In Silk Attire: A Novel

CHAPTER XXI.
IN ENGLAND

Mr. Melton was overjoyed to see Annie Brunel in London again. He had spent half his fortune in beautifying his theatre, in getting up elaborate scenery for the new piece with which he was to welcome the return to town of his patrons, and in providing costly properties. So long as the heroine of the piece was wandering among the mountains of the Schwarzwald, it was impossible that the manager's mind could be well at ease.

"You shall come round now, and see what we have done for you, and give us your opinion," said he, politely.

Indeed, he would like to have kissed her just then, in a fatherly way, to show how delighted he was to have her back again. He saw pictures of overflowing audiences before his mind as he looked on the quiet little figure before him, on the dark face, and the large grave eyes.

It was about eleven o'clock in the forenoon. A tolerably clear light fell upon the stage, a duskier twilight hung over the rows of empty benches in the pit, and the gloomy darkness behind the galleries was here and there lit up by a solitary lamp. One or two gilders were still at work on the front of the dress-circle; overhead an echoing clang of hammer and nail told that carpenters were busy; and a vague shouting from the dusky region of the "flies" revealed the presence of human beings in those dim Olympian heights. Everywhere, as usual, the smell of escaped gas; here and there an odour of size or paint.

As they descended from the dark corridor behind the dress-circle into the wings, a mass of millinery ran full-tilt against Mr. Melton, and then started back with a slight cry and a giggle.

"God bless my soul!" said the manager, piously, although that was not the part of his body which had suffered.

The next moment Miss Featherstone had thrown her arms around Annie Brunel's neck, and was kissing her and calling her "My dear" with that profusion of sentiment which most actresses love to scatter over the object, pro tem., of their affection. Miss Featherstone was attired in a green silk dress – in many a love-scene had that rather dingy piece of costume figured, on the stage and elsewhere – a blue cloth jacket, a white hat with a scarlet feather, and yellow gloves. During this outburst of emotion, Mr. Melton had caught sight of a young gentleman – to whom he gave thirty shillings a week in order that he might dress as a gentleman should, and always have a good hat to keep on his head while walking about in a drawing-room – who had been in pursuit of Miss Featherstone, and who now sneaked away in another direction.

"And so you've come back, my dear, and none of the German princes have run away with you! And how well you look! I declare I'm quite ashamed of myself when I see the colour in your cheeks; but what with rehearsals, you know, my dear, and other troubles – "

She heaved a pretty and touching sigh. She intimated that these quarrels with the young gentleman who escorted her to and from the stage-door – quarrels which came off at a rate of about seven per week – were disturbing the serenity of her mind so far as to compel her to assist nature with violet-powder and rouge.

"Do you know, my dear," she said, in a whisper that sent Mr. Melton away on his own business, "he swears he will forsake me for ever if I accept a part in which I must wear tights. How can I help it, my dear? What is a poor girl to do?"

"Wear trousers," said Annie Brunel, with a smile.

"Nothing will please him. He would have all my comic parts played in a train half a mile long. At last I told him he had better go and help my mother to cut my skirts and petticoats of a proper length; and he pretended to be deeply hurt, and I haven't seen him since."

Then she tossed her wilful little head with an air of defiance.

"He will write to me before I write to him."

"It is too cruel of you," said her companion.

"Yes, my dear, you may laugh; but you have no burlesque parts to play. And you have nobody sitting in the stalls watching your every movement, and keeping you in a fright about what he is thinking of you."

"No," said Annie Brunel, rather absently, "I have nobody to watch me like that. If I had, I should not be able to go upon the stage, I think."

"And the bitter things he says about the profession – and particularly about Mr. Gannet, and Mr. Marks, and Mr. Jobson – all because they are young men, and he fancies they may be so polite as to lift a glove for me if I let it fall. You know, my dear, that I don't encourage them. If there's any fun at rehearsal, you know that I don't begin it."

