CHAPTER XIn Which Miss Pamela Pounce Sets Three BlackFeathers for Tragedy
In Which Miss Pamela Pounce Sets Three BlackFeathers for Tragedy
Miss Pamela Pouncewas in the act of tying on her own hat, in the upper room, preparatory to departure after the day’s work, when a breathless junior summoned her.
“There’s a young lady below as wants to see you, Miss Pounce, and, la! I think ’tis Miss Falcon!”
Now, Felicity Falcon had recently flashed out upon the London stage with a startling and unexpected splendour that was more like that of a comet than of a star; Miss Farren, Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Jordan, were for the moment as idols overthrown. The cry was all for Falcon. Her name was on every man’s lips. She was the first excitement of the season; and not the opera, not an oratorio, not a concert, not a rout at Almack’s, nor a display at Ranelagh, could be said to offer attraction in comparison to the playhouse which announced the fair Falcon in the night’s performance.
On hearing this remarkable name, Pamela paused, her hand on the black velvet string which fastened her simple Dunstable straw under her round, white chin. A play-actress! Many a young person of that profession had Miss Pounce with dignity shown forth already from the doors of this select establishment: “Much regretting, Madame, that there is nothing likely to suit you here.”
Heavens, if a Mirabel hat were to be recognised on the boards! But Felicity Falcon? It was only last week that Pamela had wept and trembled, and sucked inbreaths of excitement over her “Mrs. Haller.” Never had she beheld anything more affecting, more impassioned, soul-stirring, and elegant than that impersonation.
To provide Miss Falcon with a hat in which she would enthral and ravish all London! It was too splendid an opportunity for such an artistic soul as that of Pamela to resist. After hours, too, and the shutters putting up, and no fear of awkward rencounters. And if some of her ladies did find it out, why, foh! for one that would be offended, forty would order a hat to the same model.
Pamela flung the Dunstable straw off her chestnut head, and turning with great dignity, “Inform Miss Falcon,” said she, “that I will attend her presently.”
After a due delay, which she spent in drumming with white fingers on the dressing-table, her eyes lost beyond her own reflection, in a far vision of millinery genius, Madame Mirabel’s partner appeared in the empty shop; sedate, her eyebrows well elevated into her white forehead, her hands folded on her trim waistband.
The slender figure in the brown silk cloak turned quickly with a rustle and flutter.
“You was wishful to speak with me, Madam?” questioned Miss Pounce, in her finest business manner.
“I want a hat for to-night, for Lady Teazle—for the third act, for the screen scene. Oh, I want something——”
Miss Pounce raised her hand.
“One moment, Madam.”
She gazed at the narrow, pale face, unrouged; the dark, ardent eyes.
“’Tis the most mortal-genteel creature I have ever seen,” thought Pamela.
“Not a word, Miss Falcon!” cried she. Then in the tone of a sibyl: “Black and white; or yet all white. But if you listen to me, blackandwhite.”
“I’ve no time to get any new gowns for the part,” said Miss Falcon.
She had a slow, musical voice, with a ring in it as of tears never far off, yet never to be shed.
“And if you’ll excuse me, Miss,” repeated the milliner, “Lady Teazle’s not your part, so to speak. Tragedy, that’s what you’re born to. Oh, your Mrs. Haller!” Pamela drew a sucking breath in reminiscence of last week’s thrills. “There! I’d never ask to enjoy anything more. Cry, I did. I couldn’t see out of my two eyes, I vow and protest, when I came forth out of the theatre. But if it’s got to be Lady Teazle, Madame, ’tis your one bit of tragedy I’m to dress your head for, as I understand it. And put colour on it—I declare I’d as soon stick a pink rosette on that there goddess with the lamp from Greece his Grace of Hampshire sets so much store by in his hall. Put yourself into white for it, Miss Falcon, and I’ll do you a hat that’ll show it off and you. When all’s said and done, ’twill be a symbol of what an innocent, poor young lady you are, so took in by that lying young gentleman, what I’d hiss off the boards every time he shows his vile, deceitful face, if I’d my will! La! men are base creatures,” cried Pamela out of her own bitterness. “White for your innocence, and the shadow of my broad brim over your eyes with a toss of white feathers atop, and just three black plumes standing up in the midst of them; the bit of tragedy that has come into your young life; one,” said Miss Pounce, “for the horrid danger you’ve escaped, and one for your poor deceived heart, and one for the remorse, like, over the goodness of that kind Sir Peter, making his will so generous and trusting, for all his ways ’ud be enough to drive any wife out of her wits. Those black feathers,” said the girl impressively, “will show you off, Miss Falcon, better than trumpet blasts.”
Miss Falcon listened with an odd, abstracted look.
“So you think I’m best in tragedy, do you?” she said, and sighed. “But I don’t want to be tragic, I want to be happy.” And then: “I’m late!” she cried impetuously. “You’ll have to bring me the hatto the theatre. I’ve scarce the time to get into my clothes.”
