CHAPTER VI.
A BUNCH OF VIOLETS.
He had spent the greater part of the day looking for her, his disappointment growing hour by hour as he grew convinced that he should not find her; that he had lost her forever. If he had only known her name, he could have inquired in the town; but he could scarcely go about asking people if they had happened to see the loveliest girl on earth, with dark hair and wonderful blue eyes; besides, there was, to him, something almost sacred in his meeting with her, and he shrank from putting commonplace questions about her.
By luncheon time he was, I am sorry to say, in anything but a good temper. Fortunately the marquis rarely put in an appearance at that meal, or, in all probability, there would have occurred an open quarrel between him and his nephew, and Lord Cecil would have fled the house. Lady Grace, too, did not appear; she had gone to pay a visit to a friend in the neighborhood, and Lord Cecil, therefore, ate his cutlet and drank his Chateau Margaux in solitude.
He was not at all sorry for this, for, to tell the truth, Lady Grace’s candor, though extremely original, had very much embarrassed him, and Lord Cecil was too little used to embarrassment to find it agreeable. She was very beautiful, very charming, and he admired her very much, but still he felt her absence a relief; he was free to muse over the unknown, who had eluded his search all the morning.
Suddenly, as he finished his last glass of claret, he remembered the play-bill he had picked up on the terrace, and it occurred to him that here was the means of escaping dinner at the Towers; for this night, at all events, he could get away from the marquis’ sneers and sarcasm.
“I shall not be home to dinner,” he said to the stately butler. “I think I’ll go to the theatre.”
“Yes, my lord,” responded the butler, displaying not a sign of the disgust which the announcement caused him.To think that any one—a viscount, especially—should prefer going to the play to dining!
“What sort of a theatre is it?” asked Lord Cecil, carelessly, and for the sake of talking.
“Very good, my lord, I believe,” was the solemn reply. “I’ve heard that it’s almost as good as a London theatre, and that there is an excellent company there. They play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to-night. That is,” he made haste to add, “I heard some of the under-servants talking about it; I never go to the theatre myself, my lord. I will send a small dinner, of three or four courses, at an early hour in the breakfast room, for you, my lord.”
“All right,” said Lord Cecil, carelessly. “That will give you a lot of trouble, will it not? I can get a chop or something at the hotel in the town, can’t I?”
“Oh, no, my lord; it will be no trouble,” the butler made haste to reply; “the marquis would be much annoyed if your lordship were to be inconvenienced.”
Lord Cecil nodded; he could scarcely suppress a smile at the butler’s crediting the marquis with such hospitable sentiments.
“All right,” he said, again; “I’ll have it at half-past six.”
“Yes, my lord,” assented the butler, with a faint sigh; it seemed to him a dreadful sacrifice; and Lord Cecil soon afterward took up his hat and went out.
He made his way to the meadows, and stood looking down on the brook and at the spot where Polly had landed him so nearly upon his head; and at the bank where the fair unknown, whose face and voice haunted him perpetually, had sat, and a vague hope dwelt in his breast that she might, perhaps, revisit the scene as he was doing.
But an hour passed and she did not come, and he strode off, moodily, full of disappointment and half angry with himself.
“I am a fool!” he thought. “She has forgotten me by this time. Why should she come back here? If I were to meet her, what could I say to her? She’d very likely think me an impertinent snob if I did more than lift my hat. I couldn’t very well tell her that I have scarcely thought of anything but her since we parted yesterdayand to say anything less to her would seem to me to be saying nothing at all!”
Thus musing, he went into the town, his stalwart figure, with its military carriage, his handsome, patrician face, and his Poole-made clothes, which he wore as if they had grown on him, causing no little sensation amongst the inhabitants.
But though he stared into the shop windows and looked at every girl who came in sight, he did not see the girl of whom he was thinking; and it was nearly seven before he came back to the “small dinner of three or four courses” which the considerate butler had served for him in the breakfast room.
He was half inclined to give up the idea of the theatre, and if it had not been for his dread of the marquis’ society he would have done so. As it was, he ate his dinner slowly, and enjoyed it, although he was in love; and then, and not till then, he fully made up his mind to go.
“I’ll have a brougham round in ten minutes, my lord,” said the butler, but Lord Cecil declined it.
