AFRAID.
But the very first thing she did on reaching home again was to write to
Macleod begging him to postpone his visit to London. What was the use?
The company of which she formed a part was most probably going on an
autumn tour; she was personally very busy. Surely it would not much
interest him to be present at the production of a new piece in
Liverpool?
And then she pointed out to him that, as she had her duties and
occupations, so ought he to have. It was monstrous his thought of
foregoing the shooting that year. Why, if he wanted some additional
motive, what did he say to preserving as much grouse-plumage as would
trim a cloak for her? It was a great pity that the skins of so beautiful
a bird should be thrown away. And she desired him to present her kind
regards to Lady Macleod and to Miss Macleod; and to thank them both for
their great kindness.
Immediately after writing that letter Miss White seemed to grow very
light-hearted indeed, and she laughed and chatted with Carry, and was
exceedingly affectionate toward her sister.
"And what do you think of your own home now, Gerty?" said Miss Carry,
who had been making some small experiments in arrangement.
"You mean, after my being among the savages?" said she. "Ah, it is too
true, Carry. I have seen them in their war-paint; and I have shuddered
at their spears; and I have made voyages in their canoes. But it is
worth while going anywhere and doing anything in order to come back and
experience such a sense of relief and quiet. Oh, what a delicious
cushion! where did you get it, Carry?"
She sank back in the rocking-chair out on this shaded veranda. It was
the slumbering noontide of a July day the foliage above and about the
Regent's Canal hung motionless in the still sunlight; and there was a
perfume of roses in the air. Here, at last, was repose. She had said
that her notion of happiness was to be let alone; and--now that she had
despatched that forbidding letter--she would be able to enjoy a quiet
and languor free from care.
"Aha, Gerty, don't you know?" said the younger sister. "Well, I suppose,
you poor creature, you don't know--you have been among the tigers and
crocodiles so long. That cushion is a present from Mr. Lemuel to me--to
me, mind, not to you--and he brought it all the way from Damascus some
years ago. Oh, Gerty, if I was only three years older, shouldn't I like
to be your rival, and have a fight with you for him!"
"I don't know what you mean," said the elder sister, sharply.
"Oh, don't you! Poor, innocent thing! Well, I am not going to quarrel
with you this time, for at last you are showing some sense. How you ever
could have thought of Mr. Howson, or Mr. Brook, or you know whom--I
never could imagine; but here is some one now whom people have heard
of--some one with fame like yourself--who will understand you. Oh Gerty,
hasn't he lovely eyes?"
"Like a gazelle," said the other. "You know what Mr. ---- said--that he
never met the appealing look of Mr. Lemuel's eyes without feeling in his
pockets for a biscuit."
"He wouldn't say anything like that about you, Gerty," Carry said
reproachfully.
"Who wouldn't?"
"Mr. Lemuel."
"Oh, Carry, don't you understand that I am so glad to be allowed to talk
nonsense? I have been all strung up lately--like the string of a violin.
Everything _au grand serieux_ I want to be idle, and to chat, and to
talk nonsense. Where did you get that bunch of stephanotis?"
"Mr. Lemuel brought it last evening. He knew you were coming home
to-day. Oh Gerty, do you know I have seen your portrait, though it isn't
finished yet; and you look--you look like an inspired prophetess. I
never saw anything so lovely!"
"Indeed!" said Miss White, with a smile; but she was pleased.
"When the public see that, they will know what you are really like,
Gerty--instead of buying your photograph in a shop from a collection of
ballet-dancers and circus women. That is where you ought to be--in the
Royal Academy: not in a shop-window with any mountebank. Oh, Gerty, do
you know who is your latest rival in the stationers' windows? The woman
who dresses herself as a mermaid and swims in a transparent tank, below
water--Fin-fin they call her. I suppose you have not been reading the
newspapers?"
"Not much."
"There is a fine collection for you upstairs. And there is an article
about you in the _Islington Young Men's Improvement Association_. It is
signed _Trismegistus_. Oh, it is beautiful, Gerty--quite full of poetry!
It says you are an enchantress striking the rockiest heart, and a well
of pure emotion springs up. It says you have the beauty of Mrs. Siddons
and the genius of Rachel."
"Dear me!"
"Ah, you don't half believe in yourself, Gerty," said the younger
sister, with a critical air. "It is the weak point about you. You
depreciate yourself, and you make light of other people's belief in you.
However, you can't go against your own genius. That is too strong for
you. As soon as you get on the stage, then you forget to laugh at
yourself."
"Really, Carry, has papa been giving you a lecture about me?"
"Oh, laugh away? but you know it is true. And a woman like you--you were
going to throw yourself away on a--"
"Carry! There are some things that are better not talked about," said
Gertrude White, curtly, as she rose and went indoors.
