by Henry James
“The other solution?”
“That you should stay on the stage.”
“I don’t understand you,” her friend gloomed.
“Stay on my stage. Come off your own.”
For a little he said nothing; then: “You mean that if I’ll do that you’ll have me?”
“I mean that if it were to occur to you to offer me a little sacrifice on your own side it might place the matter in a slightly more attractive light.”
“Continue to let you act—as my wife?” he appealed. “Is it a real condition? Am I to understand that those are your terms?”
“I may say so without fear, because you’ll never accept them.”
“Would you accept them from me?” he demanded; “accept the manly, the professional sacrifice, see me throw up my work, my prospects—of course I should have to do that—and simply become your appendage?”
She raised her arms for a prodigious fall. “My dear fellow, you invite me with the best conscience in the world to become yours.”
“The cases are not equal. You’d make of me the husband of an actress. I should make of you the wife of an ambassador.”
“The husband of an actress, c’est bientôt dit, in that tone of scorn! If you’re consistent,” said Miriam, all lucid and hard, “it ought to be a proud position for you.”
“What do you mean, if I’m consistent?”
“Haven’t you always insisted on the beauty and interest of our art and the greatness of our mission? Haven’t you almost come to blows with poor Gabriel Nash about it? What did all that mean if you won’t face the first consequences of your theory? Either it was an enlightened conviction or it was an empty pretence. If you were only talking against time I’m glad to know it,” she rolled out with a darkening eye. “The better the cause, it seems to me, the better the deed; and if the theatre is important to the ‘human spirit,’ as you used to say so charmingly, and if into the bargain you’ve the pull of being so fond of me, I don’t see why it should be monstrous of you to give us your services in an intelligent, indirect way. Of course if you’re not serious we needn’t talk at all; but if you are, with your conception of what the actor can do, why is it so base to come to the actor’s aid, taking one devotion with another? If I’m so fine I’m worth looking after a bit, and the place where I’m finest is the place to look after me!”
He had a long pause again, taking her in as it seemed to him he had never done. “You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest domesticity of private life. I’ve no conception whatever of what the actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely dropped from me, and for all I care the theatre may go to the dogs—which I judge it altogether probably will!”
“You’re dishonest, you’re ungrateful, you’re false!” Miriam flashed. “It was the theatre brought you here—if it hadn’t been for the theatre I never would have looked at you. It was in the name of the theatre you first made love to me; it’s to the theatre you owe every advantage that, so far as I’m concerned, you possess.”
“I seem to possess a great many!” poor Peter derisively groaned.
“You might avail yourself better of those you have! You make me angry, but I want to be fair,” said the shining creature, “and I can’t be unless you are. You’re not fair, nor candid, nor honourable, when you swallow your words and abjure your faith, when you throw over old friends and old memories for a selfish purpose.”
“‘Selfish purpose’ is, in your own convenient idiom, bientôt dit,” Peter promptly answered. “I suppose you consider that if I truly esteemed you I should be ashamed to deprive the world of the light of your genius. Perhaps my esteem isn’t of the right quality—there are different kinds, aren’t there? At any rate I’ve explained to you that I propose to deprive the world of nothing at all. You shall be celebrated, allez!”
“Vain words, vain words, my dear!” and she turned off again in her impatience. “I know of course,” she added quickly, “that to befool yourself with such twaddle you must be pretty bad.”
“Yes, I’m pretty bad,” he admitted, looking at her dismally. “What do you do with the declaration you made me the other day—the day I found my cousin here—that you’d take me if I should come to you as one who had risen high?”
Miriam thought of it. “I remember—the chaff about the honours, the orders, the stars and garters. My poor foolish friend, don’t be so painfully literal. Don’t you know a joke when you see it? It was to worry your cousin, wasn’t it? But it didn’t in the least succeed.”
“Why should you wish to worry my cousin?”
“Because he’s so provoking!” she instantly answered; after which she laughed as if for her falling too simply into the trap he had laid. “Surely, at all events, I had my freedom no less than I have it now. Pray what explanations should I have owed you and in what fear of you should I have gone? However, that has nothing to do with it. Say I did tell you that we might arrange it on the day you should come to me covered with glory in the shape of little tinkling medals: why should you anticipate that transaction by so many years and knock me down such a long time in advance? Where’s the glory, please, and where are the medals?”
“Dearest girl, am I not going to strange parts—a capital promotion—next month,” he insistently demanded, “and can’t you trust me enough to believe I speak with a real appreciation of the facts (that I’m not lying to you in short) when I tell you I’ve my foot in the stirrup? The glory’s dawning. I‘m all right too.”
“What you propose to me, then, is to accompany you tout bonnement to your new post. What you propose to me is to pack up and start?”
“You put it in a nutshell.” But Peter’s smile was strained.