“I’d rather walk,” he said. “I like a stroll after dinner.”
The butler—more in sorrow than in anger—asked what time he should send the carriage, but Lord Cecil declined a conveyance for any part of the evening.
“I’ll walk back,” he said; “I rather like a stroll after the theatre,” and the butler, with a sigh of resignation, gave him up as a bad job.
As he walked along the lanes, fragrant with the breath of spring, a thought—a hope—flashed through his mind that he might, perhaps, see the girl in the theatre. He never asked himself what his object in seeking her might be; men seldom ask themselves such questions. Lord Cecil was not an altogether bad character. He was not a modern Lovelace in pursuit of his prey, by any means. He was not, in fact, a Lovelace at all. He had lived in a fast set—had been the star and centre of the crack regiment in which he had held a commission—had gone through the ordeal of London life as completely as most young men of title; but he had come out of it, if hecould be said to have come out of it, not altogether unscathed, but not very badly burned or smirched.
The Nevilles had always been wild, and Lord Cecil had not been any tamer than his ancestors; but in all his wildness he had drawn the line. For women in general—for the sex, as a whole—he possessed a respect which had sometimes amused his less scrupulous companions.
He had overspent his allowance; lost large sums at baccarat and kindred games, turned night into day, risked his money and his neck at steeplechases, and generally, as his friends put it, played Old Harry, but no woman had, as yet, any indictment against him. He could truthfully declare, with the Frenchman, on his deathbed: “No woman can come to my grave and say that for want of heart I broke hers.”
To women he was always frank and gentle, and the women of his set adored him. If he had broken no hearts in the sterner sense of the word, he had all unwittingly caused many to ache, and many a belle of the London season had “given herself away” to Cissy Neville, as his intimate friends called him.
And now the marquis had intimated that he must marry Lady Grace. Lord Cecil thought of last night’s after-dinner conversation as he strolled along, tried to think of it gravely and seriously, but somehow he could not; all his thoughts flew, whether he would or would not, to the dark-haired, blue-eyed girl he had so nearly ridden over in the meadows. After all, he was not obliged to marry Lady Grace. The marquis could not compel him, and as for the money—— He shrugged his shoulders, and, having reached the theatre, put the subject from him.
It must be confessed that he followed the box-keeper to the private box he had taken with rather doubtful anticipations.
“Romeo and Juliet” in a country theatre is not always an entrancing spectacle, and Lord Cecil only wondered how long he should stand it. He was rather surprised at the air of elegance perceptible, and still more surprised at the crowded state of the house, and he congratulated himself, as he looked round at the well-dressed and aristocratic audience, that he had come in evening dress, forhe had at one time thought of retaining his morning clothes.
He settled himself in his box—he had arrived during theentr’acte—and looked at the programme.
“Juliet—Doris Marlowe.”
The name struck him at once as a pretty one, and he did not trouble to read the rest of the cast. Then the curtain drew up on the balcony scene, and, leaning forward carelessly, he looked at the stage and saw, there in the balcony—the girl for whom he had been seeking, the girl with the dark hair and blue eyes!
For a moment he thought he was dreaming, and the color rushed to his face. Then he looked again, “all his soul in his eyes,” and saw that he was not dreaming, but that it was in solemn truth she, herself.
If he had had any doubts her voice would have dispelled them. He would have remembered and recognized those musical tones if he had heard them fifty years hence instead of as many hours.
He was amazed, bewildered, engrossed, but not too engrossed to be aware that the “Juliet” he looked upon, Miss Doris Marlowe, was a great actress.
If she moved the rest of the vast audience, imagine how she moved him who had been thinking of her and longing to see her!
His heart beat wildly, the color came and went in his face; he was lost to everything but that bright, celestial, and yet purely human, being on the stage, then rendering the exquisite lines of her part; and it was not until he caught one or two curious glances directed at him that he drew back a little and tried to look simply interested like the rest.
The drop scene went down on the act, and he, to use his own phrase, “pulled himself together.”
He got up and went out into the lobby, and made his way to the refreshment bar; and when he had obtained his brandy and soda he lingered over it and got in conversation with the attendant.
“This Miss Doris Marlowe is a great success?” he said, trying to speak indifferently.
