by Grant Allen
“Certainly, certainly,” Mr Blades replied, with a scrutinising glance. “Not even to our friend Florian?” And he eyed her quizzingly.
Rue’s face flushed deeper still. “Above all, not to him,” she answered firmly. “But what do you say to my offer? Is it business or not? Does it seem to you possible?”
The manager hesitated, and drummed with his finger on the desk before him. “Well, to tell you the truth, my dear lady,” he answered, evasively, “I couldn’t very well give you any opinion, good, bad, or indifferent, till I’ve read the manuscript, and considered it carefully. You see, a play’s not quite like a book or picture; a deal of capital’s involved in its production; and, besides, its success or its failure don’t stand quite alone; they mean so much in the end to the theatre. It won’t do for me to reckon only how many hundreds or thousands I may possibly lose on this or that particular venture if it turns out badly; there’s the indirect loss as well to take into consideration. Every success in a house means success in future; every failure in a house means gradual increase in the public coldness. It wouldn’t pay me, you understand, if you were merely to offer me a big lump sum down to produce a piece with no chance of a run in it. I never produce anything for anybody on earth unless I believe myself there’s really money in it. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” and he brightened up most amiably; “I’ll read it this very day; and then, if I think it won’t prejudice the Duke’s to bring it out at once, why, . . . I’ll consider whether or not I can accept your offer.”
“Oh, thank you!” Rue cried, very gratefully indeed; for she was a simple soul, in spite of her thousands.
The manager drew himself up, and looked stonily grave. He shook his bullet-head. This charge was most painful. It hurt his feelings as a business man that a pretty woman should even for one moment suppose he meant to make a concession to her.
“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” he answered, truthfully; and indeed she hadn’t; for his answer, after all, amounted merely to this: that if he thought the play likely to prove a success, he would generously permit the rich American to indemnify him beforehand against the off-chance of a failure. In other words, if it turned out well, he stood to win all; while if it turned out ill, it was Rue who stood to lose whatever was lost upon it.
Nevertheless, after a few more preliminary arrangements, Rue drove off, not ill-satisfied with her partial success, leaving behind her many injunctions of profoundest secrecy with the blandly-smiling manager. As she disappeared down the road, Mr Blades chuckled inwardly. Was he likely to tell any one else in the world, indeed, that he had even entertained so unequal a bargain? He would keep to himself his own clever compact with the American heiress. But two days later, Rue’s heart was made glad, when she came down to breakfast, by a letter from the manager, couched in politest terms, informing her that he had read Mr Deverill’s manuscript; that he thought on the whole there was possibly money in it; and that he would be pleased to talk over the question of its production on the basis of the arrangement she had herself proposed at their recent interview. Rue read it, overjoyed. In the innocence of her heart, she agreed to promise whatever the astute Mr Blades demanded. Moreover, this being a strictly confidential matter, she couldn’t even submit it to her lawyer for advice; she was obliged to act for once on her own initiative. She longed to rush off the very moment it was settled and tell Will the good news; but prudence and womanly reserve prevented her. However, she had her reward none the less next day, when Will hurried round immediately after breakfast to announce the splendid tidings which had come by that morning’s post, that Blades had accepted “Honeysuckle,” without any reserve, and intended to put it in rehearsal forthwith at the Duke of Edinburgh’s. His face beamed with delight; Rue smiled contentment. She was pleased he should burst in upon her first of all the world in London with news of his good fortune; that really looked as if he rather liked her! And then, how sweet it was to feel she had managed it all herself, and he didn’t know it. It was such a delightful secret that, womanlike, she longed to tell it to him outright — only that, of course, to divulge it would be to spoil the whole point of it. So she merely smiled a tranquil smile, to her own proud heart, and felt as happy as a queen about it. ’Tis delicious to do something for the man you love, and to know he doesn’t even suspect you of doing it. . . . Some day, perhaps, she would be able to tell him. But not till he’d made a great name for himself. Then she might say to him with pride, at some tender moment, “Before the world found you out, Will, I knew what you were, and, all unknown to yourself, it was I who stretched out the first helping hand to your fortunes!”
