The Sunday party separated at Paddington on the night of the Nuneham
expedition, and Wallace and Eustace Kendal walked eastward together. The
journey home had been very quiet. Miss Bretherton had been forced to
declare herself 'extremely tired,' and Mrs. Stuart's anxiety and sense of
responsibility about her had communicated themselves to the rest of the
party.
'It is the effect of my long day yesterday,' she said apologetically to
Forbes, who hovered about her with those affectionate attentions which a
man on the verge of old age pays with freedom to a young girl. 'It won't
do to let the public see so much of me in future. But I don't want to
spoil our Sunday. Talk to me, and I shall forget it.'
Wallace, who had had his eyes about him when she and Eustace Kendal
emerged from the wood in view of the rest of the party, was restless and
ill at ease, but there was no getting any information, even by a gesture,
from Kendal, who sat in his corner diligently watching the moonlight on
the flying fields, or making every now and then some disjointed attempts
at conversation with Mrs. Stuart.
At the station Miss Bretherton's carriage was waiting; the party of
gentlemen saw her and Mrs. Stuart, who insisted on taking her home, into
it; the pale, smiling face bent forward; she waved her hand in response
to the lifted hats, and she was gone.
'Well?' said Wallace, with a world of inquiry in his voice, as he and
Kendal turned eastward.
'It has been an unfortunate business,' said Kendal abruptly. 'I never did
a thing worse, I think, or spent a more painful half-hour.'
Wallace's face fell. 'I wish I hadn't bored you with my confounded
affairs,' he exclaimed. 'It was too bad!'
Kendal was inclined to agree inwardly, for he was in a state of irritable
reaction; but he had the justice to add aloud, 'It was I who was the fool
to undertake it. And I think, indeed, it could have been done, but that
circumstances, which neither you nor I had weighed sufficiently, were
against it. She is in a nervous, shaken state, mentally and physically,
and before I had had time to discuss the point at all, she had carried it
on to the personal ground, and the thing was up.'
'She is deeply offended, then?'
'Not at all, in the ordinary sense; she is too fine a creature; but she
talked of the "contempt" that you and I feel for her!'
'Good heavens!' cried Wallace, feeling most unjustly persuaded that his
friend had bungled the matter horribly.
'Yes,' said Kendal deliberately; '"contempt," that was it. I don't know
how it came about. All I know is, that what I said, which seemed to me
very harmless, was like a match to a mine. But she told me to tell you
that she made no further claim on _Elvira_. So the play is safe.'
'D---- the play!' cried Wallace vigorously, a sentiment to which perhaps
Kendal's silence gave consent. 'But I cannot let it rest there. I must
write to her.'
'I don't think I would, if I were you,' said Kendal. 'I should let it
alone. She looks upon the matter as finished. She told me particularly to
tell you that she was _not_ vexed, and you may be quite sure that she
isn't, in any vulgar sense. Perhaps that makes it all the worse. However,
you've a right to know what happened, so I'll tell you, as far as I
remember.'
He gave an abridged account of the conversation, which made matters a
little clearer, though by no means less uncomfortable, to Wallace. When
it was over, they were nearing Vigo Street, the point at which their
routes diverged, Wallace having rooms in the Albany, and Kendal hailed a
hansom.
'If I were you,' he said, as it came up, 'I should, as I said before, let
the thing alone as much as possible. She will probably speak to you about
it, and you will, of course, say what you like, but I'm pretty sure she
won't take up the play again, and if she feels a coolness towards
anybody, it won't be towards you.'
'There's small consolation in that!' exclaimed Wallace.
'Anyhow, make the best of it, my dear fellow,' said Kendal, as though
determined to strike a lighter key. 'Don't be so dismal, things will look
differently to-morrow morning--they generally do--there's no tremendous
harm done. I'm sorry I didn't do your bidding better. Honestly, when I
come to think over it, I don't see how I could have done otherwise. But
I don't expect you to think so.'
Wallace laughed, protested, and they parted.
A few moments later Kendal let himself into his rooms, where lights were
burning, and threw himself into his reading-chair, beside which his books
and papers stood ready to his hand. Generally, nothing gave him a greater
sense of _bien-être_ than this nightly return, after a day spent in
society, to these silent and faithful companions of his life. He was
accustomed to feel the atmosphere of his room when he came back to it
charged with welcome. It was as though the thoughts and schemes he had
left warm and safe in shelter there started to life again after a day's
torpor, and thronged to meet him. His books smiled at him with friendly
faces, the open page called to him to resume the work of the morning--he
was, in every sense, at home. Tonight, however, the familiar spell seemed
to have lost its force. After a hasty supper he took up some proofs, pen
in hand. But the first page was hardly turned before they had dropped on
to his knee. It seemed to him as if he still felt on his arm the folds of
a green, fur-edged cloak, as if the touch of a soft cold hand were still
lingering in his. Presently he fell to recalling every detail of the
afternoon scene,--the arching beech trees, the rich red and brown of the
earth beneath, tinged with the winter sheddings of the trees, the little
raised bank, her eyes as she looked up at him, the soft wisps of her
golden brown hair under her hat. What superb, unapproachable beauty it
was! how living, how rich in content and expression!
'Am I in love with Isabel Bretherton?' he asked himself at last, lying
back on his chair with his eyes on the portrait of his sister. 'Perhaps
Marie could tell me--I don't understand myself. I don't think so. And if
I were, I am not a youngster, and my life is a tolerably full one. I
could hold myself in and trample it down if it were best to do so. I can
hardly imagine myself absorbed in a great passion. My bachelor life is a
good many years old--my habits won't break up easily. And, supposing I
felt the beginnings of it, I could stop it if reason were against it.'
He left his chair, and began to pace up and down the room, thinking. 'And
there is absolutely no sort of reason in my letting myself fall in love
with Isabel Bretherton! She has never given me the smallest right to
think that she takes any more interest in me than she does in hundreds of
people whom she meets on friendly terms, unless it may be an intellectual
interest, as Wallace imagines, and that's a poor sort of stepping-stone
to love! And if it were ever possible that she should, this afternoon has
taken away the possibility. For, however magnanimous a woman may be, a
thing like that rankles: it can't help it. She will feel the sting of it
worse to-morrow than to-day, and, though she will tell herself that she
bears no grudge, it will leave a gulf between us. For, of course, she
must go on acting, and, whatever depressions she may have, she must
believe in herself; no one can go on working without it, and I shall
always recall to her something harsh and humiliating!'
'Supposing, by any chance, it were not so--supposing I were able to
gather up my relation with her again and make it a really friendly one--I
should take, I think, a very definite line; I should make up my mind
to be of use to her. After all, it is true what she says: there are many
things in me that might be helpful to her, and everything there was she
should have the benefit of. I would make a serious purpose of it. She
should find me a friend worth having.'
His thoughts wandered on a while in this direction. It was pleasant to
see himself in the future as Miss Bretherton's philosopher and friend,
but in the end the sense of reality gained upon his dreams. 'I am a
fool!' he said to himself resolutely at last, 'and I may as well go to
bed and put her out of my mind. The chance is over--gone--done with, if
it ever existed.'
The next morning, on coming down to breakfast, he saw among his letters a
handwriting which startled him. Where had he seen it before? In Wallace's
hand three days ago? He opened it, and found the following note:--
'MY DEAR MR. KENDAL--You know, I think, that I am off next week--on
Monday, if all goes well. We go to Switzerland for a while, and then to
Venice, which people tell me is often very pleasant in August. We shall
be there by the first week in August, and Mr. Wallace tells me he hears
from you that your sister, Madame de Châteauvieux, will be there about
the same time. I forgot to ask you yesterday, but, if you think she would
not object to it, would you give me a little note introducing me to her?
