The Tragic Muse (London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1890)/Volume 3/Chapter 9
IX.
"I don't know—I haven't the least idea—I don't care—don't ask me," he broke out immediately, in answer to some question that she put to him, with little delay, about his sense of the way she had done certain things at the theatre. Had she not frankly better give up that way and return to their first idea, the one they had talked over so much? Sherringham declared that it was no idea of his; that at any rate he should never have another as long as he lived; and that, so help him heaven, they had talked such things over more than enough.
"You're tired of me—yes, already," said Miriam, sadly and kindly. They were alone, her mother had not peeped out, and she had prepared herself to return to the theatre. "However, it doesn't matter, and of course your head is full of other things. You must think me ravenously selfish—perpetually chattering about my little shop. What will you have, when one's a shop-girl? You used to like it, but then you weren't a minister."
"What do you know about my being a minister?" Sherringham asked, leaning back in his chair and gazing at her from sombre eyes. Sometimes he thought she looked better on the stage than she did off it, and sometimes he thought the exact contrary. The former of these convictions had held his mind in the morning, and it was now punctually followed by the other. As soon as she stepped on the boards a great and special alteration usually took place in her—she was in focus and in her frame; yet there were hours too in which she wore her world's face before the audience, just as there were hours when she wore her stage face in the world. She took up either mask as it suited her humour. To-day Sherringham was seeing each in its order, and he thought each the best.
"I should know very little if I waited for you to tell me—that's very certain," Miriam answered. "It's in the papers that you've got a high appointment, but I don't read the papers unless there's something in them about myself. Next week I shall devour them and think them drivelling too, no doubt. It was Basil Dashwood told me, this afternoon, of your promotion—he has seen it announced somewhere. I'm delighted if it gives you more money and more advantages, but don't expect me to be glad that you're going away to some distant, disgusting country."
"The matter has only just been settled and we have each been busy with our own affairs. Even if you hadn't given me these opportunities," Sherringham went on, "I should have tried to see you to-day, to tell you my news and take leave of you."
"Take leave? Aren't you coming to-morrow?"
"Oh, yes, I shall see you through that. But I shall rush away the very moment it's over."
"I shall be much better then—really I shall," the girl said.
"The better you are the worse you are."
Miriam returned his gaze with a beautiful charity. "If it would do you any good I would be bad."
"The worse you are the better you are!" laughed Sherringham. "You're a kind of devouring demon."
"Not a bit! It's you."
"It's I? I like that."
"It's you who make trouble, who are sore and suspicious and supersubtle, not taking things as they come and for what they are, but twisting them into misery and falsity. Oh, I've watched you enough, my dear friend, and I've been sorry for you—and sorry for myself; for I'm not so taken up with myself as you think. I'm not such a low creature. I'm capable of gratitude, I'm capable of affection. One may live in paint and tinsel, but one isn't absolutely without a soul. Yes, I've got one," the girl went on, "though I do paint my face and practise my intonations. If what you are going to do is good for you I'm very glad. If it leads to good things, to honour and fortune and greatness, I'm enchanted. If it means your being away always, forever and ever, of course that's serious. You know it—I needn't tell you—I regard you as I really don't regard any one else. I have a confidence in you—ah, it's a luxury. You're a gentleman, mon bon—ah, you're a gentleman! It's just that. And then you see, you understand, and that's a luxury too. You're a luxury altogether, Mr. Sherringham. Your being where I shall never see you is not a thing I shall enjoy; I know that from the separation of these last months—after our beautiful life in Paris, the best thing that ever happened to me or that ever will. But if it's your career, if it's your happiness, I can miss you and hold my tongue. I can be disinterested—I can!"
"What did you desire me to come for?" Sherringham asked, attentive and motionless. The same impression, the old impression was with him again; the sense that if she was sincere it was sincerity of execution, if she was genuine it was the genuineness of doing it well. She did it so well now that this very fact was charming and touching. When she asked him at the theatre to grant her the hour in the afternoon, she wanted candidly (the more as she had not seen him at home for several days) to go over with him once again, on the eve of the great night (it would be for her second attempt the critics would lie so in wait—the first success might have been a fluke), some of her recurrent doubts: knowing from experience what good ideas he often had, how he could give a worrying alternative its quietus at the last. Then she had heard from Dashwood of the change in his situation, and that had really from one moment to the other made her think sympathetically of his preoccupations—led her open-handedly to drop her own. She was sorry to lose him and eager to let him know how good a friend she was conscious that he had been to her. But the expression of this was already, at the end of a minute, a strange bedevilment: she began to listen to herself, to speak dramatically, to represent. She uttered the things she felt as if they were snatches of old play-books, and really felt them the more because they sounded so well. This however didn't prevent them from being as good feelings as those of anybody else, and at the moment Sherringham, to still a rising emotion—which he knew he shouldn't still— articulated the challenge I have just recorded, she seemed to him to have at any rate the truth of gentleness and generosity.