“You’re touching—it has its charm. But you can’t get anything in any of the Americas, you know. I’m assured there are no medals to be picked up in those parts—which are therefore ‘strange’ indeed. That’s why the diplomatic body hate them all.”
“They’re on the way, they’re on the way!”—he could only feverishly hammer. “The people here don’t keep us long in disagreeable places unless we want to stay. There’s one thing you can get anywhere if you’ve ability, and nowhere if you’ve not, and in the disagreeable places generally more than in the others; and that—since it’s the element of the question we’re discussing—is simply success. It’s odious to be put on one’s swagger, but I protest against being treated as if I had nothing to offer—to offer a person who has such glories of her own. I’m not a little presumptuous ass; I’m a man accomplished and determined, and the omens are on my side.” Peter faltered a moment and then with a queer expression went on: “Remember, after all, that, strictly speaking, your glories are also still in the future.” An exclamation at these words burst from Miriam’s lips, but her companion resumed quickly: “Ask my official superiors, ask any of my colleagues, if they consider I’ve nothing to offer.”
He had an idea as he ceased speaking that she was on the point of breaking out with some strong word of resentment at his allusion to the contingent nature of her prospects. But it only deepened his wound to hear her say with extraordinary mildness: “It’s perfectly true that my glories are still to come, that I may fizzle out and that my little success of to-day is perhaps a mere flash in the pan. Stranger things have been—something of that sort happens every day. But don’t we talk too much of that part of it?” she asked with a weary patience that was noble in its effect. “Surely it’s vulgar to think only of the noise one’s going to make—especially when one remembers how utterly bêtes most of the people will be among whom one makes it. It isn’t to my possible glories I cling; it’s simply to my idea, even if it’s destined to betray me and sink me. I like it better than anything else—a thousand times better (I’m sorry to have to put it in such a way) than tossing up my head as the fine lady of a little coterie.”
“A little coterie? I don’t know what you’re talking abo
ut!”—for this at least Peter could fight.
“A big coterie, then! It’s only that at the best. A nasty, prim, ‘official’ woman who’s perched on her little local pedestal and thinks she’s a queen for ever because she’s ridiculous for an hour! Oh you needn’t tell me, I’ve seen them abroad—the dreariest females—and could imitate them here. I could do one for you on the spot if I weren’t so tired. It’s scarcely worth mentioning perhaps all this while—but I’m ready to drop.” She picked up the white mantle she had tossed off, flinging it round her with her usual amplitude of gesture. “They’re waiting for me and I confess I’m hungry. If I don’t hurry they’ll eat up all the nice things. Don’t say I haven’t been obliging, and come back when you’re better. Good-night.”
“I quite agree with you that we’ve talked too much about the vulgar side of our question,” Peter returned, walking round to get between her and the French window by which she apparently had a view of leaving the room. “That’s because I’ve wanted to bribe you. Bribery’s almost always vulgar.”
“Yes, you should do better. Merci! There’s a cab: some of them have come for me. I must go,” she added, listening for a sound that reached her from the road.
Peter listened too, making out no cab. “Believe me, it isn’t wise to turn your back on such an affection as mine and on such a confidence,” he broke out again, speaking almost in a warning tone—there was a touch of superior sternness in it, as of a rebuke for real folly, but it was meant to be tender—and stopping her within a few feet of the window. “Such things are the most precious that life has to give us,” he added all but didactically.
She had listened once more for a little; then she appeared to give up the idea of the cab. The reader need hardly be told that at this stage of her youthful history the right way for her lover to take her wouldn’t have been to picture himself as acting for her highest good. “I like your calling the feeling with which I inspire you confidence,” she presently said; and the deep note of the few words had something of the distant mutter of thunder.
“What is it, then, when I offer you everything I have, everything I am, everything I shall ever be?”
She seemed to measure him as for the possible success of an attempt to pass him. But she remained where she was. “I’m sorry for you, yes, but I’m also rather ashamed.”
“Ashamed of me?”
“A brave offer to see me through—that’s what I should call confidence. You say to-day that you hate the theatre—and do you know what has made you do it? The fact that it has too large a place in your mind to let you disown it and throw it over with a good conscience. It has a deep fascination for you, and yet you’re not strong enough to do so enlightened and public a thing as take up with it in my person. You’re ashamed of yourself for that, as all your constant high claims for it are on record; so you blaspheme against it to try and cover your retreat and your treachery and straighten out your personal situation. But it won’t do, dear Mr. Sherringham—it won’t do at all,” Miriam proceeded with a triumphant, almost judicial lucidity which made her companion stare; “you haven’t the smallest excuse of stupidity, and your perversity is no excuse whatever. Leave her alone altogether—a poor girl who’s making her way—or else come frankly to help her, to give her the benefit of your wisdom. Don’t lock her up for life under the pretence of doing her good. What does one most good is to see a little honesty. You’re the best judge, the best critic, the best observer, the best believer, that I’ve ever come across: you’re committed to it by everything you’ve said to me for a twelvemonth, by the whole turn of your mind, by the way you’ve followed us up, all of us, from far back. If an art’s noble and beneficent one shouldn’t be afraid to offer it one’s arm. Your cousin isn’t: he can make sacrifices.”
