MISS FINETTA.
Two mornings later there rode into the Row at Hyde Park a young lady
whose appearance always attracted a great deal of attention. In the
first place, she was one of the handsomest, if not the handsomest woman
there; in the next, she rode her horse as perfectly as it is possible
for a girl to ride; and, lastly, wherever she went, on horseback or on
foot, this lady was well known; in fact a celebrity. For she was Miss
Finetta.
As she rode in at a brisk canter in the superbly-fitting habit, which
seemed an outer skin of the lithe, supple figure, and followed by
her correctly clad groom, mounted on a horse as good as that of his
mistress, the hats of the men flew off, and the eyeglasses of the
women went up, or their owners looked another way. But to smiles or
frowns, pleasant nods, or icy stares, Finetta returned the same cool,
good-humored smile, the flash of her white teeth and black eyes.
Every now and then London has a fit. Sometimes it takes the shape of
hero worship, and down the mob go on their knees to some celebrity,
male or female; at others it goes black in the face with hooting and
mud-flinging at some object which it has suddenly taken it into its
head to hate.
At present all London--all fashionable male London--was in fits of
admiration of Finetta; and, strange to say, it had rather more than the
usual excuse for its enthusiasm. For she was a remarkable young woman.
Not very long ago she had been playing in company with other girls in
the alley in which her father's small coal store was situated; and was
perfectly happy when the organ man came into the alley, and she and her
playmates danced round that popular instrument.
Her mother wanted her to go to school, or at any rate to help her in
the green grocer shop, which was run in conjunction with the coal
store; but Finetta--her name at that time was Sarah Ann, by the
way--declined to go to school, and confined her ministrations in the
shop to stealing the oranges and apples.
Her mother alternately scolded and beat her; her father declared with
emphatic and descriptive language, that she would come to no good. And
Sarah Ann, taking the scoldings, and the beatings, and the prophecies
of a bad end, with infinite good-humor, went on playing hop-scotch, and
dancing round the organ, quite happy in her ragged skirts and her black
tousled hair, and almost as black face and hands.
But the gods, they say, delight in surprises, and one day an individual
happened to come down that alley who was fated to have an immense
influence on Sarah Ann's career.
He was a well-known dancing-master, a first-rate one, and a respectable
man whose whole life had been devoted to his art and nothing else.
He saw the group of girls dancing round the organ, stood and watched
them with an absent, reflective smile, and then, suddenly, his face lit
up and his eyes brightened.
Sarah Ann had run out from the green grocer's shop with an orange she
had stolen, and as she tore off the peel with her white teeth, set to
dancing with the rest.
The dancing-master drew aside a little, and kept his eyes on the lank,
angular girl whose dark orbs glowed under the excitement of the dance,
which, unlike that of her companions, was in perfect time with the
"music," and full of a grace which was as natural as a young Indian's.
Monsieur Faber, he was a Frenchman, went up to her.
"Are you fond of dancing?" he asked.
"Am I! Ain't I?" she retorted, flashing her teeth upon him. "Why, of
course I am! Who ain't?"
"So am I," he said. "Would you like to learn to dance properly?"
"Learn! I can dance already!" she retorted, with a toss of her head.
"Ah, you think so!" he said, smiling, with a kind of good-natured pity.
He looked round; the alley was empty, excepting for the children; and
he signed to the organ man to go on playing, and as he played, the
thin, dapper little Frenchman began to dance. We won't try and describe
it. All the world has seen him, and knows what is meant when it is said
that it was Monsieur Faber at his best.
He seemed to be made of springs, India rubber springs, to be as light
as a thistle down, to tread, float, on air, and to possess the wind and
speed of a dervish.
The black-eyed slip of a girl watched him in breathless amazement and
delight; and when he finished and came on his toe points as if he had
just floated down from the grimy house-tops, she uttered a long-drawn
sigh of envy and admiration.
"I couldn't do that," she said, looking at him sullenly but wistfully.
"No, not yet," he said. "And why, my child? Because you have not been
taught. One does not know how to dance till one learns. Would you like
to learn?"
"Shouldn't I, just!" she responded.
"Take me to your mother, and we will see," he said.
She ran, sprang into the shop.
"Mother, here's a man as dances like--like--an angel," (she said "a
hangel",) "and he's going to teach me."
The poor woman "went for her" with a stick that lay handy, but M. Faber
interposed, and entered on an explanation and a proposal.
