Part 66 (1/2)
IX.
”Glenfaba.
”Oh, my dear John Storm, is it coals of fire you are heaping on my head, or fire of brimstone? Your last letter with its torrents of enthusiasm came sweeping down on me like a flood. What work you are in the midst of! What a life! What a purpose! While I--I am lying here like an old slipper thrown up oil the sea-beach. Oh, the pity oft, the pity oft!
It must be glorious to be in the rush and swirl of all this splendid effort, whatever comes of it! One's soul is thrilled, one's heart expands! As for me, the garden of my mind is withering, and I am consuming the seed I ought to sow.
”Rosa has come. She has been here a month nearly, and is just charming, say what you will. Her thoughts have the dash of the great world, and I love to hear her talk. True, she troubles me sometimes, but that's only my envy and malice and all uncharitableness. When she tells of Betty-this and Ellen-that, and their wonderful successes and triumphs, I'm the meanest sinner that crawls.
”It's funny to see how the old folk bear themselves toward her. Aunt Rachel regards her as a sort of an artist, and is clearly afraid that she will break out into madness in spots somewhere. Aunt Anna disapproves of her hair, which is brushed up like a man's, and of her skirt, which 'would be no worse if it were less like a pair of breeches,' for she has brought her 'bike.' She talks on dangerous subjects also, and n.o.body did such things in auntie's young days.
Then she addresses the old girlies as I do, and calls grandfather 'G-rand-dad,' and like the witch of Endor generally, is possessed of a familiar spirit. Of course I give her various warning looks from time to time lest the fat should be in the fire, but she's a woman, bless her!
and it's as true as ever it was that a woman can keep the secret she doesn't know.
”Yes, the ideal of womanhood has changed since the old aunties were young; but when I listen to Rosa and then look over at Rachel with her black ringlets, and at Anna with her old-fas.h.i.+oned 'front,' I shudder and ask myself, 'Why do I struggle?' What is the reward if one gives up the fascination of life and the world? There is no reward. Nothing but solitary old-maidism, unless two of you happen to be sisters, for who else will join her shame to yours? Dreams, dreams, only dreams of the dearest thing that ever comes into a woman's arms--and then you awake and there is no one there. A dame's school, when the old father is gone, but no children of your own to love you, n.o.body to think of you, sc.r.a.ping a little here, pinching a little there, growing older and smaller year by year, looking yellow and craned like an apple that has been kept on the top shelf too long, and then--the end!
”Oh, but I'm trying so hard, so very hard, to be 'true to the higher self in me,' because somebody says I must. What do you think I did last week? In my character of Lady Bountiful I gave an old folks' supper in the soup kitchen, understood to be in honour of my return. Roast beef and plum duff, not to speak of pipes and 'baccy, and forty old people of both s.e.xes sitting down to 'the do.' After supper there was a concert, when Chaise (the fat old thief!) overflowed the 'elber' chair, and alluded to me as 'our beautiful donor,' and lured me into singing Mylecharaine, and leading the company, when we closed with the doxology.
”But 'it was not myself at all, Molly dear, 'twas my shadow on the wall,' and in any case man can't live by soup kitchens alone--nor woman either. And knowing what a poor, weak, vain woman I am at the best, I ask myself sometimes would it not be a thousand times better if I yielded to my true nature instead of struggling to realize a bloodless ideal that is not me in the least, but only my picture in the heart of some one who thinks me so much better than I am?
”Not that anybody ever sees what a hypocrite I can be, though I came near to letting the cat out of the bag as lately as last night. You must know that when I turned my back on London at the command of John Knox the second, I brought all my beautiful dresses along with me, except such of them as were left at the theatre. Yet I daren't lay them out in the drawers, so I kept them under lock and key in my boxes. There they lurked like evil spirits in ambush, and as often as their perfume escaped into the room my eyes watered for another sight of them! But in spite of all temptation I resisted, I conquered, I triumphed--until last night when Rosa talked of Juliet, what a glorious creature she was, and how there was n.o.body on the stage who could 'look' her and 'play' her too!
”What do you think I did? Shall I tell you? Yes, I will. I crept upstairs to my quiet little room, tugged the box from its hiding-place under the bed, drew out my dresses--my lovely, lovely brocades--and put them on! Then I spoke the potion speech, beginning in a whisper, but getting louder as I went on, and always looking at myself in the gla.s.s.
I had blown out the candle, and there was no light in the room but the moon that was s.h.i.+ning on my face, but I was glowing, my very soul was afire, and when I came to the end I drew myself up with eyes closed and head thrown back and heart that paused a beat or two, and said, '_I_--_I_ am Juliet, for I am a great actress!'
”Oh, oh, oh! I could scream with laughter to think of what happened next! Suddenly I became aware of somebody knocking at my door (I had locked it) and of a thin voice outside saying fretfully: 'Glory, whatever is it? Aren't you well, Glory?' It was the little auntie; and thinking what a shock she would have if I opened the door and she came upon this grand Italian lady instead of poor little me, I had to laugh and to make excuses while I smuggled off my gorgeous things and got back into my plain ones!
