Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Is there anything improper in the play?” asked Jessie, striking in with her usual bluntness — never afraid to put her thoughts into speech. “Is that your reason for not wishing Christabel to see it?”

  “No, the piece is perfectly correct,” stammered the Major, “there is not a word — —”

  “Then I think Belle’s whim ought to be indulged,” said Jessie, “especially as Mr. Hamleigh’s absence makes her feel out of spirits.”

  The Major murmured something vague about the difficulty of getting places with less than six weeks’ notice, whereupon Christabel told him, with a dignified air, that he need not trouble himself any further.

  But a young lady who has plenty of money, and who has been accustomed, while dutiful and obedient to her elders, to have her own way in all essentials, is not so easily satisfied as the guileless Major supposed. As soon as the West-end shops were open next morning, before the jewellers had set out their dazzling wares — those diamond parures and rivières, which are always inviting the casual lounger to step in and buy them — those goodly chased claret jugs, and Queen Anne tea-kettles, and mighty venison dishes, which seem to say, this is an age of luxury, and we are indispensable to a gentleman’s table — before those still more attractive shops which deal in hundred-guinea dressing-cases, jasper inkstands, ormolu paper-weights, lapis lazuli blotting-books, and coral powder-boxes — had laid themselves out for the tempter’s work — Miss Courtenay and Miss Bridgeman, in their neat morning attire, were tripping from library to library, in quest of a box at the Kaleidoscope for that very evening.

  They found what they wanted in Bond Street. Lady Somebody had sent back her box by a footman, just ten minutes ago, on account of Lord Somebody’s attack of gout. The librarian could have sold it were it fifty boxes, and at a fabulous price, but he virtuously accepted four guineas, which gave him a premium of only one guinea for his trouble — and Christabel went home rejoicing.

  “It will be such fun to show the Major that we are cleverer than he,” she said to Jessie.

  Miss Bridgeman was thoughtful, and made no reply to this remark. She was pondering the Major’s conduct in this small matter, and it seemed to her that he must have some hidden reason for wishing Christabel not to see “Cupid and Psyche.” That he, who had so faithfully waited upon all their fancies, taking infinite trouble to give them pleasure, could in this matter be disobliging or indifferent seemed hardly possible. There must be a reason; and yet what reason could there be to taboo a piece which the Major distinctly declared to be correct, and which all the fashionable world went to see? “Perhaps there is something wrong with the drainage of the theatre,” Jessie thought, speculating vaguely — a suspicion of typhoid fever, which the Major had shrunk from mentioning, out of respect for feminine nerves.

  “Did you ever tell Mr. Hamleigh you wanted to see ‘Cupid and Psyche’?” asked Miss Bridgeman at last, sorely exercised in spirit — fearful lest Christabel was incurring some kind of peril by her persistence.

  “Yes, I told him; but it was at a time when we had a good many engagements, and I think he forgot all about it. Hardly like Angus, was it, to forget one’s wishes, when he is generally so eager to anticipate them?”

  “A strange coincidence!” thought Jessie. Mr. Hamleigh and the Major had been unanimous in their neglect of this particular fancy of Christabel’s.

  At luncheon Miss Courtenay told her aunt the whole story — how Major Bree had been most disobliging, and how she had circumvented him.

  “And my revenge will be to make him sit out ‘Cupid and Psyche’ for the second time,” she said, lightly, “for he must be our escort. You will go, of course, dearest, to please me?”

  “My pet, you know how the heat of a theatre always exhausts me!” pleaded Mrs. Tregonell, whose health, long delicate, had been considerably damaged by her duties as chaperon. “When you are going anywhere with Angus, I like to be seen with you; but to-night, with the Major and Jessie, I shall not be wanted. I can enjoy an evening’s rest.”

  “But do you enjoy that long, blank evening, Auntie?” asked Christabel, looking anxiously at her aunt’s somewhat careworn face. People who have one solitary care make so much of it, nurse and fondle it, as if it were an only child. “Once or twice when we have let you have your own way and stay at home, you have looked so pale and melancholy when we came back, as if you had been brooding upon sad thoughts all the evening.”