All that I have heard of her makes me very anxious to know her, and she
would not find me a troublesome person! We shall hardly, I suppose, meet
again before I start. If not, please remember that my friends can always
find me on Sunday afternoon.--Yours very truly, ISABEL BRETHERTON.'
Kendal's hand closed tightly over the note. Then he put it carefully back
into its envelope, and walked away with his hands behind him and the note
in them, to stare out of window at the red roofs opposite.
'That is like her,' he murmured to himself; 'I wound and hurt her: she
guesses I shall suffer for it, and, by way of setting up the friendly
bond again, next day, without a word, she asks me to do her a kindness!
Could anything be more delicate, more gracious!'
Kendal never had greater difficulty in fixing his thoughts to his work
than that morning, and at last, in despair, he pushed his book aside, and
wrote an answer to Miss Bretherton, and, when that was accomplished, a
long letter to his sister. The first took him longer than its brevity
seemed to justify. It contained no reference to anything but her request.
He felt a compulsion upon him to treat the situation exactly as she had
done, but, given this limitation, how much cordiality and respect could
two sides of letterpaper be made to carry with due regard to decorum and
grammar?
When he next met Wallace, that hopeful, bright-tempered person had
entirely recovered his cheerfulness. Miss Bretherton, he reported, had
attacked the subject of _Elvira_ with him, but so lightly that he had no
opportunity for saying any of the skilful things he had prepared.
'She evidently did not want the question seriously opened,' he said, 'so
I followed your advice and let it alone, and since then she has been
charming both to Agnes and me. I feel myself as much of a brute as ever,
but I see that the only thing I can do is to hold my tongue about it.' To
which Kendal heartily agreed.
A few days afterwards the newspapers gave a prominent place to reports of
Miss Bretherton's farewell performance. It had been a great social event.
Half the distinguished people in London were present, led by royalty.
London, in fact, could hardly bear to part with its favourite, and
compliments, flowers, and farewells showered upon her. Kendal, who had
not meant to go at the time when tickets were to be had, tried about the
middle of the week after the Oxford Sunday to get a seat, but found it
utterly impossible. He might have managed it by applying to her through
Edward Wallace, but that he was unwilling to do, for various reasons.
He told himself that, after all, it was better to let her little note and
his answer close his relations with her for the present. Everywhere else
but in the theatre she might still regard him as her friend; but there
they could not but be antagonistic in some degree one to another, and not
even intellectually did Kendal wish just now to meet her on a footing of
antagonism.
So, when Saturday night came, he passed the hours of Miss Bretherton's
triumph at a ministerial evening party, where it seemed to him that the
air was full of her name and that half the guests were there as a
_pis-aller,_ because the _Calliope_ could not receive them. And yet he
thought he noticed in the common talk about her that criticism of her as
an actress was a good deal more general than it had been at the beginning
of the season. The little knot of persons with an opinion and reasons for
it had gradually influenced the larger public. Nevertheless, there was no
abatement whatever of the popular desire to see her, whether on the stage
or in society. The _engouement_ for her personally, for her beauty, and
her fresh pure womanliness, showed no signs of yielding, and would hold
out, Kendal thought, for some time, against a much stronger current of
depreciation on the intellectual side than had as yet set in.
He laid down the Monday paper with a smile of self-scorn and muttered: 'I
should like to know how much she remembers by this time of the prig who
lectured to her in Nuneham woods a week ago!' In the evening his _Pall
Mall Gazette_ told him that Miss Bretherton had crossed the channel that
morning, _en route_ for Paris and Venice. He fell to calculating the
weeks which must elapse before his sister would be in Venice, and before
he could hear of any meeting between her and the Bretherton party, and
wound up his calculations by deciding that London was already hot and
would soon be empty, and that, as soon as he could gather together
certain books he was in want of, he would carry them and his proofs down
into Surrey, refuse all invitations to country houses, and devote himself
to his work.
Before he left he paid a farewell call to Mrs. Stuart, who gave him full
and enthusiastic accounts of Isabel Bretherton's last night, and informed
him that her brother talked of following the Brethertons to Venice some
time in August.
'Albert,' she said, speaking of her husband, 'declares that he cannot get
away for more than three weeks, and that he must have some walking; so
that, what we propose at present is to pick up Edward at Venice at the
end of August, and move up all together into the mountains afterwards.
Oh, Mr. Kendal,' she went on a little nervously, as if not quite knowing
whether to attack the subject or not, 'it _was_ devoted of you to throw
yourself into the breach for Edward as you did at Oxford. I am afraid it
must have been very disagreeable, both to you and to her. When Edward
told me of it next morning it made me cold to think of it. I made up my
mind that our friendship--yours and ours--with her was over. But do you
know she came to call on me that very afternoon--how she made time I
don't know--but she did. Naturally, I was very uncomfortable, but she
began to talk of it in the calmest way while we were having tea. "Mr.
Kendal was probably quite right," she said, "in thinking the part
unsuited to me; anyhow, I asked him for his opinion, and I should be a
poor creature to mind his giving it." And then she laughed and said that
I must ask Edward to keep his eyes open for anything that would do better
for her in the autumn. And since then she has behaved as if she had
forgotten all about it. I never knew any one with less smallness about
her.'
'No; she is a fine creature,' said Kendal, almost mechanically. How
little Mrs. Stuart knew--or rather, how entirely remote she was from
_feeling_--what had happened! It seemed to him that the emotion of that
scene was still thrilling through all his pulses, yet to what ordinary
little proportions had it been reduced in Mrs. Stuart's mind! He alone
had seen the veil lifted, had come close to the energetic reality of the
girl's nature. That Isabel Bretherton could feel so, could look so, was
known only to him--the thought had pain in it, but the keenest pleasure
also.
'Do you know,' said Mrs. Stuart presently, with a touch of reproach in
her voice, 'that she asked for you on the last night?'
'Did she?'
'Yes. We had just gone on to the stage to see her after the curtain had
fallen. It was such a pretty sight, you ought not to have missed it. The
Prince had come to say good-bye to her, and, as we came in, she was just
turning away in her long phantom dress with the white hood falling round
her head, like that Romney picture--don't you remember?--of Lady
Hamilton,--Mr. Forbes has drawn her in it two or three times. The stage
was full of people. Mr. Forbes was there, of course, and Edward, and
ourselves, and presently I heard her say to Edward, "Is Mr. Kendal here?
I did not see him in the house." Edward said something about your not
having been able to get a seat, which I thought clumsy of him, for, of
course, we could have got some sort of place for you at the last moment.
She didn't say anything, but I thought--if you won't mind my saying so,
Mr. Kendal--that, considering all things, it would have been better if
you had been there.'
'It seems to me,' said Kendal, with vexation in his voice, 'that there is
a fate against my doing anything as I ought to do it. I thought, on the
whole, it would be better not to make a fuss about it when it came to
the last. You see she must look upon me to some extent as a critical, if
not a hostile, influence, and I did not wish to remind her of my
existence.'
'Oh well,' said Mrs. Stuart in her cheery commonsense way, 'that evening
was such an overwhelming experience that I don't suppose she could have
felt any soreness towards anybody. And, do you know, she _is_ improved?
I don't quite know what it is, but certainly one or two of those long
scenes she does more intelligently, and even the death-scene is
better,--less monotonous. I sometimes think she will surprise us all
yet.'
'Very likely,' said Kendal absently, not in reality believing a word of
it, but it was impossible to dissent.
'I hope so,' exclaimed Mrs. Stuart, 'with all my heart. She has been very
depressed often these last weeks, and certainly, on the whole, people
have been harder upon her than they were at first. I am so glad that she
and your sister will meet in Venice. Madame de Châteauvieux is just the
friend she wants.'
