Miss Bretherton. Mrs. Humphry Ward
Kendal entered.
Mrs. Stuart put him in the way of a chair and of abundant chances of conversation, and then left him with a shrug of her shoulders and a whisper, 'The beauty is shockingly late! Tell me what I shall do if all these people are disappointed.' In reality, Mrs. Stuart was beginning to be restless. Kendal had himself arrived very late, and, as the talk flowed faster, and the room filled fuller of guests eager for the new sensation which had been promised them, the spirits of the little hostess began to sink. The Minister had surreptitiously looked at his watch, and a tiresome lady friend had said good-bye in a voice which might have been lower, and with a lament which might have been spared. Mrs. Stuart set great store upon the success of her social undertakings, and to gather a crowd of people to meet the rising star of the season, and then to have to send them home with only tea and talk to remember, was one of those failures which no one with any self-respect should allow themselves to risk.
However, fortune was once more kind to one of her chief favourites. Mrs. Stuart was just listening with a tired face to the well-meant, but depressing condolences of the barrister standing by her, who was describing to her the 'absurd failure' of a party to meet the leading actress of the Comédie Française, to which he had been invited in the previous season, when the sound of wheels was heard outside. Mrs. Stuart made a quick step forward, leaving her Job's comforter planted in the middle of his story; the hum of talk dropped in an instant, and the crowd about the door fell hastily back as it was thrown open and Miss Bretherton entered.
What a glow and radiance of beauty entered the room with her! She came in rapidly, her graceful head thrown eagerly back, her face kindling and her hands outstretched as she caught sight of Mrs. Stuart. There was a vigour and splendour of life about her that made all her movements large and emphatic, and yet, at the same time, nothing could exceed the delicate finish of the physical structure itself. What was indeed characteristic in her was this combination of extraordinary perfectness of detail, with a flash, a warmth, a force of impression, such as often raises the lower kinds of beauty into excellence and picturesqueness, but is seldom found in connection with those types where the beauty is, as it were, sufficient in and by itself, and does not need anything but its own inherent harmonies of line and hue to impress itself on the beholders.
There were some, indeed, who maintained that the smallness and delicacy of her features was out of keeping with her stature and her ample gliding motions. But here, again, the impression of delicacy was transformed half way into one of brilliancy by the large hazel eyes and the vivid whiteness of the skin. Kendal watched her from his corner, where his conversation with two musical young ladies had been suddenly suspended by the arrival of the actress, and thought that his impression of the week before had been, if anything, below the truth.
'She comes into the room well, too,' he said to himself critically; 'she is not a mere milkmaid; she has some manner, some individuality. Ah, now Fernandez'—naming the Minister—'has got hold of her. Then, I suppose, Rushbrook (the member of the Government) will come next, and we commoner mortals in our turn. What absurdities these things are!'
His reflections, however, were stopped by the exclamations of the girls beside him, who were already warm admirers of Miss Bretherton, and wild with enthusiasm at finding themselves in the same room with her. They discovered that he was going to see her in the evening; they envied him, they described the play to him, they dwelt in superlatives on the crowded state of the theatre and on the plaudits which greeted Miss Bretherton's first appearance in the ballroom scene in the first act, and they allowed themselves—being aesthetic damsels robed in sober greenish-grays—a gentle lament over the somewhat violent colouring of one of the actress's costumes, while all the time keeping their eyes furtively fixed on the gleaming animated profile and graceful shoulders over which, in the entrance of the second drawing-room, the Minister's gray head was bending.
Mrs. Stuart did her duty bravely. Miss Bretherton had announced to her, with a thousand regrets, that she had only half an hour to give. 'We poor professionals, you know, must dine at four. That made me late, and now I find I am such a long way from home that six is the latest moment I can stay.' So that Mrs. Stuart was put to it to get through all the introductions she had promised. But she performed her task without flinching, killing remorselessly each nascent conversation in the bud, giving artist, author, or member of Parliament his proper little sentence of introduction, and at last beckoning to Eustace Kendal, who left his corner feeling society to be a foolish business, and wishing the ordeal were over.
Miss Bretherton smiled at him as she had smiled at all the others, and he sat down for his three minutes on the chair beside her.
'I hear you are satisfied with your English audiences, Miss Bretherton,' he began at once, having prepared himself so far. 'To-night I am to have the pleasure for the first time of making one of your admirers.'
'I hope it will please you,' she said, with a shyness that was still bright and friendly. 'You will be sure to come and see me afterwards? I have been arranging it with Mrs. Stuart. I am never fit to talk to afterwards, I get so tired. But it does one good to see one's friends; it makes one forget the theatre a little before going home.'
'Do you find London very exciting?'
'Yes, very. People have been so extraordinarily kind to me, and it is all such a new experience after that little place Kingston. I should have my head turned, I think,' she added, with a happy little laugh, 'but that when one cares about one's art one is not likely to think too much of one's self. I am always despairing over what there is still to do, and what one may have done seems to make no matter.'
She spoke with a pretty humility, evidently meaning what she said, and yet there was such a delightful young triumph in her manner, such an invulnerable consciousness of artistic success, that Kendal felt a secret stir of amusement as he recalled the criticisms which among his own set he had most commonly heard applied to her.
'Yes, indeed,' he answered pleasantly. 'I suppose every artist feels the same. We all do if we are good for anything—we who scribble as well as you who act.'
'Oh yes,' she said, with kindly, questioning eyes, 'you write a great deal? I know; Mr. Wallace told me. He says you are so learned, and that your book will be splendid. It must be grand to write books. I should like it, I think, better than acting. You need only depend on yourself; but in acting you're always depending on some one else, and you get in such a rage when all your own grand ideas are spoilt because the leading gentleman won't do anything different from what he has been used to, or the next lady wants to show off, or the stage manager has a grudge against you! Something always happens.'
'Apparently the only thing that always happens to you is success,' said Kendal, rather hating himself for the cheapness of the compliment. 'I hear wonderful reports of the difficulty of getting a seat at the Calliope; and his friends tell me that Mr. Robinson looks ten years younger. Poor man! it is time that fortune smiled on him.'
'Yes, indeed; he had a bad time last year. That Miss Harwood, the American actress, that they thought would be such a success, didn't come off at all. She didn't hit the public. It doesn't seem to me that the English public is hard to please. At that wretched little theatre in Kingston I wasn't nearly so much at my ease as I am here. Here one can always do one's best and be sure that the audience will appreciate it. I have all sorts of projects in my head. Next year I shall have a theatre of my own, I think, and then—'
'And then we shall see you in all the great parts?'
The beauty had just begun her answer when Kendal became conscious of Mrs.
Stuart standing beside him, with another aspirant at her elbow, and
nothing remained for him but to retire with a hasty smile and handshake,
Miss Bretherton brightly reminding him that they should meet again.
A few minutes afterwards there was once more a general flutter in the room. Miss Bretherton was going. She came forward in her long flowing black garments, holding Mrs. Stuart by the hand, the crowd dividing as she passed. On her way to the door stood a child, Mrs. Stuart's youngest, looking at her with large wondering brown eyes, and finger on lip. The actress suddenly stooped to her, lifted her up with the ease of physical strength