A handsome private coach, with liveried footmen, was waiting for her at the door, and as Pamela accompanied her to the threshold, the actress looked back over her shoulder with a fugitive smile:
“I’ll wear a white satin gown for the screen scene,” she said, stepped into the coach, and was whirled away.
Pamela stood looking after her.
“Now who’s paying for all that?” the milliner asked herself. “Some very great personage, ’tis well known; for anything more splendid and discreet I never see. Best in tragedy, you poor thing!” The tears rose to Pamela’s candid eyes. “Why, ’tis tragedy itself you are already! You so young, with that smile that ought to have warmed a good man’s heart! La, if my ladies knew who ’tis I’m going to trim a hat for this minute, and where ’tis I’m to bring it when ’tis done!”
Pamela Pounce looked about her with shrewd eyes, as she sat, very politely, on the edge of a cane chair in Miss Falcon’s dressing-room at Drury Lane. A bandbox at her feet, her hands folded one across the other in her dove-grey lap, she presented the very image of elegant propriety in a doubtful atmosphere. She had not expected to find company in the dressing-room, the play being well started; nevertheless, there was a knot of two or three modish-looking individuals who laughed a good deal together, and tapped the lids of their own snuff-boxes and took pinches out of each other’s with positively the last thing in flourishes.
The gaunt woman who moved about at the back of the dressing-table, unnecessarily shaking garments, was, of course, the actress’s dresser, and a sour piece she was, thought Pamela, who had already refused, with a high air of contempt, this functionary’s proposal to leave the bandbox with her. “As if I was come all this way to doporter’s work!” thought Miss Pounce, with a toss of her admirably tired head.
Miss Falcon was standing at the door, looking in upon them, before anyone was aware of her presence; then she came forward, followed by a portly, handsome gentleman past middle age, at sight of whom the gossips bowed to a most obsequious depth.
Miss Falcon bore still upon her countenance the humorous peevishness of the character she had just represented.
“Why, how now?” she exclaimed. “Fie, for shame, gentlemen! What are you doing here? If you desire to show me a compliment your place is before the curtain, sirs! Foh! ’Tis a poor compliment to salute an actress in her dressing-room!”
“Why, my dearest creature!” exclaimed the chief of the fops, coming forward, and bowing repeatedly with such an affected parade of courtesy that Pamela’s hand itched to box his ears. “I vow and declare we are but mustering all our energies to acclaim you after your great scene! We would not spoil that effect, ’pon our life! Not for a hundred thousand guineas! What’s Lady Teazle before the screen scene? No part for your genius, incomparable Falcon!”
“Out with you now, then!” said Miss Falcon. “Good evening, Miss Pounce. Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen, indeed you cannot remain here! Miss Pounce and I have the most important business on hand. La, that bandbox! It is vastly good of you, Miss Pounce. Pray, my Lord, give the gentlemen the lead and take them to their seats!”
“Rat me!” said the spokesman of the fashionable group, looking round with what Pamela thought was a very offensive leer. “If my Lord Harborough sets the example, who are we that we should refuse to follow it? After you, my Lord Marquis.”
Pamela had often heard the name of the great Marquis, especially of late, but she had never yet seen him. She now gazed at him with shrewd eyes of disapproval.
“Ah, my Lord, you may have a fine taste in coaches and in the horses to draw them, and a superlative delicate taste in play-actresses, but to my mind ’tis mortal poor taste to be bringing those grey hairs that are under your wig, and an honoured name, and all your privilege to the undoing of one poor girl! You should keep that smile for your grand-nephews—Mr. W.’s brats—you should indeed, my Lord!”
My Lord Harborough raised himself from a profound bow over the hand which Felicity Falcon extended to him in a careless sort of way, more as if she were dropping something out of it than yielding it to his caress. The smile he gave her as he straightened himself was full of ardent admiration. Although he failed to meet with her favour, Pamela could not but admit that he had a very splendid presence, and that any woman’s head, much less that of a young player on her promotion, might well be turned by receiving attention from such a quarter.
My Lord Marquis now waved the company from the room with a politely compelling gesture, as of a host who bids his guests pass before him; kissed his hand to Miss Falcon, and himself departed.
“Now, my dear girl, my dear girl, the hat!” cried she, turning upon Pamela.
And Pamela had the strange thought that Miss Falcon—even though she had stepped off the boards—had not ceased acting for one single moment, and that no emotion had been more cleverly counterfeited than the playfulness with which she was now herself addressed.
Indeed, when Felicity Falcon first contemplated her countenance in the mirror under that confection in which Miss Pounce considered her own genius had reached its most perfect expression, so deep an air of tragedy spread itself over her features that the sprightly milliner thought in dismay, “Heaven be good to me; to see her one would think my lovely feathers were crowning a hearse!”
But as if she guessed her companion’s thoughts, the play-actress instantly resumed a jocund air, and, twistingher head from side to side, treated her own reflection to smiles of different meanings, as though testing their effect; mischief, archness, innocent mirth, mockery, melancholy, chased each other across her fair countenance like shadows over a pool, and in each Miss Pounce could have cried out to her to stay it, vowing that she was more perfect in it than the last.
