Robert Orange
career. Have I helped you, or have I been a hindrance? I am perverse,
capricious--not an angel. No human influence can help me very much. I
must depend on the discipline of God. Oh, if I could know all that He
wants me to do!"
"Most of us have that desire, Brigit. At least it is better to be
damned, in the world's opinion, trying to do the will of God than
saved--doing nothing! One has to take a good many chances--even the
chance of displeasing Him--if it comes to a crisis."
"Many people would call that reckless."
"Let them call it anything," said the young man; "names do not matter.
The ghastly, unspeakable dread is to be timorous, halting, the creature
of indecision."
"We are too much alike," she sighed. "Oh, Robert, if we did not suffer
horribly within ourselves when we do wrong, I believe we should both
defy every law in the world! I am a born rebel."
More than a note of her mother's insolence was in the speech, but the
whole spirit of the dead actress seemed to possess Brigit for that
moment. Her being rippled, as it were, with the new disturbance, just as
a pond will tremble to its edges at the mere dip of a swallow's wing.
The artistic hatred of all restraint and the wild desire of liberty were
the imperious passions of her heart--more vehement than any other
feeling--even her love for Orange.
"I could fight," she said, "a visible devil, but this struggle with
moods and tastes is deadening."
"What are the moods and tastes?" he asked.
"I cannot describe them well. But music calls me; I hear it trilling,
and sobbing, and whispering everywhere; and sometimes it is so loud and
so beautiful that I wonder why every one else doesn't stop to listen.
They never do. So I sing back my answer. It is silent singing. You would
only wonder why I was so quiet all at once."
"But I have heard you sing."
"Not with my real voice, Robert. It is stronger than it used to be."
She checked herself and hesitated, stopped by a sudden scruple--a sort
of delicacy. She thought nothing at all of her beauty and never of her
fortune; but in giving Robert her voice, and the nameless ambitions
which enveloped it, she was conscious that she had made, in some way, a
renunciation.
"Say what you were going to say, dearest?"
"I cannot forget," she exclaimed desperately, "that mama was an actress.
And I remember some of the nights at the theatre.... I liked the
theatre.... I believe I could act.... I have learned the whole of
_Phedre_ and the whole of _Juliet_. That is why I live."
This avowal of her secret over-ruling instinct set free the sanguine
strength which circumstances had imprisoned, but could not destroy, in
her character. The constant effort of hiding from all observation the
irrepressible yearnings of a talent that would not be denied, had given
her that quality of mysteriousness, of dreamy habits of thought, of
languor, which, even to Robert, had looked as though she might find this
earth too rough to live on. But the despair which comes from fighting,
unsuccessfully, the world, is not that appearance of weakness which is
the result of fighting--more or less effectively--one's own energy. In
this latter issue the beaten foe joins forces obediently enough with the
conqueror, till at last the opposing elements are directed, whether for
good or evil, by one will.
"So you want to go on the stage," said Orange quietly.
She turned to him and saw, with anguish, the deep amazement his words
had not expressed.
"No," she said, "no. I have you instead. I want to devote myself to
you--to exist for you."
"Oh, don't you see, my dear child, that this is a kind of--of pity--of
anything you like, except the one thing----"
"I adore you, Robert. Oh, I can't get at what I want to say! Any talk
about love always sounds very stilted or hollow. I only know that I want
to live intensely in all that concerns you; that just to think of you
makes me perfectly happy. When I said that learning _Phedre_ and
_Juliet_ was the reason I lived, I was thinking of the time when I had
no right to think of you. Of course I loved you always, from the
beginning. It began at Chambord when I first met you. I very seldom say
these things, and it is better that they should remain unsaid for the
most part. But you must never doubt me, and I feel to-day, in spite of
all we know about each other and all we have suffered, that you are
doubting me now. You fear I don't know my own mind. Isn't this the
trouble?"
The intuition which comes to men and women through suffering has always
the certain sharpness of a surgeon's knife. It may be a reassurance to
have the inmost thought plucked at by some loving spirit, and yet it is
seldom that the touch can be given without inflicting agony. Orange
could not reply at once. In his resolve to be unselfish--to put aside
that personal equation which was nothing less than his whole nature--he
had to steel his heart to her, contradicting painfully, by curt, unfelt
phrases, the promptings of a soul turned in upon itself, desolate and
confused.
"I have been selfish and thoughtless," he said abruptly; "a missed
vocation is irreplaceable and it is also indestructible. You hear the
echo of the call as long as you live--perhaps afterwards. At your age
you could feel, but you could not wholly understand your talents. If you
had told me all this before----"
She laughed with real joyousness and clung more closely to his arm.
"I didn't tell you," she exclaimed, "because you would have said just
what you are saying now. You are the one. All the rest is a means of
forgetting you. It is something resembling happiness to be alone in the
turmoil of the world with one unspoilt illusion. This illusion in my
case is a little idea that I could be a great actress--perhaps! Don't
look grave, Robert. It makes you sad when I talk this way."
