“Of my grief (guess the length of the sword by the sheath’s);
By the silence of life, more pathetic than death’s!
Go--be clear of that day.”
E. Barrett Browning.
|The Park seemed dull and well-nigh deserted when, at about ten o’clock
on the following day, Fraulein Ellerbeck and the two children made their
way to the water’s edge. Fraulein said she would establish herself on a
seat in a sheltered nook not far off, and the children carried her book
and her knitting-bag for her, chatting as they walked. Pacing slowly
towards them was a figure which somehow arrested their attention.
“Why,” said Evereld, lowering her voice, “it is surely the man we saw as
_Benedick_, last March, Fraulein. It’s Hugh Macneillie, the actor.”
Ralph looked curiously and with great interest at a member of the
profession which had such charms for him.
Macneillie was a man of about seven and thirty, with chestnut-brown
hair, strongly marked features, and a muscular, well-knit figure.
About his clean-shaven face there was an air of profound gravity which
surprised Ralph, who could not conceive how a man capable of acting
_Benedick_, and noted for his subtle sense of humour, could wear such
an anxious and melancholy expression. He glanced at them with dreamy,
absent eyes and paced slowly by.
Yet the little group had not been altogether lost on Hugh Macneillie in
spite of the unseeing look in his eyes. He had carried away a curiously
vivid impression of the two children, their black garments and their
fresh young faces. He gave an impatient sigh, and paced on with quicker
steps, yet turned again to walk by the side of the water, every now and
then glancing at his watch with an air of vexation. He had been waiting
there for a good hour, and he was in a mood which made waiting specially
irksome.
“I will give her till half past ten,” he thought to himself, and walked
doggedly on, his face growing more and more haggard as the time
passed by. At last the Westminster chimes rang out the half hour; he
mechanically took out his watch again to verify the time, and setting
his teeth hard turned to go.
At that moment there suddenly appeared, walking towards him, a very
beautiful woman. It was difficult to say precisely in what her great
charm lay. Her every movement was full of grace, and although she was
dressed with scrupulous quietness--indeed with a simplicity that was
almost severe,--no one could have passed her by without a lingering
glance. Her complexion was pale but very fair, her hair was like spun
gold, contrasting curiously with the brown, deep-set eyes; and
though the mouth was a little too wide and betrayed a not ever strong
character, both face and manner were full of that indescribable
fascination which carries all before it.
Macneillie, though he met her in the company of other people every day
of his life, though he had known her for at least ten years, went to
meet her now with his heart throbbing painfully. She gave him a charming
little greeting, and apologised prettily for being so unpunctual.
“It is Elizabeth’s fault,” she said, glancing at the maid who
accompanied her. “She allowed me to oversleep myself. You can wait for
me on that bench Elizabeth, I shall not be long.”
The maid walked back to the seat where Fraulein Ellerbeck sat with her
knitting, and Macneillie, who had scarcely spoken a word as yet, broke
the silence as they paced on together. “I had almost given you up,” he
said, a world of repressed impatience in his tone.
“That’s the wisest thing I ever heard you say, Hugh,” she replied
lightly, though with a secret effort. “But you must go further. It must
be not only almost, but altogether.”
“Don’t let us talk in parables,” said Macneillie, passionately. “You
can’t compare an hour’s waiting in a park with ten years waiting through
the best part of a man’s life.”
A look of pain flashed across her face: there was remorse and tenderness
in her voice as she replied. But there was not the love he had once
heard there, and he knew it well enough.
“Poor Hugh!” she said, “I have treated you very badly. But how am I to
help myself. We have waited for each other, as you say, these ten years,
but you know well enough that my father and mother will never consent.
They have made up their minds that I shall make a very different
marriage.”
“In other words,” said Macneillie between his teeth, “they have made up
their minds to sell you to the highest bidder.”
“No, no, you are so exaggerated, Hugh. Every one can’t look at the
matter as you with your religious education in the Highlands look at
it. Marriage is, after all, an arrangement affecting many people and
interests. We are not living in a romance but in the prosaic nineteenth
century. And I must not just please myself. I must think of what will
best help on my career; my first duty is undoubtedly to help and to
please my parents who have done so much for me.”
“You didn’t think so ten years ago,” said Macneillie.
“Ten years ago I was a foolish girl of seventeen. You had been very good
to me when the year before I had been taken straight from school and set
down alone and friendless in a travelling company. It was natural enough
that I should love you then, Hugh--you who shielded me and helped me.”
