CHAPTER XXVIII.

CHAPTER XXVIII.THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER.A drollrogue of my acquaintance, whom (one tried to think) the force of circumstance, rather than any natural disposition, had driven from the pavement of integrity into the gutter, used to maintain that it was better to confess one’s peccadilloes, with such colourable excuses as might suggest themselves, than to conceal them. In the former case you might, with a struggle, get out of the scrape and have done with it; in the latter case you were never safe from discovery, and when it came there was sure to be a catastrophe.There was, it is true, no peccadillo in William Henry’s keeping that appointment we wot of with those two charming ornaments of Drury Lane Theatre, but since he had an impression that Margaret might not like it, heought, according to my friend’s philosophy, to have told her all about it. After his interview with his Royal Highness (which could not be concealed) he felt that this straightforward course was the right one, and as he returned home in the hackney carriage with the precious manuscripts, amused himself with the thoughts of the pleasure Margaret would exhibit on hearing of the greatness that had been thrust upon him. When her mind had been dazzled by visions of Royalty, he had intended it to slip out in a casual way that he had been indebted for his introduction to his Royal Highness to one of those professional persons who had called in Norfolk Street the previous day on business, and whom he had been compelled to receive in place of his father—a Mrs. Jordan. The whole thing ran as smoothly and naturally in his own mind as could be. It was like some well-oiled mechanical machine, which the inventor (though of course it was no invention, only an adaptation) feels confident will do all he expects of it, only somehow in practice it doesn’t act. He found Margaretnot in the least interested about his Royal Highness, and very much excited about the lady who had been the mere medium of his introduction, and whose part in the matter he had taken, it must be confessed, some pains to minimise.‘You have not been frank with me, William Henry,’ she said with some severity.He had it upon his lips to say that since he was William Henry he could hardly be Frank, but he felt she was in no mood for banter; and, moreover, with that name there naturally occurred to him the thought of Frank Dennis, which made his heart stand still. It was not her anger that he feared, nor even the diminution of her love, which had been indicated very significantly by the mention of his double name (which she had not used for months) instead of ‘Willie,’ but the possible diversion of her love to another object. Perhaps she was already making a comparison in her mind between himself and a certain other person who, whatever his faults, would, she knew, never have deceived her.It was not impossible that love could stray, for had it not done so but a few hours ago, within his own experience, and with no such provocation? It was very different, of course, in his case; there is a certain latitude given to men, and the handsomest man on the stage, or off it, would, he was well aware, not have caused Margaret to forget her Willie even for an instant. But then women, when they are jealous, are capable of anything, and from pique will not only ‘be off’ with those they love, but sometimes ‘be on’ with another.‘I am very sorry, Margaret,’ he stammered, ‘but I really don’t know what you mean.’‘Then your face belies your words,’ was the cold reply. ‘Why did you not tell me yesterday that you were going to meet that woman at Drury Lane this morning?’‘There were two of them,’ said William Henry eagerly, urged, as he felt, by some fortunate inspiration to tell the whole truth.‘Oh, there were two, were there?’ Though she strove to keep her tone the same, there was a relaxation in her severity that did notescape him; the reflection that there was safety in numbers had no doubt occurred to her. ‘You omitted that circumstance, sir, in your previous narrative, with, no doubt, many others.’‘Indeed, Margaret, I have told you all; that is, all that I thought could have any interest for you. I ought to have said, of course, that the invitation to the theatre came from both the ladies; they wanted to have some alteration made in the play for them (which of course was out of the question). Mrs. Powell was very angry about it; I should think that she had a temper of her own.’‘I don’t want to hear about Mrs. Powell.’There was once a young gentleman who was endeavouring to make himself agreeable as araconteurin the presence of Royalty. When he had done his story the Royal lips let fall these terrible words: ‘We are not amused.’ Poor William Henry found himself in much the same position. His reminiscences of Mrs. Powell were, as it were, cut off at the main.Margaret’s instinct had eliminated that factor from the sum of the matter as insignificant; there was another person to talk about, it was true, but he was averse to enter upon that subject. Unhappily it was suggested to him as a topic.‘Who, may I ask, is this Mrs. Jordan?’‘Well, she was the other lady, of course, who called here,’ said William Henry (he felt that he was turning a lively red, and it was so important to him that he should keep his colour). ‘She is to perform Flavia in the play.’‘The person in man’s clothes?’ observed Margaret icily.‘Well, she plays the Page; you can hardly expect her to play him in petticoats. It was not a dress rehearsal,’ stammered the young man, ‘if you mean that. They simply asked me—both of them—to step round to the theatre this morning and render them some professional assistance, which, as it happened, I am unable to do. I cannot for the life of me see what harm there was in that.’‘Then why did you not tell me you were going?’It was the same dreadful question over again. Of course he ought to have told her, and if he had had any idea that she would have come to know of it he certainly would have done so. He looked so sorry (not to say silly) that Margaret’s heart melted a little.‘You know how I hate anything clandestine and underhand, William Henry.’‘I know it,’ he answered, with a deep sigh. His face was one of such abject misery, that one would have said, whatever he had done, he was sufficiently punished for it. Her heart melted more and more; he went on penitently:‘Of course I ought to have told you, Margaret, but I did not conceal it because there was anything to be ashamed of. Only I knew you would not like it, that you would think there was harm in it—as you do, it seems—where there is no harm. It was surely a great piece of goodnature on their part, after I haddisappointed them about the play, to offer to do their best for it, and to get the Duke——’‘Did they both go with you to St. James’s Palace?’ she put in drily.He was on the point of saying that there had been only room for two in the coach, but fortunately he was a young gentleman who thought before he spoke. It would certainly not have been a satisfactory explanation, and the very idea that he had been about to make it turned him scarlet.‘No wonder you are ashamed of yourself, sir,’ said she, perceiving his confusion. ‘Why do you talk to me about “they“ and “them,” when you know that only one of these women had anything to do with the matter?’‘Well, naturally, my dear, Mrs. Jordan was the person to introduce me to his Royal Highness, since she has been privately married to him.’‘I don’t believe one word of it.’‘I can only say she told me so,’ said William Henry simply.Margaret did not give much credit to theassertion of this lady, but she believed what William Henry said. After all, the poor young fellow had probably meant no harm, nor even dreamt of the meshes into which this designing female would have drawn him. He had only been indiscreet and a little surreptitious, and had been rated enough.‘You don’t know what these actresses are, Willie,’ she said gravely, ‘nor what pleasure they take in making misery and estrangements between honest people. Nothing this woman would like better, I’m sure of it, than to come between you and me.’‘My dear Margaret, how can you say such things? If you had only seen her!’‘I don’t want to see her,’ interpolated Margaret quickly.‘A person entirely devoted to her profession, in which she is justly held in the highest esteem.’‘I don’t deny that she is a good actress,’ returned Margaret significantly; ‘indeed I have no doubt of it.’‘And she spoke of you so kindly.’‘Of me? How dared she speak of me?’ cried Margaret with flashing eye. ‘What does she know of me?’‘Well, she saw you just for a moment when you looked in by accident yesterday, and she said how beautiful and kind you looked, and congratulated me——’‘It was shameful of you to tell those women of our engagement,’ she put in.‘Why not? What was there to be ashamed of? Am I not proud of it? Why should I not have told them?’His simplicity was very touching. If there had been such a thing as a maleingénueupon the stage, the speaker would have been the very man to play it.‘How they must have laughed at you in their sleeves, my poor Willie!’ she answered pityingly.He did not think it necessary to state that theyhadlaughed at him, and by no means in their sleeves.‘I will never see them again if you don’t wish it,’ said William Henry, still sticking tothe plural number. ‘Only I suppose when the “Vortigern“ comes to be acted it will be necessary to do so just for a night or two.’‘Oh, I don’t mind your seeing them at the play, Willie. We shall, of course, be there together.’He had meant that his assistance would probably be required behind the scenes. Indeed Mrs. Jordan had taken it for granted that he would be a constant visitor at the theatre while the play was in preparation, and he had very willingly acquiesced in that arrangement, but he had not the courage to say so. He was only too thankful that Margaret’s suspicions were at last set at rest. He knew that she was of a jealous disposition, and also that she abhorred deceit, and he loved her none the less on either account, but there were reasons why her manifestation of such excessive displeasure on so small a matter alarmed him, and made his heart heavy within him. However, in a month or two they would be married. He would then be her very own, and she would have no misgivings about him; and as todeceit, there would be no further cause for it, and what was past and gone would surely be forgiven. But still his heart was heavy.Considering Margaret’s youth and her middle-class position in life, the irritation and annoyance she had exhibited may seem unnatural as well as uncalled for. Young women of her age and rank are not nowadays supposed to know so much about the temptations of the stage, but in her time matters were different. The charms of this and that popular actress, and even their mode of life, were topics of common talk, and there was none of them more talked about than Mrs. Jordan. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Margaret regarded her as a syren attracted by the notoriety (not to mention the innocence and beauty) of her Willie, who designed to wile him from the quiet harbour of domestic love into the stormy seas of passion. Moreover, it must be said for Margaret that her jealousy was not like that of some people who, while resenting the interference of others with their private property, do not lavish on it any especial kindness of theirown. She had always been the friend and defender of William Henry, even before he became her lover, and had long-established claims on his fidelity, and it galled her that one glimpse of a pretty face should have so worked with him as to induce him to renew acquaintance with it, under what seemed to her such suspicious circumstances, and especially in so secret and clandestine a fashion. It had always been a complaint of hers in the old days that William Henry was inclined to deception. It was in relation, however, to Mr. Erin only that she had observed it, and in that case there had been, certainly, excuses for the young man; but that he should have deceivedher—if, at least, concealment could be called deception—she justly considered to be less pardonable. However, she had now said her say, and with a vigour that the circumstances scarcely called for; indeed, she felt that she had been somewhat hard upon him. However wrong he had been to try to hoodwink her, that had been the extent of his offending. He could hardly have declined to go to the theatre; and, indeed, sheconfessed to herself that while the play was in progress it was not reasonable to expect him to hold no communication with those who were to perform in it. The matter interested him very much, nor did she forget that it was mainly on her own account, for did not her uncle’s consent to their union depend upon the play’s success?When Mr. Erin presently announced the first rehearsal at the theatre, and suggested that William Henry should be present to witness it, Margaret made no opposition; her objections, in short, to the young man’s renewing his acquaintance with the fair Flavia were tacitly withdrawn. She acknowledged to herself that things could scarcely be otherwise, and that, after all, there could be no possible harm in the matter; and from that moment, whenever her Willie was out of her sight, she was more tormented with the fires of jealousy than ever.She knew that he saw Mrs. Jordan constantly, and was yet compelled to ignore it; she burned to know what passed between them, yet scorned to inquire. The news WilliamHenry brought back with him of the prospects of the play seemed hardly of any consequence to her compared with matters on which he never spoke at all. What was it to her that Kemble was unsympathetic, dogged, and studiously apathetic in his rendering of Vortigern; that Phillimore as Horsus was more like a buffoon than a hero? What was it to her, on the other hand, that Mrs. Powell as Edmunda surpassed Mrs. Siddons herself? What she wished to know, and could not ask, was how that hussey Mrs. Jordan was behaving herself, not as Flavia in tights (though that idea was far from consolatory), but in her own proper person. Of one thing she felt convinced, that not content with seeing her Willie every day, this woman corresponded with him; that he received letters from her under that very roof. Else how was it that when the post now brought him missives in a hand that was strange to her, he would slip them into his pocket without a word of comment, and with an air of indifference that did not impose upon her for an instant? William Henry had nowa little sitting-room of his own, and she noticed that when these letters arrived he remained in it longer alone than usual; reading them, no doubt, over and over, perhaps replying to them in the same fervid style in which (she felt sure) they were written, and possibly (for Margaret, though no poet like her Willie, had a lively imagination of her own) even kissing them.One morning the Epilogue to ‘Vortigern and Rowena’ arrived from Mr. Merry, and was discussed at breakfast-time word by word, as befitted so important a document. An hour afterwards, when William Henry had gone out, as Margaret was only too well convinced, to Drury Lane, Mr. Erin returned to the subject.‘I don’t much like those concluding lines in the first part,’ he said—The scattered flowers he left, benignly save,Posthumous flowers; the garland of the grave.‘It ran “benignly save,“ did it not, Madge?’‘I am not sure, uncle.’‘Then just go and get the thing out of Samuel’s room.’Margaret went and looked about her for the manuscript in question. It was nowhere to be found. But in her researches she came upon another document spread out in the half-opened drawer of the writing-table; it was written in a delicate hand on large letter-paper, and it was almost impossible that she could avoid reading the commencement of it.‘My dear W. H.,’ it began, and then followed a mass of heterogeneous words without sense or meaning, as if they had been taken at random out of some dictionary. It is probable that Margaret had never heard of a cryptogram, but she had heard of communications written in cypher, and it flashed upon her mind at once that she was looking at some letter of that nature. It was bad enough that this abandoned hussey of Drury Lane, who dwelt but a mile away from them, and saw her Willie five days out of six, should nevertheless have the audacity to correspond with him; but that she should write such things as could not bear the light and had to be concealed in cypher was indeed intolerable. Granting herpremises, there was certainly ample cause for the indignation that mantled to her very forehead, and the bitterness that took possession of her very soul.As she stood with one hand on the table, for her limbs trembled with the agitation that shook her mind, she heard the front door softly closed, and a hurried footstep in the passage. It was William Henry, who had remembered no doubt—too late—that he had left the letter exposed to view, and had returned to place it in some safer receptacle. The next moment he was face to face with her.CHAPTER XXIX.THE CYPHER.‘I knowwhat you are come for,’ said Margaret in a broken voice, which had yet no touch of tenderness in it. ‘You are come for this letter.’ She snatched it from the drawer and held it before him. ‘It is no use to lie to me; your face tells me the truth.’William Henry’s face was indeed white to the lips; his eyes returned her gaze with a confused and frightened stare. He stammered out something, he knew not what, and sank into a chair.‘What,’ continued the girl, in harsh, pitiless tones, ‘have you nothing to say for yourself? Has your ready tongue no excuse to offer for this new duplicity?’‘Have you read the letter?’ he inquired hoarsely.f172‘I know what you are come for. You are come for this letter.’‘No; how could I?’The colour rushed back to his cheeks, and into his eyes there came a gleam of hope.‘No,’ she went on, ‘it is you who shall read it to me. If you decline to do so, I shall conclude that this vile creature has written you what is not fit for anyone, save women like herself, to hear, and your refusal will be the last words that you will ever address to me with my consent, so help me Heaven.’Mrs. Powell herself, when personating some heroine of the stage, never looked or spoke with greater earnestness of purpose than on this occasion did simple Margaret Slade out of the simplicity of her nature.‘I will read you the letter, Margaret,’ was William Henry’s quiet reply.His words, and still more his tone, staggered Margaret not a little. The change in his face and manner within the last few minutes had indeed been most remarkable. At first he had seemed so struck with the consciousness of guilt, and so hopeless of forgiveness, that he had not dared to throw himself upon hermercy. Then he had appeared to recover himself a little; and now he was quite calm and composed as though all apprehension had passed away from him.His voice as he said ‘I will read you the letter, Margaret,’ had even a tender reproach in it, as though he, and not she, were the injured party.‘Read it,’ she said; but her tone was no longer stubborn and imperious. It was plain that this woman’s letter was not a love-letter, or he would not have consented to read it; and if it was not a love-letter, what cause had she for anger? And yet, if it was not so, why had he exhibited such confusion—nay despair?‘I will read it, since you wish it,’ he went on, ‘though it is a breach of confidence. It is better to break one’s word than to break one’s heart.’The morality of this aphorism was somewhat questionable, but Margaret nodded assent. She took it, no doubt, in a particular sense. It was certainly better that she should know the worst than that any proviso of a designing woman,made for her own wicked convenience, should be respected.‘It is well to begin at the beginning,’ continued William Henry. ‘Be so good as to look at the address of that letter.’She did so with an indifferent air. She could almost have said that she had seen it before, for she recognised it at once as one of those missives of which he had received so many of late.‘Let me draw your attention to the postmark.’It was ‘Mallow: Ireland.’The letter fell from her hand. Self-humiliation mastered for the moment the happiness of discovering that he had not been false to her after all. It was certainly not with Mrs. Jordan that he was secretly corresponding, and probably with no one of her sex. If Margaret had been an older woman, with a larger experience of the ways of men, she might have regretted her misplaced indignation as ‘waste;’ it might have even struck her that the present mistake might weaken herposition if on some future occasion she should have better reason for her reproaches, but she had no thought except for the injustice she had done her lover. She stood before him with downcast head, stupefied and penitent.‘Oh, Willie, I am so sorry.’‘So am I, dear; sorry that you should have so little confidence in me; sorry that you should have thought me capable of carrying on, under the roof that shelters you, an intrigue with another woman. This letter—and I have received others like it—is from Reginald Talbot.’‘But, Willie, whatcouldI think?’ she pleaded humbly, ‘and why should you write to Mr. Talbot in cypher? And why when I charged you falsely—with—what—you have mentioned—did you look so—so guilty?’‘Say rather so hurt and shocked, Margaret,’ he answered gravely. ‘It was surely only natural that I should be shocked at finding the girl I loved so distrustful of me.’‘I was wrong, oh, very, very wrong; and yet,’ she pleaded, ‘I erred through love of you, Willie. If I had not cared for you so much—sovery much—I should not have been so unreasonable.’‘You mean so wild with jealousy,’ he replied smiling. ‘However, it’s all over now,’ and he held out his hand for the letter which she still retained.‘Please to read it to me,’ she said; ‘a few words will do.’His face grew pale again, as she thought with anger.‘Why so?’ he replied. ‘Are you not satisfied even now?’‘Yes, yes; it was foolish of me, I know, but I said “So help me Heaven.”’‘Oh, I see. For your oath’s sake. That is what Herod said to the daughter of Herodias. It is not a good example to follow.’He spoke stiffly, but she shook her head.‘I only ask for a few words, Willie.’‘But Talbot writes to me in confidence; about matters that only affect him and me. There is not a word that concerns you in it.’Still she shook her head. The girl was truth itself, not only in the spirit but in the letter.She had sworn not to speak with him unless he did a certain thing, and though the reason for his doing so no longer existed, her oath remained. Her stubbornness evidently annoyed him. Their parts in the little drama had as it were become reversed. The wrongdoer had become the injured person, andvice versâ.‘The facts are these,’ he said slowly. ‘Talbot and I, as you know, have a secret in common. He is the only person save myself, who has seen my patron. What he writes of him and his concerns—that is of the manuscripts—we do not wish others to see. We have therefore hit upon a device to keep our communications secret.’He took out of the drawer a piece of cardboard exactly the shape and size of ordinary letter-paper, full of large holes neatly cut at unequal distances. He placed it on blank paper, and through the interstices wrote these words:‘Margaret has done you the honour to take your finnikin hand-writing for that of Mrs. Jordan.’Then he took off the cardboard and filled in the spaces with a number of inconsequent words, so that the whole communication became meaningless.‘Talbot has another piece of cardboard exactly similar to this,’ he continued, ‘and has only to place it over this rubbish for my meaning to become apparent.’‘It is very ingenious,’ said Margaret. It was the highest praise she could afford. Such arts were distasteful to her. They seemed to suggest a natural turn for deception, and she secretly hoped that the invention lay at Talbot’s door.‘Yes, I think the plan does me some credit,’ said William Henry complacently. ‘Well, I have only to lay the cardboard over this letter that so excited your indignation, to get at the writer’s meaning.’Her eyes were turned towards him, but with no fixity of expression, she was bound to listen and to look, but her interest was gone.‘“Why do you not send me a copy of the play?”’ he rapidly read. “One would thinkit was you only who had any stake in it;“ and so on, and so on. I suppose you have no wish to pry further into our little secret?’ he added, folding up the letter at the same time.‘I did not wish to pry into it at all, Willie,’ she answered sorrowfully; ‘I again repeat I am sorry to have mistrusted you.’‘Well, well, let us say no more about it. Let us forgive and forget.’‘It is you who have to forgive, Willie, not I.’