by Fiona Hill
Thaddeus excused himself and proceeded up the stairs. Elizabeth responded to his knock immediately; he entered and kissed her brow. “You were well amused last night, I hope?” he said.
“Oh, yes! It was a fine trick, and just what Jacob needed. I should never have forgiven you if you hadn’t warned me of it first, but as it was! La! the greatest good fun! How has Jake behaved towards you this morning?”
“Very prettily. You know, Sir Kenneth obliged me to apologise to him last night, and once he understood what had happened to him, he took it in quite good part.”
“I am glad for it. Will you stay and read to me this morning?”
“I should like to, but it can only be for a little while. In a few moments we are all—that is, it’s the surprise, you know. I can’t tell you.
“Oh, that miserable surprise!” cried Elizabeth. “I am sure it cannot be worth half so much trouble. You all neglect me, and say it is because of my surprise,” she continued a little pettishly, “and how it is to entertain me I cannot imagine. Would you not do better to leave it be and bear me company instead?”
“Poor, dear Elizabeth!” Thaddeus exclaimed. “It must seem very hard to you, indeed, but I promise you that you shall find it delightful.”
Lizzy sniffed with a touch of scepticism. “When is it to be shown me?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, perhaps. Saturday at the latest.”
“Saturday! But that is the day before the wedding! Thaddeus, when are you going to tell—”
“Now, don’t fret, please. All will be mended,” he assured her. “I swore by my love for you, did I not? Now, you cannot doubt that!”
“No,” she conceded, but rather sadly. She had begun to suspect how little idea Thaddeus had of how to resolve their problem, though in truth she had no notion how really desperate he felt. Besides, she had other troubles; her conscience had begun to awaken as the doses of laudanum Lady Eleanor gave her decreased. Thaddeus sensed something of this, and would fain have remained with her, but the sound of carriage wheels in the drive obliged him to take his leave. She passed the morning alone, toying with a book and brooding prodigiously.
“Now, are we all assembled?” said Laura, shutting the doors to the blue salon and looking about her. “Clio, Emily, Mr. Chance…yes, I believe we may begin. Dear Clio, you will be wondering if I have gone mad, but I assure you it is no such thing.” She explained to the wondering Miss Simpson about Elizabeth’s accident and the diversion they planned for her. Miss Simpson was delighted with the notion, and even more pleased upon learning that she was to play the queen.
“But what shall I play, Laura?” inquired Emily anxiously. “Why should Miss Simpson play the lead when it is my sister who—”
“Do not fly into the boughs, I beg you,” said Laura, laughing. “You will play the lady-in-waiting, which is one of the largest parts.
“Oh, shall I indeed? Oh, Cousin, thank you!” she cried, enraptured.
“Yes, and Thaddeus, if he will be so obliging, will play the prince.”
“I shall do my poor best,” bowed Thaddeus, with false humility.
“Mr. Lowland, if you will be so kind, I should like you to play the king. I have made it a very small part, so that you will not be obliged to learn too many lines, or to spend much time rehearsing.”
“I am honoured,” he said, casting her a quizzical look. At the same time, he received a rather more ardent glance from Miss Clio Simpson, who had perceived that he was to act as her husband. She thanked Laura silently, and even wondered if Mr. Lowland had perhaps requested such an arrangement, for. Miss Simpson was a wonderfully silly girl and she had mistaken Ashley’s uniformly warm address for partiality. Fortunately, Mr. Lowland was absorbed in gazing upon his Laura when Clio tried to exchange regards with him, and he was altogether spared consciousness of her feelings.
“I should like Jacob to be the jester,” Laura went on. “I think you will find it an amusing role.”
“Suits me very well,” said Jacob, “but I am not much of an actor, you know.”
“You are not expected to be,” she answered, smiling. “And there are only two parts remaining,” she continued, looking mischievously at Ashley, “the princess and the minstrel. These will be played by Miss Webb and Mr. Chance respectively, if you please.”
“Oh, Miss Fieldon! I am sure I could never take a part!” protested Lavinia Webb, blushing mightily.