“But later on,” said Macneillie, clenching his hands, “when you no
longer were lonely and friendless, when fame had come to you and all the
world was at your feet, you very naturally needed me no longer, and your
love died. Mine was never that sort of love--it will always live.”
Christine Greville looked down with troubled face. Ambition and the
importunities of her parents had for the time stifled her love. She felt
cold and hard. His passionate constancy annoyed her. “I wish,” she said
plaintively, “you would not speak like that, Hugh. I hate to think that
I have pained you, or spoiled your life; but what am I to do? What am I
to do?”
He turned to her eagerly.
“Be true to your best self, Christine. Trust the man who loved you long
before this Sir Roderick Fenchurch had ever seen you. I’m not blind! I
can see the advantages you might gain by marrying him! You would be very
rich. You could have your own theatre, you would leap at once to a much
higher position. But do you dream that such a marriage would be happy?
Why, you have hardly a taste in common, and he is old enough to be your
father.”
“Oh, as to happiness,” she said, impatiently, “I have long ceased to
expect that. Don’t think me brutal if I speak plainly. I have had your
love all these years, and it has not made me really happy. And if I
married you, Hugh, I should not be happy at all. You are much too good
for me, your standard of life is far too high. You would not be able to
draw me up, and I should be always longing to drag you down to my level.
It would be a life of perpetual strain and tension.”
“No, no,” he cried passionately, and as he spoke he caught her hand
in his as though he felt that she was slipping from him. “Together,
darling, we should be happy, we should be strong to work for art’s sake
and for truth’s sake--strong to fight all that is evil.”
They had paused, and were standing now beside the railing that fenced
off the grass and bushes, and within a stone’s throw of Ralph and
Evereld; half unconsciously Macneillie watched the progress of the
toy boat as the soft summer wind filled its white sails. At a little
distance the ducks swam about the wooded island, and in the golden haze
Queen Anne’s Mansions loomed up impressively like some great fortress.
“But I don’t want to toil and to struggle like that,” said his
companion, petulantly. “Every word you say only proves to me how far we
have drifted apart, Hugh. You have a sort of ideal of me in your mind
not in the least like the true Christine. I tell you I am tired of all
your ideals and aims and dreams of raising the drama. That is not what I
care for. I care for success and applause--yes I do, don’t interrupt me.
I care for them, and I must have them. And I want a better position, and
I want much, much more money. I want other things, too, which you can
never give me. You’ll never be a rich man, Hugh, it’s somehow not in
you; you’ll never push your way to the very front of the profession. But
I must do that, nothing but the very first place will satisfy me. I have
ten times your ambition.”
“By that sin fell the angels,” said Macneillie.
“Don’t quote Shakspere, we have enough of him every evening,” she said,
forcing a laugh. “And for me, I am not an angel as you very well know.
Come, let us make an end of this useless talk. My father is at this
moment discussing settlements with Sir Roderick, and in a day or two all
the world will know that the marriage is arranged.”
Macneillie’s lips moved but no words would come--he breathed hard.
“Don’t look like that, Hugh,” she exclaimed. “We shall often see each
other; we shall be the best of friends; and when I have my own theatre,
why you shall be the first to find a place in the company.”
A look of hot anger flashed across Macneillie’s haggard face.
“Do you think I would accept such a post?” he said, indignantly. “For
what do you take me?” Then, his tone softening to tender reproach, “You
don’t understand a man’s love--you don’t understand!”
“Perhaps I don’t understand it,” she said, looking rather nettled; “but
I have met plenty of men who were dying for love of me one month and
raving about some one else the next. There, I must go home. Talking
only makes matters worse. Go and take a good walk, Hugh, or you will act
abominably to-night. _Au revoir!_”
She beckoned to her maid and turned away abruptly, anxious to put an
end to an interview which had been trying to both of them. Her face
was grave and down-cast as she walked, and more than once she sighed
heavily. She had never been formally betrothed to Macneillie, but there
had been a private engagement between them, and she had spoken quite
truly when she said that his care during her girlhood had shielded her
from many perils. Her love for him had been very real; she had struggled
long against the opposition of her parents, but at last her strength had
failed, and little by little she had yielded to the influence which by
degrees had paralysed her powers of loving.
“Poor Hugh,” she thought to herself, remorsefully. “He is terribly cut
up. But I was never good enough for him. Sir Roderick and the low level
will suit me much better.”
