“Now,” said Jack, wheeling round the instant the door closed. “What can I do for you? Your few minutes have spun themselves out to twenty.”
“Did they seem so very long?” she said, seating herself upon an ottoman and throwing her dress into graceful folds.
“Yes,” said Jack, bluntly.
“So they did to me. Won’t you sit down?”
Jack pushed an oaken stool opposite to her with his foot, and sat upon it, much as, in a Scandinavian story, a dwarf might have sat at the feet of a princess. “Well, mistress,” he said. “Things have changed since I taught you. Eh?”
“Some things have.”
“You have become great; and so — in my small way — have I.”
“I have become what you call great,” she said. But you have not changed. People have found out your greatness, that is all.”
“Well said,” said Jack, approvingly. “They starved me long enough first, damn them. Used I to swear at you when I was teaching you?”
“I think you used to. Just a little, when I was very dull.”
“It is a bad habit — a stupid one, as all low habits are. I rarely fall into it. And so you stuck to your work, and fought your way. That was right. Are you as fond of the stage as ever?”
“It is my profession,” said Madge, with a disparaging shrug. “One’s profession is only half of one’s life. Acting in London, where the same play runs for a whole season, leaves one time to think of other things. ‘‘
“Sundays at home, and fine furniture, for instance.”
“Things that they vainly pretend to supply. I have told you that my profession is only half my life — the public half. Now that I have established that firmly, I begin to find that the private and personal half, the half which is concerned with home and — and domestic ties, must be well established too, or else the life remains incomplete, and the heart unsatisfied.”
“In plain English, you have too much leisure which you can employ no better than in grumbling.”
“Perhaps so; but am I much at fault? When I entered upon my profession, its difficulties so filled my mind with hopes and fears, and its actual work so fully occupied my time, that I forgot every other consideration and cut myself off from my family and friends with as little hesitation as a child might feel in exchanging an estate for a plaything. Now that the difficulties are overcome, the hopes fulfilled (or abandoned) and the fears dispelled — now that I find that my profession does not suffice to fill my life, and that I have not only time, but desire, for other interests, I find how thoughtless I was when I ran away from all the affection I had unwittingly gathered to myself as I grew.”
“Why? What have you lost? You have your family still.”
“I am as completely estranged from them by my profession as if it had transported me to another world.”
“I doubt if they are any great loss to you. The public are fond of you, ain’t they?”
“They pay me to please them. If I disappeared, they would forget me in a week.”
“Why shouldn’t they? How long do you think they should wear mourning for you? Have you made no friends in your own way of life?”
“Friends? Yes, I suppose so.”
“You suppose so! What is the matter, then? What more do you want?”
Magdalen raised her eyelids for an instant, and looked at him. Then she said, “Nothing,” and let the lids fall with the cadence of her voice.
“Listen to me,” said Jack, after a pause, drawing his seat nearer to her, and watching her keenly. “You want to be romantic. You won’t succeed. Look at the way we cling to the stage, to music, and poetry, and so forth. Why do you think we do that? Just because we long to be romantic, and when we try it in real life, facts and duties baffle us at every turn. Men who write plays for you to act, cook up the facts and duties so as to heighten the romance; and so we all say ‘How wonderfully true to nature!’ and feel that the theatre is the happiest sphere for us all. Heroes and heroines are to be depended on: there is no more chance of their acting prosaically than there is of a picture in the Royal Academy having stains on its linen, or blacks in its sky. But in real life it is just the other way. The incompatibility is not in the world, but in ourselves. Your father is a romantic man; and so am I; but how much of our romance have we ever been able to put into practice?”
“More than you recollect, perhaps,” said Madge, unmoved (for constant preoccupation with her own person had made her a bad listener), “but more than I shall ever forget. There has been one piece of romance in my life — a very practical piece. A perfect stranger once gave me, at my mere request, all the money he had in the world.”
“Perhaps he fell in love with you at first sight. Or perhaps — which is much the same thing — he was a fool.”
“Perhaps so. It occurred at Paddington Station some years ago.”
“Oh! Is that what you are thinking of? Well, that is a good illustration of what I am saying. Did any romance come out of that? In three weeks, time you were grubbing away at elocution with me at so much a lesson.”
“I know that no romance came out of it — for you.”
“So you think,” said Jack complacently; “but romance comes out of everything for me. Where do you suppose I get the supplies for my music? And what passion there is in that! — what fire — what disregard of conventionality! In the music, you understand: not in my everyday life.”
“Your art, then, is enough for you,” said Madge, in a touching tone.
“I like to hear you speak,” observed Jack: “you do it very well. Yes: my art is enough for me, more than I have time and energy for occasionally. However, I will tell you a little romance about myself which may do you some good. Eh? Have you the patience to listen?”
“Patience!”echoed Madge, in a low steady voice. “Try whether you can tire me.”
“Very well: you shall hear. You must know that when, after a good many years of poverty and neglect, I found myself a known man, earning over a hundred a year, I felt for a while as if my house was built and I had no more to do than to put it in repair from time to time — much as you think you have mastered the art of acting, and need only learn a new part occasionally to keep your place on the stage. And so it came about that I — Owen Jack — began to languish in my solitude; to pine for a partner; and, in short, to suffer from all those symptoms which you so admirably described just now.” He gave this account of himself with a derision so uncouth that Madge lost for the moment her studied calm, and shrank back a little. “I was quite proud to think that I had the affections of a man as well as the inspiration of a musician; and I selected the lady; fell in love as hard as I could; and made my proposals in due form. I was luckier than I deserved to be. Her admiration of me was strictly impersonal; and she nearly had a fit at the idea of marrying me. She is now the wife of a city speculator; and I have gone back to my old profession of musical student, and quite renounced the dignity of past master