'I'm awfully glad it's fixed up. She's accepted the part on what I've told her about it. Ordinarily she won't take anything unless she's read the play.'
It was just as well he could not see Julia's face when she heard him say this. She would have liked to answer tartly that it was not their habit when they engaged small-part actresses to let them read the play, but instead she said mildly.
'Well, I think she'll like it, don't you? It's quite a good part.'
'And you know, she'll play it for all it's worth. I believe she'll make a sensation.'
Julia took a long breath.
'It'll be wonderful, won't it. I mean, it may make her.'
'Yes, I've told her that. I say, when am I going to see you again?'
'I'll phone you, shall I? It's such a bore, I'm terribly full of engagements for the next few days.'
'You're not going to drop me just because ...'
She gave a low, rather hoarse chuckle, that chuckle which so delighted audiences.
'Don't be so silly. Oh lord, there's my bath running. I must go and have it. Good-bye, my sweet.'
She put down the receiver. The sound of his voice! The pain in her heart was unendurable. Sitting up in her bed she rocked to and fro in an agony.
'What shall I do? What shall I do?'
She had thought she was getting over it, and now that brief, silly conversation had shown her that she loved him as much as ever. She wanted him. She missed him every minute of the day. She could not do without him.
'I shall never get over it,' she moaned.
Once again the theatre was her only refuge. By an ironic chance the great scene of the play in which she was then acting, the scene to which the play owed its success, showed the parting of two lovers. It was true that they parted from a sense of duty; and Julia, in the play, sacrificed her love, her hopes of happiness, all that she held dear, to an ideal of uprightness. It was a scene that had appealed to her from the beginning. She was wonderfully moving in it. She put into it now all the agony of her spirit; it was no longer the broken heart of a character that she portrayed but her own. In ordinary life she tried to stifle a passion that she knew very well was ridiculous, a love that was unworthy of the woman she was, and she steeled herself to think as little as possible of the wretched boy who had wrought such havoc with her; but when she came to this scene she let herself go. She gave free rein to her anguish. She was hopeless with her own loss, and the love she poured out on the man who was playing opposite to her was the love she still felt, the passionate, devouring love, for Tom. The prospect of the empty life that confronted the woman of the play was the prospect of her own empty life. There was at least that solace, she felt she had never played so magnificently.
'My God, it's almost worth while to suffer so frightfully to give such a performance.'
She had never put more of herself into a part.
One night a week or two later when she came into her dressing-room at the end of the play, exhausted by all the emotion she had displayed, but triumphant after innumerable curtain calls, she found Michael sitting there.
'Hulloa? You haven't been in front, have you?'
'Yes.'
'But you were in front two or three days ago.'
'Yes, I've sat through the play for the last four nights.'
She started to undress. He got up from his chair and began to walk up and down. She gave him a glance and saw that he was frowning slightly.
'What's the matter?'
'That's what I want to know.'
She gave a start. The thought flashed through her mind that he had once more heard something about Tom.
'Why the devil isn't Evie here?' she asked.
'I told her to get out. I've got something to say to you, Julia. It's no good your flying in a temper. You've just got to listen.'
A cold shiver ran down her spine.
'Well, what is it?'
'I heard something was up and I thought I'd better see for myself. At first I thought it was just an accident. That's why I didn't say anything till I was quite sure. What's wrong with you, Julia?'
'With me?'
'Yes. Why are you giving such a lousy performance?'
'Me?' That was the last thing she expected to hear him say. She faced him with blazing eyes. 'You damned fool, I've never acted better in my life.'
'Nonsense. You're acting like hell.'
Of course it was a relief that he was talking about her acting, but what he was saying was so ridiculous that, angry as she was, she had to laugh.
'You blasted idiot, you don't know what you're talking about. Why, what I don't know about acting isn't worth knowing. Everything you know about it I've taught you. If you're even a tolerable actor, it's due to me. After all, the proof of the pudding's in the eating. D'you know how many curtain calls I got to-night? The play's never gone better in all its run.'