‘I don’t say that,’ he answered gravely; ‘but if you think so, keep your forgiveness, Maggie, for next time. Be sure I shall have need of it.’Here the voice of Mr. Erin was heard calling for Margaret.‘Why do you not bring me the play?’William Henry held up his finger in sign that she should not reveal his presence in the house to Mr. Erin, and taking the manuscript from a cupboard placed it in her hand.‘Take it him,’ he whispered, with a tender kiss.She kissed him again without a word; the tears stood in her eyes, as, the very image of penitence and self-reproach, she made her mute adieu.It was certainly an occasion on which some men, not unconscious of errors, might have congratulated themselves.The expression on William Henry’s face, however, was very far from one of triumph; it was white and worn and weary.‘Another such a victory,’ he murmured with a haggard smile, ‘and I shall be undone.’He locked the door and threw himself into a chair with an exhausted air, like an actor who, having played his part successfully, is conscious of having done so with great effort, and also that he owed more to good luck than to good guidance. ‘Great heaven!’ he muttered, ‘what an escape! Suppose she had found the key for herself and read the letter, or even if she had compelled me to do so. She must have heard it all. I could not have invented a syllable to save my life——. What a millstone is this fellow about my neck,’ he presentlycontinued, as he tore the letter along and across, and threw the fragments under his feet. ‘A copy of the play! No, that he shall never see till the time is past for harm to come of it. A few days more, and all will be safe. I will be pestered no longer with his cursed importunities.’Then he took the perforated cardboard and tore that likewise into small pieces. ‘Now I have burnt my boats with a vengeance,’ he added grimly.Then he rose and paced up and down the room, first rapidly, then slower and slower.‘I am afraid I have been hasty, after all,’ he murmured; ‘this Talbot is ill to deal with, and suspicious as the devil. If I tell him in what peril his communications have placed me, and that therefore I have destroyed his cypher, he will not believe me, though it is the truth. I must tell him that it has been destroyed by accident, and that therefore I dare not write him what he wishes, and that he will not believe either. If incredulity were genius, then indeed he would be a very clever fellow, but nototherwise. Great heavens! what rubbish he writes and calls it poetry. No, no, no,’ he muttered with knitted brows, ‘notthat, Master Reginald, at any price. And yet how mad it will make him to find it is not so. He will do me a mischief if he can, no doubt. However, he will know nothing till it is too late. Next Saturday will put me out of the reach of harm. Would it were Saturday, and all were well. That’s Shakespeare, by the bye, save that he says supper time. A bad augury—a bad augury. The Ides of March are come, but they have not yet gone.’ Here he took another turn up and down the room. ‘I wonder whether, with all his knowledge of humanity, Shakespeare ever knew a man who suffered like me. I wonder whether he sees me now, and knows about it. A strange thought indeed, and yet it may be so. Perhaps his great soul, which understands it all, has pity on me. Willshepity me? A still more momentous question. Pity is akin to love, he says, when love comes last. If love comes first, will pity follow it? What thoughts could I set downthis moment were I in the mood for it; and yet they say I am no more a poet than this Talbot. He a poet! The vain drivelling fool; curse his false heart and prying eyes! I hate him.’CHAPTER XXX.THE PLAY.Thefirst night of one new play is much the same as that of another, I suppose, all the world over. The opening and shutting of doors, the rustling of silks and satins, the murmur of expectancy, cannot hush the beating of the young author’s breast, as he sits at the back of the box and longs, like the sick man, for the morning. Everybody who is anybody (a charming phrase indicating about one billionth of the human race) is there. Men of fashion and women of wit: gossips and critics; playwriters who have been damned and hope for company in their Inferno; playwriters who have succeeded, with no love for a new rival; the fast and the loose. Lights everywhere, but as much difficulty in finding places as though itwere dark; mute recognitions, whispered information (’A dead failure, they tell me.’ ‘The best thing since the “School for Scandal”’); fashionable titters; consumption with her ill-bred cough. These are things peculiar to all first nights, but the first night of ‘a newly discovered play by William Shakespeare’ was, as one may imagine, something exceptional.Malone, of course, had been at work. The public had been warned against ‘an impudent imposture’ in ‘a Letter to Lord Charlemont’ (surely the longest ever written) of which Edmund Burke had been so good as to say ‘that he had got to the seventy-third page before he went to sleep.’ It had been necessary to issue a counter-handbill and to distribute it at the doors.‘Vortigern.‘A malevolent and impudent attack on the Shakespeare Manuscript having appeared on the eve of representation of this play, evidently intended to injure the proprietor of the Manuscript, Mr. Erin feels it impossible, within theshort space of time between the publishing and the representation, to produce an answer to Mr. Malone’s most ill-founded assertions in his “Inquiry.“ He is therefore induced to request that “Vortigern and Rowena“ may be heard with that candour which has ever distinguished a British audience.’Opposition handbills were also in circulation, headed ‘A Forgery.’ The public interest in the play was unprecedented. The doors of Drury Lane were besieged. Within, the excitement was even more tremendous. The house was crammed to the very roof. Many paid box prices though they knew no seats were to be obtained there, for the purpose of getting down into the pit. ‘The air was charged with the murmurs of the contending factions.’ Nothing was ever heard or seen like it within the walls of a playhouse. In a centre box sat Samuel Erin and Margaret. The antiquary had thought it right that they should occupy a conspicuous position and show a bold front to the world, and she had consented to this arrangement without a murmur, for was it not for herWillie’s sake? She looked very pale, however, and when addressed had hardly voice to answer. The vast assemblage in such commotion, the shouts and cries from the gallery, the satirical cries of ‘Author! Author!’—though the overture had not commenced—appalled her.In a small box on the opposite side of the house, sat alone a tall handsome man, as pale as she. He had drawn the little curtain forward, so as to conceal himself from the occupants of the house, and kept his face, which wore a look of great distress, turned towards the stage. Through the folds of the curtain he had stolen one glance at her as she took her seat; but afterwards he had looked no more at her. In the next compartment was another and younger man, who also seemed to have a personal interest in Margaret Slade. His box was full of spectators, but he sat at the back of them, and unseen by her, fixed his eyes upon her from time to time with a searching expression. When the play began, however, he listened to it with the most rapt attention—not a word escaped him—and withevery word his face grew darker and more malevolent.Behind the curtain opinion was almost as much divided as before it. Kemble was in his grimmest humour; disinclined, as many said, both then and afterwards, to give his Vortigern fair play. Some of the inferior actors, taking their tune from him, certainly abstained from exerting themselves, and even made no secret beforehand of their design to abstain. It was a play cumbrous in construction, and even in the very names of the dramatis personæ, such as Wortimerus and Catagrinus; but it had been accepted by the management, and the company, as it was afterwards urged, and with justice, should have done their best for it. Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Jordan vied with one another in encouraging William Henry, who remained all the evening behind the scenes. The former made a magnificent Edmunda; the latter, of whom the greatest of our dramatic critics writes, ‘Delightful Mrs. Jordan, whose voice did away with the cares of the whole house before they saw her come in,’ surpassedherself. If beauty and vivacity could have saved the piece she would have saved it, single-handed. There was a great deal of opposition, but at first the play went fairly well. The swell and roll of its sonorous lines hid their lack of ideas, and in a fashion supported themselves unaided.‘We are safe now, the “Vortigern“ will succeed, Henry,’ said Mrs. Jordan cheerfully, as she left the stage at the close of the second act.William Henry did not answer; his face, pale and haggard as it had been throughout the evening, had suddenly assumed a look of horror.‘What is the matter with you, lad?’ exclaimed Mrs. Powell. ‘You would make a good actor, but a very bad author; you could not look more desponding if the play was your own. It is going all right; you must not mind a hiss or two.’‘I fear him,’ whispered William Henry, hoarsely. ‘That is his hateful voice; it is all over.’The two ladies looked at one another significantly; they had seen young fathers of promising plays on first nights before, but here was a mere godfather worse than any of them. They thought that the young fellow had taken leave of his wits.‘I tell you it is all over,’ continued the wretched youth; ‘he has come here to damn me.’‘If you mean the Devil, that is nothing new,’ said Mrs. Powell; ‘he is always, so we are told, in the play-house.’She spoke very sharply; she thought it the right remedy to apply under the circumstances, just as she might have recommended bending back the fingers in an extreme case of hysterics.‘Come here,’ said Mrs. Jordan, leading the young man to a spot where, through a chink in the curtain, they could get a view of the box where his father and cousin sat. ‘Look at your Margaret yonder; she is not a coward like you.’ Indeed, the more the people hissed, the calmer and the more indifferent Margaretseemed to be, though under that unmoved exterior she suffered agonies. She was thinking of her Willie, though she could not see him, and love enhanced her beauty.It was a frightful scene of turmoil, though up till now a good-natured one. The actor who had last left the stage (or rather who was left upon it, for he had been killed in combat) had had, by some mismanagement, the curtain dropped upon his legs, and had jumped up and rubbed them before the audience in a manner very unbecoming a corpse. At this they screamed with laughter, to which his Highness the Duke of Clarence, in the royal box, contributed his full share. Their good humour was, therefore, for the present, assured, though such mirth was hardly conducive to the success of a tragedy. But at the commencement of the next act there were signs of ill-nature. There were cries set agoing from a box on the upper tier, of ‘Forgery! forgery!’ and even of ‘Thief Erin! Thief Erin! look at Thief Erin!’Kemble’s magnificent voice alone could make itself heard above these sounds of displeasure.He was apostrophising the King of Terrors:—Oh sovereign Death,Who hast for thy domain this world immense.Churchyards and charnelhouses are thy haunts,And hospitals thy sumptuous palaces;And when thou wouldst be merry thou dost chooseThe gaudy chamber of a dying king.And then thou dost ope wide thy monstrous jaws,And with rude laughter and fantastic tricksThou clapp’st thy rattling fingers to thy side;And when this solemn mockery is o’er——Here he was suffered to proceed no further; that unfortunate line, uttered in the most sepulchral tone, was the signal for the most discordant howl that was ever heard within the walls of a theatre. He repeated the line with his own peculiar emphasis, and even, as a spectator tells us, ‘with a solemn grimace.’ It was the death-blow of the piece. A scene of confusion ensued which beggars description. Suddenly, and as the newspapers of the day said, ‘without any premonition,’ a rush was made for the box occupied by the Erins. Fortunately, however, one man at least had premonition of it. He was the one who hasbeen mentioned as occupying a box by himself. He had been silent all the evening, taking no part either with the partisans or the opponents of the play, but with eyes ever attentive to what was going on. The voice of the young fellow in the next compartment had attracted him above all others; it had malevolence in it which was wanting in the other cases, and, though he did not recognise it, sounded not unfamiliar to him. It had been the first to raise the cry of ‘Forger!’ and the only one which had mentioned the name of Erin. As he repeated the words for the third or fourth time, some drunken fellow hiccuped ‘Where are they?’ To which the malevolent voice replied, ‘I’ll show you. The young scoundrel is hiding behind the curtain, but we’ll have him out.’f194The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble.The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble, led by Reginald Talbot. They ran in their stupid fury at full speed, but not so fast as Frank Dennis would have run could he have got free of them. He had dashed from his box the instant he had heard Talbot’s vengeful cry, but it had already raised the wilder spirits of the house, and they had rushed out from this door and that, and interposed themselves between him and their leader. He beheld already Margaret surrounded by this wild and wanton crew, the old man maltreated, and William Henry, evidently the object of this fellow’s hatred, torn to pieces. He ran with the impetuous crowd, parting them like water left and right with his broad shoulders, till he gained a place among the foremost. Talbot, leading by a few paces, had reached a spot where two staircases met; the one a narrow one, leading straight down to a few boxes, in one of which Margaret was seated, the other a broader flight, which led to one of the exits of the house. Talbot, wild with haste and rage, cast a glance behind him to point out to his followers the right direction to take, when he met Dennis’ eye, and strove to turn and speak. But ere he could do so, Frank’s strong fingers were on his neck, and impelled him forward, like the wind, to the top of the broader stair. The others, who knew not what had happened,thought that they were still following their leader to their destination, and ran on full pelt behind them. Ere the third step was reached, half a dozen had fallen headlong, and half a score came toppling over these. Oaths and groans mingled with the cries of those who still pushed on behind, but Reginald Talbot neither spoke nor fell. The fingers that had closed about his neck clutched his throat also, while at the same time they kept him up, though his legs used a speed which they had never before attained to; they took their four and even five steps at a time. Fortunately for him, and perhaps for his custodian also, the great door at the foot of the staircase was open to the street, and when they reached it Frank simply let his companion go, who, bereft of sense, though by no means of motion, fell face foremost, with the most frightful violence, into a mud heap. A friendly pillar brought Dennis himself to anchorage, who then quietly turned and entered the theatre by another way.Thanks to his presence of mind and strength of body, the house was now freed of its moredangerous elements, and an attempt was being made to finish the play, though almost in dumb show. Mrs. Jordan, though greatly agitated, had even the courage to speak the epilogue, and for the first time found her graces and witcheries of no avail. Margaret would have stayed to say a few words of love and confidence to William Henry, but Mr. Erin hurried her away.‘It was a planned thing,’ he kept murmuring on the way home in the hackney-coach. ‘There was a plot to damn the play; that devil Malone was at the bottom of it.’But Margaret was not thinking of Malone, nor even of the play, concerning which, though she heard them not, there were reports, besides its failure, of misadventure and even death. She was thinking of Willie, and why he did not come home to be comforted. The two sat down alone to supper, of which neither could touch a mouthful; the antiquary full of woeful thoughts, the girl with only one question in her mind, ‘Why does he not come?’The maid thought she had seen him at thedoor when her mistress got out of the carriage; there was certainly some young man with his hat pulled over his eyes, who had watched her into the house, and having, as it seemed, assured himself of her safety, had walked away. It was possible of course that this might have been Willie, but whither had he gone?‘It is no use your waiting for William Henry,’ said the antiquary roughly; ‘why don’t you eat?’She noticed that her uncle no longer spoke of ‘Samuel,’ and the change jarred upon her feelings, already strained and tried. It was no fault of Willie’s that the play had not succeeded, and it was cruel to visit such a misfortune upon his innocent head.‘It is only natural that I should be anxious about him,’ she returned with some touch of resentment.‘Pooh, pooh! why should you be anxious? He is no doubt supping with one of the players.’His indifferent words struck her like a blow at random. Was it conceivable, after what had happened that evening, that Willie shouldprefer the society of another to her own? Above all, was it possible that that one should be Mrs. Jordan? She could not but notice how Flavia had fought for the play, and had hardly known whether to admire or detest her for it. If she had been in her place, and could have done it, she would have fought for it too, but then she would have an adequate motive. Why should that woman have dared so much for it when the others had performed their parts in so sluggish and perfunctory a manner? It must have been because she had her heart in it. And who could have their heart in a mere stage-play, a thing at the best full of fictitious woes and imaginary heroes? There must have been human love—or what such creatures took for love—to have enlisted her in its cause. Oh, why did not Willie come?As the night wore on apprehensions for her lover’s personal safety took the place of these jealous fears. What might not despair and disappointment have induced him to do? In her wretchedness and need of sympathy and consolation, she ventured to hint at this to Mr. Erin.‘It is surely very odd, uncle. Willie ought to be home by this time at all events. Should we not send somewhere?’‘What nonsense! Whither should we send, and why? The lad is old enough to take care of himself.’‘But perhaps in his dejection and—and—misery, uncle, he might not have any care of himself.’‘Tush! he is not of that sort. He has much too high an opinion of his own value to throw himself away—into the river, for instance. That such an idea should have entered your mind, however, shows what an unstable fellow you think him; and in some ways—though not in that way—heisunstable. He is but a boy, after all, and a spoilt boy. I take blame to myself that I suffered him to entertain the delusion that he was fit to take to himself a wife. It was conditional indeed upon certain contingencies which have not taken place, so that the whole affair is null and void.’‘Uncle!’ Margaret rose from her chair,and with white face and flashing eyes confronted the old man.‘Of course it’s null and void,’ he went on, flattening the tobacco in his pipe with its stopper, and affecting an indifferent air. ‘A bargain’s a bargain, though indeed, as I have said, it is one that I should never have entered into in any case, but the mere vulgar question of ways and means now puts an end to the matter. Of course he looked for material results from the “Vortigern.“ It will now not keep the stage another night, while the publication of the play is rendered worthless. It is not his fault, of course; I don’t blame him. It is not in mortals to command success. There is nothing for him now but to return to the conveyancing business; and in ten years or so there is no knowing but that he may step into old Bingley’s shoes.’‘And I?’ cried Margaret bitterly. ‘What am I to do? To wait for him?’‘Certainly not; that would be hopeless indeed. The best thing you can possibly do just at present is to—I shall make arrangements forhis lodging elsewhere out of harm’s way—is to begin to forget all about him.’‘Forget him—forget Willie? How can I?’‘By thinking of somebody else,’ returned the antiquary coolly: ‘that I have heard is the best way. At all events it will have to be done.’‘Do you think then a woman’s heart is like a seal, uncle, on which an image is impressed, and which, held to some fierce flame—as mine seems to be, Heaven help me, this moment—it straightway becomes a blank ready for the reception of another image? Oh, no, no, I will wait ten years for Willie, if it be necessary, but I will never forget him.’‘He’ll forgetyouin half the time,’ was the dry rejoinder.‘You speak falsely as well as cruelly, uncle,’ said Margaret passionately.There had been a time when even passion could not have nerved her to speak so boldly to the antiquary; and there had been a time when if she had dared to do so the old man would have put down his foot upon suchpassion and crunched the sparks out. But just now Margaret was too full of her misery and the sense of wrong to care what she said, while her uncle on his part, though he was fully resolved to put an end to his niece’s engagement with William Henry, could not at once resume the relative position to her he had occupied before it was mooted.‘As to my speaking falsely concerning William Henry’s fidelity,’ he answered quietly, ‘time alone can prove that: and there will be certainly plenty of time; while as to cruelty I really cannot accuse myself of having been cruel.’‘What! when you have allowed the mutual love between your son and me for months to ripen without censure? When you have heard him call me his own ten times a day, and never reproved him for it. When you have thrown us together and left us together? And now because something has not succeeded, of the success of which you made sure, do you wish to tear us asunder and bid us forget one another. And then, ohshame, do you dare to say you are not cruel?’The old man made her no reply, perhaps his conscience pricked him in the matter, or perhaps he perceived that it was useless to argue with her in her present excited state.‘Have you any fault to find with Willie?’ she continued reproachfully. ‘Has he not done all he could do in this unfortunate affair? What has happened to the “Vortigern“ that he could help or hinder? Do you suppose he has deceived you because it has not succeeded?‘Of course not,’ put in the antiquary testily; ‘the boy is honest enough, no doubt; but one must look at things from a reasonable point of view. Come, come, we can talk of these things to-morrow. It is getting late. Let us to bed.’She answered not a word, but sat with her face bowed down on the table and hidden in her hands, while he took up his candle and left her. She remained in the same position for many minutes, when suddenly there camea gentle knock, a mere tap, at the front door. She was on her feet in a moment, with her long hair loose behind her ears, listening. It was not Willie’s knock, she knew, but it might be news of Willie. The clock on the mantelpiece had just struck two. Then came the tap again; this time a little more distinct. It was evident that her uncle had not heard it, and the servant had long gone to bed. There were many bad characters abroad in the street in those times, restrained by a very inefficient constabulary, but Margaret did not hesitate to obey this second summons. She went to the door and undid the fastenings without making the least noise.A woman stood on the step, to judge by her figure a young one, but her face was hidden in her hood.‘You are Margaret?’ she said, in clear sweet tones mingled with an ineffable pity.‘I am,’ she answered, with a dreadful fear at her heart. She felt that some messenger of evil tidings stood before her.‘I thought so; I felt sure that you wouldbe sitting up for him,’ murmured the other softly.‘Where is he? Is he ill? Why does he not come home?’ gasped Margaret.‘He is not ill, but he cannot come home. Let me in, and I will tell you all.’With a gentle pressure, for Margaret’s instinct was to oppose her, the visitor made her way into the house. ‘Let me see you quite alone,’ she said; ‘somewhere where we cannot be interrupted. I have news for your private ear—I am sorry to say, bad news.’‘And who are you?’ Margaret’s voice was antagonistic, almost defiant. She resented this woman’s coming beyond all measure, but the fear within her compelled her to listen to what she might have to say.‘I am Mrs. Jordan,’ was the quiet reply.

