GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“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 of the art. I sometimes shudder when I think that I was once within an ace of getting a wife and family.”

“And so your heart is dead?”

“No: it is marriage that kills the heart and keeps it dead. Better starve the heart than overfeed it. Better still to feed it only on fine food, like music. Besides, I sometimes think I will marry Mrs Simpson when I grow a little older.”

“You are jesting: you have been jesting all along. It is not possible that a woman refused your love.”

“It is quite possible, and has happened. And,” here he rose and prepared to go, “I should do the same good service to a woman, if one were so foolish as to persuade herself on the same grounds that she loved me.”

“You would not believe that she could love you on any deeper and truer grounds?” said Madge, rising slowly without taking her eyes off his face.

“Stuff! Wake up, Miss Madge; and realize what nonsense you are talking. Rub your eyes and look at me, a Kobold — a Cyclop, as that fine woman Mrs Herbert once described inc. What sane person under forty would be likely to fall in love with me? And what do I care about women over forty, except perhaps Mrs. Herbert — or Mrs. Simpson I like them young and beautiful, like you.”

Madge, as if unconsciously, raised her hand, half offering it to him. He took it promptly, and continued humorously, “And I love you, and have always done so. Who could know such a lovely woman and fine genius as you without loving her? But,” he added, shaking her fingers warningly, “you must not love me. My time for playing Romeo was over before you ever saw me; and Juliet must not fall in love with Friar Lawrence, even when he is a great composer.”

“Not if he forbids her — and she can help it,” said Madge with solemn sadness, letting her hand drop as he released it.

“Not on any account,” said Jack. “Come, he added, turning to her imperiously: “we are not a pair, you and I. I know how to respect myself: do you learn to know yourself. We two are artists, as you are aware. Well, there is an art that is inspired by nothing but a passion for shamming; and that is yours, so far. There is an art which is inspired by a passion for beauty, but only in men who can never associate beauty with a lie. That is my art. Master that and you will be able to make true love. At present you only know how to make scenes, which is too common an accomplishment to interest me. You see you have not quite finished you lessons yet. Goodbye.”

“Adieu,” said Madge, like a statue.

He walked out in the most prosaic manner possible; and she sank on the ottoman in an attitude of despair, and — finding herself at her ease in it, and not understanding him in the least — kept it up long after he, by closing the door, had, as it were, let fall the curtain. For it was her habit to attitudinize herself when alone quite as often as to other people, in whose minds the pleasure of attitudinizing is unalloyed by association with the labor of breadwinning.

Jack, meanwhile, had let himself out of the house. It had become dusk by this time; and he walked away in a sombre mood, from which he presently roused himself to shake his head at the house he had just left, and to say aloud, “You are a bold-faced jade.” This remark, which was followed by muttered imprecations, was ill-received by a passing woman who, applying it to herself, only waited until he was at a safe distance before retorting with copious and shrill abuse, which soon caused many persons to stop and stare after him. But he, hardly conscious of the tumult, and not suspecting that it had anything to do with him, walked on without raising his head, and was presently lost to them in the deepening darkness.

All this time, Charlie, who had been among the first to leave Madge’s rooms, was wandering about Kensington in the neighborhood of Herbert’s lodging. He felt restless and unsatisfied, shrinking from the observation of the passers-by, with a notion that they might suspect and ridicule the motive of his lurking, there. He turned into Campden Hill at last, and went to his sister’s. Mary usually had visitors on Sunday evenings; and some of them might help him to pass away the evening pleasantly in spite of Hoskyn’s prose. Perhaps even — but here he shook off further speculation, and knocked at the door.