by Henry James
“That’s no use—it’s Italian,” said Peter; “only carry it round to Miss Rooth without a minute’s delay. Place it in her hand and she’ll give you some object—a bracelet, a glove, or a flower—to bring me back as a sign that she has received it. I shall be outside; bring me there what she gives you and you shall have another shilling—only fly!”
His small messenger sounded him a moment with the sharp face of London wage-earning, and still more of London tip-earning, infancy, and vanished as swiftly as a slave of the Arabian Nights. While he waited in the lobby the audience began to pour out, and before the urchin had come back to him he was clapped on the shoulder by Nick.
“I’m glad I haven’t lost you, but why didn’t you stay to give her a hand?”
“Give her a hand? I hated it.”
“My dear man, I don’t follow you,” Nick said. “If you won’t come to Dashwood’s supper I fear our ways don’t lie together.”
“Thank him very much; say I’ve to get up at an unnatural hour.” To this Peter added: “I think I ought to tell you she may not be there.”
“Miss Rooth? Why it’s all for her.”
“I’m waiting for a word from her—she may change her mind.”
Nick showed his interest. “For you? What then have you proposed?”
“I’ve proposed marriage,” said Peter in a strange voice.
“I say—!” Nick broke out; and at the same moment Peter’s messenger squeezed through the press and stood before him.
“She has given me nothing, sir,” the boy announced; “but she says I’m to say ‘All right!’”
Nick’s stare widened. “You’ve proposed through him?”
“Aye, and she accepts. Good-night!”—on which, turning away, Peter bounded into a hansom. He said something to the driver through the roof, and Nick’s eyes followed the cab as it started off. This young man was mystified, was even amused; especially when the youth in buttons, planted there and wondering too, brought forth:
“Please sir, he told me he’d give me a shilling and he’ve forgot it.”
“Oh I can’t pay you for that!” Nick laughed. But he fished out a dole, though he was vexed at the injury to the supper.
XLVI
Peter meanwhile rolled away through the summer night to Saint John’s Wood. He had put the pressure of strong words on his young friend, entreating her to drive home immediately, return there without any one, without even her mother. He wished to see her alone and for a purpose he would fully and satisfactorily explain—couldn’t she trust him? He besought her to remember his own situation and throw over her supper, throw over everything. He would wait for her with unspeakable impatience in Balaklava Place.
He did so, when he got there, but it had taken half an hour. Interminable seemed his lonely vigil in Miss Lumley’s drawing-room, where the character of the original proprietress came out to him more than ever before in a kind of afterglow of old sociabilities, a vulgar, ghostly reference. The numerous candles had been lighted for him, and Mrs. Rooth’s familiar fictions lay about; but his nerves forbade him the solace of a chair and a book. He walked up and down, thinking and listening, and as the long window, the balmy air permitting, stood open to the garden, he passed several times in and out. A carriage appeared to stop at the gate—then there was nothing; he heard the rare rattle of wheels and the far-off hum of London. His impatience was overwrought, and though he knew this it persisted; it would have been no easy matter for Miriam to break away from the flock of her felicitators. Still less simple was it doubtless for her to leave poor Dashwood with his supper on his hands. Perhaps she would bring Dashwood with her, bring him to time her; she was capable of playing him—that is, of playing Her Majesty’s new representative to the small far-off State, or even of playing them both—that trick. Perhaps the little wretch in buttons—Peter remembered now the neglected shilling—only pretending to go round with his card, had come back with an invented answer. But how could he know, since presumably he couldn’t read Italian, that his answer would fit the message? Peter was sorry now that he himself had not gone round, not snatched Miriam bodily away, made sure of her and of what he wanted of her.
When forty minutes had elapsed he regarded it as proved that she wouldn’t come, and, asking himself what he should do, determined to drive off again and seize her at her comrade’s feast. Then he remembered how Nick had mentioned that this entertainment was not to be held at the young actor’s lodgings but at some tavern or restaurant the name of which he had not heeded. Suddenly, however, Peter became aware with joy that this name didn’t matter, for there was something at the garden door at last. He rushed out before she had had time to ring, and saw as she stepped from the carriage that she was alone. Now that she was there, that he had this evidence she had listened to him and trusted him, all his impatience and bitterness gave way and a flood of pleading tenderness took their place in the first words he spoke to her. It was far “dearer” of her than he had any right to dream, but she was the best and kindest creature—this showed it—as well as the most wonderful. He was really not off his head with his contradictory ways; no, before heaven he wasn’t, and he would explain, he would make everything clear. Everything was changed.
She stopped short in the little dusky garden, looking at him in the light of the open window. Then she called back to the coachman—they had left the garden door open—”Wait for me, mind; I shall want you again.”
“What’s the matter—won’t you stay?” Peter asked. “Are you going out again at this absurd hour? I won’t hurt you,” he gently urged. And he went back and closed the garden door. He wanted to say to the coachman, “It’s no matter—please drive away.” At the same time he wouldn’t for the world have done anything offensive to her.
