I had promised to take Mrs. Latham and Irene to see the French plays
which were then being acted by Marie Leroux's celebrated Palais Royal
company. I wasn't at the time exactly engaged to poor Irene: it has
always been a comfort to me that I wasn't engaged to her, though I knew
Irene herself considered it practically equivalent to an understood
engagement. We had known one another intimately from childhood upward,
for the Lathams were a sort of second cousins of ours, three times
removed: and we had always called one another by our Christian names,
and been very fond of one another in a simple girlish and boyish fashion
as long as we could either of us remember. Still, I maintain, there was
no definite understanding between us; and if Mrs. Latham thought I had
been paying Irene attentions, she must have known that a young man of
two and twenty, with a decent fortune and a nice estate down in
Devonshire, was likely to look about him for a while before he thought
of settling down and marrying quietly.
I had brought the yacht up to London Bridge, and was living on board in
picnic style, and running about town casually, when I took Irene and
her mother to see "Faustine," at the Ambiguities. As soon as we had got
in and taken our places, Irene whispered to me, touching my hand lightly
with her fan, "Just look at the very dark girl on the other side of you,
Harry! Did you ever in your life see anybody so perfectly beautiful?"
It has always been a great comfort to me, too, that Irene herself was
the first person to call my attention to Cesarine Vivian's extraordinary
beauty.
I turned round, as if by accident, and gave a passing glance, where
Irene waved her fan, at the girl beside me. She was beautiful,
certainly, in a terrible, grand, statuesque style of beauty; and I saw
at a glimpse that she had Southern blood in her veins, perhaps Negro,
perhaps Moorish, perhaps only Spanish, or Italian, or Provencal. Her
features were proud and somewhat Jewish-looking; her eyes large, dark,
and haughty; her black hair waved slightly in sinuous undulations as it
passed across her high, broad forehead; her complexion, though a dusky
olive in tone, was clear and rich, and daintily transparent; and her
lips were thin and very slightly curled at the delicate corners, with a
peculiarly imperious and almost scornful expression of fixed disdain. I
had never before beheld anywhere such a magnificently repellent specimen
of womanhood. For a second or so, as I looked, her eyes met mine with a
defiant inquiry, and I was conscious that moment of some strange and
weird fascination in her glance that seemed to draw me irresistibly
towards her, at the same time that I hardly dared to fix my gaze
steadily upon the piercing eyes that looked through and through me with
their keen penetration.
"She's very beautiful, no doubt," I whispered back to Irene in a low
undertone, "though I must confess I don't exactly like the look of her.
She's a trifle too much of a tragedy queen for my taste: a Lady Macbeth,
or a Beatrice Cenci, or a Clytemnestra. I prefer our simple little
English prettiness to this southern splendour. It's more to our English
liking than these tall and stately Italian enchantresses. Besides, I
fancy the girl looks as if she had a drop or two of black blood
somewhere about her."
"Oh, no," Irene cried warmly. "Impossible, Harry. She's exquisite:
exquisite. Italian, you know, or something of that sort. Italian girls
have always got that peculiar gipsy-like type of beauty."
Low as we spoke, the girl seemed to know by instinct we were talking
about her; for she drew away the ends of her light wrap coldly, in a
significant fashion, and turned with her opera-glass in the opposite
direction, as if on purpose to avoid looking towards us.
A minute later the curtain rose, and the first act of Halevy's
"Faustine" distracted my attention for the moment from the beautiful
stranger.
Marie Leroux took the part of the great empress. She was grand, stately,
imposing, no doubt, but somehow it seemed to me she didn't come up quite
so well as usual that evening to one's ideal picture of the terrible,
audacious, superb Roman woman. I leant over and murmured so to Irene.
"Don't you know why?" Irene whispered back to me with a faint movement
of the play-bill toward the beautiful stranger.
"No," I answered; "I haven't really the slightest conception."
