“I would simply give anything to be there,” Miss Livingstone said, with
a look of sincere desire.
“I should love to have you, but it isn't possible. You might meet men
you knew who had been invited by particular lady friends among the
company.”
“Oh, well, that of course would be odious.”
“Very, I should think,” Hilda agreed. “You must be satisfied with a
faithful report of it. I promise you that.”
“You have asked Mr. Lindsay,” Alicia complained.
“That's quite a different thing. And if I hadn't, Llewellyn Stanhope
would; Stanhope cherishes Duff as he cherishes the critic of the
Chronicle. He refers to him as a pillar of the legitimate. Whenever
he begs me to turn the Norwegian crank, he says, 'I'm sure Mr. Lindsay
would come.'”
Miss Howe was at the top of the staircase in Middleton Street, on the
point of departure. It was to be the night of her last appearance for
the season and her benefit, followed by a supper in her honour, at
which Mr. Stanhope and his company would take leave of those whose
acquaintance, as he expressed it, business and pleasure had given them
during the months that were past. It was this function that Alicia, at
the top of the staircase, so ardently desired to attend.
“No, I won't kiss you,” Hilda said, as the other put her cool cheek
forward; “I'm so divinely happy--some of it might escape.”
Alicia's voice pursued her as she ran downstairs. “Remember,” she said,
“I don't approve. I don't at all agree either with my reverend cousin
or with you. I think you ought to find some other way, or let it go. Go
home instead; go straight to London and insist on your chance. After six
weeks you will have forgotten the name of his Order.”
Hilda looked back with a smile. Her face was splendid with the dawn and
the promise of success. “Don't say that,” she cried.
Alicia, leaning down, was visited by a flash of quotation. “Well,” she
said, “nothing in this life becomes you like the leaving of it,” and
went back to her room to write to Laura Filbert in Plymouth. She wrote
often to Miss Filbert, at Duff's request. It gratified her that she was
able, without a pang, to address four pages of pleasantly colourless
communication to Mr. Lindsay's fiancee. Her letters stood for a medicine
surprisingly easy to take, aimed at the convalescence which she already
anticipated in the future immediately beyond Duff's miserable marriage.
If that event had promised felicitously she would have faced it, one
fancies, with less sanguine anticipations for herself: but the black
disaster that rode on with it brought her certain aids to the spirit,
certain hopes of herself. Laura's prompt replies, with their terrible
margins and painstaking solecisms, came to be things Miss Livingstone
looked forward to. She read them with a beating heart, however, in the
unconscious apprehension of some revelation of improvement. She was
quite unaware of it, but she entertained towards the Simpsons an
attitude of misgiving in this regard.
Hilda went on about her business. As usual her business was important
and imperative; nothing was lightened for her this last day. She drove
about from place to place in the hot, slatternly city, putting more than
her usual vigour and directness into all she did. It seemed to her that
the sunlight burning on the tiles, pouring through the crowded streets,
had more than ever a vivid note; and so much spoke to her, came to her,
from the profuse and ingenuous life which streamed about her, that she
leaned a little forward to meet it with happy eyes and tender lips that
said, “I know. I see.” She was living for the moment which should exhale
itself somewhere about midnight after the lights had gone out on her
last appearance--living for it as a Carmelite might live for the climax
of her veil and her vows if it were conceivable that beyond the cell
and the grating she saw the movement and the colour and the passion of
a wider life. All Hilda's splendid vitality went into her intention,
of which she was altogether mistress, riding it and reining it in a
straight course through the encumbered hours. It keyed her to a finer
and more eager susceptibility; and the things she saw stayed with her,
passing into a composite day which the years were hardly to dim for her.
She could live like that, for the purposes of a period, wrought up to
immense keenness of sense and brilliancy of energy, making steadily for
some point of feeling or achievement flashing gloriously on the horizon.
It is already plain, perhaps, that she rejoiced in such strokes, and
that life as she found it worth living was marked by a succession of
them.