Miss White betook herself to her professional and domestic duties with
much alacrity and content, for she believed that by her skill as a
letter-writer she could easily ward off the importunities of her too
passionate lover. It is true that at times, and in despite of her
playful evasion, she was visited by a strange dread. However far away,
the cry of a strong man in his agony had something terrible in it. And
what was this he wrote to her in simple and calm words?--
"Are our paths diverging, Gerty? and if that is so, what will be the end
of it for me and for you? Are you going away from me? After all that has
passed, are we to be separated in the future, and you will go one way
and I must go the other way, with all the world between us, so that I
shall never see you again? Why will you not speak? You hint of lingering
doubts and hesitations. Why have you not the courage to be true to
yourself--to be true to your woman's heart--to take your life in your
own hands, and shape it so that it shall be worthy of you?"
Well, she did speak in answer to this piteous prayer. She was a skilful
letter-writer:
"It may seem very ungrateful in an actress, you know, dear Keith, to
contest the truth of anything said by Shakespeare; but I don't think,
with all humility, there ever was so much nonsense put into so small a
space as there is in these lines that everybody quotes at your head--
"To thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
"'Be true to yourself,' people say to you. But surely every one who is
conscious of failings, and deceitfulness, and unworthy instincts, would
rather try to be a little better than himself? Where else would there be
any improvement, in an individual or in society? You have to fight
against yourself, instead of blindly yielding to your wish of the
moment. I know I, for one, should not like to trust myself. I wish to be
better than I am--to be other than I am--and I naturally look around
for help and guidance. Then, you find people recommending you absolutely
diverse ways of life, and with all show of authority and reason, too;
and in such an important matter ought not one to consider before making
a final choice?"
Miss White's studies in mental and moral science, as will readily be
perceived, had not been of a profound character. But he did not stay to
detect the obvious fallacy of her argument. It was all a maze of words
to him. The drowning man does not hear questions addressed to him. He
only knows that the waters are closing over him, and there is no arm
stretched out to save.
"I do not know myself for two minutes together," she wrote. "What is my
present mood, for example? Why, one of absolute and ungovernable
hatred--hatred of the woman who would take my place if I were to retire
from the stage. I have been thinking of it all the morning--picturing
myself as an unknown nonentity, vanished from the eyes of the public, in
a social grave. And I have to listen to people praising the new actress;
and I have to read columns about her in the papers; and I am unable to
say, 'Why, all that and more was written and said about me!' What has an
actress to show for herself if once she leaves the stage? People forget
her the next day; no record is kept of her triumphs. A painter, now, who
spends years of his life in earnest study--it does not matter to him
whether the public applaud or not, whether they forget or not. He has
always before him these evidences of his genius; and among his friends
he can choose his fit audience. Even when he is an old man, and
listening to the praise of all the young fellows who have caught the
taste of the public, he can, at all events, show something of his work
as testimony of what he was. But an actress, the moment she leaves the
stage, is a snuffed-out candle. She has her stage-dresses to prove that
she acted certain parts; and she may have a scrap-book with cuttings of
criticisms from the provincial papers! You know, dear Keith, all this is
very heart-sickening; and I am quite aware that it will trouble you, as
it troubles me, and sometimes makes me ashamed of myself; but then it is
true, and it is better for both of us that it should be known. I could
not undertake to be a hypocrite all my life. I must confess to you,
whatever be the consequences, that I distinctly made a mistake when I
thought it was such an easy thing to adopt a whole new set of opinions
and tastes and habits. The old Adam, as your Scotch ministers would
say, keeps coming back, to jog my elbow as an old familiar friend. And
you would not have me conceal the fact from you? I know how difficult it
will be for you to understand or sympathize with me. You have never been
brought up to a profession, every inch of your progress in which you
have to contest against rivals; and you don't know how jealous one is of
one's position when it is gained. I think I would rather be made an old
woman or sixty to-morrow morning, than get up and go out and find my
name printed in small letters in the theatre-bills. And if I try to
imagine what my feelings would be if I were to retire from the stage,
surely that is in your interest as well as mine. How would you like to
be tied for life to a person who was continually looking back to her
past career with regret, and who was continually looking around her for
objects of jealous and envious anger? Really, I try to do my duty by
everybody. All the time I was at Castle Dare I tried to picture myself
living there, and taking an interest in the fishing, and the farms, and
so on; and if I was haunted by the dread that, instead of thinking about
the fishing and the farms, I should be thinking of the triumphs of the
actress who had taken my place in the attention of the public, I had to
recognize the fact. It is wretched and pitiable, no doubt; but look at
my training. If you tell me to be true to myself--that is myself. And at
all events I feel more contented that I have made a frank-confession."
Surely it was a fair and reasonable letter? But the answer that came to
it had none of its pleasant common-sense. It was all a wild appeal--a
calling on her not to fall away from the resolves she had made--not to
yield to those despondent moods. There was but the one way to get rid of
her doubts and hesitations; let her at once cast aside the theatre, and
all its associations and malign influences, and become his wife, and he
would take her by the hand and lead her away from that besetting
temptation. Could she forget the day on which she gave him the red rose?
She was a woman; she could not forget.
She folded up the letter and held it in her hand, and went into her
father's room. There was a certain petulant and irritated look on her
face.
"He says he is coming up to London, papa," said she, abruptly.
"I suppose you mean Sir Keith Macleod," said he.