“Oh, yes, she is, indeed,” said the girl, with a long sigh; she had dreamed of being an actress herself, poorthing; “I just stole out and looked in at the last act. A success?—I should think so! I call it magnificent. I never saw anything like it; did you, sir?”
“No, never,” responded Lord Cecil. “She is a London actress, I suppose? And yet I don’t remember seeing her in London,” he added.
“No, I don’t think she’s ever played in London, but always in the provinces. This is the first time she’s ever done anything like this. She’s played here in small parts; this is her first appearance in Shakespeare.”
“Who is she?” he asked, endeavoring to make his question commonplace, yet feeling that he was hanging on her reply.
The girl paused in the wiping of a glass and looked puzzled.
“Who is she? I don’t know, sir. I question whether anybody knows rightly, excepting Mr. Jeffrey.”
“Mr. Jeffrey? Who’s he?” asked Lord Cecil, with a sharp pang. Could this man be her husband?
“Oh, the old gentleman who goes about with her. He ain’t her father, but a kind of guardian. He was an actor once. It was he, so they say, who taught her to act. Anyhow, she treats him just like a father.”
Lord Cecil drew a breath of relief.
“They are always together; they go from theatre to theatre. He is a very extraordinary old gentleman, and very trying at rehearsals, so I’ve heard the actors say; but he knows all about it, quite as well as the stage manager.”
At this moment the two London critics came up for a drink, and one of them bowed to Lord Cecil.
“Quite an eventful evening, my lord,” he said, with the easy respect of a fellow-Londoner.
“Yes,” said Lord Cecil. “It is a great success, I suppose. Do you know who Miss Doris Marlowe is?”
The critic shrugged his shoulders.
“Haven’t the least idea. Quite astella incognita, but she will not be so after to-night. We shall see her in Drury Lane before many months are passed.”
“Who was that?” his friend, the other critic, asked.
“Lord Cecil Neville,” was the reply. “The heir to the Marquisate of Stoyle. A splendid fellow, and, strangeto say, not a bit spoiled, though all the women make a dead set at him.”
“The Marquis of Stoyle,” said the other thoughtfully. “That old villain? And this is his nephew. He is immensely good-looking.”
“Oh, a splendid fellow. Did you ever hear that story about him——?” and they moved away.
Lord Cecil drank half his soda and brandy, and then went back to his box.
Meanwhile, a thrill of excitement seemed to run through those engaged behind the scenes. A theatre is rendered famous by its actors, and it seemed that the Theatre Royal, Barton, was going to be made celebrated as the place of the first appearance of a great actress.
“If she can only carry us through to the end!” muttered Jeffrey, as he paced to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes flashing fire.
“Oh, she’ll do it!” said the manager, who happened to hear him. “Don’t you be afraid, Mr. Jeffrey; that young lady is a genius! I knew it from the first. She will carry it through to the very last. And about the engagement now? You make your own terms, and I’ll agree to them. You’ll find me straight and honest——”
But Jeffrey paced on. He was an old theatrical hand, and he knew, full well, that a Juliet may score in the balcony scene and yet fail in the later and more important ones.
But there did not seem much fear of failure with Doris.
Off the stage, and in her dressing room, she was quiet and subdued, but the moment she got on the boards her eyes flew to the centre box, and she seemed to draw inspiration from the handsome face that leaned forward in rapt, almost devout, attention.
The play proceeded. The great scene, in which Romeo takes leave of Juliet, his newly-made wife, went with a rush. The audience cheered until it was hoarse. Thrice the young actress was called to the front, and everybody who had brought a bouquet flung it at her feet.
Jeffrey, pale and statuesque, implored Doris to be calm.
“It is not all over yet!” he said, warningly. “There is the last scene. Remember what I taught you! It is thelast scene in which a Juliet, who is a Juliet, declares herself! Do not let their applause make you forget what is due to your art! I would rather that they remained mute and silent, Doris.”
And for answer she simply smiled. She did not tell him that while she could see a certain face in the centre box all would be well.
The pause before the last scene arrived. The whole house was talking in excited whispers. To the Barton folk, ardent theatre-goers as they were, nothing like this had befallen them. A twitter of excitement ran through the house, and amongst the crowd that thronged the lobbies Lord Cecil walked about, as excited as the rest.