“I’ve come because I thought it better to-night, as things have turned out, to do the thing you ask me, whatever it may be,” she had already begun. “That’s probably what you calculated I would think, eh? What this evening has been you’ve seen, and I must allow that your hand’s in it. That you know for yourself—that you doubtless felt as you sat there. But I confess I don’t imagine what you want of me here now,” she added. She had remained standing in the path.
Peter felt the irony of her “now” and how it made a fool of him, but he had been prepared for this and for much worse. He had begged her not to think him a fool, but in truth at present he cared little if she did. Very likely he was—in spite of his plea that everything was changed: he cared little even himself. However, he spoke in the tone of intense reason and of the fullest disposition to satisfy her. This lucidity only took still more from the dignity of his change of front: his separation from her the day before had had such pretensions to being lucid. But the explanation and the justification were in the very fact, the fact that had complete possession of him. He named it when he replied to her: “I’ve simply overrated my strength.”
“Oh I knew—I knew! That’s why I entreated you not to come!” Miriam groaned. She turned away lamenting, and for a moment he thought she would retreat to her carriage. But he passed his hand into her arm, to draw her forward, and after an instant felt her yield.
“The fact is we must have this thing out,” he said. Then he added as he made her go into the house, bending over her, “The failure of my strength—that was just the reason of my coming.”
She broke into her laugh at these words, as she entered the drawing-room, and it made them sound pompous in their false wisdom. She flung off, as a good-natured tribute to the image of their having the thing out, a white shawl that had been wrapped round her. She was still painted and bedizened, in the splendid dress of her climax, so that she seemed protected and alienated by the character she had been acting. “Whatever it is you want—when I understand—you’ll be very brief, won’t you? Do you know I’ve given up a charming supper for you? Mamma has gone there. I’ve promised to go back to them.”
“You’re an angel not to have let her come with you. I’m sure she want
ed to,” Peter made reply.
“Oh she’s all right, but she’s nervous.” Then the girl added: “Couldn’t she keep you away after all?”
“Whom are you talking about?” Biddy Dormer was as absent from his mind as if she had never existed.
“The charming thing you were with this morning. Is she so afraid of obliging me? Oh she’d be so good for you!”
“Don’t speak of that,” Peter gravely said. “I was in perfect good faith yesterday when I took leave of you. I was—I was. But I can’t—I can’t: you’re too unutterably dear to me.”
“Oh don’t—please don’t!” Miriam wailed at this. She stood before the fireless chimney-piece with one of her hands on it. “If it’s only to say that, don’t you know, what’s the use?”
“It isn’t only to say that. I’ve a plan, a perfect plan: the whole thing lies clear before me.”
“And what’s the whole thing?”
He had to make an effort. “You say your mother’s nervous. Ah if you knew how nervous I am!”
“Well, I’m not. Go on.”
“Give it up—give it up!” Peter stammered.
“Give it up?” She fixed him like a mild Medusa.
“I’ll marry you to-morrow if you’ll renounce; and in return for the sacrifice you make for me I’ll do more for you than ever was done for a woman before.”
“Renounce after to-night? Do you call that a plan?” she asked. “Those are old words and very foolish ones—you wanted something of that sort a year ago.”
“Oh I fluttered round the idea at that time; we were talking in the air. I didn’t really believe I could make you see it then, and certainly you didn’t see it. My own future, moreover, wasn’t definite to me. I didn’t know what I could offer you. But these last months have made a difference—I do know now. Now what I say is deliberate—It’s deeply meditated. I simply can’t live without you, and I hold that together we may do great things.”
She seemed to wonder. “What sort of things?”
“The things of my profession, of my life, the things one does for one’s country, the responsibility and the honour of great affairs; deeply fascinating when one’s immersed in them, and more exciting really—put them even at that—than the excitements of the theatre. Care for me only a little and you’ll see what they are, they’ll take hold of you. Believe me, believe me,” Peter pleaded; “every fibre of my being trembles in what I say to you.”
“You admitted yesterday it wouldn’t do,” she made answer. “Where were the fibres of your being then?”
“They throbbed in me even more than now, and I was trying, like an ass, not to feel them. Where was this evening yesterday—where were the maddening hours I’ve just spent? Ah you’re the perfection of perfections, and as I sat there to-night you taught me what I really want.”
“The perfection of perfections?” the girl echoed with the strangest smile.
“I needn’t try to tell you: you must have felt to-night with such rapture what you are, what you can do. How can I give that up?” he piteously went on.