“Neither did I expect one,” said the Reverend Mr. Chance, avoiding Miss Webb’s unsteady gaze.
“But you are both needed! You see how it is, do not you? My mother says I am not to act, and Mr. Lowland has no time to take so large a role, for he is still painting the scenery. Besides, if you will not play the minstrel, Mr. Chance, who is to sing your song? And who, Miss Webb, is to read your poem? Oh no,” she said, shaking her head sadly, “if you will not oblige us, I am afraid we must forget the scheme altogether!”
“Well,” Mr. Chance replied slowly; “if that is how it is…”
“I suppose we must,” said Miss Webb shyly. Of course, she was next to fainting with delight at the thought of having to work hand-and-glove with the rector, but she would not have revealed this for anything. She was sincerely glad, though, that Thaddeus was to play prince to her princess, for she thought she should die of embarrassment if Mr. Chance was to act opposite her. It seemed, however, that she would have little to say to him, for what should a princess be saying to a minstrel? It was a reassuring thought.
“Now, we have a great deal of work to do, if you please,” Laura was saying. “There is only one manuscript, of course, and I have thought for a while and have come up with no better solution than this: I shall read the whole to you, and you must each write down your lines and the ones that come before them. That way we will not be obliged to make six copies of the play, which would surely take forever. Is that agreeable to everyone?”
Since no one came forward with a better idea, pens and paper were distributed all round and the party began to work, Mr. Chance feeling very ridiculous indeed at taking dictation from a girl less than half his age. It was slow going, of course, for Laura was obliged to repeat each line a minimum of three times, and the room fairly hummed with “what was that?” and “a little slower, please.” By dinner time, however, the task was accomplished, and the party was given until after supper to get as many lines by heart as they could. A rehearsal was scheduled for nine o’clock that evening.
Directly after dinner Miss Fieldon and Mr. Lowland met in the drawing room for a portrait-painting session. Ashley was determined to make as much progress as was possible on it before Sunday, the day of the wedding, mainly to avoid answering questions from the Fieldons as to why he did not feel obliged to make haste. Laura, having gone upstairs to don her cerulean gown, and to have her hair dressed with ribbons as before, found him adjusting his easel and mixing his paints busily.
“Dear Ashley,” she said, as she settled into her pose, “it seems such an age since first we did this. Can it really have been less than a se’ennight?”
“It does seem impossible,” he agreed, beginning to work with his brushes.
“I think things are going forward very well, do not you? Surely my parents will understand the reason for the play.”
“I trust they will. If not we shall have to fly from here in the dark of night, for I will not stand by while you marry someone else.”
“I do not expect to be obliged to use such measures,” she answered, smiling a little. He was working quickly, now staring at her hair, now applying his brush. “Ashley, why do you not tell me to be quiet? You informed me once that you could not concentrate if I spoke.”
“It was a lie,” he responded, not breaking the rhythm of his movements. “I told you to be quiet because I knew if you spoke you would utter only commonplaces which, being already in love with you, I could not bear. Do you think me reprehensible?”
“Oh no!” she sighed. “How wonderful you are! And did you cause me to look at
you because you loved me, too?”
“I did,” he admitted.
She smiled again and her eyes shone. For a while no sound was heard but the soft stroking of the brush against the canvas; then she spoke again, anxiously. “Ashley, you will not leave me, will you? Promise you shall never leave me.”
“I promise. How could I leave you? And now you must really be quiet, for I am going to paint your mouth.”
“Oh dear!” she teased. “Mamma told me I must never paint my mouth. She said ladies who paint are not real ladies!”
“Do stop being silly, pray,” he replied, though he did not seem at all annoyed. “You have a lovely mouth, indeed you do,” he went on, choosing a new brush, “and I must try to paint it as it is—soft, and red, and glistening. But—lick your lips a little.” She obeyed. “There, that is perfect! Full, gleaming, but delicate and fine…alas that I am so poor an artist, and can but make a lifeless image! Do you know what we must do, I think? No, do not answer—I’ll tell you. I think we shall be obliged to make a baby, for that is the only manner in which your beauty may be duplicated to my satisfaction.”