"When we met you just now – "

"That was only some of Mr. Murphy's nonsense. Oh, I declare to you, no one knows what I have suffered. The other evening, when he and I got into a cab, he glared at the man who opened the door for us. And the fuss he makes about cosmetique and bismuth is something dreadful."

"He must be a monster."

There now ensued a little fragment of thorough comedy. For a moment the elderly young lady, who had been assuming throughout the tone of a spoiled child, stood irresolute. There was a petulance on her face, and she had half a mind to go away in high dudgeon from one who was evidently laughing at her. Then through this petulance there broke a sort of knowing smile, while a glimmer of mischievous intelligence appeared in her eyes; and then, with an unaffected comical giggle, she once more threw her arms round Annie Brunel's neck and kissed her.

"I'm very wicked, I know," she said, with a shrug of the shoulders, "but I can't help it. What's bred in the bone, you know. And it's all the men's fault, for they keep teasing one so. As for him, if he writes to me, and makes an apology, and promises to be a good boy, I'll make friends with him. And I'll be very good myself – for a week."

It was with a cold inward shiver that Annie Brunel stepped out upon the stage and looked round the empty theatre. She tried to imagine it full of people, and yellow light, and stir, and she knew within herself she dared not venture before them. Even without that solitary pair of eyes watching her movements, and without the consciousness that she might be producing a strong impression, for good or evil, on one particular person whose estimation she desired, she trembled to think of the full house, and the rows of faces, and her own individual weakness.

"What do you think of the decorations, Miss Brunel?" said Mr. Melton, coming up.

"They are very pretty," she said, mechanically.

"With your 'Rosalind,' the theatre should draw all London to it."

"It is 'Rosalind' you mean to play?" she asked, scarcely knowing what she said.

"Certainly," replied the manager, with astonishment. "Don't you remember our agreement? If you turn round, you will see the new forest-scene Mr. Gannet has painted; perhaps it may remind you of something in the Black Forest."

For a moment or two she glanced over the great breadth of canvas, covered with gnarled oaks, impossible brushwood, and a broad, smooth stream. With a short "No, it is not like the Black Forest," she turned away again.

"Miss Featherstone will play 'Celia;' and you know there is not a 'Touchstone' in the world to come near Bromley's. Mrs. Wilkes refuses to play 'Audrey,' luckily, and Miss Alford will play it a deal better. I have had several rehearsals, everybody is declared letter-perfect; and we only you to put the keystone to the arch, as one might say."

She turned quickly round and said to him —

"If I were at the last moment prevented from playing in the piece, could Miss Featherstone take 'Rosalind,' and some one else play 'Celia?'"

"What do you mean, my dear Miss Brunel?" said the manager, aghast. "You frighten me, I assure you. I calculated upon you; and after all this expense, and your agreement, and – "

"Don't misunderstand me, Mr. Melton," she said, quietly. "I mean to play the part so as to give every satisfaction both to you and myself, if I can. I only asked in the event of any accident."

"Come," said he, kindly, "I can't have you talk in that strain, with such a prospect before us. Why, we are going to set all London, as well as the Thames, on fire, and have the prices of the stalls going at a hundred per cent. premium. An accident! Bah! I wish Count Schönstein were here to laugh the notion out of your head."

So it was, therefore, that the play was put in full rehearsal for several days, and Mr. Melton looked forward hopefully to the success of his new venture. Sometimes he was a little disquieted by the remembrance of Miss Brunel's singular question; but he strove to banish it from his mind. He relied upon his new scenery and decorations, and upon Annie Brunel; the former were safe, and he would take care to secure the latter.

The gentlemen of the press had been good enough to mention the proposed revival in terms of generous anticipation. Altogether, Mr. Melton had every reason to hope for the best.

Occasionally he observed an unusual constraint in the manner of his chief favourite, and sometimes a listless indifference to what was going on around her. One or twice he had caught her standing idly behind the foot-lights, gazing into the empty theatre with a vague earnestness which revealed some inward purpose. He still trusted that all would go well; and yet he confessed to himself that there was something about the young actress's manner that he had never noticed before, and which he could not at all understand.

