Part 80 (1/2)
”Give it up--give it up!” Peter stammered.
”Give it up?” She fixed him like a mild Medusa.
”I'll marry you to-morrow if you'll renounce; and in return for the sacrifice you make for me I'll do more for you than ever was done for a woman before.”
”Renounce after to-night? Do you call that a plan?” she asked. ”Those are old words and very foolish ones--you wanted something of that sort a year ago.”
”Oh I fluttered round the idea at that time; we were talking in the air.
I didn't really believe I could make you see it then, and certainly you didn't see it. My own future, moreover, wasn't definite to me. I didn't know what I could offer you. But these last months have made a difference--I do know now. Now what I say is deliberate--It's deeply meditated. I simply can't live without you, and I hold that together we may do great things.”
She seemed to wonder. ”What sort of things?”
”The things of my profession, of my life, the things one does for one's country, the responsibility and the honour of great affairs; deeply fascinating when one's immersed in them, and more exciting really--put them even at that--than the excitements of the theatre. Care for me only a little and you'll see what they are, they'll take hold of you. Believe me, believe me,” Peter pleaded; ”every fibre of my being trembles in what I say to you.”
”You admitted yesterday it wouldn't do,” she made answer. ”Where were the fibres of your being then?”
”They throbbed in me even more than now, and I was trying, like an a.s.s, not to feel them. Where was this evening yesterday--where were the maddening hours I've just spent? Ah you're the perfection of perfections, and as I sat there to-night you taught me what I really want.”
”The perfection of perfections?” the girl echoed with the strangest smile.
”I needn't try to tell you: you must have felt to-night with such rapture what you are, what you can do. How can I give that up?” he piteously went on.
”How can _I_, my poor friend? I like your plans and your responsibilities and your great affairs, as you call them. _Voyons_, they're infantile. I've just shown that I'm a perfection of perfections: therefore it's just the moment to 'renounce,' as you gracefully say? Oh I was sure, I was sure!” And Miriam paused, resting eyes at once lighted and troubled on him as in the effort to think of some arrangement that would help him out of his absurdity. ”I was sure, I mean, that if you did come your poor, dear, doting brain would be quite confused,” she presently pursued. ”I can't be a m.u.f.f in public just for you, _pourtant_. Dear me, why do you like us so much?”
”Like you? I loathe you!”
”_Je le vois parbleu bien_!” she lightly returned. ”I mean why do you feel us, judge us, understand us so well? I please you because you see, because you know; and then for that very reason of my pleasing you must adapt me to your convenience, you must take me over, as they say. You admire me as an artist and therefore want to put me into a box in which the artist will breathe her last. Ah be reasonable; you must let her live!”
”Let her live? As if I could prevent her living!” Peter cried with unmistakable conviction. ”Even if I did wish how could I prevent a spirit like yours from expressing itself? Don't talk about my putting you in a box, for, dearest child, I'm taking you out of one,” he all persuasively explained. ”The artist is irrepressible, eternal; she'll be in everything you are and in everything you do, and you'll go about with her triumphantly exerting your powers, charming the world, carrying everything before you.”
Miriam's colour rose, through all her artificial surfaces, at this all but convincing appeal, and she asked whimsically: ”Shall you like that?”
”Like my wife to be the most brilliant woman in Europe? I think I can do with it.”
”Aren't you afraid of me?”
”Not a bit.”
”Bravely said. How little you know me after all!” sighed the girl.
”I tell the truth,” Peter ardently went on; ”and you must do me the justice to admit that I've taken the time to dig deep into my feelings.
I'm not an infatuated boy; I've lived, I've had experience, I've observed; in short I know what I mean and what I want. It isn't a thing to reason about; it's simply a need that consumes me. I've put it on starvation diet, but that's no use--really, it's no use, Miriam,” the young man declared with a ring that spoke enough of his sincerity. ”It is no question of my trusting you; it's simply a question of your trusting me. You're all right, as I've heard you say yourself; you're frank, spontaneous, generous; you're a magnificent creature. Just quietly marry me and I'll manage you.”
”'Manage' me?” The girl's inflexion was droll; it made him change colour.
”I mean I'll give you a larger life than the largest you can get in any other way. The stage is great, no doubt, but the world's greater. It's a bigger theatre than any of those places in the Strand. We'll go in for realities instead of fables, and you'll do them far better than you do the fables.”
Miriam had listened attentively, but her face that could so show things showed her despair at his perverted ingenuity. ”Pardon my saying it after your delightful tributes to my worth,” she returned in a moment, ”but I've never listened to anything quite so grandly unreal. You think so well of me that humility itself ought to keep me silent; nevertheless I _must_ utter a few shabby words of sense. I'm a magnificent creature on the stage--well and good; it's what I want to be and it's charming to see such evidence that I succeed. But off the stage, woe betide us both, I should lose all my advantages. The fact's so patent that it seems to me I'm very good-natured even to discuss it with you.”
”Are you on the stage now, pray? Ah Miriam, if it weren't for the respect I owe you!” her companion wailed.
”If it weren't for that I shouldn't have come here to meet you. My gift is the thing that takes you: could there be a better proof than that it's to-night's display of it that has brought you to this unreason?