Kendal walked home feeling the rankling of a fresh pin-point. She had
asked for him, and he had not been there! What must she think,
apparently, but that, from a sour, morose consistency, he had refused to
be a witness of her triumph!
Oh, hostile fates!
* * * * *
A week later Eustace was settled in the Surrey farmhouse which had
sheltered the Sunday League on its first expedition. The Surrey country
was in its full glory: the first purple heather was fully out, and the
distant hills rose blue and vaporous across stretches of vivid crimson,
broken here and there by the dim gray greens of the furze or the sharper
colour of the bracken. The chorus of birds had died away, but the nests
were not yet tenantless. The great sand-pit near the farmhouse was still
vocal with innumerable broods of sand-martins, still enlivened by the
constant skimming to and fro of the parent birds. And under Kendal's
sitting-room window a pair of tomtits, which the party had watched that
May Sunday, were just launching their young family on the world. One of
his first walks was to that spot beyond the pond where they had made
their afternoon camping-ground. The nut-hatches had fled--fled, Kendal
hoped, some time before, for the hand of the spoiler had been near their
dwelling, and its fragments lay scattered on the ground. He presently
learnt to notice that he never heard the sharp sound of the bird's
tapping beak among the woods without a little start of recollection.
Outside his walks, his days were spent in continuous literary effort. His
book was in a condition which called for all his energies, and he threw
himself vigorously into it. The first weeks were taken up with a long
review of Victor Hugo's prose and poetry, with a view to a final critical
result. It seemed to him that there was stuff in the great Frenchman to
suit all weathers and all skies. There were sombre, wind-swept days, when
the stretches of brown ling not yet in flower, the hurrying clouds, and
the bending trees, were in harmony with all the fierce tempestuous side
of the great Romantic. There were others when the homely, tender,
domestic aspect of the country formed a sort of framework and
accompaniment to the simpler patriarchal elements in the books which
Kendal had about him. Then, when the pages on Victor Hugo were
written, those already printed on Chateaubriand began to dissatisfy him,
and he steeped himself once more in the rolling artificial harmonies, the
mingled beauty and falsity of one of the most wonderful of styles, that
he might draw from it its secrets and say a last just word about it.
He knew a few families in the neighbourhood, but he kept away from them,
and almost his only connection with the outer world, during his first
month in the country, was his correspondence with Madame de Châteauvieux,
who was at Etretât with her husband. She wrote her brother very lively,
characteristic accounts of the life there, filling her letters with
amusing sketches of the political or artistic celebrities with whom the
little Norman town swarms in the season.
After the third or fourth letter, however, Kendal began to look
restlessly at the Etretât postmark, to reflect that Marie had been there
a long time, and to wonder she was not already tired of such a public
sort of existence as the Etretât life. The bathing scenes, and the
fire-eating deputy, and the literary woman with a mission for the spread
of naturalism, became very flat to him. He was astonished that his sister
was not as anxious to start for Italy as he was to hear that she had done
so.
This temper of his was connected with the fact that after the first of
August he began to develop a curious impatience on the subject of the
daily post. At Old House Farm the post was taken as leisurely as
everything else; there was no regular delivery, and Kendal generally was
content to trust to the casual mercies of the butcher or baker for his
letters. But, after the date mentioned, it occurred to him that his
letters reached him with an abominable irregularity, and that it would do
his work no harm, but, on the contrary, much good, if he took a daily
constitutional in the direction of the post-office, which gave a touch of
official dignity to the wasp-filled precincts of a grocer's shop in the
village, some two miles off.
For some considerable number of days, however, his walks only furnished
him with food for reflection on the common disproportion of means to ends
in this life. His sister's persistence in sticking to the soil of France
began to seem to him extraordinary! However, at last, the monotony of the
Etretât postmarks was broken by a postcard from Lyons. 'We are here for
the night on some business of Paul's; to-morrow we hope to be at Turin,
and two or three days later at Venice. By the way, where will the
Brethertons be? I must trust to my native wits, I suppose, when I get
there. She is not the sort of light to be hidden under a bushel.'
This postcard disturbed Kendal not a little, and he felt irritably that
somebody had mismanaged matters. He had supposed, and indeed suggested,
that Miss Bretherton should enclose his note in one of her own to his
sister's Paris address, giving, at the same time, some indication of a
place of meeting in Venice. But if she had not done this, it was very
possible that the two women might miss each other after all. Sometimes,
when he had been contemplating this possibility with disgust, he would
with a great effort make himself reflect why it was that he cared about
the matter so disproportionately. Why was he so deeply interested in
Isabel Bretherton's movements abroad, and in the meeting which would
bring her, so to speak, once more into his own world? Why! because it was
impossible, he would answer himself indignantly, not to feel a profound
interest in any woman who had ever shared as much emotion with you as she
had with him in those moments at Nuneham, who had received a wound at
your hands, had winced under it, and still had remained gracious, and
kind, and womanly! 'I should be a hard-hearted brute,' he said to
himself, 'if I did not feel a very deep and peculiar interest in her--if
I did not desire that Marie's friendship should abundantly make up to her
for my blundering!'
Did he ever really deceive himself into imagining that this was all? It
is difficult to say. The mind of a man no longer young, and trained in
all the subtleties of thought, does not deal with an invading sentiment
exactly as a youth would do with all his experience to come. It steals
upon him more slowly, he is capable of disguising it to himself longer,
of escaping from it into other interests. Passion is in its ultimate
essence the same, wherever it appears and under whatever conditions, but
it possesses itself of human life in different ways. Slowly, and
certainly, the old primeval fire, the commonest, fatalest, divinest force
of life, was making its way into Kendal's nature. But it was making its
way against antagonistic forces of habit, tradition, self-restraint,--it
found a hundred other interests in possession;--it had a strange
impersonality and timidity of nature to fight with. Kendal had been
accustomed to live in other men's lives. Was he only just beginning to
live his own?
But, however it was, he was at least conscious during this waiting time
that life was full of some hidden savour; that his thoughts were never
idle, never vacant; that, as he lay flat among the fern in his moments of
rest, following the march of the clouds as they sailed divinely over the
rich breadth and colour of the commons, a whole brood of images nestled
at his heart, or seemed to hover in the sunny air before him,--visions
of a slender form fashioned with Greek suppleness and majesty, of a soft
and radiant presence, of looks all womanliness, and gestures all grace,
of a smile like no other he had ever seen for charm, of a quick impulsive
gait! He followed that figure through scene after scene; he saw primroses
in its hand, and the pale spring blue above it; he recalled it standing
tense and still with blanched cheek and fixed appealing eye, while all
round the June woods murmured in the breeze; he surrounded it in
imagination with the pomp and circumstance of the stage, and realised it
as a centre of emotion to thousands. And then from memories he would pass
on to speculations, from the scenes he knew to those he could only guess
at, from the life of which he had seen a little to the larger and
unexplored life beyond.
And so the days went on, and though he was impatient and restless, yet
indoors his work was congenial to him, and out of doors the sun was
bright, and all the while a certain little god lay hidden, speaking no
articulate word, but waiting with a mischievous patience for the final
overthrow of one more poor mortal.
At last the old postmistress, whom he had almost come to regard as
cherishing a personal grudge against him, ceased to repulse him, and,
after his seven years of famine, the years of abundance set in. For the
space of three weeks letters from Venice lay waiting for him almost every
alternate morning, and the heathery slopes between the farm and the
village grew familiar with the spectacle of a tall thin man in a rough
tweed suit struggling, as he walked, with sheets of foreign paper which
the wind was doing its best to filch away from him.
