in all his work; his incomparable humour endears to us the least of his creations. His adorable landladies become our friends, his "walking gentlemen" our close acquaintance. I do not know to this day whether I have met certain of these heavenly creatures in life or in Mr. Merrick's novels, and it is difficult to enter a theatrical lodging without feeling that you are living the last story in _The Man who Understood Women_, or revisiting the first beginnings of Peggy Harper.

London has many lovers, none so intimate with her allurements as Leonard Merrick. He knows the glamour of her midnight pavements, the hunger of her clamant streets, and the enchantments of her grey river have drawn him. He has felt the deciduous charm of her luxury, the abiding pleasure of her leafy spaces, and the intriguing alleys of Fleet Street are to him familiar and dear. For the suburbs he has an infinite kindness, and has companioned adventure on many a questing tram.

It has long been a matter of insuperable difficulty to obtain Mr. Merrick's novels; for years I have essayed to find a copy of _Conrad_, and from every bookseller have been sent empty away. In a moment of folly I lent my own copy to a neighbour--I cannot call him friend--who forthwith adopted the volume as his most invaluable possession, and, undeterred by savagery or threats, refused to give it up. And now after long waiting, I am made glad by a reissue of these incomparable works, and the knowledge that an ever-increasing public, too long denied the opportunity of their acquaintance, will share my delight. Far removed from the nightmare of the problem novel, his books centre on simple human things savoured with the rare salt of his humour; and whether in the suburbs or the slums, in Soho or the Strand, whether prosperous or starving, the men and women of whom he writes are touched with that high courage, that fine comradeship, which is the very essence of romance.

There were three women in the dressing-room. Little Miss Macy, who played a subaltern, was pulling off her uniform; and the "Duchess," divested of velvet, stood brushing the powder out of her hair. The third woman was doing nothing. In a chair by the theatrical hamper labelled "Miss Olive Westland's Tour: 'The Foibles of Fashion' Co.," she sat regarding the others, her hands idle in her lap. She was scarcely what is called "beautiful," much less was she what ought to be called "pretty"; perhaps "womanly" came nearer to suggesting her than either. Her eyes were not large, but they were so pensive; her mouth was not small, but it curved so tenderly; the face was not regular, but it looked so deliciously soft. Somebody had once said that it "made him admire God"; in watching her, it seemed such a perfect thing that there should be a low white brow, and hair to shade it; it seemed such an exquisite and consummate thing that there should be lips where the Maker put lips, and a chin where the chin is modelled. Her age might have been twenty-seven, also it might have been thirty. The wise man does not question the nice woman's age--he just thanks Heaven she lives; and she in the chair by the hamper was decidedly nice. Other women said so.

"Have you been in front, Mrs. Carew?" asked the "Duchess."

She answered that she had. "I came round at the end. It was a very good house; the business is improving."

"I should think," remarked the "subaltern," reaching for her skirt, "you must know every line of the piece, the times you've seen it! But, of course, you've nothing else to do."

"No, it isn't lively sitting alone all the evening in lodgings; and it's more comfortable in the circle than behind. How you people manage to get dressed in some of the theatres puzzles me; I look at you from the front, remembering where your things were put on, and marvel. If I were in the profession, my salary wouldn't keep me in the frocks I ruined."

"I wonder Carew has never wanted you to go into it."

The nice woman laughed.

"Go into the profession!" she exclaimed--"I? Good gracious, what an idea! No; Tony has a very flattering opinion of his wife's abilities, but I don't think even he goes the length of fancying I could act."

"You'd be as good as a certain leading lady we know of, at any rate. Nobody could be much worse than our respected manageress, I'll take my oath!"

"Jeannie," said the "Duchess" sharply, "don't quarrel with your bread-and-butter!"

"I'm not," said the girl; "I'm criticising it--a very different matter, my dear. I hate these amateurs with money, even if they do take out companies and give shops to us pros. She queers the best line I've got in the piece every night because she won't speak up and nobody knows what it's an answer to. The real type of the 'confidential actress' is Miss Westland; no danger of _her_ allowing anyone in the audience to overhear what she says!"

"Tony believes she'll get on all right," said Mrs. Carew, "when she has had more experience. You do, too, don't you, Mrs. Bowman?"

The "Duchess" replied vaguely that "experience did a great deal." She had profited by her own, and at the "aristocratic mother" period of her career no longer canvassed in dressing-rooms the capabilities of the powers that paid the treasury.