"Well, of course. And can you imagine anything more provoking--just at
present, when we are rehearsing this new play, and when all the time I
can afford Mr. Lemuel wants for the portrait? I declare the only time I
feel quiet, secure, safe from the interference of anybody, and more
especially the worry of the postman, is when I am having that portrait
painted; the intense stillness of the studio is delightful, and you have
beautiful things all around you. As soon as I open the door, I come out
into the world again, with constant vexations and apprehensions all
around. Why, I don't know but that at any minute Sir Keith Macleod may
not come walking up to the gate!"
"And why should that possibility keep you in terror?" said her father,
calmly.
"Well, not in terror," said she, looking down, "but--but anxiety, at
least; and a very great deal of anxiety. Because I know he will want
explanations, and promises, and I don't know what--just at the time I am
most worried and unsettled about everything I mean to do."
Her father regarded her for a second or two.
"Well?" said he.
"Isn't that enough?" she said, with some indignation.
"Oh," said he, coldly, "you have merely come to me to pour out your tale
of wrongs. You don't want me to interfere, I suppose. Am I to condole
with you?"
"I don't know why you should speak to me like that, at all events," said
she.
"Well, I will tell you," he responded, in the same cool, matter of fact
way. "When you told me you meant to give up the theatre and marry Sir
Keith Macleod, my answer was that you were likely to make a mistake. I
thought you were a fool to throw away your position as an actress; but I
did not urge the point. I merely left the matter in your own hands.
Well, you went your own way. For a time your head was filled with
romance--Highland chieftains, and gillies, and red-deer, and baronial
halls, and all that stuff; and no doubt you persuaded that young man
that you believed in the whole thing fervently, and there was no end to
the names you called theatres and everybody connected with them. Not
only that, but you must needs drag me up to the Highlands to pay a visit
to a number of strangers with whom both you and I lived on terms of
apparent hospitality and goodwill, but in reality on terms of very great
restraint. Very well. You begin to discover that your romance was a
little bit removed from the actual state of affairs--at least, you say
so--"
"I say so!" she exclaimed.
"Hear me out," the father said, patiently. "I don't want to offend you,
Gerty, but I wish to speak plainly. You have an amazing faculty for
making yourself believe anything that suits you. I have not the least
doubt but that you have persuaded yourself that the change in your
manner toward Keith Macleod was owing to your discovering that their way
of life was different from what you expected; or perhaps that you still
had a lingering fancy for the stage--anything you like. I say you could
make yourself believe anything. But I must point out to you that any
acquaintance of yours--an outsider--would probably look on the marked
attentions Mr. Lemuel has been paying you; and on your sudden conversion
to the art-theories of himself and his friends; and on the revival of
your ambitious notions about tragedy--"
"You need say no more," said she, with her face grown quickly red, and
with a certain proud impatience in her look.
"Oh, yes, but I mean to say more," her father said, quietly, "unless you
wish to leave the room. I mean to say this--that when you have persuaded
yourself somehow that you would rather reconsider your promise to Sir
Keith Macleod--am I right?--that it does seem rather hard that you
should grow ill-tempered with him and accuse him of being the author of
your troubles and vexations. I am no great friend of his--I disliked his
coming here at the outset; but I will say he is a manly young fellow,
and I know he would not try to throw the blame of any change in his own
sentiments on to some one else. And another thing I mean to say is--that
your playing the part of the injured Griselda is not quite becoming,
Gerty: at all events, I have no sympathy with it. If you come and tell
me frankly that you have grown tired of Macleod, and wish somehow to
break your promise to him, then I can advise you."
"And what would you advise, then," said she, with equal calmness,
"supposing that you choose to throw all the blame on me."
"I would say that it is a woman's privilege to be allowed to change her
mind; and that the sooner you told him so the better."
"Very simple!" she said, with a flavor of sarcasm in her tone. "Perhaps
you don't know that man as I know him."
"Then you _are_ afraid of him?"
She was silent.
"These are certainly strange relations between two people who talk of
getting married. But, in any case, he cannot suffocate you in a cave,
for you live in London; and in London it is only an occasional young man
about Shoreditch who smashes his sweetheart with a poker when she
proposes to marry somebody else. He might, it is true, summon you for
breach of promise; but he would prefer not to be laughed at. Come, come,
Gerty, get rid of all this nonsense. Tell him frankly the position, and
don't come bothering me with pretended wrongs and injuries."
"Do you think I ought to tell him?" said she, slowly.
"Certainly."
She went away and wrote to Macleod; but she did not wholly explain her
position. She only begged once more for time to consider her own
feelings. It would be better that he should not come just now to London.
And if she were convinced, after honest and earnest questioning of
herself, that she had not the courage and strength of mind necessary for
the great change in her life she had proposed, would it not be better
for his happiness and hers that the confession should be made?
Macleod did not answer that letter, and she grew alarmed. Several days
elapsed. One afternoon, coming home from rehearsal, she saw a card lying
on the tray on the hall-table.
"Papa," said she, with her face somewhat paler than usual, "Sir Keith
Macleod is in London!"