There’s Hearts are Trumps.
You always hated your part in that.’
‘Everyone says the season’s going to be wonderful.
You can’t expect much of a revival with me out of the cast; you won’t make a penny.’
‘I don’t care a hang about that.
The only thing that matters is your health.’
‘Oh, Christ, don’t be so magnanimous,’ she cried.
‘I can’t bear it.’
Suddenly she burst into a storm of weeping.
‘Darling!’
He took her in his arms and sat her down on the sofa with himself beside her.
She clung to him desperately.
‘You’re so good to me, Michael, and I hate myself.
I’m a beast, I’m a slut, I’m just a bloody bitch. I’m rotten through and through.’
‘All that may be,’ he smiled, ‘but the fact remains that you’re a very great actress.’
‘I don’t know how you can have the patience you have with me.
I’ve treated you foully.
You’ve been too wonderful and I’ve sacrificed you heartlessly.’
‘Now, dear, don’t say a lot of things that you’ll regret later.
I shall only bring them up against you another time.’
His tenderness melted her and she reproached herself bitterly because for years she found him so boring.
‘Thank God, I’ve got you.
What should I do without you?’
‘You haven’t got to do without me.’
He held her close and though she sobbed still she began to feel comforted.
‘I’m sorry I was so beastly to you just now.’
‘Oh, my dear.’
‘Do you really think I’m a ham actress?’
‘Darling, Duse couldn’t hold a candle to you.’
‘Do you honestly think that?
Give me your hanky.
You never saw Sarah Bernhardt, did you?’
‘No, never.’
‘She ranted like the devil.’
They sat together for a little while, in silence, and Julia grew calmer in spirit.
Her heart was filled with a great love for Michael.
‘You’re still the best-looking man in England,’ she murmured at last.
‘No one will ever persuade me to the contrary.’
She felt that he drew in his belly and thrust out his chin, and it seemed to her rather sweet and touching.
‘You’re quite right.
I’m tired out.
I feel low and miserable.
I feel all empty inside.
The only thing is to go away.’
23.
AFTER Julia had made up her mind to that she was glad.
The prospect of getting away from the misery that tormented her at once made it easier to bear.
The notices were put up; Michael collected his cast for the revival and started rehearsals.
It amused Julia to sit idly in a stall and watch the actress who had been engaged rehearse the part which she had played herself some years before.
She had never lost the thrill it gave her when she first went on the stage to sit in the darkened playhouse, under dust-sheets, and see the characters grow in the actors’ hands. Merely to be inside a theatre rested her; nowhere was she so happy.