Suddenly, as if he had been stricken by an idea, he turned up the collar of his coat and made his way through the press to the streets, and looked about him eagerly.
Some women selling oranges came hurrying up to him, and amongst them a woman with a basket of violets.
He bought the whole contents of her basket, and bade her tie them together; then, with the flowers in his hand, he went back to the theatre; but, instead of going to his box, he made his way to the stalls and stood close to the orchestra.
The last scene came on. Again it is unnecessary to describe it; the grim and solemn vault, the beautiful figure of the girl in the death throes, the terrible agony of Romeo, were all here, rendered real and lifelike by the genius of the actors.
Spellbound, the house watched and listened in profound silence. Listened to the passionate, despairing plaint of Romeo, and the deeper agony of Juliet, who awakes to find her lover dead.
Never, perhaps, since the play was played, was actress more touching, more tear-compelling than Doris Marlowe that night at the Theatre Royal, Barton; and as her last words died away in solemn silence, a great sob seemed to rise from the crowded house.
Then the sob gave place to a thunder of applause. Once more the sober audience seemed possessed by a spirit of delirium; men sprang to their feet and wavedtheir hats, women rose and waved their handkerchiefs with which they had wiped away their tears; and cries of “Juliet! Juliet!” resounded through the theatre.
A pause, and presently Romeo appeared, leading Juliet by the hand.
The audience stormed and cheered as one man, and those who had not already thrown their bouquets to her threw them now.
She was pale to the lips, and the blue eyes looked almost black as she bent them on the cheering crowd, and like a queen bowed beneath the tribute of their devotion, she bent her girlish head low.
She had nearly crossed the stage, had reached the spot exactly opposite that on which Lord Cecil stood. Then, and not till then, he raised his bunch of violets and tossed them at her feet.
She paused a moment in her triumphant progress, for it was nothing less, then stooped and picked up the rough-and-ready bouquet; Romeo’s arms were quite full.
For an instant her eyes rested on Lord Cecil’s face, then, as if with an involuntary movement, she raised the bunch of violets to her lips and passed off, the side wings engulfing her.
Three times more they called her, as if they could not let her go from their sight, and thrice she came before them, and, modestly, girlishly, bowed her acknowledgments.
Then—tired, hot and thirsty—the crowd began to disperse.
Lord Cecil Neville alone remained on the spot from which he had thrown his bouquet. He could scarcely believe that it was over, until the attendants began to cover up the seats with their calico wrappings, and, taking the hint, he made his way out.
The groups of people he passed through were talking about her triumph. He caught a word here and there, and, all unconsciously, found himself at the stage door. At least, he thought, he should get a glimpse of her as she drove away from the theatre.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes the greatest excitement prevailed. There had never been a Juliet like her, theywere declaring; and they prophesied a success in London which should even eclipse that of Barton!
And Doris, looking pale, stood smiling dreamily through it all. Even while Jeffrey paced to and fro in her dressing-room, too excited for speech, she remained calm and serene, wrapt in a kind of spiritual veil.
Managers, actors, thronged round her with congratulations; even the old dresser, declared, with tears, that “nothing had been seen like it.”
At last, the porter announced that Miss Marlowe’s fly was waiting, and Jeffrey took her away from the excited crowd.
“Draw your cloak well round your throat,” he said, as anxiously as if she were so fragile that a breath of wind would sweep her away. “Give me those violets to hold for you,” he said.
She drew her hand back, almost with a gesture of dread, and a dash of color came flying into her pale face.
“No, no—I can manage, thanks,” she said, quickly. “How sweet they smell, do they not?” and she held them up to him for a second.
“Yes,” he said, absently. “Were they thrown with the rest?”
“Yes,” she said, in a low voice.
“Some one of the poor people in the pit, I daresay,” he said; “a graceful and spontaneous tribute, worth, I was going to say, all the rest of them, beautiful and costly though some of the bouquets are. But I daresay you don’t agree with me?” and he smiled.
“But I do,” she said, averting her eyes. “Yes, I think them worth all the rest!”
They had traversed the long passage by this time, and reached the fly. Jeffrey put her in carefully, and was himself following, when he stopped suddenly, frowning and biting his lips.