CHAPTER XXIII
A PROPHET INDEED!
While Will Deverill’s operetta was still in rehearsal at the Duke of Edinburgh’s, a little episode occurred at Rue’s house in Hans Place, which was not without a certain weird influence of its own on the after-life of herself and her companions.
Rue gave an At Home one night early in March, to which Florian and Will Deverill were invited. Will brought his sister with him — the sister who was married to an East End curate, and who had called upon Rue at her brother’s bidding.
“Well, what do you think of her to-night, Maud?” Will asked a little anxiously as they stood alone for a minute or two in the middle of the evening.
Mrs Sartoris curled her lip. “Oh, she’s pretty enough,” she answered; “pretty enough, after her fashion. I could see that the first time; and she’s got nice manners. She lights up well, too; women of her age always do light up well. They look better by night, even in the searching glare of these electric lamps, than in full broad sunshine. But, of course, she hasn’t got quite the tone of our set; you couldn’t expect it. A faded air of drapery clings about her to the end. That’s the way with these people; they may be ever so rich, they may be ever so fascinating — but a discriminating nose still scents trade in them somewhere.”
Will smiled a quiet smile of suppressed amusement. He didn’t care to answer her. Rue’s father, he knew, had been an episcopal clergyman in New York, and she herself, though she married a dry-goodsman, had been every bit as well brought up as Will and his sister. But ’tis a sisterly way to say these disparaging things about women whom one’s brother might be suspected of marrying. Will didn’t mean to marry Rue, it is true; but Maud thought he might; and that idea alone was more than enough to give a caustic tone to her critical comments.
The feature of the evening, it seemed, was to be a peculiar séance of a new American phenomenon, who had come over to Europe with a wonderful reputation for thought-reading, hypnotism, and what he was pleased to style “magnetic influences.” Like most of her countrymen and countrywomen, Rue had a sneaking regard, in the background of her soul, for mesmerism, spiritualism, psychic force, electro-biology, and the occult and mysterious in human nature generally. She was one of those impressionable women, in short, who fall a ready prey to plausible impostors with voluble talk about ethereal vibrations, telepathic energy, the odic fluid, and the rest of such rubbish, unless strong-minded male friends intervene to prevent them. The medium on this occasion, it appeared, was one Joaquin Holmes, otherwise known as the Colorado Seer, who professed to read the inmost thoughts of man or woman by direct brainwaves, without contact of any sort. The guests that night had been specially invited to meet Mr Holmes on this his first appearance at a séance in London; so about ten o’clock, all the world trooped down to the dining-room, which Florian had cunningly arranged as a temporary lecture-hall, with seats in long rows, and an elevated platform at one end for the medium.
“What an odd-looking man!” Mrs Sartoris exclaimed, as the Colorado Seer, in full evening dress, bowed a graceful bow from his place on the platform. “He’s handsome, though, isn’t he? Such wonderful eyes! Just look! And such a Spanish complexion!”
“A Hidalgo, every inch!” Florian assented gravely, nodding his head, and looking at him as he would have looked at a Velasquez. “That olive-brown skin points back
straight to Andalusia. It doesn’t want his name to tell one at a glance that if his father was an American of English descent, his mother’s folk must have emigrated from Cordova or Granada. I see a Moslem tinge in cheek and eye; those dusky thin fingers are the Moor all over!”
“For Moor, read blackamoor,” Colonel Quackenboss, the military attaché to the American Legation, murmured half under his breath to his next-door neighbour.
