Just as the sun began to sink, several little pages came out of the
house, and with low salutations, distributed among the guests daintily
embossed and painted programmes of the 'Tableaux Vivants,' prepared for
their diversion in the extemporized bijou theatre. Numbers of people
rose at once from their chairs on the lawn, eager for this new
spectacle, and began to scramble along and hustle one another in that
effective style of 'high-breeding' so frequently exhibited at Her
Majesty's Drawing-Rooms. I, with Sibyl, hastily preceded the impatient,
pushing crowd, for I wished to find a good seat for my beautiful
betrothed before the room became full to over-flowing. There proved
however, to be plenty of accommodation for everybody,--what space there
was seemed capable of limitless expansion, and all the spectators were
comfortably placed without difficulty. Soon we were all studying our
programmes with considerable interest, for the titles of the 'Tableaux'
were somewhat original and mystifying. They were eight in number, and
were respectively headed--'Society,'--'Bravery: Ancient and Modern,'--'A
Lost Angel,'--'The Autocrat,'--'A Corner of Hell,'--'Seeds of
Corruption,'--'His Latest Purchase,'--and 'Faith and Materialism.' It
was in the theatre that everyone became at last conscious of the weirdly
beautiful character of the music that had been surging round them all
day. Seated under one roof in more or less enforced silence and
attention, the vague and frivolous throng grew hushed and passive,--the
'society' smirk passed off certain faces that were as trained to grin as
their tongues were trained to lie,--the dreadful giggle of the unwedded
man-hunter was no longer heard,--and soon the most exaggerated
fashion-plate of a woman forgot to rustle her gown. The passionate
vibrations of a violoncello, superbly played to a double harp
accompaniment, throbbed on the stillness with a beseeching depth of
sound,--and people listened, I saw, almost breathlessly, entranced, as
it were, against their wills, and staring as though they were
hypnotized, in front of them at the gold curtain with its familiar
motto--
"All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players."
Before we had time to applaud the violoncello solo however, the music
changed,--and the mirthful voices of violins and flutes rang out in a
waltz of the giddiest and sweetest tune. At the same instant a silvery
bell tinkled, and the curtain parted noiselessly in twain, disclosing
the first tableau--"Society." An exquisite female figure, arrayed in
evening-dress of the richest and most extravagant design, stood before
us, her hair crowned with diamonds, and her bosom blazing with the same
lustrous gems. Her head was slightly raised,--her lips were parted in a
languid smile,--in one hand she held up-lifted a glass of foaming
champagne,--her gold-slippered foot trod on an hour-glass. Behind her,
catching convulsively at the folds of her train, crouched another woman
in rags, pinched and wretched, with starvation depicted in her face,--a
dead child lay near. And, overshadowing this group, were two
Supernatural shapes,--one in scarlet, the other in black,--vast and
almost beyond the stature of humanity,--the scarlet figure represented
Anarchy, and its blood-red fingers were advanced to clutch the diamond
crown from 'Society's' brow,--the sable-robed form was Death, and even
as we looked, it slowly raised its steely dart in act to strike! The
effect was weird and wonderful,--and the grim lesson the picture
conveyed, was startling enough to make a very visible impression. No
one spoke,--no one applauded,--but people moved restlessly and fidgetted
on their seats,--and there was an audible sigh of relief as the curtain
closed. Opening again, it displayed the second tableau--'Bravery--Ancient
and Modern.' This was in two scenes;--the first one depicted a nobleman
of Elizabeth's time, with rapier drawn, his foot on the prostrate body
of a coarse ruffian who had evidently, from the grouping, insulted a
woman whose slight figure was discerned shrinking timidly away from the
contest. This was 'Ancient Bravery,'--and it changed rapidly to 'Modern,'
showing us an enervated, narrow-shouldered, pallid dandy in opera-coat
and hat, smoking a cigarette and languidly appealing to a bulky
policeman to protect him from another young noodle of his own class,
similarly attired, who was represented as sneaking round a corner in
abject terror. We all recognised the force of the application, and were
in a much better humour with this pictured satire than we had been at
the lesson of 'Society.' Next followed 'A Lost Angel,' in which was
shown a great hall in the palace of a king, where there were numbers of
brilliantly attired people, all grouped in various attitudes, and
evidently completely absorbed in their own concerns, so much so as to
be entirely unconscious of the fact that in their very midst, stood a
wondrous Angel, clad in dazzling white, with a halo round her fair hair,
and a glory, as of the sunset, on her half drooping wings. Her eyes were
wistful,--her face was pensive and expectant; she seemed to say, "Will
the world ever know that I am here?" Somehow,--as the curtain slowly
closed again, amid loud applause, for the picture was extraordinarily
beautiful, I thought of Mavis Clare, and sighed. Sibyl looked up at me.
