IN but one important respect was Brent's original plan modified.Instead of getting her stage experience in France, Susan joined a London company making one of those dreary, weary, cheap and trashy tours of the smaller cities of the provinces with half a dozen plays by Jones, Pinero, and Shaw.
Clelie stayed in London, toiling at the language, determined to be ready to take the small part of French maid in Brent's play in the fall.Brent and Palmer accompanied Susan; and every day for several hours Brent and the stage manager--his real name was Thomas Boil and his professional name was Herbert Streathern--coached the patient but most unhappy Susan line by line, word by word, gesture by gesture, in the little parts she was playing.Palmer traveled with them, making a pretense of interest that ill concealed his boredom and irritation.This for three weeks; then he began to make trips to London to amuse himself with the sports, amateur and professional, with whom he easily made friends--some of them men in a position to be useful to him socially later on.He had not spoken of those social ambitions of his since Susan refused to go that way with him--but she knew he had them in mind as strongly as ever.He was the sort of man who must have an objective, and what other objective could there be for him who cared for and believed in the conventional ambitions and triumphs only--the successes that made the respectable world gape and grovel and envy?
"You'll not stick at this long," he said to Susan.
"I'm frightfully depressed," she admitted."It's tiresome--and hard--and so hideously uncomfortable! And I've lost all sense of art or profession.Acting seems to be nothing but a trade, and a poor, cheap one at that."He was not surprised, but was much encouraged by this candid account of her state of mind.Said he:
"It's my private opinion that only your obstinacy keeps you from giving it up straight off.Surely you must see it's nonsense.Drop it and come along--and be comfortable and happy.Why be obstinate? There's nothing in it.""Perhaps it _is_ obstinacy," said she."I like to think it's something else.""Drop it.You want to.You know you do."
"I want to, but I can't," replied she.
He recognized the tone, the expression of the eyes, the sudden showing of strength through the soft, young contour.And he desisted.
Never again could there be comfort, much less happiness, until she had tried out her reawakened ambition.She had given up all that had been occupying her since she left America with Freddie; she had abandoned herself to a life of toil.
Certainly nothing could have been more tedious, more tormenting to sensitive nerves, than the schooling through which Brent was putting her.Its childishness revolted her and angered her.Experience had long since lowered very considerably the point at which her naturally sweet disposition ceased to be sweet--a process through which every good-tempered person must pass unless he or she is to be crushed and cast aside as a failure.There were days, many of them, when it took all her good sense, all her fundamental faith in Brent, to restrain her from an outbreak.Streathern regarded Brent as a crank, and had to call into service all his humility as a poor Englishman toward a rich man to keep from showing his contempt.And Brent seemed to be--indeed was--testing her forbearance to the uttermost.He offered not the slightest explanation of his method.He simply ordered her blindly to pursue the course he marked out.She was sorely tempted to ask, to demand, explanations.But there stood out a quality in Brent that made her resolve ooze away, as soon as she faced him.Of one thing she was confident.
Any lingering suspicions Freddie might have had of Brent's interest in her as a woman, or even of her being interested in him as a man, must have been killed beyond resurrection.
Freddie showed that he would have hated Brent, would have burst out against him, for the unhuman, inhuman way he was treating her, had it not been that Brent was so admirably serving his design to have her finally and forever disgusted and done with the stage.
Finally there came a performance in which the audience--the gallery part of it--"booed" her--not the play, not the other players, but her and no other.Brent came along, apparently by accident, as she made her exit.He halted before her and scanned her countenance with those all-seeing eyes of his.
Said he:
"You heard them?"
"Of course," replied she.
"That was for you," said he and he said it with an absence of sympathy that made it brutal.
"For only me," said she--frivolously.
"You seem not to mind."
"Certainly I mind.I'm not made of wood or stone.""Don't you think you'd better give it up?"
She looked at him with a steely light from the violet eyes, a light that had never been there before.
"Give up?" said she."Not even if you give me up.This thing has got to be put through."He simply nodded."All right," he said."It will be.""That booing--it almost struck me dead.When it didn't, I for the first time felt sure I was going to win."He nodded again, gave her one of his quick expressive, fleeting glances that somehow made her forget and forgive everything and feel fresh and eager to start in again.He said:
"When the booing began and you didn't break down and run off the stage, I knew that what I hoped and believed about you was true."Streathern joined them.His large, soft eyes were full of sympathetic tears.He was so moved that he braved Brent.He said to Susan:
"It wasn't your fault, Miss Lenox.You were doing exactly as Mr.Brent ordered, when the booing broke out.""Exactly," said Brent.