CHAPTER XXVIII.THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER.A drollrogue of my acquaintance, whom (one tried to think) the force of circumstance, rather than any natural disposition, had driven from the pavement of integrity into the gutter, used to maintain that it was better to confess one’s peccadilloes, with such colourable excuses as might suggest themselves, than to conceal them. In the former case you might, with a struggle, get out of the scrape and have done with it; in the latter case you were never safe from discovery, and when it came there was sure to be a catastrophe.There was, it is true, no peccadillo in William Henry’s keeping that appointment we wot of with those two charming ornaments of Drury Lane Theatre, but since he had an impression that Margaret might not like it, heought, according to my friend’s philosophy, to have told her all about it. After his interview with his Royal Highness (which could not be concealed) he felt that this straightforward course was the right one, and as he returned home in the hackney carriage with the precious manuscripts, amused himself with the thoughts of the pleasure Margaret would exhibit on hearing of the greatness that had been thrust upon him. When her mind had been dazzled by visions of Royalty, he had intended it to slip out in a casual way that he had been indebted for his introduction to his Royal Highness to one of those professional persons who had called in Norfolk Street the previous day on business, and whom he had been compelled to receive in place of his father—a Mrs. Jordan. The whole thing ran as smoothly and naturally in his own mind as could be. It was like some well-oiled mechanical machine, which the inventor (though of course it was no invention, only an adaptation) feels confident will do all he expects of it, only somehow in practice it doesn’t act. He found Margaretnot in the least interested about his Royal Highness, and very much excited about the lady who had been the mere medium of his introduction, and whose part in the matter he had taken, it must be confessed, some pains to minimise.‘You have not been frank with me, William Henry,’ she said with some severity.He had it upon his lips to say that since he was William Henry he could hardly be Frank, but he felt she was in no mood for banter; and, moreover, with that name there naturally occurred to him the thought of Frank Dennis, which made his heart stand still. It was not her anger that he feared, nor even the diminution of her love, which had been indicated very significantly by the mention of his double name (which she had not used for months) instead of ‘Willie,’ but the possible diversion of her love to another object. Perhaps she was already making a comparison in her mind between himself and a certain other person who, whatever his faults, would, she knew, never have deceived her.It was not impossible that love could stray, for had it not done so but a few hours ago, within his own experience, and with no such provocation? It was very different, of course, in his case; there is a certain latitude given to men, and the handsomest man on the stage, or off it, would, he was well aware, not have caused Margaret to forget her Willie even for an instant. But then women, when they are jealous, are capable of anything, and from pique will not only ‘be off’ with those they love, but sometimes ‘be on’ with another.‘I am very sorry, Margaret,’ he stammered, ‘but I really don’t know what you mean.’‘Then your face belies your words,’ was the cold reply. ‘Why did you not tell me yesterday that you were going to meet that woman at Drury Lane this morning?’‘There were two of them,’ said William Henry eagerly, urged, as he felt, by some fortunate inspiration to tell the whole truth.‘Oh, there were two, were there?’ Though she strove to keep her tone the same, there was a relaxation in her severity that did notescape him; the reflection that there was safety in numbers had no doubt occurred to her. ‘You omitted that circumstance, sir, in your previous narrative, with, no doubt, many others.’‘Indeed, Margaret, I have told you all; that is, all that I thought could have any interest for you. I ought to have said, of course, that the invitation to the theatre came from both the ladies; they wanted to have some alteration made in the play for them (which of course was out of the question). Mrs. Powell was very angry about it; I should think that she had a temper of her own.’‘I don’t want to hear about Mrs. Powell.’There was once a young gentleman who was endeavouring to make himself agreeable as araconteurin the presence of Royalty. When he had done his story the Royal lips let fall these terrible words: ‘We are not amused.’ Poor William Henry found himself in much the same position. His reminiscences of Mrs. Powell were, as it were, cut off at the main.Margaret’s instinct had eliminated that factor from the sum of the matter as insignificant; there was another person to talk about, it was true, but he was averse to enter upon that subject. Unhappily it was suggested to him as a topic.‘Who, may I ask, is this Mrs. Jordan?’‘Well, she was the other lady, of course, who called here,’ said William Henry (he felt that he was turning a lively red, and it was so important to him that he should keep his colour). ‘She is to perform Flavia in the play.’‘The person in man’s clothes?’ observed Margaret icily.‘Well, she plays the Page; you can hardly expect her to play him in petticoats. It was not a dress rehearsal,’ stammered the young man, ‘if you mean that. They simply asked me—both of them—to step round to the theatre this morning and render them some professional assistance, which, as it happened, I am unable to do. I cannot for the life of me see what harm there was in that.’‘Then why did you not tell me you were going?’It was the same dreadful question over again. Of course he ought to have told her, and if he had had any idea that she would have come to know of it he certainly would have done so. He looked so sorry (not to say silly) that Margaret’s heart melted a little.‘You know how I hate anything clandestine and underhand, William Henry.’‘I know it,’ he answered, with a deep sigh. His face was one of such abject misery, that one would have said, whatever he had done, he was sufficiently punished for it. Her heart melted more and more; he went on penitently:‘Of course I ought to have told you, Margaret, but I did not conceal it because there was anything to be ashamed of. Only I knew you would not like it, that you would think there was harm in it—as you do, it seems—where there is no harm. It was surely a great piece of goodnature on their part, after I haddisappointed them about the play, to offer to do their best for it, and to get the Duke——’‘Did they both go with you to St. James’s Palace?’ she put in drily.He was on the point of saying that there had been only room for two in the coach, but fortunately he was a young gentleman who thought before he spoke. It would certainly not have been a satisfactory explanation, and the very idea that he had been about to make it turned him scarlet.‘No wonder you are ashamed of yourself, sir,’ said she, perceiving his confusion. ‘Why do you talk to me about “they“ and “them,” when you know that only one of these women had anything to do with the matter?’‘Well, naturally, my dear, Mrs. Jordan was the person to introduce me to his Royal Highness, since she has been privately married to him.’‘I don’t believe one word of it.’‘I can only say she told me so,’ said William Henry simply.Margaret did not give much credit to theassertion of this lady, but she believed what William Henry said. After all, the poor young fellow had probably meant no harm, nor even dreamt of the meshes into which this designing female would have drawn him. He had only been indiscreet and a little surreptitious, and had been rated enough.‘You don’t know what these actresses are, Willie,’ she said gravely, ‘nor what pleasure they take in making misery and estrangements between honest people. Nothing this woman would like better, I’m sure of it, than to come between you and me.’‘My dear Margaret, how can you say such things? If you had only seen her!’‘I don’t want to see her,’ interpolated Margaret quickly.‘A person entirely devoted to her profession, in which she is justly held in the highest esteem.’‘I don’t deny that she is a good actress,’ returned Margaret significantly; ‘indeed I have no doubt of it.’‘And she spoke of you so kindly.’‘Of me? How dared she speak of me?’ cried Margaret with flashing eye. ‘What does she know of me?’‘Well, she saw you just for a moment when you looked in by accident yesterday, and she said how beautiful and kind you looked, and congratulated me——’‘It was shameful of you to tell those women of our engagement,’ she put in.‘Why not? What was there to be ashamed of? Am I not proud of it? Why should I not have told them?’His simplicity was very touching. If there had been such a thing as a maleingénueupon the stage, the speaker would have been the very man to play it.‘How they must have laughed at you in their sleeves, my poor Willie!’ she answered pityingly.He did not think it necessary to state that theyhadlaughed at him, and by no means in their sleeves.‘I will never see them again if you don’t wish it,’ said William Henry, still sticking tothe plural number. ‘Only I suppose when the “Vortigern“ comes to be acted it will be necessary to do so just for a night or two.’‘Oh, I don’t mind your seeing them at the play, Willie. We shall, of course, be there together.’He had meant that his assistance would probably be required behind the scenes. Indeed Mrs. Jordan had taken it for granted that he would be a constant visitor at the theatre while the play was in preparation, and he had very willingly acquiesced in that arrangement, but he had not the courage to say so. He was only too thankful that Margaret’s suspicions were at last set at rest. He knew that she was of a jealous disposition, and also that she abhorred deceit, and he loved her none the less on either account, but there were reasons why her manifestation of such excessive displeasure on so small a matter alarmed him, and made his heart heavy within him. However, in a month or two they would be married. He would then be her very own, and she would have no misgivings about him; and as todeceit, there would be no further cause for it, and what was past and gone would surely be forgiven. But still his heart was heavy.Considering Margaret’s youth and her middle-class position in life, the irritation and annoyance she had exhibited may seem unnatural as well as uncalled for. Young women of her age and rank are not nowadays supposed to know so much about the temptations of the stage, but in her time matters were different. The charms of this and that popular actress, and even their mode of life, were topics of common talk, and there was none of them more talked about than Mrs. Jordan. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Margaret regarded her as a syren attracted by the notoriety (not to mention the innocence and beauty) of her Willie, who designed to wile him from the quiet harbour of domestic love into the stormy seas of passion. Moreover, it must be said for Margaret that her jealousy was not like that of some people who, while resenting the interference of others with their private property, do not lavish on it any especial kindness of theirown. She had always been the friend and defender of William Henry, even before he became her lover, and had long-established claims on his fidelity, and it galled her that one glimpse of a pretty face should have so worked with him as to induce him to renew acquaintance with it, under what seemed to her such suspicious circumstances, and especially in so secret and clandestine a fashion. It had always been a complaint of hers in the old days that William Henry was inclined to deception. It was in relation, however, to Mr. Erin only that she had observed it, and in that case there had been, certainly, excuses for the young man; but that he should have deceivedher—if, at least, concealment could be called deception—she justly considered to be less pardonable. However, she had now said her say, and with a vigour that the circumstances scarcely called for; indeed, she felt that she had been somewhat hard upon him. However wrong he had been to try to hoodwink her, that had been the extent of his offending. He could hardly have declined to go to the theatre; and, indeed, sheconfessed to herself that while the play was in progress it was not reasonable to expect him to hold no communication with those who were to perform in it. The matter interested him very much, nor did she forget that it was mainly on her own account, for did not her uncle’s consent to their union depend upon the play’s success?When Mr. Erin presently announced the first rehearsal at the theatre, and suggested that William Henry should be present to witness it, Margaret made no opposition; her objections, in short, to the young man’s renewing his acquaintance with the fair Flavia were tacitly withdrawn. She acknowledged to herself that things could scarcely be otherwise, and that, after all, there could be no possible harm in the matter; and from that moment, whenever her Willie was out of her sight, she was more tormented with the fires of jealousy than ever.She knew that he saw Mrs. Jordan constantly, and was yet compelled to ignore it; she burned to know what passed between them, yet scorned to inquire. The news WilliamHenry brought back with him of the prospects of the play seemed hardly of any consequence to her compared with matters on which he never spoke at all. What was it to her that Kemble was unsympathetic, dogged, and studiously apathetic in his rendering of Vortigern; that Phillimore as Horsus was more like a buffoon than a hero? What was it to her, on the other hand, that Mrs. Powell as Edmunda surpassed Mrs. Siddons herself? What she wished to know, and could not ask, was how that hussey Mrs. Jordan was behaving herself, not as Flavia in tights (though that idea was far from consolatory), but in her own proper person. Of one thing she felt convinced, that not content with seeing her Willie every day, this woman corresponded with him; that he received letters from her under that very roof. Else how was it that when the post now brought him missives in a hand that was strange to her, he would slip them into his pocket without a word of comment, and with an air of indifference that did not impose upon her for an instant? William Henry had nowa little sitting-room of his own, and she noticed that when these letters arrived he remained in it longer alone than usual; reading them, no doubt, over and over, perhaps replying to them in the same fervid style in which (she felt sure) they were written, and possibly (for Margaret, though no poet like her Willie, had a lively imagination of her own) even kissing them.One morning the Epilogue to ‘Vortigern and Rowena’ arrived from Mr. Merry, and was discussed at breakfast-time word by word, as befitted so important a document. An hour afterwards, when William Henry had gone out, as Margaret was only too well convinced, to Drury Lane, Mr. Erin returned to the subject.‘I don’t much like those concluding lines in the first part,’ he said—The scattered flowers he left, benignly save,Posthumous flowers; the garland of the grave.‘It ran “benignly save,“ did it not, Madge?’‘I am not sure, uncle.’‘Then just go and get the thing out of Samuel’s room.’Margaret went and looked about her for the manuscript in question. It was nowhere to be found. But in her researches she came upon another document spread out in the half-opened drawer of the writing-table; it was written in a delicate hand on large letter-paper, and it was almost impossible that she could avoid reading the commencement of it.‘My dear W. H.,’ it began, and then followed a mass of heterogeneous words without sense or meaning, as if they had been taken at random out of some dictionary. It is probable that Margaret had never heard of a cryptogram, but she had heard of communications written in cypher, and it flashed upon her mind at once that she was looking at some letter of that nature. It was bad enough that this abandoned hussey of Drury Lane, who dwelt but a mile away from them, and saw her Willie five days out of six, should nevertheless have the audacity to correspond with him; but that she should write such things as could not bear the light and had to be concealed in cypher was indeed intolerable. Granting herpremises, there was certainly ample cause for the indignation that mantled to her very forehead, and the bitterness that took possession of her very soul.As she stood with one hand on the table, for her limbs trembled with the agitation that shook her mind, she heard the front door softly closed, and a hurried footstep in the passage. It was William Henry, who had remembered no doubt—too late—that he had left the letter exposed to view, and had returned to place it in some safer receptacle. The next moment he was face to face with her.

THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER.

A drollrogue of my acquaintance, whom (one tried to think) the force of circumstance, rather than any natural disposition, had driven from the pavement of integrity into the gutter, used to maintain that it was better to confess one’s peccadilloes, with such colourable excuses as might suggest themselves, than to conceal them. In the former case you might, with a struggle, get out of the scrape and have done with it; in the latter case you were never safe from discovery, and when it came there was sure to be a catastrophe.

There was, it is true, no peccadillo in William Henry’s keeping that appointment we wot of with those two charming ornaments of Drury Lane Theatre, but since he had an impression that Margaret might not like it, heought, according to my friend’s philosophy, to have told her all about it. After his interview with his Royal Highness (which could not be concealed) he felt that this straightforward course was the right one, and as he returned home in the hackney carriage with the precious manuscripts, amused himself with the thoughts of the pleasure Margaret would exhibit on hearing of the greatness that had been thrust upon him. When her mind had been dazzled by visions of Royalty, he had intended it to slip out in a casual way that he had been indebted for his introduction to his Royal Highness to one of those professional persons who had called in Norfolk Street the previous day on business, and whom he had been compelled to receive in place of his father—a Mrs. Jordan. The whole thing ran as smoothly and naturally in his own mind as could be. It was like some well-oiled mechanical machine, which the inventor (though of course it was no invention, only an adaptation) feels confident will do all he expects of it, only somehow in practice it doesn’t act. He found Margaretnot in the least interested about his Royal Highness, and very much excited about the lady who had been the mere medium of his introduction, and whose part in the matter he had taken, it must be confessed, some pains to minimise.

‘You have not been frank with me, William Henry,’ she said with some severity.

He had it upon his lips to say that since he was William Henry he could hardly be Frank, but he felt she was in no mood for banter; and, moreover, with that name there naturally occurred to him the thought of Frank Dennis, which made his heart stand still. It was not her anger that he feared, nor even the diminution of her love, which had been indicated very significantly by the mention of his double name (which she had not used for months) instead of ‘Willie,’ but the possible diversion of her love to another object. Perhaps she was already making a comparison in her mind between himself and a certain other person who, whatever his faults, would, she knew, never have deceived her.

It was not impossible that love could stray, for had it not done so but a few hours ago, within his own experience, and with no such provocation? It was very different, of course, in his case; there is a certain latitude given to men, and the handsomest man on the stage, or off it, would, he was well aware, not have caused Margaret to forget her Willie even for an instant. But then women, when they are jealous, are capable of anything, and from pique will not only ‘be off’ with those they love, but sometimes ‘be on’ with another.

‘I am very sorry, Margaret,’ he stammered, ‘but I really don’t know what you mean.’

‘Then your face belies your words,’ was the cold reply. ‘Why did you not tell me yesterday that you were going to meet that woman at Drury Lane this morning?’

‘There were two of them,’ said William Henry eagerly, urged, as he felt, by some fortunate inspiration to tell the whole truth.

‘Oh, there were two, were there?’ Though she strove to keep her tone the same, there was a relaxation in her severity that did notescape him; the reflection that there was safety in numbers had no doubt occurred to her. ‘You omitted that circumstance, sir, in your previous narrative, with, no doubt, many others.’

‘Indeed, Margaret, I have told you all; that is, all that I thought could have any interest for you. I ought to have said, of course, that the invitation to the theatre came from both the ladies; they wanted to have some alteration made in the play for them (which of course was out of the question). Mrs. Powell was very angry about it; I should think that she had a temper of her own.’

‘I don’t want to hear about Mrs. Powell.’

There was once a young gentleman who was endeavouring to make himself agreeable as araconteurin the presence of Royalty. When he had done his story the Royal lips let fall these terrible words: ‘We are not amused.’ Poor William Henry found himself in much the same position. His reminiscences of Mrs. Powell were, as it were, cut off at the main.Margaret’s instinct had eliminated that factor from the sum of the matter as insignificant; there was another person to talk about, it was true, but he was averse to enter upon that subject. Unhappily it was suggested to him as a topic.

‘Who, may I ask, is this Mrs. Jordan?’

‘Well, she was the other lady, of course, who called here,’ said William Henry (he felt that he was turning a lively red, and it was so important to him that he should keep his colour). ‘She is to perform Flavia in the play.’

‘The person in man’s clothes?’ observed Margaret icily.

‘Well, she plays the Page; you can hardly expect her to play him in petticoats. It was not a dress rehearsal,’ stammered the young man, ‘if you mean that. They simply asked me—both of them—to step round to the theatre this morning and render them some professional assistance, which, as it happened, I am unable to do. I cannot for the life of me see what harm there was in that.’

‘Then why did you not tell me you were going?’

It was the same dreadful question over again. Of course he ought to have told her, and if he had had any idea that she would have come to know of it he certainly would have done so. He looked so sorry (not to say silly) that Margaret’s heart melted a little.

‘You know how I hate anything clandestine and underhand, William Henry.’

