Part 81 (1/2)
Peter promptly answered. ”I suppose you consider that if I truly esteemed you I should be ashamed to deprive the world of the light of your genius. Perhaps my esteem isn't of the right quality--there are different kinds, aren't there? At any rate I've explained to you that I propose to deprive the world of nothing at all. You shall be celebrated, _allez_!”
”Vain words, vain words, my dear!” and she turned off again in her impatience. ”I know of course,” she added quickly, ”that to befool yourself with such twaddle you must be pretty bad.”
”Yes, I'm pretty bad,” he admitted, looking at her dismally. ”What do you do with the declaration you made me the other day--the day I found my cousin here--that you'd take me if I should come to you as one who had risen high?”
Miriam thought of it. ”I remember--the chaff about the honours, the orders, the stars and garters. My poor foolish friend, don't be so painfully literal. Don't you know a joke when you see it? It was to worry your cousin, wasn't it? But it didn't in the least succeed.”
”Why should you wish to worry my cousin?”
”Because he's so provoking!” she instantly answered; after which she laughed as if for her falling too simply into the trap he had laid.
”Surely, at all events, I had my freedom no less than I have it now.
Pray what explanations should I have owed you and in what fear of you should I have gone? However, that has nothing to do with it. Say I did tell you that we might arrange it on the day you should come to me covered with glory in the shape of little tinkling medals: why should you antic.i.p.ate that transaction by so many years and knock me down such a long time in advance? Where's the glory, please, and where are the medals?”
”Dearest girl, am I not going to strange parts--a capital promotion--next month,” he insistently demanded, ”and can't you trust me enough to believe I speak with a real appreciation of the facts (that I'm not lying to you in short) when I tell you I've my foot in the stirrup? The glory's dawning. _I_'m all right too.”
”What you propose to me, then, is to accompany you _tout bonnement_ to your new post. What you propose to me is to pack up and start?”
”You put it in a nutsh.e.l.l.” But Peter's smile was strained.
”You're touching--it has its charm. But you can't get anything in any of the Americas, you know. I'm a.s.sured there are no medals to be picked up in those parts--which are therefore 'strange' indeed. That's why the diplomatic body hate them all.”
”They're on the way, they're on the way!”--he could only feverishly hammer. ”The people here don't keep us long in disagreeable places unless we want to stay. There's one thing you can get anywhere if you've ability, and nowhere if you've not, and in the disagreeable places generally more than in the others; and that--since it's the element of the question we're discussing--is simply success. It's odious to be put on one's swagger, but I protest against being treated as if I had nothing to offer--to offer a person who has such glories of her own. I'm not a little presumptuous a.s.s; I'm a man accomplished and determined, and the omens are on my side.” Peter faltered a moment and then with a queer expression went on: ”Remember, after all, that, strictly speaking, your glories are also still in the future.” An exclamation at these words burst from Miriam's lips, but her companion resumed quickly: ”Ask my official superiors, ask any of my colleagues, if they consider I've nothing to offer.”
He had an idea as he ceased speaking that she was on the point of breaking out with some strong word of resentment at his allusion to the contingent nature of her prospects. But it only deepened his wound to hear her say with extraordinary mildness: ”It's perfectly true that my glories are still to come, that I may fizzle out and that my little success of to-day is perhaps a mere flash in the pan. Stranger things have been--something of that sort happens every day. But don't we talk too much of that part of it?” she asked with a weary patience that was n.o.ble in its effect. ”Surely it's vulgar to think only of the noise one's going to make--especially when one remembers how utterly _betes_ most of the people will be among whom one makes it. It isn't to my possible glories I cling; it's simply to my idea, even if it's destined to betray me and sink me. I like it better than anything else--a thousand times better (I'm sorry to have to put it in such a way) than tossing up my head as the fine lady of a little coterie.”
”A little coterie? I don't know what you're talking about!”--for this at least Peter could fight.
”A big coterie, then! It's only that at the best. A nasty, prim, 'official' woman who's perched on her little local pedestal and thinks she's a queen for ever because she's ridiculous for an hour! Oh you needn't tell me, I've seen them abroad--the dreariest females--and could imitate them here. I could do one for you on the spot if I weren't so tired. It's scarcely worth mentioning perhaps all this while--but I'm ready to drop.” She picked up the white mantle she had tossed off, flinging it round her with her usual amplitude of gesture. ”They're waiting for me and I confess I'm hungry. If I don't hurry they'll eat up all the nice things. Don't say I haven't been obliging, and come back when you're better. Good-night.”
”I quite agree with you that we've talked too much about the vulgar side of our question,” Peter returned, walking round to get between her and the French window by which she apparently had a view of leaving the room. ”That's because I've wanted to bribe you. Bribery's almost always vulgar.”
”Yes, you should do better. _Merci_! There's a cab: some of them have come for me. I must go,” she added, listening for a sound that reached her from the road.
Peter listened too, making out no cab. ”Believe me, it isn't wise to turn your back on such an affection as mine and on such a confidence,”
he broke out again, speaking almost in a warning tone--there was a touch of superior sternness in it, as of a rebuke for real folly, but it was meant to be tender--and stopping her within a few feet of the window.
”Such things are the most precious that life has to give us,” he added all but didactically.
She had listened once more for a little; then she appeared to give up the idea of the cab. The reader need hardly be told that at this stage of her youthful history the right way for her lover to take her wouldn't have been to picture himself as acting for her highest good. ”I like your calling the feeling with which I inspire you confidence,” she presently said; and the deep note of the few words had something of the distant mutter of thunder.
”What is it, then, when I offer you everything I have, everything I am, everything I shall ever be?”
She seemed to measure him as for the possible success of an attempt to pa.s.s him. But she remained where she was. ”I'm sorry for you, yes, but I'm also rather ashamed.”
”Ashamed of _me_?”
”A brave offer to see me through--that's what I should call confidence.
You say to-day that you hate the theatre--and do you know what has made you do it? The fact that it has too large a place in your mind to let you disown it and throw it over with a good conscience. It has a deep fascination for you, and yet you're not strong enough to do so enlightened and public a thing as take up with it in my person. You're ashamed of yourself for that, as all your constant high claims for it are on record; so you blaspheme against it to try and cover your retreat and your treachery and straighten out your personal situation. But it won't do, dear Mr. Sherringham--it won't do at all,” Miriam proceeded with a triumphant, almost judicial lucidity which made her companion stare; ”you haven't the smallest excuse of stupidity, and your perversity is no excuse whatever. Leave her alone altogether--a poor girl who's making her way--or else come frankly to help her, to give her the benefit of your wisdom. Don't lock her up for life under the pretence of doing her good. What does one most good is to see a little honesty. You're the best judge, the best critic, the best observer, the best _believer_, that I've ever come across: you're committed to it by everything you've said to me for a twelvemonth, by the whole turn of your mind, by the way you've followed us up, all of us, from far back.
If an art's n.o.ble and beneficent one shouldn't be afraid to offer it one's arm. Your cousin isn't: he can make sacrifices.”