"Why," she whispered, smiling; "just look beside you. Could anybody bear
comparison for a moment as a Faustine with that splendid creature in the
stall next to you?"
I stole a glance sideways as she spoke. It was quite true. The girl by
my side was the real Faustine, the exact embodiment of the dramatist's
creation; and Marie Leroux, with her stagey effects and her actress's
pretences, could not in any way stand the contrast with the genuine
empress who sat there eagerly watching her.
The girl saw me glance quickly from her towards the actress and from
the actress back to her, and shrank aside, not with coquettish timidity,
but half angrily and half as if flattered and pleased at the implied
compliment. "Papa," she said to the very English-looking gentleman who
sat beyond her, "ce monsieur-ci...." I couldn't catch the end of the
sentence.
She was French, then, not Italian or Spanish; yet a more perfect
Englishman than the man she called "papa" it would be difficult to
discover on a long summer's day in all London.
"My dear," her father whispered back in English, "if I were you...." and
the rest of that sentence also was quite inaudible to me.
My interest was now fully roused in the beautiful stranger, who sat
evidently with her father and sister, and drank in every word of the
play as it proceeded with the intensest interest. As for me, I hardly
cared to look at the actors, so absorbed was I in my queenly neighbour.
I made a bare pretence of watching the stage every five minutes, and
saying a few words now and again to Irene or her mother; but my real
attention was all the time furtively directed to the girl beside me. Not
that I was taken with her; quite the contrary; she distinctly repelled
me; but she seemed to exercise over me for all that the same strange and
indescribable fascination which is often possessed by some horrible
sight that you would give worlds to avoid, and yet cannot for your life
help intently gazing upon.
Between the third and fourth acts Irene whispered to me again, "I can't
keep my eyes off her, Harry. She's wonderfully beautiful. Confess now:
aren't you over head and ears in love with her?"
I looked at Irene's sweet little peaceful English face, and I answered
truthfully, "No, Irene. If I wanted to fall in love, I should find
somebody----"
"Nonsense, Harry," Irene cried, blushing a little, and holding up her
fan before her nervously. "She's a thousand times prettier and handsomer
in every way----"
"Prettier?"
"Than I am."
At that moment the curtain rose, and Marie Leroux came forward once more
with her imperial diadem, in the very act of defying and bearding the
enraged emperor.
It was a great scene. The whole theatre hung upon her words for twenty
minutes. The effect was sublime. Even I myself felt my interest aroused
at last in the consummate spectacle. I glanced round to observe my
neighbour. She sat there, straining her gaze upon the stage, and heaving
her bosom with suppressed emotion. In a second, the spell was broken
again. Beside that tall, dark southern girl, in her queenly beauty, with
her flashing eyes and quivering nostrils, intensely moved by the passion
of the play, the mere actress who mouthed and gesticulated before us by
the footlights was as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. My companion
in the stalls was the genuine Faustine: the player on the stage was but
a false pretender.
As I looked a cry arose from the wings: a hushed cry at first, a buzz or
hum; rising louder and ever louder still, as a red glare burst upon the
scene from the background. Then a voice from the side boxes rang out
suddenly above the confused murmur and the ranting of the actors "Fire!
Fire!"
Almost before I knew what had happened, the mob in the stalls, like the
mob in the gallery, was surging and swaying wildly towards the exits, in
a general struggle for life of the fierce old selfish barbaric pattern.
Dense clouds of smoke rolled from the stage and filled the length and
breadth of the auditorium; tongues of flame licked up the pasteboard
scenes and hangings, like so much paper; women screamed, and fought, and
fainted; men pushed one another aside and hustled and elbowed, in one
wild effort to make for the doors at all hazards to the lives of their
neighbours. Never before had I so vividly realized how near the savage
lies to the surface in our best and highest civilized society. I had to
realize it still more vividly and more terribly afterwards.
One person alone I observed calm and erect, resisting quietly all pushes
and thrusts, and moving with slow deliberateness to the door, as if
wholly unconcerned at the universal noise and hubbub and tumult around
her. It was the dark girl from the stalls beside me.
