Part 34 (1/2)
”Nothing much, Granya, except that you are you. I heard you were a great actress ... and that you had two babies ... who died....”
”Not a great actress, Shane, a very good one, perhaps. I might have been great one day ... and again, I mighn't. I shall never know.... And I had two babies.... They were very nice little people, Shane. I was very fond of them.... But a physical life is a little thing, I have come to believe, and there is another life, a life of thought and emotion. And that one is so long.... It seems ages since I was an actress and had two pretty babies. It seems in another life.... Shane, I don't think I was alive until my babies died....”
”I don't understand, Granya.”
”I mean this, Shane, that things were so casual to me. They came and they went, and I was what I was, and that was all.... When you were a boy, Shane, you had what I never had--wonder. I was the child of actors, Shane, brought up to a mechanical tradition, knowing the business thoroughly--a part was words and directions, and a salary.... That things were mimic meant nothing ... do you see? That there was a life that was unreal, and another life that was real, and then a further life, too subtle, too profound for the value of words ... one sees glimpses ... one feels ... and when you try to fix it, it eludes you. Do you understand? Like your mirage, a little.... That is only a symbol....
Am I talking nonsense, Shane? Anyway, I took things, well, just casually....
”See the moon rising, Shane?” she paused. She turned again.
”I got married, just got married; he was a good man, Shane. But I didn't love him. I loved n.o.body. I got married because he was a suitable and every one got married. And just the same way I accepted marriage.... And when he died, I was very sorry, but impersonally sorry ... as if something nice in the world had been gone ... a swan shot....
”And my little people, Shane, they were very nice little people.... I was fond of them, but as I might be fond of some terrier dogs.... I was good to them.... Often I sit here and wonder: Was I good enough? And, Shane, G.o.d is my witness and this garden, and the moon above, there is nothing I could give them I held back....
”You know how they died, Shane?... I was playing and my house went on fire, and the servants fled.... When I came back from the theater a policeman said: 'We got everything all right, Miss O'Malley. Your dogs, your piano.' ... 'Where did you put the babies?' I asked.... They said: 'What babies?'
”Shane, I knew after a little while that I cried too easily ... a little sweet rain of affection ... April ... I didn't forget them.... I wouldn't let myself.... And then I thought: G.o.d! if I had loved my husband my heart would have been like a cracked cup when he died.... And when my babies died, I could not have lived.... And all I shed of tears was a little shower of April.... O Shane, one isn't like that when one is hurt.... Do you remember David, Shane, when he went up to the chamber over the gate ... and as he went thus he said, 'O my son Absalom, my son Absalom! would G.o.d I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!' ...
And he was only a man, Shane....
”Am I bothering you, Shane? No? I am just thinking aloud, with you there.... I never thought I could, with any human being....
”And then I knew, Shane.... Part of me was not alive.... That was terrible to know, like finding out a horrible deformity, or knowing you are insane.... And I began to watch people.... I could say: There is a woman who knows she is loved, Shane.... There is a radiance in her face, an indescribable something.... You remember the Bible word 'Shechinah,'
the glory of the Lord!... And there were women with children ... that had lost themselves in the joy of giving ... would always have that joy of giving.... And it made me feel strange, shameful ... as though I had no b.r.e.a.s.t.s....
”I must have been a little insane then, Shane. I would go along the streets, looking at people, and saying: 'That person looks as if they would understand,' and thinking of stopping them with: 'Please, a moment, there is something wrong with me!' But I knew they wouldn't understand ... wouldn't believe it real.... Even if they were kind, all they would say was: 'It's all imagination ... as if imagination were not the most terrible thing in the world.... All that is wrong with the poor mad people is imagination.... Shane, I was like some poor cripple holding out his deformity to the pa.s.sers-by, asking for help.... All he would want was money, but I wanted ... oh, I don't know what I wanted....
”And, then, Shane, I would go into a church, and pray, and wait, kneeling there, for something to happen.... It never happened.... Then I would laugh. People used to turn and look at me.... I began to hate them. I grew proud. I hated them more and more....
”I said I'd get back to work, and forget it all.... I was made as I was made.... Accept it.... I thought I could.... I was to play _Lady Macbeth_ in Nottingham.
”You know how she enters, Shane. She comes in reading a letter. She is alone on the stage, in _Macbeth's_ castle of Inverness: '”They met me in the day of success,”' she reads--_Macbeth_ is writing of the witches in the desert place: '”and I have learned by the perfectest report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge.”' I came on as I always came on.... And the moment I left the wings, Shane, saw the audience, a strange thing happened.... Illusion died, not died ... but was dead....
And there I was supposed to be reading a letter that had never been written by people who had never possibly an existence, before an audience who had paid a little money to be amused.... I couldn't read it. I just couldn't....
”Behind me in the wings they were prompting, whispering fiercely.... But I couldn't.... I stood there.... Then I said: I'll go off the stage. But I couldn't do that even.... My feet were shackled to the ground.... I seemed to have been charmed.... My hand fell to my side.... And then a panic came. My knees. .h.i.t one another. My teeth chattered ... awful, awful....
”There was such a silence. The audience stirred, whispered.... Then some one laughed.... Never laugh, Shane, suddenly, with me.... I crumpled up.
They rang the curtain down ... I stole away to Ireland.... Whenever I am not hating--enough, the thought of that laugh comes to me....” She s.h.i.+vered on her seat.
”That was only nervousness, Granya. Somebody got nervous and laughed.”
”No, Shane, no.”
”They talk of people laughing in the face of death. It's just a nervous action, Granya.”
”I tell you, no, Shane.” She grew vehement. ”It's a cruel country, England. And Shane, they hate us Irish. As long as we are pleasant, witty, as long as we are buffoons ... but let us be human beings, Shane, and they hate us.”
”Don't be silly, Granya!”