With that last desolate moan of a proud and stormy spirit, sobbing itself into the death-quiet, a visible shudder crept through the house. Even the King threw himself back in his royal chair with an uncomfortable sort of "ahem!" as though choking with an emotion of common humanity; and the Queen—forgot to take snuff.
From the night of her triumphant début, the life of the actress ran in the full sunlight of public favor; but the life of the woman crept away into the shadow,—not of that quiet and repose so grateful to the true artist, but of domestic discomfort and jealous estrangement.
Nobly self-forgetful always, Zelma, in the first hour of success, feeling, in spite of herself, the pettiness and egoism of her husband's nature, with a sense of humiliation in which it seemed her very soul blushed, offered to renounce forever the career on which she had just entered. Mr. Bury, however, angrily refused to accept the sacrifice, though she pressed it upon him, at last, as a "peace-offering," on her knees, and weeping like a penitent. "It is too late," he said, bitterly. "The deed is done. You are mine no longer,—you belong to the public;—I wish you joy of your fickle master."
From that time Zelma went her own ways, calm and self-reliant outwardly, but inwardly tortured with a host of womanly griefs and regrets, a helpless sense of wrong and desolation. She flew to her beautiful art for consolation, flinging herself, with a sort of desperate abandonment, out of her own life of monotonous misery into the varied sorrows of the characters she personated. For her the cup of fame was not mantling with the wine of delight which reddens the lips and "maketh glad the heart." The costly pearl she had dissolved in it had not sweetened the draught; but it was intoxicating, and she drank it with feverish avidity.
But for Lawrence Bury, his powers flagged and failed in the unnatural rivalship; his acting grew more and more cold and mechanical. He became more than ever subject to moods and caprices, and rapidly lost favor with the public, till at last he was regarded only as the husband of the popular actress,—then, merely tolerated for her sake. He fell, or rather flung himself, into a life of reckless dissipation and profligacy, and sunk so low that he scrupled not to accept from his wife, and squander on base pleasures, money won by the genius for which he hated her. Many were the nights when Zelma returned from the playhouse to her cheerless lodgings, exhausted, dispirited, and alone, to walk her chamber till the morning, wrestling with real terrors and sorrows, the homely distresses of the heart, hard, absolute, unrelieved,—to which the tragic agonies she had been representing seemed but child's play.
At length, finding himself at the lowest ebb of theatrical favor, and hating horribly the scene of his humiliating defeat, Mr. Bury resolved to return to his old strolling life in the provinces. Making at the same moment the first announcement of his going and his hurried adieux to Zelma, who heard his last cold words in dumb dismay, with little show of emotion, but with heavy grief and dread presentiments at her heart, he departed. He was accompanied by the fair actress with whom he played first parts at Arden,—but now, green-room gossip said, not in a merely professional association. This story was brought to Zelma; but her bitter cup was full without it. With a noble blindness, the fanaticism of wifely faith, she rejected it utterly. "He is weak, misguided, mad," she said, "but not so basely false as that. He must run his wild, wretched course awhile longer,—it seems necessary for him; but he will return at last,—surely he will,—sorrowful, repentant, 'in his right mind,' himself and mine once more. He cannot weary out God's patience and my love."
After the first shock of her desertion was past, Zelma was conscious of a sense of relief from a weight of daily recurring care and humiliation, the torture of an unloving presence, chill and ungenial as arctic sunlight. Even in the cold blank of his absence there was something grateful to her bruised heart, like the balm of darkness to suffering eyes. Her art was now all in all to her,—the strong-winged passion, which lifted her out of herself and her sorrows. She was studying Juliet for the first time. She had been playing for more than a year before she could be prevailed upon to attempt a Shakspearian character, restrained by a profound modesty from exercising her crude powers upon one of those grand creations.
When, at length, she made choice of Juliet, what study was hers!—how reverent! how loving! how glad!—the perfect service of the spirit! She shut out the world of London from her sight, from her thoughts, till it seemed lost in one of its own fogs. The air, the sky, the passion, the poetry of Italy were above and around her. Again she revelled in that wondrous garden of love and poesy, with a background of graves, solemnizing joy. Now her fancy flitted, on swift, unresting wing, from beauty to beauty,—now settled, bee-like, on some rich, half-hidden thought, and hung upon it, sucking out its most sweet and secret heart of meaning. She steeped her soul in the delicious romance, the summer warmth, the moonlight, the sighs and tears of the play. She went from the closet to the stage, not brain-weary and pale with thought, but fresh, tender, and virginal,—not like one who had committed the part of Juliet, but one whom Juliet possessed in every part. She seemed to bear about her an atmosphere of poetry and love, the subtile spirit of that marvellous play. There was no air of study, not the faintest taint of the midnight oil;—like a gatherer of roses from some garden of Cashmere, or a peasant-girl from the vintage, she brought only odors from her toil,—the sweets of the fancy, a flavor of the passion she had made her own.
On her first night in this play, Zelma was startled by recognizing among the audience the once familiar faces of her uncle Roger, her cousin Bessie, and Sir Harry Willerton. They had all come up to London to draw up the papers and purchase the trousseau for the wedding, which would have taken place a year sooner, but for the death of Bessie's mother.