He would take Sarah Ann as a pupil, teach her to dance, get her an
engagement at one of the theaters, and in return, she was to be bound
to him as a kind of apprentice, and give him a certain percentage--it
was a fair one--of all she might earn for the next five years.
Sarah Ann's parents hesitated, but Sarah Ann cut the negotiation short
by coolly announcing her determination, in the event of their refusing,
to accept the offer, to "cut and run," and, knowing that she was quite
capable of carrying out her threat the couple consented.
M. Faber christened her Finetta, and commenced the lessons at once.
He had two daughters of his own, but though they worked hard, neither
they nor any of the other pupils were half so quick at the enchanting
science as Sarah Ann--pardon! Finetta--the daughter of the small coal
man.
She worked hard, almost day and night; it might be said that she danced
in her dreams. She had a good ear for music; "if you only had a voice,
my dear child," M. Faber would murmur, throwing up his hands, and when
she danced it was like a human instrument playing, moving, in accord
and harmony with the mechanical one, the violin or the piano.
She would do nothing at home in the alley; would not serve in the
shop, or keep the small coal accounts, or wash her face or brush her
hair; but she obeyed M. Faber with an eager alacrity which was almost
pathetic.
"I want to dance better than any one in the world!" she would say, and
her master encouraged her by remarking that it was not unlikely she
would attain her wish.
The months passed on. The angular girl--all legs and wings, like a
pullet--grew into a graceful young woman, with a face, which, if not
beautiful in the regulation way, was singularly striking, with flashing
eyes, and rather large but mobile lips.
"There is a great future before that girl," M. Faber would remark to
his wife, a good-natured woman, who treated all the pupils as if they
were her own children. But he did not hurry. "One does not learn to
dance in a day," he would say, when Finetta begged him to get her an
engagement, even if it were ever so small a one. "Patience, my good
child; and when the time comes, _voila_, you shall see!"
The time came, and Finetta appeared among the ladies of the ballet at a
small provincial theater. He kept her in the ranks for two years, then
gave her a "solo" part, and lastly obtained an engagement for her at
the Diadem.
To dance at the Diadem was the height of Finetta's ambition. Her heart
beat that night as it had never beat before, not even on her first
appearance at the provincial theater; but it did not deafen the music,
or drive her steps out of her mind, and when she had finished, the roar
of delight that rose in the theater proclaimed the fact that Finetta
had scored a triumph, and that M. Faber had not labored in vain.
This was three years ago. Her popularity had steadily increased. She
was now the rage. Her salary exceeded that of a cabinet minister; the
percentage alone was a good income for the patient, persevering M.
Faber.
When she appeared at night the house roared a welcome, and rewarded her
efforts with thunders of applause.
Her photographs were placed among the other celebrities in the shop
windows, next those of the Royal Family, the great poets, the eminent
statesmen, and sold as well as, if not better than, the rest. Outside
the theater hung a huge transparency, showing Finetta in her Spanish
dancing-dress; the tobacconists sold a cigarette bearing her name.
All this ought to have turned her head. It did a little, but only a
little. To tell the truth, she was a good-hearted girl, and in her
prosperity did not forget those near to her. She set her father up
in the wholesale coal trade, and put her mother into a nice house in
Islington; sent her brother to school, and had her sister to live with
her in the pretty house in St. John's Wood, and though the world said
hard things of her, she was unjustly accused and calumniated.
Her manners were not those of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. She gave supper
parties at which only gentlemen and ladies of the ballet were present;
she talked and laughed loudly; she knew nothing, and cared less, for
the proprieties; was fond of champagne, and enjoyed a cigarette;
delighted in riding, and driving tandem, and did both surpassingly
well; but scandal could find no chink in her armor through which to
shoot its poisoned darts, and the worst the world could, with truth,
call her was "Finetta, the dancer!"
The men who thronged round her called her "a good fellow!" and when a
woman of her class has earned that title, depend upon it, she is not so
black as the virtuous paint her.
She knew half the peerage--the male side--but she was as friendly and
pleasant to a struggling young journalist as to my Lord Vinson. Men
sent her letters, telling her they adored her; she lit her cigarettes
with them, and told the writers, when next she saw them, not to waste
ink and paper upon her, but to make up a party to take her for a drive
and a dinner at Richmond.