"Why do you sigh?" she said--"It is a lovely fancy,--but the symbol is
wasted in the present audience,--no one with education believes in
angels now-a-days."
"True!" I assented; yet there was a heaviness at my heart, for her words
reminded me of what I would rather have forgotten,--namely her own
admitted lack of all religious faith. 'The Autocrat,' was the next
tableau, and represented an Emperor enthroned. At his footstool knelt a
piteous crowd of the starving and oppressed, holding up their lean hands
to him, clasped in anguished petition, but he looked away from them as
though he saw them not. His head was turned to listen to the
side-whisper of one who seemed, by the courtly bend and flattering
smile, to be his adviser and confidant,--yet that very confidant held
secreted behind his back, a drawn dagger, ready to strike his sovereign
to the heart. "Russia!" whispered one or two of the company, as the
scene was obscured; but the scarcely-breathed suggestion quickly passed
into a murmur of amazement and awe as the curtain parted again to
disclose "A Corner of Hell." This tableau was indeed original, and quite
unlike what might have been imagined as the conventional treatment of
such a subject. What we saw was a black and hollow cavern, glittering
alternately with the flashings of ice and fire,--huge icicles drooped
from above, and pale flames leaped stealthily into view from below, and
within the dark embrasure, the shadowy form of a man was seated,
counting out gold, or what seemed to be gold. Yet as coin after coin
slipped through his ghostly fingers, each one was seen to change to
fire,--and the lesson thus pictured was easily read. The lost soul had
made its own torture, and was still at work intensifying and increasing
its own fiery agony. Much as this scene was admired for its Rembrandt
effect of light and shade, I, personally, was glad when it was curtained
from view; there was something in the dreadful face of the doomed sinner
that reminded me forcibly and unpleasantly of those ghastly Three I had
seen in my horrid vision on the night of Viscount Lynton's suicide.
'Seeds of Corruption' was the next picture, and showed us a young and
beautiful girl in her early teens, lying on a luxurious couch _en
deshabille_, with a novel in her hand, of which the title was plainly
seen by all;--a novel well-known to everyone present, and the work of a
much-praised living author. Round her, on the floor, and cast carelessly
on a chair at her side, were other novels of the same 'sexual'
type,--all their titles turned towards us, and the names of their
authors equally made manifest.
"What a daring idea!" said a lady in the seat immediately behind me--"I
wonder if any of those authors are present!"
"If they are they won't mind!" replied the man next to her with a
smothered laugh--"Those sort of writers would merely take it as a
first-class advertisement!"
Sibyl looked at the tableau with a pale face and wistful eyes.
"That is a _true_ picture!" she said under her breath--"Geoffrey, it is
painfully true!"
I made no answer,--I thought I knew to what she alluded; but alas!--I
did not know how deeply the 'seeds of corruption' had been sown in her
own nature, or what a harvest they would bring forth. The curtain
closed,--to open again almost immediately on "His Latest Purchase." Here
we were shown the interior of a luxurious modern drawing-room, where
about eight or ten men were assembled, in fashionable evening-dress.
They had evidently just risen from a card-table,--and one of them, a
dissipated looking brute, with a wicked smile of mingled satire and
triumph on his face was pointing to his 'purchase,'--a beautiful woman.
She was clad in glistening white like a bride,--but she was bound, as
prisoners are bound, to an upright column, on which the grinning head of
a marble Silenus leered above her. Her hands were tied tightly
together,--with chains of diamonds; her waist was bound,--with thick
ropes of pearls;--a wide collar of rubies encircled her throat;--and
from bosom to feet she was netted about and tied,--with strings of gold
and gems. Her head was flung back defiantly with an assumption of pride
and scorn,--her eyes alone expressed shame, self-contempt, and despair
at her bondage. The man who owned this white slave was represented, by
his attitude, as cataloguing and appraising her 'points' for the
approval and applause of his comrades, whose faces variously and
powerfully expressed the differing emotions of lust, cruelty, envy,
callousness, derision, and selfishness, more admirably than the most
gifted painter could imagine.