Indeed, the delicate loveliness set in the flying powdered curls, crowned with the soft splendour of the feathers, marked, so to speak, by the three notes of black, was a vision worth gazing upon. The sheen of the white satin she had chosen for her robe flung up the ivory of her shoulders and throat. Miss Pounce almost regretted to see the obligatory smear of rouge put on each pale cheek; by which, however, the lily fairness gained something exotic, feverish, that seemed to match very well with the swift passion of her art.
“It’ll be such a Lady Teazle as never was,” thought the milliner; and was wondering whether she could yet find a seat for herself in the theatre, when, turning suddenly dark, haunted eyes upon her, Miss Falcon said like a child:
“Oh, do let me find you here when I come back, you kind thing!” and, without giving Madame Mirabel’s head woman time to reply, she added: “I know you will,” and whisked back to the dressing-table.
Her hand hovered over a closed jewel-case, then, shrugging her shoulders, she drew out a string of pearls and clasped it round her throat.
It was strange for Pamela presently to sit alone in the little dressing-room and think of the mimic play of emotion, clash of passion and interest that was enthralling so many scores of spectators within a few yards of her; to think, too, of that drama of real life, so sad and shameful, of which she had unexpectedly become a witness.
It was contrary to her vivacious nature to sit, unoccupied and in patience, while the world swept on its way, but to-night she had much to engross her thoughts. All she had seen pointed to courses which, to her straight judgment, could not but appear as evil. Yet if ever, thought Pamela Pounce, there was delicacy and purity stamped on a human countenance, if ever noble pride, it was on the face of the young play-actress.
“Why did she ask me to remain?” puzzled the girl. “If my Lord Harborough is her protector, as he seems to be, what does she want with a poor, honest milliner? Oh, la! to see her, so beautiful, with them pearls, and to know what it means, I could fair cry!”
Miss Falcon’s dresser came rushing in, declaring that there never had been such a success as the new Lady Teazle; that the house had had her out again and again. “And, oh, my goodness, the shouts and claps and nose-gays flying! What a pity Miss had not been in the gallery!”
Before Pamela had time to reply Miss Falcon herself, accompanied by a very conspicuous group of admirers, returned to her dressing-room. Her flush outdid the rouge, her eyes flashed. The tips of her taper fingers rested on Lord Harborough’s wrist, and he came in leading her with an air as though her triumph belonged to him. Behind her the sycophants gabbled, “for all the world like father’s geese,” thought Miss Pounce.
“Oh, my Lord, she is incomparable!” “I do assure you, Miss Falcon, when the screen was knocked down and you stood forth I could have fallen on my knees before you!” “’Pon honour! ’Pon honour, never was acting half so fine!”
The flush was fading, and the fire dying in her gaze as she turned round upon them.
“Pray, gentlemen, you are very kind, but I have to change my gown for the next act. My Lord, bid your friends leave me. And you too, my Lord.”
As bowing, kissing hands, grimacing, jostling againsteach other, the little knot of gossips withdrew, obedient once more to their patron’s wave, he himself lingered.
“Felicity,” he said, “there never was anyone like you. My dear, you brought the tears to my eyes.”
When he released her hand there was a new ring upon it. The donor hurried forth, as if, with the finest tact, to forego gratitude in connection with a trifle, or so Miss Pounce understood his magnificent mien.
Felicity gazed at the object on her hand, gave a laugh which rang scornful, dropped the jewel from her on the dressing-table, and sat down before the mirror.
“Now,” said she to Pamela, “take off the hat yourself, if you will. My dresser hath so gross a touch. The hat, you know, it has made me to-night. I owe you a vast debt of gratitude. Oh, those black feathers! Your excellent taste, child, gave the note, I do assure you, to my whole rendering. The tragedy, you know, and the innocence, and the remorse.”
It seemed to Pamela as if she were mocking herself as she gazed upon her own countenance. She broke off. There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” she cried. And, as a young gentleman in mourning, with a pale face, appeared in the aperture, she went on in an unchanged voice: “How would it be, Miss Pounce, if I were to run a blue ribbon among these curls? ’Twould not come amiss, I think, in the last act, to mark the girlishness of Lady Teazle beside so old a husband. Now, my Lord, pray be quick about your business. I have scarce five minutes to give you! Yes, a blue ribbon, I think. You have such charming fingers, my dear, pray pass it in yourself. Go on, my Lord, I can see you very well in the glass, and sure, besides, I did not promise to look at you, so long as I listen.”
“You mean to torture me,” said the young man in a low voice.
Had he been on the rack, Pamela thought, glancing compassionately at his reflection, as her hands moveddelicately in the actress’s tresses, he could scarce have had a greater air of suffering.
“Pho!” cried Miss Falcon. (“Is not that a trifle too forward, Miss Pounce?”) “Pray, my Lord, remember, this interview is none of my seeking.”
“I asked to speak with you alone.”
“Ah, but I did not promise you that! Say out, or keep silence, it matters nothing to me.”