"Get on?" echoed Jeannie Macy, struggling into her jacket, "of course she'll get on; she has oof! If it's very much she's got, you'll see her by-and-by with a theatre of her own in London. Money, influence, or talent, you must have one of the three in the profession, and for a short-cut give me either of the first two. Sweet dreams, both of you; I've got a hot supper waiting for me, and I can smell it spoiling from here!" The door banged behind her; and Mrs. Carew turned to the "Duchess" with a smile.

"You're coming round to us afterwards, aren't you?" she said.

"Yes, Carew asked the husband in the morning: I hope he's got some coppers; I reminded him. It's such a bother having to keep an account of how we stand after every deal. We'll be round about half-past twelve. Are you going?"

"I should think Tony ought to be ready by now. You remember our number?"

"Nine; opposite the baker's."

Mrs. Carew hummed a little tune, and made her way down the stairs. The stage, of which she had a passing view, was dark, for the foot-lights were out, and in the T-piece only one gas-jet flared bluely between the bare expanse of boards and the blackness of the empty auditorium. In the passage, a man, hastening from the star-room, almost ran against her; Mr. Seaton Carew still wore the clothes in which he finished the play, and he had not removed his make-up yet.

"What!" she cried, "haven't you changed? How's that? What have you been doing?"

"I've been talking to Miss Westland," he explained hurriedly. "There was something she wanted to see me about. Don't wait any longer, Mary; I've got to go up to her lodgings with her."

She hesitated a moment, surprised.

"Is it so important?" she asked.

"Yes," he said; "I'll tell you about it later on; I want to have a talk with you afterwards. I shan't be long."

Whenever she came to the theatre, which was four or five times a week, they, naturally, returned together, and she enjoyed the stroll in the fresh air, "after the show," with Tony. Three years' familiarity with the custom had not destroyed its charm to her. To-night she went out into the Leicester streets a shade disconsolately. The gas was already lighted when she reached the house, and a fire--for the month was March--burnt clearly in the grate. The accommodation was not extensive: a small ground-floor parlour, and a bedroom at the back. On the parlour mantelpiece were some faded photographs of people who had stayed there --Mr. Delancey as the Silver King; Miss Ida Ryan, smoking a cigarette, as Sam Willoughby. She took off her coat, and, turning her back on the supper-table, wondered what the conference with Miss Westland was about.

The tedium of the delay began to tell upon her. The landlady had brought in her book of testimonials during the afternoon, to ask Mr. and Mrs. Carew for theirs; and fetching it from where it lay, she began listlessly to turn the leaves. These books were abominated by Carew, for he never knew what to write; and, perusing the comments in this one, she mentally agreed with him that it was not easy to find a medium between curtness and exaggeration. Some she recognised, knowing before she looked what signatures were appended. The "Stay but a little, I will come again" quotation she had seen above the same name in a score of lodgings, and there were two or three "impromptus" in rhyme that she had met before.

She had been very happy this time at Leicester. They had arrived on the anniversary of her and Tony's first meeting, and she had felt additionally tender towards him all the week. The landlady had not effected the happiness certainly, but her lodger was quite willing to give her some of the benefit of it. She dipped the pen in the ink, and wrote in a bold, upright hand, "The week spent in Mrs. Liddy's apartments will always be a pleasant remembrance to Mr. and Mrs. Seaton Carew." Then she put the date underneath.

She had just finished when Mrs. Liddy entered with the beer. The Irishwoman said that she was going to bed, but that Mrs. Carew would find more glasses in the cupboard when her friends came. She supposed that that was all?

It was now twelve o'clock, and Mrs. Carew, with an occasional glance at the cold beef and the corner of rice pudding, began to walk about the room. Presently she stopped and listened. A whistle had reached her from outside--the whistle of eight notes that is the actor's call. She surmised that young Dolliver had forgotten their number, as he did in every town. She drew aside the blind and let the light shine out. Young Dolliver it was.

"I've been whistling all up and down the road," he said, aggrieved; "what were you doing?"

"Well, that isn't bad," she laughed. "Why don't you remember addresses like anybody else?"

"Can't," he declared; "never could! Never know where I'm staying myself if I don't make a note of it as soon as I go in. In Jarrow, one Monday, I had to wander all over the place for three' mortal hours in the pouring rain, looking for someone in the company to tell me where I lived. Hallo! where's Carew?"

