Theatre

by William Somerset Maugham

  ‘You’ve got a pretty good opinion of yourself, haven’t you? But you’re wrong. If you want to make a success you can’t afford to have a leading man who’s not up to the mark.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’d rather marry him and be a failure than be a success and married to somebody else.’

  ‘Are you a virgin?’

  Julia giggled again.

  ‘I don’t know that it’s any business of yours, but in point of fact I am.’

  ‘I thought you were. Well, unless it means something to you, why don’t you go over to Paris with him for a fortnight when we close? He won’t be sailing till August. It might get him out of your system.’

  ‘Oh, he wouldn’t. He’s not that sort of man. You see, he’s by way of being a gentleman.’

  ‘Even the upper classes propagate their species.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Julia haughtily.

  ‘I bet you don’t either.’

  Julia did not condescend to reply. She was really very unhappy.

  ‘I can’t live without him, I tell you. What am I to do with myself when he’s away?’

  ‘Stay on with me. I’ll give you a contract for another year. I’ve got a lot of new parts I want to give you and I’ve got a juvenile in my eye who’s a find. You’ll be surprised how much easier you’ll find it when you’ve got a chap opposite you who’ll really give you something. You can have twelve pounds a week.’

  Julia went up to him and stared into his eyes searchingly.

  ‘Have you done all this to get me to stay on for another year? Have you broken my heart and ruined my whole life just to keep me in your rotten theatre?’

  ‘I swear I haven’t. I like you and I admire you. And we’ve done better business the last two years than we’ve ever done before. But damn it, I wouldn’t play you a dirty trick like that.’

  ‘You liar, you filthy liar.’

  ‘I swear it’s the truth.’

  ‘Prove it then,’ she said violently.

  ‘How can I prove it? You know I’m decent really.’

  ‘Give me fifteen pounds a week and I’ll believe you.’

  ‘Fifteen pounds a week? You know what our takings are. How can I? Oh well, all right. But I shall have to pay three pounds out of my own pocket.’

  ‘A fat lot I care.’

  6

  AFTER a fortnight of rehearsals, Michael was thrown out of the part for which he had been engaged, and for three or four weeks was left to kick his heels about till something else could be found for him. He opened in due course in a play that ran less than a month in New York. It was sent on the road; but languished and was withdrawn. After another wait he was given a part in a costume play where his good looks shone to such advantage that his indifferent acting was little noticed, and in this he finished the season. There was no talk of renewing his contract. Indeed the manager who had engaged him was caustic in his comments.

  ‘Gee, I’d give something to get even with that fellow Langton, the son of a bitch,’ he said. ‘He knew what he was doing all right when he landed me with that stick.’

  Julia wrote to Michael constantly, pages and pages of love and gossip, while he answered once a week, four pages exactly in a neat, precise hand. He always ended up by sending her his best love and signing himself hers very affectionately, but the rest of his letter was more informative than passionate. Yet she awaited its coming in an agony of impatience and read it over and over again. Though he wrote cheerfully, saying little about the theatre except that the parts they gave him were rotten and the plays in which he was expected to act beneath contempt, news travels in the theatrical world, and Julia knew that he had not made good.

  ‘I suppose it’s beastly of me,’ she thought, ‘but thank God, thank God.’

  When he announced the date of his sailing she could not contain her joy. She got Jimmie so to arrange his programme that she might go and meet him at Liverpool.

  ‘If the boat comes in late I shall probably stay the night,’ she told Jimmie.

  He smiled ironically.

  ‘I suppose you think that in the excitement of homecoming you may work the trick.’

  ‘What a beastly little man you are.’

  ‘Come off it, dear. My advice to you is, get him a bit tight and then lock yourself in a room with him and tell him you won’t let him out till he’s made a dishonest woman of you.’

  But when she was starting he came to the station with her. As she was getting into the carriage he took her hand and patted it.

  ‘Feeling nervous, dear?’

  ‘Oh, Jimmie dear, wild with happiness and sick with anxiety.’