'I know all about that. The public are a lot of jackasses. If you yell and scream and throw yourself about you'll always get a lot of damned fools to shout themselves silly. Just barn-storming, that's what you've been doing the last four nights. It was false from beginning to end.'
'False? But I felt every word of it.'
'I don't care what you felt, you weren't acting it. Your performance was a mess. You were exaggerating; you were over-acting; you didn't carry conviction for a moment. It was about as rotten a piece of ham acting as I've ever seen in my life.'
'You bloody swine, how dare you talk to me like that? It's you the ham.'
With her open hand she gave him a great swinging blow on the face. He smiled.
'You can hit me, you can swear at me, you can yell your head off, but the fact remains that your acting's gone all to hell. I'm not going to start rehearsing "Nowadays" with you acting like that.'
'Find someone who can act the part better than I can then.'
'Don't be silly, Julia. I may not be a very good actor myself, I never thought I was, but I know good acting from bad. And what's more there's nothing about you I don't know. I'm going to put up the notices on Saturday and then I want you to go abroad. We'll make "Nowadays" our autumn production.'
The quiet, decisive way in which he spoke calmed her. It was true that when it came to acting Michael knew everything there was to know about her.
'Is it true that I'm acting badly?'
'Rottenly.'
She thought it over. She knew exactly what had happened. She had let her emotion run away with her; she had been feeling, not acting. Again a cold shiver ran down her spine. This was serious. It was all very fine to have a broken heart, but if it was going to interfere with her acting ... no, no, no. That was quite another pair of shoes. Her acting was more important than any love affair in the world.
'I'll try and pull myself together.'
'It's no good trying to force oneself. You're tired out. It's my fault, I ought to have insisted on your taking a holiday long ago. What you want is a good rest.'
'What about the theatre?'
'If I can't let it, I'll revive some play that I can play in. There's "Hearts are Trumps." You always hated your part in that.'
'Everyone says the season's going to be wonderful. You can't expect much of a revival with me out of the cast; you won't make a penny.'
'I don't care a hang about that. The only thing that matters is your health.'
'Oh, Christ, don't be so magnanimous,' she cried. 'I can't bear it.'
Suddenly she burst into a storm of weeping.
'Darling!'
He took her in his arms and sat her down on the sofa with himself beside her. She clung to him desperately.
'You're so good to me, Michael, and I hate myself. I'm a beast, I'm a slut, I'm just a bloody bitch. I'm rotten through and through.'
'All that may be,' he smiled, 'but the fact remains that you're a very great actress.'
'I don't know how you can have the patience you have with me. I've treated you foully. You've been too wonderful and I've sacrificed you heartlessly.'
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'Now, dear, don't say a lot of things that you'll regret later. I shall only bring them up against you another time.'
His tenderness melted her and she reproached herself bitterly because for years she had found him so boring.
'Thank God, I've got you. What should I do without you?'
'You haven't got to do without me.'
He held her close and though she sobbed still she began to feel comforted.
'I'm sorry I was so beastly to you just now.'
'Oh, my dear.'
'Do you really think I'm a ham actress?'
'Darling, Duse couldn't hold a candle to you.'
'Do you honestly think that? Give me your hanky. You never saw Sarah Bernhardt, did you?'
'No, never.'
'She ranted like the devil.'
They sat together for a little while, in silence, and Julia grew calmer in spirit. Her heart was filled with a great love for Michael.
'You're still the best-looking man in England,' she murmured at last. 'No one will ever persuade me to the contrary.'
She felt that he drew in his belly and thrust out his chin, and it seemed to her rather sweet and touching.
'You're quite right. I'm tired out. I feel low and miserable. I feel all empty inside. The only thing is to go away.'
