"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 a.s.sociation_. 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sed, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 nonent.i.ty, 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 sc.r.a.p-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 a.s.sociations 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 Sh.o.r.editch 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!"