  “Sad thoughts will come, Belle.”

  “They ought not to come to you, Auntie. What cause have you for sadness?”

  “I have a dear son far away, Belle — don’t you think that is cause enough?”

  “A son who enjoys the wild sports of the West ever so much better than he enjoys his home; but who will settle down by-and-by into a model country Squire.”

  “I doubt that, Christabel. I don’t think he will ever settle down — now.”

  There was an emphasis — an almost angry emphasis — upon the last word which told Christabel only too plainly what her aunt meant. She could guess what disappointment it was that her aunt sighed over in the long, lonely evenings; and, albeit the latent resentfulness in Mrs. Tregonell’s mind was an injustice, her niece could not help being sorry for her.

  “Yes, dearest, he will — he will,” she said, resolutely. “He will have his fill of shooting bisons, and all manner of big and small game, out yonder; and he will come home, and marry some good sweet girl, who will love you only just a little less than I do, and he will be the last grand example of the old-fashioned country Squire — a race fast dying out; and he will be as much respected as if the power of the Norman Botterells still ruled in the land, and he had the right of dealing out high-handed justice, and immuring his fellow-creatures in a dungeon under his drawing-room.”

  “I would rather you would not talk about him,” answered the widow, gloomily; “you turn everything into a joke. You forget that in my uncertainty about his fate, every thought of him is fraught with pain.”

  Belle hung her head, and the meal ended in silence. After luncheon came dressing, and then the drive to Twickenham, with Major Bree in attendance. Christabel told him of her success as they drove through the Park to Kensington.

  “I have the pleasure to invite you to a seat in my box at the Kaleidoscope this evening,” she said.

  “What box?”

  “A box which Jessie and I secured this morning, before you had finished your breakfast.”

  “A box for this evening?”

  “For this evening.”

  “I wonder you care to go to a theatre without Hamleigh.”

  “It is very cruel of you to say that!” exclaimed Christabel, her eyes brightening with girlish tears, which her pride checked before they could fall. “You ought to know that I am wretched without him — and that I want to lose the sense of my misery in dreamland. The theatre for me is what opium was for Coleridge and De Quincey.”

  “I understand,” said Major Bree; “‘you are not merry, but you do beguile the thing you are by seeming otherwise.’”

  “You will go with us?”

  “Of course, if Mrs. Tregonell does not object.”

  “I shall be very grateful to you for taking care of them,” answered the dowager languidly, as she leant back in her carriage — a fine example of handsome middle-age: gracious, elegant, bearing every mark of good birth, yet with a worn look, as of one for whom fading beauty and decline of strength would come too swiftly. “I know I shall be tired to death when we get back to town.”

  “I don’t think London society suits you so well as the monotony of Mount Royal,” said Major Bree.

  “No; but I am glad Christabel has had her first season. People have been extremely kind. I never thought we should have so many invitations.”

  “You did not know that beauty is the ace of trumps in the game of society.”

  The garden party was as other parties of the same genus: strawberry ices and iced coffee in a tent under a spreading Spanish chest
nut — music and recitations in a drawing-room, with many windows looking upon the bright swift river — and the picturesque roofs of Old Richmond — just that one little picturesque group of bridge and old tiled-gables which still remains — fine gowns, fine talk; a dash of the æsthetic element; strange colours, strange forms and fashions; pretty girls in grandmother bonnets; elderly women in limp Ophelia gowns, with tumbled frills and lank hair. Christabel and the Major walked about the pretty garden, and criticized all the eccentricities, she glad to keep aloof from her many admirers — safe under the wing of a familiar friend.

  “Five o’clock,” she said; “that makes twenty-four hours. Do you think he will be back to-morrow?”

  “He? Might I ask whom you mean by that pronoun?”

  “Angus. His telegram this morning said that his aunt was really ill — not in any danger — but still quite an invalid, and that he would be obliged to stay a little longer than he had hoped might be needful, in order to cheer her. Do you think he will be able to come back to-morrow?”