The following extracts from these letters contain such portions of them
as are necessary to our subject:--
* * * * *
'CASA MINGHETTI 2, GRAND CANAL,
'VENICE, _August_ 6.
'MY DEAR EUSTACE--I can only write you a very scrappy letter to-day, for
we are just settling into our apartment, and the rooms are strewn in the
most distracting way with boxes, books, and garments; while my maid,
Félicie, and the old Italian woman, Caterina, who is to cook and manage
for us, seem to be able to do nothing--not even to put a chair straight,
or order some bread to keep us from starving--without consulting me.
Paul, taking advantage of a husband's prerogative, has gone off to
_flâner_ on the Piazza, while his women-folk make life tolerable at home;
which is a very unfair and spiteful version of his proceedings, for he
has really gone as much on my business as on his own. I sent him--feeling
his look of misery, as he sat on a packing-case in the middle of this
chaos, terribly on my mind--to see if he could find the English consul
(whom he knows a little), and discover from him, if possible, where your
friends are. It is strange, as you say, that Miss Bretherton should not
have written to me; but I incline to put it down to our old Jacques at
home, who is getting more and more imbecile with the weight of years and
infirmities, and is quite capable of forwarding to us all the letters
which are not worth posting, and leaving all the important ones piled up
in the hall to await our return. It is provoking, for, if the Bretherton
party are not going to stay long in Venice, we may easily spend all our
time in looking for each other; which will, indeed, be a lame and
impotent conclusion. However, I have hopes of Paul's cleverness.
'And now, four o'clock! There is no help for it, my dear Eustace. I must
go and instruct Caterina how not to poison us in our dinner to-night. She
looks a dear old soul, but totally innocent of anything but Italian
barbarities in the way of cooking. And Félicie also is well-meaning but
ignorant, so, unless I wish to have Paul on my hands for a week, I must
be off. This rough picnicking life, in Venice of all places, is a curious
little experience; but I made up my mind last time we were here that we
would venture our precious selves in no more hotels. The heat, the
mosquitoes, the horrors of the food, were too much. Here we have a
garden, a kitchen, a cool sitting-room; and if I choose to feed Paul on
_tisane_ and milk-puddings, who is to prevent me?
'....Paul has just come in, with victory written on his brow. The English
consul was of no use; but, as he was strolling home, he went into St.
Mark's, and there, of course, found them! In the church were apparently
all the English people who have as yet ventured to Venice; and these, or
most of them, seemed to be following in the wake of a little party of
four persons--two ladies, a gentleman, and a lame girl walking with a
crutch. An excited English tourist condescended to inform Paul that it
was "the great English actress, Miss Bretherton," who was creating all
the commotion. Then, of course, he went up to her--he was provoked that
he could hardly see her in the dim light of St. Mark's--introduced
himself, and described our perplexities. Of course, she had written. I
expected as much. Jacques must certainly be pensioned off! Paul thought
the other three very inferior to her, though the uncle was civil, and
talked condescendingly of Venice as though it were even good enough to be
admired by a Worrall. It is arranged that the beauty is to come and see
me to-morrow if, after Caterina has operated upon us during two meals, we
are still alive. Good-night, and good-bye.'
* * * * *
'VENICE, _August_ 7.
'Well, I have seen her! It has been a blazing day. I was sitting in the
little garden which separates one half of our rooms from the other, while
Caterina was arranging the _déjeûner_ under the little acacia arbour in
the centre of it. Suddenly Félicie came out from the house, and behind
her a tall figure in a large hat and a white dress. The figure held out
both hands to me in a cordial, un-English way, and said a number of
pleasant things, rapidly, in a delicious voice; while I, with the dazzle
of the sun in my eyes so that I could hardly make out the features, stood
feeling a little thrilled by the advent of so famous a person. In a few
moments, however, as it seemed to me, we were sitting, under the acacias,
she was helping me to cut up the melon and arrange the figs, as if we had
known one another for months, and I was experiencing one of those sudden
rushes of liking which, as you know, are a weakness of mine. She stayed
and took her meal with its. Paul, of course, was fascinated, and for once
has not set her down as a _réputation surfaite_.
'Her beauty has a curious air of the place; and now I remember that her
mother was Italian--Venetian actually, was it not? That accounts for it;
she is the Venetian type spiritualised. At the foundation of her face, as
it were, lies the face of the Burano lace-maker; only the original type
has been so refined, so chiselled and smoothed away, that, to speak
fancifully, only a beautiful ghost of it remains. That large stateliness
of her movement, too, is Italian. You may see it in any Venetian street,
and Veronese has fixed it in art.
'While we were sitting in the garden who should be announced but Edward
Wallace? I knew, of course, from you that he might be here about this
time, but in the hurry of our settling in I had quite forgotten his
existence, so that the sight of his trim person bearing down upon us was
a surprise. He and the Bretherton party, however, had been going about
together for several days, so that he and she had plenty of gossip in
common. Miss Bretherton's enthusiasm about Venice is of a very naive,
hot, outspoken kind. It seems to me that she is a very susceptible
creature. She lives her life fast, and crowds into it a greater number of
sensations than most people. All this zest and pleasure must consume a
vast amount of nervous force, but it makes her very refreshing to people
as _blasés_ as Paul and I are. My first feeling about her is very much
what yours was. Personally, there seems to be all the stuff in her of
which an actress is made; will she some day stumble upon the discovery of
how to bring her own individual flame and force to bear upon her art? I
should think it not unlikely, and, altogether, I feel as though I should
take a more hopeful view of her intellectually than you do. You see, my
dear Eustace, you men never realise how clever we women are, how fast we
learn, and how quickly we catch up hints from all quarters under heaven
and improve upon them. An actress so young and so sympathetic as Isabel
Bretherton must still be very much of an unknown quantity dramatically. I
know you think that the want of training is fatal, and that popularity
will stereotype her faults. It may be so; but I am inclined to think,
from my first sight of her, that she is a nature that will gather from
life rather what stimulates it than what dulls and vulgarises it.
Altogether, when I compare my first impressions of her with the image of
her left by your letters, I feel that I have been pleasantly surprised.
Only in the matter of intelligence. Otherwise it has, of course, been
your descriptions of her that have planted and nurtured in me that strong
sense of attraction which blossomed into liking at the moment of personal
contact.'
* * * * *
'_August_ 10.
'This afternoon we have been out in the gondola belonging to this
modest establishment, with our magnificent gondolier, Piero, and his
boy to convey us to the Lido. I got Miss Bretherton to talk to me about
her Jamaica career. She made us all laugh with her accounts of the
blood-and-thunder pieces in which the audiences at the Kingston theatre
revelled. She seems generally to have played the Bandit's Daughter, the
Smuggler's Wife, or the European damsel carried off by Indians, or some
other thrilling elemental personage of the kind. The _White Lady_ was,
apparently, her first introduction to a more complicated order of play.
It is extraordinary, when one comes to think of it, how little positive
dramatic knowledge she must have! She knows some Shakespeare, I think--at
least, she mentions two or three plays--and I gather from something she.
said that she is now making the inevitable study of Juliet that every
actress makes sooner or later; but Sheridan, Goldsmith, and, of course,
all the French people, are mere names to her. When I think of the minute
exhaustive training our Paris actors go through, and compare it with such
a state of nature as hers, I am amazed at what she has done! For, after
all, you know, she must be able to act to some extent; she must know a
great deal more of her business than you and I suspect, or she could not
get on at all.'
* * * * *
'_August_ 16.