23
After Julia had made up her mind to that she was glad. The prospect of getting away from the misery that tormented her at once made it easier to bear. The notices were put up; Michael collected his cast for the revival and started rehearsals. It amused Julia to sit idly in a stall and watch the actress who had been engaged rehearse the part which she had played herself some years before. She had never lost the thrill it gave her when she first went on the stage to sit in the darkened playhouse, under dust-sheets, and see the characters grow in the actors' hands. Merely to be inside a theatre rested her; nowhere was she so happy. Watching the rehearsals she was able to relax so that when at night she had her own performance to give she felt fresh. She realized that all Michael had said was true. She took hold of herself. Thrusting her private emotion into the background and thus getting the character under control, she managed once more to play with her accustomed virtuosity. Her acting ceased to be a means by which she gave release to her feelings and was again the manifestation of her creative instinct. She got a quiet exhilaration out of thus recovering mastery over her medium. It gave her a sense of power and of liberation.
But the triumphant effort she made took it out of her, and when she was not in the theatre she felt listless and discouraged. She lost her exuberant vitality. A new humility overcame her. She had a feeling that her day was done. She sighed as she told herself that nobody wanted her any more. Michael suggested that she should go to Vienna to be near Roger, and she would have liked that, but she shook her head.
'I should only cramp his style.'
She was afraid he would find her a bore. He was enjoying himself and she would only be in the way. She could not bear the thought that he would find it an irksome duty to take her here and there and occasionally have luncheon or dinner with her. It was only natural that he should have more fun with the friends of his own age that he had made. She decided to go and stay with her mother. Mrs. Lambert – Madame de Lambert, as Michael insisted on calling her – had lived for many years now with her sister, Madame Falloux, at St. Malo. She spent a few days every year in London with Julia, but this year had not been well enough to come. She was an old lady, well over seventy, and Julia knew that it would be a great joy for her to have her daughter on a long visit. Who cared about an English actress in Vienna? She wouldn't be anyone there. In St. Malo she would be something of a figure, and it would be fun for the two old women to be able to show her off to their friends.
'Ma fille, la plus grande actrice d'Angleterre,' and all that sort of thing.
Poor old girls, they couldn't live much longer and they led drab, monotonous lives. Of course it would be fearfully boring for her, but it would be a treat for them. Julia had a feeling that perhaps in the course of her brilliant and triumphant career she had a trifle neglected her mother. She could make up for it now. She would lay herself out to be charming. Her tenderness for Michael and her ever-present sense of having been for years unjust to him filled her with contrition. She felt that she had been selfish and overbearing, and she wanted to atone for all that. She was eager to sacrifice herself, and so wrote to her mother to announce her imminent arrival.
She managed in the most natural way in the world to see nothing of Tom till her last day in London. The play had closed the night before and she was starting for St. Malo in the evening. Tom came in about six o'clock to say good-bye to her. Michael was there, Dolly, Charles Tamerley and one or two others, so that there was no chance of their being left even for a moment by themselves. Julia found no difficulty in talking to him naturally. To see him gave her not the anguish she had feared but no more than a dull heartache. They had kept the date and place of her departure secret, that is to say, the Press representative of the theatre had only rung up a very few newspapers, so that when Julia and Michael reached the station there were not more than half a dozen reporters and three cameramen. Julia said a few gracious words to them, and Michael a few more, then the Press representative took the reporters aside and gave them a succinct account of Julia's plans. Meanwhile Julia and Michael posed while the camera-men to the glare of flashes photographed them arm in arm, exchanging a final kiss, and at last Julia, half out of the carriage window, giving her hand to Michael who stood on the platform.
'What a nuisance these people are,' she said. 'One simply cannot escape them.'
'I can't imagine how they knew you were going.'
The little crowd that had assembled when they realized that something was going on stood at a respectful distance. The Press representative came up and told Michael he thought he'd given the reporters enough for a column. The train steamed out.