Mrs. Christmas seemed to share with him this uneasy feeling. He knew that the old lady was now in the habit of lecturing her pupil in a derisive way, as if trying to banish some absurd notion from her mind; and whenever he approached, Mrs. Christmas became silent.

For the first time during their long companionship Mrs. Christmas found her young friend incomprehensibly obstinate, not to say intractable. Night and day she strove to convince her that in anticipating nervousness and failure, she was rendering both inevitable; and yet she could not, by all her arguments and entreaties, remove this gloomy apprehension.

"I cannot explain the feeling," was the constant reply. "I only know it is there."

"But you, of all people, Miss Annie! Girls who have suddenly come to try the stage get fits of stage-fright naturally: but people who are born and bred to it, who have been on the stage since their childhood – "

"Why should you vex yourself, mother? I have no dread of stage-fright. I shall be as cool as I am now. Don't expect that I shall blunder in my part, or make mistakes otherwise – that is not what I mean. What I fear is, that the moment I go upon the stage, and see the men and women all around me, I shall feel that I am just like one of them, only a little lower in having to amuse them. I shall feel as if I ought to be ashamed of myself in imitating the real emotions of life."

"You never had any of those fantastic notions before. Didn't you use to pride yourself on your indifference to the people?"

"I used to."

"What has changed you?"

"My growing older," she replied, with a sad smile. "I begin to feel as if those things that make up acting had become part of my own life now, and that I had no business to burlesque them any more on the stage. I begin to wonder what the people will think of my lending myself to a series of tricks."

And here she fell into a reverie, which Mrs. Christmas saw it was useless to interrupt. The worthy old woman was sorely puzzled and grieved by the apostacy of her most promising pupil, and ceased not to speculate on what subtle poison had been allowed to creep into her mind.

Meanwhile the opening night had arrived. People had come back from the moors and Mont Blanc, and every place in the theatre had been taken. Mr. Melton already enjoyed his triumph by anticipation, and tried every means of keeping up Annie Brunel's spirits. She was bound to achieve the most brilliant of all her successes, as he confidently told her.

CHAPTER XXII.
ROSALIND

"Ah, mon bon petit public, be kind to my leetel child!" says Achille Talma Dufard, when his daughter is about to go on the stage for the first time. The words were in the heart, if not on the lips, of Mrs. Christmas, as the kindly old woman busied herself in Annie Brunel's dressing-room, and prepared her favourite for the coming crisis. She had a vague presentiment that it was to be a crisis, though she did not know why.

By the time the inevitable farce was over, the house was full. Miss Featherstone, rushing downstairs to change her costume of a barmaid for that of 'Celia,' brought word that all the critics were present, that Royalty was expected, and that her own particular young gentleman had laughed so heartily at the farce that she was sure he was in a good humour, and inclined to let bygones be bygones.

"So you must cheer up," said Mrs. Christmas, blithely, when Nelly had gone; "you must cheer up, and do great things, my dear."

"Am I not sufficiently cheerful, Lady Jane?"

"Cheerful? Cheerful? Yes, perhaps cheerful. But you must forget all you have been saying about the people, and mind only your character, and put fire and spirit into it. Make them forget who youare, my dear, and then you'll only think of yourself as 'Rosalind.' Isn't your first cue 'Be merry'?"

"Then I will be merry, mother, or anything else you wish. So don't vex your poor little head about me. I shall add a grey hair to it if you bother yourself so much."

"You would find it hard to change it now, unless you changed it to black," said Lady Jane.

When 'Rosalind' and 'Celia' together appeared on the stage, a long and hearty welcome was given forth from every part of the house. Mr. Melton was standing in the wings with Mrs. Christmas, and his dry grey face brightened up with pleasure.