‘I know it,’ he answered, with a deep sigh. His face was one of such abject misery, that one would have said, whatever he had done, he was sufficiently punished for it. Her heart melted more and more; he went on penitently:

‘Of course I ought to have told you, Margaret, but I did not conceal it because there was anything to be ashamed of. Only I knew you would not like it, that you would think there was harm in it—as you do, it seems—where there is no harm. It was surely a great piece of goodnature on their part, after I haddisappointed them about the play, to offer to do their best for it, and to get the Duke——’

‘Did they both go with you to St. James’s Palace?’ she put in drily.

He was on the point of saying that there had been only room for two in the coach, but fortunately he was a young gentleman who thought before he spoke. It would certainly not have been a satisfactory explanation, and the very idea that he had been about to make it turned him scarlet.

‘No wonder you are ashamed of yourself, sir,’ said she, perceiving his confusion. ‘Why do you talk to me about “they“ and “them,” when you know that only one of these women had anything to do with the matter?’

‘Well, naturally, my dear, Mrs. Jordan was the person to introduce me to his Royal Highness, since she has been privately married to him.’

‘I don’t believe one word of it.’

‘I can only say she told me so,’ said William Henry simply.

Margaret did not give much credit to theassertion of this lady, but she believed what William Henry said. After all, the poor young fellow had probably meant no harm, nor even dreamt of the meshes into which this designing female would have drawn him. He had only been indiscreet and a little surreptitious, and had been rated enough.

‘You don’t know what these actresses are, Willie,’ she said gravely, ‘nor what pleasure they take in making misery and estrangements between honest people. Nothing this woman would like better, I’m sure of it, than to come between you and me.’

‘My dear Margaret, how can you say such things? If you had only seen her!’

‘I don’t want to see her,’ interpolated Margaret quickly.

‘A person entirely devoted to her profession, in which she is justly held in the highest esteem.’

‘I don’t deny that she is a good actress,’ returned Margaret significantly; ‘indeed I have no doubt of it.’

‘And she spoke of you so kindly.’

‘Of me? How dared she speak of me?’ cried Margaret with flashing eye. ‘What does she know of me?’

‘Well, she saw you just for a moment when you looked in by accident yesterday, and she said how beautiful and kind you looked, and congratulated me——’

‘It was shameful of you to tell those women of our engagement,’ she put in.

‘Why not? What was there to be ashamed of? Am I not proud of it? Why should I not have told them?’

His simplicity was very touching. If there had been such a thing as a maleingénueupon the stage, the speaker would have been the very man to play it.

‘How they must have laughed at you in their sleeves, my poor Willie!’ she answered pityingly.

He did not think it necessary to state that theyhadlaughed at him, and by no means in their sleeves.

‘I will never see them again if you don’t wish it,’ said William Henry, still sticking tothe plural number. ‘Only I suppose when the “Vortigern“ comes to be acted it will be necessary to do so just for a night or two.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind your seeing them at the play, Willie. We shall, of course, be there together.’

He had meant that his assistance would probably be required behind the scenes. Indeed Mrs. Jordan had taken it for granted that he would be a constant visitor at the theatre while the play was in preparation, and he had very willingly acquiesced in that arrangement, but he had not the courage to say so. He was only too thankful that Margaret’s suspicions were at last set at rest. He knew that she was of a jealous disposition, and also that she abhorred deceit, and he loved her none the less on either account, but there were reasons why her manifestation of such excessive displeasure on so small a matter alarmed him, and made his heart heavy within him. However, in a month or two they would be married. He would then be her very own, and she would have no misgivings about him; and as todeceit, there would be no further cause for it, and what was past and gone would surely be forgiven. But still his heart was heavy.

Considering Margaret’s youth and her middle-class position in life, the irritation and annoyance she had exhibited may seem unnatural as well as uncalled for. Young women of her age and rank are not nowadays supposed to know so much about the temptations of the stage, but in her time matters were different. The charms of this and that popular actress, and even their mode of life, were topics of common talk, and there was none of them more talked about than Mrs. Jordan. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Margaret regarded her as a syren attracted by the notoriety (not to mention the innocence and beauty) of her Willie, who designed to wile him from the quiet harbour of domestic love into the stormy seas of passion. Moreover, it must be said for Margaret that her jealousy was not like that of some people who, while resenting the interference of others with their private property, do not lavish on it any especial kindness of theirown. She had always been the friend and defender of William Henry, even before he became her lover, and had long-established claims on his fidelity, and it galled her that one glimpse of a pretty face should have so worked with him as to induce him to renew acquaintance with it, under what seemed to her such suspicious circumstances, and especially in so secret and clandestine a fashion. It had always been a complaint of hers in the old days that William Henry was inclined to deception. It was in relation, however, to Mr. Erin only that she had observed it, and in that case there had been, certainly, excuses for the young man; but that he should have deceivedher—if, at least, concealment could be called deception—she justly considered to be less pardonable. However, she had now said her say, and with a vigour that the circumstances scarcely called for; indeed, she felt that she had been somewhat hard upon him. However wrong he had been to try to hoodwink her, that had been the extent of his offending. He could hardly have declined to go to the theatre; and, indeed, sheconfessed to herself that while the play was in progress it was not reasonable to expect him to hold no communication with those who were to perform in it. The matter interested him very much, nor did she forget that it was mainly on her own account, for did not her uncle’s consent to their union depend upon the play’s success?

When Mr. Erin presently announced the first rehearsal at the theatre, and suggested that William Henry should be present to witness it, Margaret made no opposition; her objections, in short, to the young man’s renewing his acquaintance with the fair Flavia were tacitly withdrawn. She acknowledged to herself that things could scarcely be otherwise, and that, after all, there could be no possible harm in the matter; and from that moment, whenever her Willie was out of her sight, she was more tormented with the fires of jealousy than ever.

She knew that he saw Mrs. Jordan constantly, and was yet compelled to ignore it; she burned to know what passed between them, yet scorned to inquire. The news WilliamHenry brought back with him of the prospects of the play seemed hardly of any consequence to her compared with matters on which he never spoke at all. What was it to her that Kemble was unsympathetic, dogged, and studiously apathetic in his rendering of Vortigern; that Phillimore as Horsus was more like a buffoon than a hero? What was it to her, on the other hand, that Mrs. Powell as Edmunda surpassed Mrs. Siddons herself? What she wished to know, and could not ask, was how that hussey Mrs. Jordan was behaving herself, not as Flavia in tights (though that idea was far from consolatory), but in her own proper person. Of one thing she felt convinced, that not content with seeing her Willie every day, this woman corresponded with him; that he received letters from her under that very roof. Else how was it that when the post now brought him missives in a hand that was strange to her, he would slip them into his pocket without a word of comment, and with an air of indifference that did not impose upon her for an instant? William Henry had nowa little sitting-room of his own, and she noticed that when these letters arrived he remained in it longer alone than usual; reading them, no doubt, over and over, perhaps replying to them in the same fervid style in which (she felt sure) they were written, and possibly (for Margaret, though no poet like her Willie, had a lively imagination of her own) even kissing them.

One morning the Epilogue to ‘Vortigern and Rowena’ arrived from Mr. Merry, and was discussed at breakfast-time word by word, as befitted so important a document. An hour afterwards, when William Henry had gone out, as Margaret was only too well convinced, to Drury Lane, Mr. Erin returned to the subject.

‘I don’t much like those concluding lines in the first part,’ he said—

The scattered flowers he left, benignly save,Posthumous flowers; the garland of the grave.

‘It ran “benignly save,“ did it not, Madge?’

‘I am not sure, uncle.’

‘Then just go and get the thing out of Samuel’s room.’

Margaret went and looked about her for the manuscript in question. It was nowhere to be found. But in her researches she came upon another document spread out in the half-opened drawer of the writing-table; it was written in a delicate hand on large letter-paper, and it was almost impossible that she could avoid reading the commencement of it.

‘My dear W. H.,’ it began, and then followed a mass of heterogeneous words without sense or meaning, as if they had been taken at random out of some dictionary. It is probable that Margaret had never heard of a cryptogram, but she had heard of communications written in cypher, and it flashed upon her mind at once that she was looking at some letter of that nature. It was bad enough that this abandoned hussey of Drury Lane, who dwelt but a mile away from them, and saw her Willie five days out of six, should nevertheless have the audacity to correspond with him; but that she should write such things as could not bear the light and had to be concealed in cypher was indeed intolerable. Granting herpremises, there was certainly ample cause for the indignation that mantled to her very forehead, and the bitterness that took possession of her very soul.

As she stood with one hand on the table, for her limbs trembled with the agitation that shook her mind, she heard the front door softly closed, and a hurried footstep in the passage. It was William Henry, who had remembered no doubt—too late—that he had left the letter exposed to view, and had returned to place it in some safer receptacle. The next moment he was face to face with her.

CHAPTER XXIX.THE CYPHER.‘I knowwhat you are come for,’ said Margaret in a broken voice, which had yet no touch of tenderness in it. ‘You are come for this letter.’ She snatched it from the drawer and held it before him. ‘It is no use to lie to me; your face tells me the truth.’William Henry’s face was indeed white to the lips; his eyes returned her gaze with a confused and frightened stare. He stammered out something, he knew not what, and sank into a chair.‘What,’ continued the girl, in harsh, pitiless tones, ‘have you nothing to say for yourself? Has your ready tongue no excuse to offer for this new duplicity?’‘Have you read the letter?’ he inquired hoarsely.f172‘I know what you are come for. You are come for this letter.’‘No; how could I?’The colour rushed back to his cheeks, and into his eyes there came a gleam of hope.‘No,’ she went on, ‘it is you who shall read it to me. If you decline to do so, I shall conclude that this vile creature has written you what is not fit for anyone, save women like herself, to hear, and your refusal will be the last words that you will ever address to me with my consent, so help me Heaven.’Mrs. Powell herself, when personating some heroine of the stage, never looked or spoke with greater earnestness of purpose than on this occasion did simple Margaret Slade out of the simplicity of her nature.‘I will read you the letter, Margaret,’ was William Henry’s quiet reply.His words, and still more his tone, staggered Margaret not a little. The change in his face and manner within the last few minutes had indeed been most remarkable. At first he had seemed so struck with the consciousness of guilt, and so hopeless of forgiveness, that he had not dared to throw himself upon hermercy. Then he had appeared to recover himself a little; and now he was quite calm and composed as though all apprehension had passed away from him.His voice as he said ‘I will read you the letter, Margaret,’ had even a tender reproach in it, as though he, and not she, were the injured party.‘Read it,’ she said; but her tone was no longer stubborn and imperious. It was plain that this woman’s letter was not a love-letter, or he would not have consented to read it; and if it was not a love-letter, what cause had she for anger? And yet, if it was not so, why had he exhibited such confusion—nay despair?‘I will read it, since you wish it,’ he went on, ‘though it is a breach of confidence. It is better to break one’s word than to break one’s heart.’The morality of this aphorism was somewhat questionable, but Margaret nodded assent. She took it, no doubt, in a particular sense. It was certainly better that she should know the worst than that any proviso of a designing woman,made for her own wicked convenience, should be respected.‘It is well to begin at the beginning,’ continued William Henry. ‘Be so good as to look at the address of that letter.’She did so with an indifferent air. She could almost have said that she had seen it before, for she recognised it at once as one of those missives of which he had received so many of late.‘Let me draw your attention to the postmark.’It was ‘Mallow: Ireland.’The letter fell from her hand. Self-humiliation mastered for the moment the happiness of discovering that he had not been false to her after all. It was certainly not with Mrs. Jordan that he was secretly corresponding, and probably with no one of her sex. If Margaret had been an older woman, with a larger experience of the ways of men, she might have regretted her misplaced indignation as ‘waste;’ it might have even struck her that the present mistake might weaken herposition if on some future occasion she should have better reason for her reproaches, but she had no thought except for the injustice she had done her lover. She stood before him with downcast head, stupefied and penitent.‘Oh, Willie, I am so sorry.’‘So am I, dear; sorry that you should have so little confidence in me; sorry that you should have thought me capable of carrying on, under the roof that shelters you, an intrigue with another woman. This letter—and I have received others like it—is from Reginald Talbot.’‘But, Willie, whatcouldI think?’ she pleaded humbly, ‘and why should you write to Mr. Talbot in cypher? And why when I charged you falsely—with—what—you have mentioned—did you look so—so guilty?’‘Say rather so hurt and shocked, Margaret,’ he answered gravely. ‘It was surely only natural that I should be shocked at finding the girl I loved so distrustful of me.’‘I was wrong, oh, very, very wrong; and yet,’ she pleaded, ‘I erred through love of you, Willie. If I had not cared for you so much—sovery much—I should not have been so unreasonable.’‘You mean so wild with jealousy,’ he replied smiling. ‘However, it’s all over now,’ and he held out his hand for the letter which she still retained.‘Please to read it to me,’ she said; ‘a few words will do.’His face grew pale again, as she thought with anger.‘Why so?’ he replied. ‘Are you not satisfied even now?’‘Yes, yes; it was foolish of me, I know, but I said “So help me Heaven.”’‘Oh, I see. For your oath’s sake. That is what Herod said to the daughter of Herodias. It is not a good example to follow.’He spoke stiffly, but she shook her head.‘I only ask for a few words, Willie.’‘But Talbot writes to me in confidence; about matters that only affect him and me. There is not a word that concerns you in it.’Still she shook her head. The girl was truth itself, not only in the spirit but in the letter.She had sworn not to speak with him unless he did a certain thing, and though the reason for his doing so no longer existed, her oath remained. Her stubbornness evidently annoyed him. Their parts in the little drama had as it were become reversed. The wrongdoer had become the injured person, andvice versâ.‘The facts are these,’ he said slowly. ‘Talbot and I, as you know, have a secret in common. He is the only person save myself, who has seen my patron. What he writes of him and his concerns—that is of the manuscripts—we do not wish others to see. We have therefore hit upon a device to keep our communications secret.’He took out of the drawer a piece of cardboard exactly the shape and size of ordinary letter-paper, full of large holes neatly cut at unequal distances. He placed it on blank paper, and through the interstices wrote these words:‘Margaret has done you the honour to take your finnikin hand-writing for that of Mrs. Jordan.’Then he took off the cardboard and filled in the spaces with a number of inconsequent words, so that the whole communication became meaningless.‘Talbot has another piece of cardboard exactly similar to this,’ he continued, ‘and has only to place it over this rubbish for my meaning to become apparent.’‘It is very ingenious,’ said Margaret. It was the highest praise she could afford. Such arts were distasteful to her. They seemed to suggest a natural turn for deception, and she secretly hoped that the invention lay at Talbot’s door.‘Yes, I think the plan does me some credit,’ said William Henry complacently. ‘Well, I have only to lay the cardboard over this letter that so excited your indignation, to get at the writer’s meaning.’Her eyes were turned towards him, but with no fixity of expression, she was bound to listen and to look, but her interest was gone.‘“Why do you not send me a copy of the play?”’ he rapidly read. “One would thinkit was you only who had any stake in it;“ and so on, and so on. I suppose you have no wish to pry further into our little secret?’ he added, folding up the letter at the same time.‘I did not wish to pry into it at all, Willie,’ she answered sorrowfully; ‘I again repeat I am sorry to have mistrusted you.’‘Well, well, let us say no more about it. Let us forgive and forget.’‘It is you who have to forgive, Willie, not I.’‘I don’t say that,’ he answered gravely; ‘but if you think so, keep your forgiveness, Maggie, for next time. Be sure I shall have need of it.’Here the voice of Mr. Erin was heard calling for Margaret.‘Why do you not bring me the play?’William Henry held up his finger in sign that she should not reveal his presence in the house to Mr. Erin, and taking the manuscript from a cupboard placed it in her hand.‘Take it him,’ he whispered, with a tender kiss.She kissed him again without a word; the tears stood in her eyes, as, the very image of penitence and self-reproach, she made her mute adieu.It was certainly an occasion on which some men, not unconscious of errors, might have congratulated themselves.The expression on William Henry’s face, however, was very far from one of triumph; it was white and worn and weary.‘Another such a victory,’ he murmured with a haggard smile, ‘and I shall be undone.’He locked the door and threw himself into a chair with an exhausted air, like an actor who, having played his part successfully, is conscious of having done so with great effort, and also that he owed more to good luck than to good guidance. ‘Great heaven!’ he muttered, ‘what an escape! Suppose she had found the key for herself and read the letter, or even if she had compelled me to do so. She must have heard it all. I could not have invented a syllable to save my life——. What a millstone is this fellow about my neck,’ he presentlycontinued, as he tore the letter along and across, and threw the fragments under his feet. ‘A copy of the play! No, that he shall never see till the time is past for harm to come of it. A few days more, and all will be safe. I will be pestered no longer with his cursed importunities.’Then he took the perforated cardboard and tore that likewise into small pieces. ‘Now I have burnt my boats with a vengeance,’ he added grimly.Then he rose and paced up and down the room, first rapidly, then slower and slower.‘I am afraid I have been hasty, after all,’ he murmured; ‘this Talbot is ill to deal with, and suspicious as the devil. If I tell him in what peril his communications have placed me, and that therefore I have destroyed his cypher, he will not believe me, though it is the truth. I must tell him that it has been destroyed by accident, and that therefore I dare not write him what he wishes, and that he will not believe either. If incredulity were genius, then indeed he would be a very clever fellow, but nototherwise. Great heavens! what rubbish he writes and calls it poetry. No, no, no,’ he muttered with knitted brows, ‘notthat, Master Reginald, at any price. And yet how mad it will make him to find it is not so. He will do me a mischief if he can, no doubt. However, he will know nothing till it is too late. Next Saturday will put me out of the reach of harm. Would it were Saturday, and all were well. That’s Shakespeare, by the bye, save that he says supper time. A bad augury—a bad augury. The Ides of March are come, but they have not yet gone.’ Here he took another turn up and down the room. ‘I wonder whether, with all his knowledge of humanity, Shakespeare ever knew a man who suffered like me. I wonder whether he sees me now, and knows about it. A strange thought indeed, and yet it may be so. Perhaps his great soul, which understands it all, has pity on me. Willshepity me? A still more momentous question. Pity is akin to love, he says, when love comes last. If love comes first, will pity follow it? What thoughts could I set downthis moment were I in the mood for it; and yet they say I am no more a poet than this Talbot. He a poet! The vain drivelling fool; curse his false heart and prying eyes! I hate him.’