"He'll be in directly," she said. "Sit down."

"Oh! I'm awfully sorry to have come so early," he exclaimed; "why, you haven't fed or anything."

He was a bright-faced boy, with a cheery flow of chatter, and she was glad he had appeared.

"I expect the Bowmans any minute," she assured him; "you aren't early. Do sit down, there's a good child, and don't stand fiddling your hat about; put it on the piano! Have you banqueted yourself?"

"To repletion. What did you think of Carew's notice in the Great Sixpennyworth on Saturday? Wasn't it swagger? 'The rôle finds an ideal exponent in Mr. Seaton Carew, an actor who is rapidly making his way into the foremost ranks of his profession'!"

"A line and a half," she said, "by a provincial correspondent! I shan't be satisfied till----well!"

"I know--till you see him with sixteen lines all to himself in the _Telegraph_! No more will he, I fancy. He's red-hot on success, is Carew--do anything for it. So'm I; I should like to play Claude."

"Claude?" she exclaimed. "Why, you're funny!"

"Not by disposition," he declared. "Miss Westland is responsible for my being funny. When they said 'a small comedy-part is still vacant,' I said small comedy-parts are my forte of fortes! Had it been an 'old man' that was wanted, I should have professed myself born to dodder. But if it comes to choice--to the secret tendency of the sacred fire--I am lead, I am romantic, I have centre-entrances in the limelight. Look here: 'A deep vale, shut out by Alpine----' No, wait a minute; you do the Langtry business and let the flowers fall, while I 'paint the home.' Do you know, my private opinion is that Claude only took those lessons so that the widow shouldn't be put to any expense doing up the home. Haven't got any flowers? Anything else then--where are the cards?"

He found the pack on the sideboard, and pushed a few into her hand.

"These'll do for the flowers," he said; "finger 'em lovingly; think you're holding a good nap."

"Don't be so ridiculous!"

"I'm not," said Dolliver, with dignity; "I really want to hear your views on my reading. Where was I--er--er----

"'Near a clear lake margin'd by fruits of gold And whispering myrtles; glassing softest skies As cloudless, save with rare and roseate shadows.... As I would have thy fate.'

"You see I make a pause after 'shadows'--I'm natural. I gaze hesitatingly at the floats, and the borders, and a kid in the pit. Then I meet the eyes of the fair Pauline, and conclude with 'As I would have thy fate,' smiling dreamily at the excellence of the comparison. That's a new point, I take it?"

He was seriously enamoured of his "new point," and was still expatiating on it when they heard Carew unlocking the street-door.

It was a man much of the woman's own age who came in. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair was worn a trifle longer than the hair of most men. Now that he was seen in a good light, it was plain that he was disturbed; but he shook Dolliver by the hand as if relieved to find him there.

"What, not had supper? You must be starving, Mary?"

"I _am_ pretty hungry," she admitted; "aren't you?"

"Well, I've had something--still, I'll come to the table." She had looked disappointed, and he drew his chair up. "Dolliver?"

"Nothing for me, thanks. Oh! a glass of beer--I don't object to that."

Despite her assertion, Mary made no great progress with her supper, and Carew's evident disquietude even damped the garrulity of the boy. It was not until the Bowmans arrived and a game of napoleon had been begun, that the faint restraint caused by his manner wore away.

Mr. Bowman, mindful of his wife's injunction, had provided himself with several shillings'-worth of coppers, and, profiting by his forethought, each of the party started with a rouleau of pence. These occasional card parties after the performance had become an institution in "The Foibles of Fashion" company, and it was seldom that anyone found them expensive. Mary's capital, coppers included, was half a sovereign, and to have won or lost such a sum as that at a sitting would have been the subject of allusion for a month. To-night, however, the luck was curiously unequal, and, to the surprise of all, Dolliver found himself losing seven shillings before he had been playing half an hour. Much sympathy was expressed for Dolliver.

"Never mind, dear boy; it's always a mistake to win early in the evening," said Carew. "There's plenty of time. I pass!"

"Pass," said the "Duchess."

Mary called three, and made them.

"How do you stand, Mrs. Carew?" asked Bowman.

"I'm just about the same as when we began. Tony, Mr. Bowman has nothing to drink.--Oh, what a shame, Dolliver!--thanks! Fill up your own, won't you?--He's a perfect martyr, this boy," she went on; "he cleared the table before you two people came in--didn't you?"