Dick Sheridan believed that his ingenuity would be taxed to the
uttermost to invent plausible answers to satisfy the curiosity of
the many people who would be questioning him on the subject of Mr.
Long's meeting with Captain Mathews. When he had to make up so many
replies to the questions put to him regarding the duels that had never
been contemplated, what would he not have to do in respect of this
meeting, which had actually taken place, though without an exchange of
shots? His reasoning on this basis showed that he had but an imperfect
acquaintance with the methods of the good people of Bath. He should
have known that, having had two duels to talk about within the previous
fortnight, and having, moreover, found out that neither of these
encounters had taken place, they would lose all interest in duels real
or imaginary. But that was just the view the people of Bath took of
the incident. If any tale of the interrupted encounter--surely a most
piquant topic!--reached the ears of the gossips of the Pump Room and
the Parade, they were reticent on the subject. Not one question was
put to Dick respecting Mr. Long and Captain Mathews, the fact being
that all Bath was talking about quite another matter--namely, the
infatuation of Mrs. Abington.
What a freak it was to be sure! There was the most charming actress of
the day (her day had lasted a pretty long while), at whose feet had
sat in vain some of the most distinguished men then living, infatuated
with that young Linley, neglecting her engagements at Mr. Colman's
theatre, laughing at Mr. Cumberland, who had one of his most lugubrious
comedies ready for her to breathe into it the spirit of life, and all
on account of a youth who was certainly (they said) utterly incapable
of appreciating her varied charms.
Mr. Colman had posted down from London to reason with her: in spite of
his experience, he was still of the impression that a woman in love
would listen to reason--and that woman an actress too! He made a step
forward (he thought) in his knowledge of women and actresses, when he
had had a talk with Mrs. Abington.
And Mr. Cumberland---- But then, Mr. Cumberland knew nothing whatever
about the nature of men and women; he had taken the pains to prove this
by the production of a dozen comedies--so that when he tried to wheedle
her by obvious flatteries, she laughed in his face, and that annoyed
Mr. Cumberland greatly; for he thought that laughter was always out
of place except during the performance of one of his comedies, though
people said that that was the only time when laughter was impossible.
Poor Tom Linley (the men who envied him alluded to him as poor Tom
Linley) was having the finishing touch put to his education, all
sensible people agreed. The wits said that he would learn more of what
music meant by listening to Mrs. Abington's voice, than he would by
studying all the masters of harmony, from Palestrina to Handel.
Of course the scandal-mongers made a scandal out of this latest whim
of Mrs. Abington, but the lovely lady was so well accustomed to be the
centre of a cocoon of scandal (she had a good deal of the nature of the
butterfly about her), she did not mind. She only wondered what Dick
Sheridan thought of Tom Linley's being the hero of so fascinating a
scandal. She wondered how long it would be before Dick Sheridan would
become jealous of the position to which his friend had been advanced.
She judged of Dick Sheridan from her previous knowledge of him; but as
the days went on, she began to feel that a change had come over him.
And then Mrs. Abington became a little reckless; for whenever she and
Tom Linley were in the same room as Dick, her laugh was a little louder
than usual and a good deal less melodious; and the way she allowed her
eyes to rest on Tom's face when she knew that Dick was looking, was
rather too pictorial for everyday life, some people thought, and these
were the people who said, "Poor Tom Linley!"
But there came a day when Tom Linley was announced to play at a
concert. He was to take the violin part in a concerto, and to play in
two duets with the harpsichord; but these selections had to be omitted
from the programme, the fact being that Master Tom had that day gone
a-driving into the country with Mrs. Abington.
It was a very pretty scene in high comedy, that in which the actress
got the promise of the youth who had buried his heart in his violin, to
fling his music-book to the unmelodious winds in order to take up the
Book of Life and turn over its glowing pages with her. She had told him
that she wished to take a drive into the country the next day, and had
expressed the hope that he would act as her protector.
Of course he replied that it would be to him a trip to the Delectable
Mountains to be by her side, or something to that effect; but he
pointed playfully (now and again Tom could become playful, though never
in the artless spirit of Mrs. Abington) at the bill of the concert in
which his name figured.
What had the fact of his name being on the bill to do with the
question of his coming with her? she inquired in a sweetly simple way,
with artless open eyes.
