Read Ebook: The Lady Evelyn: A Story of To-day by Pemberton Max Brown Arthur William Illustrator

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Ebook has 1158 lines and 77435 words, and 24 pages

a play nowadays. If you'd more of 'em this side, you wouldn't have so many failures. In America we star the woman first and the play afterwards. Here you star the man and when all the schoolgirls have seen him, your theatre's empty."

"Exactly--this play is the exception. You've certainly cut the writing on the wall. There's no room for whiskers on your ideas."

Mr. Izard drained his coffee cup and admitted loftily that there was not.

"Something odd about her all the same," Lacombe reflected; "dreadfully afraid of being known. She goes in and out of the theatre like a ghost."

Mr. Charles Izard laughed again.

"Well, don't she play the part of one?" he asked affably. "How would you have her come in and out? Whistling like the overhead? The part's herself--the Lady of Haddon. She was born to it. If that girl hasn't walked as a ghost sometime or other, put me down for twenty pounds to an hospital. And no salary, sir, not a single penny."

"Immense," said Lacombe, but immediately paused as a well-known critic passed through the hall and went out to the theatre almost adjoining the hotel.

"There's Clayaton," he went on quickly, "it's not often he sits out a sword-and-cape drama."

"Then he'll sit out one to-night and be ashamed of himself in the morning. Let's get, my boy, it's just on the half-hour. We must be there."

What precisely would have happened had so great a man not been there, the merely humble individual might hardly dare to say. As events went, Mr. Charles Izard put on a light great-coat with a great deal of splendid ceremony, and giving the many-colored lackey a shilling, strolled pompously into the street with his cigar still alight. Passing His Majesty's, before whose doors the boards "House Full" were conspicuously displayed, the pair walked leisurely on to the front entrance of the Carlton Theatre, and were there gratified by one of those spectacles which London alone can display upon the first night of a new production.

Cabs, carriages, electric broughams, even the motor-cars, arrived in quick succession before the brightly lighted vestibule of one of the prettiest theatres in London. From these emerged women in blazing evening dress, men who had dined, and men capricious and irritable because they had not dined--young girls to whom all plays were a dream of delight, mere boys who already had voted the whole thing "rot." As for the critics, they were chiefly patrons of hansoms; though a few arrived on foot, two and two, each trying to learn what the other would say about a performance which many had witnessed at a dress rehearsal. Short men and tall men, bearded men and bald men, they cared nothing for the success of the play, but everything for the glory of the notices they must write. An historical drama could not fail to give them a fine opening. They lolled back easily in their stalls as men whose literary knives were for the moment sheathed, but would be busy anon.

The theatre was packed to the very ceiling when the curtain rose, and few of the amiable first-nighters were missing from the audience. Famous lawyers, doctors of letters, and doctors of medicine, editors of illustrated papers and editors of papers that were not illustrated, literary ladies and ladies who were not literary, novelists, essayists, poets, that curious quasi-Bohemian crowd which constitutes a London first-night house, stood for most of the arts and many of the sciences of our day; and yet in the main brought a child's heart to the play as Bohemian crowds will. The cynics of eighteen, mostly representing halfpenny evening papers, were among the few who denounced the drama before they had seen it. "'Haddon Hall' on the stage again--why," said they, "there have been twenty Di Vernons in our time and why should this Di Vernon find mercy?" She was already in the coach of failure so far as they were concerned. The curtain rose upon their mutterings and did not still them.

So the Second Act passed and found him not a little anxious, and he sat far back in his box when the curtain rose upon the Third and concentrated his whole attention upon the performance. The scene was that of the Long Gallery at Haddon; the episode, a midnight meeting between Dorothy and her lover. Dressed in spotless white with the softest black hair tumbling about her almost to her knees, young and supple limbs moving elegantly, a face that Reynolds might have loved to paint, a voice that was music to hear--nevertheless all these physical attributes were speedily forgotten in the sincerity of Etta Romney's acting and the human feeling which animated it. Here was one who loved every stone of this ancient house which the quivering canvas attempted to portray; who had wandered abroad often in its stately park, who spoke the tongue of three centuries ago more naturally than her own, who had been so moved by this story of Di Vernon's life that she gave her very soul to its re-telling. From amazement the audiences passed quickly to a kind of entrancement which only genius can command. It did not applaud; its silence was astounding--not a whisper, scarce the rustle of a dress could be heard. The spell growing, it followed the white figure from scene to scene; was unconscious, perhaps, that any other than she trod the stage; devoured her with amazed eyes; heard, for the first time, each a tale of mediaeval England as neither historian nor romancer had ever told. When the curtain fell, the people still sat in silence a little while; but the applause came at length, upon a tempest of wild excitement rarely known in a modern theatre.

