It was a rainy November night. A soft continuous downpour was soaking the
London streets, without, however, affecting their animation or the
nocturnal brightness of the capital, for the brilliance of the gas-lamps
was flashed back from innumerable patches of water, and every ray of
light seemed to be broken by the rain into a hundred shimmering
reflections. It was the hour when all the society of which an autumnal
London can boast is in the streets, hurrying to its dinner or its
amusements, and when the stream of diners-out, flowing through the
different channels of the west, is met in all the great thoroughfares by
the stream of theatre-goers setting eastward.
The western end of D---- Street was especially crowded, and so was the
entrance to a certain narrow street leading northwards from it, in which
stood the new bare buildings of the _Calliope_. Outside the theatre
itself there was a dense mass of carriages and human beings, only kept in
order by the active vigilance of the police, and wavering to and fro with
kaleidoscopic rapidity. The line of carriages seemed interminable, and,
after those who emerged from them had run the gauntlet of the dripping,
curious, good-tempered multitude outside, they had to face the sterner
ordeal of the struggling well-dressed crowd within, surging up the double
staircase of the newly-decorated theatre. The air inside was full of the
hum of talk, and the whole crowd had a homogeneous, almost a family air,
as though the contents of one great London _salon_ had been poured into
the theatre. Everybody seemed to know everybody else; there were
politicians, and artists, and writers of books, known and unknown; there
were fair women and wise women and great ladies; and there was that large
substratum of faithful, but comparatively nameless, persons on whom a
successful manager learns to depend with some confidence on any first
night of importance.
And this was a first night of exceptional interest. So keen, indeed, had
been the competition for tickets that many of those present had as vague
and confused an idea of how they came to be among the favoured multitude
pouring into the _Calliope_ as a man in a street panic has of the devices
by which he has struggled past the barrier which has overthrown his
neighbour. Miss Bretherton's first appearance in _Elvira_ had been the
subject of conversation for weeks past among a far larger number of
London circles than generally concern themselves with theatrical affairs.
Among those which might be said to be within a certain literary and
artistic circumference, people were able to give definite grounds for the
public interest. The play, it was said, was an unusually good one, and
the progress of the rehearsals had let loose a flood of rumours to the
effect that Miss Bretherton's acting in it would be a great surprise to
the public. Further, from the intellectual centre of things, it was only
known that the famous beauty had returned to the scene of her triumphs;
and that now, as in the season, one of the first articles of the social
decalogue laid it down as necessary that you should, first of all, see
her in the theatre, and, secondly, know her--by fair means if possible,
if not, by crooked ones--in society.
It was nearly a quarter to eight. The orchestra had taken their places,
and almost every seat was full. In one of the dress-circle boxes sat
three people who had arrived early, and had for some time employed
themselves in making a study of the incoming stream through their
opera-glasses. They were Eustace Kendal, his sister, Madame de
Châteauvieux, and her husband. The Châteauvieux had travelled over
from Paris expressly for the occasion, and Madame de Châteauvieux, her
gray-blue eyes sparkling with expectation and all her small delicate
features alive with interest and animation, was watching for the rising
of the heavy velvet curtain with an eagerness which brought down upon her
the occasional mockery of her husband, who was in reality, however,
little less excited than herself. It was but three weeks since they had
parted with Isabel Bretherton in Paris, and they were feeling on this
first night something of the anxiety and responsibility which parents
feel when they launch a child upon whom they have expended their best
efforts into a critical world.
As for Eustace, he also had but that afternoon arrived in London. He had
been paying a long duty-visit to some aged relatives in the North, and
had so lengthened it out, in accordance with the whim which had taken
possession of him in Surrey, that he had missed all the preparations for
_Elvira_, and had arrived upon the scene only at the moment when the
final _coup_ was to be delivered. Miss Bretherton had herself sent him a
warm note of invitation, containing an order for the first night and an
appeal to him to come and 'judge me as kindly as truth will let you.' And
he had answered her that, whatever happened, he would be in his place in
the _Calliope_ on the night of the 20th of November.