“I begin to believe what I have heard,” he exclaimed hoarsely.
Her eye flashed lightning at his image in the glass.
“Indeed, my Lord? And that again leaves me indifferent.”
But as she spoke she turned round on her chair. What a marvel of loveliness she was, thought the milliner. ’Twas but natural any poor young gentleman that loved her should be distraught upon her. He gazed on her wildly, then broke out, clasping his hands:
“Nay,” he cried. “I will not believe it. I will not believe it, unless you tell me yourself. Felicity, my father is dead. I am my own master. Look at me. Behold this black. I came straight—yes, I am not ashamed of it—straight from the closing of my father’s grave to offer you my hand and name.”
He paused.
“I ought, no doubt, to be overwhelmed at your generosity. A month ago you were no less ardent, if I remember right, in pressing a different proposition,” she said very quietly.
Pamela’s heart quickened in passionate sympathy. What a world was this for poor girls!
“It’s not possible,” the young gentleman cried, “that you will carry rancour so far! A month ago I was not a free agent; a month ago I—oh, confusion! You cannot have understood. I—Miss Falcon, I am now Earl Ashmore, and I ask you to become my countess. This is a question of marriage. You cannot thus lightly dismiss so honourable, so respectful an offer!”
“Marriage!” she laughed. “I, too, am a free agent, sir, and I have tasted liberty longer than you. I have no desire to relinquish it.”
A moment he stood gazing at her with clenched hands and open mouth, as if unable to grasp the extent of her folly and his own misery. Then he snapped his jaws together and crimsoned to the roots of his lightly powdered hair.
“It’s true, then?”
“What is true?”
“What all the world says; that you’re my Lord Harborough’s—my Lord Harborough’s——”
He choked upon the word.
Pamela Pounce held her breath in the dreadful silence that ensued. Then:
“Don’t be a foolish lad,” said Miss Falcon in a changed kind voice. “One day you’ll say, ‘Whatever the player woman may have done, she did one good deed to me. She wouldn’t marry me when I was fool enough to ask her.’”
Then Felicity turned back to the mirror with a laugh that rang like tinkling icicles, so musical it was, so cold.
The wretched young man cast himself on his knees, lifted his clasped hands and wrung them. He had forgotten that there was any witness, save the one who was, at that moment, all the world to him.
“Felicity, I don’t care what you have done—what you are to that bad old man. I will forgive everything. Come to me and be my wife!”
“Now, Bonnets, open the door. Miss Pounce, pray put a hand upon my Lord’s elbow and help him to rise. That is the way out, my Lord Ambrose. (I cannot help it. I remember best the name under which you once insulted me.)Youforgive me? Had I the time I could laugh. Heavens! But three minutes to get into the paduasoy!”
She did laugh as the young nobleman, a look on his face which struck a kind of terror into Pamela’s womanlyheart, flung his hands out with a menace and dashed from the room.
“Thank Heaven, the creature’s gone! Bolt the door, Mrs. Bonnets. I’ll have no more visitors till the play’s over!”
Pamela Pounce was not bidden remain this time; but she could not bring herself to leave the dressing-room until Miss Falcon’s last appearance there. Talk of plays! What a tremendous play she had seen that night. ’Twould be like walking out before the last curtain dropped to go home now.
When the actress returned she was accompanied only by Lord Harborough. As he led her in he looked at her hand.
“I see,” he said, “you have not honoured my poor gift.”
“My Lord,” she said, “I have honoured you sixty-five times with these pearls. Is it not enough? As for rings, there is a slave weight about them. I hate them. But is this really mine? Mine to do as I will with?”
He smiled at each question, and Pamela thought that, for all his fond admiration, there was a sort of contemptuous indulgence lurking in his glance—that he had the air of one who says to himself, “These pretty tricks are known; these charming moods are part of the little game. I have not the enthusiasm of youth, but I have experience, I have toleration, and I have patience!”
“It is an elegant and artistic ring,” said Miss Falcon, lifting it to the light of the wax candles which branched from her mirror. “A sapphire, I see, and all chased.”
“It was found,” said Lord Harborough, “in a Roman tomb. There is not another like it in the world!”
“And what does it represent? Oh, I see snakes about that strange little face!”
“’Tis a Medusa head.”
“What?” she cried. “What an ill omen for an actress! How terrible if I were to turn my audience to stone. Fie, I would not keep such a thing about me for the world! Pray, Miss Pounce, will you accept thistrifle in memory of our first acquaintance and of, oh, your beautiful hat! How kind of you, dear girl, to stay and see the last of me. Why, it just fits your finger! Nay, I will take no refusal. My cloak, Bonnets! La, I am mortal tired. Pray, my Lord, good night. Well, as far as the coach then, but no further. Remember our compact!”
“As far as the coach,” said the peer, with his disillusioned smile. “As far as the coach at least, lovely mystery, beautiful secret! Oh, the Medusa head would have been vastly appropriate, I assure you!”
They went forth, and Pamela Pounce stared at her ring. She had never felt, in all her varied energetic existence, thus puzzled and troubled.