  ‘Well, good luck to you. And don’t forget you’re much too good for him. You’re young and pretty and you’re the greatest actress in England.’

  When the train steamed out Jimmie went to the station bar and had a whisky and soda. ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be,’ he sighed. But Julia stood up in the empty carriage and looked at herself in the glass.

  ‘Mouth too large, face too puddingy, nose too fleshy. Thank God, I’ve got good eyes and good legs. Exquisite legs. I wonder if I’ve got too much make-up on. He doesn’t like make-up off the stage. I look bloody without rouge. My eyelashes are all right. Damn it all, I don’t look so bad.’

  Uncertain till the last moment whether Jimmie would allow her to go, Julia had not been able to let Michael know that she was meeting him. He was surprised and frankly delighted to see her. His beautiful eyes beamed with pleasure.

  ‘You’re more lovely than ever,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly,’ he laughed, squeezing her arm affectionately. ‘You haven’t got to go back till after dinner, have you?’

  ‘I haven’t got to go back till tomorrow. I’ve taken a couple of rooms at the Adelphi, so that we can have a real talk.’

  ‘The Adelphi’s a bit grand, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, well, you don’t come back from America every day. Damn the expense.’

  ‘Extravagant little thing, aren’t you? I didn’t know when we’d dock, so I told my people I’d wire when I was getting down to Cheltenham. I’ll tell them I’ll be coming along tomorrow.’

  When they got to the hotel Michael came to Julia’s room, at her suggestion, so that they could talk in peace and quiet. She sat on his knees, with her arm round his neck, her cheek against his.

  ‘Oh, it’s so good to be home again,’ she sighed.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ he said, not understanding that she referred to his arms and not to his arrival.

  ‘D’you still like me?’

  ‘Rather.’

  She kissed him fondly.

  ‘Oh, you don’t know how I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I was an awful flop in America,’ he said. ‘I didn’t tell you in my letters, because I thought it would only worry you. They thought me rotten.’

  ‘Michael,’ she cried, as though she could not believe him.

  ‘The fact is, I suppose, I’m too English. They don’t want me another year. I didn’t think they did, but just as a matter of form I asked them if they were going to exercise their option and they said no, not at any price.’

  Julia was silent. She looked deeply concerned, but her heart was beating with exultation.

  ‘I honestly don’t care, you know. I didn’t like America. It’s a smack in the eye of course, it’s no good denying that, but the only thing is to grin and bear it. If you only knew the people one has to deal with! Why, compared with some of them, Jimmie Langton’s a great gentleman. Even if they had wanted me to stay I should have refused.’

  Though he put a brave face on it, Julia felt that he was deeply mortified. He must have had to put up with a good deal of unpleasantness. She hated him to have been made unhappy, but, oh, she was so relieved.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Well, I shall go home for a bit and think things over. Then I shall go to London and see if I can’t get a par
t.’

  She knew that it was no good suggesting that he should come back to Middlepool. Jimmie Langton would not have him.

  ‘You wouldn’t like to come with me, I suppose?’

  Julia could hardly believe her ears.

  ‘Me? Darling, you know I’d go anywhere in the world with you.’

  ‘Your contract’s up at the end of this season, and if you want to get anywhere you’ve got to make a stab at London soon. I saved every bob I could in America, they all called me a tight-wad but I just let them talk, I’ve brought back between twelve and fifteen hundred pounds.’

  ‘Michael, how on earth can you have done that?’

  ‘I didn’t give much away, you know,’ he smiled happily. ‘Of course it’s not enough to start management on, but it’s enough to get married on, I mean we’d have something to fall back on if we didn’t get parts right away or happened to be out of a job for a few months.’

  It took Julia a second or two to understand what he meant.

  ‘D’you mean to say, get married now?’

  ‘Of course it’s a risk, without anything in prospect, but one has to take a risk sometimes.’

  Julia took his head in both her hands and pressed his lips with hers. Then she gave a sigh.

