"I am better."
He came nearer again, throwing his hat aside.
"Will you let me sit down? I've had a long journey in third-class, and I feel tired. Such weather as this doesn't help to make me cheerful. I imagined Naples with a rather different sky."
Miriam motioned towards a chair, and looked drearily from the window at the dreary sea. Neither spoke again for two or three minutes. Reuben Elgar surveyed the room, but inattentively.
"What is it you want of me?" Miriam asked, facing him abruptly.
"Want? You hint that I have come to ask you for money?"
"I shouldn't have thought it impossible. If you were in need—you spoke of a third-class journey—I am, at all events, the natural person for your thoughts to turn to."
Reuben laughed dispiritedly.
"No, no, Miriam; I haven't quite got to that. You are the very last person I should think of in such a case."
"Why?"
"Simply because I am not quite so contemptible as you think me. I don't quarrel with my sister, and come back after some years to make it up just because I want to make a demand on her purse."
"You haven't accustomed me to credit you with high motives, Reuben."
"No. And I have never succeeded in making you understand me. I suppose it's hopeless that you ever will. We are too different. You regard me as a vulgar reprobate, who by some odd freak of nature happens to be akin to you. I can picture so well what your imagination makes of me. All the instances of debauchery and general blackguardism that the commerce of life has forced upon your knowledge go towards completing the ideal. It's a pity. I have always felt that you and I might have been a great deal to each other if you had had a reasonable education. I remember you as a child rebelling against the idiocies of your training, before your brain and soul had utterly yielded; then you were my sister, and even then, if it had been possible, I would have dragged you away and saved you."
"I thank Heaven," said Miriam, "that my childhood was in other hands than yours!"
"Yes; and it is very bitter to me to hear you say so."
Miriam kept silence, but looked at him less disdain fully.
"I suppose," he said, "the people you are staying with have much the same horror of my name as you have."
"You speak as loosely as you think. The Spences can scarcely respect you."
"You purpose remaining with them all the winter?"
"It is quite uncertain. With what intentions have you come here? Do you wish me to speak of you to the Spences or not?"
He still kept looking about the room. Perhaps upon him too the baleful southern wind was exercising its influence, for he sat listlessly when he was not speaking, and had a weary look.
"You may speak of me or not, as you like. I don't see that anything's to be gained by my meeting them; but I'll do just as you please."
"You mean to stay in Naples?"
"A short time. I've never been here before, and, as I said, I may as well be here as anywhere else."
"When did you last see Mr. Mallard?"
"Mallard? Why, what makes you speak of him?"
"You made his acquaintance, I think, not long after you last saw me."
"Ha! I understand. That was why he sought me out. You and your friends sent him to me as a companion likely to 'do me good.'"
"I knew nothing of Mr. Mallard then—nothing personally. But he doesn't seem to be the kind of man whose interest you would resent."
"Then you know him?" Reuben asked, in a tone of some pleasure.
"He is in Naples at present."
"I'm delighted to hear it. Mallard is an excellent fellow, in his own way, Somehow I've lost sight of him for a long time. He's painting here, I suppose? Where can I find him?"
"I don't know his address, but I can at once get it for you. You are sure that he will welcome you?"
"Why not? Have you spoken to him about me?"
"No," Miriam replied distantly.
"Why shouldn't he welcome me, then? We were very good friends. Do you attribute to him such judgments as your own?"
His way of speaking was subject to abrupt changes. When, as in this instance, he broke forth impulsively, there was a corresponding gleam in his fine eyes and a nervous tension in all his frame. His voice had an extraordinary power of conveying scornful passion; at such moments he seemed to reveal a profound and strong nature.
"I am very slightly acquainted with Mr. Mallard," Miriam answered, with the cold austerity which was the counterpart in her of Reuben's fiery impulsiveness, "but I understand that he is considered trustworthy and honourable by people of like character."
Elgar rose from his chair, and in doing so all but flung it down.
"Trustworthy and honourable! Why, so is many a greengrocer. How the artist would be flattered to hear this estimate of his personality! The honourable Mallard! I must tell him that."
"You will not dare to repeat words from my lips!" exclaimed Miriam, sternly. "You have sunk lower even than I thought."
"What limit, then, did you put to my debasement? In what direction had I still a scrap of trustworthiness and honour left?"
"Tell me that yourself, instead of talking to no purpose in this frenzied way. Why do you come here, if you only wish to renew our old differences?"
"You were the first to do so."
"Can I pretend to be friendly with you, Reuben? What word of penitence have you spoken? In what have you amended yourself? Is not every other sentence you speak a defence of yourself and scorn upon me?"
"And what right have you to judge me? Of course I defend myself, and as scornfully as you like, when I am despised and condemned by one who knows as little of me as the first stranger I pass on the road. Cannot you come forward with a face like a sister's, and leave my faults for my own conscience? You judge me! What do you, with your nun's experiences, your heart chilled, your paltry view of the world through a chapel window, know of a man whose passions boil in him like the fire in yonder mountain? I should subdue my passions. Excellent text for a copy book in a girls' school! I should be another man than I am; I should remould myself; I should cool my brain with doctrine. With a bullet, if you like; say that, and you will tell the truth. But with the truth you have nothing to do; too long ago you were taught that you must never face that. Do you deal as truthfully with yourself as I with my own heart? I wonder, I wonder."
Miriam's eyes had fallen. She stood quite motionless, with a face of suffering.
"You want me to confess my sins?" Reuben continued, walking about in uncontrollable excitement. "What is your chapel formula? Find one comprehensive enough, and let me repeat it after you; only mind that it includes hypocrisy, for the sake of the confession. I tell you I am conscious of no sins. Of follies, of ignorances, of miseries—as many as you please. And to what account should they all go? Was I so admirably guided in childhood and boyhood that my subsequent life is not to be explained? It succeeded in your case, my poor sister. Oh, nobly! Don't be afraid that I shall outrage you by saying all I think. But just think of me as a result of Jewish education applied to an English lad, and one whose temperament was plain enough to eyes of ordinary penetration. My very name! Your name, too! You it has made a Jew in soul; upon me it weighs like a curse as often as I think of it. It symbolizes all that is making my life a brutal failure—a failure—a failure!"
He threw himself upon the couch and became silent, his strength at an end, even his countenance exhausted of vitality, looking haggard and almost ignoble. Miriam stirred at length, for the first time, and gazed steadily at him.
"Reuben, let us have an end of this," she said, in a voice half choked. "Stay or go as you will; but I shall utter no more reproaches.