Who was she? Whence had she come?

A hundred ready tongues asked the question which none appeared able to answer.

There was but one man in the house who made sure of Etta Romney's identity, and he was a Roumanian.

"She is a great actress," he said to his companion, Felix Horowitz, a young attach? from the Hungarian Embassy; "I am going to make love to her."

The young man looked up quickly.

"I promise you failure," he said--"a woman who can speak of England like that will marry none but an Englishman."

SUCCESS AND AFTERWARDS

Etta Romney sat in her little dressing-room when the play was over, so very tired after all she had done that even the congratulations of Mr. Charles Izard failed to give her pleasure.

Etta sat alone, but it was not for many minutes after the curtain fell. Little Dulcie Holmes, the artist's daughter, who had a "walking part" at twenty-four shillings a week, came leaping into the room presently and catching her friend in both arms kissed her rapturously.

"Oh, Etta," she cried ardently, "oh, my dear--they won't go away even now. Can't you hear them calling for you?"

"They are too kind to me," was the quiet response, "and all because I love Derbyshire. Isn't it absurd?--but, of course, I'm very pleased, Dulcie."

"Think of it, dear Etta. Your very first night and Mr. Izard in such a state that he'd give you a hundred a week if you asked him. Of course, you won't play for nothing now, Etta."

"I've never thought of it," said Etta still without apparent emotion ... and then with a very sweet smile, she asked, "What would you say if I told you that I was about to give up the theatre altogether, Dulcie?"

Dulcie opened her eyes so wide that the rest of her piquant face was quite dwarfed by them.

"Give up the theatre. You're joking. Here Lucy--here's Etta talking of giving up the theatre. Now, what do you say to that?"

Lucy Grey, a pretty brunette, whose share in the triumph was the saucy delivery of the momentous line, "Oh, Captain, how could you?" , would not believe that Dulcie could possibly be serious.

"Whatever will the papers say to-morrow?" she exclaimed. "Did you ever think she could do it? I didn't, and I'm not going to say that I did. Why, here's Mr. Izard quite beside himself."

Etta had begun to gather up the heavy tresses of her long black hair by this time; but she did so slowly and deliberately as one whom success had neither surprised nor agitated. Could the two young girls about her have read her thoughts they would have been astonished indeed. Not idly had she asked Dulcie Holmes what people would say if she gave up the theatre entirely. For give it up she must. In one short month her father would return from the Continent. She must be at home by that time, and none must ever know that she had left her home.

"We'll talk it all over in the morning," she said, still smiling--"I want both of you to come and see me to-morrow. We shall have read the papers by that time. Whatever will they say about me?"

"It doesn't matter what they say. Everyone in London will be talking about you before the week's out. All the same, the papers are going to be nice. Lucy's cousin was in the vestibule between the acts and he heard the critics talking. They called you 'immense,' dear. That means bad luck for the play, but everything for you. You just wait until the morning comes."

"I fear I'll have to," said Etta, with a sly look toward them; but just then there came a tap on the door and who should it be but a messenger with the intimation that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Izard expected Miss Etta Romney to supper at the Carlton Hotel as soon as she could conveniently join their party. To the extreme astonishment both of Dulcie Holmes and Lucy Grey, Etta appeared to be distressed beyond words by this customary invitation.

"Oh, I never can go; I dare not go--whatever shall I do?" she asked.

"Not go!" cried Dulcie, almost too amazed to speak; "why, of course you must go. Charles would send soldiers to fetch you if you refused. The star always sups with him on a first night. I never heard of such a thing. She talks of not going, Lucy!"

"That's the excitement," said Lucy wisely. "I should be just the same in her place. She wants a glass of wine. She'll break out crying just now if she doesn't get one."

Their solicitude for Etta was very pretty and really honest. They were too fond of her to be jealous. Women who love loyally welcome their friends successes; men rarely do. Dulcie and Lucy might say "what a lucky girl she is;" but they would not have wished her to be less so.

As for Etta herself, the invitation perplexed her to distraction. How if she met some one who knew her at the Carlton. It was very unlikely she thought. Fifteen years passed in a French convent with few English pupils do not admit of many embarrassing acquaintances. The subsequent years, lived chiefly in the park of a mediaeval country house rarely open to strangers, were not likely to be more dangerous. Etta knew that discovery might be disastrous to her beyond the ordinary meaning of the term; but her cleverness told her that the risk of it was very small. It was then after eleven o'clock. She remembered that they turned the people out of the Carlton Hotel at half-past twelve.

"Tell Mr. Izard that I will come," she said to the messenger, and then to the girls, "You won't forget to-morrow. Run round early and we'll read the newspapers together. And, dear girls, we'll spend Sunday at Henley, as I promised you."