And now here he was, wearing outwardly precisely the same aspect of
interested expectation as those around him, and all the time conscious
inwardly that to him alone, of all the human beings in that vast theatre,
the experience of the evening would be so vitally and desperately
important, that life on the other side of it would bear the mark of it
for ever. It was a burden to him that his sister suspected nothing of his
state of feeling; it would have consoled him that she should know it, but
it seemed to him impossible to tell her.
'There are the Stuarts,' he said, bending down to her as the orchestra
struck up, 'in the box to the left. Forbes, I suppose, will join them
when it begins. I am told he has been working like a horse for this play.
Every detail in it, they say, is perfect, artistically and historically,
and the time of preparation has been exceptionally short. Why did she
refuse to begin again with the _White Lady_, to give herself more time?'
'I cannot tell you, except that she had a repugnance to it which could
not be got over. I believe her associations with the play were so painful
that it would have seemed an evil omen to her to begin a new season with
it.'
'Was she wise, I wonder?'
'I think she did well to follow her fancy in the matter, and she herself
has had plenty of time. She was working at it all the weeks she was with
us, and young Harting, too, I think had notice enough. Some of the
smaller parts may go roughly to-night, but they will soon fall into
shape.'
'Poor Wallace!' said Kendal; 'he must be wishing it well over. I never
saw a house better stocked with critics.'
'Here he is,' cried Madame de Châteauvieux, betraying her suppressed
excitement in her nervous little start. 'Oh, Mr. Wallace, how do you do?
and how are things going?'
Poor Wallace threw himself into his seat, looking the picture of misery
so far as his face, which Nature had moulded in one of her cheerfullest
moods, was capable of it.
'My dear Madame de Châteauvieux, I have no more notion than the man in
the moon. Miss Bretherton is an angel, and without Forbes we should have
collapsed a hundred times already, and that's about all I know. As for
the other actors, I suppose they will get through their parts somehow,
but at present I feel like a man at the foot of the gallows. There goes
the hell; now for it.'
The sketch for the play of _Elvira_ had been found among the papers of a
young penniless Italian who had died, almost of starvation, in his Roman
garret, during those teeming years after 1830, when poets grew on every
hedge and the romantic passion was abroad. The sketch had appeared in a
little privately-printed volume which Edward Wallace had picked up by
chance on the Paris quays. He had read it in an idle hour in a railway,
had seen its capabilities, and had forthwith set to work to develop the
sketch into a play. But, in developing it, he had carefully preserved the
character of the original conception. It was a conception strictly of the
Romantic time, and the execution of it presented very little of that
variety of tone which modern audiences have learnt to expect. The play
told one rapid breathless story of love, jealousy, despair, and death,
and it told it directly and uninterruptedly, without any lighter
interludes. Author and adapter alike had trusted entirely to the tragic
force of the situation and the universality of the motives appealed to.
The diction of the piece was the diction of Alfred de Vigny or of the
school of Victor Hugo. It was, indeed, rather a dramatic love-poem than a
play, in the modern sense, and it depended altogether for its success
upon the two characters of Macias and Elvira.
In devising the character of Macias the Italian author had made use of a
traditional Spanish type, which has its historical sources, and has
inspired many a Spanish poet from the fifteenth century downwards. Macias
is knight, poet, and lover; his love is a kind of southern madness which
withers every other feeling in its neighbourhood, and his tragic death is
the only natural ending to a career so fierce and uncontrolled. Elvira,
with whom Macias is in love, the daughter of Nuno Fernandez, is embodied
gentleness and virtue, until the fierce progress of her fate has taught
her that men are treacherous and the world cruel. For her love had been
prosperous and smooth until, by a series of events, it had been brought
into antagonism with two opposing interests--those of her father and of a
certain Fernan Perez, the tool and favourite of the powerful Duke of
Villena. The ambition and selfish passion of these two men are enlisted
against her. Perez is determined to marry her; her father is determined
to sweep Macias out of the path of his own political advancement. The
intrigue devised between the two is perfectly successful. Macias is
enticed away; Elvira, forced to believe that she is deserted and
betrayed, is half driven, half entrapped, into a marriage with Perez; and
Macias, returning to claim her against a hundred obstacles, meets the
wedding party on their way back to the palace of the Duke. The rest of
the play represented, of course, the struggle between the contending
forces thus developed. In plan and mechanism the story was one of a
common romantic type, neither better nor worse than hundreds of others of
which the literary archives of the first half of the present century are
full. It required all the aid that fine literary treatment could give it
to raise it above the level of vulgar melodrama and turn it into tragedy.