And they were each of them right, in his own way and fashion. The Colorado Seer was a very handsome man, somewhat swarthier than is usual with pure-blooded Europeans. His eyes were large and dark and brilliant; his abundant black hair fell loose over his brow with a graceful southern curl; a heavy moustache fringed his upper lip; he looked to the unsophisticated European eye like a pleasing cross between Buffalo Bill and a Castilian poet. But his Christian name of Joaquin and his southern skin had descended to him, not from Andalusian Hidalgos, but from a mother who was partly Spanish and partly negress, with a delicate under-current of Red Indian ancestry. As he stood there on the platform, however, in his becoming evening dress, and flooded them with the light of his lustrous dark eyes — ’twas a trick of the trade he had learned in Colorado — every woman in the room felt instinctively to herself he was a superb creature, while every man admitted with a grudging smile that the fellow had at least the outward air of a gentleman.
The Seer, stepping forward with a genial smile, entertained them at first with some common little tricks of so-called thought-reading, familiar enough to all those who have ever attempted to watch the ways of that simple exhibition. He found pins concealed in ladies’ skirts, and guessed the numbers of bank-notes in financiers’ pockets. Florian’s mouth curled incredulity; why, these were just the same futile old games as ever, the well-known and innocent little conjuring dodges of the Bishops and the Stuart Cumberlands! But after awhile, Mr Joaquin Holmes, waking up all at once, proceeded to try something newer and more original. A pack of cards was produced. To avoid all suspicion of collusion or trickery, ’twas a brand-new pack — observe, there’s no deception — bought by Rue herself that afternoon in Bond Street. With much air of serious mystery, the Colorado Seer pulled off the stamped cover before their very eyes, gave the cards themselves to Will to shuffle, and then proceeded to offer them to every member of the company one by one in order. Each drew a card, looked at it, and replaced it in the pack. Instantly, the Seer in a very loud voice, without one moment’s hesitation, announced it correctly as ten of spades, ace of clubs, five of hearts, or queen of diamonds. It was an excellent trick, and the performer could do it equally well with open eyes or blindfolded; he could offer the cards behind his back, after the pack had been shuffled and handed him unseen; he could even succeed in the dark, he said, if the lights were lowered, and each person in the company took his own card out to inspect it in the passage.
“That looks like genuine thought-reading,” Will was compelled to admit, thinking it over in his own mind; “but perhaps he forces his cards. One knows conjurers can do such wonderful things in the way of forcing.”
Instantly the Seer turned upon him with an air of injured innocence. “If you think there’s any conjuring about this performance,” he exclaimed, with much dignity, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet two, “you can offer them yourself, and allow each lady and gentleman in the room to pick as they choose for themselves among them. I’ll take each card, blindfold, as fast as they pick, hold it up behind my back, with my hands tied, without seeing it myself, and read off for you what it is by direct thought-transference.”
Will accepted the test — a fairly severe one; and, sure enough, the Seer was right. Carefully blindfolded with one of those moulded wraps, invented for the purpose, which prevent all possibility of looking down through the chinks, he yet took each card behind his back in one hand, held it up before their eyes without moving his head, and gave out its name distinctly and instantly. The audience was impressed. There was a touch of magic in it. But the Seer smiled blandly.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” he murmured aloud, with a deprecating little laugh; “a mere matter of choosing between fifty-two alternatives — which, after all, is easy. With Mrs Palmer’s consent,” and he turned in a gracefully deferential attitude to Rue, “I can show you something a great deal more remarkable. Here are pencils and papers. Each lady or gentleman will please take a sheet as I hand them round. Write anything you like, in English, French, German or Spanish, on the piece of paper. Then fold it up, so, and put it into one of these envelopes gummed down and fastened. After that, as this experiment requires very great concentration of thought” — he knitted his brows, and assumed an expression of the intensest internal effort — ”with Mrs Palmer’s kind leave, we will turn out the electric light, which confuses and distracts one by revealing to the eye so many surrounding visible objects. And then, without breaking the envelopes in which you have enclosed the pieces of paper, I will read out to you, in the dark, what each of you has written.”