THE CYPHER.

‘I knowwhat you are come for,’ said Margaret in a broken voice, which had yet no touch of tenderness in it. ‘You are come for this letter.’ She snatched it from the drawer and held it before him. ‘It is no use to lie to me; your face tells me the truth.’

William Henry’s face was indeed white to the lips; his eyes returned her gaze with a confused and frightened stare. He stammered out something, he knew not what, and sank into a chair.

‘What,’ continued the girl, in harsh, pitiless tones, ‘have you nothing to say for yourself? Has your ready tongue no excuse to offer for this new duplicity?’

‘Have you read the letter?’ he inquired hoarsely.

f172

‘I know what you are come for. You are come for this letter.’

‘I know what you are come for. You are come for this letter.’

‘I know what you are come for. You are come for this letter.’

‘No; how could I?’

The colour rushed back to his cheeks, and into his eyes there came a gleam of hope.

‘No,’ she went on, ‘it is you who shall read it to me. If you decline to do so, I shall conclude that this vile creature has written you what is not fit for anyone, save women like herself, to hear, and your refusal will be the last words that you will ever address to me with my consent, so help me Heaven.’

Mrs. Powell herself, when personating some heroine of the stage, never looked or spoke with greater earnestness of purpose than on this occasion did simple Margaret Slade out of the simplicity of her nature.

‘I will read you the letter, Margaret,’ was William Henry’s quiet reply.

His words, and still more his tone, staggered Margaret not a little. The change in his face and manner within the last few minutes had indeed been most remarkable. At first he had seemed so struck with the consciousness of guilt, and so hopeless of forgiveness, that he had not dared to throw himself upon hermercy. Then he had appeared to recover himself a little; and now he was quite calm and composed as though all apprehension had passed away from him.

His voice as he said ‘I will read you the letter, Margaret,’ had even a tender reproach in it, as though he, and not she, were the injured party.

‘Read it,’ she said; but her tone was no longer stubborn and imperious. It was plain that this woman’s letter was not a love-letter, or he would not have consented to read it; and if it was not a love-letter, what cause had she for anger? And yet, if it was not so, why had he exhibited such confusion—nay despair?

‘I will read it, since you wish it,’ he went on, ‘though it is a breach of confidence. It is better to break one’s word than to break one’s heart.’

The morality of this aphorism was somewhat questionable, but Margaret nodded assent. She took it, no doubt, in a particular sense. It was certainly better that she should know the worst than that any proviso of a designing woman,made for her own wicked convenience, should be respected.

‘It is well to begin at the beginning,’ continued William Henry. ‘Be so good as to look at the address of that letter.’

She did so with an indifferent air. She could almost have said that she had seen it before, for she recognised it at once as one of those missives of which he had received so many of late.

‘Let me draw your attention to the postmark.’

It was ‘Mallow: Ireland.’

The letter fell from her hand. Self-humiliation mastered for the moment the happiness of discovering that he had not been false to her after all. It was certainly not with Mrs. Jordan that he was secretly corresponding, and probably with no one of her sex. If Margaret had been an older woman, with a larger experience of the ways of men, she might have regretted her misplaced indignation as ‘waste;’ it might have even struck her that the present mistake might weaken herposition if on some future occasion she should have better reason for her reproaches, but she had no thought except for the injustice she had done her lover. She stood before him with downcast head, stupefied and penitent.

‘Oh, Willie, I am so sorry.’

‘So am I, dear; sorry that you should have so little confidence in me; sorry that you should have thought me capable of carrying on, under the roof that shelters you, an intrigue with another woman. This letter—and I have received others like it—is from Reginald Talbot.’

‘But, Willie, whatcouldI think?’ she pleaded humbly, ‘and why should you write to Mr. Talbot in cypher? And why when I charged you falsely—with—what—you have mentioned—did you look so—so guilty?’

‘Say rather so hurt and shocked, Margaret,’ he answered gravely. ‘It was surely only natural that I should be shocked at finding the girl I loved so distrustful of me.’

‘I was wrong, oh, very, very wrong; and yet,’ she pleaded, ‘I erred through love of you, Willie. If I had not cared for you so much—sovery much—I should not have been so unreasonable.’

‘You mean so wild with jealousy,’ he replied smiling. ‘However, it’s all over now,’ and he held out his hand for the letter which she still retained.

‘Please to read it to me,’ she said; ‘a few words will do.’

His face grew pale again, as she thought with anger.

‘Why so?’ he replied. ‘Are you not satisfied even now?’

‘Yes, yes; it was foolish of me, I know, but I said “So help me Heaven.”’

‘Oh, I see. For your oath’s sake. That is what Herod said to the daughter of Herodias. It is not a good example to follow.’

He spoke stiffly, but she shook her head.

‘I only ask for a few words, Willie.’

‘But Talbot writes to me in confidence; about matters that only affect him and me. There is not a word that concerns you in it.’

Still she shook her head. The girl was truth itself, not only in the spirit but in the letter.She had sworn not to speak with him unless he did a certain thing, and though the reason for his doing so no longer existed, her oath remained. Her stubbornness evidently annoyed him. Their parts in the little drama had as it were become reversed. The wrongdoer had become the injured person, andvice versâ.

‘The facts are these,’ he said slowly. ‘Talbot and I, as you know, have a secret in common. He is the only person save myself, who has seen my patron. What he writes of him and his concerns—that is of the manuscripts—we do not wish others to see. We have therefore hit upon a device to keep our communications secret.’

He took out of the drawer a piece of cardboard exactly the shape and size of ordinary letter-paper, full of large holes neatly cut at unequal distances. He placed it on blank paper, and through the interstices wrote these words:

‘Margaret has done you the honour to take your finnikin hand-writing for that of Mrs. Jordan.’

Then he took off the cardboard and filled in the spaces with a number of inconsequent words, so that the whole communication became meaningless.

‘Talbot has another piece of cardboard exactly similar to this,’ he continued, ‘and has only to place it over this rubbish for my meaning to become apparent.’

‘It is very ingenious,’ said Margaret. It was the highest praise she could afford. Such arts were distasteful to her. They seemed to suggest a natural turn for deception, and she secretly hoped that the invention lay at Talbot’s door.

‘Yes, I think the plan does me some credit,’ said William Henry complacently. ‘Well, I have only to lay the cardboard over this letter that so excited your indignation, to get at the writer’s meaning.’

Her eyes were turned towards him, but with no fixity of expression, she was bound to listen and to look, but her interest was gone.

‘“Why do you not send me a copy of the play?”’ he rapidly read. “One would thinkit was you only who had any stake in it;“ and so on, and so on. I suppose you have no wish to pry further into our little secret?’ he added, folding up the letter at the same time.

‘I did not wish to pry into it at all, Willie,’ she answered sorrowfully; ‘I again repeat I am sorry to have mistrusted you.’

‘Well, well, let us say no more about it. Let us forgive and forget.’

‘It is you who have to forgive, Willie, not I.’

‘I don’t say that,’ he answered gravely; ‘but if you think so, keep your forgiveness, Maggie, for next time. Be sure I shall have need of it.’

Here the voice of Mr. Erin was heard calling for Margaret.

‘Why do you not bring me the play?’

William Henry held up his finger in sign that she should not reveal his presence in the house to Mr. Erin, and taking the manuscript from a cupboard placed it in her hand.

‘Take it him,’ he whispered, with a tender kiss.

She kissed him again without a word; the tears stood in her eyes, as, the very image of penitence and self-reproach, she made her mute adieu.

It was certainly an occasion on which some men, not unconscious of errors, might have congratulated themselves.

The expression on William Henry’s face, however, was very far from one of triumph; it was white and worn and weary.

‘Another such a victory,’ he murmured with a haggard smile, ‘and I shall be undone.’

He locked the door and threw himself into a chair with an exhausted air, like an actor who, having played his part successfully, is conscious of having done so with great effort, and also that he owed more to good luck than to good guidance. ‘Great heaven!’ he muttered, ‘what an escape! Suppose she had found the key for herself and read the letter, or even if she had compelled me to do so. She must have heard it all. I could not have invented a syllable to save my life——. What a millstone is this fellow about my neck,’ he presentlycontinued, as he tore the letter along and across, and threw the fragments under his feet. ‘A copy of the play! No, that he shall never see till the time is past for harm to come of it. A few days more, and all will be safe. I will be pestered no longer with his cursed importunities.’

Then he took the perforated cardboard and tore that likewise into small pieces. ‘Now I have burnt my boats with a vengeance,’ he added grimly.

Then he rose and paced up and down the room, first rapidly, then slower and slower.

‘I am afraid I have been hasty, after all,’ he murmured; ‘this Talbot is ill to deal with, and suspicious as the devil. If I tell him in what peril his communications have placed me, and that therefore I have destroyed his cypher, he will not believe me, though it is the truth. I must tell him that it has been destroyed by accident, and that therefore I dare not write him what he wishes, and that he will not believe either. If incredulity were genius, then indeed he would be a very clever fellow, but nototherwise. Great heavens! what rubbish he writes and calls it poetry. No, no, no,’ he muttered with knitted brows, ‘notthat, Master Reginald, at any price. And yet how mad it will make him to find it is not so. He will do me a mischief if he can, no doubt. However, he will know nothing till it is too late. Next Saturday will put me out of the reach of harm. Would it were Saturday, and all were well. That’s Shakespeare, by the bye, save that he says supper time. A bad augury—a bad augury. The Ides of March are come, but they have not yet gone.’ Here he took another turn up and down the room. ‘I wonder whether, with all his knowledge of humanity, Shakespeare ever knew a man who suffered like me. I wonder whether he sees me now, and knows about it. A strange thought indeed, and yet it may be so. Perhaps his great soul, which understands it all, has pity on me. Willshepity me? A still more momentous question. Pity is akin to love, he says, when love comes last. If love comes first, will pity follow it? What thoughts could I set downthis moment were I in the mood for it; and yet they say I am no more a poet than this Talbot. He a poet! The vain drivelling fool; curse his false heart and prying eyes! I hate him.’