But fortune had been kind to it; the subject had been already handled in
the Italian sketch with delicacy and a true tragic insight, and Edward
Wallace had brought all the resources of a very evenly-trained and
critical mind to bear upon his task. It could hardly have been foreseen
that he would be attracted by the subject, but once at work upon it he
had worked with enthusiasm.
The curtain drew up on the great hall of the Villena Palace. Everything
that antiquarian knowledge could do had been brought to bear upon the
surroundings of the scene; the delicate tilework of the walls and floor,
the leather hangings, the tapestries, the carved wood and brass work of a
Spanish palace of the fifteenth century, had been copied with lavish
magnificence; and the crowded expectant house divided its attention and
applause during the first scene between the beauty and elaboration of its
setting and the play of the two tolerable actors who represented Elvira's
father and the rival of Macias, Fernan Perez.
Fernan Perez, having set the intrigue on foot which is to wreck the love
of Macias and Elvira, had just risen from his seat, when Wallace, who was
watching the stage in a torment of mingled satisfaction and despair,
touched Madame de Châteauvieux's arm.
'_Now_!' he said. 'That door to the left.'
Kendal, catching the signal, rose from his seat behind Madame de
Châteauvieux and bent forward. The great door at the end of the palace
had slowly opened, and gliding through it with drooping head and hands
clasped before her came Elvira, followed by her little maid Beatriz. The
storm which greeted her appearance was such as thrilled the pulses of the
oldest _habitué_ in the theatre. Tears came to Madame de Châteauvieux's
eyes, and she looked up at her brother.
'What a scene! It is overpowering--it is too much for her! I wish they
would let her go on!'
Kendal made no answer, his soul was in his eyes; he had no senses for any
but one person. _She_ was there, within a few yards of him, in all the
sovereignty of her beauty and her fame, invested with the utmost romance
that circumstances could bestow, and about, if half he heard were true,
to reap a great artistic, no less than a great personal triumph. Had he
felt towards her only as the public felt it would have been an experience
beyond the common run, and as it was--oh, this aching, intolerable sense
of desire, of separation, of irremediable need! Was that her voice? He
had heard that tone of despair in it before--under over-arching woods,
when the June warmth was in the air! That white outstretched hand had
once lain close clasped in his own; those eyes had once looked with a
passionate trouble into his. Ah, it was gone for ever, nothing would ever
recall it--that one quick moment of living contact! In a deeper sense
than met the ear, she was on the stage and he among the audience. To the
end his gray life would play the part of spectator to hers, or else she
would soon have passed beyond his grasp and touch, just as Elvira would
have vanished in a little while from the sight of the great audience
which now hung upon her every movement.
Then from the consciousness of his own private smart he was swept out,
whether he would or no, into the general current of feeling which was
stirring the multitude of human beings around him, and he found himself
gradually mastered by considerations of a different order altogether. Was
this the actress he had watched with such incessant critical revolt six
months before? Was this the half-educated girl, grasping at results
utterly beyond her realisation, whom he remembered?
It seemed to him impossible that this quick artistic intelligence, this
nervous understanding of the demands made upon her, this faculty in
meeting them, could have been developed by the same Isabel Bretherton
whose earlier image was so distinctly graven on his memory. And yet his
trained eye learned after a while to decipher in a hundred indications
the past history of the change. He saw how she had worked, and where; the
influences which had been brought to bear upon her were all familiar to
him; they had been part of his own training, and they belonged, as he
knew, to the first school of dramatic art in Europe--to the school which
keeps alive from generation to generation the excellence and fame of the
best French drama. He came to estimate by degrees all that she had done;
he saw also all she had still to do. In the spring she had been an
actress without a future, condemned by the inexorable logic of things to
see her fame desert her with the first withering of her beauty. Now she
had, as it were, but started towards her rightful goal, but her feet were
in the great high-road, and Kendal saw before her, if she had but
strength to reach it, the very highest summit of artistic success.
