IN THE ANTE-ROOM
When the Thorsgarth party arrived at the concert-room, before all
the disturbance had taken place, Magdalen went straight to that
waiting-room where the performers sat, and which was just behind the
platform. She walked quickly thither, and did not know, until she
had entered the room, that Otho had followed her. But on turning to
close the door, she saw him there, and he walked in after her, not
looking at her at all, but casting a quick glance round the room, to
see who might be already present.
Those who were there, were Ada Dixon, and one or two other girls who
belonged to the choir, and were going to assist in the part-songs.
Ada looked very pretty, if a little commonplace and vulgar, in her
blue frock, and white fleecy shawl. She sat apart from her
companions in solitary dignity, and appeared to be studying her
song; and it was in this situation that Magdalen and Otho found her.
Ada looked up as they came in, and rose with a heightened colour.
Magdalen took no notice of Otho, but shook hands with Ada.
‘Well, Ada, how are you, and how is your song?’
‘Oh, I’m ready with mine, thank you, Miss Wynter; and there’s no
need to ask you about yours.’
‘Good evening, Miss Dixon,’ here said Otho, and he too advanced, and
shook hands with her. Ada looked both alarmed and conscious. He had
never done this before—at least, in Magdalen’s presence.
‘So long as you are here,’ pursued Otho, addressing Ada, ‘things
cannot go very far wrong.’
‘Oh, Mr. Askam, what nonsense!’ said the girl, half-pleased,
half-confused, and wholly astonished, at this public manifestation
of favour and interest. She gave a furtive glance behind her, and
was not displeased to find that the audience had been augmented by
the arrival of more youths and maidens.
‘Otho,’ observed Magdalen, in her clear, low tones, ‘excuse me if I
remind you that this room is set apart for those who take part in
the performance, and I don’t think you ought to be here.’
‘I’m going to take part in the performance,’ said Otho, throwing his
head back, and flashing a curious glance upon her—a glance which Ada
saw, and in her silly little soul at once decided that Otho was
paying her more attention than was agreeable to Miss Wynter. That
was delightful to her, and she simpered complacently.
‘You!’ exclaimed Magdalen, who had also seen the glance, and who had
hard work not to betray the tremulousness she felt.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Otho, carelessly. ‘What’s to prevent me if I
choose?’
He brought forward a chair, and placed it for her with a polite bow,
and a wave of his hand, inviting her to be seated. Magdalen behaved
as if she were paralysed, as in truth she was, in a manner. She had
absolutely no precedent from which to judge the meaning of Otho’s
conduct just now. She had studied him, humoured him, flattered him,
made him the object of her supreme interest and supreme attention,
for more than five years; and within the last year, she had begun to
confess that her pains had been in vain—that he had never intended
to proceed to anything more than friendship, and was not likely now
to change his mind. And then her own deeds had avenged themselves
upon her, for in confessing this, she had suffered tortures, and in
trying to act upon it, and to shake off her intimacy with him, she
had found that she could not. He had made himself master of what
heart she possessed. Her resistance this evening to a demand of his
had cost her a pang, and this conduct of his, in consequence,
bewildered her. She was thrown off her guard; she felt that she was
groping in a fog, and she knew not how to battle with him. She
repented her now, in her soul, of having thwarted him just to-night,
since this was the way in which he chose to revenge himself. She
could see nothing except to maintain an unruffled personal dignity,
which she knew came easily to her, and, if necessary, to retire
altogether from the arena. She was calculating altogether without
her host in the matter, as Otho soon proved to her.
She took the chair he offered her, and sat down; and then Otho,
taking no further present notice of her, turned to Ada, and, under
Magdalen’s eyes, proceeded to inaugurate a flirtation with the young
girl, in the most outrageously bad taste, and with a persistency and
determination from which, as Magdalen very well saw, a more resolute
girl than Ada could with difficulty have withdrawn herself. The only
method of resistance would have been for the object of his
attentions to close her lips, and entirely refuse to converse with
him; and that, of course, was a method which did not for a moment
occur to Ada, whose inflammable vanity, utterly unbalanced by common
sense, took fire at his attentions, and construed them into proofs
of the most flattering regard.
