A fair slope of land in buttercup-time, just when May, the capricious, melts into tender June—a slope of fertile pasture within two miles of the city of Eborsham, whose cathedral towers rise tall in the blue dim distance—a wealth of hedgerow flowers on every side, and all the air full of their faint sweet perfume, mixed with the odorous breath of the fast perishing hawthorn. Two figures are seated in a corner of the meadow, beneath the umbrage of an ancient thorn not Arcadian or pastoral figures by any means;—not Phillis the milkmaid, with sun-browned brow and carnation cheeks, not Corydon fluting sweetly on his tuneful pipe as he reclines at her feet;—but two figures which carry the unmistakable2 stamp of city life in every feature and every garment. One is a tall, slender girl of seventeen, with a pale, tired face, and a look of having outgrown her strength, shot up too swiftly from childhood to girlhood, like a fast-growing weed. The other is a man who may be any age from forty to sixty, a man with sparse grey hair crowning a high forehead, bluish-grey eyes, under thick dark brows, a red nose, a mouth that looks as if it had been made for eating and drinking rather than oratory, a heavy jaw, and a figure inclining to corpulence.
The girl's eyes are large and clear, and changeful, of that dark blue-grey which often looks like black. The delicate young face possesses no other strong claim to be admired, and would be a scarcely noticeable countenance, perhaps, save for those grey eyes.
The raiment of both man and girl is of the shabbiest. His threadbare coat has become luminous with much friction, a kind of phosphorescent brightness pervades the sleeves, like the oleaginous scum that pollutes the surface of a city river; the tall hat which lies beside him in the deep grass has3 a look of having been soaped. His boots have obviously been soled and heeled, and have arrived at that debatable period in boot-life when they must either be soled again or hie them straight to the dust-hole. The girl's gown is faded and too short for her long legs, her mantle a flimsy silken thing of an almost forgotten fashion, her hat a fabric of tawdry net and ribbon patched together by her own unskilled hands.
She sits with her lap full of bluebells and hawthorn, looking absently at the landscape, with those solemn towers rising out of the valley.
'How grand they are, father!'
The father is agreeably occupied in filling a cutty pipe, embrowned by much smoking, which he handles fondly, as if it were a sentient thing.
'What's grand?'
'The cathedral towers. I could look at them for hours together—with that wide blue sky above them, and the streets and houses clustering at their feet. There's a bird's nest in one of them, oh! so high up, squeezed behind a horrid grinning face. Do you know, father, I've stood and looked at it sometimes4 till I've strained my eyes with looking? And I've wished I was a bird in that nest, and to live up there in the cool shadow of the stone; no care, no trouble, no work, and all that blue sky above me for ever and ever.'
'The sky isn't always blue, stupid,' answered the father, contemptuously. 'Your bird's nest would be a nice place in stormy weather. You talk like a fool, Justina, with your towers, and nests, and blue skies; and you're getting a young woman now, and ought to have some sense. As for cathedral towns, for my part I've never believed in 'em. Never saw good business for a fortnight on end in a cathedral town. It's all very well for a race week, or you may pull up with a military bespeak, if there's a garrison. But in a general way, as far as the profession goes, your cathedral town is a dead failure.'
'I wasn't thinking of the theatre, father,' said the girl, with a contemptuous shrug of her thin shoulders. 'I hate the theatre, and everything belonging to it.'
'There's a nice young woman, to quarrel with your bread and butter!'
'Bread and ashes, I think, father,' she said, looking downward at the flowers, with a moody face. 'It tastes bitter enough for that.'
'Did ever any one hear of such discontent?' ejaculated the father, lifting his eyes towards the heavens, as if invoking Jove himself as a witness of his child's depravity. 'To go and run down the Pro.! Hasn't the Pro. nourished you and brought you up, and maintained you since you were no higher than that?'
He spread his dingy hand a foot or so above the buttercups to illustrate his remark.
The Pro. of which he spoke with so fond an air was the calling of an actor, and this elderly gentleman, in threadbare raiment, was Mr. Matthew Elgood, a performer of that particular line of dramatic business known in his own circle as 'the first heavies,' or, in less technical phrase, Mr. Elgood was the heavy man—the King in Hamlet, Iago, Friar Lawrence, the Robber Chief of melodrama—the relentless father of the ponderous top-booted and pig-tailed comedy. And Justina Elgood, his seventeen year old daughter, commonly called Judy?6 Was she Juliet or Desdemona, Ophelia or Imogen? No. Miss Elgood had not yet soared above the humblest drudgery. Her line was general utility, in which she worked with the unrequited patience of an East-end shirtmaker.
'Hasn't the Pro. supported you from the cradle?' growled Mr. Elgood between short, thoughtful puffs at his pipe.
'Had I ever a cradle, father?' the girl demanded, wonderingly. 'If you were always moving about then as you are now, a cradle must have been a great inconvenience.'
'I've a sort of recollection of seeing you in one, for all that,' replied Mr. Elgood, shutting his eyes with a meditating air, as if he were casting his gaze back into the past,—'a clumsy edifice of straw, bulky and awkward of shape. It might have held properties pretty well—but I don't remember travelling with it. I dare say your mother borrowed the thing of her landlady. In the days of your infancy we were at Slowberry in Somersetshire, and the Slowberry people are uncommonly friendly. I make no doubt your mother borrowed it.'
'I dare say, father. We're great people for borrowing!'
'Why not?' asked Mr. Elgood, lightly; 'give and take, you know, Judy: that's a Christian sentiment.'
'Yes, father, but we always take.'
'Man is the slave of circumstances, my dear. "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away." That's the gospel, Justina. If I have been rather in the position of the borrower than the lender, that has been my misfortune, and not my fault. Had I been the possessor of ten thousand per annum, I would have been the last of men to refuse to take a box-ticket for a fellow-creature's benefit.'
The girl gave a faint sigh, and began to arrange the bluebells and hawthorn into a nosegay somewhat listlessly, as if even her natural joy in these things were clouded by a settled gloom within her mind.
'You're in the first piece, aren't you, Judy?' inquired Matthew Elgood, after indulging himself with a snatch of slumber, his elbow deep in the buttercups, and his head rested on his hand.
'Yes, father,' with a sigh, 'the countess, you know.'
'The countess in "The Stranger," a most profitable part. Don't put on that hat and feather you wore last time we played the piece. It made the gallery laugh. I wonder whether you'll ever be fit for the juvenile lead, Judy?' he went on meditatively. 'Do you know, sometimes I am afraid you never will; you're so gawky and so listless. The gawkiness would be nothing—you'll get over that when you've done growing, I dare say—but your heart is not in your profession, Justina. There's the rub.'
'My heart in it,' echoed the girl, with a dreary laugh. 'Why, I hate it, father; you must know that. Hasn't it kept me ignorant and shabby, and looked down upon all the days of my life, since I was two years old, and went on as the child in "Pizarro?" Hasn't it kept me hanging about the wings till midnight, from year's end to year's end, when other children were snug in bed with a mother to look after them? Haven't I been told often enough that I've no talents, and no good looks to help me, and that I must be a drudge all my life?'
'No good looks! Well, I'm not so sure about that,' said the father, thoughtfully. 'Talent, I admit, you are deficient of, Judy; but your looks even now are by no means despicable, and will improve with time. You have a fine pair of eyes, and a complexion that lights up uncommonly well. I have seen leading ladies earning their three to four guineas a week with less personal advantages.'
'I wish I could earn a good salary, father, for your sake; but I should never be fond of acting. I've seen too much of the theatre. If I'd been a young lady, now, shut up in a drawing-room all my life, and brought to the theatre for the first time to see "Romeo and Juliet," I could fancy myself wanting to play Juliet; but I've seen too much of the ladder Juliet stands on in the balcony scene, and the dirty-looking man that holds it steady for her, and the way she quarrels with Mrs. Wappers the nurse, between the acts. I've read the play often, father, since you've told me to study Juliet, and I've tried to fancy her a real living woman in Verona, under a cloudless sky, as blue as these flowers—but I can't—I can only think of Miss10 Villeroy, in her whitey-brown satin, and Mrs. Wappers, in her old green and yellow brocade,—and the battered old garden scene—and the palace flats we use so often—and the scene-shifters in their dirty shirt-sleeves. All the poetry has been taken out of it for me, father.'
'That's because yours is a commonplace mind, child,' answered Mr. Elgood, with a superior air. 'Look at me, now! If I feel as dull as ditchwater when I go on the stage, the first hearty round of applause kindles the poetic fire, and the second fans it into a blaze. The divine afflatus, Judy; that's what you want, the afflatus!'
'I suppose you mean applause, father. I know I don't get much of that.'
'No, Justina, I mean the breath of the gods—the sacred wind which breathes from the nostrils of genius, which gives life and shape to the imaginings of the dramatic poet, which inspires a Kean,—and, occasionally, an Elgood. I suppose you didn't hear of their encoring my exit in Iago on Tuesday night?'
'Yes, father, I heard of it.'
'Come, Judy, we must be going,' said Mr. Elgood, raising himself from his luxurious repose among the buttercups, after looking at a battered silver watch; 'it's past four, and we've a good two miles to walk before we get our teas.'
'Oh, how I wish we could stay here just as long as we like—and then go quietly home in the starlight to some cottage among those trees over there.'
'Cottages among trees are proverbially damp, and the kind of existence you talk of—mooning about a meadow and going home to a cottage—would be intolerably dull for a man with any pretension to intellect.'
'Oh, father, we might have books and music, and flowers, and birds, and animals, and a few friends, perhaps, who would like us and respect us—if we were not on the stage. I don't think we need be dull.'
'The varied pages of this busy world comprise the only book I care to study, Justina. As for birds, flowers, and animals, I consider them alike messy and unprofitable. I never knew a man who12 had a pet dog come to much good. It's a sign of a weak mind.'
They were both standing by this time looking across the verdant, undulating landscape to the valley where nestled the city of Eborsham. The roofs and pinnacles did not seem far off, but there was that intervening sea of meadow land about the navigation whereof these wanderers began to feel somewhat uncertain.
'Do you know your way home, Judy?'
The girl looked across the meadows doubtfully.
'I'm not quite sure, father, but I fancy we came across that field over there, where there's such a lot of sorrel.'
'Fancy be hanged!' exclaimed Mr. Elgood, impatiently, 'I've got to be on the stage at half-past seven o'clock, and you lead me astray in this confounded solitary place, to suit your childish whims, and don't know how to get me back. It would be a nice thing if I were to lose a week's salary through your tomfoolery.'
'No fear of that, father. We shall find our way back somehow, depend upon it. Why, we can't go13 very far astray when we can see the cathedral towers.'
'Yes, and we might wander about in sight of them from now till midnight without getting any nearer to 'em. You ought to have known better, Justina.'
Justina hung her head, abashed by this stern reproof.
'I dare say somebody will come by presently, father, and we can ask——'
'Do you dare say? Then I don't dare say anything of the sort. Here we've been sitting in this blessed meadow full two hours without seeing a mortal, except a solitary ploughboy, who went across with a can of something half an hour ago—beer, most likely—I know the sight of it made me abominably thirsty—and according to the doctrine of averages there's no chance of another human being for the next hour. Never you ask me to come for a walk with you again, Justina, after being trapped in this manner.'
