“You were kind only to yourself. You never were a favourite in St. Penfer. Other ladies did not often call upon you. In me you had a companionship which you could control, you had your sewing done for next to nothing, you had the 285 news of the town brought to you. You played upon my restless disposition, my love of fine clothing, my ambition to be some one greater than Denas Penelles, and as soon as good fortune came to you and you had everything you desired, you found me a bore, a claimant on your sense of justice which you did not like to meet. Understand that the fact of wearing silk and jewelry does not give you the right to take up an immortal soul and play with it or cast it aside as you find it convenient. I owe you the deepest grudge. You made me dissatisfied with my own life, you showed me the pleasant vistas of a different life, and when I hoped to enter with you, I found myself outside and the door shut in my face. You have always tried to make Roland dissatisfied with me. You insinuated, you deplored, in every letter to him. You stabbed while you pretended to kiss me. I found you out long ago. Everyone finds you out. You never had a friend. You never will have one.”
She spoke with that pitiless scorn which is the language of suppressed passion. Elizabeth only lifted her eyebrows and turned away from her. And Denasia knew that she had made a mistake, and yet she did not regret it. There are times when it is a relief to be angry, whether we do well to be so or not; when to lose the temper is better than to keep it. Of course there are great and beautiful souls with whom nothing turns to bitterness, but the soul of Denasia was not one of these. It had been born ready to feel and ready to speak, and regarded it as something of a virtue to do so.
She left Elizabeth’s house in a very unhappy mood, and at a rapid walk proceeded to her lodging in Bloomsbury. She would have felt the confinement of a cab to be intolerable, but it was a relief to set her personality against the friction of a million of encompassing wills. And in a short time she succumbed to that condition of electricity which they evolve, and permitted herself to be moved by it without considering her steps.
At length she was hungry, and she turned into a place of refreshment and ate with more healthy desire than she had felt for many months, and then the restless, fretting creature within was pacified, and she resolved to walk quietly to her room and sleep before she suffered herself to think any more. But as she was following out this plan she came to a famous theatre, and the name at the entrance attracted her. “I will be my own judge,” she said. “I will see, and hear, and be more unmerciful to myself than any other could be.”
So she entered the place and sat throughout three scenes. She did not wait for the final act. There was no necessity. She had arrived at her verdict. It was in her eyes and attitude when she left the building, but she gave it no voice until she sat weary and sad before the glimmering fire in her room.
“I could be Queen of England as easily as I could be a prima donna,” she said mournfully. “There was perhaps a time––perhaps––perhaps, when youth and beauty and love could have helped me, but that time has gone for ever.”
She said the words slowly, and the weight of despair was on each one. For she realised that in her case effort had brought forth no lasting fruit and that endurance had been without avail, and she was exceedingly sorrowful. For there is a singular vitality in the idea of public singing or acting when once it has taken root in any nature, and Denasia had been subject that night to one of its periods of revival. She had told herself that “she would probably have a thousand pounds; that she could go to Italy and pay for the best teachers; that it would please Roland if he knew, if he remembered, for her to do so; that it would annoy Elizabeth in many ways if she became a singer; that she would show the world it was possible to sing and act and yet be in every respect womanly, pure-hearted, and blameless before God and man.”
These and many such ideas had filled her mind at intervals all the way across the Atlantic, and her passionate renunciation of the stage, made that miserable day when Roland deserted her, began to lose its reasonableness and therefore its sense of obligation. After her interview with Elizabeth, the question of money to carry out such intentions was practically settled, and she had, therefore, only to arrive at a positive personal conclusion. Once or twice in her public career she had received what her heart told her was a just criticism. It had not been a very flattering one, and Roland had passionately denied its justice. But she felt that the hour had now come when she must have the truth and accept the truth.