“My cousin?” Peter amazedly echoed. “Why, wasn’t it only the other day you were throwing his sacrifices in his teeth?”
Under this imputation on her straightness Miriam flinched but for an instant. “I did that to worry you,” she smiled.
“Why should you wish to worry me if you care so little about me?”
“Care little about you? Haven’t I told you often, didn’t I tell you yesterday, how much I care? Ain’t I showing it now by spending half the night here with you—giving myself away to all those cynics—taking all this trouble to persuade you to hold up your head and have the courage of your opinions?”
“You invent my opinions for your convenience,” said Peter all undaunted. “As long ago as the night I introduced you, in Paris, to Mademoiselle Voisin, you accused me of looking down on those who practise your art. I remember how you came down on me because I didn’t take your friend Dashwood seriously enough. Perhaps I didn’t; but if already at that time I was so wide of the mark you can scarcely accuse me of treachery now.”
“I don’t remember, but I daresay you’re right,” Miriam coldly meditated. “What I accused you of then was probably simply what I reproach you with now—the germ at least of your deplorable weakness. You consider that we do awfully valuable work, and yet you wouldn’t for the world let people suppose you really take our side. If your position was even at that time so false, so much the worse for you, that’s all. Oh it’s refreshing,” his formidable friend exclaimed after a pause during which Peter seemed to himself to taste the full bitterness of despair, so baffled and cheapened he intimately felt—”oh it’s refreshing to see a man burn his ships in a cause that appeals to him, give up something precious for it and break with horrid timidities and snobberies! It’s the most beautiful sight in the world.”
Poor Peter, sore as he was, and with the cold breath of failure in his face, nevertheless burst out laughing at this fine irony. “You’re magnificent, you give me at this moment the finest possible illustration of what you mean by burning one’s ships. Verily, verily there’s no one like you: talk of timidity, talk of refreshment! If I had any talent for it I’d go on the stage to-morrow, so as to spend my life with you the better.”
“If you’ll do that I’ll be your wife the day after your first appearance. That would be really respectable,” Miriam said.
“Unfortunately I’ve no talent.”
“That would only make it the more respectable.”
“You’re just like poor Nick,” Peter returned—”you’ve taken to imitating Gabriel Nash. Don’t you see that it’s only if it were a question of my going on the stage myself that there would be a certain fitness in your contrasting me invidiously with Nick and in my giving up one career for another? But simply to stand in the wing and hold your shawl and your smelling-bottle—!” he concluded mournfully, as if he had ceased to debate.
“Holding my shawl and my smelling-bottle is a mere detail, representing a very small part of the whole precious service, the protection and encouragement, for which a woman in my position might be indebted to a man interested in her work and as accomplished and determined as you very justly describe yourself.”
“And would it be your idea that such a man should live on the money earned by an exhibition of the person of his still more accomplished and still more determined wife?”
“Why not if they work together—if there’s something of his spirit and his support in everything she does?” Miriam demanded. “Je vous attendais with the famous ‘person’; of course that’s the great stick they beat us with. Yes, we show it for money, those of us who have anything decent to show, and some no doubt who haven’t, which is the real scandal. What will you have? It’s only the envelope of the idea, it’s only our machinery, which ought to be conceded to us; and in proportion as the idea takes hold of us do we become unconscious of the clumsy body. Poor old ‘person’—if you knew what we think of it! If you don’t forget it that’s your own affair: it shows you’re dense before the idea.”
“That I‘m dense?”—and Peter appealed to their lamplit solitude, the favouring, intimate night that only witnessed his defeat, as if this outrage had been all that was wanting.
“I mean the p
ublic is—the public who pays us. After all, they expect us to look at them too, who are not half so well worth it. If you should see some of the creatures who have the face to plant themselves there in the stalls before one for three mortal hours! I daresay it would be simpler to have no bodies, but we’re all in the same box, and it would be a great injustice to the idea, and we’re all showing ourselves all the while; only some of us are not worth paying.”
“You’re extraordinarily droll, but somehow I can’t laugh at you,” he said, his handsome face drawn by his pain to a contraction sufficiently attesting the fact. “Do you remember the second time I ever saw you—the day you recited at my place?” he abruptly asked; a good deal as if he were taking from his quiver an arrow which, if it was the last, was also one of the sharpest.
“Perfectly, and what an idiot I was, though it was only yesterday!”
“You expressed to me then a deep detestation of the sort of self-exposure to which the profession you were taking up would commit you. If you compared yourself to a contortionist at a country fair I’m only taking my cue from you.”