She had kept, even from Lindsay, what she meant to do. When she stepped
from his brougham, flushed after the indubitable triumph of the evening,
with her arms full of real bouquets from Chatterjee's--no eight-anna
bazar confections edged with silver tinsel--it occurred to her that this
reticence was not altogether fair to so constant a friend. He was there,
keen and eager as ever in all that concerned her, foremost with his
congratulations on the smiling fringe of the party assembled to do her
honour. It was a party of some brilliance in its way, though its way was
diverse; there was no steady glow. Fillimore said of the company that it
comprised all the talent, and Fillimore, Editor of the Indian Sportsman
and Racing Gazelle, was a judge. He said it to Hagge, of the Bank of
Hindostan, who could hardly have been an owner on three hundred rupees
a month without conspicuous ability disconnected with his ledgers; and
Hagge looked gratified. Though so promising, he was young. Lord Bobby
was there from Government House. Lord Bobby always accompanied the
talent, who were very kind to him. He was talking when Hilda arrived to
the Editor of the Indian Empire, who wanted to find out the date of her
Excellency's fancy dress party for children, in order that he might make
a leaderette of it; but Lord Bobby couldn't remember--had to promise
to drop him a line. Gianacchi was there, trying to treat Fillimore with
coldness because the Sportsman had discovered too many virtues in his
Musquito, exalted her indeed into a favourite for Saturday's hurdle
race, a notability for which Gianacchi felt himself too modest. “They
say,” Fillimore had written, “that Musquito has been seen jumping by
moonlight”--the sort of thing to spoil any book. Fillimore was an acute
and weary-looking little man, with a peculiarly sweet smile and an air
of cynicism which gave to his lightest word a dangerous and suspicious
air. It was rumoured in official circles that he had narrowly escaped
beheading for pointing out too ironically the disabilities of a Viceroy
who insisted on reviewing the troops from a cushioned carriage with the
horses taken out. Fillimore seemed to think that if nature had not made
such a nobleman a horseman, the Queen-Empress should not have made him
Governor-General of India. Fillimore was full of prejudices. Gianacchi,
however, found it impossible to treat him coldly. His smoothness
of temperament stood in the way. Instead, he imparted the melodious
information that Musquito had pecked badly twice at Tollygunge that
morning, and smiled with pathetic philosophy. “Always let 'em use their
noses,” said Fillimore, and there seemed to be satire in it. Fillimore
certainly had a flair, and when Beryl Stace presently demanded of
him, “What's the dead bird going to be on Saturday, Filly?” he put it
generously at her service. Among the friends of Mr. Stanhope and his
company were also several gentlemen, content, for their personal effect,
with the lustre they shed upon the Stock Exchange--gentlemen of high
finance, who wrote their names at the end of directors' reports, but
never in the visitors' book at Government House, who were little more
to the Calcutta world than published receipts for so many lakhs, except
when they were seen now and then driving, in fleet dogcarts across the
Maidan toward comfortable suburban residences where ladies were not
entertained. They were extremely, curiously, devoted to business; but if
they allowed themselves any amusement other than company promoting,
it was the theatre, of which their appreciation had sometimes an odd
relation to the merits of performance. This supper, on the part of Miss
Beryl Stace and one or two others of Mr. Stanhope's artistes, might have
been considered a return of hospitality to these gentlemen, since the
suburban residences stood lavishly open to the profession.
Altogether, perhaps, there were fifty people, and an eye that looked for
the sentiment, the pity of things, would have distinguished at once
on about half the faces, especially those of the women, the used,
underlined look that spoke of the continual play of muscle and forcing
of feeling. It gave them a shabbily complicated air, contrasting in a
strained and sorry way even, with the countenances of the brokers and
bankers, where nature had laid on a smooth wash and experience had not
interfered. They were all gay and enthusiastic as Miss Howe entered,
they loafed forward, broad shirt-fronts lustrous, fat hands in financial
pockets, with their admiration, and Fillimore put out his cigarette.
Hilda came down among them from the summit of her achievement, clasping
their various hands. They were all personally responsible for her
success, she made them feel that, and they expanded in the conviction.
She moved in a kind of tide of infectious vitality, subtly drawing from
every human flavour in the room the power to hold and show something
akin to it in herself, a fugitive assimilation floating in the lamplight
with the odour of the flowers and the soup, to be extinguished with the
occasion. They looked at her up and down the table with an odd smiling
attraction, they told each other that she was in great form. Mr.
Fillimore was of the opinion that she couldn't be outclassed at the
Lyceum, and Mr. Hagge responded with vivacity that there were few places
where she wouldn't stretch the winner's neck. The feast was not
after all one of great bounty, Mr. Stanhope justly holding that the
opportunity, the little gathering, was the thing, and it was not long
before the moment of celebration arrived for which the gentlemen of
the Stock Exchange, to judge from their undrained glasses, seemed to be
reserving themselves. There certainly had been one tin of pate, and
it circulated at that end; on the other hand the ladies had all the
fondants. So that when Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope rose with the sentiment
of the evening he found satisfaction, if not repletion, in the regards
turned upon him.
Llewellyn got up with modest importance, and ran a hand through his
yellow hair, not dramatically, but with the effect of collecting
his ideas. He leaned a little forward, he was extremely, happily
conspicuous. The attention of the two lines of faces seemed to overcome
him, for an instant, with dizzy pleasure; Hilda's beside him was bent a
little, waiting.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mr. Stanhope, looking with precision up
and down the table to be still more inclusive, “we have met together
to-night in honour of a lady who has given this city more pleasure in
the exercise of her profession than can be said of any single performer
during the last twenty years. Cast your eye back over the theatrical
record of Calcutta for that space of time, and you yourselves will admit
that there has been nobody that could be said to have come within a mile
of her shadow, if I may use the language of metaphor.” (Applause, led
by Mr. Fillimore.) “I would ask you to remember, at the same time, that
this pleasure has been of a superior class. I freely admit that this is
a great satisfaction to me personally. Far be it from me to put myself
forward on this auspicious occasion, but, ladies and gentlemen, if I
have one ambition more than another, it is to promote the noble cause
of the unfettered drama. To this I may say I have been vowed from the
cradle, by a sire who was well-known in the early days of the metropolis
of Sydney as a pioneer of the great movement which has made the dramatic
talent of Australia what it is. To-day a magnificent theatre rises on
the site forever consecrated to me by those paternal labours, but--but I
can never forget it. In Miss Hilda Howe I have found a great coadjutor,
and one who is willing to consecrate her royal abilities in the same
line as myself, so that we have been able to maintain a high standard of
production among you, prices remaining as usual. I have to thank you,
as representing the public of the Indian capital, for the kind support
which has been so encouraging to Miss Howe, the Company, and myself
personally, during the past season. Many a time ladies and gentlemen of
my profession have said to me, 'Mr. Stahhope, why do you go to Calcutta?
