Part 70 (2/2)
Peter asked.
”Mercy, how you chatter about 'marrying'!” the girl laughed. ”_C'est la maladie anglaise_--you've all got it on the brain.”
”Why I put it that way to please you,” he explained. ”You complained to me last year precisely that this was not what seemed generally wanted.”
”Oh last year!”--she made nothing of that. Then differently, ”Yes, it's very tiresome!” she conceded.
”You told me, moreover, in Paris more than once that you wouldn't listen to anything but that.”
”Well,” she declared, ”I won't, but I shall wait till I find a husband who's charming enough and bad enough. One who'll beat me and swindle me and spend my money on other women--that's the sort of man for me. Mr.
Dormer, delightful as he is, doesn't come up to that.”
”You'll marry Basil Dashwood.” He spoke it with conviction.
”Oh 'marry'?--call it marry if you like. That's what poor mother threatens me with--she lives in dread of it.”
”To this hour,” he mentioned, ”I haven't managed to make out what your mother wants. She has so many ideas, as Madame Carre said.”
”She wants me to be some sort of tremendous creature--all her ideas are reducible to that. What makes the muddle is that she isn't clear about the creature she wants most. A great actress or a great lady--sometimes she inclines for one and sometimes for the other, but on the whole persuading herself that a great actress, if she'll cultivate the right people, may _be_ a great lady. When I tell her that won't do and that a great actress can never be anything but a great vagabond, then the dear old thing has tantrums, and we have scenes--the most grotesque: they'd make the fortune, for a subject, of some play-writing rascal, if he had the wit to guess them; which, luckily for us perhaps, he never will. She usually winds up by protesting--_devinez un peu quoi_!” Miriam added.
And as her companion professed his complete inability to divine: ”By declaring that rather than take it that way I must marry _you_.”
”She's shrewder than I thought,” Peter returned. ”It's the last of vanities to talk about, but I may state in pa.s.sing that if you'd marry me you should be the greatest of all possible ladies.”
She had a beautiful, comical gape. ”Lord o' mercy, my dear fellow, what natural capacity have I for that?”
”You're artist enough for anything. I shall be a great diplomatist: my resolution's firmly taken, I'm infinitely cleverer than you have the least idea of, and you shall be,” he went on, ”a great diplomatist's wife.”
”And the demon, the devil, the devourer and destroyer, that you are so fond of talking about: what, in such a position, do you do with that element of my nature? _Ou le fourrez-vous_?” she cried as with a real anxiety.
”I'll look after it, I'll keep it under. Rather perhaps I should say I'll bribe it and amuse it; I'll gorge it with earthly grandeurs.”
”That's better,” said Miriam; ”for a demon that's kept under is a shabby little demon. Don't let's be shabby.” Then she added: ”Do you really go away the beginning of next week?”
”Monday night if possible.”
”Ah that's but to Paris. Before you go to your new post they must give you an interval here.”
”I shan't take it--I'm so tremendously keen for my duties. I shall insist on going sooner. Oh,” he went on, ”I shall be concentrated now.”
”I'll come and act there.” She met it all--she was amused and amusing.
”I've already forgotten what it was I wanted to discuss with you,” she said--”it was some trumpery stuff. What I want to say now is only one thing: that it's not in the least true that because my life pitches me in every direction and mixes me up with all sorts of people--or rather with one sort mainly, poor dears!--I haven't a decent character, I haven't common honesty. Your sympathy, your generosity, your patience, your precious suggestions, our dear sweet days last summer in Paris, I shall never forget. You're the best--you're different from all the others. Think of me as you please and make profane jokes about my mating with a disguised 'Arty'--I shall think of _you_ only in one way. I've a great respect for you. With all my heart I hope you'll be a great diplomatist. G.o.d bless you, dear clever man.”
She got up as she spoke and in so doing glanced at the clock--a movement that somehow only added to the n.o.ble gravity of her discourse: she was considering his time so much more than her own. Sherringham, at this, rising too, took out his watch and stood a moment with his eyes bent upon it, though without in the least seeing what the needles marked.
”You'll have to go, to reach the theatre at your usual hour, won't you?
Let me not keep you. That is, let me keep you only long enough just to say this, once for all, as I shall never speak of it again. I'm going away to save myself,” he frankly said, planted before her and seeking her eyes with his own. ”I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, in decorum, in virtuous submission to hard necessity--without asking for credit or sympathy, without provoking any sort of scene or calling attention to my fort.i.tude. But I can't--upon my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it through, but I can't hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so that over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know--and that it does neither you nor me any good!”
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