“Oh, Ashley,” she burst out in spite of herself, “will it have your eyes? I think it must have your eyes, or I should not love it!”
“For Heaven’s sake, Laura!” he exclaimed, “I do not care whose eyes it has so long as it has not your tongue! Can you not keep quiet?” She did not speak again, but as his rough words had been delivered in the gentlest of accents, her feelings were not at all hurt, and she continued to look upon him with the greatest indulgence and love. When the light began to fail and he put down his brush at last, she begged to have a look at the picture.
“But do you not wish to be surprised by it, when it is all finished?”
“No I do not wish to be surprised by it, you goose,” she answered. “I am nearly dead with anticipation. Do let me look!”
“Very well,” he conceded, and stood aside from the canvas.
She stared at it in silence for a moment. The figure was as yet but barely sketched in, but the face! The face was nearly completed. “Oh, Ashley,” she breathed in a shaken voice, “is that how you see me?”
“No indeed,” he answered. “You are infinitely more beautiful.”
“But I am not nearly so pretty as that!” she protested. “No one will guess who it is meant to be!”
“Then you do not like my skill?”
“Pray—oh, pray do not be absurd, my dearest! It is only that—it is quite breath-taking.”
“Then you do like it?”
“How could I fail to?” She threw her arms round him in an almost cruelly tight embrace, and Mr. Lowland quite destroyed the careful arrangement of his cravat in bending to kiss the top of her head. Her criticism of his art was a little exaggerated, but in the main quite correct. It was a stunning portrait, and though no one could fail to identify it, such was the power of his love for the subject that her features seemed somehow transformed upon the canvas. Her skin, her yellow hair radiated luminously from the dark background; her green eyes shone hugely, perfectly, from under the ivory brow. Had there ever been a doubt in Laura’s mind, there could not be now: Mr. Lowland was deeply in love with her. She hugged him closer to her.
At just that moment a knock was heard upon the door, and Lady Eleanor entered an instant later. The lovers sprang apart, and applied themselves diligently to looking nonchalant, but her Ladyship was not regarding them anyhow. Instead her attention was focussed upon the portrait that, until then, Mr. Lowland had always kept covered. She stared at it wordlessly.
“Mr. Lowland,” she said at last, “I am no judge of art, but indeed I think you must have been too modest in describing your talents. It is exquisite…exquisite…” She scrutinized it more closely.
“I am honoured that you should like it,” Mr. Lowland bowed.
“It is much more beautiful than it should be, is not it, Mamma?”
“Oh no, it could not be that,” Lady Eleanor answered, drawing her daughter to her and kissing her brow, while tears welled in her eyes. “I am only surprised…you see her just as I do,” she continued to Mr. Lowland. “I should have thought—I feared, that is, that not loving her, you might not have seen…” She could not finish her speech, for her tears stopped her. “You must think me very silly,” she said, striving to compose herself, “but you cannot know what it means to have one’s daughter, one’s only daughter, taken from one. Which is not to say that Thaddeus is not the finest young man in the world, for I am sure he is, and I know she will be very happy, but—oh dear, I must not go on in this way!” she concluded and, excusing herself tearfully, hurried from the room.
Laura and Ashley exchanged an heavy look. “I fear it will be more difficult than we had foreseen,” he said at last.
“Indeed. I did not know…it means so much to her,” she replied brokenly. “She will not wish me to go farther from her than I must.”
“But she loves you,” Ashley said firmly, “and she would not wish for you to do anything that will make you unhappy. Perhaps—perhaps you should go to her directly, forget the play, and beg her—”
“No, it will not answer. There is still my father to contend with, and he has been planning this marriage for years. I cannot believe he would consent—not now. He would say it is a girlish start, and be angry with both of us.”
“Then back to work!” Ashley exclaimed, shrugging off these worries and setting out to find his sketches for the scenery. “I shall see you at supper,” he added, kissing her lightly. “And pray, do not fret. I have a letter, which you do not know of, and which may yet save us though nothing else will.”