'Look, father! there's some one,' cried Justina.
'Some two,' said Mr. Elgood. 'Swells, by the14 cut of their jibs. Down for the races, I dare say.'
Eborsham was a city which had its two brief seasons of glory every year. The 'Eborsham Spring,' and the 'Eborsham Summer,' were meetings famous in the sporting world; but the spring to the summer was as Omega to Alpha in the sidereal heavens—or, taking a more earthly standard of magnitude, while beds for the accommodation of visitors were freely offered at half a crown during the spring meeting, the poorest pallet on hire in Eborsham was worth half a guinea in the summer.
The strangers approached at a leisurely pace. Two men in the spring-time of their youth, clothed in grey. One tall, strong of limb, broad of chest, somewhat slovenly of attire; loose cravat, grey felt hat, stout, sportsmanlike boots, fishing-rod under his arm. The other shorter, slighter, smaller, dressed with a certain girlish prettiness and neatness that smacked of Eton.
Both were smoking as they came slowly strolling along the field path on the other side of the irregular hawthorn hedge. The younger and smaller15 held a paper cigarette between his girlish lips. The other smoked a black-muzzled clay, which would not have been out of keeping with the costume and bearing of an Irish navvy.
They came to a gap in the hedge, which brought them close to the strollers.
'Gentlemen, can you enlighten me as to the nearest way to Eborsham?' asked Mr. Elgood, with a grandiose air, which the prolonged exercise of his avocation had made second nature.
The elder of the strangers stared at him blankly, with that unseeing gaze of the deep thinker, and went on pulling at his blackened pipe. The younger smiled kindly, and made haste to answer, with a shy eagerness—just a little stammer in his speech at first—which was not unpleasing.
'I really am at a loss to direct you,' he said. 'We are strangers here ourselves—only came to Eborsham last night.'
'For the races, I opine?' interrupted Mr. Elgood.
'Not exactly for the races,' replied the young man, doubtfully.
'You came for the races, Jim,' said the taller16 stranger, looking down at his companion as from an altitude of wisdom and experience. 'I came to see that you were not fleeced. There are no rogues like the rogues that haunt a racecourse.'
This with a dark glance at the actor.
'He looks the image of a tout,' thought the tall stranger. His fancies had been up aloft in his own particular cloudland when the wayfarers accosted him, and he was slowly coming down to the level of work-a-day life. Only this instant had he become conscious of the girl's presence.
Justina stood in the shadow of her father's bulky figure, making herself as narrow as she possibly could. Her detractors in the theatre found fault with that narrowness of Justina's. She had been disadvantageously likened to gas-pipes, May-poles, and other unsubstantial objects, and was considered a mere profile of a girl, an outline sketch, only worth half the salary that might have been given to a plumper damsel.
'Good heavens, Elgood!' the manager had exclaimed once, when Justina played a page, 'when will your daughter begin to have legs?'
The tall stranger's slow gaze had now descended upon Justina. To that bashful maiden, conscious of her gawkiness, the darkly bright eyes seemed awful as the front of Jove himself. She shrank behind her father, dazzled as if by a sunburst. There was such power in Maurice Clissold's face.
'We came here, anyhow, following the windings of yonder trout-stream,' said Clissold, with a backward glance at the valley. 'I haven't the faintest notion how we are to get back, except by turning our noses to the cathedral, and then following them religiously. We can hardly fail to get there, sooner or later, if we are true to our noses.'
Justina began to laugh, as if it had been a green-room jokelet, and then checked herself, blushing vehemently. She felt it was taking a liberty to be amused by this tall stranger.
'Perhaps time is no object to you, sir?' said Mr. Elgood.
'Not the slightest. I don't think time ever has been any object to me, except when I was gated at Oxford,' replied Clissold.
'To me, sir, it is vital. If I do not reach yon18 city before the clock strikes seven, the prospects of a struggling commonwealth are blighted.'
'Father,' remonstrated the girl, plucking his sleeve, 'what do these gentlemen know about commonwealths?'
'I have studied the subject but superficially in the pages of our friend Cicero,' said Clissold, lightly. 'Modern scholars call him Kikero, but your elder erudition might hardly accept the Kappa.'
'The commonwealth to which I allude, sir, is a company of actors now performing on their own hook at the Theatre Royal, Eborsham. If I am not on the stage before eight o'clock to-night our chances in that town are gone. The provincial public, having paid its shillings and sixpences, will not brook disappointment. You will hardly credit the fact, perhaps, sir, but there are seven places taken in the dress-circle, paid in advance, sir, further secured by a donation to the boxkeeper, for this evening's performance. Conceive the feelings of those seven dress circles, sir, if Matthew Elgood is conspicuous by his absence!'
'That must not be, sir,' returned Maurice19 Clissold, gravely. 'Pedestrian wanderings have somewhat developed my organ of locality; and if you like to trust yourself to my guidance I will do my best to navigate you in the desired direction. Is that young lady also required by the British public?'
'Yes,' responded Elgood, indifferently, 'she's in the first piece. But we might send a ballet-girl on for her part—if,' as an afterthought, 'we had any ballet.'
'The numerical strength of your commonwealth is limited, I infer from your remark,' observed Clissold, as the stroller stepped through the gap in the hedge, and joined those other strollers in the lane.
'Well, sir,—"lead on, I follow thee"—when a manager puts it to his company roundly that he must either make it a commonwealth or shut up shop altogether, the little people are generally the first to fall away.'
'The little people!'
'Yes, sir, second walking gentleman, ditto lady, second chambermaid, general utility; second old20 man, proverbially duffing, and ballet. The little people lack that confidence in their own genius which sustains a man under the fluctuations of a commonwealth. They want the afflatus, and when the ghost walks not——'
'The ghost?'
'In vulgar English—when there is no treasury, no reliable weekly stipend, the little people collapse. The second walking lady and chambermaid go home to their mothers; the second old man opens a sweetstuff shop. They fade and evanish from a profession they did nothing to adorn.'
'What is a commonwealth?' asked the younger gentleman, interested by this glimpse of a strange world.
'In a theatrical sense,' added Clissold.
'A theatrical commonwealth is a body without a head. There is no responsible lessee. The weekly funds are divided into so many shares, each share representing half a sovereign. The actor whose nominal salary is two pound ten takes five shares. The actor whose ordinary pay is fifteen shillings claims but a share and a half, and has his claim21 allowed. I have known the shares to rise to fourteen and ninepence halfpenny; I have seen them dwindle to one and sevenpence.'
'Thanks for the explanation. Does prosperity attend you in Eborsham?'
'Sir, our receipts heretofore have been but middling. Our anchor of hope is the Spring Meeting, which begins, as you are doubtless aware, to-morrow.'
'Do you remain here long?' asked Mr. Penwyn, the younger pedestrian.
'A fortnight at most. Our next engagement is Duffield, thence we proceed to Humberston, then Slingerford, after which we separate to seek "fresh woods and pastures new."'
Mr. Penwyn looked at the vagabond wonderingly. The man spoke so lightly of his fortuitous life. James Penwyn, of Penwyn Manor, Cornwall, had been brought up like the Danish princess who discovered the presence of the pea under seven feather beds and seven mattresses. He had never been inconvenienced in his life; and this encounter with a fellow-creature, who anatomically resembled22 himself, and yet belonged to a world so wide apart from his world, at once interested and amused him. He pitied the stroller with a serio-comic pity, as he might have compassionated an octopus in an uncomfortable position.
Perhaps there was never in this world a better natured youth than this James Penwyn. He had not the knack of sending his thoughts far afield, never lost himself in a tangle of speculative fancies, like his dark-eyed, wide-browed friend and master, Maurice Clissold, but within its somewhat narrow limit his mind was clear as a crystal streamlet. His first thought in every relation of life was to do a kindness. He was a man whom sponges of every order, and college scouts, and cabmen, and tavern waiters adore; and for whom the wise and prudent apprehend a youth of waste and riot, and an afterlife of ruin.
'I'll tell you what,' said he with a friendly air. 'We'll come to the theatre to-night and see you act—and the young lady,' with a critical glance at Justina, who walked close beside her father, and did her best to extinguish herself in the shadow of23 Mr. Elgood's bulky form. It was as much as James Penwyn could do to get a glimpse of the girl's face, which had a pale, tired look just now. 'Humph!' thought James, 'fine eyes; but not particularly pretty,—rather a washed-out look.'
'Sir,' said Mr. Elgood, 'you will confer at once honour and substantial benefit upon us poor players. And if you like to take a peep at life behind the scenes, my position in the theatre warrants my admitting you to that exoteric region.'
'I should like it of all things, and we can sup together afterwards. They've a decent cook at the inn where my friend and I are staying, though it's only a roadside tavern. You know it, perhaps—the "Waterfowl," half a mile out of the town. It's my friend's fancy that we should stop there.'
'It's your friend's necessity that he should avoid costly hotels,' said Maurice, lightly.
They had crossed a couple of meadows, where young lambs scuttled off at the sight of them, bleating vehemently, and now came to a green lane, a long grassy gully between tall hedges, where the earliest of the dog-roses were budding, creamy white,24 amidst tender green leaves. Mr. Penwyn took advantage of the change to slip behind Mr. Elgood and place himself beside Justina. Maurice looked after him darkly. A too general worship of the fair sex was one of James Penwyn's foibles.
No, decidedly she was not pretty, thought James, after a closer inspection of the pale young face, with its somewhat pensive mouth and greyish-blue eyes. She blushed a little as he looked at her, and the delicate rose tint became the oval cheek. All the lines of her face were too sharp, for want of that filling out and rounding of angles which is the ripening of beauty. She was like a pale greenish-hued peach on a wall in early June, to which July and August will bring roundness, velvety texture, and richest bloom.
'I hope you are not very tired,' said James, gently.
'Not very,' answered Justina, with an involuntary sigh. 'We had a long rehearsal this morning.'
'Yes, there always must be long rehearsals while there are stupid people in a theatre,' interjected25 Mr. Elgood, with a sharpness which made the remark sound personal.
'We are getting up a burlesque for the race nights, gentlemen,' continued the actor,—'"Faust and Marguerite"—the last popular thing in London, and my daughter knows as much about burlesque business as an eating-house waiter knows of a holiday.'
'Are you fond of acting?' asked James, confidentially, ignoring Mr. Elgood's remarks.
'I hate it,' answered Justina, less shyly than she had spoken before. There was something friendly in the young man's voice and manner which invited confidence; and then he was so pleasant to look at, with his small clearly-cut features, light auburn moustache, crisp auburn hair cut close to the well-shaped head, garments of rough grey tweed, which looked more distinguished than any clothes Justina had ever seen before; thick cable chain and pendent locket—a large, dull gold locket, with a Gothic monogram in black enamel—tawny gloves upon the small hands,—altogether a very different person from the tall man in the shabby shooting coat,26 leather gaiters, and bulky boots, who walked on the other side of Mr. Elgood. Justina was young enough to be impressed by externals.