'It is almost a week, I see, since I wrote to you last. During that time
we have seen a great deal more of Miss Bretherton, sometimes in company
with her belongings, sometimes without them, and my impressions of her
have ripened very fast. Oh, my dear Eustace, you have been hasty,--all
the world has been hasty! Isabel Bretherton's _real_ self is only now
coming to the front, and it is a self which, as I say to myself with
astonishment, not even your keen eyes have ever seen--hardly suspected
even. Should I, myself a woman, have been as blind to a woman's
capabilities, I wonder? Very likely! These sudden rich developments of
youth are often beyond all calculation.
'Mr. Wallace's attitude makes me realise more than I otherwise could the
past and present condition of things. He comes and talks to me with
amazement of the changes in her tone and outlook, of the girl's
sharpening intellect and growing sensitiveness, and as he recalls
incidents and traits of the London season--confessions or judgments or
blunders of hers, and puts them beside the impression which he sees her
to be making on Paul and myself--I begin to understand from his talk and
his bewilderment something of the real nature of the case.
Intellectually, it has been "the ugly duckling" over again. Under all the
crude, unfledged imperfection of her young performance, you people who
have watched her with your trained critical eyes seem to me never to have
suspected the coming wings, the strange nascent power, which is only now
asserting itself in the light of day.
'"What has Eustace been about?" said Paul to me last night, after we had
all returned from rambling round and round the moonlit Piazza, and he had
been describing to me his talk with her. "He ought to have seen farther
ahead. That creature is only just beginning to live--and it will be a
life worth having! He has kindled it, too, as much as anybody. Of course
we have not seen her act yet, and ignorant--yes, she is certainly
ignorant,--though not so much as I imagined. But as for natural power and
delicacy of mind, there can be no question at all about them!"
'"I don't know that Eustace did question them," I said; "he thought
simply that she had no conception of what her art really required of her,
and never would have because of her popularity."
'To which Paul replied that, as far as he could make out, nobody thought
more meanly of her popularity than she did, and he has been talking a
great deal to her about her season.
'"I never saw a woman at a more critical or interesting point of
development," he exclaimed at last, striding up and down, and so absorbed
in the subject that I could have almost laughed at his eagerness.
"Something or other, luckily for her, set her on the right track three
months ago, and it is apparently a nature on which nothing is lost. One
can see it in the way in which she takes Venice: there isn't a scrap of
her--little as she knows about it--that isn't keen and interested and
wide-awake!"
'"Well, after all," I reminded him as he was settling down to his books,
"we know nothing about her as an actress."
'"We shall see," he said; "I will find out something about that too
before long."'
* * * * *
'_August_ 17-19.
'And so he has!
'Paul has been devoting himself more and more to the beauty, Mr. Wallace
and I looking on with considerable amusement and interest; and this
afternoon, finding it intolerable that Miss Bretherton has not even a
bowing acquaintance with any of his favourite plays, Augier, Dumas,
Victor Hugo, or anything else, he has been reading aloud to us in the
garden, running on from scene to scene and speech to speech, translating
as he went--she in rapt attention, and he gesticulating and spouting,
and, except for an occasional queer rendering that made us laugh, getting
on capitally with his English. She was enchanted; the novelty and the
excitement of it absorbed her; and every now and then she would stop Paul
with a little imperious wave of her hand, and repeat the substance of a
speech after him with an impetuous _élan_, an energy, a comprehension,
which drew little nods of satisfaction out of him, and sometimes produced
a strong and startling effect upon myself and Mr. Wallace. However, Mr.
Wallace might stare as he liked; the two people concerned were totally
unconscious of the rest of us, until at last, after the great death-scene
in the _Nuit Blanche_, Paul threw down the book almost with a sob, and
she, rising in a burst of feeling, held out her white arms towards an
imaginary lover, and with extraordinary skill and memory repeated the
substance of the heroine's last speeches:--
'"_Achille, beloved! my eyes are dim--the mists of death are gathering. O
Achille! the white cottage by the river--the nest in the reeds--your face
and mine in the water--the blue heaven below us in the stream--O joy,
quick! those hands, those lips! But listen, listen! it is the cruel wind
rising, rising: it chills me to the bone, it chokes, it stifles me! I
cannot see the river, and the cottage is gone, and the sun. O Achille, it
is dark, so dark! Gather me close, beloved!--closer, closer! O death is
kind--tender, like your touch! I have no fears--none!"_
'She sank back into her chair. Anything more pathetic, more noble than
her intonation of those words, could not have been imagined. Desforêts
herself could not have spoken them with a more simple, a more piercing
tenderness. I was so confused by a multitude of conflicting feelings--my
own impressions and yours, the realities of the present position and the
possibilities of her future--that I forgot to applaud her. It was the
first time I had had any glimpse at all of her dramatic power, and, rough
and imperfect as the test was, it seemed to me enough. I have not been so
devoted to the _Français_, and to some of the people connected with
it, for ten years, for nothing! One gets a kind of insight from long
habit which, I think, one may trust. Oh, you blind Eustace, how could you
forget that for a creature so full of primitive energy, so rich in the
_stuff_ of life, nothing is irreparable! Education has passed her by.
Well, she will go to find her education. She will make a teacher out of
every friend, out of every sensation. Incident and feeling, praise and
dispraise, will all alike tend to mould the sensitive plastic material
into shape. So far she may have remained outside her art; the art, no
doubt, has been a conventional appendage, and little more. Training would
have given her good conventions, whereas she has only picked up bad and
imperfect ones. But no training could have given her what she will
evidently soon develop for herself, that force and flame of imagination
which fuses together instrument and idea in one great artistic whole. She
has that imagination. You can see it in her responsive ways, her quick
sensitive emotion. Only let it be roused and guided to a certain height,
and it will overleap the barriers which have hemmed it in, and pour
itself into the channels made ready for it by her art.
'There, at least, you have my strong impression. It is, in many ways, at
variance with some of my most cherished principles; for both you and I
are perhaps inclined to overrate the value of education, whether
technical or general, in its effect on the individuality. And, of course,
a better technical preparation would have saved Isabel Bretherton an
immense amount of time; would have prevented her from contracting a host
of bad habits--all of which she will have to unlearn. But the root of the
matter is in her; of that I am sure; and whatever weight of hostile
circumstance may be against her, she will, if she keeps her health--as to
which I am sometimes, like you, a little anxious--break through it all
and triumph.
'But if you did not understand her quite, you have enormously helped her;
so much I will tell you for your comfort. She said to me yesterday
abruptly--we were alone in our gondola, far out on the lagoon--"Did your
brother ever tell you of a conversation he and I had in the woods at
Nuneham about Mr. Wallace's play?"
'"Yes," I answered with outward boldness, but a little inward
trepidation; "I have not known anything distress him so much for a long
time. He thought you had misunderstood him."
'"No," she said quietly, but as it seemed to me with an undercurrent of
emotion in her voice; "I did not misunderstand him. He meant what he
said, and I would have forced the truth from him, whatever happened. I
was determined to make him show me what he felt. That London season was
sometimes terrible to me. I seemed to myself to be living in two
worlds--one a world in which there was always a sea of faces opposite to
me, or crowds about me, and a praise ringing in my ears which was enough
to turn anybody's head, but which after a while repelled me as if there
was something humiliating in it; and then, on the other side, a little
inner world of people I cared for and respected, who looked at me kindly,
and thought for me, but to whom as an actress I was just of no account at
all! It was your brother who first roused that sense in me; it was so
strange and painful, for how could I help at first believing in all the
hubbub and the applause?"
'"Poor child!" I said, reaching out my hand for one of hers. "Did Eustace
make himself disagreeable to you?"
'"It was more, I think," she answered, as if reflecting, "the standard he
always seemed to carry about with him than anything connected with my own
work. At least, of course, I mean before that Nuneham day. Ah, that
Nuneham day! It cut deep."