Julia had refused to take Evie with her. She had a feeling that in order to regain her serenity she must cut herself off completely for a time from her old life. Evie in that French household would be out of place. For Madame Falloux, Julia's Aunt Carrie, married as a girl to a Frenchman, now as an old, old lady spoke French more easily than English. She had been a widow for many years and her only son had been killed in the war. She lived in a tall, narrow stone house on a hill, and when you crossed its threshold from the cobbled street you entered upon the peace of a by-gone age. Nothing had been changed for half a century. The drawing-room was furnished with a Louis XV suite under covers, and the covers were only taken off once a month to give the silk underneath a delicate brushing. The crystal chandelier was shrouded in muslin so that the flies should not spot it. In front of the chimney-piece was a fire-screen of peacocks' feathers artfully arranged and protected by glass. Though the room was never used Aunt Carrie dusted it herself every day. The dining-room was panelled and here too the chairs were under dust-covers. On the sideboard was a silver épergne, a silver coffee-pot, a silver teapot and a silver tray. Aunt Carrie and Julia's mother, Mrs Lambert, lived in the morning-room, a long narrow room, with empire furniture. On the walls in oval frames were oil portraits of Aunt Carrie and her deceased husband, of his father and mother, and a pastel of the dead son as a child. Here they had their work-boxes, here they read their papers, the Catholic La Croix, the Revue des Deux Mondes and the local daily, and here they played dominoes in the evening. Except on Thursday evenings when the Abbé and the Commandant La Garde, a retired naval officer, came to dinner, they had their meals there; but when Julia arrived they decided that it would be more convenient to eat in the dining-room.
Aunt Carrie still wore mourning for her husband and her son. It was seldom warm enough for her to leave off the little black tricot that she crocheted herself. Mrs Lambert wore black too, but when Monsieur L'Abbé and the Commandant came to dinner she put over her shoulders a white lace shawl that Julia had given her. After dinner they played plafond for tw
o sous a hundred. Mrs Lambert, because she had lived for so many years in Jersey and still went to London, knew all about the great world, and she said that a game called contract was much played, but the Commandant said it was all very well for Americans, but he was content to stick to plafond, and the Abbé said that for his part he thought it a pity that whist had been abandoned. But there, men were never satisfied with what they had; they wanted change, change, change, all the time.
Every Christmas Julia gave her mother and her aunt expensive presents, but they never used them. They showed them to their friends with pride, these wonderful things that came from London, and then wrapped them up in tissue paper and put them away in cupboards. Julia had offered her mother a car, but she refused it. For the little they went out, they could go on foot; a chauffeur would steal their petrol, if he had his meals out it would be ruinous and if he had them in it would upset Annette. Annette was cook, house-keeper and housemaid. She had been with Aunt Carrie for five and thirty years. Her niece was there to do the rough work, but Angèle was young, she wasn't forty yet, and it would hardly do to have a man constantly about the house.
They put Julia in the same room she had had as a girl when she was living with Aunt Carrie for her education. It gave her a peculiar, heart-rending sensation, indeed for a little it made her quite emotional. But she fell into the life very easily. Aunt Carrie had become a Catholic on her marriage and Mrs Lambert, when on losing her husband she settled down in St. Malo, having received instructions from the Abbé, in due course took the same step. The two old ladies were very devout. They went to Mass every morning and to High Mass on Sundays. Otherwise they seldom went out. When they did it was to pay a ceremonious call on some old lady who had had a bereavement in the family or one of whose grandchildren was become engaged. They read their papers, and their magazine, did a great deal of sewing for charitable purposes, played dominoes and listened to the radio that Julia had given them. Though the Abbé and the Commandant had dined with them every Thursday for many years they were always in a flutter when Thursday came. The Commandant, with the sailor's downrightness that they expected of him, did not hesitate to say so if something was not cooked to his liking, and even the Abbé, though a saint, had his likes and dislikes. For instance, he was very fond of sole normande, but he insisted on its being cooked with the best butter, and with butter at the price it was since the war that was very expensive. Every Thursday morning Aunt Carrie took the cellar key from the place where she had hidden it and herself fetched a bottle of claret from the cellar. She and her sister finished what was left of it by the end of the week.