“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, every one 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 play-acting 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 whiskey
and soda, and then something always turns up to prevent my explanation.