"A capital type of most fashionable marriages!" I heard some-one say.
"Rather!" another voice replied--"The orthodox 'happy couple' to the
life!"
I glanced at Sibyl. She looked pale,--but smiled as she met my
questioning eyes. A sense of consolation crept warmly about my heart as
I remembered that now, she had, as she told me 'learnt to love,'--and
that therefore her marriage with me was no longer a question of material
advantage alone. She was not my 'purchase,'--she was my love, my saint,
my queen!--or so I chose to think, in my foolishness and vanity!
The last tableau of all was now to come,--"Faith and Materialism," and
it proved to be the most startling of the series. The auditorium was
gradually darkened,--and the dividing curtain disclosed a ravishingly
beautiful scene by the sea-shore. A full moon cast its tranquil glory
over the smooth waters, and,--rising on rainbow-wings from earth towards
the skies, one of the loveliest creatures ever dreamed of by poet or
painter, floated angel-like upwards, her hands holding a cluster of
lilies clasped to her breast,--her lustrous eyes full of divine joy,
hope, and love. Exquisite music was heard,--soft voices sang in the
distance a chorale of rejoicing;--heaven and earth, sea and air,--all
seemed to support the aspiring Spirit as she soared higher and higher,
in ever-deepening rapture, when,--as we all watched that aerial flying
form with a sense of the keenest delight and satisfaction,--a sudden
crash of thunder sounded,--the scene grew dark,--and there was a distant
roaring of angry waters. The light of the moon was eclipsed,--the music
ceased; a faint lurid glow of red shone at first dimly, then more
vividly,--and 'Materialism' declared itself,--a human skeleton, bleached
white and grinning ghastly mirth upon us all! While we yet looked, the
skeleton itself dropped to pieces,--and one long twining worm lifted its
slimy length from the wreck of bones, another working its way through
the eye-holes of the skull. Murmurs of genuine horror were heard in the
auditorium,--people on all sides rose from their seats--one man in
particular, a distinguished professor of sciences, pushed past me to get
out, muttering crossly--"This may be very amusing to some of you, but to
me, it is disgusting!"
"Like your own theories, my dear Professor!" said a rich laughing voice,
as Lucio met him on his way, and the bijou theatre was again flooded
with cheerful light--"They are amusing to some, and disgusting to
others!----Pardon me!--I speak of course in jest! But I designed that
tableau specially in your honour!"
"Oh, you did, did you?" growled the Professor--"Well, I didn't
appreciate it."
"Yet you should have done, for it is quite scientifically
correct,"--declared Lucio laughing still. "Faith,--with the wings, whom
you saw joyously flying towards an impossible Heaven, is _not_
scientifically correct,--have you not told us so?--but the skeleton and
the worms were quite of your _cult_! No materialist can deny the
correctness of that 'complexion to which we all must come at last.'
Positively, some of the ladies look quite pale! How droll it is, that
while everybody (to be fashionable, and in favour with the press) must
accept Materialism as the only creed, they should invariably become
affrighted, or let us say offended, at the natural end of the body, as
completed by material agencies!"
"Well, it was not a pleasant subject, that last tableau,"--said Lord
Elton, as he came out of the theatre with Diana Chesney hanging
confidingly on his arm--"You cannot say it was festal!"
"It was,--for the worms!" replied Lucio gaily--"Come, Miss Chesney,--and
you Tempest, come along with Lady Sibyl,--let us go out in the grounds
again, and see my will-o'-the-wisps lighting up."
Fresh curiosity was excited by this remark; the people quickly threw off
the gruesome and tragic impression made by the strange 'tableaux' just
witnessed,--and poured out of the house into the gardens chattering and
laughing more noisily than ever. It was just dusk,--and as we reached
the open lawn we saw an extraordinary number of small boys, clad in
brown, running about with will-o'-the-wisp lanterns. Their movements
were swift and perfectly noiseless,--they leaped, jumped and twirled
like little gnomes over flowerbeds, under shrubberies, and along the
edges of paths and terraces, many of them climbing trees with the
rapidity and agility of monkeys, and wherever they went they left behind
them a trail of brilliant light. Soon, by their efforts, all the grounds
were illuminated with a magnificence that could not have been equalled
even by the historic fêtes at Versailles,--tall oaks and cedars were
transformed to pyramids of fire-blossoms,--every branch was loaded with
coloured lamps in the shape of stars,--rockets hissed up into the clear
space showering down bouquets, wreaths and ribbons of flame,--lines of
red and azure ran glowingly along the grass-borders, and amid the
enthusiastic applause of the assembled spectators, eight huge
fire-fountains of all colours sprang up in various corners of the
garden, while an enormous golden balloon, dazzlingly luminous, ascended
slowly into the air and remained poised above us, sending from its
glittering car hundreds of gem-like birds and butterflies on fiery
wings, that circled round and round for a moment and then vanished.