  ‘Darling, you’re wonderful and you’re as beautiful as a Greek god, but you’re the biggest damned fool I’ve ever known in my life.’

  They went to a theatre that night and at supper drank champagne to celebrate their reunion and toast their future. When Michael accompanied her to her room she held up her face to his.

  ‘D’you want me to say good night to you in the passage? I’ll just come in for a minute.’

  ‘Better not, darling,’ she said with quiet dignity.

  She felt like a high-born damsel, with all the traditions of a great and ancient family to keep up; her purity was a pearl of great price; she also felt that she was making a wonderfully good impression: of course he was a great gentleman, and ‘damn it all’ it behoved her to be a great lady. She was so pleased with her performance that when she had got into her room and somewhat noisily locked the door, she paraded up and down bowing right and left graciously to her obsequious retainers. She stretched out her lily white hand for the trembling old steward to kiss (as a baby he had often dandled her on his knee), and when he pressed it with his pallid lips she felt something fall upon it. A tear.

  7

  THE first year of their marriage would have been stormy except for Michael’s placidity. It needed the excitement of getting a part or a first night, the gaiety of a party where he had drunk several glasses of champagne, to turn his practical mind to thoughts of love. No flattery, no allurements, could tempt him when he had an engagement next day for which he had to keep his brain clear or a round of golf for which he needed a steady eye. Julia made him frantic scenes. She was jealous of his friends at the Green Room Club, jealous of the games that took him away from her, and jealous of the men’s luncheons he went to under the pretext that he must cultivate people who might be useful to them. It infuriated her that when she worked herself up into a passion of tears he should sit there quite calmly, with his hands crossed and a good-humoured smile on his handsome face, as though she were merely making herself ridiculous.

  ‘You don’t think I’m running after any other woman, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘How do I know? It’s quite obvious that you don’t care two straws for me.’

  ‘You know you’re the only woman in the world for me.’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘I don’t know what you want.’

  ‘I want love. I thought I’d married the handsomest man in England and I’ve married a tailor’s dummy.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly. I’m just the ordinary normal Englishman. I’m not an Italian organ-grinder.’

  She swept up and down the room. They had a small flat at Buckingham Gate and there was not much space, but she did her best. She threw up her hands to heaven.

  ‘I might be squint-eyed and hump-backed. I might be fifty. Am I so unattractive as all that? It’s so humiliating to have to beg for love. Misery, misery.’

  ‘That was a good movement, dear. As if you were throwing a cricket ball. Remember that.’

  She gave him a look of scorn.

  ‘That’s all you can think of. My heart is breaking, and you can talk of a movement that I made quite accidentally.’

  But he saw by the expression of her face that she was registering it in her memory, and he knew that when the occasion arose she would make effective use of it.

  ‘After all love isn’t everything. It’s all very well at its proper time and in its proper place. We had a lot of fun on our honeymoon, that’s what a honeymoon’s for, but now we’ve got to get down to work.’

  They had been lucky. They had managed to get fairly good parts together in a play that had proved a success. Julia had one good acting scene in which she had brought down the house, and Michael’s astonishing beauty had made a sensation. Michael with his gentlemanly push, with his breezy good-nature, had got them both a lot of publicity and their photographs appeared in the illustrated papers. They were asked to a number of parties and Michael, notwithstanding his thriftiness, did not hesitate to spend money on entertaining people who might be of service. Julia was impressed by his lavishness on these occasions. An actor-manager offered Julia the leading part in his next play, and though there was no part for Michael and she was anxious to refuse it, he would not let her. He said they could not afford to let sentiment stand in the way of business. He eventually got a part in a costume play.