'Hate it?' exclaimed Mr. Penwyn; 'I thought actresses always adored the stage, and looked forward to acquiring the fame of an O'Neil or a Faucit.'
'Do they?' said Justina; 'those I know are like horses in a mill, and go the same round year after year. When I think that I may have to lead that kind of life till I die of old age, I almost feel that I should like to drown myself, if it wasn't wicked; but then I haven't any talent. I suppose it would all seem different if I were clever.'
'Aren't you clever?' asked James, smiling at her simplicity. Although not pretty she was far from unpleasing. He was amused—interested even. But then he was always ready to interest himself in any tolerably attractive young woman.
Maurice Clissold fell away from the actor, and walked beside his friend, overlooking James and Justina from his superior height. There was plenty of space in the wide green lane for four to walk abreast.
'No,' said Justina, confidentially, not wishing her father to hear ungrateful murmurs against the art he respected, 'I believe I'm very stupid. If there is a point to be made I generally miss it—speak too fast, or too slow, or drop my voice at the end of a speech, or raise it too soon. Even in Fran?ois I didn't get a round the other night. You know Fran?ois?'
'Haven't the honour of his acquaintance.'
'The page in "Richelieu." He has a grand speech. One is bound to get a tremendous round of applause; but somehow I missed it. Father said he should like to have boxed my ears.'
'He didn't do it, I hope.'
'No, but it was almost as bad. He said it before everybody in the green-room.'
'I understand—like a fellow saying something unpleasant of one at one's club.'
They came to the end of the green lane at last. It opened upon a level sweep of land, across which they saw the city, all its roofs and walls steeped in the westering sunlight. The ground was marshy, and between low rush-grown banks gently flowed the Ebor, a narrow river that wound its sinuous28 course around the outskirts of Eborsham, without entering the city.
'I have not led you astray, you see, sir,' said Maurice; 'behold the cathedral. Yonder path by the water's edge will bring us to the lower end of the town.'
'We have to thank you for extrication from a difficulty, sir,' replied Mr. Elgood, with dignity. 'You have brought us a shorter way than that which my daughter and I traversed when we came out this afternoon.'
They followed the river path—a towpath along which slow, clumsy horses were wont to drag the lingering chain of a heavily-laden barge. The dark green rushes shivered in the west wind—the slow river was gently rippled—the city had a look of unspeakable stillness—like a city in a picture.
Half way along the towpath they encountered some stragglers—a man laden with oaken mats, who walked wide of his companions on the marshy ground outside the path—a boy running here and there at random, chasing the small yellow butterflies, and shouting at them in the ardour of the chase—an29 elderly woman of the gipsy race, carrying a string of light fancy baskets across her shoulder.
'That's the worst of a race meeting,' said James Penwyn, with reference to these nomads. 'It brings together such a lot of rabble.'
One of the rabble stopped and blocked his pathway. It was the elderly gipsy woman.
'Let me tell you your fortune, my pretty gentleman,' she said, pouncing on Mr. Penwyn, as if she had discovered his superior wealth at a glance. 'Cross the poor gipsy's hand with a bit of silver—half a crown won't hurt you—my pretty gentleman. You've riches in your face—you've never known what it is to want a sovereign, and never will. The world was made for such as you.'
'Avaunt, harridan!' cried the tragedian, 'and suffer us to proceed.'
'What, you'd like to spoil my market, would you?' cried the sibyl, vindictively. 'No one was ever a penny the richer for your generosity, and no one will be a penny the worse off when you're dead and gone, except yourself. Let me tell your fortune, pretty gentleman,' she went on, laying a persuasive30 hand on James Penwyn's grey sleeve, and keeping up with the pedestrians as they strove to pass her. 'There's plenty of pleasant things the old gipsy woman can tell you. You're a gentleman that likes a dark blue eye, and there's an eye that looks kindly upon you now, and though there's crosses for true lovers, all will come out happy in the end, if you'll listen to the old gipsy.'
James laughed, and flung the prophetess a florin.
'Show me your hand, kind gentleman,' she urged, after a string of thanks and benedictions, 'your left hand. Yes, there's the mount of Venus, and not an ugly line across it, and you've a long thumb, my pretty gentleman, long between the first joint and the second—that means strength of will, for the thumb is Jupiter, and rules the house of life. Don't take your hand away, pretty gentleman. Let's see the line——'
'What's the matter, mother?' asked James, as the woman stopped in the middle of a sentence, still holding his hand and staring at the palm steadfastly with a scared look.
'What's that?' she asked, pointing to a short indented line across the palm.
'Why, what keen eyes you have, old lady! That's the mark of a hole I dug in my palm two years ago, cutting a tough bit of cavendish. My scout told me I was bound to have lockjaw, but I didn't realize his expectations. I suppose lockjaw doesn't run in our family.'
'Right across the line of life,' muttered the gipsy, still examining the seam left by the knife upon the pinkish, womanish palm.
'Does that mean anything bad—that I am to die young, for instance?'
'The scar of a knife can't overrule the planets,' replied the sibyl, sententiously.
James Penwyn and Maurice Clissold went to the Eborsham Theatre as soon as they had eaten their dinner and smoked a single cigar apiece, lounging by the open window in the gloaming, talking over their afternoon's adventure.
'What a fellow you are, Jim!' cried Maurice, with a half-contemptuous, half-compassionate air, as for the foolishness of a child. 'To hear you go on about that scarecrow of a girl, one would suppose you had never seen a pretty woman in your life.'
'I never saw prettier eyes,' said James, 'and she has a manner that a fellow might easily fall in love with—so simple, so childish, so confiding.'
'Which means that she gazed with undisguised admiration upon the magnificent Squire Penwyn, of Penwyn Manor. A woman need only flatter you, Jim, for you to think her a Venus.'
'That poor little thing didn't flatter me. She's a great deal too innocent.'
'No, she only admired you innocently; opening those big blue eyes of hers to their widest in a gaze of rapture. Was it the locket, or the studs, or the moustache, I wonder, that struck her most?'
'Don't be a fool, Clissold. If we are to go to the theatre, we'd better not waste any more time. I want to see what kind of an actor our friend is.'
'Student of humanity,' jeered Maurice, 'even a provincial player is not beneath your notice. Cuvier was profound upon spiders. Penwyn has a mind of a wider range.'
'What is his name, by-the-bye?' mused James, thinking of Mr. Elgood. 'We don't even know his name, and we've asked him to supper. That's rather awkward, isn't it?'
'Be sure he will come. No doubt he has already speculated on the possibility of borrowing five pounds from you.'
Mr. Penwyn rang the bell and gave his orders with that easy air of a man unaccustomed to count34 the cost. The best supper the 'Waterfowl' could provide, at half-past eleven.
They walked along the lonely country road into Eborsham. The 'Waterfowl Inn' was upon one of the quietest, most obscure roads leading outside the city; not the great coach road to London, bordered for a mile beyond the town by snug villas, and band-boxical detached cottages—orderly homes of retired traders—but a by-road leading to a village or two, of no consequence save to the few humble folks who lived in them.
This road followed the wind of the river which traversed the lower end of Eborsham, and it was for its vicinity to the river, and a something picturesque in its aspect, that the two friends had chosen the 'Waterfowl' as their resting place. There was a small garden behind the inn which sloped to the edge of the stream, and a rustic summerhouse where the young men smoked their pipes after dinner.
Between the 'Waterfowl' and Eborsham the landscape was low and flat; on one side a narrow strip of marshy ground between road and river, with a scrubby brush here and there marking the boundary,35 on the other a tall neglected hedgerow at the top of a steep bank, divided from the road by a wide weedy ditch.
The two friends entered Eborsham through a Gothic archway called Lowgate. The old town had been a strongly fortified city, famous for its walls, and there were several of these stone gateways. The theatre stood in the angle of a small square, almost overshadowed by the mighty towers of the cathedral, as if the stage had gone to the church for sanctuary and protection from the intolerance of bigots.
Here Mr. Penwyn and Mr. Clissold placed themselves among the select few of the dress-circle, a cool and airy range of seats, whose sparsely scattered occupants listened with rapt attention to the gloomy prosings of 'The Stranger.' James Penwyn was not ravished by that Germanic drama. Even Mrs. Haller bored him. She dropped her h's, and expressed the emotions of grief and remorse by spasmodic chokings and catchings of her breath. But Mr. Penwyn lighted up a little when the Countess appeared, for the Countess had the large melancholy36 blue eyes of the girl he had met in the meadow.
Miss Elgood did not look her best on the stage. Tall, slim, and willow-waisted, sharp of elbow and angular of shoulder, dressed in cheap finery, soiled satin, tarnished silver lace, murky marabouts, badly painted with two dabs of rouge that were painfully visible upon the pure pale of her young cheeks. Artistically, Justina was a failure, and feeling herself a failure suffered from an inability to dispose of her arms, and a lurking conviction that the audience regarded her with loathing.
Mr. Clissold exchanged his front seat for a place on the hindmost bench before 'The Stranger' was halfway through his troubles, and here, secure in the shade, slept comfortably. James Penwyn endured two acts and a half, and then, remembering Mr. Elgood's offer to show him life behind the scenes, slipped quietly out of the dress-circle, and asked the boxkeeper how he was to get to the side scenes.
That official, sweetened by a liberal donation, unlocked a little door behind the proscenium box, a door sacred to the manager, and let Mr. Penwyn37 through into the mystic world of behind the scenes. He would hardly have done such a thing under a responsible lessee, but in a commonwealth morals become relaxed.
The mystic world looked dark and dusty, and smelt of gas and dirt, to the unaccustomed senses of Mr. Penwyn.
The voices on the stage sounded loud and harsh now that they were so near his ear. There was hardly room for him to move between the side scenes and the wall—indeed, it was only by screwing himself against this whitewashed wall that he made his way in the direction which a scene-shifter had indicated as the way to the green-room.
Mr. Penwyn's experience of life had never before led him behind the scenes. He had a vague idea that a green-room was a dazzling saloon, lighted by crystal chandeliers, lined with mirrors, furnished with divans of ruby velvet, an idealized copy of a club-house smoking-room. He found himself in a small dingy chamber, carpetless, curtainless, uncleanly, provided with narrow baize-covered benches and embellished with one cloudy looking-glass,38 on either side whereof flared an unscreened gas jet.
Here over the narrow wooden mantelshelf hung castes of pieces in preparation, 'Jack Sheppard,' 'Delicate Ground,' 'Courier of Lyons,' 'Box and Cox,' a wide range of dramatic art, and calls for next day's rehearsal. Here, in divers attitudes of weariness, lounged various members of the dramatic commonwealth; among them Mr. Elgood, in the frogged coat, crimson worsted pantaloons and Hessian boots of the Baron; and Justina, seated disconsolately, with her limp satin trailing over the narrow bench beside her, studying her part in the piece for to-morrow night.
'My dear sir,' exclaimed Matthew Elgood, shaking hands with enthusiasm, 'this is kind! Dempson,'—this to a gentleman in mufti, small, sallow, close-cropped, and smelling of stale tobacco—'this is my pioneer of to-day. Mr. Dempson, Mr.?—stay, we did not exchange cards.'