Magdalen sat quite passive under this behaviour until the choir had
gone to the concert-room, to sing their glee about ‘the oak and the
ash, and the bonny ivy tree,’ and then she said, coldly and
deliberately—
‘Ada, I want to speak to you.’
‘Oh, never mind her!’ said Otho, carelessly, almost contemptuously.
‘A sermon should not come before a song, especially such a song as
Miss Dixon is going to give us.’
But old habit was yet strong in Ada. Never before had Miss Wynter
addressed her without receiving instant and profound attention, and
she received it now. Ada gave it almost instinctively.
‘What is it, Miss Wynter?’ she asked.
‘Only this, that I don’t know what Mr. Askam means by behaving as he
is doing, and I am quite sure you do not; but one thing is
certain,—that Mr. Roger Camm will be here directly, and I would
advise you to moderate your transports, and behave a little more
like a reasonable being before he comes.’
‘Roger Camm, indeed!’ exclaimed Ada, nettled. ‘He’s not my master
yet, nor ever will be, Miss Wynter. He may come twenty times for
aught I care.’
Never before had she addressed Magdalen in such a tone. It would
appear that the latter was in earnest in her remonstrance, for she
now appealed to Otho.
‘Listen to me, Otho. If you are conducting yourself in this way in
order to vex me, you have quite succeeded. I’m ready to own it, and
I will give you whatever explanation you like after this is over;
but for heaven’s sake go back into the concert-room before Roger
Camm comes. You have no right to behave as you are doing, and he
will very speedily let you know that he thinks so.’
‘Right!’ exclaimed Otho, with a laugh. ‘I never ask about right. I
do what I have a fancy for.’
‘Pray what harm can Roger say of me?’ said Ada pettishly.
‘I would rather ask, what good he can say of you, if you let him see
you making yourself ridiculous in this fashion. In any case, you
belong to him, and——’
‘Not yet!’ exclaimed both Otho and Ada in one voice. Magdalen looked
at them both, and showed what was with her a rare sign, betokening
strong emotion—a heightened colour in her cheeks.
‘Otho,’ she said, slowly and deliberately, and with a glitter in her
eyes, ‘I believe you are a downright bad man; and, Ada, I am certain
now that you are a complete fool. You are both doing what you will
rue to the last day of your lives.’ Magdalen spoke with a suppressed
passion, so unusual with her as to cause her physical pain in the
effort to control it—passion which would have astounded Otho now, if
he had not been too angrily determined to do his own way to heed
her.
‘To the last day of your lives,’ she repeated. ‘But I have spoken,
and I leave it between you. I wash my hands of you both.’
She got up, and went to another chair at the extreme end of the
room, and seating herself at the table, rested her chin on her hand,
and fixed her eyes on the floor. Otho whispered something to Ada,
who was not quite so happy as she had been, now that she had heard
the denunciations of Magdalen. While he stooped towards her, and she
was laughing in a nervously pleased manner at his words, the
suddenly opened door let in a louder burst of music from the front.
It was closed again.
‘Oh, I’m not so late, after all,’ began Roger Camm’s voice, and then
he came to a dead stop, looking from one to the other, speechless.
Otho, who was leaning over the back of Ada’s chair, raised his head
as Roger entered, and looked at him with the disagreeable smile
which showed his white teeth and his frowning brows.
‘Good evening, Camm,’ he said, carelessly, and in so condescending a
tone that Magdalen looked up.
Roger advanced a step.
‘What does this mean?’ he asked, and his hands had clenched
themselves, and his face had grown pale.
‘What does what mean?’ asked Ada, laughing flippantly, to conceal
her dismay.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Roger, standing directly in front
of Otho, and looking at him with a frown as black as night.
‘What I please,’ replied Otho, insolently, and not raising himself
from his too familiar attitude.
‘That is an odd answer to give me,’ observed Roger, incisively,
‘when you are apparently amusing yourself with my future wife.’
‘Roger!’ exclaimed Ada, flushing fiercely, and speaking in a choked
voice.
‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Otho.
At this juncture Magdalen again rose, and came forward once more.
