Walter Besant - The Changeling

"You drive me mad with your perverseness, Molly."

"I am going to please myself. Please understand that, even if I were engaged to you, I would keep my independence. If you don't like that, take back your offer. Take it back at once." She held out both her hands, as if she was carrying it about.

"You know I can't. Molly, I love you too much, though you are a little devil."

"Then let me alone. If one is born in a theatre, one belongs to a theatre. I would rather be born in a theatre than in a West End square. Humphrey, you make me sorry that I ever listened to you."

"Well, go and listen to that fiddler fellow who calls you Molly. Curse his impudence!"

"Oh, if you had been only born differently! You belong to the people who are all alike. You sit in the stalls in a row, as if you were made after the same pattern; you expect the same jokes; you take the same too much champagne; you are like the pebbles of the seashore, all rounded alike."

"Well, what would you have?"

"The actors and show folk – my folk – are all different. As for kind hearts, how can you know, with your tables spread every day, and your champagne running like water? There's no charity where there's no poverty."

"I don't pretend to any charity."

"It is a dreadful thing to be born rich. You might have been so different if you had had nothing."

"Then you wouldn't have listened to me."

"Thank you. Listening doesn't mean consenting."

"You cannot withdraw. You are promised to me."

"Only on conditions. You want me to be engaged secretly. Well, I won't. You want me to marry you secretly. Well, I won't."

"You are engaged to me."

"I am not. And I don't think now that I ever shall be. It flattered me at first, having a man in your position following around. I should like to be 'my lady.' But I can't see any happiness in it. You belong to a different world, not to my world."

"I will lift you into my world."

"It looks more like tumbling down than getting lifted up. There is still time, however, to back out. If you dare to maintain that I ever said 'Yes,' I'll say 'No' on the spot. There!"

This sweet and loving conversation explains itself. Every one will understand it. The girl lived in a boarding-house, where she took lessons from an old actress in preparation for the stage. From time to time she went to stay with her friend – her benefactress – who had found her, after her father's death, penniless. At her country house she met, as we have seen, her old friend Dick, and the other cousin. The second meeting, outside the boarding-house, which the latter called, and she believed to be, accidental, led to other meetings. They were attended by the customary results; that is, by an ardent declaration of love. The girl was flattered by the attentions of a young man of position and apparent wealth. She listened to the tale. She found, presently, that her lover was not in every respect what a girl expects in a lover. His ideas of love were not hers. He turned out to be jealous, but that might prove the depth and sincerity of his love; suspicious, which argued a want of trust in her; ashamed to introduce her to his own people; anxious to be engaged first and married next, in secrecy; avowedly selfish, worshipping false gods in the matter of art and science; and, worst of all, ill-tempered, and boorish in his ill temper. Lastly, she was, at this stage, rapidly making the discovery that not even for a title and a carriage and a West End square ought she to marry a man she was unable to respect.

"We will now go back to the lady's bower," she said. "This talk, Humphrey, will have to last a long while."

"My dear Dick!" Molly ran into the dining-room of her dingy boarding-house, which was also the reception-room for visitors. "At last! I thought you were never coming to see me again."

"It has been a long summer. I only came home last night."

"Sit down, and let me look at you." She put him in a chair, and turned his face to the light, familiarly holding it by the chin. "You look very well, Dick. You are browned by the summer's sun, that's all."

She released his chin, and lightly boxed his ears. They had always been on very friendly terms, these two.

"Well, Dick, tell me about your summer. Has it been prosperous? Have you had adventures?" She laughed, because she knew very well the kind of adventures that this young man desired.

"Adventures come to the adventurous, Molly."

"Oh, how I envied you that day when you turned up among the tombs, covered all over with dust, looking so fit and going so free! If I were only a man, to go off with you on the tramp!"

"I wish you were, Molly. We would go off together. I've often thought of it. You should carry a mandoline; I would stick to the fiddle. We would take a room at the inn, and have a little show. You should dance and sing and twang the mandoline. I should play the fiddle and do the patter. We should have a rare time, Molly."

"We should, oh, we should! Do you remember that time when daddy let me go with him, and you came too?"

"I do. I remember how charming you looked, even then! You were about fourteen; you wore a red flannel cap. You used to take off your shoes and stockings whenever we came to a brook, and wade in it with your pretty bare feet."

"And we rested on the trunks of trees in the woods, and had dinner in the open. And you talked to all the gipsies in their own language. And one night we sat round their fire, and had some of their stew for supper. Oh! And we listened to the birds, and made nosegays of honeysuckle. And the people came to the inn at night while you played the fiddle, and daddy sang comic songs and did conjuring tricks. Oh, what a time it was!"

"And you danced. Don't forget your dance, Molly. I taught you that dance."

The girl laughed merrily. Then she threw herself into the attitude common to all dancing-girls in all ages and all countries – the arms held out and the foot pointed.

"I haven't forgotten it, Dicky. I only wish I could forget it." She sighed. "It would be better for me if I could."

"If we could go away together, Molly!" He took her hand and held it.

"Don't, Dick, don't! You make me feel a longing for the road and the country."

"There's nothing like it, Molly darlin', nothing! When the summer comes, I'm off. All the winter I live in a lonely flat, and am respectable."

"As respectable as you can be, Dick."

"Well, I put on dress clothes and get engagements. I don't mind, so that in summer I can be a tramp and a rogue and a vagabond."

"Not a rogue, Dick."

"I was born behind the scenes in a circus at St. Louis before my worthy parent ran away from his wife. It's in the blood, I suppose. I don't care, Molly, what they say." He sprang to his feet, and began to walk about. "There is no life like it. We don't want money; we don't try to be gentlefolk. We're not cooped up in cages. All we've got to do is to amuse the people. We're not stupid; we're not dull. We're not selfish; we are contented with a little. We're never tired of it. We're always trying some new business. My poor Molly, you're out of it. Pity, pity!" He sat down again, shaking his head. "And you born to it – actually born to it!"

"Well, I'm to have the next best thing to it. I'm to be an actress, at any rate."

"An actress! Well, that's something. Tell me about it, Molly."

"A serious actress – a tragic actress. It's all settled. I'm to show the world the real inwardness of Shakespeare. I'm to be the light and lamp of all other actresses. I'm to be another Siddons."

"You another Siddons? Oh, Molly!" He laughed, but not convincingly. The part of the scoffer was new to him. "You, with that face, with those lips, with those eyes? My child, you might be another Nelly Farren, but never another Siddons."