'Penwyn,' said James, smiling.
Mr. Elgood stared at the speaker curiously, as if he hardly believed his own ears, as if this39 name of Penwyn had some strange significance for him.
'Penwyn,' he repeated, 'that's a Cornish name isn't it?'
'By Tre, Pol, and Pen you may know the Cornish men. There is nothing more Cornish; I was born and brought up near London, but my race belongs to the Cornish soil. We were indigenous at Penwyn, I believe, the founders and earliest inhabitants of the settlement. Do you know Cornwall?'
'Not intimately. Merely as a traveller.'
'Were you ever at Penwyn?'
'I don't think so, I have no recollection.'
'Well, it's a place you might easily forget, not a promising locality for the exercise of your art. But you seemed struck by my name just now, as if you had heard it before.'
'I think I must have heard it somewhere, but I can't recall the occasion. Let that pass.' And with a majestic wave of the hand Mr. Elgood performed the ceremony of introduction.
'Mr. Dempson, Mr. Penwyn. Mr. Penwyn,40 Mr. Dempson. Mr. Dempson is our sometime manager, now a brother professional. He has resigned the round and top of sovereignty, and the carking cares of Saturday's treasury.'
Mr. Dempson assented to this statement with a plaintive sigh.
'A harassing profession, the drama, Mr. Penwyn,' he said. 'The many-headed is a monster of huge ingratitudes.'
James bowed assent.
'The provincial stage is in its decline, sir. Time was when this very theatre could be kept open for ten consecutive months in every year, to the profit of the manager, and when the good old comedies and the Shaksperian drama were acted week after week to an intelligent and approving audience. Now-a-days a man must rack his brains in order to cater for a frivolous and insatiable public, which has been taught to consider a house on fire, or a railway smash, the end and aim of dramatic composition. I speak from bitter experience. My grandfather was manager of the Eborsham circuit, and retired with a competency. My father inherited the competency,41 and lost it in the Eborsham circuit. I have been cradled in the profession, and have failed as manager, with credit to my head and heart, as my friends have been good enough to observe, some three or four times, and now hang on to dramatic art, "quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail in monumental armour." That's what I call the decline of the drama, Mr. Penwyn.'
James assented, and was not sorry that Mr. Dempson, having 'vented his woe,' went off to dress for the afterpiece.
'What a melancholy person!' said James.
'An excellent low comedian,' replied Mr. Elgood. 'You'll hear the people screaming at him in the "Spitalfields Weaver" by and by. His business with the tea and bread and butter is the finest thing I ever saw, not second to Wright's. Indeed,' added Mr. Elgood, as an after thought, 'I believe it is Wright's business.'
'Then it can hardly claim the merit of originality.'
'Genius, Mr. Penwyn, finds its material where it can.'
'Baron,' screamed a small boy, putting his head in at the door.
'My scene!' exclaimed Mr. Elgood, and vanished.
James seated himself on the narrow bench beside Justina.
'I have been in the boxes to see you act,' he said, in that gentle winning voice which had made him a favourite among women. To Justina it sounded fresh as a voice from another world. No one in her world spoke like that, in tones so deferential, with accents so pure.
'I am very sorry for it,' said Justina.
'Sorry! but why?'
'Because you must hate me. The audience always do hate me. I feel it in their looks—feel it freezing me directly I go on the stage. "Oh, there she is again!" they say to themselves. "Can't they manage to get through the piece without sending her on?"
'What a curious notion! I thought actresses were conceited people.'
'Yes, when they are favourites.'
'I don't know about the rest of the audience,43 Miss Elgood,' said James, almost tenderly, 'but I know I did not hate you,—my feelings leaned too much the other way.'
Justina blushed through those two dabs of rouge—compliments were so new to her, and a compliment from this elegant stranger was worth all the loud praises of the vulgar herd. She hardly envied Miss Villeroy—the leading lady—whose chokings and sobbings in Mrs. Haller had been applauded to the echo, while the poor countess in her draggle-tailed sky-blue satin had walked on and off unnoticed.
'So this is the way you enjoy the legitimate drama, Mr. Penwyn,' said a sonorous voice—the full rich baritone of Maurice Clissold—and, looking up, James and Justina beheld that gentleman watching them from the doorway.
'I left you asleep,' replied James, abashed by his friend's advent.
'Yes, sneaked off, and left me to grope my way to this abominable den as best I could. I beg your pardon, Miss Elgood, but it really is a den.'
'You can't hate it worse than I do,' said Justina, 'or so badly—I have to sit here every night.'
'Poor child! It's a strange life—and a hard one. Seen from the outside there seems a not unpleasant Bohemian flavour about it—but when one comes behind the scenes the Bohemian flavour appears to be mainly dirt. I've inhaled enough dust and escaped gas within the last ten minutes to last me comfortably for my lifetime. And you breathe this atmosphere for four or five hours every night! Poor child!'
James sighed. His benevolent heart longed to rescue the girl from such a life—a girl with pensive violet eyes, fringed by darkest lashes—soft brown hair, so luxuriant that it made a crown of plaits upon the well-shaped head,—altogether a girl whom benevolence would fain benefit.
'Come, Jim,' said Clissold, who had a knack of reading his friend's thoughts, 'you've seen enough of behind the scenes.'
'No, I haven't,' answered James, sturdily, as the countess ran off to act her part in the close of45 the play. He was wont to be plastic as wax in the hands of his guide, philosopher, and friend, but to-night there glowed a spark of rebellion in his soul. 'I am going to stop to see Mr. Elgood, and to ask him to bring his daughter to supper.'
'Bring his daughter! To visit two young men at a roadside inn?'
'Honi soit—,' said James. 'Can a girl be safer anywhere than with her father?'
'Look here, Penwyn,' said Clissold, earnestly, 'I've made it the business of my life for the last two years to keep you in the straight path. I won't have you kicking over the traces for any blue-eyed chit in the universe. Remember what I promised your poor mother, Jim.'
'That you'd act the part of an elder brother—supply the balance of good sense wanting to my shallow brains. That's all very well, Maurice. I always respected my poor mother's ideas even when they took the shape of prejudices. But a man must enjoy his life.'
'Yes, but he is bound to enjoy life with the least possible injury to other people.'
'Whom am I going to injure?' demanded Mr. Penwyn, with an impatient shrug, as he moved towards the wings.
'You are putting foolish ideas into that poor child's head.'
'What nonsense! Simply because I am civil to her. I mean to ask her to supper, whether you like it or not.'
'I hope her father will have the sense to refuse.'
'If you come to that, I'll invite the whole company!' cried the spoiled child of fortune.
The curtain came down at this moment, and Mr. Elgood returned to the green-room, unbuckling his sword-belt as he came along.
'I waited to remind you of your promise to sup with us to-night, Mr. Elgood,' said James.
'My dear sir, it is not an engagement to be forgotten. I shall be there.'
'Will half-past eleven be too early?'
'No; "The Stranger" has played quick to-night, and the afterpiece is short. I shall be there.'
'Miss Elgood will accompany you, I hope?'
'Thanks, no. The proprieties would be outraged by her appearance at a bachelor's table. The only lady present.'
'We could easily remedy that, if any other lady of the company would honour us.'
'Upon my word you are very kind; and I know the child would consider it a treat. If you put the question in such a friendly manner I feel sure that Mr. and Mrs. Dempson would be delighted to join us.'
'Pray bring them. Is Mrs. Dempson also dramatic?'
'You have seen her to-night in one of her greatest parts—Mrs. Haller.'
'I thought the lady was a Miss Villeroy.'
'Her professional name, merely. Joe Dempson and Miss Villeroy have been united in the sacred bonds of matrimony for some years.'
'I shall be charmed to make the lady's acquaintance. You know your way to the "Waterfowl?"
'It is familiar to me as the path of my infancy.'
'And you'll be sure to bring Miss Elgood?'
'Judy shall come without fail.'
'Judy?'
'The pet name chosen by affection. She was christened Justina. Pardon me if I leave you hastily, I play in the next piece.'
Mr. Elgood hurried away. James Penwyn glanced at his friend with the glance of triumph.
'Out of leading-strings, you see, Maurice,' he said.
Maurice Clissold shrugged his shoulders and turned away with a sigh. James, more touched by silence than reproof, put his arm through his friend's with a gay laugh, and they went out of the green-room and out of the theatre together, arm-in-arm, like brothers who loved each other.
The supper at the 'Waterfowl' was a success. Every one, except perhaps Clissold, was in the humour to be pleased with everything, and even Clissold could not find it in his heart to make himself vehemently disagreeable amidst mirth so harmless, gaiety so childishly simple. To an actor, supper after the play is just the one crowning delight of life—that glimpse of paradise upon earth which we all get in some shape or other. A supper at a comfortable hostelry like the 'Waterfowl,' where the landlord knew how to do things in good style for a customer who could pay the piper, was certainly not to be despised. In this northern district there was a liberal plenty, a bounteous wealth of provision hardly known elsewhere. Tea at Eborsham meant dinner and breakfast rolled into one. Supper at Eborsham50 meant aldermanic barn-door fowls, and a mighty home-cured ham, weighing five-and-twenty pounds, or so—lobsters nestling among crisp green lettuces—pigeon pie—cheese-cakes—tarts—and, lest these lighter trifles should fail to satisfy appetite, a lordly cold sirloin by way of corps de reserve, to come in at a critical juncture, like Blucher at Waterloo.
Mr. Dempson made himself the life of the party. The small melancholy man who had bewailed the decline of the drama, vanished altogether at sight of that plenteously-furnished table, and in his place appeared a jester of the first water. So James Penwyn thought at any rate, as he laughed—with youth's gay silver-clear laughter—at the low comedian's jokes. Even Miss Villeroy was sprightly, though she had a worn look about the eyes, as if she had aged herself prematurely with the woes of Mrs. Haller, and other heroines of tragedy. Justina sat next to James Penwyn, and was supremely happy, though only an hour ago she had shed tears of girlish shame at the idea of coming to a supper party in her threadbare brown merino gown—last winter's gown—which she51 was obliged to wear in the warm glad spring for want of fitter raiment. No one thought of her shabby gown, however, when the pale young face brightened and flushed with unwonted pleasure, and the large thoughtful eyes took a new light, and darkened to a deeper grey.
James Penwyn did his uttermost to make her happy and at ease, and succeeded only too well. There is no impression so swift and so vivid as that which the first admirer makes upon a girl of seventeen. The tender words, the subdued tones, the smiles, the praises, have such a freshness. The adulation of a C?sar in after years would hardly seem so sweet as these first flatteries of commonplace youth to the girl on the threshold of womanhood.
Mr. Elgood saw what was going on, but was by no means alarmed by the aspect of affairs. He felt himself quite able to take care of Justina, even if Mr. Penwyn had been a hardened libertine instead of a kind-hearted youth fresh from the university. He had no desire to stifle admiration which might mean very little, but which would most likely result in liberal patronage for his own benefit, and a trifling52 present or two for Justina, a ring, or a bracelet, or a box of gloves.