That city is a death-trap for professionals,' and now the past season
proves that I was right and they were wrong; and the magnificent houses,
the enthusiasm, and the appreciation that have greeted our efforts,
especially on the Saturday evening performances, show plainly enough
that when a good thing is available the citizens of Calcutta won't be
happy till they get it. Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to join me in
drinking the health, happiness, and prosperity of Miss Hilda Howe!”
“Miss Howe!” “Miss Howe!” “Miss Hilda Howe!” In the midst of a pushing
back of chairs and a movement of feet, the response was quick and
universal. Hilda accepted their nods and becks and waving glasses with a
slow movement of her beautiful eyes and a quiet smile, in the subsidence
of sound Mr. Stanhope's voice was heard again, “We can hardly expect
a speech from Miss Howe, but perhaps Mr. Hamilton Bradley, whose
international reputation need hardly be referred to, will kindly say a
few words on her behalf.”
Then with deliberate grace, Hilda rose from her chair, a tall figure
among them, looking down with a hint of compassionateness on the little
man at her left. She stood for an instant without speaking, as if the
flushed silence, the expectation, the warm magnetism that drew all their
eyes to her were enough. Then out of something like reverie she came
to the matter, she threw up her beautiful face with one of the supreme
gestures which belonged to her. “I think,” she said, with a little
smiling bow in his direction, “that I will not trouble my friend Mr.
Bradley. He has rendered me so many kind services already that I am sure
I might count upon him again, but this is a thing I should like to do
for myself. I would not have my thanks chilled by even the passage from
my heart to his.” There was something like bravado in the glance that
rested lightly on Bradley with this. One would have said that parley of
hearts between them was not a thing that as a rule she courted. “I can
only offer you my thanks, poor things to which we can give neither life
nor substance, yet I beg that you will somehow take them and remember
them. It is to me, and will always be, a kind of crowning satisfaction
that you were pleased to come together to-night to tell me I had done
well. You know yourselves, and I know, how much too flattering your
kindness is, but perhaps it will hurt nobody if to-night I take it as it
is generously offered, and let it make me as happy as you intend me
to be. At all events, no one could disturb me in believing that in
obtaining your praise and your good wishes I have done well enough.”
For a few seconds she stopped speaking, but she held them with her eyes
from the mistake of supposing she had done. Lindsay, who was watching
her closely and hanging with keen pleasure on the sweetness and
precision of what she found to say, noted a swift constriction pass upon
her face. There was a half-tone of difference, too, in her voice, when
she raised it again, a firmer vibration, as if she passed, deliberate
and aware, out of one phase into another.
“No,” she went on, “I am not shy on this occasion; indeed, I feel that
I should like to keep your eyes upon me for a long time to-night, and
go on talking far past your patience or my wit. For I cannot think it
likely that our ways will cross again.” Here her words grew suddenly low
and hurried. “If I may trespass upon your interest so much further,
I have to tell you that my connection with the stage closes with this
evening's performance. To-morrow I join the Anglican Order of the
Sisters of St. Paul--the Baker Institution--in Calcutta, as a novice.
They have taken me without much question because--because the plague
hospitals of this cheerful country”--she contrived a smile--“have made a
great demand upon their body. That is all. I have nothing more to say.”
It was, after all, ineffective, the denouement, or perhaps it was too
effective. In any case it was received in silence, the applause that was
ready falling back on itself, inconsistent and absurd. The incredulity
of Llewellyn Stanhope might have been electric had it found words, but
that gentleman's protests were made in violent whispers, to which Hilda,
who sat playing with a faded rose, seemed to pay no attention whatever.
One might have thought her more overcome than anyone. She seemed to make
one or two unsuccessful efforts to raise her head. There was a moment of
waiting for someone to reply; eyes were turned towards Mr. Bradley, and
when it became plain that no one would, broken murmurs of talk began
with a note of deprecation and many shakes of the head. The women,
especially, looked tragically at their neighbours with very wide-open
eyes. Presently a chair was drawn back, and then another, and people
began to filter, in slow embarrassment, towards the door. Lindsay came
with Hilda's cloak. “You won't mind my coming with you,” he said, “I
should like to hear the details.” Beryl Stace made as if to embrace her,
pouring out abusive disbelief, but Hilda waved her away with a gesture
almost of irritation. Some of the others said a perfunctory word or two,
and went away with lingering backward looks. In a quarter of an hour,
Mr. Lindsay's brougham had followed the other vehicles into the lamp-lit
ways of Calcutta, and only the native table-servants remained in
somewhat resentful possession of what was left.