"So, good-bye," said Delia, without emotion.
"Oh, Delia!" I said. "Not _this_?"
"Good-bye, Mr. Cummins," she said.
By a violent effort I controlled myself and touched her hand. I tried
to say some word of explanation to her. She looked into my working face
and winced. "I _must_ do it," she said hopelessly. Then she turned from
me and began walking rapidly down the gallery.
Heavens! How the human agony cried within me! I loved Delia. But
nothing found expression--I was already too deeply crusted with my
acquired self.
"Good-baye!" I said at last, watching her retreating figure. How I
hated myself for doing it! After she had vanished, I repeated in a
dreamy way, "Good-baye!" looking hopelessly round me. Then, with a kind
of heart-broken cry, I shook my clenched fists in the air, staggered to
the pedestal of a winged figure, buried my face in my arms, and made my
shoulders heave. Something within me said "Ass!" as I did so. (I had
the greatest difficulty in persuading the Museum policeman, who was
attracted by my cry of agony, that I was not intoxicated, but merely
suffering from a transient indisposition.)
But even this great sorrow has not availed to save me from my fate.
I see it, everyone sees it; I grow more "theatrical" every day.
And no one could be more painfully aware of the pungent silliness
of theatrical ways. The quiet, nervous, but pleasing E. C. Cummins
vanishes. I cannot save him. I am driven like a dead leaf before the
winds of March. My tailor even enters into the spirit of my disorder.
He has a peculiar sense of what is fitting. I tried to get a dull grey
suit from him this spring, and he foisted a brilliant blue upon me,
and I see he has put braid down the sides of my new dress trousers. My
hairdresser insists upon giving me a "wave."
I am beginning to associate with actors. I detest them, but it is only
in their company that I can feel I am not glaringly conspicuous. Their
talk infects me. I notice a growing tendency to dramatic brevity, to
dashes and pauses in my style, to a punctuation of bows and attitudes.
Barnaby has remarked it too. I offended Wembly by calling him "Dear
Boy" yesterday. I dread the end, but I cannot escape from it.
The fact is, I am being obliterated. Living a grey, retired life all
my youth, I came to the theatre a delicate sketch of a man, a thing
of tints and faint lines. Their gorgeous colouring has effaced me
altogether. People forget how much mode of expression, method of
movement, are a matter of contagion. I have heard of stage-struck
people before, and thought it a figure of speech. I spoke of it
jestingly, as a disease. It is no jest. It _is_ a disease. And I have
got it bad! Deep down within me I protest against the wrong done to my
personality--unavailingly. For three hours or more a week I have to go
and concentrate my attention on some fresh play, and the suggestions
of the drama strengthen their awful hold upon me. My manners grow so
flamboyant, my passions so professional, that I doubt, as I said at the
outset, whether it is really myself that behaves in such a manner. I
feel merely the core to this dramatic casing, that grows thicker and
presses upon me--me and mine. I feel like King John's abbot in his cope
of lead.
I doubt, indeed, whether I should not abandon the struggle
altogether--leave this sad world of ordinary life for which I am
so ill-fitted, abandon the name of Cummins for some professional
pseudonym, complete my self-effacement, and--a thing of tricks and
tatters, of posing and pretence--go upon the stage. It seems my only
resort--"to hold the mirror up to Nature." For in the ordinary life,
I will confess, no one now seems to regard me as both sane and sober.
Only upon the stage, I feel convinced, will people take me seriously.
That will be the end of it. I _know_ that will be the end of it. And
yet ... I will frankly confess ... all that marks off your actor
from your common man ... I _detest_. I am still largely of my Aunt
Charlotte's opinion, that playacting is unworthy of a pure-minded man's
attention, much more participation. Even now I would resign my dramatic
criticism and try a rest. Only I can't get hold of Barnaby. Letters
of resignation he never notices. He says it is against the etiquette
of journalism to write to your Editor. And when I go to see him, he
gives me another big cigar and some strong whisky and soda, and then
something always turns up to prevent my explanation.