'I don't want to stand in Justina's light,' mused Mr. Elgood, as he leaned back in his chair and sipped his last glass of champagne, when the pleasures of the table had given way to an agreeable sense of repletion.
'What did that gipsy woman mean by the line of life, and the planets?' asked Justina. She had lost all sense of shyness by this time, and she and James were talking to each other in lowered voices, as much alone as if the rest of the party had been pictures on the wall. Maurice marked them as he sat a little way apart from the others, smoking his black-muzzled pipe.
'Pshaw, only the professional jargon. What does she know of the planets?'
'But she stared at your hand in such a curious way, and looked so awful that she frightened me. Do tell me what she meant.'
James laughed, and laid his left hand in Justina's, palm upwards. 'Look there,' he said; 'you see that line, a curved channel that goes from below the first53 finger to the base of the thumb—that is to say, it should go to the base of the thumb, but in my hand it doesn't. See where the line disappears, midway, just by that seam left by my pocket-knife. You can see no line beyond that scar, ergo the line never travelled further than that point.'
Justina closely scrutinized the strong unwrinkled palm.
'What does that mean?' she asked; 'I don't understand even now.'
'It means a short life and a merry one.'
The rare bloom faded from Justina's cheek.
'You don't believe in that?' she said, anxiously.
'No more than I believe in gipsies, or spirit-rappers, or the cave of Trophonius,' answered James, gaily. 'What a silly child you are to look so scared!'
Justina gave a little sigh, and then tried to smile. Even this first dawn of a girlish fancy, airy as a butterfly's passion for a rose, brought new anxieties along with it. The gipsy's cant was an evil omen that disturbed her like a shapeless fear. Women resemble those medi?val roysterers of whom the old chronicler wrote. They take their pleasure sadly.
The moon was at the full. There she sailed, a silver targe, above the distant hill-tops. James looked up at her, looked into that profound world above, which draws the fancies of youth with irresistible power. The room opened on the garden by two long windows, and the one nearest to Mr. Penwyn's end of the table stood open.
'Let us get away from the smoke,' he said, vexed to see Clissold's eye upon him, fixed and gloomy. The room was tolerably full of tobacco-smoke by this time, and Mr. Elgood was urging Mr. Dempson to favour the company with his famous song, 'The Ship's Carpenteer.'
'Come into the garden, Maud,' said James, gaily, flinging a look of defiance at his monitor.
Justina blushed, hesitated, and obeyed him. They went out into the moonlit night together, and strolled side by side across the rustic garden, a slope of grass on which the most ancient of apple-trees, and pear-trees, big enough to have been mistaken for small elms, cast their crooked shadows. It was more orchard than garden, a homely, useful place altogether. Potherbs grew among the rose-bushes on55 the border by the boundary hedge, and on one side of the inn there was a patch of ground that grew cabbages and broad-beans; but all the rest was grass and apple-trees.
At the end of that grassy slope ran the river, silver-shining under the moon. Eborsham, seen across the level landscape, looked a glorified city in that calm and mellow light. The boy and girl walked silently down to the river's brim and looked at the distant hills and woods, scattered cottages with lowly thatched roofs and antique chimney-stacks, here and there the white walls of a mansion silvered by the moon, and, dominating all in sublime and gloomy grandeur, the mighty towers of the cathedral, God's temple, rising, like fortalice and sanctuary, above all human habitations, as of old the Acropolis.
Justina gazed and was silent. It was one of those rare moments of exaltation which poets tell us are worth a lifetime of sluggish feeling. The girl felt as if she had never lived till now.
'Pretty, isn't it?' remarked James, very much in the tone of Brummel, who after watching a56 splendid sunset was pleased to observe, 'How well he does it!'
'It is too beautiful,' said Justina.
'Why too beautiful?'
'I don't know. It hurts me somehow, like actual pain!'
'You are like Byron's Lara,—
"But a night like this, A night of beauty, mocked such breast as his.
"I hope it is not a case of bad conscience with you, as it was with him?'
'No, it is not my conscience. The worst I have ever done has been to grumble at the profession; and though father says it is wicked, the thought of my wickedness has never troubled me. But to me there's something awful in the beauty of night and stillness, a solemnity that chills me. I feel as if there were some trouble hanging over me, some great sorrow. Don't you?'
'Not the least in the world. I think moonlight awfully jolly. Would you much mind my lighting a cigar? You'll hardly feel the effects of the smoke out here.'
'I never feel it anywhere,' answered Justina, frankly. 'Father hardly ever leaves off smoking.'
There was a weeping willow at the edge of the garden, a willow whose lower branches dipped into the river, and just beside the willow a bench where these two seated themselves, in the full glory of the moon. A much better place than the dusky summerhouse, which might peradventure be a harbour for frogs, snails, or spiders. They sat by the river's brim, and talked—talked as easily as if they had a thousand ideas in common, these two, who had never met until to-day, and whose lives lay so far apart.
They had youth and hope in common, and that bond was enough to unite them.
James asked Justina a good many questions about stage life, and was surprised to find the illusions of his boyhood vanish before stern truth.
'I thought it was such a jolly life, and the easiest in the world,' he said. 'I've often fancied I should like to be an actor. I think I could do it pretty well. I can imitate Buckstone, and Charles Mathews.'
'Pray don't think of it,' exclaimed Justina. 'You'd be tired to death in a year.'
'I dare say I should. I'm not much of a fellow for sticking to anything. I got "ploughed" a year ago at Oxford, and now I've been trying to read with Clissold walking through England and Wales, and putting up at all the quietest places we can find. Clissold is a first-rate coach, and it won't be his fault if I don't get my degree next time. How do you like him?'
'I don't know. I haven't thought about him, answered the girl, simply. This younger and fairer stranger had made her oblivious of Maurice Clissold, with his tall, strong frame, dark, penetrating eyes, and broad brow. Too manly a man altogether to be admired by a girl of seventeen.
'He is as good a fellow as ever breathed; a little bitter, perhaps; but most wholesome things are bitter,' said James. 'He has his crotchets. One is that I am to be a model master of Penwyn by and by, go into Parliament, marry an heiress, set up as a fine old English gentleman, in fact. Rather a wearisome métier, I should think. The worst of it is, he keeps it continually before my mind's eye, is always reminding me of how much I owe to59 Penwyn Manor and my race, and won't let me get much enjoyment out of youth's brief holiday. He's a good fellow, but I might love him better if I didn't respect him so much. He was a great favourite of my poor mother's. A romantic story, by the way. She was engaged to Maurice's father some years before she married mine. He was a captain in the East India Company's service, and fell fighting the niggers at Goojerat. Years afterwards, when my father was dead and gone, Clissold and I met at Eton. My mother burst into tears when she heard my schoolfellow's name, and asked me to bring him to see her. Of course I obeyed, and from that time to the day of her death my mother had a second son in Maurice. I think she loved him as well as she loved me.'
'And you were never jealous?'
'No, I was too fond of both of them for that. And then my dear mother was all love, all tenderness. I could afford to share her affection with my adopted brother. And now tell me something about your own life.'
'There is so little to tell,' answered the girl,60 drearily. 'Ever since I can remember we have lived the same kind of life—sometimes in one town, sometimes in another. When father could afford the money he used to send me to a day school, so I've been a little educated somehow, only I dare say I'm very ignorant, because my education used to stop sometimes, and by the time it began again I had forgotten a good deal.'
'Poor child,' murmured James, compassionately. 'Is your mother still living?'
'She died seven years ago. She had had so much trouble, it wore her out at last.' And Justina paid her dead mother the tribute of a hidden tear.
'I say, Jim, do you know that it is half-past two o'clock, and that Mr. Elgood is waiting for his daughter?' asked the voice of common sense in the tones of Maurice Clissold.
The two children started up from the bench by the willow, scared by the sudden question. There stood Mr. Clissold, tall and straight, and severe-looking.
'I heard the cathedral clock a few minutes ago, and I am quite aware of the time. If Mr. Elgood61 wants his daughter he can come for her himself,' replied James.
Mr. Penwyn was resolved to make a stand against his mentor, and he felt that now was the time for action.
Mr. Elgood and Mr. Dempson came strolling out into the garden, cigars in their mouths. Penwyn's choicest brand had been largely sacrificed at the altar of hospitality.
'Judy, have you forgotten the time?' asked the heavy father, with accents that had a legato sound—one syllable gliding gently into another,—a tone that was all sweetness and affection, though indistinct.
'Yes, father,' answered the girl, innocently. 'It's so beautiful out here.'
'Beautiful,' echoed the father, thickly. '"Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with—what's its names—of bright gold." Come, Jessica—Judy—put on your bonnet and shawl. Mrs. Dempson has been fast asleep for the last half-hour. "But look! The morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill," which reminds me that we have nearly a mile to walk before we get home.'
'I'll go with you,' said James. 'I want to arrange about to-morrow. We must make up a jolly party for the races. I'll get a roomy carriage that will hold all of us.'
'I haven't seen a race in anything like comfort for the last fifteen years,' responded Mr. Elgood.
'We'll make a day of it. Clissold and I will come to the theatre in the evening.'
'Make your own engagements if you please, James, and allow me to make mine,' said Mr. Clissold. 'I shall not go to the races to-morrow—or if I do, it will be by myself, and on foot; and I shall not go to the theatre in the evening.'
'Please yourself,' answered James, offended.
They were all ready by this time. Mrs. Dempson had been awakened, and shaken out of the delusion that she had fallen asleep on the sofa in her own lodgings, and somewhat harshly reminded that she had a mile or so to walk before she could obtain complete repose. Mr. Dempson had finished his cigar, and accepted another as solace during the homeward walk. Justina had put on her shabby little bonnet and mantle. Every one was ready.
The players took their leave of Maurice Clissold, who was but coldly civil. James Penwyn went out with them, and gave his arm to Justina, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. These two walked on in front, the other three straggling after them—walked arm in arm along the lonely footpath. The low murmur of the river sounded near—the stream showed silvery now and again between a break in the screen of alders.
They talked as they had talked in the garden—about each other—their thoughts—and fancies—hopes—dreams—imaginings.
Oh youth! oh glamour! Strange world in which for the first bright years we live as in a dream! Sweet dawn of life, when nothing in this world seems so real as the hopes that are never to know fruition!
Sir Nugent Bellingham was one of those men who are born and reared amidst pecuniary difficulties, and whose existence is spent upon the verge of ruin. Yet it seems a tolerably comfortable kind of life notwithstanding, and men of Sir Nugent's type hardly realize the meaning of the word deprivation. Sir Nugent had never known what it was to be out of debt. The Bellingham estate was mortgaged up to the hilt when he inherited it. Indeed, to be thus encumbered was the normal condition of all Bellingham property.
Of course Sir Nugent had from time to time possessed money. He hardly could have drifted on so long without some amount of specie, even in such an easy-going world as that patrician sphere in which he revolved. He had inherited a modest65 fortune from his mother, with which he had paid his creditors something handsome on account all round, and made them his bondslaves for all time to come, since they cherished the hope of something more in the future. Sir Nugent had received legacies from an aunt and uncle or two, and these afforded further sops for his Cerberus, and enabled the baronet's dainty little household to sail gaily down the stream of time for some years.