"There's something the matter with you—you're jealous," said Miriam. "You're jealous of Mr. Dormer. That's an example of the way you tangle everything up. Lord, he won't hurt you, nor me either!"
"He can't hurt me, my dear, and neither can you; for I have a nice little heart of stone and a smart new breastplate of iron. The interest I take in you is something quite extraordinary; but the most extraordinary thing in it is that it's perfectly prepared to tolerate the interest of others."
"The interest of others needn't trouble it much!" Miriam declared. "If Mr. Dormer had broken off his marriage to such an awfully fine woman (for she is that, your swell of a sister), it isn't for a loud wretch like me. He's kind to me because that's his nature, and he notices me because that's his business; but he's away up in the clouds—a thousand miles over my head. He has got something 'on,' as they say; he's in love with an idea. I think it's a shocking bad one, but that's his own affair. He's quite exalté; living on nectar and ambrosia—what he has to spare for us poor crawling things on earth is only a few dry crumbs. I didn't even ask him to come to rehearsal. Besides, he thinks you're in love with me and that it wouldn't be honourable to cut in. He's capable of that—isn't it charming?"
"If he were to relent and give up his scruples, would you marry him?" asked Sherringham.
"Mercy, how you chatter about marrying!" the girl laughed. "You've all got it on the brain."
"Why, I put it that way to please you, because you complained to me last year precisely that this was not what seemed generally to be wanted."
"Oh, last year!" Miriam murmured. Then, differently: "Yes, it's very tiresome!" she exclaimed.
"You told me moreover in Paris, more than once, that you wouldn't listen to anything but that."
"Well, I won't, but I shall wait till I find a husband who's bad enough. One who'll beat me and swindle me and spend my money on other women—that's the sort of man for me. Mr. Dormer, delightful as he is, doesn't come up to that."
"You'll marry Basil Dashwood," Sherringham replied.
"Oh, marry?—call it marry, if you like. That's what poor mother says—she lives in dread of it."
"To this hour," said Sherringham, "I haven't managed to make out what your mother wants. She has so many ideas, as Madame Carré said."
"She wants me to be a tremendous sort of creature—all her ideas are reducible to that. What makes the muddle is that she isn't clear about the kind of creature she wants most. A great actress or a great lady—sometimes she inclines for one and sometimes for the other; but on the whole she persuades herself that a great actress, if she'll cultivate the right people, may be a great lady. When I tell her that won't do and that a great actress can never be anything but a great vagabond, then the dear old thing has tantrums and we have scenes—the most grotesque: they'd make the fortune, for a subject, of some play-writing fellow, if he had the wit to guess them; which, luckily for us perhaps, he never will. She usually winds up by protesting—devinez un pen quoi!" Miriam added. And as her companion professed his complete inability to divine: "By declaring that rather than take it that way I must marry you."
"She's shrewder than I thought. It's the last of vanities to talk about it, but I may mention in passing that if you would marry me you should be the greatest of all possible ladies."
"Heavens, my dear fellow, what natural capacity have I for that?"
"You're artist enough for anything. I shall be a great diplomatist: my resolution is firmly taken. I'm infinitely cleverer than you have the least idea of, and you shall be a great diplomatist's wife."
"And the demon, the devil, the devourer and destroyer, that you are so fond of talking about: what, in such a position, do you do with that element of my nature? Où le fourrez-vous?"
"I'll look after it, I'll keep it under. Rather perhaps I should say I'll bribe it and lull it—I'll gorge it with earthly grandeurs."
"That's better," said Miriam; "for a demon that's kept under is a shabby little demon. Don't let us be shabby." Then she added: "Do you really go away the beginning of next week?"
"Monday night, if possible."
"That's to Paris. Before you go to your new post they must give you an interval here."
"I shan't take it—I'm so tremendously keen for my duties. I shall insist on going sooner. Oh, I shall be concentrated now."
"I'll come and act there," said Miriam, with her handsome smile. "I've already forgotten what it was I wanted to discuss with you: it was some trumpery stuff. What I want to say now is only one thing: that it's not in the least true that because my life pitches me in every direction and mixes me up with all sorts of people—or rather with one sort mainly, poor dears!—I haven't a decent character, I haven't common honesty. Your sympathy, your generosity, your patience, your precious suggestions, our dear, sweet days last summer in Paris, I shall never forget. You're the best—you're different from all the others. Think of me as you please and make profane jokes about my matrimonial prospects—I shall think of you only in one way. I have a great respect for you. With all my heart I hope you'll be a great diplomatist. God bless you!"
Miriam got up as she spoke and in so doing she glanced at the clock—a movement which somehow only added to the noble gravity of her discourse: it was as if she were considering his time, not her own. Sherringham, at this, rising too, took out his watch and stood a moment with his eyes bent upon it, though without in the least perceiving what the needles marked.