  “Hardly, I fear. Twenty-four hours would be a very short time for the cheering process. I think you ought to allow him a week. Did you answer his telegram?”

  “Why, of course! I told him how miserable I was without him; but that he must do whatever was right and kind for his aunt. I wrote him a long letter before luncheon to the same effect. But, oh, I hope the dear old lady will get well very quickly!”

  “If usquebaugh can mend her, no doubt the recovery will be rapid,” answered the Major, laughing. “I dare say that is why you are so anxious for Hamleigh’s return. You think if he stays in the North he may become a confirmed toddy-drinker. By-the-by, when his return is so uncertain, do you think it is quite safe for you to go to the theatre to-night? He might come to Bolton Row during your absence.”

  “That is hardly possible,” said Christabel. “But even if such a happy thing should occur, he would come and join us at the Kaleidoscope.”

  This was the Major’s last feeble and futile effort to prevent a wilful woman having her own way. They rejoined Mrs. Tregonell, and went back to their carriage almost immediately — were in Bolton Row in time for a seven o’clock dinner, and were seated in the box at the Kaleidoscope a few minutes after eight. The Kaleidoscope was one of the new theatres which have been added to the attractions of London during the last twenty years. It was a small house, and of exceeding elegance; the inspiration of the architect thereof seemingly derived rather from the bonbonnières of Siraudin and Boissier than from the severer exemplars of high art. Somebody said it was a theatre which looked as if it ought to be filled with glacé chestnuts, or crystallized violets, rather than with substantial flesh and blood. The draperies thereof were of palest dove-coloured poplin and cream-white satin; the fauteuils were upholstered in velvet of the same dove colour, with a monogram in dead gold; the pilasters and mouldings were of the slenderest and most delicate order — no heavy masses of gold or colour — all airy, light, graceful; the sweeping curve of the auditorium was in itself a thing of beauty: every fold of the voluminous dove-coloured curtain, lined with crimson satin — which flashed among the dove tints here and there, like a gleam of vivid colour in the breast of a tropical bird — was a study. The front of the house was lighted with old-fashioned wax candles, a recurrence to obsolete fashion which reminded the few survivors of the D’Orsay period of Her Majesty’s in the splendid days of Pasta and Malibran, and which delighted the Court and Livery of the Tallow Chandlers’ Company.

  “What a lovely theatre!” cried Christabel, looking round the house, which was crowded with a brilliant audience; “and how cruel of you not to bring us here! It is the prettiest theatre we have seen yet.”

  “Yes; it’s a nice little place,” said the Major, feebly; “but, you see, they’ve been playing the same piece all the season — no variety.”

  “What did that matter, when we had not seen the piece? Besides, a young man I danced with told me he had been to see it fifteen times.”

  “That young man was an ass!” grumbled the Major.

  “Well, I can’t help thinking so too,” assented Christabel. And then the overture began — a dreamy, classical compound, made up of reminiscences of Mozart, Beethoven, and Weber — a melodious patchwork, dignified by scientific orchestration. Christabel listened dreamily to the dreamy music, thinking of Angus all the while — wondering what he was doing in the far-away Scottish land, which she knew only from Sir Walter’s novels.

  The dove-coloured curtains were drawn apart to a strain of plaintive sweetness, and the play — half poem, half satire — began. The scene was a palace garden, in some “unsuspected isle in far-off seas.” The personages were Psyche, her sisters, and the jealous goddess, whose rest had been disturbed by rumours of an earthly beauty which surpassed her own divine charms, and who approached the palace disguised as a crone, dealing in philters and simples, ribbons and perfumes, a kind of female Autolycus.

  First came a dialogue between Venus and the elder sisters — handsome women both, but of a coarse type of beauty, looking too large for the frame in which they appeared. Christabel and Jessie enjoyed the smartness of the dialogue, which sparkled with Aristophanian hits at the follies of the hour, and yet had a poetical grace which seemed the very flavour of the old Greek world.