When the amelioration of manners brought bankruptcy within the reach of any gentleman, Sir Nugent Bellingham availed himself of the new code, and became insolvent in an easy, gentleman-like fashion. And what with one little help and another, the bijou house in May Fair, where Sir Nugent lived with his two motherless girls, was always kept up in the same good style. The same dinners—small and soigné—the same lively receptions after the little dinners. The best music, the newest books, the choicest hothouse flowers, were always to be found at No. 12, Cavendish Bow, May Fair. There were only a dozen houses in Cavendish Bow, and Sir Nugent Bellingham's was at the corner, squeezed66 into an angle made by the lofty wall of Lord Loamshire's garden—one of those dismal, awe-inspiring London gardens, grey and dull and blossomless, which look like a burial-ground without any graves. Seen from the street, No. 12 looked a mere doll's house, but the larger rooms were behind, abutting upon Lord Loamshire's garden. It was an irregular old house, full of corners, but, furnished after the peculiar tastes of Miss Bellingham, was one of the most charming houses in London. No upholsterer had been allowed to work his will—Madge Bellingham had chosen every item. The chairs and tables, and sofas and cabinets, were the cheapest that could be had, for they were all of unstained light woods, made after designs from Miss Bellingham's own pencil. The cabinets were mere frames for glass doors, behind which appeared the Bellingham collection of bric-a-brac, upon numerous shelves covered with dark-green silk. Madge's own clever hands had covered the deal shelves; and the bronzes, the Venetian glass, the Sèvres, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna, and Dresden porcelains looked all the better for so simple a setting.
There were no draperies but chintz, the cheapest that could be bought, but always fresh. The looking-glasses had no frame save a natural garland of ivy. The floors were beeswaxed only, a Persian carpet here and there offering accommodation for the luxurious. The one costly object in the two drawing-rooms, after that bric-a-brac upon which the Bellingham race had squandered a small fortune, was the piano, a Broadwood grand, in a case made by a modern workman out of veritable Louis Seize marqueterie. The old ormolu mountings, goat's head, festoons, and masques, had been religiously preserved, and the piano was a triumph of art. It occupied the centre of the back drawing-room, the largest room in the house, and when Madge Bellingham sat before it, girl and piano made a cabinet picture of the highest school.
'People know we are out at elbows,' Madge said to her father when they began housekeeping in Cavendish Row. 'If we have expensive furniture every one will be sure we haven't paid for it; but if you let me carry out my ideas, the bills will be so light that you can pay them at once.'
'I can give the fellows something on account, at any rate,' replied Sir Nugent.
Lady Bellingham's death, which occurred soon after the birth of Viola, the second daughter, had left Sir Nugent free to lead the life of a bachelor, for the most part in other people's houses, while his girls were in his sister's nursery or at school. When they grew to womanhood—and a very lovely womanhood, for good looks were hereditary in the Bellingham family—Sir Nugent found it incumbent upon him to provide them with a home; so he took the house in Cavendish Bow, and brought home the Bellingham bric-a-bric, which had been left him by the aforesaid aunts and uncles, and lodged at the Pantechnicon pending his settlement in life. He began housekeeping at five-and-forty years of age, and gave his little dinners at home henceforward, instead of at one or other of his clubs, and cherished high hopes of seeing his daughters splendidly established by and by.
'I think you have seen enough of what it is to be tormented by a set of harpies to teach you the value of money, Madge,' said Sir Nugent one morning,69 pointing to a small heap of letters which he had just now opened and dismissed with a glance. The harpies in question were his creditors, who expressed an unwarrantable eagerness for something more 'on account.'
'With your knowledge of life you are not likely to marry a pauper,' pursued Sir Nugent, dipping into a Strasburg pie.
'No, papa, not with my knowledge of life,' answered Madge, with ever so slight and upward curl of the firm lip. Miss Bellingham fondly loved her father, but it is possible that respect may have been somewhat lessened by her experience of that financial scramble in which his life was spent.
Two or three evenings before the night which made James Penwyn acquainted with life behind the scenes of a small provincial theatre, Sir Nugent Bellingham gave one of his snug little dinners—a dinner of eight—the guests of choicest brands, like the wines. Lady Cheshunt, one of the most exalted matrons in the great world, kept the Miss Bellinghams in countenance. Madge was her pet protegée whose praises she was never tired of sounding among70 the chosen ones of the earth. Mr. Albert Noyce, a distinguished wit and littérateur, supplied the salt of the banquet. He was a small, mild-looking man, with a pretty, unoffending wife, and dined out perpetually during the London season. Mr. Shinebar, the famous barrister, made a fourth. Lord George Bulrose, a West of England man, a gourmet, and, in so far as after-dinner talk went, a mighty hunter, was the fifth; and Sir Nugent and his two daughters completed the circle.
After dinner there was to be an evening party, and before the small hours of the morning a great many famous people would have dropped in at the corner house in Cavendish Row.
The ladies had retired, leaving Sir Nugent and his chosen friends to talk about law, and horses, and the last new burlesque actress, as they drew closer in to the dainty round table, where the glass sparkled and the deep-hued blossoms brightened under the cluster of wax lights in the central chandelier.
Viola and Lady Cheshunt went upstairs arm-in-arm,71 the girl nestling affectionately against the substantial shoulder of the portly matron. Mrs. Noyce tripped lightly after these two, and Madge followed, alone, with a grave brow, and that lofty air which so well became Sir Nugent Bellingham's elder daughter.
Barely were sisters less alike than these two. Viola was a blonde, complexion alabaster, hair the colour of raw silk—plenteous flaxen hair, which the girl wound into a crown of pale gold upon the top of her small head; eyes of turquoise blue; figure a thought too slim, but the perfection of grace in every movement and attitude; foot and hand absolutely faultless: altogether a girl to be put under a glass case.
'I should admire the younger Miss Bellingham more if she were a little less like Sèvres china,' one of the magnates of society had observed.
Madge was a brunette—hair almost black, and with a natural ripple—complexion a rich olive, eyes darkest hazel—features the true Bellingham type, clearly cut as a profile on an old Roman medal—figure tall and commanding, a woman born to rule,72 one would say, judging by externals—a woman with the stuff in her to make a general, Sir Nugent was wont to boast. But although she was of a loftier mould than the generality of women, there was no hardness about Madge Bellingham. In love or in anger she was alike strong. For hate she was too noble.
The rooms were deliciously cool, the light somewhat subdued, the windows open to the warm spring night. There were flowers enough in the small front drawing-room to make it an indoor garden.
The dowager seated herself upon the most comfortable sofa in this room, a capacious, square-backed sofa, in a dusky corner, fenced off and sheltered by a well-filled jardinière.
'Come here, Madge,' she cried, with good-natured imperiousness, 'I want to talk to you.—Viola, child, go and amuse yourself with Mrs. Noyce. Show her your photograph album, or parlez chiffons. I want Madge all to myself.'
Madge obeyed without a word, and squeezed herself into the corner of the sofa, which Lady Cheshunt and Lady Cheshunt's dress almost filled.
'How big you are growing, child! there's hardly room enough for you!' remarked the matron. 'And now tell me the truth, Madge; what is the matter with you to-night?'
'I don't think there is anything the matter more than usual, Lady Cheshunt.'
'I know better than that. You were dull and distrait all dinner-time. True, there was no one to talk to but two married men, and that old twaddler, Bulrose; but a young lady should be always equally agreeable—that is one of the fundamental principles of good breeding.'
'If I seemed a little out of spirits you can hardly wonder. Papa's sadly involved state is enough to make me uneasy.'
'My dear, your papa has been involved ever since my first season—when my waist was only eighteen inches, and Madame Devy made my gowns. He is no worse off now than he was then, and he will go on being hopelessly involved till the end of the chapter. I don't see why you should be unhappy about it. He will be able to give you and Viola a tolerable home till you marry and make74 better homes for yourselves, which it is actually incumbent upon you to do.'
This was said with a touch of severity. Madge sighed, and the slender foot in the satin shoe tapped the ground with a nervous, impatient movement.
'Madge, I hope there is no truth in what I hear about you and Mr. Penwyn.'
A deep tell-tale glow burned in Miss Bellingham's cheek. She fanned herself vehemently.
'I cannot imagine what you have heard, Lady Cheshunt.'
'I have heard your name coupled with Mr. Penwyn's—the poor Mr. Penwyn.'
'I only know one Mr. Penwyn.'
'So much the worse for you, my dear. You know the wrong one. There is a cousin of that young man's who has a fine estate in Cornwall—the Penwyn estate. You must have heard of that.'
'Yes, I have heard Mr. Penwyn speak of his cousin's property.'
'Of course. Poor penniless young man; very natural that he should talk of it. Don't suppose75 that I have no feeling for him. He is next heir to the property, but no doubt the other young man, James Penwyn's son, will marry and have a herd of children. I knew James Penwyn, this young man's father, years ago. There were three brothers—George, the eldest, who was in the army, and was killed in a skirmish with some wild Indians in Canada—very sad story; James, who was in the church, and had a living somewhere near London; and Balfour, in the law, I believe, whose son you know.'
'Yes,' sighed Madge.
She had heard the family history from Churchill Penwyn, but the dowager liked to hear herself talk, and did not like to be interrupted.
'Now, if by any chance the present James Penwyn, who is little more than a lad, were to die unmarried, Churchill Penwyn could come into the property under his grandfather's will, which left the estate to the eldest surviving son and his children after him. George died unmarried. James left an only son. Churchill is therefore heir presumptive. But it's a very remote contingency, my love, and it76 would be madness for you to give it a thought—with your chances.'
Madge shrugged her shoulders despondently.
'I don't think my chances are particularly brilliant, Lady Cheshunt.'
'Nonsense, Madge! Everybody talks of the beautiful Bellinghams. And you refused a splendid offer only the other day—that Mr. Cardingham, the great manufacturer.'
'Who had only seen me four times when he had the impudence to ask me to marry him! He was old and ugly, too.'
'When the end is a good establishment one must not look at the means too closely. Poor dear Cheshunt was many years my senior, and no beauty, even in his wig. You must take a more serious view of things, my dear Madge. It will not do for you and your sister to hang fire. The handsomer girls are, the more vital it is for them to go off quickly. A plain little unobtrusive thing may creep through half a dozen seasons and surprise everybody by making a good match at last. But a beauty who doesn't marry soon is apt to get talked about.77 Malicious people put it down to too much flirtation. And then, my love, consider your milliner's bills; what will they be at the end of a few seasons?'
'Not very much, Lady Cheshunt. I cut out all my own dresses and Viola's too, and our maid runs them together. Viola and I help sometimes, when we can steal an hour from society. I couldn't bear to wear anything that wasn't paid for.'
'Upon my word you are an exemplary girl, Madge,' exclaimed Lady Cheshunt, astounded by such Roman virtue. 'What a wife you will make!'
'Yes, I think I might make a tolerable wife, for a poor man.'
'Don't speak of such a thing. You were born for wealth and power. You are bound to make a great marriage—if not for your own sake, for Viola's. See what a poor helpless child she is—sadly wanting in moral stamina. If you had a good establishment she would have a haven of refuge. But if you were to marry badly what will become of her? She would never be able to manage your papa.'
