Part 10 (1/2)
'_August_ 22.
'During the last few days I have not been seeing so much of Miss Bretherton as before. She has been devoting herself to her family, and Paul and I have been doing our pictures. We cannot persuade her to take any very large dose of galleries; it seems to me that her thoughts are set on one subject--and one subject only--and while she is in this first stage of intensity, it is not likely that anything else will have a chance.
'It is amusing to study the dissatisfaction of the uncle and aunt with the turn things have taken since they left London. Mr. Worrall has been evidently accustomed to direct his niece's life from top to bottom--to choose her plays for her, helped by Mr. Robinson; to advise her as to her fellow-actors, and her behaviour in society; and all, of course, with a shrewd eye to the family profit, and as little regard as need be to any fantastical conception of art.
'Now, however, Isabel has a.s.serted herself in several unexpected ways.
She has refused altogether to open her autumn season with the play which had been nearly decided on before they left London--a flimsy spectacular performance quite unworthy of her. As soon as possible she will make important changes in the troupe who are to be with her, and at the beginning of September she is coming to stay three weeks with us in Paris, and, in all probability (though the world is to know nothing of it), Perrault of the Conservatoire, who is a great friend of ours, will give her a good deal of positive teaching. This last arrangement is particularly exasperating to Mr. Worrall. He regards it as sure to be known, a ridiculous confession of weakness on Isabel's part, and so on.
However, in spite of his wrath and the aunt's sullen or tearful disapproval, she has stood firm, and matters are so arranged.'
'_Sat.u.r.day night, August_ 25.
'This evening we persuaded her at last to give us some scenes of Juliet.
How I wish you could have been here! It was one of those experiences which remain with one as a sort of perpetual witness to the poetry which life holds in it, and may yield up to one at any moment. It was in our little garden; the moon was high above the houses opposite, and the narrow ca.n.a.l running past our side railing into the Grand Ca.n.a.l was a s.h.i.+ning streak of silver. The air was balmy and absolutely still; no more perfect setting to Shakespeare or to Juliet could have been imagined.
Paul sat at a little table in front of the rest of us; he was to read Romeo and the Nurse in the scenes she had chosen, while in the background were the Worralls and Lucy Bretherton (the little crippled sister), Mr.
Wallace, and myself. She did the balcony scene, the morning scene with Romeo, the scene with the nurse after Tybalt's death, and the scene of the philtre. There is an old sundial in the garden, which caught the moonbeams. She leaned her arms upon it, her eyes fixed upon the throbbing moonlit sky, her white brocaded dress glistening here and there in the pale light--a vision of perfect beauty. And when she began her sighing appeal--
”O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?”
--it seemed to me as if the night--the pa.s.sionate Italian night--had found its voice--the only voice which fitted it.
'Afterwards I tried as much as possible to shake off the impressions peculiar to the scene itself to think of her under the ordinary conditions of the stage, to judge her purely as an actress. In the love scenes there seemed hardly anything to find fault with. I thought I could trace in many places the influence of her constant dramatic talks and exercises with Paul. The flow of pa.s.sion was continuous and electric, but marked by all the simpleness, all the sweetness, all the young winsome extravagance which belong to Juliet. The great scene with the Nurse had many fine things in it; she has evidently worked hard at it line by line, and that speech of Juliet's, with its extraordinary dramatic capabilities--
”Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?”--
was given with admirable variety and suppleness of intonation. The dreary sweetness of her
”_Banished!_ that one word _banished!_”
still lives with me, and her gestures as she paced restlessly along the little strip of moonlit path. The speech before she takes the potion was the least satisfactory of all; the ghastliness and horror of it are beyond her resources as yet; she could not infuse them with that terrible beauty which Desforets would have given to every line. But where is the English actress that has ever yet succeeded in it?
We were all silent for a minute after her great cry--
”Romeo, Romeo, Romeo, I drink to thee!”--
had died upon our ears. And then, while we applauded her, she came forward listlessly, her beautiful head drooping, and approached Paul like a child that has said its lesson badly.
'”I can't do it, that speech; I can't do it!”
'”It wants more work,” said Paul; ”you'll get it. But the rest was admirable. You must have worked very hard!”
'”So I have,” she said, brightening at the warmth of his praise. ”But Diderot is wrong, wrong, wrong! When I could once reach the feeling of the Tybalt speech, when I could once _hate_ him for killing Tybalt in the same breath in which I _loved_ him for being Romeo, all was easy; gesture and movement came to me; I learnt them, and the thing was done.”
'The reference, of course, meant that Paul had been reading to her his favourite _Paradoxe sur le Comedien_, and that she had been stimulated, but not converted, by the famous contention that the actor should be the mere ”cold and tranquil spectator,” the imitator of other men's feelings, while possessing none of his own. He naturally would have argued, but I would not have it, and made her rest. She was quite worn out with the effort, and I do not like this excessive fatigue of hers. I often wonder whether the life she is leading is not too exciting for her. This is supposed to be her holiday, and she is really going through more brain-waste than she has ever done in her life before! Paul is throwing his whole energies into one thing only, the training of Miss Bretherton; and he is a man of forty-eight, with an immense experience, and she a girl of twenty-one, with everything to learn, and as easily excited as he is capable of exciting her. I really must keep him in check.
'Mr. Wallace, when we had sent her home across the ca.n.a.l--their apartment is on the other side, farther up towards the railway station--could not say enough to me of his amazement at the change in her.