The end of the first act was reached; Elvira, returning from the
performance of the marriage ceremony in the chapel of the palace, had
emerged hand-in-hand with her husband, and, followed by her wedding
train, upon the great hall. She had caught sight of Macias standing
blanched and tottering under the weight of the incredible news which had
just been given to him by the Duke. She had flung away the hateful hand
which held her, and, with a cry, instinct with the sharp and terrible
despair of youth, she had thrown herself at the feet of her lover.
When the curtain fell, Edward Wallace could have had few doubts--if he
had ever cherished any--of the success of his play. He himself escaped
behind the scenes as soon as Miss Bretherton's last recall was over,
and the box was filled in his absence with a stream of friends, and a
constant murmur of congratulation, which was music in the ears of Madame
de Châteauvieux, and, for the moment, silenced in Kendal his own
throbbing and desolate consciousness.
'There never was a holiday turned to such good account before,' a
gray-haired dramatic critic was saying to her, a man with whose keen,
good-natured face London had been familiar for the last twenty years.
'What magic has touched the beauty, Madame de Châteauvieux? Last spring
we all felt as though one fairy godmother at least had been left out at
the christening. And now it would seem as though even she had repented of
it, and brought her gift with the rest. Well, well, I always felt there
was something at the bottom in that nature that might blossom yet. Most
people who are younger at the trade than I would not hear of it. It was
commonly agreed that her success would last just as long as the first
freshness of her beauty, and no more. And _now_--the English stage has
laid its hold at last upon a great actress.'
Madame de Châteauvieux's smiling reply was broken by the reappearance of
Wallace, round whom the buzz of congratulation closed with fresh vigour.
'How is she?' asked Madame de Châteauvieux, laying a hand on his arm.
'Tired?'
'Not the least! But, of course, all the strain is to come. It is amazing,
you know, this reception. It's almost more trying than the acting. Forbes
in the wings, looking on, is a play in himself!'
In another minute the hubbub had swept out again, and the house had
settled into silence.
Macias was the central figure of the second act. In the great scene of
explanation between himself and Elvira, after he had forced his way into
her apartment, his fury of jealous sarcasm, broken by flashes of the old
absolute trust, of the old tender worship, had been finely conceived, and
was well rendered by the promising young actor, whom Wallace had himself
chosen for the part, Elvira, overwhelmed by the scorn and despair of her
lover, and, conscious of the treachery which has separated them, is yet
full of a blind resolve to play the part she has assumed to the bitter
end, to save her own name and her father's from dishonour, and to
interpose the irrevocable barrier of her marriage vow between herself and
Macias. Suddenly they are interrupted by the approach of the Duke and of
Fernan Perez. Elvira throws herself between her husband and her lover,
and, having captured the sword of Macias, hands it to the Duke. Macias is
arrested after a tumultuous scene, and is led away, shaking off Elvira's
efforts to save him with bitter contempt, and breaking loose from her
with the prophecy that in every joy of the future and every incident of
her wedded life, the spectre of his murdered love will rise before her,
and 'every echo and every breeze repeat the fatal name, Macias.'
During the rapid give and take of this trying scene Kendal saw with a
kind of incredulous admiration that Isabel Bretherton never once lost
herself, that every gesture was true, every word struck home. Her
extraordinary grace, her marvellous beauty were all subordinated to,
forgotten almost in the supreme human passion speaking through her.
Macias, in the height of his despair while he was still alone with her,
had flung her his sword, declaring that he would go forth and seek his
death an unarmed and defenceless man. Then, when he becomes conscious of
the approach of his rival, the soldier's instinct revives in him; he
calls for his sword; she refuses it, and he makes a threatening step
towards her.
'_Mac_. My sword, Elvira.
_Elvira_. Never!
_Beatriz_. Ah! they are here. It is too late!
_Elvira_. Go! No blood shall flow for me. Come no nearer--or I sheathe it
in this breast.'
All the desperate energy of a loving woman driven to bay was in her
attitude as she repelled Macias, whereas in the agony of her last
clinging appeal to him, as his guards lead him off, every trace of her
momentary heroism had died away. Faint and trembling, recoiling from
every harsh word of his as from a blow, she had followed him towards the
door, and in her straining eyes and seeking, outstretched hands as she
watched him disappear, there was a pathos so true, so poignant, that it
laid a spell upon the audience, and the curtain fell amid a breathless
silence, which made the roar that almost instantly followed doubly
noticeable.