He spoke deliberately, with slow western American distinctness, though with a pleasing accent. That accent, superimposed on his native negro dialect, had cost him no small effort. The guests, half-incredulous, took the sheets of paper he distributed to them one by one, and wrote down a sentence or two, according to taste, after a little interval of whispered consultation. Then, by the Seer’s direction, they folded the slips in two and placed them in their envelopes, each bearing outside the name of the person who wrote it. Florian collected the papers, all carefully gummed down, and handed them to the Seer, who stood ready to receive them at his place on the platform. Without one moment’s delay, the lights were turned out. It was the instantaneousness, indeed, and the utter absence of the usual hocus-pocus, that distinguished Mr Joaquin Holmes’s unique performance from the ordinary style of spiritualist conjuring. In a second, the Seer’s voice rang out clear from his place: “First envelope, Mrs Palmer, containing inscription in French — very prettily written:
‘La vie est brève:
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de rêve,
Et puis — bonjour.
La vie est vaine:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis — bonsoir.’
“Extremely graceful verses; I don’t know the author. However, no matter! . . . Second envelope, Colonel Marchmont, containing inscription in English, ‘The general immediately ordered an advance, and the gallant 21st, regardless of danger, charged for the battery in magnificent style, sabring the enemy’s gunners in a wild outburst of military enthusiasm.’ Very characteristic! A most soldierly choice. And boldly written. . . . Third envelope, Mrs Sartoris, — stop, please! the lady’s thoughts are wandering; kindly fix your attention for a moment, Madam, on the words you have given me. Ah, so; that’s better. — ’The curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea; The ploughman homeward wends’ — wends? wends? it should have been ‘plods’; but ‘wends’ is what you thought — ’The ploughman homeward wends his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.’ Very appropriate; it’s dark enough here! And I am the only speaker. Bend your minds to what you have written, please, or I may have to hesitate. Each think of your own. . . . Fourth envelope, Mr Florian Wood, containing inscription:
‘We struggle fain to enlarge
Our bounded physical recipiency,
Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,
Repair the waste of age and sickness: no,
It skills not! life’s inadequate to joy,
As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take.’
An exceedingly appropriate quotation! I forget where it comes from. Try to concentrate your mind, Mr Wood. Ah, now I know! — from Browning’s Cleon.”
Florian’s mellifluous voice broke the silence in the auditory. “This is wonderful!” he said, in his impressive tone,
“most wonderful! miraculous! I never heard anything in my life to equal it.”
The Seer, noting his advantage, didn’t pause for a moment to answer the interruption, but, smiling a self-satisfied though invisible smile, which could be heard in his voice in spite of the dense darkness, went on still more rapidly, “Fifth envelope, Lady Martindale, a familiar quotation, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.’ Somewhat hackneyed that, but easy enough to read on her brain for that very reason. . . . Sixth envelope, Sir Henry Martindale — I regret to say, a confirmed sceptic; Sir Henry didn’t believe I could read his thoughts, so he wrote down these rude words: ‘The performance is a sham, and the man’s a humbug.’ But the performance is not a sham, and the man’s a thought-reader. Sir Henry also wrote three words below in the Russian character, which he learnt in the Crimea. Now, I don’t know Russian, and I can’t pretend to read thoughts in languages I don’t understand, any more than I could pretend to repeat a conversation I happened to overhear on top of an omnibus in Japanese or Hottentot. But I can tell Sir Henry what he thought in English as he wrote those words; he thought to himself, ‘That’s a puzzler for him, that is; I’ll bet five quid that’ll beat the fellow.’ ”
The audience laughed at this unexpected sally. Sir Henry felt uncomfortable. But the Seer, unabashed, went on as before, without an instant’s pause, to the succeeding envelopes. He ran through them all in the same rapid manner, till he reached the last, “Miss Violet Farrar, — kindly concentrate your thoughts on the subject, Señorita, — Miss Farrar wrote a couple of lines from Swinburne:
‘Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.’
That’s the last I received!” He drew a deep sigh. Then without one instant interposed, “Turn up the lights, please,” he said. “To show all’s fair, I’ll return you your envelopes.”
