CHAPTER XI.CHARADES.
The drawing-room at Leeholme was filled with a brilliant party of guests. It was the eve of Lady Hermione’s birthday, and they were invited to do her honor.
All theéliteof the country were present, for though Clarice Severn was perhaps more beautiful, no one was so dearly loved as the charming, gifted daughter of Lord Lorriston.
Apart from the others was a group of young people, busily engaged in discussing the morrow’sfête. It was the general wish that charades should be the feature of the entertainment. Lord Lorriston, who indulged his daughter in every caprice she chose to adopt, had arranged one of the largest rooms in the house as a theatre. It was one of the most perfect and complete little theatres ever seen. There was a pretty stage with a row of foot-lights, a greenroom, scenes painted by a celebrated artist, and Lady Hermione had no greater pleasure than the arrangement and management of her favorite plays.
The group holding this discussion had sought refuge in the deep recess of a large bay window. The lamps were lighted in the drawing-room, but the fairy nook seemed filled yet with the evening gloaming. The long curtains were not drawn, the window was slightly open, and the fragrance of the flowers floated in. Lady Hermione was speaking, and Sir Ronald, who listened to every note of that sweet, musical voice, thought how perfectly it harmonized with the fragrance of the flowers.
“We must have everything arranged beforehand,” she was saying; “nothing spoils tableaux so entirely as long waiting between the pictures—the audience grows tiredbeforehand. Let us go to the greenroom now and rehearse.”
An idea that was most warmly received. The other members of the party were engaged with cards, chess, or in conversation. Miss Salve, a beautiful Italian, visiting in the neighborhood, was singing, and singing so delightfully that she was listened to with the most profound attention. One by one the members of the little group stole away unperceived, and met in the greenroom with a laugh. There were Lady Hermione, Miss Severn, pretty Clara Seville, Isabel Gordon, a beauty of Spanish type; Lilian Monteith, a calm, grand, impassive blonde, whose share in the programme was simply to look beautiful and say nothing.
There were Sir Ronald, Kenelm Eyrle, Captain Gordon and Sir Harry Bellaire. It seemed to Lady Hermione that her assistants were much disposed to waste their time in sentimental conversation. She looked around with that pretty, willful impatience that was one of her greatest charms.
“Do let us begin to work,” she said. “Clarice, you open the tableaux with what is really the prettiest of all.”
“Your own design,” interrupted Sir Ronald.
“Ah, never mind; it is easy to design, but difficult to carry out. Now, ‘Sunshine.’”
For the first tableau represented a picture called “Sunshine,” Miss Severn standing in the middle of the stage, her golden hair falling like a bright, gleaming veil around her. Her dress was of some golden-hued fabric that resembled nothing so much as sunbeams. Flowers of every hue were heaped on her white breast and arms, and lay at her feet. The light, arranged so as to fall above, poured a flood of radiance on the brightest picture that was ever seen.
“It is simply perfect,” said Kenelm. “I should like all the world to see ‘Sunshine.’”
“But you must remember,” said Miss Severn, with a bright blush and a smile, “that every one would not see it with your eyes.”
It pierced her to the heart, knowing that she had never looked more beautiful, to see that Sir Ronald did not look at her, made no remark upon the beauty of the picture, neither praised nor suggested, but was simply indifferent. All Kenelm’s admiration was wasted after that.
The next tableau was “Evening,” a picture almost as beautiful; Isabel Gordon in a dark dress studded with stars, the light subdued and silvery as moonlight, her dark hair crowned with a wreath of stars, her dreamy, lovely Italian face inexpressibly tender and lovely in the glittering starlight.
Clarice noticed that Sir Ronald did admire Isabel Gordon. She overheard him say to Lady Hermione:
“If you had searched the world through, you could not have found a lovelier ‘Evening.’”
“I think Clarice is the more beautiful of the two,” Lady Hermione replied.
“I like the gleam of ‘starlight’ better than the glitter of ‘sunshine,’” he said, and Clarice Severn overheard the words.