But it was in the third act that she won her highest triumph. The act
opened with a scene between Elvira and her husband, in which she implored
him, with the humility and hopelessness of grief, to allow her to retire
from the world and to hide the beauty which had wrought such ruin from
the light of day. He, in whom jealousy has taken fierce root, refuses
with reproach and insult, and in the full tide of her passionate reaction
against his tyranny, the news is brought her by Beatriz that Fernan, in
his determination to avoid the duel with Macias on the morrow, which the
Duke, in accordance with knightly usage, has been forced to grant, has
devised means for assassinating his rival in prison. Naturally, her whole
soul is thrown into an effort to save her lover. She bribes his guards.
She sends Beatriz to denounce the treachery of her husband to the Duke,
and, finally, she herself penetrates into the cell of Macias, to warn him
of the fate that threatens him and to persuade him to fly.
It was, indeed, a dramatic moment when the gloom of Macias's cell was
first broken by the glimmer of the hand-lamp, which revealed to the vast
expectant audience the form of Elvira standing on the threshold,
searching the darkness with her shaded eyes; and in the great love scene
which followed the first sharp impression was steadily deepened word by
word and gesture after gesture by the genius of the actress. Elvira finds
Macias in a mood of calm and even joyful waiting for the morrow. His
honour is satisfied; death and battle are before him, and the proud
Castilian is almost at peace. The vision of Elvira's pale beauty and his
quick intuition of the dangers she has run in forcing her way to him
produce a sudden revulsion of feeling towards her, a flood of passionate
reconciliation; he is at her feet once more; he feels that she is true,
that she is his. She, in a frenzy of fear, cannot succeed for all her
efforts in dimming his ecstasy of joy or in awakening him to the
necessity of flight, and at last he even resents her terror for him, her
entreaties that he will forget her and escape.
'Great heaven!' he says, turning from her in despair, 'it was not love,
it was only pity that brought her here.' Then, broken down by the awful
pressure of the situation, her love resists his no longer, but rather she
sees in the full expression of her own heart the only chance of
reconciling him to life, and of persuading him to take thought for his
own safety.
'_Elvira._ See, Macias! these tears--each one is yours, is wept for you!
Oh, if to soften that proud will of yours this hapless woman must needs
open all her weak heart to you, if she must needs tell you that she lives
only in your life and dies in your death, her lip will brace itself even
to that pitiful confession! Ah me! these poor cheeks have been so
blanched with weeping, they have no blushes left.'
To her this supreme avowal is the only means of making him believe her
report of his danger, and turn towards flight; but in him it produces a
joy which banishes all thought of personal risk, and makes separation
from her worse than death. When she bids him fly, he replies by one word,
'Come!' and not till she has promised to guide him to the city gates and
to follow him later on his journey will he move a step towards freedom.
And then, when her dear hand is about to open to him the door of his
prison, it is too late. Fernan and his assassins are at hand, the stairs
are surrounded, and escape is cut off. Again, in these last moments, when
the locked door still holds between them and the death awaiting them, her
mood is one of agonised terror, not for herself, but for him; while he,
exalted far above all fear, supports and calms her.
'_Macias_. Think no more of the world which has destroyed us! We owe it
nothing--nothing! Come, the bonds which linked us to it are for ever
broken! Death is at the door; _we are already dead_! Come, and make death
beautiful: tell me you love, love, love me to the end!'
Then, putting her from him, he goes out to meet his enemies. There is a
clamour outside, and he returns wounded to death, pursued by Fernan and
his men. He falls, and Elvira defends him from her husband with a look
and gesture so terrible that he and the murderers fall back before her as
though she were some ghastly avenging spirit. Then, bending over him, she
snatches the dagger from the grasp of the dying man, saying to him, with
a voice into which Isabel Bretherton threw a wealth of pitiful
tenderness, 'There is but one way left, beloved. Your wife that should
have been, that is, saves herself and you--_so_!'