“Doris,” he said, “you leave all to me? You leave all to my judgment, as hitherto? You are a famous woman now, or will be to-morrow, and may like to be independent. Would you rather wait till to-morrow and make your own arrangements with the manager, or shall I, as of old——”
“Jeffrey!” she broke in, with a reproachful look in her eyes.
“Very well,” he said. “Brown has made me a very large offer for a month. I put him off just now, but I think I will go back and accept for you. I shall not be many minutes.”
Doris leaned back, and, closing her eyes, pressed the violets against her cheek. She could see the handsome face all aglow with excitement and admiration as he raised his right arm and flung the flowers; she could see it at that moment, and the mental vision shut out all the rest of that eventful night.
Suddenly she heard her name spoken beside the carriage window, and, leaning forward, she saw, in real earnest, the face which had been her inspiration. It was Lord Cecil Neville’s.
“Miss Marlowe,” he said, learning forward and speaking quietly, pleadingly. “Don’t be angry! Pray forgive me! I—I could not pass on without saying a word—one word of thanks.”
“Thanks?” she murmured.
Her eyes were lifted for a moment to his ardent face, then dropped to the violets and rested there.
“Yes. I was in the theatre,” he said. “You did not see me, of course, but I was there, and—I can’t tell you how we all felt, how we all feel. It was superb; it was—but there, I can only thank you.”
“You have done that already,” she said, with a smile, as she raised the violets.
Lord Cecil Neville blushed. I am afraid it would be rather difficult to get credit for this statement in certain quarters in London.
“I couldn’t get any better ones,” he said, apologetically.
“No,” she said; “I think you could not! Yes, I saw you in the theatre,” she added, as if she had been thinking of his first sentence. “Were—were you surprised, or did you know?” and she glanced at him with a half curious smile.
“Surprised!” he said. “I could scarcely believe my senses! I had no idea, until I saw you on the stage, thatyou, who were so good to me yesterday, were a great actress.”
“I am not,” she said, in a low voice. “I am only a very little one. To-night I succeeded, another night I might fail——” a faint shadow came on her face, as he looked puzzled; then she smiled, as she broke off, to add: “I have something of yours——”
“Yes, my heart!” was his mental comment, but he said aloud: “Of mine?”
“Yes,” she said. “A handkerchief, I haven’t it here,” and she smiled again; then, suddenly, her face grew crimson, for she remembered that she had left it in the bosom of her dress. “I—I will send it to you if you tell me where.”
“Let me call for it,” he said, eagerly.
Doris’ brows came together, and she shook her head gently. She knew that Jeffrey’s welcome to a stranger would be a rough one.
“I will send it,” she said. “I think I know—the Towers, you said, did you not?”
A sudden inspiration seized him, and, bending forward, he said, in a low voice:
“If you should walk in the fields to-morrow morning—you may, you know!—lay it on the bank where you sat yesterday. Will you do this, Miss Marlowe? I will fetch it in the afternoon.”
The beautiful eyes dwelt upon his face with a deep gravity for a moment, as if she were wondering what his object could be in making the request; then she said, gently:
“Yes, why should I not?” as she held out her hand; “good-night.”
“Thanks, thanks!” he said, in his deep, musical voice. “Good-night! You should be happy to-night, for you have made so many people miserably so! I shall dream of Juliet all night!”
She let her hand rest in his for a moment, then drew it away and he was gone.
But at that moment it chanced that a handsomely-appointed carriage came round the bend of the road, and a lady, with softly-shimmering hair and darkly-brilliant eyes, who was leaning back in a corner of it, suddenlycaught sight of the fly and the stalwart figure standing beside it.
She bent forward eagerly, and her keen eyes took in, as the carriage rolled past, not only the expression of Cecil Neville’s face, but the face of the girl in the fly.
For an instant the warm blood rushed to Lady Grace’s face; then, as she sank back again into her corner, she laughed, a laugh of cold, insolent contempt.
“Some actress or shop-girl,” she murmured. Then her expression changed, and she bit her lip thoughtfully. “And yet he looked terribly in earnest!” she added. “Shall I take him up?” and her hand went out to the check-string; then she let it fall, and the carriage go on its way. “No; I think I’ll keep my little discovery to myself—it may be useful—and let you walk home, Lord Cecil!”