“Heaven ha’ mercy,” she thought, “what a prodigious bit of insolence, to give it to me under his very nose! And, oh, lud, what’s a body to think? Will he marry her after all and my poor Miss Sarah and Mr. W. be cut out? She wears his pearls and drives in his coach, and yet withal he’s to lead her no further than its door!”
“’Tis the most dreadful tale, child, that’s current,” said my Lady Kilcroney to her friend, Nan Day, as they met in Madame Mirabel’s hat shop. “They say my young Lord Ashmore has put an end to himself. I met the Duke of Hampshire anon, and His Grace could scarce speak, so overwhelmed was he. Lord Ashmore’s father was his friend and neighbour.”
Pamela Pounce put down the dove-coloured capote she had been about to place upon Lady Anne Day’s pretty head. She was more affected than her customer, who looked up, knitting her brows vaguely, with small interest in her blue eyes.
“Ashmore?”
“Why, Nan, he that was young Ambrose! A pretty youth, and full of promise. It seems he was mad in love with Falcon, the actress. Did you see her Lady Teazlelast night? ’Twas a wonder, my love, but a thought too solemn. But, oh, Pounce, child, she had a hat! You should have seen it! With all your art, you’ve never dreamt one like it. Eglantine, Eglantine at her best. Paris was stamped all over it. When all is said and done there is naught like the French taste.”
“I have always said so, my Lady,” responded Miss Pounce, “and there’s a case upstairs full of the real Paris modes, of which I’d like your Ladyship to have her pick this moment! Perhaps the last consignment we’ll get for goodness knows how long, seeing the trouble over there. Fetched at the Dover coach office by our special messenger not half an hour ago, I do assure your Ladyship.”
Pamela could control her voice better than her hands, and the professional patter escaped her almost mechanically.
“But I haven’t seen how the capote suits me,” protested Nan Day, a little pettishly. “Kitty, what say you? I’ve been so long in the fields. I was scarce fit to go out in a chair at Bath, so worn was I with the sick-nursing,” complained the squire’s wife, “I have positively forgot what a fashion looks like. Sister Susan promised to meet me here and advise—not indeed that I care for my Lady Verney’s taste. You are ten thousand times better, my dearest Kitty. Pray give me your opinion.”
“My love,” said Kitty, “in all sober earnest I am too overset to be able to give my mind to it as I ought. That unfortunate young man! It seems Lord Harborough cast him out of her dressing-room last night, and there was a monstrous great scandal at the theatre door. The wretched girl, my Lord Harborough——”
“And what, my Lady, have you heard of it already?” said a masculine voice behind her. And all started to behold Lord Verney in their midst. “I thought I was the first to have wind of it, coming straight from Brooks’s. ’Tis scarce an hour since he was picked up unconscious.”
“Never say,” cried my Lady Kilcroney in horror,“that he had so little discretion as to choose a club for such an act.”
Lord Verney stared.
“Why, Madame, you speak as if the poor Marquis had had any choice in the matter?”
“The poor Marquis? In Heaven’s name, collect your wits. ’Tis not Lord Harborough who has committed suicide?”
“Indeed, my Lady Kilcroney, the idea is sprung entirely from your own imagination. Lord Harborough’s illness is a fit. He had scarce interchanged a few words with a friend in the club-room when he groaned and fell forward. Sir Richard Jebb and Dr. Jenner were at once summoned. They could not get the blood to flow. He was still breathing, that was all.”
“Well, ’tis another old sinner gone to his account,” said Nan Day philosophically. “And Sarah W. is a Marchioness—who’d have thought it? Where is Susan? I’m not sure, Miss Pounce, that I really care for a capote. Could you not let me see some of those French hats you spoke of anon?”
“Ah, Nan, you have indeed sadly lost touch with the world, child! ’Twas a magnificent fine gentleman, a noble patron of literature and art——”
“Ay, and of the stage, by your own showing, Kitty.” Nan Day spoke smartly. “Pray, Miss Pounce, did you not hear me?”
Pamela felt sick and faint. She was glad enough of the excuse to crawl away and take a dose of the hartshorn which was kept handy in the workroom in hot weather. When she returned to the showroom to announce that the case was at that moment being opened—her head girl was wrapping all last week’s inspirations carefully in tissue for the occasion—she found the company increased by My Lady Verney and Mrs. Lafone, and that well-known personage, Beau Stafford. He was speaking as she entered, and the first words that caught her ear were these:
“I call her Fair Fatality.”
Mistress Molly Lafone’s shrill accents were then uplifted.
“Why, Mr. Stafford,” though she was sister-in-law to the Beau there was small love lost between them, “granting the suicide—to be sure, the poor young man must have been mad—you cannot hold Miss Falcon responsible for Lord Harborough’s seizure.”