CHAPTER XXX.THE PLAY.Thefirst night of one new play is much the same as that of another, I suppose, all the world over. The opening and shutting of doors, the rustling of silks and satins, the murmur of expectancy, cannot hush the beating of the young author’s breast, as he sits at the back of the box and longs, like the sick man, for the morning. Everybody who is anybody (a charming phrase indicating about one billionth of the human race) is there. Men of fashion and women of wit: gossips and critics; playwriters who have been damned and hope for company in their Inferno; playwriters who have succeeded, with no love for a new rival; the fast and the loose. Lights everywhere, but as much difficulty in finding places as though itwere dark; mute recognitions, whispered information (’A dead failure, they tell me.’ ‘The best thing since the “School for Scandal”’); fashionable titters; consumption with her ill-bred cough. These are things peculiar to all first nights, but the first night of ‘a newly discovered play by William Shakespeare’ was, as one may imagine, something exceptional.Malone, of course, had been at work. The public had been warned against ‘an impudent imposture’ in ‘a Letter to Lord Charlemont’ (surely the longest ever written) of which Edmund Burke had been so good as to say ‘that he had got to the seventy-third page before he went to sleep.’ It had been necessary to issue a counter-handbill and to distribute it at the doors.‘Vortigern.‘A malevolent and impudent attack on the Shakespeare Manuscript having appeared on the eve of representation of this play, evidently intended to injure the proprietor of the Manuscript, Mr. Erin feels it impossible, within theshort space of time between the publishing and the representation, to produce an answer to Mr. Malone’s most ill-founded assertions in his “Inquiry.“ He is therefore induced to request that “Vortigern and Rowena“ may be heard with that candour which has ever distinguished a British audience.’Opposition handbills were also in circulation, headed ‘A Forgery.’ The public interest in the play was unprecedented. The doors of Drury Lane were besieged. Within, the excitement was even more tremendous. The house was crammed to the very roof. Many paid box prices though they knew no seats were to be obtained there, for the purpose of getting down into the pit. ‘The air was charged with the murmurs of the contending factions.’ Nothing was ever heard or seen like it within the walls of a playhouse. In a centre box sat Samuel Erin and Margaret. The antiquary had thought it right that they should occupy a conspicuous position and show a bold front to the world, and she had consented to this arrangement without a murmur, for was it not for herWillie’s sake? She looked very pale, however, and when addressed had hardly voice to answer. The vast assemblage in such commotion, the shouts and cries from the gallery, the satirical cries of ‘Author! Author!’—though the overture had not commenced—appalled her.In a small box on the opposite side of the house, sat alone a tall handsome man, as pale as she. He had drawn the little curtain forward, so as to conceal himself from the occupants of the house, and kept his face, which wore a look of great distress, turned towards the stage. Through the folds of the curtain he had stolen one glance at her as she took her seat; but afterwards he had looked no more at her. In the next compartment was another and younger man, who also seemed to have a personal interest in Margaret Slade. His box was full of spectators, but he sat at the back of them, and unseen by her, fixed his eyes upon her from time to time with a searching expression. When the play began, however, he listened to it with the most rapt attention—not a word escaped him—and withevery word his face grew darker and more malevolent.Behind the curtain opinion was almost as much divided as before it. Kemble was in his grimmest humour; disinclined, as many said, both then and afterwards, to give his Vortigern fair play. Some of the inferior actors, taking their tune from him, certainly abstained from exerting themselves, and even made no secret beforehand of their design to abstain. It was a play cumbrous in construction, and even in the very names of the dramatis personæ, such as Wortimerus and Catagrinus; but it had been accepted by the management, and the company, as it was afterwards urged, and with justice, should have done their best for it. Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Jordan vied with one another in encouraging William Henry, who remained all the evening behind the scenes. The former made a magnificent Edmunda; the latter, of whom the greatest of our dramatic critics writes, ‘Delightful Mrs. Jordan, whose voice did away with the cares of the whole house before they saw her come in,’ surpassedherself. If beauty and vivacity could have saved the piece she would have saved it, single-handed. There was a great deal of opposition, but at first the play went fairly well. The swell and roll of its sonorous lines hid their lack of ideas, and in a fashion supported themselves unaided.‘We are safe now, the “Vortigern“ will succeed, Henry,’ said Mrs. Jordan cheerfully, as she left the stage at the close of the second act.William Henry did not answer; his face, pale and haggard as it had been throughout the evening, had suddenly assumed a look of horror.‘What is the matter with you, lad?’ exclaimed Mrs. Powell. ‘You would make a good actor, but a very bad author; you could not look more desponding if the play was your own. It is going all right; you must not mind a hiss or two.’‘I fear him,’ whispered William Henry, hoarsely. ‘That is his hateful voice; it is all over.’The two ladies looked at one another significantly; they had seen young fathers of promising plays on first nights before, but here was a mere godfather worse than any of them. They thought that the young fellow had taken leave of his wits.‘I tell you it is all over,’ continued the wretched youth; ‘he has come here to damn me.’‘If you mean the Devil, that is nothing new,’ said Mrs. Powell; ‘he is always, so we are told, in the play-house.’She spoke very sharply; she thought it the right remedy to apply under the circumstances, just as she might have recommended bending back the fingers in an extreme case of hysterics.‘Come here,’ said Mrs. Jordan, leading the young man to a spot where, through a chink in the curtain, they could get a view of the box where his father and cousin sat. ‘Look at your Margaret yonder; she is not a coward like you.’ Indeed, the more the people hissed, the calmer and the more indifferent Margaretseemed to be, though under that unmoved exterior she suffered agonies. She was thinking of her Willie, though she could not see him, and love enhanced her beauty.It was a frightful scene of turmoil, though up till now a good-natured one. The actor who had last left the stage (or rather who was left upon it, for he had been killed in combat) had had, by some mismanagement, the curtain dropped upon his legs, and had jumped up and rubbed them before the audience in a manner very unbecoming a corpse. At this they screamed with laughter, to which his Highness the Duke of Clarence, in the royal box, contributed his full share. Their good humour was, therefore, for the present, assured, though such mirth was hardly conducive to the success of a tragedy. But at the commencement of the next act there were signs of ill-nature. There were cries set agoing from a box on the upper tier, of ‘Forgery! forgery!’ and even of ‘Thief Erin! Thief Erin! look at Thief Erin!’Kemble’s magnificent voice alone could make itself heard above these sounds of displeasure.He was apostrophising the King of Terrors:—Oh sovereign Death,Who hast for thy domain this world immense.Churchyards and charnelhouses are thy haunts,And hospitals thy sumptuous palaces;And when thou wouldst be merry thou dost chooseThe gaudy chamber of a dying king.And then thou dost ope wide thy monstrous jaws,And with rude laughter and fantastic tricksThou clapp’st thy rattling fingers to thy side;And when this solemn mockery is o’er——Here he was suffered to proceed no further; that unfortunate line, uttered in the most sepulchral tone, was the signal for the most discordant howl that was ever heard within the walls of a theatre. He repeated the line with his own peculiar emphasis, and even, as a spectator tells us, ‘with a solemn grimace.’ It was the death-blow of the piece. A scene of confusion ensued which beggars description. Suddenly, and as the newspapers of the day said, ‘without any premonition,’ a rush was made for the box occupied by the Erins. Fortunately, however, one man at least had premonition of it. He was the one who hasbeen mentioned as occupying a box by himself. He had been silent all the evening, taking no part either with the partisans or the opponents of the play, but with eyes ever attentive to what was going on. The voice of the young fellow in the next compartment had attracted him above all others; it had malevolence in it which was wanting in the other cases, and, though he did not recognise it, sounded not unfamiliar to him. It had been the first to raise the cry of ‘Forger!’ and the only one which had mentioned the name of Erin. As he repeated the words for the third or fourth time, some drunken fellow hiccuped ‘Where are they?’ To which the malevolent voice replied, ‘I’ll show you. The young scoundrel is hiding behind the curtain, but we’ll have him out.’f194The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble.The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble, led by Reginald Talbot. They ran in their stupid fury at full speed, but not so fast as Frank Dennis would have run could he have got free of them. He had dashed from his box the instant he had heard Talbot’s vengeful cry, but it had already raised the wilder spirits of the house, and they had rushed out from this door and that, and interposed themselves between him and their leader. He beheld already Margaret surrounded by this wild and wanton crew, the old man maltreated, and William Henry, evidently the object of this fellow’s hatred, torn to pieces. He ran with the impetuous crowd, parting them like water left and right with his broad shoulders, till he gained a place among the foremost. Talbot, leading by a few paces, had reached a spot where two staircases met; the one a narrow one, leading straight down to a few boxes, in one of which Margaret was seated, the other a broader flight, which led to one of the exits of the house. Talbot, wild with haste and rage, cast a glance behind him to point out to his followers the right direction to take, when he met Dennis’ eye, and strove to turn and speak. But ere he could do so, Frank’s strong fingers were on his neck, and impelled him forward, like the wind, to the top of the broader stair. The others, who knew not what had happened,thought that they were still following their leader to their destination, and ran on full pelt behind them. Ere the third step was reached, half a dozen had fallen headlong, and half a score came toppling over these. Oaths and groans mingled with the cries of those who still pushed on behind, but Reginald Talbot neither spoke nor fell. The fingers that had closed about his neck clutched his throat also, while at the same time they kept him up, though his legs used a speed which they had never before attained to; they took their four and even five steps at a time. Fortunately for him, and perhaps for his custodian also, the great door at the foot of the staircase was open to the street, and when they reached it Frank simply let his companion go, who, bereft of sense, though by no means of motion, fell face foremost, with the most frightful violence, into a mud heap. A friendly pillar brought Dennis himself to anchorage, who then quietly turned and entered the theatre by another way.Thanks to his presence of mind and strength of body, the house was now freed of its moredangerous elements, and an attempt was being made to finish the play, though almost in dumb show. Mrs. Jordan, though greatly agitated, had even the courage to speak the epilogue, and for the first time found her graces and witcheries of no avail. Margaret would have stayed to say a few words of love and confidence to William Henry, but Mr. Erin hurried her away.‘It was a planned thing,’ he kept murmuring on the way home in the hackney-coach. ‘There was a plot to damn the play; that devil Malone was at the bottom of it.’But Margaret was not thinking of Malone, nor even of the play, concerning which, though she heard them not, there were reports, besides its failure, of misadventure and even death. She was thinking of Willie, and why he did not come home to be comforted. The two sat down alone to supper, of which neither could touch a mouthful; the antiquary full of woeful thoughts, the girl with only one question in her mind, ‘Why does he not come?’The maid thought she had seen him at thedoor when her mistress got out of the carriage; there was certainly some young man with his hat pulled over his eyes, who had watched her into the house, and having, as it seemed, assured himself of her safety, had walked away. It was possible of course that this might have been Willie, but whither had he gone?‘It is no use your waiting for William Henry,’ said the antiquary roughly; ‘why don’t you eat?’She noticed that her uncle no longer spoke of ‘Samuel,’ and the change jarred upon her feelings, already strained and tried. It was no fault of Willie’s that the play had not succeeded, and it was cruel to visit such a misfortune upon his innocent head.‘It is only natural that I should be anxious about him,’ she returned with some touch of resentment.‘Pooh, pooh! why should you be anxious? He is no doubt supping with one of the players.’His indifferent words struck her like a blow at random. Was it conceivable, after what had happened that evening, that Willie shouldprefer the society of another to her own? Above all, was it possible that that one should be Mrs. Jordan? She could not but notice how Flavia had fought for the play, and had hardly known whether to admire or detest her for it. If she had been in her place, and could have done it, she would have fought for it too, but then she would have an adequate motive. Why should that woman have dared so much for it when the others had performed their parts in so sluggish and perfunctory a manner? It must have been because she had her heart in it. And who could have their heart in a mere stage-play, a thing at the best full of fictitious woes and imaginary heroes? There must have been human love—or what such creatures took for love—to have enlisted her in its cause. Oh, why did not Willie come?As the night wore on apprehensions for her lover’s personal safety took the place of these jealous fears. What might not despair and disappointment have induced him to do? In her wretchedness and need of sympathy and consolation, she ventured to hint at this to Mr. Erin.‘It is surely very odd, uncle. Willie ought to be home by this time at all events. Should we not send somewhere?’‘What nonsense! Whither should we send, and why? The lad is old enough to take care of himself.’‘But perhaps in his dejection and—and—misery, uncle, he might not have any care of himself.’‘Tush! he is not of that sort. He has much too high an opinion of his own value to throw himself away—into the river, for instance. That such an idea should have entered your mind, however, shows what an unstable fellow you think him; and in some ways—though not in that way—heisunstable. He is but a boy, after all, and a spoilt boy. I take blame to myself that I suffered him to entertain the delusion that he was fit to take to himself a wife. It was conditional indeed upon certain contingencies which have not taken place, so that the whole affair is null and void.’‘Uncle!’ Margaret rose from her chair,and with white face and flashing eyes confronted the old man.‘Of course it’s null and void,’ he went on, flattening the tobacco in his pipe with its stopper, and affecting an indifferent air. ‘A bargain’s a bargain, though indeed, as I have said, it is one that I should never have entered into in any case, but the mere vulgar question of ways and means now puts an end to the matter. Of course he looked for material results from the “Vortigern.“ It will now not keep the stage another night, while the publication of the play is rendered worthless. It is not his fault, of course; I don’t blame him. It is not in mortals to command success. There is nothing for him now but to return to the conveyancing business; and in ten years or so there is no knowing but that he may step into old Bingley’s shoes.’‘And I?’ cried Margaret bitterly. ‘What am I to do? To wait for him?’‘Certainly not; that would be hopeless indeed. The best thing you can possibly do just at present is to—I shall make arrangements forhis lodging elsewhere out of harm’s way—is to begin to forget all about him.’‘Forget him—forget Willie? How can I?’‘By thinking of somebody else,’ returned the antiquary coolly: ‘that I have heard is the best way. At all events it will have to be done.’‘Do you think then a woman’s heart is like a seal, uncle, on which an image is impressed, and which, held to some fierce flame—as mine seems to be, Heaven help me, this moment—it straightway becomes a blank ready for the reception of another image? Oh, no, no, I will wait ten years for Willie, if it be necessary, but I will never forget him.’‘He’ll forgetyouin half the time,’ was the dry rejoinder.‘You speak falsely as well as cruelly, uncle,’ said Margaret passionately.There had been a time when even passion could not have nerved her to speak so boldly to the antiquary; and there had been a time when if she had dared to do so the old man would have put down his foot upon suchpassion and crunched the sparks out. But just now Margaret was too full of her misery and the sense of wrong to care what she said, while her uncle on his part, though he was fully resolved to put an end to his niece’s engagement with William Henry, could not at once resume the relative position to her he had occupied before it was mooted.‘As to my speaking falsely concerning William Henry’s fidelity,’ he answered quietly, ‘time alone can prove that: and there will be certainly plenty of time; while as to cruelty I really cannot accuse myself of having been cruel.’‘What! when you have allowed the mutual love between your son and me for months to ripen without censure? When you have heard him call me his own ten times a day, and never reproved him for it. When you have thrown us together and left us together? And now because something has not succeeded, of the success of which you made sure, do you wish to tear us asunder and bid us forget one another. And then, ohshame, do you dare to say you are not cruel?’The old man made her no reply, perhaps his conscience pricked him in the matter, or perhaps he perceived that it was useless to argue with her in her present excited state.‘Have you any fault to find with Willie?’ she continued reproachfully. ‘Has he not done all he could do in this unfortunate affair? What has happened to the “Vortigern“ that he could help or hinder? Do you suppose he has deceived you because it has not succeeded?‘Of course not,’ put in the antiquary testily; ‘the boy is honest enough, no doubt; but one must look at things from a reasonable point of view. Come, come, we can talk of these things to-morrow. It is getting late. Let us to bed.’She answered not a word, but sat with her face bowed down on the table and hidden in her hands, while he took up his candle and left her. She remained in the same position for many minutes, when suddenly there camea gentle knock, a mere tap, at the front door. She was on her feet in a moment, with her long hair loose behind her ears, listening. It was not Willie’s knock, she knew, but it might be news of Willie. The clock on the mantelpiece had just struck two. Then came the tap again; this time a little more distinct. It was evident that her uncle had not heard it, and the servant had long gone to bed. There were many bad characters abroad in the street in those times, restrained by a very inefficient constabulary, but Margaret did not hesitate to obey this second summons. She went to the door and undid the fastenings without making the least noise.A woman stood on the step, to judge by her figure a young one, but her face was hidden in her hood.‘You are Margaret?’ she said, in clear sweet tones mingled with an ineffable pity.‘I am,’ she answered, with a dreadful fear at her heart. She felt that some messenger of evil tidings stood before her.‘I thought so; I felt sure that you wouldbe sitting up for him,’ murmured the other softly.‘Where is he? Is he ill? Why does he not come home?’ gasped Margaret.‘He is not ill, but he cannot come home. Let me in, and I will tell you all.’With a gentle pressure, for Margaret’s instinct was to oppose her, the visitor made her way into the house. ‘Let me see you quite alone,’ she said; ‘somewhere where we cannot be interrupted. I have news for your private ear—I am sorry to say, bad news.’‘And who are you?’ Margaret’s voice was antagonistic, almost defiant. She resented this woman’s coming beyond all measure, but the fear within her compelled her to listen to what she might have to say.‘I am Mrs. Jordan,’ was the quiet reply.