”It was a narrow squeak; but I had a narrower one some days before. Poor grandfather! He regards Rosa as belonging to a superior race, and loves to ask her what she thinks of Glory. He has grown quite simple lately, and as soon as he thinks my back is turned he is always saying, 'And what is your opinion of my granddaughter, Miss Macquarrie?' To which she answers, 'Glory is going to make your name immortal, Mr. Quayle.' Then his eyes sparkle and he says, 'Do you think so?--do you really think so?' Whereupon she talks further balderdash, and the dear old darling smiles a triumphant smile!
”But I always notice that not long afterward his eyes look wet and his head hangs low, and he is saying to the aunties, with a crack in his voice: 'She'll go away again. You'll see she will. Her beauty and her talents belong to the world.' And then I burst in on them and scold them, and tell them not to talk nonsense.
”Nevertheless he is beginning to regard Rosa with suspicion, as if she were a witch luring me away, and one evening last week we had to steal into the garden to talk that we might escape from his watchful eyes. The sun had set--there was the red glow behind the castle across the sky and the sea, and we were walking on the low path by the river under the fuchsia hedge that hangs over from the lawn, you know. Rosa was talking with her impetuous dash of the great career open to any one who could win the world in London, how there were people enough to help her on, rich men to find her opportunities, and even to take theatres for her if need be. And I was hesitating and halting and stammering: 'Yes, yes, if it were the _regular_ stage ... who knows? ... perhaps it might not be opened to the same objections, ...' when suddenly the leaves of the fuchsia rustled as with a gust of wind, and we heard footsteps on the path above.
”It was the grandfather, who had come out on Rachel's arm and overheard what I had said! 'It's Glory!' he faltered, and then I heard him take his snuff and blow his nose as if to cover his confusion, thinking I was deceiving them and carrying on a secret intercourse. I hardly know what happened next, except that for the five minutes following 'the great actress' had to talk with the tongues of men and angels (Beelzebub's) in order to throw dust in the dear old eyes and drive away their doubts. It was a magnificent performance, 'you go bail.' I'll never do the like of it again, though I had only one old man and one old maid and one young woman for audience. The house 'rose' at me too, and the poor old grandfather was appeased. But when we were back indoors I overheard him saying: 'After all there's no help for it. She's dull with us--what wonder! We can't cage our linnet, Rachel, and perhaps we shouldn't try.
A song-bird came to cheer us, but it will fly away. We are only old folks, dear--it's no use crying.' And on going to his room that night he closed his door and said his prayers in a whisper, that I might not hear him when he sobbed.
”He hasn't left his bed since. I fear he never will More than once I have been on the point of telling him there is no reason to think the deluge would come if I _did_, go back to London; but I will never leave him now. Yet I wish Aunt Rachel wouldn't talk so much of the days when I went away before. It seems that every night, on his way to his own room, he used to step into my empty one and come out with his eyes dim and his lips moving. I am not naturally hard-hearted, but I can't love grandfather like that. Oh, the cruelty of life! ... I know it ought to be the other way about; ... but I can't help it.
”All the same I could cry to think how short life is, and how little of it I can spare. 'Cling fast to me and hold me,' my heart is always saying, but meantime London is calling to me, calling to me, like the sea, and I feel as if I were a wandering mermaid and she were my ocean home.
”Later.--Poor, poor grandfather! I was interrupted in the writing of my letter this morning by another of those sudden alarms. He had fainted again, and it is extraordinary how helpless the aunties are in a case of illness. Grandfather knows it too; and after I had done all I could to bring him round, he opened his eyes and whispered that he had something to say to me alone. At that the poor old things left the room with tears of woe and a look of understanding. Then fetching a difficult breath he said, '_You_ are not afraid, Glory, are you?' and I answered him 'No,'
though my heart was trembling. And then a feeble smile struggled through the wan features of his drawn face, and he told me his attack was only another summons. 'I'll soon die for good,' he said, 'and you must be strong and brave, my child, for death is the common lot, and then what is there to fear?' I didn't try to contradict him--what was the good of doing that? And after he had spoken of the coming time he talked quietly of his past life, how he had weathered the storm for seventy odd years, and his Almighty Father was bringing him into harbour at last. 'I can't pray for life any longer, Glory. Many a time I did so in the old days when I had to bring up my little granddaughter, but my task is over now, and after the day is done where is the tired labourer who does not lie down to his rest with a will?'
”The doctor has been and gone. There is no ailment, and nothing to be done or hoped. It is only a general failure and a sinking earthward of the poor worn-out body as the soul rises to the heaven that is waiting to receive it. What a pagan I feel beside him! And how glad I am that I didn't talk of leaving him again when he was on the eve of his far longer journey! I have sent the aunties to bed, but Rosa has made me promise to awaken her at four, that she may take her turn at his bedside.
”Next Morning.--Rosa relieved me during the night, and I came to my room and lay down in the dullness of the dawn. But now I am sorry that I allowed her to do so, for I did not sleep, and grandfather appears to have been troubled with dreams. I fancied he shuddered a little as I left them together, and more than once through the wall I heard him cry, 'Bring him back!' in the toneless voice of one who is labouring under the terrors of a nightmare. But each time I heard Rosa comforting him, so I lay down again without going in.