After he was left alone, Macneillie did not move for some minutes. He
just leant on the iron fence with clenched hands and set face, despair
in his heart. The voices of the two children to the right fell on his
ear, mingling strangely with his miserable thoughts.
“I shall lose her! I shall lose her!” cried the boy in a tragic voice.
“How came you to let go of the string?” asked his small companion.
“I had forgotten all about it; I was thinking of those people. Hurrah!
the wind is shifting; she is coming nearer. I do believe I could reach
her with my stick.”
Macneillie watched the boy’s strenuous efforts to recapture the tiny
craft, which seemed almost within his reach, yet somehow always eluded
him. Suddenly, at the very moment when his stick had touched the boat,
he lost his balance and fell headlong over the low foot-rail into the
water.
Macneillie had hurried to the rescue before Evereld’s cry of terror had
reached Fraulein Ellerbeck. He lifted out the dripping boy and laid him
on the path, and Ralph, recovering from the shock and rubbing his wet
eyelashes, looked up to find a grave face bending over him and to meet
the inquiry of the kindest blue-grey eyes he had ever seen.
“None the worse for your bath, I hope?” said Macneillie, smiling a
little.
“No, thank you,” said Ralph, struggling to his feet and looking very
much like Johnnie Head-in-air when “with hooks the two strong men hooked
poor Johnnie out again.”
“It was awfully good of you to help me,” he added, gratefully.
“And now let us rescue the boat,” said Macneillie, winning golden
opinions from the children by the real pains he took to capture the _Rob
Roy_, and the same from Fraulein Ellerbeck by his courteous farewell.
“So few Englishmen,” she remarked, “know how to bow. You must take a
lesson from him, Ralph.”
“And, oh, Fraulein,” said Evereld, as they walked briskly home, that
Ralph might change his clothes, “did you see what a long time Miss
Christine Greville stayed talking to him? And part of the time they were
quite close to us, and we heard her say that soon every one would know
she was to be married--I think, to some very rich man--and she would
have a theatre of her own, and Mr. Macneillie should act there.”
“You should not have listened, my dears,” said Fraulein Ellerbeck,
uneasily.
“But, indeed, Fraulein, we couldn’t help it; her voice was so very,
very clear, it reached us every word just like raindrops pattering on
leaves.”
“And so did his voice too,” said Ralph. “He seemed quite angry when
she said that. He said he would never accept such a post, and that she
didn’t a bit understand how he loved her.”
“Well, well,” said Fraulein, “let us say no more about it now; and
be sure you never repeat what you accidentally overheard. It may be a
secret from people in general, and it would be more honourable if you
treated it as a secret.”
The children promised that they would do so, but, like the celebrated
parrot, though they said nothing, they thought the more, and Macneillie
became their great hero. Through him they had both received their first
glimpse into the unknown region where men and women loved and suffered;
and, since they both were missing the familiar home life and the close
companionship of parents, they seized eagerly on this new outlet
for certain feelings of reverence and hero-worship which they both
possessed.
Could the actor have known what sympathy and devotion these two felt for
him, or how real was their childish love and admiration, he would have
felt, even at that bitter time in his life, a touch of amused gratitude
and wonder. Wholly unknown to himself he was filling the minds of two
somewhat desolate little mortals, brightening their tedious days, and
drawing them out of themselves and their own troubles.
Often, in after years, they would laugh to think what pleasure they had
found in running downstairs before the breakfast gong had sounded, that
they might get possession of the _Times_ and see the announcement of
“Hamlet,” in which Macneillie was appearing. And one morning it chanced
that their two smiling faces were still bent over the paper when Sir
Matthew came into the room.
“Well,” he said, kindly, “what good news have you found?”
For once Ralph forgot the shy stiffness of manner which usually crept
over him at his guardian’s approach.
“Oh,” he said, in an eager boyish way, “We were just looking at the cast
for ‘Hamlet.’”
“To be sure. I had quite forgotten that you were stage-struck, and
that I had promised you to go to see Washington. You must get Fraulein
Ellerbeck to take you some day.”
“We would much rather see Macneillie,” said Evereld, “for it was
Macneillie, you know, who helped Ralph out when he tumbled into the
water.”
“Very well,” said Sir Matthew, “then do that instead. Fraulein
Ellerbeck, will you take tickets for them?--and the sooner the better,
for I hear there has been a great run on the seats there since the
announcement of Miss Greville’s marriage. She’s to marry Sir Roderick
Fenchurch at the end of the season.”
