Part 9 (2/2)
'She sank back into her chair. Anything more pathetic, more n.o.ble than her intonation of those words, could not have been imagined. Desforets herself could not have spoken them with a more simple, a more piercing tenderness. I was so confused by a mult.i.tude of conflicting feelings--my own impressions and yours, the realities of the present position and the possibilities of her future--that I forgot to applaud her. It was the first time I had had any glimpse at all of her dramatic power, and, rough and imperfect as the test was, it seemed to me enough. I have not been so devoted to the _Francais_, and to some of the people connected with it, for ten years, for nothing! One gets a kind of insight from long habit which, I think, one may trust. Oh, you blind Eustace, how could you forget that for a creature so full of primitive energy, so rich in the _stuff_ of life, nothing is irreparable! Education has pa.s.sed her by.
Well, she will go to find her education. She will make a teacher out of every friend, out of every sensation. Incident and feeling, praise and dispraise, will all alike tend to mould the sensitive plastic material into shape. So far she may have remained outside her art; the art, no doubt, has been a conventional appendage, and little more. Training would have given her good conventions, whereas she has only picked up bad and imperfect ones. But no training could have given her what she will evidently soon develop for herself, that force and flame of imagination which fuses together instrument and idea in one great artistic whole. She has that imagination. You can see it in her responsive ways, her quick sensitive emotion. Only let it be roused and guided to a certain height, and it will overleap the barriers which have hemmed it in, and pour itself into the channels made ready for it by her art.
'There, at least, you have my strong impression. It is, in many ways, at variance with some of my most cherished principles; for both you and I are perhaps inclined to overrate the value of education, whether technical or general, in its effect on the individuality. And, of course, a better technical preparation would have saved Isabel Bretherton an immense amount of time; would have prevented her from contracting a host of bad habits--all of which she will have to unlearn. But the root of the matter is in her; of that I am sure; and whatever weight of hostile circ.u.mstance may be against her, she will, if she keeps her health--as to which I am sometimes, like you, a little anxious--break through it all and triumph.
'But if you did not understand her quite, you have enormously helped her; so much I will tell you for your comfort. She said to me yesterday abruptly--we were alone in our gondola, far out on the lagoon--”Did your brother ever tell you of a conversation he and I had in the woods at Nuneham about Mr. Wallace's play?”
'”Yes,” I answered with outward boldness, but a little inward trepidation; ”I have not known anything distress him so much for a long time. He thought you had misunderstood him.”
'”No,” she said quietly, but as it seemed to me with an undercurrent of emotion in her voice; ”I did not misunderstand him. He meant what he said, and I would have forced the truth from him, whatever happened. I was determined to make him show me what he felt. That London season was sometimes terrible to me. I seemed to myself to be living in two worlds--one a world in which there was always a sea of faces opposite to me, or crowds about me, and a praise ringing in my ears which was enough to turn anybody's head, but which after a while repelled me as if there was something humiliating in it; and then, on the other side, a little inner world of people I cared for and respected, who looked at me kindly, and thought for me, but to whom as an actress I was just of no account at all! It was your brother who first roused that sense in me; it was so strange and painful, for how could I help at first believing in all the hubbub and the applause?”
'”Poor child!” I said, reaching out my hand for one of hers. ”Did Eustace make himself disagreeable to you?”
'”It was more, I think,” she answered, as if reflecting, ”the standard he always seemed to carry about with him than anything connected with my own work. At least, of course, I mean before that Nuneham day. Ah, that Nuneham day! It cut deep.”
'She turned away from me, and leant over the side of the boat, so that I could not see her face.
'”You forced it out of Eustace, you know,” I said, trying to laugh at her, ”you uncompromising young person! Of course, he flattered himself that you forgot all about his preaching the moment you got home. Men always make themselves believe what they want to believe.”
'”Why should he want to believe so?” she replied quickly. ”I had half foreseen it, I had forced it from him, and yet I felt it like a blow! It cost me a sleepless night, and some--well, some very bitter tears. Not that the tears were a new experience. How often, after all that noise at the theatre, have I gone home and cried myself to sleep over the impossibility of doing what I wanted to do, of moving those hundreds of people, of making them feel, and of putting my own feeling into shape!
But that night, and with my sense of illness just then, I saw myself--it seemed to me quite in the near future--grown old and ugly, a forgotten failure, without any of those memories which console people who have been great when they must give up. I felt myself struggling against such a weight of ignorance, of bad habits, of unfavourable surroundings. How was I ever to get free and to reverse that judgment of Mr. Kendal's? My very success stood in my way, How was 'Miss Bretherton' to put herself to school?”
'”But now,” I said to her warmly, ”you have got free; or, rather, you are on the way to freedom.”
'She thought a little bit without speaking, her chin resting on her hand, her elbow on her knee. We were pa.s.sing the great red-brown ma.s.s of the Armenian convent. She seemed to be drinking in the dazzling harmonies of blue and warm brown and pearly light. When she did speak again it was very slowly, as though she were trying to give words to a number of complex impressions.
'”Yes,” she said; ”it seems to me that I am different; but I can't tell exactly how or why. I see all sorts of new possibilities, new meanings everywhere: that is one half of it! But the other, and the greater, half is--how to make all these new feelings and any new knowledge which may come to me tell on my art.” And then she changed altogether with one of those delightful swift transformations of hers, and her face rippled over with laughter. ”At present the chief result of the difference, whatever it may be, seems to be to make me most unmanageable at home. I am for ever disagreeing with my people, saying I can't do this and I won't do that. I am getting to enjoy having my own way in the most abominable manner.” And then she caught my hand, that was holding hers, between both her own, and said half laughing and half in earnest--
'”Did you ever realise that I don't know any single language besides my own--not even French? That I can't read any French book or any French play?”
'”Well,” I said, half laughing too, ”it is very astonis.h.i.+ng. And you know it can't go on if you are to do what I think you will do. French you positively must learn, and learn quickly. I don't mean to say that we haven't good plays and a tradition of our own; but for the moment France is the centre of your art, and you cannot remain at a distance from it!
The French have organised their knowledge; it is available for all who come. Ours is still floating and amateurish--”
'And so on. You may imagine it, my dear Eustace; I spare you any more of it verbatim. After I had talked away for a long time and brought it all back to the absolute necessity that she should know French and become acquainted with French acting and French dramatic ideals, she pulled me up in the full career of eloquence, by demanding with a little practical air, a twinkle lurking somewhere in her eyes--
'”Explain to me, please; how is it to be done?”
'”Oh,” I said, ”nothing is easier. Do you know anything at all?”
'”Very little. I once had a term's lessons at Kingston.”
'”Very well, then,” I went on, enjoying this little comedy of a neglected education; ”get a French maid, a French master, and a novel: I will provide you with _Consuelo_ and a translation to-morrow.”
'”As for the French maid,” she answered dubiously, shaking her head, ”I don't know. I expect my old black woman that I brought with me from Jamaica would ill-treat her--perhaps murder her. But the master can be managed and the novel. Will none of you laugh at me if you see me trailing a French grammar about?”
'And so she has actually begun to-day. She makes a pretence of keeping her novel and a little dictionary and grammar in a bag, and hides them when any one appears. But Paul has already begun to tease her about her new and mysterious occupation, and I foresee that he will presently spend the greater part of his mornings in teaching her. I never saw anybody attract him so much; she is absolutely different from anything he has seen before; and, as he says, the mixture of ignorance and genius in her--yes, genius; don't be startled!--is most stimulating to the imagination.'
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