He was too honourable to take advantage of her.
‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more,’ he quoted.
He felt sure that when they were married they would bitterly regret it if they had lived together before as man and wife.
Julia was proud of his principles.
He was a kind and affectionate lover, but in a very short while seemed to take her a trifle for granted; by his manner, friendly but casual, you might have thought they had been married for years.
But he showed great good nature in allowing Julia to make love to him.
She adored to sit cuddled up to him with his arm round her waist, her face against his, and it was heaven when she could press her eager mouth against his rather thin lips.
Though when they sat side by side like that he preferred to talk of the parts they were studying or make plans for the future, he made her very happy.
She never tired of praising his beauty.
It was heavenly, when she told him how exquisite his nose was and how lovely his russet, curly hair, to feel his hold on her tighten a little and to see the tenderness in his eyes.
‘Darling, you’ll make me as vain as a peacock.’
‘It would be so silly to pretend you weren’t divinely handsome.’
Julia thought he was, and she said it because she liked saying it, but she said it also because she knew he liked to hear it.
He had affection and admiration for her, he felt at ease with her, and he had confidence in her, but she was well aware that he was not in love with her.
She consoled herself by thinking that he loved her as much as he was capable of loving, and she thought that when they were married, when they slept together, her own passion would excite an equal passion in him.
Meanwhile she exercised all her tact and all her self-control.
She knew she could not afford to bore him.
She knew she must never let him feel that she was a burden or a responsibility.
He might desert her for a game of golf, or to lunch with a casual acquaintance, she never let him see for a moment that she was hurt.
And with an inkling that her success as an actress strengthened his feeling for her she worked like a dog to play well.
When they had been engaged for rather more than a year an American manager, looking for talent and having heard of Jimmie Langton’s repertory company, came to Middlepool and was greatly taken by Michael.
He sent him round a note asking him to come to his hotel on the following afternoon.
Michael, breathless with excitement, showed it to Julia; it could only mean that he was going to offer him a part.
Her heart sank, but she pretended that she was as excited as he, and went with him next day to the hotel.
She was to wait in the lobby while Michael saw the great man.
‘Wish me luck,’ he whispered, as he turned from her to enter the lift.
‘It’s almost too good to be true.’
Julia sat in a great leather armchair willing with all her might the American manager to offer a part that Michael would refuse or a salary that he felt it would be beneath his dignity to accept.
Or alternatively that he should get Michael to read the part he had in view and come to the conclusion that he could not touch it.
But when she saw Michael coming towards her half an hour later, his eyes bright and his step swinging, she knew he had clicked.
For a moment she thought she was going to be sick, and when she forced on her face an eager, happy smile, she felt that her muscles were stiff and hard.
‘It’s all right.
He says it’s a damned good part, a boy’s part, nineteen.
Eight or ten weeks in New York and then on the road.
It’s a safe forty weeks with John Drew.
Two hundred and fifty dollars a week.’
‘Oh, darling, how wonderful for you.’
It was quite clear that he had accepted with alacrity.
The thought of refusing had never even occurred to him.
‘And I—I,’ she thought, ‘if they’d offered me a thousand dollars a week I wouldn’t have gone if it meant being separated from Michael.’
Black despair seized her.
She could do nothing.
She must pretend to be as delighted as he was.
He was too much excited to sit still and took her out into the crowded street to walk.
‘It’s a wonderful chance.
Of course America’s expensive, but I ought to be able to live on fifty dollars a week at the outside, they say the Americans are awfully hospitable and I shall get a lot of free meals.
I don’t see why I shouldn’t save eight thousand dollars in the forty weeks and that’s sixteen hundred pounds.’ (‘He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t care a damn about me. I hate him. I’d like to kill him. Blast that American manager.’)
‘And if he takes me on for a second year I’m to get three hundred.
That means that in two years I’d have the best part of four thousand pounds.
Almost enough to start management on.’