And on these mysterious words he was gone.
Laura trudged upstairs rather sadly to change from her blue gown into clothing suitable for supper. Her humour could not help but lighten, however, as she passed chamber after chamber from which issued solitary declamations, feigned laughter, and much throat-clearing. “Whatever shall we do?” came a voice from Miss Webb’s room. “Whatever shall we do?” it said plaintively. Then it came again, this time preceded by a little sob: “Ah! Whatever shall we do?”
Meantime a thin, nasal voice emanated from Mr. Chance’s chamber: “Sire, permit me to ask for your daughter’s hand!” Then there was some coughing, and aheming, and the flat voice whined again: “Sire! Permit me to ask for your daughter’s hand!” Laura giggled. A little farther on, Clio’s flutelike accents floated into the corridor, from the guest chamber Lady Eleanor had given her for the night.
“We welcome you all to our court,” it trilled. “Or should it be ‘our court’?” it said.
Only one door to the hallway was open, and this was Thaddeus’. From his chamber there issued a dialogue, Miss Emily Shaw having very sensibly suggested that they rehearse their scene together. Her brother’s voice was absent from the cacophony, he having even more sensibly realised that Elizabeth must hear all these voices if she were not distracted from them, and having therefore gone in to read to her. By the time Laura reached her own chamber she was feeling quite gay, and she applied herself to the task of planning the stage directions with a clear mind.
Her concentration might have been disturbed somewhat had she known that Miss Clio Simpson, having got most of her few lines by heart, soon decided to descend in search of Mr. Lowland. She had heard Thaddeus and Emily, and it struck her that she and Ashley might very well do the same as they. She was conscious, of course, that their roles called for the exchange of only a very few lines, but the opportunity to spend sometime alone with him proved too much to resist; she found him, at length, in the library.
“Do I disturb you?” she asked prettily, having gained his permission to enter.
“Not at all,” he replied, in true gentlemanly fashion, though he thought privately that any fool could see she did. He was engaged in cutting out a backdrop from some heavy pasteboard, but he was obliged to put down his knife. “Is there some way in which I could serve you?”
“O
h!” she fluted brightly. “I only thought we might rehearse our lines together—for the first scene, you know.”
“Indeed,” he said, wondering what freakish wind had brought this notion to her, for he himself had scarce a dozen lines. “But perhaps—if you will forgive me for being so disobliging, I feel I must complete these backdrops first. Do you think we might rehearse later?”
Miss Simpson was dismayed, but she did not permit herself to show it. “I am sure I would not disturb you for the world! It was only a notion,” she added vaguely, going away. She felt much less attracted to Mr. Lowland than she had at first, and suddenly decided she could do very well without him. She went off to read over her lines again.
The rehearsal, Laura thought, went very badly indeed. Jacob, not having had an opportunity to learn his part, knew none of it, but he insisted nevertheless upon clowning, and teasing, and bouncing round the others. Thaddeus seemed incapable of learning where the stage was—they had no real stage and she had had to delineate an imaginary one—and was constantly wandering, in the course of his declaiming, all over the audience. Miss Webb, for what reason Laura well knew, maintained a blush for two hours together, and read her lines in an entirely inaudible voice. Mr. Chance, on the other hand, spoke his very loudly—far too loudly, in fact—and let no opportunity pass of giving useless advice to his fellow actors. Emily seemed to think she had the leading role, and she insisted that more attention be paid to her than to any of the others. Clio was sulky, and Ashley seemed distracted. More than once did Laura have to check the gush of frustrated tears that threatened to burst from her; the company seemed impossible to manage.
“One more time, Miss Webb, pray. Remember, you are very worried! In two hours you will be wed to the wrong man! ‘Whatever shall we do?’”
“Whatever shall we do?” Miss Webb piped in her tiniest voice. “Is that better, Miss Laura?”
“Yes, fine,” Laura answered mendaciously. “Now, Mr. Chance, I think you will be obliged to find some way to face the audience when you answer her. I know it is difficult, but see if you cannot—” She broke off as Mr. Chance swung round and faced her squarely.