Sometimes, very often, they sent her presents--diamond rings,
bracelets, pendants, lockets, with their portraits (which she always
took out), and she accepted them with a careless _sang froid_, which
was amusing--to all but the donors. The horses she and her groom rode
were a gift from a well-known turf lord. It was said that the lease of
the house at John's Wood had been given to her; but that was not true.
"Why shouldn't I take 'em?" she said to her sister. "They'll only
give 'em to some one else who wouldn't look half so well on them, and
wouldn't know how to ride 'em."
So that she often danced at the Diadem wearing gems which made the
ladies in the stalls envious, and appeared in the row riding a horse
which was a better-looking and going one than even Lady Harkaway's, the
famous sportswoman.
Sometimes one of the young men who paid her court, fell in love with
her--genuine, honest love--and offered to make her his wife. She might
have been a countess, had she chosen; but she did not choose.
"No, thank you," she said to one young peer, who implored her, with
something like tears in his eyes to marry him. "What would be the use?
You'd find out that you'd made a mistake before a month was out; and so
should I. Then people would cut me, and I shouldn't like that. Besides,
you'd want me to give up dancing and live what you call respectable,
and I'm certain I shouldn't like that! No, you go and marry one of
your own set, and take a box for my next benefit and bring her, and
you'll be able to say: 'See what you saved me from!' You wouldn't? Oh,
yes, you would! I know your sort of people too well. You won't take an
answer? Well, then the truth is, I've made up my mind not to marry till
I come across a man I can really care for, and I've not tumbled on any
one yet, thank you."
She knew the world very well, did Finetta.
She sent them away when they got too "foolish," as she said, and wanted
to marry her; dismissing them good-temperedly enough. In fact she was
not a bad-tempered woman, and it was only at times that her passionate
nature revealed itself. At such times, when she let out, it was a
revelation indeed. It was almost as safe to brave the tigress in her
den at the Zoological Gardens as to affront Finetta; and they who had
done it once were satisfied with the attempt, and did not repeat it.
Now, one day, or rather one night, there came Yorke Auchester, and with
him a change in the life of Finetta. They were friends at once. She
amused and interested him; he liked to see her dance, liked to hear her
talk in her cynical, good-tempered way; liked to drop in at the little
house in St. John's Wood after the theater, at the little suppers
over which she presided with a light-hearted gayety which made them
extremely pleasant.
He admired her on horseback, admired her pluck, her coolness, her
readiness to give and take in the game of repartee; and so it came
about that of all the men, none were so often in her company as Yorke.
We are the slaves of habit. This is by no means a new saying, but it is
a painfully true one.
Yorke got into the habit of dropping in at the Diadem for Finetta's
great dance; got into the habit of dropping in at St. John's Wood, of
driving her down to Richmond, of riding with her in the park or into
the country.
And although he seldom gave her presents, never told her that she was
the most beautiful, the cleverest, the best of her sex, as most of the
other men did, Finetta liked him better than all the rest put together.
And so the chain began to be forged.
When she went on the stage her dark eyes would scan the stalls, and if
she saw his handsome, careless face and long figure there, a little
smile would curve her lips, and she would dance her best.
At the little supper parties she managed, somehow or other, that he
would sit beside her. If she were dull before he came, she brightened
up when he made his appearance. If she had made an engagement, she
would break it if Yorke asked her to ride and drive with him.
He didn't see this marked preference for some time, but the others did.
Her quiet little sister who ran the house, once said:
"Fin, you're going soft on that big Lord Yorke," and the next moment
had sufficient cause for being sorry that she had spoken.
But it was the truth. Finetta, who had laughed love to scorn, and
broken, or cracked, so many hearts, was in a fair way to discover that
she had a heart of her own.
Often when he had left her, she would sit perfectly motionless and
silent, thinking hard; then she would start up with a laugh, and burst
into a music-hall song. But it often ended with a sigh.
She was angry with herself, and she fought hard against the thralldom
that was creeping over her; but she could no more help feeling happy
when he was present, and miserable when he was absent, than she could
help dancing in time, or dropping her 'H's' when she was excited.
Nothing stands still in this world; love grows or decreases. Finetta's
love for Lord Yorke grew day by day, until it had reached such a pass
that when he went off she needs must throw up her part for the night
and follow him, and failing to find him, come back wretched at heart,
though outwardly as cool and debonair as usual.
That morning as she was putting on her habit, her sister Polly had
ventured to say a few more words of warning.
