Part 8 (2/2)
You have the gift--you must use it. The obligation of self-development is heaviest upon the shoulders of those whose foreheads Nature's twin-sister has touched with fire! I would it were any other gift, Berenice; but that is only a personal feeling. No! you must follow out your destiny. You have an opportunity of occupying a unique and marvellous position. You can create a new ideal. Only be true always to yourself. Be very jealous indeed of absorbing any of the modes of thought and life which will spring up everywhere around you in the new world. Remember it is the old ideals which are the sweetest and the truest.... Forgive me, please! I am talking like a pedagogue.”
”You are talking as I like to be talked to,” she answered. ”Yet you need not fear that my head will be turned, even if the success should come. You forget that I am almost an old woman. The religion of my life has long been conceived and fas.h.i.+oned.”
He looked at her with a curious smile. If thirty seemed old to her, what must she think of him?
”I wonder,” he said simply, ”if you would think me impertinent if I were to ask you to tell me more about yourself. How is it that you are altogether alone in the world?”
The words had scarcely left his lips before he would have given much to have recalled them. He saw her start, flinch back as though she had been struck, and a grey pallor spread itself over her face, almost to the lips. She looked at him fixedly for several moments without speaking.
”One day,” she said, ”I will tell you all that. You shall know everything. But not now; not yet.”
”Whenever you will,” he answered, ignoring her evident agitation.
”Come! what do you say to a walk down through the Park? To-day is a holiday for me--a day to be marked with a white stone. I have registered an oath that I will not even look at a pen. Will you not help me to keep it?”
”By all means,” she answered blithely. ”I will take you home with me, and keep you there till the hour of temptation has pa.s.sed. To-day is to be my last day of idleness! I too have need of a white stone.”
”We will place them,” he said, ”side by side.”
CHAPTER X
Matravers' luncheon party marked the termination for some time of any confidential intercourse between Berenice and himself. Every moment of her time was claimed by Fergusson, who, in his anxiety to produce a play from which he hoped so much before the wane of the season, gave no one any rest, and worked himself almost into a fever. There were two full rehearsals a day, and many private ones at her rooms.
Matravers calling there now and then found Fergusson always in possession, and by degrees gave it up in despair. He had a horror of interfering in any way, even of being asked for his advice concerning the practical reproduction of his work. Fergusson's invitations to the rehearsals at the theatre he rejected absolutely. As the time grew shorter, Berenice became pale and almost haggard with the unceasing work which Fergusson's anxiety imposed upon her. One night she sent for Matravers, and hastening to her rooms, he found her for the first time alone.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad?”]
”I have sent Mr. Fergusson home,” she exclaimed, welcoming him with outstretched hands, but making no effort to rise from her easy chair.
”Do you know that man is driving me slowly mad? I want you to interfere.”
”What can I do?” he said.
”Anything to bring him to reason! He is over-rehearsing! Every line, every sentence, every gesture, he makes the subject of the most exhaustive deliberation. He will have nothing spontaneous; it is positively stifling. A few more days of it and my reason will go! He is a great actor, but he does not seem to understand that to reduce everything to mathematical proportions is to court failure.”
”I will go and see him,” Matravers said. ”You wish for no more rehearsals, then?”
”I do not want to see his face again before the night of the performance,” she declared vehemently. ”I am perfect in my part. I have thought about it--dreamed about it. I have lived more as 'Bathilde' than as myself for the last three weeks. Perhaps,” she continued more slowly, ”you will not be satisfied. I scarcely dare to hope that you will be. Yet I have reached my limitations. The more I am made to rehea.r.s.e now, the less natural I shall become.”
”I will speak to Fergusson,” Matravers promised. ”I will go and see him to-night. But so far as you are concerned, I have no fear; you will be the 'Bathilde' of my heart and my brain. You cannot fail!”
She rose to her feet. ”It is,” she said, ”The desire of my life to make your 'Bathilde' a creature of flesh and blood. If I fail, I will never act again.”
”If you fail,” he said, ”the fault will be in my conception, not in your execution. But indeed we will not consider anything so improbable. Let us put the play behind us for a time and talk of something else! You must be weary of it.”
She shook her head. ”Not that! never that! Just now it is my life, only it is the details which weary me, the eternal harping upon the mechanical side of it. Will you read to me for a little? and I will make you some coffee. You are not in a hurry, are you?”
”I have come,” he said, ”to stay with you until you send me away! I will read to you with pleasure. What will you have?”
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