"You'll have to go, to reach the theatre at your usual hour, won't you? Let me not keep you. That is, let me keep you only long enough just to say this, once for all, as I shall never speak of it again. I'm going away to save myself," Sherringham went on deliberately, standing before her and soliciting her eyes with his own. "I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, in decorum, in virtuous submission to hard necessity—without asking for credit or sympathy, without provoking any sort of scene or calling attention to my fortitude. But I can't—upon my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it through, but I can't hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so that over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know—and that it does neither you nor me any good!"
He paused a moment, upon which Miriam asked: "That I do know what?"
"That I have a consuming passion for you and that it's impossible."
"Ah, impossible, my friend!" she sighed, but with a quickness in her assent.
"Very good; it interferes, the gratification of it would interfere fatally, with the ambition of each of us. Our ambitions are odious, but we are tied fast to them."
"Ah, why ain't we simple?" Miriam quavered. "Why ain't we of the people—comme tout le monde—just a man and a girl liking each other?"
Sherringhain hesitated a moment; she was so tenderly mocking, so sweetly ambiguous, as she said this. "Because we are precious asses! However, I'm simple enough, after all, to care for you as I have never cared for any human creature. You have, as it happens, a personal charm for me that no one has ever approached, and from the top of your splendid head to the sole of your theatrical shoe (I could go down on my face—there, abjectly—and kiss it!) every inch of you is dear and delightful to me. Therefore good-bye."
Miriam stared, at this, with wider eyes: he had put the matter in a way that struck her. For a moment, all the same, he was afraid she would reply as if she had often heard that sort of thing before. But she was too much moved—the pure colour that had risen to her face showed it—to have recourse to this particular facility. She was moved even to the glimmer of tears, though she gave him her hand with a smile. "I'm so glad you've said all that; for from you I know what it means. Certainly it's better for you to go away. Of course it's all wrong, isn't it?—but that's the only thing it can be: therefore it's all right, isn't it? Some day when we're great people we'll talk these things over; then we shall be quiet, we shall be at peace—let us hope so at least—and better friends than people will know." She paused a moment, smiling still; then she said while he held her hand: "Don't, don't come to-morrow night."
With this she attempted to draw her hand away, as if everything were settled and over; but the effect of her movement was that, as he held her hand tight, he was simply drawn toward her and close to her. The effect of this, in turn, was that, releasing her only to possess her more, he seized her in his arms and breathing deeply "I love you!" clasped her in a long embrace. It was so long that it gave the door of the room time to open before either of them had taken notice. Mrs. Rooth, who had not peeped in before, peeped in now, becoming in this matter witness of an incident she could scarcely have expected. The unexpected indeed, for Mrs. Rooth, had never been an insuperable element in things; it was her system, in general, to be too much in harmony to be surprised. As the others turned round they saw her standing there and smiling at them, and heard her ejaculate with wise indulgence:
"Oh, you extravagant children!"
Miriam brushed off her tears, quickly but unconfusedly. "He's going away—he's bidding us farewell."
Sherringham—it was perhaps a result of his general agitation—laughed out at the "us" (he had already laughed at the charge of puerility), and Mrs. Rooth returned: "Going away? Ah, then I must have one too!" And she held out both her hands. Sherringham stepped forward and, taking them, kissed her respectfully on each cheek, in the foreign manner, while she continued: "Our dear old friend—our kind, gallant gentleman!"
"The gallant gentleman has been promoted to a great post—the proper reward of his gallantry," Miriam said. "He's going out as minister to some impossible place—where is it?"
"As minister—how very charming! We are getting on." And the old woman gave him a curious little upward interrogative leer.
"Oh, well enough. One must take what one can get," he answered.
"You'll get everything now, I'm sure, sha'n't you?" Mrs. Rooth asked, with an inflection that called back to him, comically (the source was so different), the very vibrations he had noted the day before in Lady Agnes's voice.
"He's going to glory and he'll forget all about us—forget that he has ever known such people. So we shall never see him again, and it's better so. Good-bye, good-bye," Miriam repeated; "the brougham must be there, but I won't take you. I want to talk to mother about you, and we shall say things not fit for you to hear. Oh, I'll let you know what we lose—don't be afraid," she added to Mrs. Booth. "He's the rising star of diplomacy."
"I knew it from the first—I know how things turn out for such people as you!" cried the old woman, gazing fondly at Sherringham. "But you don't mean to say you're not coming to-morrow night?"
"Don't—don't; it's great folly," Miriam interposed; "and it's quite needless, since you saw me to-day."
Sherringham stood looking from the mother to the daughter, the former of whom broke out to the latter: "Oh, you dear rogue, to say one has seen you yet! You know how you'll come up to it; you'll be transcendent."
"Yes, I shall be there—certainly," said Sherringham, at the door, to Mrs. Booth.
"Oh, you dreadful goose!" Miriam called after him. But he went out without looking round at her.