For myself, my one thought of course was for poor Irene and Mrs. Latham.
Fortunately, I am a strong and well-built man, and by keeping the two
women in front of me, and thrusting hard with my elbows on either side
to keep off the crush, I managed to make a tolerably clear road for them
down the central row of stalls and out on to the big external staircase.
The dark girl, now separated from her father and sister by the rush, was
close in front of me. By a careful side movement, I managed to include
her also in our party. She looked up to me gratefully with her big eyes,
and her mouth broke into a charming smile as she turned and said in
perfect English, "I am much obliged to you for your kind assistance."
Irene's cheek was pale as death; but through the strange young lady's
olive skin the bright blood still burned and glowed amid that frantic
panic as calmly as ever.
We had reached the bottom of the steps, and were out into the front,
when suddenly the strange lady turned around and gave a little cry of
disappointment. "Mes lorgnettes! Mes lorgnettes!" she said. Then
glancing round carelessly to me she went on in English: "I have left my
opera-glasses inside on the vacant seat. I think, if you will excuse me,
I'll go back and fetch them."
"It's impossible," I cried, "my dear madam. Utterly impossible. They'll
crush you underfoot. They'll tear you to pieces."
She smiled a strange haughty smile, as if amused at the idea, but merely
answered, "I think not," and tried to pass lightly by me.
I held her arm. I didn't know then she was as strong as I was. "Don't
go," I said imploringly. "They will certainly kill you. It would be
impossible to stem a mob like this one."
She smiled again, and darted back in silence before I could stop her.
Irene and Mrs. Latham were now fairly out of all danger. "Go on, Irene,"
I said loosing her arm. "Policeman, get these ladies safely out. I must
go back and take care of that mad woman."
"Go, go quick," Irene cried. "If you don't go, she'll be killed, Harry."
I rushed back wildly after her, battling as well as I was able against
the frantic rush of panic-stricken fugitives, and found my companion
struggling still upon the main staircase. I helped her to make her way
back into the burning theatre, and she ran lightly through the dense
smoke to the stall she had occupied, and took the opera-glasses from the
vacant place. Then she turned to me once more with a smile of triumph.
"People lose their heads so," she said, "in all these crushes. I came
back on purpose to show papa I wasn't going to be frightened into
leaving my opera-glasses. I should have been eternally ashamed of myself
if I had come away and left them in the theatre."
"Quick," I answered, gasping for breath. "If you don't make haste, we
shall be choked to death, or the roof itself will fall in upon us and
crush us!"
She looked up where I pointed with a hasty glance, and then made her way
back again quickly to the staircase. As we hurried out, the timbers of
the stage were beginning to fall in, and the engines were already
playing fiercely upon the raging flames. I took her hand and almost
dragged her out into the open. When we reached the Strand, we were both
wet through, and terribly blackened with smoke and ashes. Pushing our
way through the dense crowd, I called a hansom. She jumped in lightly.
"Thank you so much," she said, quite carelessly. "Will you kindly tell
him where to drive? Twenty-seven, Seymour Crescent."
"I'll see you home, if you'll allow me," I answered. "Under these
circumstances, I trust I may be permitted."
"As you like," she said, smiling enchantingly. "You are very good. My
name is Cesarine Vivian. Papa will be very much obliged to you for your
kind assistance."
I drove round to the Lathams' after dropping Miss Vivian at her father's
door, to assure myself of Irene's safety, and to let them know of my own
return unhurt from my perilous adventure. Irene met me on the doorstep,
pale as death still. "Thank heaven," she cried, "Harry, you're safe back
again! And that poor girl? What has become of her?"
"I left her," I said, "at Seymour Crescent."
Irene burst into a flood of tears. "Oh, Harry," she cried, "I thought
she would have been killed there. It was brave of you, indeed, to help
her through with it."