"That Lord Yorke will make your heart ache, Fin," she said, as she
buttoned her sister's boots.
"Oh, will he?" she retorted, with a dash of color coming into her
cheeks.
"Yes, he will. And what's the good? He won't ask you to marry him."
"Oh, won't he? How do you know?"
"I've heard them talk about him. He's as poor as a rat."
"But I'm not!"
"No, I dare say; but that won't help you. Besides, he's a good as
engaged to that Lady Eleanor Dallas."
Finetta jerked her foot away, and her eyes began to glow dangerously.
"Her? Why she's like a wax doll."
"Oh, no, she isn't," said Polly. "She's as good-looking as most of the
swells, and more so; besides, she's rolling in money, and it's money
he wants. Take my advice, Fin, and don't let him hang about you any
longer."
"And you take my advice, and hold your tongue!" retorted Finetta. "He
shall hang about me as much as he likes. Who said I wanted to marry
him, or--or that I would if he asked me?"
"I do; if he'd give you the chance," said Polly.
Finetta drew her foot away.
"I'll button the other myself," she said, passionately. But when her
sister had gone she sat with the other boot unbuttoned, and kept the
groom and the horses waiting for a good half-hour; and when she did
go down and mount and ride off, her handsome face was clouded and
thoughtful.
But at the sight of the green park and the people, she chased the
melancholy brooding out of her dark eyes, and touching the magnificent
horse with her golden spur, sent him into the row in her well-known
style.
"If he were only here," she thought, and a sigh came to her lips.
"Somehow I feel tired and bored without him, and lost if he's away for
a day or two. Going to marry Lady Eleanor, is he?"
Almost before the muttered words had left her lips her eyes fell upon a
stalwart figure standing against the rails, and the color flew to her
face as she brought the horse up beside him.
It was Yorke--Yorke leaning against the rail, with his usually careless
face grave and thoughtful, his eyes absent and staring vacantly at the
ground, and yet with a strange look in them, which she, with a woman's
quickness, noticed in an instant.
"Yorke," she said, bending down.
He started, and looked up, and her name came to his lips, but without
the friendly smile which usually accompanied it.
"Why, when did you come back?" she asked, her face, her eyes all alight
with life and happiness.
"To-day," he said. "Sultan's looking well----."
"Where have you been?" she demanded, noticing a change in his voice.
"Did you get any fishing?
"Not much," he said, and his eyes were fixed on the horse.
"No? Then why didn't you come back? It's been awfully slow without you.
Did you know that I had a day off and run down to the country? I was
near you, I believe. Why didn't you leave word where you were going?
What's the matter with you?" she broke off sharply, her color coming
and going, for there had come into his face, into his eyes, a look
almost of pity--newly born pity.
He knew now that he himself loved, that this woman loved him, and how
she would suffer presently.
"I'll come in after the theater to-night," he said.
"Ride on now, or we shall have a crowd."
Several men had stopped, but waited, as if recognizing Yorke's right to
monopolize her.
"Very well," she said, and she turned the horse. "It has come at last!"
she murmured, "at last! He is going to be married. I know it! I know!"
Her breath came painfully, and her hand stole up to her heart.
At that moment a lady came riding in the opposite direction. She was
fair as a lily, and as beautiful, with soft brown eyes that looked
dreamily about her; but as they met the dark ones of Finetta they
seemed to awake, and the softness instantly vanished and gave place to
an expression that in a man would be called hard and calculating.
Finetta's face, pale a moment before, grew white.
"That's her," she muttered. "And he is going to marry her. Polly's
right; she's beautiful. Beautiful, and different to me. He'll marry
and love her."
Her head drooped and her lips set tightly, and then she rode on. But
suddenly she stopped the horse under some trees and looked back.
The beautiful girl with the soft brown eyes had stopped beside the
rail, and Yorke and she were shaking hands.
Finetta could see their faces distinctly, and she watched, scanned his
eagerly.
A singular expression came into her bold, handsome face.
"It's not her he's thinking of," she said; "not her. There's the same
look in his eyes as when he looked up at me. What is it? I'll find out
to-night." Her white teeth came together with a click. "I feel like
fighting to-day. Going to marry Lady Eleanor, is he? We'll see! Oh,
Yorke, if--if----." She looked round at the aristocrats riding past.
"There isn't one that could love you as I do."