"They have not forgotten her, have they?" he said, triumphantly.

"How could they?" was the natural response.

From that moment the old woman's eyes never left the form of her scholar during the progress of the play. Keenly and narrowly she watched the expression of her face, her manner of acting, the subtle harmony of word and gesture which, in careful keeping, make the part of 'Rosalind' an artistic wonder. And the more narrowly she studied her pupil's performance, the more she convinced herself that there was nothing to be found fault with. The timid pleasantries, the tender sadness, the coy love advances, tempered and beautified by that unconscious halo of modesty and virgin grace which surrounds the gentlest of all Shakspeare's heroines, were there before her eyes, and she was forced to say to herself that no 'Rosalind' could be more charming than this 'Rosalind.' She did not reflect that never before had she been constrained so to convince herself, and that never before had she been so anxious to know the effect on the audience.

That, so far as was yet appreciable, was satisfactory. The mere charm of admirably artistic acting, combined with a graceful figure and a pretty face, was enough to captivate any body of spectators. Mrs. Christmas, however, dared not confess to herself that they seemed to want that electric thrill of sympathy which had been wont to bring them and the young actress immediately en rapport. Once only did they in the first act catch that swift contagion of delight which flashes through an audience bound by the master-spell of genius. It was where 'Rosalind,' having graced the victorious wrestler with a chain from her own neck, is about to go away with 'Celia,' and yet is loth to go without having had speech of the young man who has so awakened her interest. The half-interpreted longing, the hesitating glance, and maiden bashfulness with which she turned to him and said:

"Did you call, sir? —

Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown

More than your enemies,"

– her eyes first seeking his face, and then being cast down, as the words became almost inaudible – provoked the house into a sudden tempest of applause which covered her disappearance from the scene, Mrs. Christmas caught her as she came off, and kissed her, with nervous tears in her eyes.

At the end of the first act she was called before the curtain. Any one calmly observing the house would have seen that it was not very enthusiastic, and that it fell to talking almost before she had passed behind the curtain at the opposite side. Then she went down to her dressing-room.

Mrs. Christmas welcomed her and complimented her with an emphasis which was a little forced and unnecessary. Annie Brunel said nothing, but stood and contemplated, with her straight-looking honest eyes, the poor little woman who was courageously trying to act her part naturally. Then she sate down.

"Do you think I did my best, mother?" she said. And again she fixed her large eyes, with a kind conciliation in them, on her aged friend.

"Of course – "

"And you were watching me, I think?"

"Yes."

"And the house?"

"A little," said Mrs. Christmas, rather nervously.

"Then you know," she said, calmly, "that I have made a total failure, that the people think so, and that to-morrow every one, including the papers, will say so."

"My dear! – "

"Why should we not speak frankly, mother? I felt it within myself, and I saw it in their faces. And I knew it before I went on the stage."

"That is it! That has done it all!" exclaimed the old woman, inclined to wring her hands in despair and grief. "You convinced yourself that you were going to fail, and then, when you went on the stage, you lost command over yourself."

"Had I not command over myself?" the young girl asked, with a smile. "I had so great command of myself that I knew and was conscious of everything I did – the tiniest thing – and kept continually asking myself how it would impress the people. I was never in the least excited; had I been – but there is no use talking, Lady Jane. Help me to change my dress; I suppose I must go through with it."

So Mrs. Christmas officiated in place of Sarah, whom she always ordered out of the way on grand occasions; and, as she did so, she still administered counsel and reproof, not having quite given up hope.

Two of the most distinguished of the critics met in the lobby leading to the stalls.

"A pity, is it not?" said one.

The other merely shrugged his shoulders.

The general run of the critics fancied that Annie Brunel had added another to her list of brilliant successes, and were already shaping in their brain elaborate sentences overflowing with adjectives.

Lord Weyminster, whom people considered to have a share in the proprietary of the theatre, went behind the scenes and met Mr. Melton.

"This won't do, my boy," he said.