"Those who can be disillusioned have no convictions. Disillusion is the
failure of a half-belief. I learnt that long ago. But I hate the very
word in your mouth. Woe to us both if we cannot be resolute now. I
could have waited--had I seen any reason to wait. Time could make no
difference in my love. As it is, I have stolen you from yourself. But
now I have stolen you I will keep you. I cannot--cannot give you back
again to anything or anybody."
He spoke with that almost mocking tenderness which dissembles its
passion. At the practical difficulty which now confronted him, all that
was merely romantic and speculative in his soul took flight, as birds
that are frightened from a quiet orchard by the yelp of dogs. He became
aware that he was bitterly independent of the joys he had once found in
the mere spectacle of the exterior world--the play of light and shade,
the changing visions of the sky, the charm of the earth. His own
thoughts were now the sole realities, and the dulness which suddenly
came over his vision for outward things seemed to render it the more
acute and concentrated for the things of the mind. As distant hills and
tree tops show most distinctly before a storm, so every possibility
which can arise from a conflict of duties stood out with a decisive
clearness for his consideration. He had married in haste a child-bride.
There was no blinking the fact. She had the strenuous religious fibre,
and with it real Bohemian blood. She was also at the yielding age, when
a dominant influence could do much to divert or modify every natural
trait. He could not doubt that he had this power over her then. How far,
and to what purpose, should he exert it? For himself he wished to
discourage any hankering on her part for public life, and, most of all,
public life behind the footlights, under an artificial sky. No one knew
better than he that there are certain things of love, of nobility, of
temperament, of pride, in certain lives which the world at large would
rather calumniate than comprehend. People in general clung to their
opinions not because they were true, but because they were their own,
and among pretty general opinions--particularly in the year 1869--there
was a strong prejudice against handsome young women who went on the
stage. It was not in him to consider--even as an egoistic reflection to
be put aside--how far Brigit's project, carried into action, could
effect his own political career. His apprehensions were all for her and
her own content.
"Promise me," he said, "that you will always tell me when the acting
mood comes over you. Never fight it, never try to resist it, give it the
liberty to die, but also the right to live. There is an old Hindoo
proverb: 'Find the flower which can bloom in the silence that
follows--not that which precedes--the storm.' This applies perfectly to
a talent or a vocation. If the mood is there, in spite of fatigue, or
discouragement, or other claims--happiness for that matter--you may
depend that it is the ruling motive of your life and not to be
vanquished. You must follow the bent or you will suffer--suffer till you
die of it."
"How? in what way?"
"Either in your vanity or your conscience; either by the world's
judgment on your conduct or by your own estimate of your conduct. You
have no vanity, so the world doesn't count. But you have a conscience,
and that counts for all!"
He had not calculated, and he could not have foreseen, the effect of his
words. Her eyes filled with tears.
"My dearest," she said, "don't you see how trivial everything is to me
in comparison with you? But I dare not love you so much as I can! So I
encourage other enthusiasms--out of fear. Sometimes it seems as though
the extraordinary, impossible ideal would be to have you with me for
ever, and be an actress as well. But that is out of the question. And if
I had my choice--if I could be as great as Rachel or Mrs. Siddons, or
live with you on my dear rag-heap, with the jackals howling--do you
think that I would hesitate, that I could hesitate?"
"If I believed you I should be a dreadful coxcomb!"
"Risk the coxcomb," she said. "I can!"
A clanging bell and the noise of traffic on the quay recalled them to
the moment. They had barely time to reach the steamer and get on board.
A strong, cold breeze was blowing; the sun shone full on the sea, which,
near the horizon, was as green as the sky on a summer evening. But
clouds were gathering in the north-west, and the peculiar brightness
which presages rain lent a fugitive brilliancy to the atmosphere. The
town and its spires glittered; the water, frothing round the
paddle-wheels, sent its shining spray upon the brown boards of the
wharf. Brigit kissed her hands toward France.
"Soon," she exclaimed, "soon I can kiss its ground. How I love my
country and the place where you lived, Robert, as a boy!"
CHAPTER X
Lady Fitz Rewes had determined to prevent the marriage of Lord Reckage
with Agnes Carillon. She could not forget the dreadful scene with Sara
when that poor girl was endeavouring to reconcile herself to the Duke of
Marshire's proposal. Pensee had studied each person concerned in the
possible tragedy. She saw that Agnes was by no means serene, that the
portrait by Rennes somehow made no progress, that Reckage was feverish
and excitable. His bearing toward Sara during the lunch confirmed
Pensee's suspicion that the love which had existed between them as boy
and girl was still unextinguished on either side. He would have been
less than mortal, she thought, if he had not felt, with all the
bitterness of a conscious fool, that he had missed his true destiny.
Sara possessed the warmth and wealth of heart which were the complements
his own bleak nature required. Agnes Carillon, with her accurate,
invariable beauty, had a prim disposition, wholesome enough for a man of
strange, dark humours like David Rennes, but perilous always in its