They kissed her affectionately, promising not to forget. There was not so much pleasure in their lives that they should pass it by when a good fairy approached them. Sharing rooms together, they had as yet discovered upon some fifty-odd shillings a week little of the glamour and none of the rewards of theatrical life. For them the theatre was the house of darkening hope, wherein success passed by them every hour crying, "Look at me--how beautiful I am; but not for you." They had believed that the pilgrim's way would be strewn with gold--they discovered it to be paved with promises.

"Of course, we shall come," said Lucy in her matter of fact way; "whatever should we be thinking of if we didn't."

But Dulcie said:

Etta laughingly told her that she could not, would not positively mind at all; and then remembering how late it was, she hurried from the theatre and found herself, just as the clocks were striking the quarter-past eleven, in the hall of the Carlton, standing before Mr. Charles Izard and listening but scarcely hearing the shrewd compliments which that astute gentleman deigned to shower upon them.

"You've struck it thick, my dear," he was saying. "Get twelve months' experience in my company and you'll make a great actress. I say what I mean. All you want is just what my theatre will teach you--the little tricks of our trade which go right there, though the public doesn't know much of them. Come and have supper now, and we'll talk business in the morning. I shouldn't wonder if the critics spread themselves over this. Don't pay too much attention to them--they dare not quarrel with me."

Mrs. Charles Izard, a frank florid woman, was much less discreet and much more honest.

"Perfectly adorable, my child," she said; "it was joy all the time to me. You couldn't have played it better if you'd have been born in a Duke's house. Wherever you got your manners from, I don't know. Now, really, Charles, don't say it wasn't; don't contradict me, Charles. You know that Miss Romney is going to make a fortune for you; and you're rich enough as it is. Why, child, the man's worth five million dollars if he's worth a penny. And it isn't five years since I was making my own clothes."

The supper room unfortunately put an end to these interesting revelations. Etta followed the loquacious Mrs. Izard as closely as she could, being sure that such a gorgeous apparition ! would divert attention from herself; and, in truth, it did so. A few turned their heads to say, "That's Izard and there's the only woman of his company who fixes her own salary;" but the supper was already in full swing and the people for the most part silent upon their own entertainment or that of their guests. Of the six or seven women who remarked the stately girl in Izard's company, the majority first said, "What a charming gown!" The men rarely noticed her. They had taken their second glasses of champagne by this time and were genially flirting with the women at their own tables. If they said anything, it was just, "What a pretty girl!"

And what were Etta's thoughts as she sat for the first time amid that garish company, typical of one of London's sets, and in some sense of society? Possibly she would have had some difficulty in expressing them. The music excited her, the ceaseless chatter hurt ears long accustomed to silence. In truth, she had tried to depict this scene in her Derbyshire home many times since her father had shut his gates upon the world. But the reality seemed so very different from her dreams; so very artificial, so shallow, so far from splendid. And beneath her disappointment lay the fear that some accident might disclose her identity. How, she asked, if she stood up there and told them all, "My name is not Etta but Evelyn. To-night I am an actress at the Carlton Theatre, but you will know me by and by as an Earl's daughter." Would they not have said that she was a mad woman? Such a confession would have been nothing but the truth, none the less.

She had planned and carried out, most daringly, as wild an escapade as ever had been recorded in the story of that romantic home of hers, to which she must soon return as secretly as she had come. Until this moment her success had been complete. Not a man or woman in all London had turned upon her to say, "You are not Etta Romney but another, the daughter of the one-time Robert Forrester, of whom your cousin's death has made an earl." Living a secluded life in a quiet lodging in Bedford Square, none remarked her presence; none had the curiosity to ask who she was or whence she came. The very daring of her adventure thrilled and delighted her. She would remember it to the end of her life; and when she returned to Derbyshire the stimulus of it would go with her, and permit her to say, "I, too, have known the hour of success, the meaning of applause, the glamour of the world."

These thoughts followed her to the supper room at the Carlton and were accountable for the indifference with which she listened to the praises and the prophecies of that truly great man, Mr. Charles Izard. He, wonderful being, confessed to himself that he could make nothing of the girl and that she was altogether beyond his experience. Her stately manners frightened him. When he called her, "my dear," as all women are called in the theatre, the words would sometimes halt upon his lips and he would hurriedly correct them and say, "Miss," instead. The first guess that he had made at her identity would have it that she was a country parson's daughter, or perhaps a relative of the agent or the steward of a Derbyshire estate. Now, however, he found himself of another opinion altogether, and there came to him the uneasy conviction that some great mystery lay behind his good fortune and would stand eventually between him and his hopes.

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