William Somerset Maugham 15 страница

" 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 anyt-

hing 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 bet-

ter 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 tonight? 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 dam-

ned fools to shout themselves silly. Just barnstorming, * 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 performan-

ce 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 ne-

ver thought I was, but I know good acting from bad. And what's mo-

re 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.

" It is 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 ac-

ting. 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 He-

arts are Trumps. You always hated your part in that. "

" Everyone says the season's going to be wonderful. You can't ex-

pect 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 yo-

ur 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. "

" 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 be-

cause for years she 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 cal-

mer 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 se-

emed 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. "

AFTER Julia had made up her mind to that she was glad. The pros-

pect 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 cha-

racters grow in the actors' hands. Merely to be inside a theatre res-

ted her; nowhere was she so happy. Watching the rehearsals she

was able to relax so that when at night she had her own performan-

ce 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 mana-

ged 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 ga-

ve 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 fe-

eling that her day was done. She sighed as she told herself that no-

body 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. Lam-

bert - Madame de Lambert, as Michael insisted on calling her - had

lived for many years now with her sister, Madame Falloux, at St. Ma-

lo. She spent a few days every year in London with Julia, but this ye-

ar 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 so-

mething 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 neglec-

ted her mother. She could make up for it now. She would lay herself

out to be charming. Her tenderness for Michael and her ever-pre-

sent 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 be-

fore 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 chan-

ce 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 the-

re were not more than half a dozen reporters and three camera-

men. Julia said a few gracious words to them, and Michael a few mo-

re, 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 so-

mething was going on stood at a respectful distance. The Press rep-

resentative came up and told Michael he thought he'd given the re-

porters 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 bygone age. Nothing had been chan-

ged 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' feat-

hers 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 epergne, a silver coffee-pot, a silver tea-

pot and a silver tray. Aunt Carrie and Julia's mother, Mrs. Lambert, li-

ved 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 de-

ad 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. Ex-

cept on Thursday evenings when the Abbe 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'Abbe and the Commandant came to dinner she put over

her shoulders a white lace shawl that Julia had given her. After din-

ner they played plafond for two sous* a hundred. Mrs. Lambert, be-

cause 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 Abbe 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 fri-

ends with pride, these wonderful things that came from London, and

then wrapped them up in tissue paper and put them away in cupbo-

ards. 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 could be ruinous and if he had

them in it would upset Annette. Annette was cook, housekeeper and

housemaid, she had been with Aunt Carrie for five and thirty years.

Her niece was there to do the rough work, but Angele was young,

she wasn't forty yet, and it would hardly do to have a man cons-

tantly 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 emoti-

onal. But she fell into the life very easily. Aunt Carrie had become a

Catholic on her marriage and Mrs. Lambert, when on losing her hus-

band she settled down in St. Malo, having received instructions from

the Abbe, 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 bereave-

ment in the family or one of whose grandchildren was become enga-

ged. 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 Abbe and the Comman-

dant 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 Abbe,

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 fetc-

hed a bottle of claret from the cellar. She and her sister finished

what was left of it by the end of the week.

They made a great fuss of Julia. They dosed her with tisanes, * and

were anxious that she should not sit in anything that might be tho-

ught a draught. Indeed a great part of their lives was devoted to

avoiding draughts. They made her lie on sofas and were solicitous

that she should cover her feet. They reasoned with her about the

clothes she wore. Those silk stockings that were so thin you could

see through them; and what did she wear next to her skin? Aunt

Carrie would not have been surprised to learn that she wore nothing

but a chemise.

" She doesn't even wear that, " said Mrs. Lambert.

" What does she wear then? "

" Panties, " said Julia.

" And a soutien-gorge, * I suppose. "

" Certainly not, " cried Julia tartly.

" Then, my niece, under your dress you are naked? "

" Practically. "

" C'est de la folie, " * said Aunt Carrie.

" C'est vraiment pas raisonnable, ma fille, " * said Mrs. Lambert.

" And without being a prude, " added Aunt Carrie, " I must say that

it is hardly decent. "

Julia showed them her clothes, and on the first Thursday after her

arrival they discussed what she should wear for dinner. Aunt Carrie

and Mrs. Lambert grew rather sharp with one another. Mrs. Lambert

thought that since her daughter had evening dresses with her she

ought to wear one, but Aunt Carrie considered it quite unnecessary.

" When I used to come and visit you in Jersey, my dear, and gent-

lemen were coming to dinner, I remember you would put on a tea-

gown. "

" Of course a tea-gown would be very suitable. "

They looked at Julia hopefully. She shook her head.

" I would sooner wear a shroud. "

Aunt Carrie wore a high-necked dress of heavy black silk, with a

string of jet, and Mrs. Lambert a similar one, but with her lace shawl

and a paste necklace. The Commandant, a sturdy little man with a

much-wrinkled face, white hair cut en brosse* and an imposing mo-

ustache dyed a deep black, was very gallant, and though well past

seventy pressed Julia's foot under the table during dinner. On the

way out he seized the opportunity to pinch her bottom.