And in the dead silence that followed, her last murmur rose upon the air
as the armed men, carrying torches, crowded round her. 'See, Macias, the
torches--how they shine! _Bring more--bring more--and light--our
marriage festival_!'
* * * * *
'Eustace! Eustace! there, now they have let her go! Poor child, poor
child! how is she to stand this night after night? Eustace, do you hear?
Let us go into her now--quick, before she is quite surrounded. I don't
want to stay, but I must just see her, and so must Paul. Ah, Mr. Wallace
is gone already, but he described to me how to find her. This way!'
And Madame de Châteauvieux, brushing the tears from her eyes with one
hand, took Kendal's arm with the other, and hurried him along the narrow
passages leading to the door on to the stage, M. de Châteauvieux
following them, his keen French face glistening with a quiet but intense
satisfaction.
As for Kendal, every sense in him was covetously striving to hold and fix
the experiences of the last half-hour. The white muffled figure standing
in the turret door, the faint lamp light streaming on the bent head and
upraised arm--those tones of self-forgetful passion, drawn straight, as
it were, from the pure heart of love--the splendid energy of that last
defiance of fate and circumstance--the low vibrations of her dying
words--the power of the actress and the personality of the woman,--all
these different impressions were holding wild war within him as he
hastened on, with Marie clinging to his arm. And beyond the little
stage-door the air seemed to be even more heavily charged with
excitement than that of the theatre. For, as Kendal emerged with his
sister, his attention was perforce attracted by the little crowd of
persons already assembled round the figure of Isabel Bretherton, and, as
his eye travelled over them, he realised with a fresh start the full
compass of the change which had taken place. To all the more eminent
persons in that group Miss Bretherton had been six months before an
ignorant and provincial beauty, good enough to create a social craze, and
nothing more. Their presence round her at this moment, their homage, the
emotion visible everywhere, proved that all was different, that she had
passed the barrier which once existed between her and the world which
knows and thinks, and had been drawn within that circle of
individualities which, however undefined, is still the vital circle of
any time or society, for it is the circle which represents, more or less
brilliantly and efficiently, the intellectual life of a generation.
Only one thing was unchanged--the sweetness and spontaneity of that
rich womanly nature. She gave a little cry as she saw Madame de
Châteauvieux enter. She came running forward, and threw her arms round
the elder woman and kissed her; it was almost the greeting of a daughter
to a mother. And then, still holding Madame de Châteauvieux with one
hand, she held out the other to Paul, asking him how much fault he had to
find, and when she was to take her scolding; and every gesture had a glow
of youth and joy in it, of which the contagion was irresistible. She had
thrown off the white head-dress she had worn during the last act, and her
delicately-tinted head and neck rose from the splendid wedding-gown of
gold-embroidered satin--vision of flowerlike and aerial beauty.
Fast as the talk flowed about her, Kendal noticed that every one seemed
to be, first of all, conscious of her neighbourhood, of her dress
rustling past, of her voice in all its different shades of gaiety or
quick emotion.
'Oh, Mr. Kendal,' she said, turning to him again after their first
greeting--was it the magnetism of his gaze which had recalled hers?--'if
you only knew what your sister has been to me! How much I owe to her and
to you! It was kind of you to come to-night. I should have been so
disappointed if you hadn't!'
Then she came closer to him, and said archly, almost in his ear,
'Have you forgiven me?'
'Forgiven you? For what?'
'For laying hands on Elvira, after all. You must have thought me a rash
and headstrong person when you heard of it. Oh, I worked so hard at her,
and all with the dread of you in my mind!'
This perfect friendly openness, this bright _camaraderie_ of hers, were
so hard to meet!
'You have played Elvira,' he said, 'as I never thought it would be played
by anybody; and I was blind from first to last. I hoped you had forgotten
that piece of pedantry on my part.'
'One does not forget the turning-points of one's life,' she answered with
a sudden gravity.
Kendal had been keeping an iron grip upon himself during the past hours,
but, as she said this, standing close beside him, it seemed to him
impossible that his self-restraint should hold much longer. Those
wonderful eyes of hers were full upon him; there was emotion in
them,--evidently the Nuneham scene was in her mind, as it was in
his,--and a great friendliness, even gratitude, seemed to look out
through them. But it was as though his doom were written in the very
candour and openness of her gaze, and he rushed desperately into speech
again, hardly knowing what he was saying.