'She turned away from me, and leant over the side of the boat, so that I
could not see her face.
'"You forced it out of Eustace, you know," I said, trying to laugh at
her, "you uncompromising young person! Of course, he flattered himself
that you forgot all about his preaching the moment you got home. Men
always make themselves believe what they want to believe."
'"Why should he want to believe so?" she replied quickly. "I had half
foreseen it, I had forced it from him, and yet I felt it like a blow! It
cost me a sleepless night, and some--well, some very bitter tears. Not
that the tears were a new experience. How often, after all that noise at
the theatre, have I gone home and cried myself to sleep over the
impossibility of doing what I wanted to do, of moving those hundreds of
people, of making them feel, and of putting my own feeling into shape!
But that night, and with my sense of illness just then, I saw myself--it
seemed to me quite in the near future--grown old and ugly, a forgotten
failure, without any of those memories which console people who have been
great when they must give up. I felt myself struggling against such a
weight of ignorance, of bad habits, of unfavourable surroundings. How was
I ever to get free and to reverse that judgment of Mr. Kendal's? My very
success stood in my way, How was 'Miss Bretherton' to put herself to
school?"
'"But now," I said to her warmly, "you have got free; or, rather, you are
on the way to freedom."
'She thought a little bit without speaking, her chin resting on her hand,
her elbow on her knee. We were passing the great red-brown mass of the
Armenian convent. She seemed to be drinking in the dazzling harmonies of
blue and warm brown and pearly light. When she did speak again it was
very slowly, as though she were trying to give words to a number of
complex impressions.
'"Yes," she said; "it seems to me that I am different; but I can't tell
exactly how or why. I see all sorts of new possibilities, new meanings
everywhere: that is one half of it! But the other, and the greater,
half is--how to make all these new feelings and any new knowledge which
may come to me tell on my art." And then she changed altogether with one
of those delightful swift transformations of hers, and her face rippled
over with laughter. "At present the chief result of the difference,
whatever it may be, seems to be to make me most unmanageable at home. I
am for ever disagreeing with my people, saying I can't do this and I
won't do that. I am getting to enjoy having my own way in the most
abominable manner." And then she caught my hand, that was holding hers,
between both her own, and said half laughing and half in earnest--
'"Did you ever realise that I don't know any single language besides my
own--not even French? That I can't read any French book or any French
play?"
'"Well," I said, half laughing too, "it is very astonishing. And you know
it can't go on if you are to do what I think you will do. French you
positively must learn, and learn quickly. I don't mean to say that we
haven't good plays and a tradition of our own; but for the moment France
is the centre of your art, and you cannot remain at a distance from it!
The French have organised their knowledge; it is available for all who
come. Ours is still floating and amateurish--"
'And so on. You may imagine it, my dear Eustace; I spare you any more of
it verbatim. After I had talked away for a long time and brought it all
back to the absolute necessity that she should know French and become
acquainted with French acting and French dramatic ideals, she pulled me
up in the full career of eloquence, by demanding with a little practical
air, a twinkle lurking somewhere in her eyes--
'"Explain to me, please; how is it to be done?"
'"Oh," I said, "nothing is easier. Do you know anything at all?"
'"Very little. I once had a term's lessons at Kingston."
'"Very well, then," I went on, enjoying this little comedy of a neglected
education; "get a French maid, a French master, and a novel: I will
provide you with _Consuelo_ and a translation to-morrow."
'"As for the French maid," she answered dubiously, shaking her head, "I
don't know. I expect my old black woman that I brought with me from
Jamaica would ill-treat her--perhaps murder her. But the master can be
managed and the novel. Will none of you laugh at me if you see me
trailing a French grammar about?"
'And so she has actually begun to-day. She makes a pretence of keeping
her novel and a little dictionary and grammar in a bag, and hides them
when any one appears. But Paul has already begun to tease her about her
new and mysterious occupation, and I foresee that he will presently spend
the greater part of his mornings in teaching her. I never saw anybody
attract him so much; she is absolutely different from anything he has
seen before; and, as he says, the mixture of ignorance and genius in
her--yes, genius; don't be startled!--is most stimulating to the
imagination.'
* * * * *
'_August_ 22.
'During the last few days I have not been seeing so much of Miss
Bretherton as before. She has been devoting herself to her family, and
Paul and I have been doing our pictures. We cannot persuade her to take
any very large dose of galleries; it seems to me that her thoughts are
set on one subject--and one subject only--and while she is in this first
stage of intensity, it is not likely that anything else will have a
chance.
'It is amusing to study the dissatisfaction of the uncle and aunt with
the turn things have taken since they left London. Mr. Worrall has been
evidently accustomed to direct his niece's life from top to bottom--to
choose her plays for her, helped by Mr. Robinson; to advise her as to her
fellow-actors, and her behaviour in society; and all, of course, with a
shrewd eye to the family profit, and as little regard as need be to any
fantastical conception of art.
'Now, however, Isabel has asserted herself in several unexpected ways.
She has refused altogether to open her autumn season with the play which
had been nearly decided on before they left London--a flimsy spectacular
performance quite unworthy of her. As soon as possible she will make
important changes in the troupe who are to be with her, and at the
beginning of September she is coming to stay three weeks with us in
Paris, and, in all probability (though the world is to know nothing of
it), Perrault of the Conservatoire, who is a great friend of ours, will
give her a good deal of positive teaching. This last arrangement is
particularly exasperating to Mr. Worrall. He regards it as sure to be
known, a ridiculous confession of weakness on Isabel's part, and so on.
However, in spite of his wrath and the aunt's sullen or tearful
disapproval, she has stood firm, and matters are so arranged.'
* * * * *
'_Saturday night, August_ 25.
'This evening we persuaded her at last to give us some scenes of Juliet.
How I wish you could have been here! It was one of those experiences
which remain with one as a sort of perpetual witness to the poetry which
life holds in it, and may yield up to one at any moment. It was in our
little garden; the moon was high above the houses opposite, and the
narrow canal running past our side railing into the Grand Canal was a
shining streak of silver. The air was balmy and absolutely still; no more
perfect setting to Shakespeare or to Juliet could have been imagined.
Paul sat at a little table in front of the rest of us; he was to read
Romeo and the Nurse in the scenes she had chosen, while in the background
were the Worralls and Lucy Bretherton (the little crippled sister), Mr.
Wallace, and myself. She did the balcony scene, the morning scene with
Romeo, the scene with the nurse after Tybalt's death, and the scene of
the philtre. There is an old sundial in the garden, which caught the
moonbeams. She leaned her arms upon it, her eyes fixed upon the throbbing
moonlit sky, her white brocaded dress glistening here and there in the
pale light--a vision of perfect beauty. And when she began her sighing
appeal--
"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
--it seemed to me as if the night--the passionate Italian night--had
found its voice--the only voice which fitted it.
'Afterwards I tried as much as possible to shake off the impressions
peculiar to the scene itself to think of her under the ordinary
conditions of the stage, to judge her purely as an actress. In the love
scenes there seemed hardly anything to find fault with. I thought I could
trace in many places the influence of her constant dramatic talks and
exercises with Paul. The flow of passion was continuous and electric, but
marked by all the simpleness, all the sweetness, all the young winsome
extravagance which belong to Juliet. The great scene with the Nurse had
many fine things in it; she has evidently worked hard at it line by line,
and that speech of Juliet's, with its extraordinary dramatic
capabilities--
"Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?"--
was given with admirable variety and suppleness of intonation. The dreary
sweetness of her
"_Banished!_ that one word _banished!_"
still lives with me, and her gestures as she paced restlessly along the
little strip of moonlit path. The speech before she takes the potion was
the least satisfactory of all; the ghastliness and horror of it are
beyond her resources as yet; she could not infuse them with that terrible
beauty which Desforêts would have given to every line. But where is the
English actress that has ever yet succeeded in it?