“You know a good deal, Mistress Molly, but you don’t know everything. Young Lord Ashmore attacked the Marquis in the street last night. There was a terrible scene between them. Ay, ladies, all on account of that wild bird, the Falcon. Lord Harborough had to call to his footmen—fact, I assure you! Only for the scandal he would have handed his assailant to the watch. ’Twas the shock of hearing of the rash youth’s dreadful end, this morning, that has been the death of him. Ay, My Lord Harborough is dead. They were pulling down the blinds of Harborough House as I passed along the Mall.”
“Fair Fatality, indeed!” cried Kitty. “And her so young and handsome, and not a six months famous yet.”
“Oh, she’s a cunning piece!” interposed Molly. “I have heard tales of her ways. They say none knows where she lives, nor where she comes from, nor her real name. She wraps herself in the utmost mystery. Probably,” went on the little lady, with her acid titter, “’tis some grocer’s daughter! But poor simplicity has no chance, especially with the gentlemen. You must play the romantick.”
My Lady Kilcroney, her fingers to her lips, seemed lost in reflection.
“Was there not a story of a duel, Mr. Stafford?”
“A duel, Madam? Five, to my certain knowledge,” asseverated the Beau. “And all with more or less serious results.”
“Pshaw, ’tis like an Italian tale of the evil eye!” Nan shuddered. “I’ll not go to Drury Lane and comeunder it, ’tis pos!Pray, Miss Pounce? Oh, no, not green! Green! Am I never to get away from it?”
Miss Falcon’s fame did not suffer from the double tragedy of which she had been so singularly the cause. She withdrew from the programmes for a week after the funerals of the two unfortunate noblemen, and then reappeared, to play to houses more crowded, more enthusiastic than ever. The wild rumours which began to circulate about her only served to increase the public frenzy.
Pamela Pounce, much occupied with the Walsingham mourning, was for some time unable to gratify her desire to see Fair Fatality act once more; a desire which—so far was she from sharing Lady Anne Day’s fears—had now indeed become a kind of obsession. When circumstances permitted her at last to indulge herself, she purchased a ticket in the forefront of the gallery, and prepared to enjoy a couple of hours complicated emotion. To her amazement, at the end of the second act a note was handed to her:
“I have just seen your kind face. Will you be a Friend to me to-night, and come back with me to my house? If you can do me this favour—my heart tells me you will—meet me at the stage door after the last act.“Felicity Falcon.”
“I have just seen your kind face. Will you be a Friend to me to-night, and come back with me to my house? If you can do me this favour—my heart tells me you will—meet me at the stage door after the last act.
“Felicity Falcon.”
At any time the adventure was one likely to tempt a girl of Pamela’s spirit. In present circumstances, wrought to the highest pitch of excitement and interest by the emotions of the drama and the personality of the young play-actress, the invitation came to her as the magic fulfilment of a dream. Although never had Miss Falcon’s acting been more poignant, more intense in passion and tragedy, the milliner could hardly wait for the drop of the curtain, so eager was she to enter upon what shecould not avoid considering the more thrilling drama still.
The crowds that packed the theatre were so immense, and the determination to recall the favourite so obstinate and prolonged, that it was after considerable delay that Pamela found herself at last at the stage door.
An elegant, sober-looking carriage, with servants in dark liveries, stood in waiting, and just behind it a hackney coach.
Miss Falcon, hooded and cloaked, escorted by a group of gentlemen, stepped forward and took her hand.
“I knew you would come,” she whispered. Her manner was preoccupied. “This is no place for introductions,” she went on, turning to her escort. “Since it must be, let us even start.”
“Sheridan,” said one who walked in advance of the others, one, indeed, whom the milliner, with a thumping heart, scarce dared recognise as the heir to the throne, “you accompany the ladies.”
The two women drew back while he passed somewhat unsteadily out of the theatre, and was, with discreet bows, ushered to his carriage by all the gentlemen of the party, a single member of which then followed him in. The carriage, evidently to order, moved a few paces up the street and again halted, while the hackney was drawn to the door.
Mr. Sheridan, followed by the other gentlemen, now came back. He offered his right arm to Miss Falcon, and, with some exaggeration of ceremony, which his companions seemed to find humorous, his left to Miss Pounce. After he had handed the ladies into the hackney coach, he paused, laughing at the door.
“What address shall I say, sweet Falcon?” He raised his voice, as for the benefit of those behind him. “Now for the great disclosure!” he cried.
Fair Fatality had a cold smile. Pamela could see her face by the light of the links each side of the theatre portals. It was very pale.
“Pray get in, sir,” she said; “the man knows his way.”
As they drove off Mr. Sheridan rubbed his hands and laughed again.
“To think that I should be sittingvis-à-visto the fairest intrigue in all London, and actually be going to solve the mystery! Though, to be sure, ’tis no mystery to you, ma’am, I dare swear?”
He looked tentatively at Pamela through the gloom.
They were turning out of a by-street into the main thoroughfare, and Pamela, casting her glance out of the window, was startled, but scarcely surprised, to see that the Prince’s carriage was very closely following theirs.
“Why, Pamela, my girl,” said the milliner to herself, “little you thought when you set out that you’d perhaps be supping with Royalty! But there’s one thing clear. You’ve got to stand by this poor soul to-night.”