"Good heavens, sweet lady, surely you must see that I cannot be at the
concert and in your carriage at the same time?" he cried.
"Did I assert that you could?" she asked. "All I did was to ask you to
be my protector to-morrow. I did not say a word about your going to the
concert. What is the concert to me--to you or me, Tom?"
"Nothing--oh, nothing!" he cried, and she allowed him to kiss her hand.
"'Tis nothing. Have not I proved it by refraining from attending a
single practice of the instruments, thereby making my father furious?"
"Then if the concert be nothing to you, am I something less than
nothing?" she cried.
"Ah, you are everything--everything, only---- Heavens, if I were to
absent myself my prospects would be ruined!"
"Ah, 'tis the old story!" sighed the lady,--there was more indignation
in her sigh than Mr. Burke could incorporate in one of his speeches on
the Marriage Act,--"the old story: a man's ambition against a woman's
affection! Go to your concert, sir, but never let me see your face
again."
"Dear child!" he cried,--he sometimes called her "dear child,"
because she was not (he thought) more than two years older than
himself,--"cannot you see that when my name is printed----"
"Do you presume to instruct me on these points, sir?" she cried. "Does
not all the world know that my name is down in every playbill that Mr.
Colman prints, as a member of his company? and yet---- But you have
taught me my duty. I shall go back to London to-morrow. I thank you,
sir, for having given me a lesson. O man, man! always cruel!--always
ready to slight the poor, trustful creature who gives up all for your
sake."
She dissolved into tears, and he was kneeling by her side, trying to
catch the hand which she withheld from him, and all the time swearing
that she was everything to him--his life, his soul, his hope, his
future....
* * * * *
And so the pieces in which Tom Linley was to take part at the concert
were omitted from the performance, and the manager assured Mr. Linley
that his son's career, so far as Bath was concerned, was at an end.
Mr. Linley that evening--at one moment weeping in the arms of his
daughter, at another pacing the room declaring passionately that Tom
need never again look near his house, that he would turn him out neck
and crop into the street--said some severely accurate things about Mrs.
Abington and the stage generally, and the Linley household was in a
condition bordering on distraction.
But Mrs. Abington, sitting in an attitude of inimitable grace upon
her little gilded sofa, passing her fingers through Tom's curls as he
sat on a stool at her feet, was in no way disturbed by the condition
of things in Pierrepont Street, the fact being that she was just at
that moment thinking more of Mrs. Abington than of any one else in the
world. She knew that the next day every one in Bath would be talking
about the completeness of her conquest of the ardent young musical
genius who, it was well known, held the theory that there was nothing
in the world worth living for save only music. She wondered what
Dick Sheridan would think now. And she was quite right so far as her
speculations in regard to Bath were concerned. Every one was talking of
how she had been the ruin of Tom Linley, and most of the men who talked
of it, envied Tom most heartily; all the women who talked of it, envied
Mrs. Abington her taste in dress.
And as for Dick Sheridan--well, Dick was for quite an hour of that
morning doing his best to comfort Betsy Linley in the grief that had
overwhelmed her family. She had written to Dick to come to her, and he
had obeyed. He found her alone, and, though not in tears, very close
to the weeping point. He saw, when he had looked into her face, that
she had not slept all night for weeping. She never looked lovelier than
when bearing the signs of recent tears.
"O Dick, Dick, is not this dreadful?" she cried. "You have heard of
it--of course you have heard of it? All Bath is talking of it to-day."
Dick acknowledged that he had heard of Tom's disappointing the audience
at the concert-room the previous day, and of the roars of laughter
that had greeted the manager's announcement that Mr. Tom Linley had
unfortunately contracted a severe indisposition which would, the
doctors declared, prevent his appearing that day. He had not heard,
however, that the manager, smarting from the ridicule of the audience,
had told Mr. Linley that his son was to consider his career as a
musician closed, so far as Bath was concerned.
"But 'tis so indeed; father told us so," said Betsy. "Oh, poor father!
what he has been called on by Heaven to suffer! How dismal his early
life was! But he freed himself by his own genius from that life and
its associations, and then, just when happiness seemed at the point of
coming to him, he finds that he has instructed me in vain,--that was
a great blow to him, Dick--oh, what a disappointment! But what was it
compared to this? O Dick, Dick, something must be done to save Tom!"
