“Oh, don't you see, my dear child, that this is a kind of—of pity—of anything you like, except the one thing——“
“I adore you, Robert. Oh, I can't get at what I want to say! Any talk about love always sounds very stilted or hollow. I only know that I want to live intensely in all that concerns you; that just to think of you makes me perfectly happy. When I said that learning Phédre and Juliet was the reason I lived, I was thinking of the time when I had no right to think of you. Of course I loved you always, from the beginning. It began at Chambord when I first met you. I very seldom say these things, and it is better that they should remain unsaid for the most part. But you must never doubt me, and I feel to-day, in spite of all we know about each other and all we have suffered, that you are doubting me now. You fear I don't know my own mind. Isn't this the trouble?”
The intuition which comes to men and women through suffering has always the certain sharpness of a surgeon's knife. It may be a reassurance to have the inmost thought plucked at by some loving spirit, and yet it is seldom that the touch can be given without inflicting agony. Orange could not reply at once. In his resolve to be unselfish—to put aside that personal equation which was nothing less than his whole nature—he had to steel his heart to her, contradicting painfully, by curt, unfelt phrases, the promptings of a soul turned in upon itself, desolate and confused.
“I have been selfish and thoughtless,” he said abruptly; “a missed vocation is irreplaceable and it is also indestructible. You hear the echo of the call as long as you live—perhaps afterwards. At your age you could feel, but you could not wholly understand your talents. If you had told me all this before——“
She laughed with real joyousness and clung more closely to his arm.
“I didn't tell you,” she exclaimed, “because you would have said just what you are saying now. You are the one. All the rest is a means of forgetting you. It is something resembling happiness to be alone in the turmoil of the world with one unspoilt illusion. This illusion in my case is a little idea that I could be a great actress—perhaps! Don't look grave, Robert. It makes you sad when I talk this way.”
“Those who can be disillusioned have no convictions. Disillusion is the failure of a half-belief. I learnt that long ago. But I hate the very word in your mouth. Woe to us both if we cannot be resolute now. I could have waited—had I seen any reason to wait. Time could make no difference in my love. As it is, I have stolen you from yourself. But now I have stolen you I will keep you. I cannot—cannot give you back again to anything or anybody.”
He spoke with that almost mocking tenderness which dissembles its passion. At the practical difficulty which now confronted him, all that was merely romantic and speculative in his soul took flight, as birds that are frightened from a quiet orchard by the yelp of dogs. He became aware that he was bitterly independent of the joys he had once found in the mere spectacle of the exterior world—the play of light and shade, the changing visions of the sky, the charm of the earth. His own thoughts were now the sole realities, and the dulness which suddenly came over his vision for outward things seemed to render it the more acute and concentrated for the things of the mind. As distant hills and tree tops show most distinctly before a storm, so every possibility which can arise from a conflict of duties stood out with a decisive clearness for his consideration. He had married in haste a child-bride. There was no blinking the fact. She had the strenuous religious fibre, and with it real Bohemian blood. She was also at the yielding age, when a dominant influence could do much to divert or modify every natural trait. He could not doubt that he had this power over her then. How far, and to what purpose, should he exert it? For himself he wished to discourage any hankering on her part for public life, and, most of all, public life behind the footlights, under an artificial sky. No one knew better than he that there are certain things of love, of nobility, of temperament, of pride, in certain lives which the world at large would rather calumniate than comprehend. People in general clung to their opinions not because they were true, but because they were their own, and among pretty general opinions—particularly in the year 1869—there was a strong prejudice against handsome young women who went on the stage. It was not in him to consider—even as an egoistic reflection to be put aside—how far Brigit's project, carried into action, could effect his own political career. His apprehensions were all for her and her own content.
“Promise me,” he said, “that you will always tell me when the acting mood comes over you. Never fight it, never try to resist it, give it the liberty to die, but also the right to live. There is an old Hindoo proverb: ‘Find the flower which can bloom in the silence that follows—not that which precedes—the storm.’ This applies perfectly to a talent or a vocation. If the mood is there, in spite of fatigue, or discouragement, or other claims—happiness for that matter—you may depend that it is the ruling motive of your life and not to be vanquished. You must follow the bent or you will suffer—suffer till you die of it.”
“How? in what way?”