While we were yet loudly clapping the splendid effect of this
sky-spectacle, a troop of beautiful girl-dancers in white came running
across the grass, waving long silvery wands that were tipped with
electric stars, and to the sound of strange tinkling music, seemingly
played in the distance on glass bells, they commenced a fantastic dance
of the wildest yet most graceful character. Every shade of opaline
colour fell upon their swaying figures from some invisible agency as
they tripped and whirled,--and each time they waved their wands, ribbons
and flags of fire were unrolled and tossed high in air where they
gyrated for a long time like moving hieroglyphs. The scene was now so
startling, so fairy-like and wonderful, that we were well-nigh struck
speechless with astonishment,--too fascinated and absorbed even to
applaud, we had no conception how time went, or how rapidly the night
descended,--till all at once without the least warning, an appalling
crash of thunder burst immediately above our heads, and a jagged fork of
lightning tore the luminous fire-balloon to shreds. Two or three women
began to scream,--whereupon Lucio advanced from the throng of spectators
and stood in full view of all, holding up his hand.
"Stage thunder, I assure you!" he said playfully, in a clear somewhat
scornful voice--"It comes and goes at my bidding. Quite a part of the
game, believe me!--these sort of things are only toys for children.
Again--again, ye petty elements!" he cried, laughing, and lifting his
handsome face and flashing eyes to the dark heavens--"Roar your best and
loudest!--roar, I say!"
Such a terrific boom and clatter answered him as baffled all
description,--it was as if a mountain of rock had fallen into
ruins,--but having been assured that the deafening noise was 'stage
thunder' merely, the spectators were no longer alarmed, and many of them
expressed their opinion that it was 'wonderfully well done.' After this,
there gradually appeared against the sky a broad blaze of red light like
the reflection of some great prairie fire,--it streamed apparently
upward from the ground, bathing us all where we stood, in its blood-like
glow. The white-robed dancing-girls waltzed on and on, their arms
entwined, their lovely faces irradiated by the lurid flame, while above
them now flew creatures with black wings, bats and owls, and great
night-moths, that flapped and fluttered about for all the world as if
they were truly alive and not mere 'stage properties.' Another flash of
lightning,--and one more booming thud of thunder,----and lo!--the
undisturbed and fragrant night was about us, clear, dewy and calm,--the
young moon smiled pensively in a cloudless heaven,--all the
dancing-girls had vanished,--the crimson glow had changed to a pure
silvery radiance, and an array of pretty pages in eighteenth century
costumes of pale pink and blue, stood before us with lighted flaming
torches, making a long triumphal avenue, down which Lucio invited us to
pass.
"On, on fair ladies and gallant gentlemen!" he cried--"This
extemporized path of light leads,--not to Heaven--no! that were far too
dull an ending!--but to supper! On!--follow your leader!"
Every eye was turned on his fine figure and striking countenance, as
with one hand he beckoned the guests,--between the double line of lit
torches he stood,--a picture for a painter, with those dark eyes of his
alit with such strange mirth as could not be defined, and the sweet,
half-cruel, wonderfully attractive smile playing upon his lips;--and
with one accord the whole company trooped pell-mell after him, shouting
their applause and delight. Who could resist him!--not one in that
assemblage at least;--there are few 'saints' in society! As I went with
the rest, I felt as though I were in some gorgeous dream,--my senses
were all in a whirl,--I was giddy with excitement and could not stop to
think, or to analyse the emotions by which I was governed. Had I
possessed the force or the will to pause and consider, I might possibly
have come to the conclusion that there was something altogether beyond
the ordinary power of man displayed in the successive wonders of this
brilliant 'gala,'--but I was, like all the rest of society, bent merely
on the pleasure of the moment, regardless of how it was procured, what
it cost me, or how it affected others. How many I see and know to-day
among the worshippers of fashion and frivolity who are acting precisely
as I acted then! Indifferent to the welfare of everyone save themselves,
grudging every penny that is not spent on their own advantage or
amusement, and too callous to even listen to the sorrows or difficulties
or joys of others when these do not in some way, near or remote, touch
their own interests, they waste their time day after day in selfish
trifling, wilfully blind and unconscious to the fact that they are
building up their own fate in the future,--that future which will prove
all the more a terrible Reality in proportion to the extent of our
presumption in daring to doubt its truth.
