Part 10 (2/2)
”You'll leave yourself some time to be a musician, won't you?”
He laughed. His alert and retentive mind had seized, long ago, on Rowlatt's recommendation at the Little Bear Inn, and he had developed, perhaps half consciously, a half sense of humour. A whole sense, however, is not congruous with the fervid beliefs and soaring ambitions of eighteen. Your sense of humour, that delicate percipience of proportion, that subrident check on impulse, that touch of the divine fellows.h.i.+p with human frailty, is a thing of mellower growth. It is a solvent and not an excitant. It does not stimulate to sublime effort; but it can cool raging pa.s.sion. It can take the salt from tears, the bitterness from judgment, the keenness from despair; but in its universal manifestation it would effectually stop a naval engagement.
Paul laughed. ”You mustn't think I brag too much, Jane,” said he. ”For anybody else I know what I say would be ridiculous. But for me it's different. I'm going to be a great man. I know it. If I'm not going to be a great actor, I shall be a great something else. G.o.d doesn't put such things into people's heads for nothing. He didn't take me from the factory in Bludston and set me here with you, walking up Regent Street, like a gentleman, just to throw me back into the gutter.”
”But who said you were going back to the gutter?” asked Jane.
”n.o.body. I wanted to get right with myself. But--that getting right with oneself--do you think it egotistic?”
”I don't quite know what that is.”
He defined the term.
”No,” she said seriously. ”I don't think it is. Everybody has got a self to consider. I don't look on it as ego-what-d'-you-call-it to strike out for myself instead of going on helping mother to mind the shop. So why should you?”
”Besides, I owe a duty to my parents, don't I?” he asked eagerly.
But here Jane took her own line. ”I can't see that you do, considering that they've done nothing for you.”
”They've done everything for me,” he protested vehemently. ”They've made me what I am.”
”They didn't take much trouble about it,” said Jane.
They squabbled for a while after the manner of boy and girl. At last she cried: ”Don't you see I'm proud of you for yourself and not for your silly old parents? What have they got to do with me? And besides, you'll never find them.”
”I don't think you know what you're talking about,” he said loftily.
”It is time we were getting home.”
He walked on for some time stiffly, his head in the air, not condescending to speak. She had uttered blasphemy. He would find his parents, he vowed to himself, if only to spite Jane. Presently his ear caught a little sniff, and looking down, saw her dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. His heart softened at once. ”Never mind,” said he.
”You didn't mean it.”
”It's only because I love you, Paul,” she murmured wretchedly.
”That's all right,” he said. ”Let us go in here”--they were pa.s.sing a confectioner's--”and we'll have some jam-puffs.”
Paul went to his friend Rowlatt, who had already heard, through one of his a.s.sistants who had a friend in the Life School, of the dramatic end of the model's career.
”I quite sympathize with you,” Rowlatt laughed. ”I've wondered how you stuck it so long. What are you going to do now?”
”I'm going on the stage.”
”How are you going to get there?”
”I don't know,” said Paul, ”but if I knew an actor, he would be able to tell me. I thought perhaps you might know an actor.”
”I do--one or two,” replied Rowlatt; ”but they're just ordinary actors--not managers; and I shouldn't think they'd be able to do anything for you.”
<script>