"Do you think not?" said the manager, anxiously. "They received her very warmly."

"They received Miss Brunel warmly, but not her 'Rosalind.'"

"What's to be done?"

"Change the piece."

"I can't. Perhaps it was only a temporary indisposition."

"Perhaps," said his lordship, carelessly. "I never saw such a difference in the acting of any woman. Formerly she was full of fire; to-night she was wooden – pretty enough, and proper enough, but wooden."

Further consolation or advice Mr. Melton could not get out of his patron. In despair, he said that his lordship was exaggerating a temporary constraint on the part of the young actress, and that the succeeding scenes would bring her out in full force.

The wood scene was of course charming. Miss Featherstone's young gentleman, sitting in the stalls, surrendered himself to the delicious intoxication of the moment ('Celia,' it will be remembered, wears long petticoats), and wondered whether he could write a poem on the forest of Ardennes. He was in that fond period of existence when the odour of escaped gas, anywhere, at once awoke for him visions of greenwood scenery and romantic love-affairs; and when the perfume of cold cream conjured up the warm touch of a certain tender cheek – for Miss Featherstone, when in a hurry to get home from the theatre, occasionally left her face unwashed.

The people never lost interest in the play. Indeed, being Londoners, they were sufficiently glad to see any character played with careful artistic propriety, and it was only as an afterthought that they missed the old thrill of Annie Brunel's acting. It could always be said of the part that it was gracefully and tenderly done, void of coarse comedy and of clap-trap effects. It struck a certain low and chastened key of sweetness and harmony that partially atoned for the absence of more daring and thrilling chords.

And yet Annie Brunel went home sick at heart. The loss of popular favour did not trouble her; for had not the people been remarkably kind, and even enthusiastic, in their final call? It was the certain consciousness that the old power had passed away from her for ever – or rather, that the intensity and emotional abandonment of her artistic nature had been sucked into her own personal nature, and was never more to be separately exhibited as a beautiful and wonderful human product.

"Mother, I am tired of acting," she said. "It has been weighing upon me ever so long; but I thought I ought to give myself one more chance, and see if the presence of a big audience would not remove my sickness. No; it has not. Everything I had anticipated occurred. I was not frightened: but I knew that all the people were there, and that I could not command them. I was not 'Rosalind' either to them or to myself; and it was not 'Rosalind' whom they applauded. The noise they made seemed to me to have a tone of pity in it, as if they were trying to deceive me into thinking well of the part."

All this she said quietly and frankly; and Mrs. Christmas sate stunned and silent. It seemed to the old woman that some terrible calamity had occurred. She could not follow the subtle sympathies and distinctions of which the young actress spoke: she knew only that something had happened to destroy the old familiar compact between them, and that the future was full of a gloomy uncertainty.

"I don't know what to say, Miss Annie. You know best what your feelings are. I know there's something wrong somewhere – "

"Don't talk so mournfully," said she. "If I don't act any more we shall find something else to keep us out of starvation."

"If you don't act any more!" said the old woman, in a bewildered way. "If you don't act any more! Tell me, Miss Annie, what you mean. You're not serious? You don't mean that because your 'Rosalind' mayn't have gone off pretty well, you intend to give up the stage altogether – at your time of life – with your prospects – my darling, tell me what you mean?"

She went over and took her companion's two hands in her own.

"Why, mother, you tremble as if you expected some terrible misfortune to happen to us. You will make me as nervous as yourself if you don't collect yourself. You have not been prepared for it as I have been. I have known for some time that I should not be able to act when I returned to London – "

With a slight scream, she started up and caught her friend, who was tottering and like to fall in her arms. The old woman had been unable to receive this intelligence all at once. It was too appalling and too sudden; and when at last some intimation of it came home to her mind, she reeled under the shock. She uttered some incoherent words – "my charge of you," "your mother," "the future" – and then she sank quite insensible upon the sofa to which Annie Brunel had half-carried her.