“How can I, my poor friend? I like your plans and your responsibilities and your great affairs, as you call them. Voyons, they’re infantile. I’ve just shown that I’m a perfection of perfections: therefore it’s just the moment to ‘renounce,’ as you gracefully say? Oh I was sure, I was sure!” And Miriam paused, resting eyes at once lighted and troubled on him as in the effort to think of some arrangement that would help him out of his absurdity. “I was sure, I mean, that if you did come your poor, dear, doting brain would be quite confused,” she presently pursued. “I can’t be a muff in public just for you, pourtant. Dear me, why do you like us so much?”
“Like you? I loathe you!”
“Je le vois parbleu bien!” she lightly returned. “I mean why do you feel us, judge us, understand us so well? I please you because you see, because you know; and then for that very reason of my pleasing you must adapt me to your convenience, you must take me over, as they say. You admire me as an artist and therefore want to put me into a box in which the artist will breathe her last. Ah be reasonable; you must let her live!”
“Let her live? As if I could prevent her living!” Peter cried with unmistakable conviction. “Even if I did wish how could I prevent a spirit like yours from expressing itself? Don’t talk about my putting you in a box, for, dearest child, I’m taking you out of one,” he all persuasively explained. “The artist is irrepressible, eternal; she’ll be in everything you are and in everything you do, and you’ll go about with her triumphantly exerting your powers, charming the world, carrying everything before you.”
Miriam’s colour rose, through all her artificial surfaces, at this all but convincing appeal, and she asked whimsically: “Shall you like that?”
“Like my wife to be the most brilliant woman in Europe? I think I can do with it.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
“Not a bit.”
“Bravely said. How little you know me after all!” sighed the girl.
“I tell the truth,” Peter ardently went on; “and you must do me the justice to admit that I’ve taken the time to dig deep into my feelings. I’m not an infatuated boy; I’ve lived, I’ve had experience, I’ve observed; in short I know what I mean and what I want. It isn’t a thing to reason about; it’s simply a need that consumes me. I’ve put it on starvation diet, but that’s no use—really, it’s no use, Miriam,” the young man declared with a ring that spoke enough of his sincerity. “It is no question of my trusting you; it’s simply a question of your trusting me. You’re all right, as I’ve heard you say yourself; you’re frank, spontaneous, generous; you’re a magnificent creature. Just quietly marry me and I’ll manage you.”
“‘Manage’ me?” The girl’s inflexion was droll; it made him change colour.
“I mean I’ll give you a larger life than the largest you can get in any other way. The stage is great, no doubt, but the world’s greater. It’s a bigger theatre than any of those places in the Strand. We’ll go in for realities instead of fables, and you’ll do them far better than you do the fables.”
Miriam had listened attentively, but her face that could so show things showed her despair at his perverted ingenuity. “Pardon my saying it after your delightful tributes to my worth,” she returned in a moment, “but I’ve never listened to anything quite so grandly unreal. You think so well of me that humility itself ought to keep me silent; nevertheless I must utter a few shabby words of sense. I’m a magnificent creature on the stage—well and good; it’s what I want to be and it’s charming to see such evidence that I succeed. But off the stage, woe betide us both, I should lose all my advantages. The fact’s so patent that it seems to me I’m very good-natured even to discuss it with you.”
“Are you on the stage now, pray? Ah Miriam, if it weren’t for the respect I owe you!” her companion wailed.
“If it weren’t for that I shouldn’t have come here to meet you. My gift is the thing that takes you: could there be a better proof than that it’s to-night’s display of it that has brought you to this unreason? It’s indeed a misfortune that you’re so sensitive to our poor arts, since they play such tricks with your power to see things as they are. Without my share of them I should be a dull, empty, third-rate woman, and yet that’s the fate you ask me to face and insanely pretend you’re ready to face yourself.”
“Without it—without it?” Sherringham cried. “Your own sophistry’s infinitely worse than mine. I should like to see you without it for the fiftieth part of a second. What I ask you to give up is the dusty boards of the play-house and the flaring footlights, but not the very essence of your being. Your ‘gift,’ your genius, is yourself, and it’s because it’s yourself that I yearn for you. If it had been a thing you could leave behind by the easy dodge of stepping off the stage I would never have looked at you a second time. Don’t talk to me as if I were a simpleton—with your own false simplifications! You were made to charm and console, to
represent beauty and harmony and variety to miserable human beings; and the daily life of man is the theatre for that—not a vulgar shop with a turnstile that’s open only once in the twenty-four hours. ‘Without it,’ verily!” Peter proceeded with a still, deep heat that kept down in a manner his rising scorn and exasperated passion. “Please let me know the first time you’re without your face, without your voice, your step, your exquisite spirit, the turn of your head and the wonder of your look!”
Miriam at this moved away from him with a port that resembled what she sometimes showed on the stage when she turned her young back upon the footlights and then after a few steps grandly swept round again. This evolution she performed—it was over in an instant—on the present occasion; even to stopping short with her eyes upon him and her head admirably erect. “Surely it’s strange,” she said, “the way the other solution never occurs to you.”