  They were both acting when the war broke out. To Julia’s pride and anguish Michael enlisted at once, but with the help of his father, one of whose old brother officers was an important personage at the War Office, he very soon got a commission. When he went out to France Julia bitterly regretted the reproaches she had so often heaped upon him, and made up her mind that if he were killed she would commit suicide. She wanted to become a nurse so that she could go out to France too and at least be on the same soil as he, but he made her understand that patriotism demanded that she should go on acting, and she could not resist what might very well be his dying request. Michael thoroughly enjoyed the war. He was popular in the regimental mess, and the officers of the old army accepted him almost at once, even though he was an actor, as one of themselves. It was as though the family of soldiers from which he was born had set a seal on him so that he fell instinctively into the manner and way of thinking of the professional soldier. He had tact and a pleasant manner, and he knew how to pull strings adroitly; it was inevitable that he should get on the staff of some general. He showed himself possessed of considerable organizing capacity and the last three years of the war he passed at G.H.Q. He ended it as a major, with the Military Cross and the Legion of Honour.

  Meanwhile Julia had been playing a succession of important parts and was recognized as the best of the younger actresses. Throughout the war the theatre was very prosperous, and she profited by being seen in plays that had long runs. Salaries went up, and with Michael to advise her she was able to extort eighty pounds a week from reluctant managers. Michael came over to England on his leaves and Julia was divinely happy. Though he was in no more danger than if he had been sheep-farming in New Zealand, she acted as though the brief periods he spent with her were the last days the doomed man would ever enjoy on earth. She treated him as though he had just come from the horror of the trenches and was tender, considerate, and unexacting.

  It was just before the end of the war that she fell out of love with him.

  She was pregnant at the time. Michael had judged it imprudent to have a baby just then, but she was nearly thirty and thought that if they were going to have one at all they ought to delay no longer; she was so well established on the stage that she could afford not to appear for a few months, and with the possibility that Michael might be killed at any moment—it was true he said he was as safe as a house, he only said t
hat to reassure her, and even generals were killed sometimes—if she was to go on living she must have a child by him. The baby was expected at the end of the year. She looked forward to Michael’s next leave as she had never done before. She was feeling very well, but she had a great yearning to feel his arms around her, she felt a little lost, a little helpless, and she wanted his protective strength. He came, looking wonderfully handsome in his well-cut uniform, with the red tabs and the crown on his shoulder-straps. He had filled out a good deal as the result of the hardships of G.H.Q. and his skin was tanned. With his close-cropped hair, breezy manner and military carriage he looked every inch a soldier. He was in great spirits, not only because he was home for a few days, but because the end of the war was in sight. He meant to get out of the army as quickly as possible.

  What was the good of having a bit of influence if you didn’t use it? So many young men had left the stage, either from patriotism or because life was made intolerable for them by the patriotic who stayed at home, and finally owing to conscription, that leading parts had been in the hands either of people who were inapt for military service or those who had been so badly wounded that they had got their discharge. There was a wonderful opening, and Michael saw that if he were available quickly he could get his choice of parts. When he had recalled himself to the recollection of the public they could look about for a theatre, and with the reputation Julia had now acquired it would be safe to start in management.

  They talked late into the night and then they went to bed. She cuddled up to him voluptuously and he put his arms round her. After three months of abstinence he was amorous.

  ‘You’re the most wonderful little wife,’ he whispered.

  He pressed his mouth to hers. She was filled on a sudden with a faint disgust. She had to resist an inclination to push him away. Before, to her passionate nostrils his body, his young beautiful body, had seemed to have a perfume of flowers and honey, and this had been one of the things that had most enchained her to him, but now in some strange way it had left him. She realized that he no longer smelt like a youth, he smelt like a man. She felt a little sick. She could not respond to his ardour, she was eager that he should get his desire satisfied quickly, turn over on his side, and go to sleep. For long she lay awake. She was dismayed. Her heart sank because she knew she had lost something that was infinitely precious to her, and pitying herself she was inclined to cry; but at the same time she was filled with a sense of triumph, it seemed a revenge that she enjoyed for the unhappiness he had caused her; she was free of the bondage in which her senses had held her to him and she exulted. Now she could deal with him on equal terms. She stretched her legs out in bed and sighed with relief.