The Changeling. Walter Besant
will have to be considered next."
"Well, if there's nothing fixed – Molly, I don't like the fellow, I own. I don't like any of the lot who talk about outsiders and cads, as if they were a different order. Still, if it makes you happy – Molly, I swear there's nothing I wouldn't consent to if it would make you happy." The tears stood in his eyes.
"My dear Dick," she said. "There's nobody cares for me so much as you." And the tears stood in her eyes as well.
The young man let go her hand, and stood up. "That's enough, Molly – so long as we understand. Now tell me about the studies. Are you really working?"
"Really working. But, oh, Dick, my trouble is that the harder I work the more I feel as if it isn't there. I do exactly what I am told to do, and it doesn't come off."
"But when you used to sing and dance – "
"Oh, anybody could make people laugh."
The actor groaned. "She says – anybody! And she can do it! And they put her into tragedy!"
"Whenever I try to feel the emotion myself, it vanishes, and I can only feel myself in white satin, with a long train sweeping to the back of the stage, and all the house in love with me."
"This is bad; this is very bad, Molly."
"See, here, Dick, I'm telling you all my troubles. I am studying the part of Desdemona – you know, Desdemona who married a black man. How could she? – and of course he was jealous. I've got to show all kinds of emotion before that beast of a husband kills me."
"It's a fine part – none finer. Once I saw it played magnificently. She was in a travelling company, and she died of typhoid, poor thing! Yes, I can see her now." He acted as he spoke. "She was full of forebodings; her husband was cold; her distress of mind was shown in the way she took up trifles, and put them down again; she spoke she knew not what, and sang snatches of song; in her eyes stood tears; her voice trembled; she moved about uneasily; she clutched at her dress in agitation.
"'The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow.'"
"Why," cried the girl, "you make me feel it – you – only with talking about it! And I – alas! Have I any feeling in me at all, Dick?"
"Oh yes, it's there – it's there all right. There's tragedy in the most unpromising materials, if you know how to get at it. I think a woman's got to be in love first. It's a very fine thing for an actress to fall in love – the real thing, I mean. Then comes jealousy, of course. And after that, all the real tragedy emotions."
"Oh, love!" the girl repeated with scorn.
"Try again now; you know the words."
Molly began to repeat the lines —
"My mother had a maid called Barbara;
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad,
And forsook her; she had a song of 'Willow.'"
She declaimed these lines with certain gestures which had been taught her. She broke off, leaving the rest unfinished.
The effect was wooden. There was no pity, no sorrow, no foreboding in the lines at all. Dick shook his head.
"What am I to say to Hilarie?" she asked.
Dick passed his fingers through his hair. Then he sat down again, and began to laugh – laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.
"You a tragedy queen!" he said. "Not even if you were over head and ears in love. Now, on the other hand, if I had my fiddle in my hand, and were to play – so – that air which you remember" – he put out his legs straight and sat upright, and pretended the conduct of a fiddle and bow – "could you dance, do you think, as you used to dance two years ago?"
She stood before him, seeming to listen. Then she gently moved her head as if touched by the music. Then she raised her arms and began to dance, with such ease and grace and lightness as can only belong to the dancer born.
"Thank you, Molly." He stood up as if the music was over. "We shall confer further upon this point – and other points. When may I come again to visit Miss Molly Pennefather?"
He caught her head in his hands and kissed her gaily on her forehead – after all, he had no more manners than can be expected of a tramp – and vanished.
"If Dick could only play 'Desdemona'!" she murmured, looking after him at the closed door. "Why, he actually looked the part. I suppose he has been in love. If I could only do it so!" She imitated his gestures, and broke out into singing —
"The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree,
Sing all a green willow."
"No," she said; "it won't do. I don't feel a bit like Desdemona. I am only myself, and I am filled with the most unholy longing for money – for riches, for filthy lucre, which we are told to despise."
Her eyes fell upon a newspaper, folded and lying on the floor. It had probably dropped out of Dick's pocket. She took it up mechanically, and opened it, expecting nothing. The sheet was one of the gossipy papers of the day, full of personal paragraphs. She glanced at it, thinking of the paragraphs about herself and her grand success, which would probably never appear, unless she could transform herself.
Presently her eye caught the word "millionaire," and she read —
"Among the nouveaux riches– the millionaires of the West – we must not, as Englishmen, forget to enumerate Mr. John Haveril, who has made his money partly by transactions in silver-mines, and partly by the sudden creation of a town on his own lands. He is said to be worth no more than two or three millions sterling, so that he is not in the very front rank of American rich men. Still, there is a good deal of spending, even in so moderate a fortune. Mr. Haveril is by birth an Englishman and a Yorkshireman. He was born about sixty years ago, and emigrated about the year '55. His wife is also of English origin, having been born at Hackney. Her maiden name was Alice Pennefather."
Molly looked up in bewilderment. "There can't be two people of that name!" she said. She went on with the paper —
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