We were all silent for a minute after her great cry--
"Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, I drink to thee!"--
had died upon our ears. And then, while we applauded her, she came
forward listlessly, her beautiful head drooping, and approached Paul like
a child that has said its lesson badly.
'"I can't do it, that speech; I can't do it!"
'"It wants more work," said Paul; "you'll get it. But the rest was
admirable. You must have worked very hard!"
'"So I have," she said, brightening at the warmth of his praise. "But
Diderot is wrong, wrong, wrong! When I could once reach the feeling of
the Tybalt speech, when I could once _hate_ him for killing Tybalt in the
same breath in which I _loved_ him for being Romeo, all was easy; gesture
and movement came to me; I learnt them, and the thing was done."
'The reference, of course, meant that Paul had been reading to her his
favourite _Paradoxe sur le Comédien_, and that she had been stimulated,
but not converted, by the famous contention that the actor should be the
mere "cold and tranquil spectator," the imitator of other men's feelings,
while possessing none of his own. He naturally would have argued, but I
would not have it, and made her rest. She was quite worn out with the
effort, and I do not like this excessive fatigue of hers. I often wonder
whether the life she is leading is not too exciting for her. This is
supposed to be her holiday, and she is really going through more
brain-waste than she has ever done in her life before! Paul is throwing
his whole energies into one thing only, the training of Miss Bretherton;
and he is a man of forty-eight, with an immense experience, and she a
girl of twenty-one, with everything to learn, and as easily excited as he
is capable of exciting her. I really must keep him in check.
'Mr. Wallace, when we had sent her home across the canal--their apartment
is on the other side, farther up towards the railway station--could not
say enough to me of his amazement at the change in her.
'"What have you done to her?" he asked. "I can hardly recognise the old
Miss Bretherton at all. Is it really not yet four months since your
brother and I went to see her in the _White Lady_? Why, you have
bewitched her!"
'"We have done something, I admit," I said; "but the power you see
developed in her now was roused in her when months ago she first came in
contact with the new world and the new ideal which you and Eustace
represented to her."
'There, my dear Eustace, have I given you your due? Oh, Miss Bretherton
says so many kind things about you! I'll take especial pains to tell you
some of them next time I write.'
* * * * *
WALLACE TO KENDAL.
'VENICE, _August_ 27.
'MY DEAR KENDAL--This has been a day of events which, I believe, will
interest you as much as they did me. I told Madame de Châteauvieux that I
should write to you to-night, and my letter, she says, must do in place
of one from her for a day or two. We have been to Torcello to-day--your
sister, M. de Châteauvieux, Miss Bretherton, and I. The expedition itself
was delightful, but that I have no time to describe. I only want to tell
you what happened when we got to Torcello.
'But first, you will, of course, know from your sister's letters--she
tells me she writes to you twice a week--how absorbed we have all been in
the artistic progress of Miss Bretherton. I myself never saw such a
change, such an extraordinary development in any one. How was it that you
and I did not see farther into her? I see now, as I look back upon her
old self, that the new self was there in germ. But I think perhaps it may
have been the vast disproportion of her celebrity to her performance that
blinded us to the promise in her; it was irritation with the public that
made us deliver an over-hasty verdict on her.
'However that may be, I have been making up my mind for some days past
that the embassy on behalf of _Elvira_, which I thrust upon you, and
which you so generously undertook, was a blunder on my part which it
would be delightful to repair, and which no artistic considerations
whatever need prevent me from repairing. You cannot think how divine she
was in Juliet the other night. Imperfect and harsh, of course, here
and there, but still a creature to build many and great hopes upon, if
ever there was one. She is shaking off trick after trick; your
brother-in-law is merciless to them whenever they appear, and she is for
ever working with a view to his approval, and also, I think, from two
or three things she has said, with a memory of that distant standard of
criticism which she believes to be embodied in you!
'M. de Châteauvieux has devoted himself to her; it is a pretty sight to
see them together. Your sister and she, too, are inseparable, and Madame
de Châteauvieux's quiet, equable refinement makes a good contrast to
Miss Bretherton's mobility. She will never lose the imprint of her
friendship with these two people; it was a happy thought which led you to
bring them together.
'Well, we went to Torcello, and I watched for an opportunity of getting
her alone. At last Madame de Châteauvieux gave me one; she carried off
her husband, Ruskin in hand, to study the mosaics, and Miss Bretherton
and I were left sitting under the outer wall of San Fosca till they
should come back. We had been talking of a hundred things--not of acting
at all; of the pomegranates, of which she had a scarlet mass in her lap,
of the gray slumberous warmth of the day, or the ragged children who
pestered us for coppers--and then suddenly, I asked her whether she would
answer me a personal question: Was there any grudge in her mind towards
me for anything I had said and done in London, or caused others to say
and do for me?
'She was much startled, and coloured a good deal, but she said very
steadily: "I feel no sort of grudge; I never had any cause." "Well,
then," I went on, throwing myself down on the grass before her that I
might really see her expression, "if you bear me no grudge, if you feel
kindly towards me, will you help me to undo a great mistake of mine?"
'She looked at me with parted lips and eyes which seemed to be trying to
find out from my face what I meant. "Will you," I said, hurrying on;
"will you take from me _Elvira_, and do what you like with it?" And then,
do you know what happened? Her lips quivered, and I thought she was on
the point of tears, but suddenly the nervousness of each of us seemed to
strike the other, and we both laughed--she long and helplessly, as if she
could not help herself.
'Presently she looked up, with her great eyes swimming in tears, and
tried to impress on me that I was speaking hastily, that I had an ideal
for that play she could never promise to reach, that it was my friendship
for her that made me change my mind, that there might be practical
difficulties now that so many arrangements had been made, and so on. But
I would not listen to her. I had it all ready; I had an actor to propose
to her for Macias, and even the costumes in my mind, ready to sketch for
her, if need were. Forbes, I suggested, might and would direct the
setting of the piece; no one could do it with more perfect knowledge
or a more exquisite taste; and for her, as we both knew, he would turn
scene-painter, if necessary. And so I rambled on, soothing her shaken
feeling and my own until she had let me beguile her out of her attitude
of reluctance and shrinking into one at least of common interest.
'But by the time the others came back I had not got a direct consent out
of her, and all the way home she was very silent. I, of course, got
anxious, and began to think that my blunder had been irreparable; but, at
any rate, I was determined not to let the thing linger on. So that, when
the Châteauvieux asked me to stay and sup with them and her, I supped,
and afterwards in the garden boldly brought it out before them all, and
appealed to your sister for help. I knew that both she and her husband
were acquainted with what had happened at Oxford, and I supposed that
Miss Bretherton would know that they were, so that it was awkward enough.
Only that women, when they please, have such tact, such an art of
smoothing over and ignoring the rough places of life, that one often with
them gets through a difficult thing without realising how difficult it
is. M. de Châteauvieux smoked a long time and said nothing, then he asked
me a great many questions about the play, and finally gave no opinion. I
was almost in despair--she said so little--until, just as I was going
away with _Elvira's_ fate still quite unsettled, she said to me with a
smile and a warm pressure of the hand, "To-morrow come and see me, and I
will tell you yes or no!"
'And to-day I have been to see her, and the night has brought good luck!