More than four hundred guests sat down to supper in the largest
pavilion,--a supper served in the most costly manner and furnished with
luxuries that represented the utmost pitch of extravagance. I ate and
drank, with Sybil at my side, hardly knowing what I said or did in the
whirling excitement of the hour,--the opening of champagne-bottles, the
clink of glasses, the clatter of plates, the loud hum of talk
interspersed with monkey-like squeals or goat-like whinnies of laughter,
over-ridden at intervals by the blare of trumpet-music and drums,--all
these sounds were as so much noise of rushing waters in my ears,--and I
often found myself growing abstracted and in a manner confused by the
din. I did not say much to Sibyl,--one cannot very well whisper
sentimental nothings in the ear of one's betrothed when she is eating
ortolans and truffles. Presently, amid all the hubbub, a deep bell
struck twelve times, and Lucio stood up at the end of one of the long
tables, a full glass of foaming champagne in his hand--
"Ladies and gentlemen!"
There was a sudden silence.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" he repeated, his brilliant eyes flashing
derisively, I thought, over the whole well-fed company, "Midnight has
struck and the best of friends must part! But before we do so, let us
not forget that we have met here to wish all happiness to our host, Mr
Geoffrey Tempest and his bride-elect, the Lady Sibyl Elton." Here there
was vociferous applause. "It is said"--continued Lucio, "by the makers
of dull maxims, that 'Fortune never comes with both hands full'--but in
this case the adage is proved false and put to shame,--for our friend
has not only secured the pleasures of wealth, but the treasures of love
and beauty combined. Limitless cash is good, but limitless love is
better, and both these choice gifts have been bestowed on the betrothed
pair whom to-day we honour. I will ask you to give them a hearty round
of cheering,--and then it must be good-night indeed, though not
farewell,--for with the toast of the bride and bridegroom-elect, I shall
also drink to the time,--not far distant perhaps,--when I shall see some
of you, if not all of you again, and enjoy even more of your charming
company than I have done to-day!"
He ceased amid a perfect hurricane of applause,--and then everyone rose
and turned towards the table where I sat with Sibyl, and naming our
names aloud, drank wine, the men joining in hearty shouts of "Hip, hip,
hip hurrah!" Yet,--as I bowed repeatedly in response to the storm of
cheering, and while Sibyl smiled and bent her graceful head to right and
left, my heart sank suddenly with a sense of fear. Was it my fancy--or
did I hear peals of wild laughter circling round the brilliant pavilion
and echoing away, far away into distance? I listened, glass in hand.
"Hip, hip, hip hurrah!" shouted my guests with gusto. "Ha--ha--!
ha--ha!" seemed shrieked and yelled in my ears from the outer air.
Struggling against this delusion, I got up and returned thanks for
myself and my future bride in a few brief words which were received with
fresh salvos of applause,--and then we all became aware that Lucio had
sprung up again in his place, and was standing high above us all, with
one foot on the table and the other on the chair, confronting us with a
fresh glass of wine in his hand, filled to the brim. What a face he had
at that moment!--what a smile!
"The parting cup, my friends!" he exclaimed--"To our next merry
meeting!"
With plaudits and laughter the guests eagerly and noisily
responded,--and as they drank, the pavilion was flooded by a deep
crimson illumination as of fire. Every face looked blood-red!--every
jewel on every woman flashed like a living flame!--for one brief instant
only,--then it was gone, and there followed a general stampede of the
company,--everybody hurrying as fast as they could into the carriages
that waited in long lines to take them to the station, the last two
'special' trains to London being at one a.m. and one thirty. I bade
Sibyl and her father a hurried good-night,--Diana Chesney went in the
same carriage with them, full of ecstatic thanks and praise to me for
the splendours of the day which she described in her own fashion as
"knowing how to do it,--" and then the departing crowd of vehicles began
to thunder down the avenue. As they went an arch of light suddenly
spanned Willowsmere Court from end to end of its red gables, blazing
with all the colours of the rainbow, in the middle of which appeared
letters of pale blue and gold, forming what I had hitherto considered as
a funereal device,
"Sic transit gloria mundi! Vale!"
