What can we do for Jesu's sakeWho is so high and good and great?
What can we do for Jesu's sakeWho is so high and good and great?
What can we do for Jesu's sakeWho is so high and good and great?
What can we do for Jesu's sake
Who is so high and good and great?
She turned when he had finished and without a word walked loudly to the piano, fetched the duster and rubbed out the words they had written on the blackboard. She was glaring at him.
"How absurd you are"—he was annoyed—"let us go out and get some tea." He wandered off to the door, but she did not follow. He stood just outside gazing vacantly at a stuffed jay that had an indigo eye. He looked into the room again. She was there still just as he had left her; her head bent, her hands hanging clasped before her, the dimness covering and caressing her—a figure full of sad thoughts. He ran to her and crushed her in his arms again:
"Kate, my lovely."
She was saying brokenly: "You know what I said. I've come to make it all up to you. I promised, didn't I?"
Something shuddered in his very soul—too late, too late, this was no love for him. The magic lantern looked a stupid childish toy, the smell of the acid was repulsive. Of all they had written upon the blackboard one word dimly remained:Jesu.
She stirred in his arms. "You are changed, David."
"Changed, yes, everything is changed."
"This is just like a theatre, like a play, as if we were acting."
"Yes, as if we were acting. But we are not acting. Let us go up and sit in the gallery."
They ascended the steps to the top ring of desks and looked down to the tiny platform and the white curtain. She sat fondling his hands, leaning against him.
"Have you ever acted—you would do it so well?"
"Why do you say that? Am I at all histrionic?"
"Does that mean insincere? O no. But you are the person one expects to be able to do anything."
"Nonsense! I've never acted. I suppose I could. It isn't difficult, you haven't to be clever, only courageous. I should think it very easy to be only an ordinary actor, but I'm wrong, no doubt. I thought it was easy to write—to write a play—until I tried. I once engaged myself to write a little play for some students to act. I had never done such a thing before and like other idiots I thought I hadn't ever done it simply because I hadn't ever wanted to. Heavens, how harassed I was and how ashamed! I could not do it. I got no further than the author's speech."
"Well that was something. Tell me it."
"It's nothing to do with the play. It's what the author says to the audience when the play is finished."
She insisted on hearing it whatever it was. "O well," he said at last. "Let's do that properly, at least. I'll go down there and deliver it from the stage. You must pretend that you are the enthusiastic audience. Come and sit in the stalls."
They went down together.
"Now imagine that this curtain goes up and I suddenly appear."
Kate faintly clapped her hands. He stood upon the platform facing her and taking off his hat, began:
"Ladies and Gentlemen.
"I am so deeply touched by the warmth of this reception, this utterly undeserved appreciation, that—forgive me—I have forgotten the speech I had carefully prepared in anticipation of it. Let me meet my obligation by telling you a story; I think it is true, I made it up myself. Once upon a time there was apoor playwright—something like me—who wrote a play—something like this—and at the end of the performance the audience, a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience—something like this—called him before the curtain and demanded a speech. He protested that he was unprepared and asked them to allow him to tell them a story—something like this. Well, that, too, was a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience, so they didn't mind and he began again, Once upon a time a poor playwright,—and was just about to repeat the story I have already twice told you when suddenly, without a word of warning, without a sound, without a compunction, the curtain swooped down and chopped him clean in half."
Masterman made an elaborate obeisance and stepped off the platform.
"Is that all?" asked Kate.
"That's all."
At that moment a loud bell clanged throughout the building signifying that the museum was about to close.
"Come along!" he cried, but Kate did not move, she still sat in the stalls.
"Don't leave me, David, I want to hear the play," she said archly.
"Therewasno play and thereisno play. Come, or we shall be locked in for the night."
Still she sat on. He went to her and seized her hands.
"What does it matter!" she whispered, embracing him. "I want to make it all up to you."
He was astoundingly moved. She was marvellously changed. If she hadn't the beauty of perfection she had some of the perfection of beauty. He adored her.
"But no," he said, "it won't do, it really won't. Come, I have got to buy you something at once, a ring with a diamond in it, as big as a bun, an engagement ring, quickly, or the shops will be shut."
He dragged the stammering bewildered girl away, down the stairs and into the street. The rain had ceased, the sunset sky was bright and Masterman was intensely happy.