Miss Bretherton. Mrs. Humphry Ward
of her soft furs and velvets, and kissed her with a gracious queenliness. The child threw its little white arms around her, smiled upon her, and smoothed her hair, as though to assure itself that the fairy princess was real. Then it struggled down, and in another minute the bright vision was gone, and the crowded room seemed to have grown suddenly dull and empty.
'That was prettily done,' said Edward Wallace to Kendal as they stood together looking on. 'In another woman those things would be done for effect, but I don't think she does them for effect. It is as though she felt herself in such a warm and congenial atmosphere, she is so sure of herself and her surroundings, that she is able to give herself full play, to follow every impulse as it rises. There is a wonderful absence of mauvaise honte about her, and yet I believe that, little as she knows of her own deficiencies, she is really modest—'
'Very possibly,' said Kendal; 'it is a curious study, a character taken so much au naturel, and suddenly transported into the midst of such a London triumph as this. I have certainly been very much attracted, and feel inclined to quarrel with you for having run her down. I believe I shall admire her more than you do to-night.'
'I only hope you may,' said the American cordially; 'I am afraid, however, that from any standard that is worth using there is not much to be said for her as an actress. But as a human being she is very nearly perfection.'
The afternoon guests departed, and just as the last had gone, Mr. Forbes was announced. He came in in a bad temper, having been delayed by business, and presently sat down to dinner with Mrs. Stuart and Wallace and Kendal in a very grumbling frame of mind. Mr. Stuart, a young and able lawyer, in the first agonies of real success at the bar, had sent word that he could not reach home till late.
'I don't know, I'm sure, what's the good of going to see that girl with you two carping fellows,' he began, combatively, over his soup. 'She won't suit you, and you'll only spoil Mrs. Stuart's pleasure and mine.'
'My dear Forbes,' said Wallace in his placid undisturbed way, 'you will see I shall behave like an angel. I shall allow myself no unpleasant remarks, and I shall make as much noise as anybody in the theatre.'
'That's all very well; but if you don't say it, Kendal will look it; and
I don't know which is the most damping.'
'Mrs. Stuart, you shall be the judge of our behaviour,' said Kendal, smiling—he and Forbes were excellent friends. 'Forbes is not in a judicial frame of mind, but we will trust you to be fair. I suppose, Forbes, we may be allowed a grumble or two at Hawes if you shut our mouths on the subject of Miss Bretherton.'
'Hawes does his best,' said Forbes, with a touch of obstinacy. 'He looks well, he strides well, he is a fine figure of a man with a big bullying voice; I don't know what more you want in a German prince. It is this everlasting hypercriticism which spoils all one's pleasure and frightens all the character out of the artists!'
At which Mrs. Stuart laughed, and, woman-like, observed that she supposed it was only people who, like Forbes, had succeeded in disarming the critics, who could afford to scoff at them—a remark which drew a funny little bow, half-petulant, half-pleased, out of the artist, in whom one of the strongest notes of character was his susceptibility to the attentions of women.
'You've seen her already, I believe,' said Wallace to Forbes. 'I think
Miss Bretherton told me you were at the Calliope on Monday.'
'Yes, I was. Well, as I tell you, I don't care to be critical. I don't want to whittle away the few pleasures that this dull life can provide me with by this perpetual discontent with what's set before one. Why can't you eat and be thankful? To look at that girl is a liberal education; she has a fine voice too, and her beauty, her freshness, the energy of life in her, give me every sort of artistic pleasure. What a curmudgeon I should be—what a grudging, ungrateful fellow, if, after all she has done to delight me, I should abuse her because she can't speak out her tiresome speeches—which are of no account, and don't matter, to my impression at all—as well as one of your thin, French, snake-like creatures who have nothing but their art, as you call it; nothing but what they have been carefully taught, nothing but what they have laboriously learnt with time and trouble, to depend upon!'
Having delivered himself of this tirade, the artist threw himself back in his chair, tossed back his gray hair from his glowing black eyes, and looked defiance at Kendal, who was sitting opposite.
'But, after all,' said Kendal, roused, 'these tiresome speeches are her métier; it's her business to speak them, and to speak them well. You are praising her for qualities which are not properly dramatic at all. In your studio they would be the only thing that a man need consider; on the stage they naturally come second.'
'Ah, well,' said Forbes, falling to upon his dinner again at a gentle signal from Mrs. Stuart that the carriage would soon be round, 'I knew very well how you and Wallace would take her. You and I will have to defend each other, Mrs. Stuart, against those two shower-baths, and when we go to see her afterwards I shall be invaluable, for I shall be able to save Kendal and Wallace the humbug of compliments.'
Whereupon the others protested that they would on no account be deprived of their share of the compliments, and Wallace especially laid it down that a man would be a poor creature who could not find smooth things to say upon any conceivable occasion to Isabel Bretherton. Besides, he saw her every day, and was in excellent practice. Forbes looked a little scornful, but at this point Mrs. Stuart succeeded in diverting his attention to his latest picture, and the dinner flowed on pleasantly till the coffee was handed and the carriage announced.
CHAPTER III
On their arrival at the theatre armed with Miss Bretherton's order, Mrs. Stuart's party found themselves shown into a large roomy box close to the stage—too close, indeed, for purposes of seeing well. The house was already crowded, and Kendal noticed, as he scanned the stalls and boxes through his opera-glass, that it contained a considerable sprinkling of notabilities of various kinds. It was a large new theatre, which hitherto had enjoyed but a very moderate share of popular favour, so that the brilliant and eager crowd with which it was now filled was in itself a sufficient testimony to the success of the actress who had wrought so great a transformation.
'What an experience this is for a girl of twenty-one,' whispered Kendal to Mrs. Stuart, who was comfortably settled in the farther corner of the box, her small dainty figure set off by the crimson curtains behind it. 'One would think that an actor's life must stir the very depths of a man or woman's individuality, that it must call every power into action, and strike sparks out of the dullest.'
'Yes; but how seldom it is so!'
'Well, in England, at any rate, the fact is, their training is so imperfect they daren't let themselves go. It's only when a man possesses the lower secrets of his art perfectly that he can aim at the higher. But the band is nearly through the overture. Just tell me before the curtain goes up something about the play. I have only very vague ideas about it. The scene is laid at Berlin?'
'Yes; in the Altes Schloss at Berlin. The story is based upon the legend of the White Lady.'
'What? the warning phantom of the Hohenzollerns?'
Mrs. Stuart nodded. 'A Crown-Prince of Prussia is in love with the beautiful Countess Hilda von Weissenstein. Reasons of State, however, oblige him to throw her over and to take steps towards marriage with a Princess of Würtemberg. They have just been betrothed when the Countess, mad with jealousy, plays the part of the White Lady and appears to the Princess, to try and terrify her out of the proposed marriage.'
'And the Countess is Miss Bretherton?'
'Yes. Of course the malicious people say that her get-up as the White Lady is really the raison d'etre of the piece. But hush! there is the signal. Make up your mind to be bored by the Princess; she is one of the worst sticks I ever saw!'
The first