For _Elvira_, my dear Kendal, will be produced on or about the 20th
November, in this year of grace, and Isabel Bretherton will play the
heroine, and your friend is already plunged in business, and aglow with
hope and expectation. How I wish--how we all wish--that you were here! I
feel more and more penitent towards you. It was you who gave the impulse
of which the results are ripening, and you ought to be here with us now,
playing in the body that friend's part which we all yield you so readily
in spirit. "Tell Mr. Kendal," were almost her last words to me, "that I
cannot say how much I owe to his influence and his friendship. He first
opened my eyes to so many things. He was so kind to me, even when he
thought least of me. I hope I shall win a word of praise from him yet!"
There! I trust that will rouse a little pleasant conceit in you. She
meant it, and it is true. I must go off and work at many things.
To-morrow or next day, after some further talk with her, I shall set off
homewards, look up Forbes and begin operations. She will be in town in
about three weeks from now--as you know she is going to stay first with
your sister in Paris--and then we shall have hard work till about the
middle of November, when I suppose the play will be produced. This will
be more than a fortnight later than she intended to open, and Mr. Worrall
will probably be furious over the delay, but she has developed a will of
her own lately.
'_Au revoir_ then. You must have had a peaceful summer with your books
and your heather. I wish I had anything like the same digestion for work
that you have; I never saw a man get as much pleasure out of his books as
you do. To me, I confess, that work is always work, and idleness a joy!
'However, no more idleness for me for a good while to come. How grand she
will be in that last act!--Where were my eyes last spring?--I wish there
were a chance of her seeing much that is interesting in Paris. However,
flat as September generally is, she will get some Molière at the
_Français_, and your sister will take care that she sees the right
people. Perrault, I hear, is to give her lessons--under the rose. Happy
man!'
* * * * *
Kendal read this letter on a glowing August morning as he walked homeward
along the side of the pond, where the shade of the fir-trees was a
welcome protection against the rising heat, and the air was fragrant with
the scent of the ling, which was just out in all its first faint flush of
beauty. He threw himself down among it after he had finished the sheets,
and stared for long at the sunlit motionless water, his hat drawn forward
over his brows. So this was the outcome of it all. Isabel Bretherton was
about to become a great actress,--Undine had found her soul!
It seemed to him, as he lay there buried in the ling, that during the
past three weeks he had lived through a whole drama of feeling--a drama
which had its beginning, its complications, its climax. While it had been
going on he had been only half-conscious of its bearings, half-conscious
of himself. Wallace's letter had made him sensible of the situation, as
it concerned himself, with a decisive sharpness and completeness. There
was no possibility of any further self-delusion: the last defences were
overcome, the last veil between himself and the pursuing force which had
overtaken him had fallen, and Kendal, with a shiver of pain, found
himself looking straight into the wide, hungry eyes of Love! Oh, was this
love,--this sore desire, this dumb craving, this restlessness of the
whole being?
The bees hummed among the heather, every now and then a little
brown-streaked lizard rustled faintly beside him, a pair of kingfishers
flashed across the pond. But he saw and heard nothing, responsive as
every sense in him commonly was to the details of the wild life about
him. His own miserable reverie absorbed him. What was it that had made
the charm of those early weeks in July immediately after his parting with
her? What was it which had added zest to his work, and enchantment to the
summer beauty of the country, and, like a hidden harmony dimly resonant
within him, had kept life tuneful and delightful? He could put words to
it now. It had been nothing less than a settled foresight, a deep
conviction, of _Isabel Bretherton's failure_! What a treachery! But
yes,--the vision perpetually before his eyes had been the vision of a
dying fame, a waning celebrity, a forsaken and discrowned beauty! And
from that abandonment and that failure he had dimly foreseen the rise
and upspringing of new and indescribable joy. He had seen her, conscious
of defeat and of the inexorable limits of her own personality, turning
to the man who had read her truly and yet had loved her, surely, from
the very beginning, and finding in his love a fresh glory and an
all-sufficient consolation. This had been the inmost truth, the centre,
the kernel of all his thought, of all his life. He saw it now with sharp
distinctness,--now that every perception was intensified by pain and
longing.
Then, as he went over the past, he saw how this consciousness had been
gradually invaded and broken up by his sister's letters. He remembered
the incredulous impatience with which he had read the earlier ones. So,
Marie thought him mistaken! 'Isabel Bretherton would be an actress
yet'--'she had genius, after all'--'she was learning, growing, developing
every day.' Absurd! _He_, had been able to keep his critical estimate of
the actress and his personal admiration of the woman separate from one
another. But evidently Marie's head had been confused, misled, by her
heart. And then, little by little, his incredulity had yielded, and his
point of view had changed. Instead of impatience of Marie's laxity of
judgment, what he had been fiercely conscious of for days was jealousy of
Paul de Châteauvieux--jealousy of his opportunities, his influence, his
relation towards that keen sweet nature. That, too, had been one of his
dreams of the future,--the dream of tutoring and training her young
unformed intelligence. He had done something towards it; he had, as it
were, touched the spring which had set free all this new and unexpected
store of power. But, if he had planted, others had watered, and others
would reap. In this great crisis of her fortunes he had been nothing to
her. Other voices and other hands had guided and directed her. Her
kindly, grateful messages only stung and tortured him. They seemed to him
the merest friendly commonplace. In reality her life had passed out of
his ken; her nature had flowered into a new perfection, and he had not
been there to see or to help. She would never connect him with the
incidents or the influences which had transformed existence to her, and
would probably irrevocably change the whole outline of her future. Once
he had wounded and startled her, and had despaired for awhile of undoing
the impression made upon her. But now he felt no quick anxiety, no fear
how things might turn, only a settled flat consciousness of division, of
a life that had once been near to his swept away from him for ever, of
diverging roads which no kindly fate would ever join again.
For, by the end of this time of solitary waiting, his change of attitude
was complete. It was evident to him that his anticipation of her failure,
potent as it had been over his life, had never been half so real, half so
vivid, as this new and strange foreboding of her true success. Marie must
be right. He had been a mere blind hair-splitting pedant, judging Isabel
Bretherton by principles and standards which left out of count the inborn
energy, the natural power of growth, of such a personality as hers. And
the more he had once doubted the more he now believed. Yes, she would be
great--she would make her way into that city of the mind, in which he
himself had made his dwelling-place; she, too, would enter upon the
world's vast inheritance of knowledge. She would become, if only her
physical frame proved equal to the demands upon it, one of that little
band of interpreters, of ministers of the idea, by whom the intellectual
life of a society is fed and quickened. Was he so lost in his own selfish
covetous need as not to rejoice?
Oh, but she was a woman, she was beautiful, and he loved her! Do what he
would, all ideal and impersonal considerations fell utterly away from
him. Day by day he knew more of his own heart; day by day the philosopher
grew weaker in him, and the man's claim fiercer. Before him perpetually
were two figures of a most human and practical reality. He saw a great
actress, absorbed in the excitement of the most stimulating of lives, her
power ripening from year to year, her fame growing and widening with
time; and beside this brilliant vision he saw himself, the quiet man of
letters, with the enthusiasms of youth behind him, the calm of middle-age
before him. What possible link could there be between them?
At last Wallace's letter cleared still further the issues of the
conflict; or rather, it led to Kendal's making a fatalist compact with
himself. He was weary of the struggle, and it seemed to him that he must
somehow or other escape from the grip in which his life was held. He must
somehow deaden this sense, this bitter sense of loss, if it were only by
postponing the last renunciation. He would go back to his work and force
himself not to hate it. It was his only refuge, and he must cling to it
for dear life. And he would not see her again till the night of the first
performance of _Elvira_. She would be in London in a month's time, but he
would take care to be out of reach. He would not meet those glorious eyes
or touch that hand again till the die was cast,--upon the fate of
_Elvira_ he staked his own. The decision brought him a strange kind of
peace, and he went back to his papers and his books like a man who has
escaped from the grasp of some deadly physical ill into a period of
comparative ease and relief.