“Perfectly. You convey that whoever creates the picture she is always in it.”
“Exactly. In my belief that must have been the secret of all the great actresses of history, not to mention the great courtesans. Be sure Aspasia convinced her lover that she was a deep stateswoman as well as highly gifted in poetry, music and art.”
“And she was so.”
“Not she!” says Greville, with his cool contempt for women. “She merely caught his ray as a mirror catches the sun and flashed it back upon him blindingly. Combine that power with sex and beauty and you have a dazzled world.”
“Yet you are not dazzled?”
“I have lived with her for four years. I know how the springs work,” says Greville sententiously. “All the same, she is remarkable. I believe there is nothing beyond her, given the opportunity. Nothing, that is, which moves her. She could have been a great actress, so expressive is she. Talk to her of the Siddons, and in a moment she will out-Siddons the woman herself in pose; a ghastly Lady Macbeth creeping to the murder. Remind her of Mrs. Jordan and she is comedy incarnate, all roguish laughter.”
Sir William reflected, gazing at the chair Comedy had lately occupied and at her wistful-eyed portrait over the mantelpiece.
“It appears to me,” he said at length, “that having lived with her so long you have perhaps become so used to these qualities that it has a little dulled your perception of what they really signify. For since woman is always more or less of a parasite [Here the eighteenth century was vocal on the good man’s lips!] we must not expect more from them than is possible. But when carried to the height you describe, it becomes what, for a woman, is genius. And, with beauty as a pedestal, you get the woman that the world remembers.”
“Her antecedents forbid that,” says Greville with his cool certainty. “Aspasias exist no longer. There is no place for them in society. You have the Pompadours whose only skill is to traffic in places, the political beauties like the Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs. Crewe, and the detestable blue-stocking. And a certain amount of decency is required before a woman can be taken at all seriously.”
“Of decency a very little will go a long way if combined with beauty,” said Sir William, with the edge of a cynical smile touching his lips. If the Spirit of Comedy were perched on the chair Emma so lately had occupied, she also must have smiled, one imagines, to see these two grave gentlemen discussing the destiny of the woman who was to settle theirs. Indeed, the Spirit of Tragedy might almost have joined the party and animated the sad and far-seeing eyes of the portrait above the mantel.