'It gives me half pain, half pleasure, that you should speak of it so. I
have never ceased to hate myself for that day. But you have travelled far
indeed since the _White Lady_--I never knew any one do so much in so
short a time!'
She smiled--did her lip quiver? Evidently his praise was very pleasant to
her, and there must have been something strange and stirring to her
feeling in the intensity and intimacy of his tone. Her bright look caught
his again, and he believed for one wild moment that the eyelids sank and
fluttered. He lost all consciousness of the crowd; his whole soul seemed
concentrated on that one instant. Surely she must feel it, or love is
indeed impotent!
But no,--it was all a delusion! she moved away from him, and the
estranging present rushed in again between them.
'It has been M. de Châteauvieux's doing, almost all of it,' she said
eagerly, with a change of voice, 'and your sister's. Will you come and
see me some time and talk about some of the Paris people? Oh, I am
wanted! But first you must be introduced to Macias. Wasn't he good? It
was such an excellent choice of Mr. Wallace's. There he is,-and there is
his wife, that pretty little dark woman.'
Kendal followed her mechanically, and presently found himself talking
nothings to Mr. Harting, who, gorgeous in his Spanish dress, was
receiving the congratulations which poured in upon him with a pleasant
mixture of good manners and natural elation. A little farther on he
stumbled upon Forbes and the Stuarts, Mrs. Stuart as sparkling and fresh
as ever, a suggestive contrast in her American crispness and prettiness
to the high-bred distinction of Madame de Châteauvieux, who was standing
near her.
'Well, my dear fellow,' said Forbes, catching hold of him, 'how is that
critical demon of yours? Is he scotched yet?'
'He is almost at his last gasp,' said Kendal, with a ghostly smile, and a
reckless impulse to talk which seemed to him his salvation. 'He was never
as vicious a creature as you thought him, and Miss Bretherton has had no
difficulty in slaying him. But that hall was a masterpiece, Forbes! How
have your pictures got on with all this?'
'I haven't touched a brush since I came back from Switzerland, except to
make sketches for this thing. Oh, it's been a terrible business! Mr.
Worrall's hair has turned gray over the expenses of it; however, she and
I would have our way, and it's all right--the play will run for twelve
months, if she chooses, easily.'
Near by were the Worralls, looking a little sulky, as Kendal fancied, in
the midst of this great inrush of the London world, which was sweeping
their niece from them into a position of superiority and independence
they were not at all prepared to see her take up; Nothing, indeed, could
be prettier than her manner to them whenever she came across them, but it
was evident that she was no longer an automaton to be moved at their will
and pleasure, but a woman and an artist, mistress of herself and of her
fate. Kendal fell into conversation on the subject with Mrs. Stuart, who
was as communicative and amusing as usual, and who chattered away to him
till he suddenly saw Miss Bretherton signalling to him with her arm in
that of his sister.
'Do you know, Mr. Kendal,' she said as he went up to her, 'you must
really take Madame de Châteauvieux away out of this noise and crowd? It
is all very well for her to preach to me. Take her to your rooms and
get her some food. How I wish I could entertain you here; but with this
crowd it is impossible.'
'Isabel, my dear Isabel,' cried Madame de Châteauvieux, holding her,
'can't you slip away too, and leave Mr. Wallace to do the honours? There
will be nothing left of you to-morrow.'
'Yes, directly, directly! only I feel as if sleep were a thing that did
not exist for me. But you must certainly go. Take her, Mr. Kendal;
doesn't she look a wreck? I will tell M. de Châteauvieux and send
him after you.'
She took Marie's shawl from Kendal's arm and put it tenderly round her;
then she smiled down into her eyes, said a low 'good-night, best and
kindest of friends!' and the brother and sister hurried away, Kendal
dropping the hand which had been cordially stretched out to himself.
'Do you mind, Eustace?' said Madame de Châteauvieux, as they walked
across the stage. 'I ought to go, and the party ought to break up. But it
is a shame to carry you off from so many friends.'