Madge sighed again, and this time deeply. Love for her sister was Madge Bellingham's weakest point. She positively adored the fair fragile girl who had been given into her childish arms eighteen years ago, on that bitter day which made her an orphan. There was only four years' difference between the ages of the sisters, yet Madge's affection was always maternal in its protecting thoughtfulness. To marry well would be to secure a home for Viola. Sir Nugent was but a feeble staff to lean upon.
'I have no objection to marrying well whenever a fair opportunity arises, Lady Cheshunt,' she said, firmly; 'but I will never marry a man whom I cannot respect and like.'
'Of course not, my poor pet,' murmured the widow, soothingly; 'but, fortunately, there are so many men in the world one can like and respect. It is that foolish sentimental feeling called love which will only fit one person. In the meantime, Madge, take my advice, and don't let people talk about you and Mr. Penwyn.'
'I don't know why they should talk about us.'
'Yes, you do, Madge—in your heart of hearts.79 You know that you have sat together in corners, and that you have a knack of blushing when he comes into the room. It won't do, Madge, it won't do. That young fellow has nothing except what he can earn himself. I know his mother had a struggle to bring him up, and if he hadn't been an only son could hardly have brought him up at all. He was a Blue-coat boy, I believe, or something equally dreadful. It is not to be thought of, Madge.'
'I do not think of it, Lady Cheshunt,' replied Miss Bellingham, resolutely, 'and I wish you would not worry yourself and me about imaginary dangers.'
'Your visitors are beginning to come; go and receive them, and leave me in my corner. Mr. Penwyn is to be here, I've no doubt.'
'I don't know. He knows that Saturday is our night.'
'Mr. Churchill Penwyn!' announced a footman at the door of the larger room.
'I thought so,' said Lady Cheshunt, 'and the first to arrive, too. That looks suspicious.'
Churchill Penwyn was one of those men who are sure to obtain a certain amount of notice in whatsoever circle they appear—a man upon whom the stamp of good blood, or good breeding, had been set in a distinct and palpable manner—a man who had no need for self-assertion.
It would have been difficult for any one to state in what the distinction lay. He was not particularly good-looking. Intellect, rather than regularity of feature, was the leading characteristic of his countenance. Already, though he was still on the sunward side of his thirtieth birthday, the dark brown hair grew thinly upon the broad high brow, showing signs of premature baldness. His features were sharply cut, but by no means faultless, the mouth somewhat sunken, the lips thin. His light grey81 eyes had a keen, cold lustre; only those who saw Churchill Penwyn in some rare moment of softer feeling knew that those severe orbs could be beautiful. Mr. Penwyn was a barrister, still in the uphill stage of his career. He got an occasional brief, went on circuit assiduously, and did a little in the literature of politics—a hard, dry kind of literature, but fairly remunerative—when he got it to do. He had contributed hard-headed statistical papers to the Edinburgh and the Westminster, and knew a good deal about the condition of the operative classes. He had lectured in some of the northern manufacturing towns, and knew the black country by heart. People talked of him as a young man who was sure to make his mark by and by; but by and by might be a long way off. He would be fifty years of age, perhaps, before he had worked his way to the front.
Churchill Penwyn went a great deal into society, when it is considered how hard and how honestly he worked; but the houses in which he was to be found were always houses affected by the best people. He never wasted himself among second-rate circles.82 He was an excellent art critic; knew enough about music to talk of it cleverly, though he had hardly the faculty of distinguishing one tune from another; waltzed like a Viennese; rode like a centaur; spoke three Continental languages perfectly. It was his theory that no man should presume to enter society who could not do everything that society could require him to do. Society was worth very little in itself, according to Churchill Penwyn, but a man owed it to himself to be admired and respected by society.
'I see a good many men who go into the world to stare about them through eye-glasses,' said Churchill. 'If I couldn't do anything more than that I should spend my evenings in my own den.'
Churchill Penwyn went into the gay world with a definite aim—some of the people he met must needs be useful to him sooner or later.
Ohne Hast, ohne Rast—without haste, without rest—was his motto. He had it engraved on his signet ring, instead of the Penwyn crest. He was never in a hurry. While striving for success he had83 the air of a man who had already succeeded. He occupied a third floor in the Temple, and lived like an anchorite, but his tailor and bootmaker were among the best in London, and he was a member of the Travellers' and the Garrick. He was to be seen sometimes lunching at his club, and occasionally entertained a friend at luncheon, but he rarely dined there, and was never seen to drink anything more costly than a pint of La Rose, or Medoc. No man had ever mastered the art of economy more thoroughly than Churchill Penwyn, and yet he had never laid himself open to the charge of meanness.
Miss Bellingham received him with a bright look of welcome, despite the dowager's warning, and their hands met, with a gentle pressure on Churchill's part. Viola was discreetly occupied in showing Mrs. Noyce a new photograph, and only gave the visitor a bow and a smile. So he had a fair excuse for seating himself next Madge, on the divan by the fireplace, where there was just room for those two.
'I did not think you would come to-night,' said Madge, opening and shutting her large black fan, with a slightly nervous movement.
'Why not?'
'I saw your name in the paper, at Halifax, or somewhere, hundreds of miles away.'
'I was at Halifax the day before yesterday, but I would not miss my Saturday evening here. You see I have come a quarter of an hour in advance of your people, so that I might have you to myself for a few minutes.'
'It is so good of you,' faltered Madge, 'and you know I am always glad.'
'I should be wretched if I did not know it.'
This was going further than Mr. Penwyn's usual limits. The man was the very soul of prudence. No sweet words, no tender promises, had ever passed between these two, and yet they knew themselves beloved. Madge knew it to her sorrow, for she was fain to admit the wisdom of the dowager's warning. It would never do for her to marry Churchill Penwyn.
Happily for her, up to this time Churchill had never asked her to be his wife.
'He is too wise,' she said to herself, with the faintest touch of bitterness. 'Too much a man of the world.'
But that this man of the world loved her she was very sure.
For just ten minutes they sat side by side, talking of indifferent things, but only as people talk who are not quite indifferent to each other. And then more visitors were announced. Sir Nugent and his friends came upstairs; the rooms began to fill. Musical people arrived. A German with long rough hair, bony wrists, and an eye-glass, seated himself at the piano, and began a performance of so strictly classical a character that he had the enjoyment of it all to himself, for nobody else listened. Minor chords chased one another backwards and forwards about the middle of the piano as if they were hunting for the melody and couldn't find it. Little runs and arpeggio passages went under and over each other, and wriggled in and out and up and down in a distracted way, still searching for the subject, and finally gave up the quest in utter despair, appropriately expressed by vague grumblings in the bass, which slowly faded into silence. Whereupon every one became enthusiastic in their admiration.
After this a young lady in pink sang an airy little chanson, with elaborate variations—using her bright soprano voice as freely as if she had been Philomel, trilling her vespers in the dusky woods of June. And then Madge Bellingham sat down to the piano, and played as few young ladies play—as if her glad young soul were in the music.
It was only an Hungarian march that she played. There were no musical fireworks—no difficulties conquered; none of those passages which make the listeners exclaim, 'Poor girl! how she must have practised!' It was but a national melody—simple and spirit-stirring—played as if the soul of a patriot were guiding those supple fingers. The graceful figure was bent a little over the key-board—the dark eyes followed the swift flight of the hands over the keys. She seemed to caress the notes as she struck them—to play with the melody. Pride, love, hope, rage, every passion expressed itself by turns as she followed that wild strange music through the mazes of its variations, never losing the subject. It sounded like the war-cry of a free people. Even Churchill Penwyn, who in a general way cared so little for87 music, listened entranced to this. He could hardly have recalled the air half an hour later, but for the moment he was enchanted. He stood a little way from the instrument, watching the player, watching the beautiful head, with its dark rippling hair wound into a Greek knot at the back, the perfect throat, with its classic necklet of old Wedgwood medallions set in plainest gold; the drooping lashes, as the downcast eyes followed the flying touch. To hear Madge play was delightful, but to see her was still better. And this man's love had all the strength of a passion repressed. He had held himself in check so long, and every time he saw her he found her more and more adorable.
The evening wore on. People came in and out. Madge played the hostess divinely, always supported by Lady Cheshunt, who sat in the smaller drawing-room as in a temple, and had all the best people brought to her. Some came to Cavendish Row on their way somewhere else, and were careful to let their acquaintance know that they were 'due' at some very grand entertainment, and made rather a favour of coming to Sir Nugent. The last of the88 guests went about half an hour after midnight, and among the last Churchill Penwyn.
'May I bring you that book after church to-morrow?' he asked. The book was a comedy of Augier's lately produced at the Fran?ais, which he had been telling her about.
Madge looked embarrassed. She had a particular wish to avoid a tête-à-tête with Mr. Penwyn, and Sunday was an awkward day. Sir Nugent would be at Hurlingham, most likely, and Viola was such a foolish little thing, almost as bad as nobody.
'If you like' she answered. 'But why take the trouble to call on purpose? You might bring it next Saturday, if you come to us.'
'I shall bring it you to-morrow,' he said, as they shook hands.
That tiresome Viola was in a hopeless state of headache and prostration next morning, so Madge had to go to church alone. Coming out of the pretty little Anglican temple she found herself face to face with Churchill Penwyn. He had evidently been lying in wait for her.
'I was so afraid I might not find you at home,'89 he said, half apologetically, 'so I thought I might as well walk this way. I knew this was your church. I've brought you the play we were talking about.'
'You're very kind, but I hope you don't think I read French comedies on Sundays?'
'Of course not; only Sunday is my leisure day, and I thought you would not shut your door upon me even on Sunday.'
The church was only five minutes' walk from Cavendish Row. When Sir Nugent's door was opened Mr. Penwyn followed Miss Bellingham into the house as a matter of course. She had no help for it but to go quietly upstairs to her fate. She almost knew what was coming. There had been something in his manner last night that told her it was very near.
'Prudence, courage,' she whispered to herself, and then, 'Viola!' The last word was a kind of charm.
The rooms looked bright and gay in the noontide sunlight, tempered by Spanish blinds. The flowers, the feminine prettiness scattered about, struck Churchill's eye, they gave such a look of home.
'If I could afford to give her as good a home as this!' he thought.
He shut the door carefully behind him, and glanced round the room to make sure they were alone, and went close to Madge as she stood by one of the small tables, fidgeting with the clasp of her prayer-book.
'I think you know why I came to-day,' he said.
'You have told me about three times,—to bring me "La Quarantaine."'
'I have come to tell you a secret I have kept more than a year. Have you never guessed it, Madge? Have I been clever enough to hide the truth altogether? I love you, dearest. I, penniless Churchill Penwyn, dare to adore one of the belles of the season. I, who cannot for years to come offer you a house in May Fair. I, who at most can venture to begin married life in a Bloomsbury lodging, supported by the fruits of my pen. It sounds like madness, doesn't it?'
'It is madness,' she answered, looking full at him with her truthful eyes.