" Sex appeal, " Julia murmured to herself as with dignity she follo-

wed the two old ladies into the parlour.

They made a fuss of her, not because she was a great actress,

but because she was in poor health and needed rest. Julia to her

great amazement soon discovered that to them her celebrity was an

embarrassment rather than an asset. Far from wanting to show her

off, they did not offer to take her with them to pay calls. Aunt Carrie

had brought the habit of afternoon tea with her from Jersey, and had

never abandoned it. One day, soon after Julia's arrival, when they

had invited some ladies to tea, Mrs. Lambert at luncheon thus ad-

dressed her daughter.

" My dear, we have some very good friends at St. Malo, but of co-

urse they still look upon us as foreigners, even after all these years,

and we don't like to do anything that seems at all eccentric. Natural-

ly we don't want you to tell a lie, but unless you are forced to menti-

on it, your Aunt Carrie thinks it would be better if you did not tell an-

yone that you are an actress. "

Julia was taken aback, but, her sense of humour prevailing, she

felt inclined to laugh.

" If one of the friends we are expecting this afternoon happens to

ask you what your husband is, it wouldn't be untrue, would it? to say

that he was in business. "

" Not at all, " said Julia, permitting herself to smile.

" Of course, we know that English actresses are not like French

ones, " Aunt Carrie added kindly. " It's almost an understood thing for

a French actress to have a lover. "

" Dear, dear, " said Julia.

Her life in London, with its excitements, its triumphs and its pains,

began to seem very far away. She found herself able soon to consi-

der Tom and her feeling for him with a tranquil mind. She realized

that her vanity had been more wounded than her heart. The days

passed monotonously. Soon the only thing that recalled London to

her was the arrival on Monday of the Sunday papers. She got a

batch of them and spent the whole day reading them. Then she was

a trifle restless. She walked on the ramparts and looked at the is-

lands that dotted the bay. The grey sky made her sick for the grey

sky of England. But by Tuesday morning she had sunk back once

more into the calmness of the provincial life. She read a good deal,

novels, English and French, that she bought at the local bookshop,

and her favourite Verlaine. There was a tender melancholy in his

verses that seemed to fit the grey Breton town, the sad old stone

houses and the quietness of those steep and tortuous streets. The

peaceful habits of the two old ladies, the routine of their uneventful

existence and their quiet gossip, excited her compassion. Nothing

had happened to them for years, nothing now would ever happen to

them till they died, and then how little would their lives have signifi-

ed. The strange thing was that they were content. They knew neit-

her malice nor envy. They had achieved the aloofness from the com-

mon ties of men that Julia felt in herself when she stood at the foot-

lights bowing to the applause of an enthusiastic audience. Someti-

mes she had thought that aloofness her most precious possession.

In her it was born of pride; in them of humility. In both cases it bro-

ught one precious thing, liberty of spirit; but with them it was more

secure.

Michael wrote to her once a week, brisk, businesslike letters in

which he told her what her takings* were at the Siddons and the

preparations he was making for the next production; but Charles Ta-

merley wrote to her every day. He told her the gossip of the town,

he talked in his charming, cultivated way of the pictures he saw and

the books he read. He was tenderly allusive and playfully erudite. He

philosophized without pedantry. He told her that he adored her.

They were the most beautiful love-letters Julia had ever received

and for the sake of posterity she made up her mind to keep them.

One day perhaps someone would publish them and people would go

to the National Portrait Gallery and look at her portrait, the one McE-

voy had painted, and sigh when they thought of the sad, romantic

love-story of which she had been the heroine.

Charles had been wonderful to her during the first two weeks of

her bereavement, she did not know what she would have done wit-

hout him. He had always been at her beck and call* His conversati-

on, by taking her into a different world, had soothed her nerves. Her

soul had been muddied, and in his distinction of spirit she had was-

hed herself clean. It had rested her wonderfully to wander about the

galleries with him and look at pictures. She had good reason to be

grateful to him. She thought of all the years he had loved her. He

had waited for her now for more than twenty years. She had not be-

en very kind to him. It would have given him so much happiness to

possess her and really it would not have hurt her. She wondered

why she had resisted him so long. Perhaps because he was so faith-

ful, because his devotion was so humble, perhaps only because she

wanted to preserve in his mind the ideal that he had of her. It was

stupid really and she had been selfish. It occurred to her with exulta-

tion that she could at last reward him for all his tenderness, his pati-

ence and his selflessness. She had not lost the sense of unworthi-

ness which Michael's great kindness had aroused in her, and she

was remorseful still because she had been for so long impatient of

him. The desire for self-sacrifice with which she left England burnt

still in her breast with an eager flame. She felt that Charles was a

worthy object for its exercise. She laughed a little, kindly and com-

passionately, as she thought of his amazement when he understood

what she intended; for a moment he would hardly be able to believe

it, and then what rapture, then what ecstasy! The love that he had