Ralph and Evereld having poured forth delighted thanks, discreetly kept
silence when the conversation turned on Miss Greville’s betrothal.
“They say, you know,” said Janet, “that it is a great surprise to every
one, and that it was always supposed she would marry Macneillie.”
And in response to this every one had something to say about the
probability or the improbability of such a story, save the two children
who, with a proud pleasure in feeling that Macneillie’s secret was safe
in their keeping, went on eating bacon with the most absolute control of
countenance.
When the eagerly awaited day at length arrived and the two
hero-worshippers were sitting in bliss at the theatre, they found some
difficulty at first in recognising Macneillie. He was just the Danish
prince and no one else. It was only when both hero and heroine were
called before the curtain, that they could at all think of him as the
same man they had seen a few weeks before in St. James’ Park.
As he led forward Miss Greville the contrast between them was curiously
marked. She, with her smiling face, her air of perfect ease and content,
seemed thoroughly to enjoy the warm reception. He, on the other hand,
merely bowed mechanically, and looked as if this interlude were
highly distasteful to him; the children could have fancied that he was
positively nervous, though they doubted whether an experienced actor
could really know what nervousness meant.
After that call before the curtain they lost the sense that _Hamlet_
himself was actually present; always through the passionate scenes
and the tragic death which followed, it was not entirely _Hamlet_, but
Macneillie with his own personal troubles that they saw; they wondered
much how he could get through his part, and more and more after that day
his name continually recurred in their talk, in their games, and even in
their prayers.
Just at the close of the season they saw him once again. Fraulein
Ellerbeck had promised that on the first fine Saturday they should go
to Richmond Park, taking their lunch with them. They had learnt from the
conversation of their elders at the breakfast table that it was the
very day on which Miss Christine Greville was to marry Sir Roderick
Fenchurch. The marriage was to take place at a small country church, and
was to be of a strictly private character. They had talked of it more
than once as they sat at lunch under the trees in the park, and early
in the afternoon as they wandered along the quiet paths and watched the
deer grazing peacefully, their minds were full of their hero and his
trouble. Suddenly Evereld gripped hold of her companion’s arm.
“Look!” she exclaimed in a low voice. “Is it not Mr. Macneillie?”
Ralph’s heart beat fast as he glanced at the approaching figure. Had
their incessant thought of him conjured up a sort of vision of the
actor? Or was it indeed himself? Nearer approach answered the question
plainly enough. It was undoubtedly Macneillie, but there was something
in his ghastly face which struck terror into the boy’s heart, it
reminded him of that awful shadow of death which he had seen stealing
over his father on that last never-to-be-forgotten day. Apparently quite
unconscious of their presence, Macneillie passed by, but in a minute
Ralph, to the amazement of Fraulein Ellerbeck and Evereld, had rushed
back and overtaken him.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, panting a little; “but I am the boy you
saved the other day in St. James’ Park. And--and please will you take
this knife as a remembrance.”
He thrust into Macneillie’s hand a little old-fashioned silver fruit
knife which had belonged to his father.
The actor evidently dragged himself back with an effort to the world
of realities. He looked in a puzzled way at the boy and at the embossed
handle of the knife.
“You are very good,” he said in a perplexed tone. “Yes, yes, I remember
you now--you and your boat. But I don’t like to take your knife away
from you.”
“But, indeed, I never use it; I always eat peel and all,” said Ralph
with an earnestness which brought a smile to Macneillie’s face. “We went
to see you as _Hamlet_, and you were splendid! Please take it. You don’t
know how awfully I like you.”
Macneillie’s eyes gave him a kindly glance and his cold fingers closed
over the boy’s small hot hand in a hearty grip.
“Then I will certainly use it,” he said. “It shall travel in my pocket
for the rest of my life. But only on condition that you take this. Don’t
get into mischief with it.”
And with a smile he put into his hand a clasp-knife, and while Ralph was
still lost in admiration of the longest and sharpest blade he had ever
seen, Macneillie passed rapidly on and disappeared among the trees.
“Oh, Ralph, how delightful!” cried Evereld, as the boy rejoined them.
“How could you be so brave as to go up and speak to him?”
“I’m awfully glad he took the fruit knife,” said Ralph. “But I wish
he hadn’t given me this. It’s such a beauty and I had done nothing for
him.”
“Perhaps you had,” said Fraulein Ellerbeck, thoughtfully. “The unseen
and unrealised help is often the most real help of all.”