Mr. Sheridan did not seem to relish the idea of conversation with Miss Falcon’s companion. Pamela, who from the first had fancied that, though carrying his liquor with decorum, he was far from sober, was not sorry to see him fall into a doze. Whether on her side the actress were asleep or not she could not guess, but she never moved nor spoke. The drive was long, and Pamela had lost all her sense of district when the coach was pulled up at last. But Mr. Sheridan, waking with a start and looking eagerly about him, cried:
“Why, this is the King’s Road! I’ll be hanged if that’s not the lodge of Elm Park House.”
“This, sir,” said Miss Falcon, “is Mulberry House, my poor abode, to which you are——” she paused, and altered her phrase—“where I am this night privileged to receive you.”
Pamela understood she would not bid them welcome. At the same moment the royal carriage halted in its turn; but Miss Falcon, alighting, did not pause to pay the respect etiquette demanded. She pushed open the gate, and went quickly across the flagged courtyard towardsthe little house which stood square and solid, with pedimented portico, before them.
As Pamela hurried after she saw that a light shone through the cracks of the shuttered ground floor windows. Miss Falcon inserted a key in the lock and opened the house door. She drew Pamela into an oak-panelled hall, dimly lit with a couple of candles in a silver candelabra, and herself stood in the aperture.
She dropped a profound curtsy as the Prince appeared, followed by Mr. Sheridan and that other gentleman whom Pamela supposed to be the equerry-in-waiting.
“Forgive me, sir,” her voice was low and tired, and it struck Pamela that something had gone out of it—the fire and thrill and youthful pathos that had made it every moment an appeal—“that you should have such a poor reception. Since I was not prepared for the honour, since it was your pleasure to surprise me by this favour, I must beg you to take me as I am. There are no servants here to-night.”
She moved backwards as she spoke. Theatrical training stood her in good stead. The movement was perfect.
“Will you condescend to enter? Mr. Sheridan, pray close the door behind His Highness.”
She preceded the Prince, still backing easily, to a parlour on the right of the entrance. It was a small, gay apartment, panelled in white, with double doors leading apparently into an inner room. Four candles on the centre table, burning rather low in their sockets, gave a fairly sufficient light.
Pamela, who slipped in, with some timidity, in the wake of the party, perceived their hostess’s face to be deathly pale, and hurried to her side.
Miss Falcon caught her hand with an ice-cold grip.
It must be confessed that the portly, elderly gentleman, who once for his charm and youthful grace had been known as Prince Florizel, looked discomfited to confoundment by the unexpected strangeness of the situation.His two companions stared at each other. The sobriety they all three needed seemed to be returning to them.
“Will your Highness condescend to take a chair?”
Still holding the milliner’s warm hand the play-actress stood erect.
“Sir, it has been your pleasure to command the revelation of a secret which concerned only my humble person. I understand even that you have honoured me so far as to make my insignificance the object of a wager. I trust I am too obedient a subject to disobey my future Sovereign, too loyal not to assist him in the gratification of his sporting instincts. With the more readiness, indeed, that at four o’clock this afternoon my reason for wishing to keep my unimportant identity, my unobtrusive abode from the knowledge of the world has ceased to exist——”
She broke off.
Not more intently had the mighty audience hung upon her lips to-night than did now these four, her oddly entertained guests. Pamela’s heart beat high. She felt herself as on the very edge of some fathomless chasm of tragedy.
“Your Royal Highness,” went on Felicity Falcon, her sweet voice hoarse, “since it is your pleasure to know it, my name is Gwenlian Morgan. I am the wife——” A spasm crossed her face. She caught her breath, and went on: “I married one Evan Morgan, a Welsh preacher. Ours has been a great love; but with him God was always first. He believed he had a call to London. We left the fair hills and our cottage for these dreadful streets. He failed. He fell into a decline. We had hardly any money left. He could work no more, and he would not take charity. I had to earn for him. How? I had to earn much and quickly or he would die. There was only one way, and that way anathema to him. To his pure and lofty mind the stage was always ruin and damnation!”
Again there was a brief silence. The equerry triedto whisper to Mr. Sheridan, but that good-hearted gentleman gave him an angry scowl. The Prince sat breathing hard, his eyes fixed, his mouth slightly open.
“There was but one way in which I could earn much and quickly. I took it. I took it in secret. I began low. Fortune favoured me. I was noticed behind the scenes by one whose notice meant advancement. Yes, sir”—she flashed a dark look at the equerry, who murmured a name—“my Lord Harborough was a generous patron; and then all came easy. At home I had but to lie. Good heavens, how I lied and plotted and contrived and deceived! But what did anything matter? There was no crime save unfaithfulness to my Beloved that I would not have committed for his sake. I told him I had inherited a fortune. I kept him almost from the first in comfort. When I was able to hire this house I told him I had sold out funds to do so. He believed me. He trusted me. He would as soon have thought of doubting an angel, as of doubting me. And so I—hoodwinked him. It was the easier that he had to keep to his bed. My one servant, his nurse, deaf and silent, never pried into my comings and goings. She believed, like him, that they were accounted for by the chapel meetings and mission-work; by necessary relaxation and repose. I went in and out of this house at night by the mews at the back. No one ever saw me enter. I took care of that. To-day—to-day the doctor came. He filled me with more hope than ever before. ‘Take him to Italy,’ he said. ‘And ’twill be a cure!’ With four thousand pounds in the bank——”
She stopped so suddenly that Pamela cast an arm about her, fearing she might fall; but she clasped a rigid strength. Mr. Sheridan raised his quizzing glass to stare at the actress’s countenance; into her pale cheeks a fierce colour had risen. She was amazingly beautiful.