  At last, after the interest of the fable had fairly begun, there rose the faint melodious breathings of a strange music within the palace — the quaint and primitive harmonies of a three-stringed lyre — and Psyche came slowly down the marble steps, a slender, gracious figure in classic drapery — Canova’s statue incarnate.

  “Very pretty face,” muttered the Major, looking at her through his opera-glass; “but no figure.”

  The slim, willowy form, delicately and lightly moulded as a young fawn’s, was assuredly of a type widely different from the two young women of the fleshly school who represented Psyche’s jealous sisters. In their case there seemed just enough mind to keep those sleek, well-favoured bodies in motion. In Stella Mayne the soul, or, at any rate, an ethereal essence, a vivid beauty of expression, an electric brightness, which passes for the soul, so predominated over the sensual, that it would have scarcely surprised one if this fragile butterfly-creature had verily spread a pair of filmy wings and floated away into space. The dark liquid eyes, the small chiselled features, exquisitely Greek, were in most perfect harmony with the character. Amongst the substantial sensuous forms of her companions this Psyche moved like a being from the spirit world.

  “Oh!” cried Christabel, almost with a gasp, “how perfectly lovely!”

  “Yes; she’s very pretty, isn’t she?” muttered the Major, tugging at his grey moustache, and glaring at the unconscious Psyche from his lurking place at the back of the box.

  “Pretty is not the word. She is the realization of a poem.”

  Jessie Bridgeman said nothing. She had looked straight from Psyche to the Major, as he grunted out his acquiescence, and the troubled expression of his face troubled her. It was plain to her all in a moment that his objection to the Kaleidoscope Theatre was really an objection to Psyche. Yet what harm could that lovely being on the stage, even were she the worst and vilest of her sex, do to any one so remote from her orbit as Christabel Courtenay?

  The play went on. Psyche spoke her graceful lines with a perfect intonation. Nature had in this case not been guilty of cruel inconsistency. The actress’s voice was as sweet as her face; every movement was harmonious; every look lovely. She was not a startling actress; nor was there any need of great acting in the part that had been written for her. She was Psyche — the loved, the loving, pursued by jealousy, persecuted by women’s unwomanly hatred, afflicted, despairing — yet loving always; beautiful in every phase of her gentle life.

  “Do you like the play?” asked the Major, grimly, when the curtain had fallen on the first act.

  “I never enjoyed anything so much! It is so different from all other plays we have seen,” said Christabel; “and Psyche — M
iss Stella Mayne, is she not — is the loveliest creature I ever saw in my life.”

  “You must allow a wide margin for stage make-up, paint and powder, and darkened lashes,” grumbled the Major.

  “But I have been studying her face through my glass. It is hardly at all made up. Just compare it with the faces of the two sisters, which are like china plates, badly fired. Jessie, what are you dreaming about? You haven’t a particle of enthusiasm! Why don’t you say something?”

  “I don’t want to be an echo,” said Miss Bridgeman, curtly. “I could only repeat what you are saying. I can’t be original enough to say that Miss Mayne is ugly.”

  “She is simply the loveliest creature we have seen on the stage or off it,” exclaimed Christabel, who was too rustic to want to know who Miss Mayne was, and where the manager had discovered such a pearl, as a London playgoer might have done.

  “Hark!” said Jessie; “there’s a knock at the door.”

  Christabel’s heart began to beat violently. Could it be Angus? No, it was more likely to be some officious person, offering ices.

  It was neither; but a young man of the languid-elegant type — one of Christabel’s devoted admirers, the very youth who had told her of his having seen “Cupid and Psyche,” fifteen times.

  “Why this makes the sixteenth time,” she said, smiling at him as they shook hands.

  “I think it is nearer the twentieth,” he replied; “it is quite the jolliest piece in London! Don’t you agree with me?”

  “I think it is — remarkably — jolly!” answered Christabel, laughing. “What odd words you have in London for the expression of your ideas — and so few of them!”

  “A kind of short-hand,” said the Major, “arbitrary characters. Jolly means anything you like — awful means anything you like. That kind of language gives the widest scope for the exercise of the imagination.”