The answer surprised and humiliated him. He91 fancied she loved him—would be ready to face poverty for his sake. She was so young, and would hardly have acquired the wisdom of her world yet awhile.
'I beg your pardon,' he said, a curious change coming over his face, a sudden coldness that made those definite features look as if they had been cut out of stone. 'I have been deceiving myself all along, it seems. I did not think I was quite indifferent to you.'
The eyelids drooped over the dark eyes for a moment, and were then lifted suddenly, and the eyes met Churchill's. That one look told all. She loved him.
'I have been learning to know the world while other girls are allowed to dream,' she said. 'I know what the burden of debt means. Poverty brings debt as a natural sequence. If you were a woodcutter and we could live in a hovel and pay our way, there would be nothing appalling in marriage. But our world will not let us live like that. We must play at being fine ladies and gentlemen while our hearts are breaking, and our creditors being92 ruined. Ever so long ago I made up my mind that I must marry a rich man. If I have ever seemed otherwise to you than a woman of the world, bent upon worldly success, I humbly beg you to forgive me.'
'Madge,' cried Churchill, passionately, 'I will forgive anything if you will only be frank. Were my luck to turn speedily, through some unlooked-for professional success, for instance, would you have me then?'
'If I stood alone in the world, if I had not my sister to consider, I would marry you to-morrow. Yes, though you were a beggar,' she answered, grandly.
He clasped her to his breast and kissed those proud lips. The first lover's kiss that had ever rested there.
'I will be rich for your sake, distinguished for your sake,' he said impetuously, 'if wealth and fame are within the reach of man's effort.'
The first faint streak of day parted the eastern clouds when James Penwyn got back to the 'Waterfowl,' but late as it was, and though a long day's various fatigues might have invited him to repose, Maurice Clissold had waited up for his friend. He was walking up and down the inn parlour, where empty bottles and glasses, cigar ashes, and a broken clay pipe or two bestrewed the table, and gave a rakish look to the room. The windows stood wide open to the pale cold dawn, and the air was chill.
'Not gone to bed yet, Maurice?' exclaimed James, surprised, and perhaps somewhat embarrassed by this unexpected encounter.
'I was in no humour for sleep. I never can sleep when I have anything on my mind. I waited up to ask you a question, Jim.'
Something like defiance sparkled in Mr. Penwyn's eyes as he planted himself upon the arm of the substantial old sofa, and lighted a final cigar.
'Don't restrain your eloquence,' he said, 'I should hardly have considered four o'clock in the morning a time for conversation, but if you think so, I'm at your service.'
'I want to know, in plain words, what you mean by this, James?'
'By what?'
'Your conduct to that girl.'
'I shouldn't think anything so simple needed explanation. I meet a strolling player and his daughter. The strolling player is something of a character; the daughter—well, not pretty, perhaps, though she has lovely eyes, but interesting. I offer them the small attention of a supper, and, seeing that my friend the player is a trifle the worse for the champagne consumed, humanity urges me to escort the young lady to her own door, lest her father should lead her into one of the ditches which beset the way. I believe that is the sum-total of my offences.'
'It sounds simple enough, Jim,' answered the other, gravely, but not unkindly, 'and I dare say no harm will come of it if you let things stop exactly where they are. But I watched you and that poor child to-night—she is little more than a child, at best—and I saw that you were doing your utmost, unconsciously, perhaps, to turn her silly head. I saw you together in the moonlight afterwards.'
'If there was anything sentimental, you must blame the moon, not me,' said James, lightly.
'And now you talk of spending to-morrow with these people, and taking them to the races.'
'And I mean to do it. There's a freshness about them that amuses me. I've been getting rather tired of nature and Greek—though, of course, we've had an uncommonly jolly time of it together, dear old boy,—and I find a relief in a glimpse of real life. When you turn mentor, you make yourself intensely disagreeable. Do you suppose that I harbour one wicked intention about this girl?'
'No, James, I don't suppose you do. If I thought you were a deliberate sinner I should leave you to go your own road, and only try to save the96 girl. But I know what misery has been wrought in this world by gentlemanly trifling, and what still deeper wretchedness has been brought about by unequal marriages.'
'Do you suppose I think of marrying Mr. Elgood's daughter, because I say a few civil words to her?' cried James, forgetting how much earnestness there had been in those civil words only an hour ago.
'If you have no such thought you have no right to cultivate an acquaintance that can only end in unhappiness to her, if not to yourself.'
James answered with a sneer, to which Clissold replied somewhat warmly, and there were angry words between the two young men before they parted in the corridor outside their bedrooms. The people of the house, already thinking about morning, heard the raised voices and angry tones—heard and remembered.
It was ten o'clock when James Penwyn went down to breakfast next morning. The sun was shining in at the open windows—all traces of last night's revelry were removed—the room was in the97 nicest order—the table spread for breakfast, with spotless linen and shining tea service, but only set for one. James plucked impatiently at the bellrope. It irked him not to see his friend's face on the other side of the board. He had come downstairs prepared to make peace on the easiest terms; ready even to own himself to blame.
'Has Mr. Clissold breakfasted?' he asked the girl who answered his summons.
'No, sir. He wouldn't stop for breakfast; he went out soon after seven this morning, with his fishing-rod. And he left a note, please, sir.'
There it was among the shells and shepherdesses on the mantelpiece. A little pencil scrawl twisted into a cocked hat:—
'Dear Jim,
'Since it seems that my counsel irritates and annoys you, I take myself off for a day's fly fishing. You must please yourself about the races. Only remember, that it is easy for a man to drift upon quicksands from which he can hardly extricate himself without the loss of honour or of happiness.98 The sum-total of a man's life depends very much upon what he does with the first years of his manhood. I shall be back before night.
'Yours always,??
'M. C.'
James Penwyn read and re-read the brief epistle, musing over it frowningly. It was rather tiresome to have a friend who took such a serious view of trifles. Towards what quicksand was he drifting? Was it a dishonourable thing to admire beautiful eyes, to wish to do some kindness to a friendless girl, en passant? As to the races, he could not dream of disappointing the people he had invited. Was he to treat them cavalierly because they were poor? He rang the bell again and ordered the largest landau or barouche which the 'Waterfowl' could obtain for him, with a pair of good horses.
'And get me up a picnic basket,' he said, 'and plenty of champagne.'
At two and twenty, with the revenues of Penwyn Manor at his command, a man would hardly do things shabbily.
He had arranged everything with his guests. The Dempsons and the Elgoods lodged in the same house, an ancient dwelling not far from the archway at the lower end of the city. Mr. Penwyn was to call for them in a carriage at twelve o'clock, and they were to drive straight to the racecourse.
James breakfasted slowly, and with little appetite. He missed the companion whose talk had been wont to enliven all their meals. He thought it unkind of Maurice to leave him—was at once angry with his friend, and with himself for his contemptuous speeches of last night. He left his breakfast unfinished at last, and went out into the garden, and down by the narrow river, which had a different look by day. It was beautiful still—the winding stream with its sedgy banks, and far-off background of low hills, and the grave old city in the middle distance—but it lacked the magic of night—the mystic charms of moonbeam and shadow.
The scene—even without the moonlight—put him painfully in mind of last night, when Justina and100 he had sat side by side on the bench by yonder willow.
'Why shouldn't I marry her if I love her?' he said to himself; 'I am my own master. Who will ask Squire Penwyn for his wife's pedigree? It isn't as if she were vulgar or ignorant. She speaks like a lady, and she seems to know as much as most of the girls I have met.'
He strolled up and down by the river, smoking and musing until the carriage was ready. It was a capacious vehicle, of the good old Baker Street Repository build, a vehicle which looked as if it had been a family travelling carriage about the period of the Bourbon Restoration, and had done the tour of Europe, and been battered and bruised a good deal between the Alps and the Danube. There was a vast amount of leather in its composition, and more iron than sticklers for absolute elegance would desire, whereby it jingled considerably in its progress. But it was roomy, and, for a racecourse, that was the main point.
James drove to the dingy old street where the players lodged, an old-fashioned street, with queer101 old houses, more picturesque than clean. The players' lodgings were above a small shop in the chandlery line, and as there was no private door, James had to enter the realms of Dutch cheese, kippered herrings, and dip candles—pendent from the low ceiling like stalactites—in quest of his new acquaintance.
The ladies were ready, but Mr. Elgood was still in his shirt-sleeves, and his countenance had a warm and shiny look, as if but that moment washed. Justina came running down the stairs and into the shop, where James welcomed her warmly. She was quite a transformed and glorified Justina—decked in borrowed raiment, which Mrs. Dempson had good-naturedly supplied for the occasion. 'There is no knowing what may come of to-day's outing,' the leading lady had remarked significantly. 'Mr. Penwyn is young and foolish, and seems actually taken with Justina—and it would be such a blessing if she could marry well, poor child, seeing that she has not a spark of talent for the profession.'
Justina wore a clean muslin dress, which hardly reached her ankles, a black silk jacket, and a blue102 crape bonnet, not too fresh, but quite respectable—a bonnet which had been pinned up in paper and carefully kept since last summer.
'I shall trim it up with a feather or two and wear it for light comedy by and by,' said Mrs. Dempson, as she pulled the bonnet into shape upon Justina's head.
The girl looked so happy that she was almost beautiful. There was a soft bloom upon her cheek, a tender depth in the dark blue eyes, a joyous, smiling look that charmed James Penwyn, who liked people to be happy and enjoy themselves when he was in a humour for festivity.
'How good of you to be ready!' cried James, taking her out to the carriage, 'and how bright, and fresh, and gay you look!' Justina blushed, conscious of her borrowed bonnet. 'I've got a nice old rattletrap to take us to the racecourse.'
'Oh, beautiful!' exclaimed Justina, gazing at the patriarchal tub with respectful admiration.
'Are the others ready?'
'Father's just putting on his coat, and the Dempsons are coming downstairs.'
The Dempsons appeared as she spoke. Mrs. Dempson superb in black moire antique and the pinkest of pink bonnets, and a white lace shawl, which had been washed a good many times, and had rather too much darning in proportion to the pattern, but, as Mrs. Dempson remarked, 'always looked graceful.' It was her bridal veil as Pauline Deschappelles. She wore it as Juliet—and as Desdemona before the senate.
'Now, then,' cried James, as Mr. Elgood appeared, still struggling with his coat. The carriage was packed without further delay. Mrs. Dempson and Justina in the seat of honour, Mr. Penwyn and Mr. Dempson opposite them, Mr. Elgood on the box. He had declared his preference for that seat.
Off they went, oh! so gaily, Justina thought, the landlady gazing at them from her shop door, and quite a cluster of small children cheering their departure. 'As if it had been a wedding,' Mrs. Dempson said archly.
Away they went through the quaint old city which wore its holiday look to-day. Crowds were pouring in from the station; coffee-houses and104 eating-houses had set forth a Rabelaisian abundance in their shining windows; taverns were decorated with flags and greenery; flies, driven by excited coachmen with ribbons on their whips, shot up and down the streets. All was life and brightness; and Justina, who had rarely ridden in a carriage, felt that just in this one brief hour she could understand how duchesses and such people must feel.