'Mind? Why, I have ordered supper for you in my rooms, and it is just
midnight. I hope these people will have the sense to go soon. Now then,
for a cab.'
They alighted at the gate of the Temple, and, as they walked across the
quadrangle under a sky still heavy with storm-clouds, Madame de
Châteauvieux said to her brother with a sigh: 'Well, it has been a great
event. I never remember anything more exciting, or more successful. But
there is one thing, I think, that would make me happier than a hundred
Elviras, and that is to see Isabel Bretherton the wife of a man she
loved!' Then a smile broke over her face as she looked at her
brother.
'Do you know, Eustace, I quite made up my mind from those first letters
of yours in May, in spite of your denials, that you were very deeply
taken with her? I remember quite seriously discussing the pros and cons
of it with myself.'
The words were said so lightly, they betrayed so clearly the speaker's
conviction that she had made a foolish mistake, that they stung Kendal to
the quick. How could Marie have known? Had not his letters for the last
three months been misleading enough to deceive the sharpest eyes? And yet
he felt unreasonably that she ought to have known--there was a blind
clamour in him against the bluntness of her sisterly perception.
His silence was so prolonged that Madame de Châteauvieux was startled by
it. She slipped her hand into his arm. 'Eustace!' Still no answer. 'Have
I said anything to annoy you--Eustace? Won't you let your old sister have
her dreams?'
But still it seemed impossible for him to speak. He could only lay his
hand over hers with a brotherly clasp. By this time they were at the foot
of the stairs, and he led the way up, Madame de Châteauvieux following in
a tumult of anxious conjecture. When they reached his rooms he put her
carefully into a chair by the fire, made her take some sandwiches, and
set the kettle to boil in his handy bachelor way, that he might make her
some tea, and all the time he talked about various nothings, till at last
Marie, unable to put up with it any longer, caught his hand as he was
bending over the fire.
'Eustace,' she exclaimed, 'be kind to me, and don't perplex me like
this.--Oh, my poor old boy, are you in love with Isabel Bretherton?'
'He drew himself to his full height on the rug, and gazed steadily into
the fire, the lines of his mobile face settling into repose.
'Yes,' he said, as though to himself; 'I love her. I believe I have loved
her from the first moment.'
Madame de Châteauvieux was tremblingly silent, her thoughts travelling
back over the past with lightning rapidity. Could she remember one word,
one look of Isabel Bretherton's, of which her memory might serve to throw
the smallest ray of light on this darkness in which Eustace seemed to be
standing? No, not one. Gratitude, friendship, esteem--all these had been
there abundantly, but nothing else, not one of those many signs by which
one woman betrays her love to another! She rose and put her arm round her
brother's neck. They had been so much to one another for nearly forty
years; he had never wanted anything as a child or youth that she had not
tried to get for him. How strange, how intolerable, that this toy, this
boon, was beyond her getting!
Her mute sympathy and her deep distress touched him, while, at the same
time, they seemed to quench the last spark of hope in him. Had he counted
upon hearing something from her whenever he should break silence which
would lighten the veil over the future? It must have been so, otherwise
why this sense of fresh disaster?
'Dear Marie,' he said to her, kissing her brow as she stood beside him,
'you must be as good to me as you can. I shall probably be a good deal
out of London for the present, and my books are a wonderful help. After
all, life is not all summed up in one desire, however strong. Other
things are real to me--I am thankful to say. I shall live it down.'
'But why despair so soon?' she cried, rebelling against this heavy
acquiescence of his and her own sense of hopelessness. 'You are a man any
woman might love. Why should she not pass from the mere friendly
intellectual relation to another? Don't go away from London. Stay and see
as much of her as you can.'
Kendal shook his head. 'I used to dream,' he said huskily, 'of a time
when failure should have come, when she would want some one to step in
and shield her. Sometimes I thought of her protected in my arms against
the world. But now!'
She felt the truth of his unspoken argument--of all that his tone
implied. In the minds of both the same image gathered shape and
distinctness. Isabel Bretherton in the halo of her great success, in all
the intensity of her new life, seemed to her and to him to stand afar
off, divided by an impassable gulf from this simple, human craving, which
was crying to her, unheard and hopeless, across the darkness.