“It will not be always,” she said to herself; “the time will come when he will love me best.”
“Those are two beautiful pictures,” said Kenelm; “but we must have variety. The next should be full of figures. What is it? A scene from ‘Henry VIII.’”
It was a simple little scene that Lady Hermione had read in some historical novel: Queen Anne Boleyn, dressed for some grand court ceremonial, was seated in an armchair waiting while a white ostrich plume was fastened in her dress. Her beautiful maid of honor, Jane Seymour,was standing behind the chair. The king, waiting half impatiently, half admiringly, for the queen, stood watching the little group. The attendant sewing on the plume let it fall. Jane Seymour raised it from the ground. Bluff Henry said with a smile:
“Never mind; keep it for your own adornment, Lady Jane.”
It was then, and for the first time, that the unhappy Anne Boleyn suspected the love of her false lord had left her. There was some discussion as to how the different characters should be distributed. Sir Ronald was to be King Henry.
“Clarice,” said Lady Hermione, “you will make a better queen than I can. I will be Jane Seymour.”
She went away then to attend to some one who was seeking a costume, and Clarice raised her eyes to Sir Ronald’s face.
“I would so much rather take the part of Jane Seymour myself.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I have been thinking over the scene and I am quite sure the king loved Jane best.”
Then she suddenly remembered all that her words implied and her beautiful face flushed crimson, her eyes drooped, her white hands clasped each other nervously.
But Sir Ronald was too deeply in love to even draw the very palpable inference.
“If you prefer the part, you must have it,” he said, and that picture was, perhaps, more loudly applauded than any other. Sir Ronald, dressed in the rich costume of King Henry, looked superbly handsome. Lady Hermione, as Queen Anne, was beautiful, even with that expression of sudden, keen, unutterable pain on her face. Jane Seymour was more lovely still, for the king’s bold, admiring glance caused a sudden flush of joy in her face, as shelooked proud to receive it, yet half afraid the queen might resent it.
“I know you do not care for tragedy, Lady Hermione,” said Sir Ronald; “but I entreat you just for once to lay aside your prejudice. There is a picture in our gallery at Aldenmere that would make a splendid sequel to this—Anne Boleyn the night before her execution—a queen no longer, but a despairing, unhappy woman. It is the very sublimity of woe. Will you try it?”
She would have tried anything he asked her. Sir Ronald gave her every detail of the picture, and many people pronounced it the gem of the night.
Lady Hermione, as Anne Boleyn, wore a robe of plain black that showed to full perfection the outline of her graceful figure. She was represented as kneeling, praying in her cell alone. Her face was a triumph of art; the color, the brightness, the light, the happiness had died from out it; the eyes were filled with unutterable woe, the white face with anguish deeper and stronger than death.
When he saw how faithfully Lady Hermione rendered the picture, Sir Ronald repented of having asked her to undertake it. He went to meet her as she came off the stage.
“Smile at me,” he said. “Was I mad, Hermione, to ask you to look like that sorrowful queen? Smile at me, that I may forget it, or it will haunt me all night.”
She smiled, but her lips quivered. How little he dreamed the time was to come when he would see the face he loved in sadder guise than that of the murdered queen.
“My king, when I find him,” she said, laughingly, “will not slay me.”
“Nor shall my queen die while I live,” he replied; and then Lady Hermione hastened away. She could not listen to love words, even from him, just then.
Then came a very beautiful tableau of Antony andCleopatra, followed by some taken from scenes in Lord Lytton’s novels.
Lady Hermione bore her part in all, but her heart and soul trembled with the passion of anguish and sorrow into which she had thrown herself so as to fully represent the murdered queen.
“If we succeed to-morrow night as well as we have done at rehearsal,” said Mr. Eyrle, “thefêteat Leeholme will be long remembered.”
Yet the picture that haunted him was the bright-faced, golden-haired girl, clasping rich flowers to her breast, and called “Sunshine.”