But, after all, it was as fairly applicable to the ephemeral splendours
of a fête as it was to the more lasting marble solemnity of a sepulchre,
and I thought little or nothing about it. So perfect were all the
arrangements, and so admirably were the servants trained, that the
guests were not long in departing,--and the grounds were soon not only
empty, but dark. Not a vestige of the splendid illuminations was left
anywhere,--and I entered the house fatigued, and with a dull sense of
bewilderment and fear on me which I could not explain. I found Lucio
alone in the smoking-room at the further end of the oak-panelled hall, a
small cosily curtained apartment with a deep bay window which opened
directly on to the lawn. He was standing in this embrasure with his back
to me, but he turned swiftly round as he heard my steps and confronted
me with such a wild, white, tortured face that I recoiled from him,
startled.
"Lucio, you are ill!" I exclaimed--"you have done too much to-day."
"Perhaps I have!" he answered in a hoarse unsteady voice, and I saw a
strong shudder convulse him as he spoke,--then, gathering himself
together as it were by an effort, he forced a smile--"Don't be alarmed,
my friend!--it is nothing,--nothing but the twinge of an old deep-seated
malady,--a troublesome disease that is rare among men, and hopelessly
incurable."
"What is it?" I asked anxiously, for his death-like pallor alarmed me.
He looked at me fixedly, his eyes dilating and darkening, and his hand
fell with a heavy pressure on my shoulder.
"A very strange illness!" he said, in the same jarring accents.
"Remorse! Have you never heard of it, Geoffrey? Neither medicine nor
surgery are of any avail,--it is 'the worm that dieth not, and the flame
that cannot be quenched.' Tut!--let us not talk of it,--no one can cure
me,--no one will! I am past hope!"
"But remorse,--if you have it, and I cannot possibly imagine why, for
you have surely nothing to regret,--is not a physical ailment!" I said
wonderingly.
"And physical ailments are the only ones worth troubling about, you
think?" he queried, still smiling that strained and haggard smile--"The
body is our chief care,--we cosset it, and make much of it, feed it and
pamper it, and guard it from so much as a pin-prick of pain if we
can,--and thus we flatter ourselves that all is well,--all _must_ be
well! Yet it is but a clay chrysalis, bound to split and crumble with
the growth of the moth-soul within,--the moth that flies with blind
instinctiveness straight into the Unknown, and is dazzled by excess of
light! Look out here,"--he went on with an abrupt and softer change of
tone--"Look out at the dreamful shadowy beauty of your gardens now! The
flowers are asleep,--the trees are surely glad to be disburdened of all
the gaudy artificial lamps that lately hung upon their branches,--there
is the young moon pillowing her chin on the edge of a little cloud and
sinking to sleep in the west,--a moment ago there was a late nightingale
awake and singing. You can feel the breath of the roses from the trellis
yonder! All this is Nature's work,--and how much fairer and sweeter it
is now than when the lights were ablaze and the blare of band-music
startled the small birds in their downy nests!--Yet 'society' would not
appreciate this cool dusk, this happy solitude;--'society' prefers a
false glare to all true radiance. And what is worse it tries to make
true things take a second place as adjuncts to sham ones,--and there
comes in the mischief."
"It is just like you to run down your own indefatigable labours in the
splendid successes of the day,"--I said laughing--"You may call it a
'false glare' if you like, but it has been a most magnificent
spectacle,--and certainly in the way of entertainments it will never be
equalled or excelled."
"It will make you more talked about than even your 'boomed' book could
do!" said Lucio, eyeing me narrowly.
"Not the least doubt of that!" I replied--"Society prefers food and
amusement to any literature,--even the greatest. By-the-by, where are
all the 'artistes,'--the musicians and dancers?"
"Gone!"
"Gone!" I echoed amazedly--"Already! Good heavens! have they had
supper?"
"They have had everything they want, even to their pay," said Lucio, a
trifle impatiently--"Did I not tell you Geoffrey, that when I undertake
to do anything, I do it thoroughly or not at all?"