She was pale even to her lips, and she walked up to Roger Camm, laid
her hand upon his arm, and said—
‘Mr. Camm, you must listen to me. I believe I am the cause of this
scene, but I swear it is without fault of mine that it has arisen.
He wished me to promise him, earlier in the evening, when I was at
his house, that I would let him hand me on to the stage when our
song came, and said he would remain in this room while I was here. I
said he had nothing to do with the concert, and that I would not
consent to it. He replied that he would have his revenge—very manly
and nice of him, of course. I suppose this is it, and I must say it
seems pitiful to me. If I had known, nothing would have induced me
to come here. I can only say he is beside himself, and——’
‘That will scarcely do,’ said Roger, turning away. ‘He is not
acknowledged as a lunatic yet, nor shut up, whatever he ought to be,
and I will thank him——’
Here the door again opened, and all the performers came into the
room. Magdalen said imploringly to Roger—
‘Please go and play the prelude. I will _make_ him behave himself.’
There was no time to be lost, and Roger, after hesitating a second
or two, followed her directions. Magdalen turned to Otho. For once
she found him deaf and senseless to her words. She bade him go to
the concert-room. He flatly refused to do so, with a bow and a
smile. She said she would not go in herself, if he did not do as she
told him; to which he replied, that in that case he would himself go
forward, and say that since Miss Wynter was in a bad temper and
refused to sing, he offered himself as a substitute. All this passed
in low tones, the pantomime being eagerly watched by those who had
come in, and who could see the gestures of the speakers and their
faces, without hearing their words.
The man’s vindictive determination prevailed. If he were mad there
was method in his madness. He was prepared to throw all appearances
to the winds, and to say or do whatever came uppermost. Magdalen was
not; and she had little time in which to decide. Otho offered his
arm to Ada, and they went on to the stage in the order before spoken
of.
When they all returned to the ante-room, Ada was more uneasy and
less triumphant than she had been; and greatly embarrassed too, by
Otho’s marked attentions in the face of the other performers, who,
so far from being awestruck at the distinction conferred upon her,
seemed to be tittering amongst themselves at the absurdity of the
whole affair.
Roger walked up to Ada, and asked her gravely and quietly if she had
to sing again.
‘No, Roger,’ said she, in a subdued voice.
‘Then I think you had better let me take you home,’ he said gently,
and offered her his arm. Ada took it instantly.
‘Oh, nonsense!’ began Otho. ‘We can’t do with that. She——’
‘Be good enough to stand out of the way,’ said Roger, fixing his
eyes upon him with a steady look that boded anything but peace
between them in the future. ‘I will take Miss Dixon home now. There
has been foolery enough to-night. I will settle with you to-morrow.’
This promise was given heartily enough, if in a low voice. Otho,
with a sneering laugh, let him pass, and then turned to Magdalen.
‘I suppose you are not too overcome to go into the other room,’ he
said. ‘Shall I take you there?’
‘I shall go when I am ready,’ replied Magdalen, coldly. ‘You are at
liberty to go as soon as ever you please.’
‘Not I!’ said he, throwing himself into a chair near to her. ‘I’ve
worked hard enough to get your society. I’m not going to quit it the
instant I have secured it.’
Here the choir were again summoned to the front, and they were left
alone. Otho had spoken of having worked hard to obtain Magdalen’s
company, but he sat in silence till towards the end of the chorus,
when, as it was the last thing in the first part of the concert,
Magdalen rose, and began to gather up her shawl.
‘Now I shall go,’ she remarked.
‘All right!’ said he. ‘But listen to me, Magdalen; you must let me
see you home, and I’ll tell you the meaning of this.’
‘As if I required to know the meaning of it!’ she said, bitterly.
‘It is pure malice and viciousness on your part, Otho. Meaning,
indeed!’
‘You know nothing in the world about it.’
‘I cannot talk about it now. I am not going to enter into an
argument with you. You have made me feel ill already.’
‘Then settle matters by promising that I shall go home with you; or
I vow you shall hear me in this very room. I intend to have it out
with you to-night, do you hear?’
‘Very well—as we go home,’ said Magdalen, very coldly.
And, as the door opened to admit the returning performers, and the
interval had begun, they took their way to the concert-room, and
joined their party.