“And so, my dear Miss Falcon—my dear Mrs. Morgan,” he cried curiously, “you took the favourable moment ofconfessing your subterfuge, your heroic subterfuge, to your pious husband! How did he bear it? A Welshman and a chapel man! I trust it was not a shock.”
Her eyes turned upon him as if she were bereft of the power of understanding.
“Mr. Sheridan means, ma’am,” cried the equerry impatiently, “how did the good preacher bear the awful revelation? Did you not yourself say that at four o’clock—four, wasn’t it, Sherry?—the great Falcon mystery ceased to exist.”
“You are right, sir,” said Fair Fatality. “When I returned from rehearsal this afternoon I found—I saw—I knew—there was no secret between us any more! You want to know so much about me, all of you.” Her voice rose suddenly and piercingly. “Your curiosity shall be gratified to the end.”
She moved away from Pamela with a steady step, flung open the folding doors, and pointed into the room revealed with a single magnificent gesture.
Grasping the elbows of his chair, fuddled, inquisitive, the Prince of Wales lifted himself to stare. Mr. Sheridan took two strides and brought himself up with an ejaculation. And “Damn me!” cried the equerry, in accents of anger and fear. “This is a dashed low trick!”
There was no need for anyone to cast a second glance into that room. The lights and the flowers, the rigid figure on the bed, covered with a white sheet, told their own story. The genial party were looking upon death.
“Oh, you poor creature! You poor, unhappy dear!” cried Pamela Pounce, bursting into hot tears, and catching the Falcon to her heart.
The preacher’s wife abandoned herself to the embrace; but only for the span of a moment, not for the relief of tears, not for the comfort of another woman’s tenderness, but because, just for that little while, every power fell into suspense. When she disengaged herself they were alone with the dead. Royalty and its booncompanions had seized the opportunity to retire from a scene so discomforting.
Felicity turned an abstracted gaze into the dining-room; it was clear to Pamela that her visitors, Royalty and all, were of less consequence in her mind than the stray moth that fluttered round the candles.
“Will you look at him?” said the widow.
Pamela wished that she would cry or swoon. This composure was terrible. Sobbing herself, she was drawn to the bedside, and, as Felicity lifted the sheet, gazed down upon the quiet, beautiful face. The play-actress bent and kissed the young forehead set in such majestic peace, and replaced the coverlet, re-arranging the white roses after she had done so. Then once more she took her companion by the arm, led her back into the dining-room, and closed the folding doors.
“Now you must drink a glass of wine with me,” she said, “before you go.”
“But I will stay with you.”
“No. No. The coach is waiting for you. The driver will take you safe back. I prefer to be alone.”
She went to a cupboard and drew out a decanter and a couple of glasses, and while Pamela sat and mopped her eyes with a drenched handkerchief, and bit her lip to keep down the rising sob, and chid herself for a poor, vaporous wretch no use to anyone, the woman who had lost her all poured out the wine with a steady hand; and with a steady hand did something else besides.
She brought the glasses to the table, gave one to Pamela, and stood watching her while she drank.
Then she sat down beside her, and, still holding her own full glass between taper fingers, leant across and said:
“Kiss me, my dear, and thank you. When I went back to him after the rehearsal to-day, so full of joy, the woman said he was asleep, and I bent to kiss him, and, oh, his lips were cold! His lips were cold! Yours are warm. I wish I’d known you before. We should have been friends. Nay, ’tis as well! I might have broughtmisfortune to you as to the others. ’Tis better as it is,” she repeated rather wildly.
And when sobbing that her own story was told and that she knew too what a broken heart meant, Pamela would have kissed her again, Felicity pushed her from her, and drank quickly.
In the silence that followed, Pamela drew herself physically and mentally together, twisted her handkerchief, patted her curls, wiped her eyes a last time, then, in the tone of one firmly determined on the right course of action:
“The coach may go, I’ll not leave you!” she cried.
She broke off. Was it the scent of the flowers from the death-chamber, or some curious flavour in the wine? She was all at once aware of a singular, intense smell of almonds in the air.
“Miss Falcon, Mrs. Morgan, my dear! Oh, you’re faint, you’re ill, and no wonder!”
She clutched the sinking figure, but Fair Fatality had acted her last tragedy.
Pamela Pounce never wore the Medusa ring. She dared not; but she kept it all her life.