"She will soon tire of his society," said Dick. "She is not a woman of
sentiment: when she finds that the topic of her conquest of Tom has
ceased to be talked about, she will release him."
"That is what you said to me long ago, and yet he is not released, and
people are talking more than ever," she cried.
"We must have patience, Betsy."
"What! do you suggest that we should do nothing--absolutely nothing? O
Dick, I looked for better advice from you! What comfort is it to the
friends of a prisoner immured in a dungeon to tell them that if they
have patience his prison bars will rust away and he will then be free?"
"Do you fancy that my going to Mrs. Abington to plead for him will have
any effect upon her? Do you really believe that all the eloquence of
man has any influence upon a woman with a whim?"
"Ah, she will listen to you--you will be able to persuade her. She
cares for you, Dick--I know that."
He looked at her wonderingly. How was it possible, he asked himself,
that she had found out Mrs. Abington's secret? He himself had not found
it out of his own accord, and he was a man. (He ventured to assume that
such secrets were more likely to be guessed by a man than by a woman.)
"She likes me--yes, I suppose--in a way," he said. "But I am not sure
that this fact would make her the more ready to abandon a whim of the
moment. On the contrary----"
"Ah, Dick, will you not help us?" she cried. "Surely if she cares about
you----"
"Dear Betsy, I think we should do well to avoid giving any
consideration to that particular point," said Dick hastily. "I will go
to Mrs. Abington and make an appeal to her, but 'twill not be on the
ground that she cares for me; in fact, I do not at this moment know on
what ground I can appeal to her."
"But you will go? Ah, I knew that we could depend on you to do your
best for us, Dick," said she, and there passed over her face a glimpse
of gladness--a flash of sunshine making more transparent the azure of
her eyes. "You are the one whom I can always trust, dear Dick, because
I know that you can always trust yourself."
"I have learned that from you, my Betsy; I can stand face to face with
you, and yet--I can trust myself."
"Ah, do not say that you learned it from me," she cried. She had
turned away from him suddenly and was looking pensively at the hand
which she had rested on the back of a chair. "If you could know what
is in my heart, Dick, you would not talk about learning anything from
me--alas--! alas!"
"You can trust your heart," he said--"you can trust your heart, for it
is true."
"Oh, do not talk in that way--for Heaven's sake, do not talk in that
way!" she cried. "My heart--true?--ah, I fancied that I could trust
myself--I fancied that I was strong, that I could do all that I had set
myself to do, but--ah, Dick, my heart, my poor heart! It is not strong,
it is not true, and the worst of it is that I--I myself--I cannot be
true to my heart, and I am too weak to be true to my resolution."
She was walking to and fro nervously, and now she threw herself into a
chair and put her hands up to her face.
He looked at her without moving, though it was in his heart to kneel
before her and, taking her hands in his own, pour out the tale of his
love to her. His heart whispered to him that she would at that moment
give him kiss for kiss. A month ago no power would have restrained him
from kneeling to her; but now he was under the control of another power
and a stronger than that which set his heart beating as it was beating.
He felt the controlling influence; but--well, he thought it would not
be wise to look at her any longer.
He turned away from where she was sitting; his hands were behind him
and his fingers locked together. He stood looking out of the window,
but seeing nothing. The room was very silent. He thought he heard a
movement behind him. He thought he heard her footfalls approaching him,
he thought he heard a sigh close to him--a sigh with the inflection
of a sob; but still he did not move--his fingers tightened about each
other. He would not turn round. His heart beat more wildly, and the
rhythm of its beats made up a siren-song hard to be resisted.
But there was another power upholding him in the struggle to which he
had nerved himself, and he knew that that power was love. He felt that
it was his love for her that saved him--that saved her. He did not turn
round.
And then there came dead silence.
He knew that she had gone.
In another moment he was kneeling beside the chair in which she had
sat, kissing the place where her hand had rested. It was still warm
from her touch, and he kissed it again and again, crying in a voice
tremulous not with passion, but with love:
"My beloved! my beloved! You have been true--true to true love--true to
the truest love!"