THE PLAY.

Thefirst night of one new play is much the same as that of another, I suppose, all the world over. The opening and shutting of doors, the rustling of silks and satins, the murmur of expectancy, cannot hush the beating of the young author’s breast, as he sits at the back of the box and longs, like the sick man, for the morning. Everybody who is anybody (a charming phrase indicating about one billionth of the human race) is there. Men of fashion and women of wit: gossips and critics; playwriters who have been damned and hope for company in their Inferno; playwriters who have succeeded, with no love for a new rival; the fast and the loose. Lights everywhere, but as much difficulty in finding places as though itwere dark; mute recognitions, whispered information (’A dead failure, they tell me.’ ‘The best thing since the “School for Scandal”’); fashionable titters; consumption with her ill-bred cough. These are things peculiar to all first nights, but the first night of ‘a newly discovered play by William Shakespeare’ was, as one may imagine, something exceptional.

Malone, of course, had been at work. The public had been warned against ‘an impudent imposture’ in ‘a Letter to Lord Charlemont’ (surely the longest ever written) of which Edmund Burke had been so good as to say ‘that he had got to the seventy-third page before he went to sleep.’ It had been necessary to issue a counter-handbill and to distribute it at the doors.

‘Vortigern.

‘A malevolent and impudent attack on the Shakespeare Manuscript having appeared on the eve of representation of this play, evidently intended to injure the proprietor of the Manuscript, Mr. Erin feels it impossible, within theshort space of time between the publishing and the representation, to produce an answer to Mr. Malone’s most ill-founded assertions in his “Inquiry.“ He is therefore induced to request that “Vortigern and Rowena“ may be heard with that candour which has ever distinguished a British audience.’

Opposition handbills were also in circulation, headed ‘A Forgery.’ The public interest in the play was unprecedented. The doors of Drury Lane were besieged. Within, the excitement was even more tremendous. The house was crammed to the very roof. Many paid box prices though they knew no seats were to be obtained there, for the purpose of getting down into the pit. ‘The air was charged with the murmurs of the contending factions.’ Nothing was ever heard or seen like it within the walls of a playhouse. In a centre box sat Samuel Erin and Margaret. The antiquary had thought it right that they should occupy a conspicuous position and show a bold front to the world, and she had consented to this arrangement without a murmur, for was it not for herWillie’s sake? She looked very pale, however, and when addressed had hardly voice to answer. The vast assemblage in such commotion, the shouts and cries from the gallery, the satirical cries of ‘Author! Author!’—though the overture had not commenced—appalled her.

In a small box on the opposite side of the house, sat alone a tall handsome man, as pale as she. He had drawn the little curtain forward, so as to conceal himself from the occupants of the house, and kept his face, which wore a look of great distress, turned towards the stage. Through the folds of the curtain he had stolen one glance at her as she took her seat; but afterwards he had looked no more at her. In the next compartment was another and younger man, who also seemed to have a personal interest in Margaret Slade. His box was full of spectators, but he sat at the back of them, and unseen by her, fixed his eyes upon her from time to time with a searching expression. When the play began, however, he listened to it with the most rapt attention—not a word escaped him—and withevery word his face grew darker and more malevolent.

Behind the curtain opinion was almost as much divided as before it. Kemble was in his grimmest humour; disinclined, as many said, both then and afterwards, to give his Vortigern fair play. Some of the inferior actors, taking their tune from him, certainly abstained from exerting themselves, and even made no secret beforehand of their design to abstain. It was a play cumbrous in construction, and even in the very names of the dramatis personæ, such as Wortimerus and Catagrinus; but it had been accepted by the management, and the company, as it was afterwards urged, and with justice, should have done their best for it. Mrs. Powell and Mrs. Jordan vied with one another in encouraging William Henry, who remained all the evening behind the scenes. The former made a magnificent Edmunda; the latter, of whom the greatest of our dramatic critics writes, ‘Delightful Mrs. Jordan, whose voice did away with the cares of the whole house before they saw her come in,’ surpassedherself. If beauty and vivacity could have saved the piece she would have saved it, single-handed. There was a great deal of opposition, but at first the play went fairly well. The swell and roll of its sonorous lines hid their lack of ideas, and in a fashion supported themselves unaided.

‘We are safe now, the “Vortigern“ will succeed, Henry,’ said Mrs. Jordan cheerfully, as she left the stage at the close of the second act.

William Henry did not answer; his face, pale and haggard as it had been throughout the evening, had suddenly assumed a look of horror.

‘What is the matter with you, lad?’ exclaimed Mrs. Powell. ‘You would make a good actor, but a very bad author; you could not look more desponding if the play was your own. It is going all right; you must not mind a hiss or two.’

‘I fear him,’ whispered William Henry, hoarsely. ‘That is his hateful voice; it is all over.’

The two ladies looked at one another significantly; they had seen young fathers of promising plays on first nights before, but here was a mere godfather worse than any of them. They thought that the young fellow had taken leave of his wits.

‘I tell you it is all over,’ continued the wretched youth; ‘he has come here to damn me.’

‘If you mean the Devil, that is nothing new,’ said Mrs. Powell; ‘he is always, so we are told, in the play-house.’

She spoke very sharply; she thought it the right remedy to apply under the circumstances, just as she might have recommended bending back the fingers in an extreme case of hysterics.

‘Come here,’ said Mrs. Jordan, leading the young man to a spot where, through a chink in the curtain, they could get a view of the box where his father and cousin sat. ‘Look at your Margaret yonder; she is not a coward like you.’ Indeed, the more the people hissed, the calmer and the more indifferent Margaretseemed to be, though under that unmoved exterior she suffered agonies. She was thinking of her Willie, though she could not see him, and love enhanced her beauty.

It was a frightful scene of turmoil, though up till now a good-natured one. The actor who had last left the stage (or rather who was left upon it, for he had been killed in combat) had had, by some mismanagement, the curtain dropped upon his legs, and had jumped up and rubbed them before the audience in a manner very unbecoming a corpse. At this they screamed with laughter, to which his Highness the Duke of Clarence, in the royal box, contributed his full share. Their good humour was, therefore, for the present, assured, though such mirth was hardly conducive to the success of a tragedy. But at the commencement of the next act there were signs of ill-nature. There were cries set agoing from a box on the upper tier, of ‘Forgery! forgery!’ and even of ‘Thief Erin! Thief Erin! look at Thief Erin!’

Kemble’s magnificent voice alone could make itself heard above these sounds of displeasure.He was apostrophising the King of Terrors:—

Oh sovereign Death,Who hast for thy domain this world immense.

Churchyards and charnelhouses are thy haunts,And hospitals thy sumptuous palaces;

And when thou wouldst be merry thou dost chooseThe gaudy chamber of a dying king.

And then thou dost ope wide thy monstrous jaws,

And with rude laughter and fantastic tricksThou clapp’st thy rattling fingers to thy side;

And when this solemn mockery is o’er——

Here he was suffered to proceed no further; that unfortunate line, uttered in the most sepulchral tone, was the signal for the most discordant howl that was ever heard within the walls of a theatre. He repeated the line with his own peculiar emphasis, and even, as a spectator tells us, ‘with a solemn grimace.’ It was the death-blow of the piece. A scene of confusion ensued which beggars description. Suddenly, and as the newspapers of the day said, ‘without any premonition,’ a rush was made for the box occupied by the Erins. Fortunately, however, one man at least had premonition of it. He was the one who hasbeen mentioned as occupying a box by himself. He had been silent all the evening, taking no part either with the partisans or the opponents of the play, but with eyes ever attentive to what was going on. The voice of the young fellow in the next compartment had attracted him above all others; it had malevolence in it which was wanting in the other cases, and, though he did not recognise it, sounded not unfamiliar to him. It had been the first to raise the cry of ‘Forger!’ and the only one which had mentioned the name of Erin. As he repeated the words for the third or fourth time, some drunken fellow hiccuped ‘Where are they?’ To which the malevolent voice replied, ‘I’ll show you. The young scoundrel is hiding behind the curtain, but we’ll have him out.’

f194

The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble.

The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble.

The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble.

The next moment the corridor was full of an excited rabble, led by Reginald Talbot. They ran in their stupid fury at full speed, but not so fast as Frank Dennis would have run could he have got free of them. He had dashed from his box the instant he had heard Talbot’s vengeful cry, but it had already raised the wilder spirits of the house, and they had rushed out from this door and that, and interposed themselves between him and their leader. He beheld already Margaret surrounded by this wild and wanton crew, the old man maltreated, and William Henry, evidently the object of this fellow’s hatred, torn to pieces. He ran with the impetuous crowd, parting them like water left and right with his broad shoulders, till he gained a place among the foremost. Talbot, leading by a few paces, had reached a spot where two staircases met; the one a narrow one, leading straight down to a few boxes, in one of which Margaret was seated, the other a broader flight, which led to one of the exits of the house. Talbot, wild with haste and rage, cast a glance behind him to point out to his followers the right direction to take, when he met Dennis’ eye, and strove to turn and speak. But ere he could do so, Frank’s strong fingers were on his neck, and impelled him forward, like the wind, to the top of the broader stair. The others, who knew not what had happened,thought that they were still following their leader to their destination, and ran on full pelt behind them. Ere the third step was reached, half a dozen had fallen headlong, and half a score came toppling over these. Oaths and groans mingled with the cries of those who still pushed on behind, but Reginald Talbot neither spoke nor fell. The fingers that had closed about his neck clutched his throat also, while at the same time they kept him up, though his legs used a speed which they had never before attained to; they took their four and even five steps at a time. Fortunately for him, and perhaps for his custodian also, the great door at the foot of the staircase was open to the street, and when they reached it Frank simply let his companion go, who, bereft of sense, though by no means of motion, fell face foremost, with the most frightful violence, into a mud heap. A friendly pillar brought Dennis himself to anchorage, who then quietly turned and entered the theatre by another way.

Thanks to his presence of mind and strength of body, the house was now freed of its moredangerous elements, and an attempt was being made to finish the play, though almost in dumb show. Mrs. Jordan, though greatly agitated, had even the courage to speak the epilogue, and for the first time found her graces and witcheries of no avail. Margaret would have stayed to say a few words of love and confidence to William Henry, but Mr. Erin hurried her away.

‘It was a planned thing,’ he kept murmuring on the way home in the hackney-coach. ‘There was a plot to damn the play; that devil Malone was at the bottom of it.’

But Margaret was not thinking of Malone, nor even of the play, concerning which, though she heard them not, there were reports, besides its failure, of misadventure and even death. She was thinking of Willie, and why he did not come home to be comforted. The two sat down alone to supper, of which neither could touch a mouthful; the antiquary full of woeful thoughts, the girl with only one question in her mind, ‘Why does he not come?’

The maid thought she had seen him at thedoor when her mistress got out of the carriage; there was certainly some young man with his hat pulled over his eyes, who had watched her into the house, and having, as it seemed, assured himself of her safety, had walked away. It was possible of course that this might have been Willie, but whither had he gone?

‘It is no use your waiting for William Henry,’ said the antiquary roughly; ‘why don’t you eat?’

She noticed that her uncle no longer spoke of ‘Samuel,’ and the change jarred upon her feelings, already strained and tried. It was no fault of Willie’s that the play had not succeeded, and it was cruel to visit such a misfortune upon his innocent head.

‘It is only natural that I should be anxious about him,’ she returned with some touch of resentment.

‘Pooh, pooh! why should you be anxious? He is no doubt supping with one of the players.’

His indifferent words struck her like a blow at random. Was it conceivable, after what had happened that evening, that Willie shouldprefer the society of another to her own? Above all, was it possible that that one should be Mrs. Jordan? She could not but notice how Flavia had fought for the play, and had hardly known whether to admire or detest her for it. If she had been in her place, and could have done it, she would have fought for it too, but then she would have an adequate motive. Why should that woman have dared so much for it when the others had performed their parts in so sluggish and perfunctory a manner? It must have been because she had her heart in it. And who could have their heart in a mere stage-play, a thing at the best full of fictitious woes and imaginary heroes? There must have been human love—or what such creatures took for love—to have enlisted her in its cause. Oh, why did not Willie come?

As the night wore on apprehensions for her lover’s personal safety took the place of these jealous fears. What might not despair and disappointment have induced him to do? In her wretchedness and need of sympathy and consolation, she ventured to hint at this to Mr. Erin.

‘It is surely very odd, uncle. Willie ought to be home by this time at all events. Should we not send somewhere?’

‘What nonsense! Whither should we send, and why? The lad is old enough to take care of himself.’

‘But perhaps in his dejection and—and—misery, uncle, he might not have any care of himself.’

‘Tush! he is not of that sort. He has much too high an opinion of his own value to throw himself away—into the river, for instance. That such an idea should have entered your mind, however, shows what an unstable fellow you think him; and in some ways—though not in that way—heisunstable. He is but a boy, after all, and a spoilt boy. I take blame to myself that I suffered him to entertain the delusion that he was fit to take to himself a wife. It was conditional indeed upon certain contingencies which have not taken place, so that the whole affair is null and void.’

‘Uncle!’ Margaret rose from her chair,and with white face and flashing eyes confronted the old man.

‘Of course it’s null and void,’ he went on, flattening the tobacco in his pipe with its stopper, and affecting an indifferent air. ‘A bargain’s a bargain, though indeed, as I have said, it is one that I should never have entered into in any case, but the mere vulgar question of ways and means now puts an end to the matter. Of course he looked for material results from the “Vortigern.“ It will now not keep the stage another night, while the publication of the play is rendered worthless. It is not his fault, of course; I don’t blame him. It is not in mortals to command success. There is nothing for him now but to return to the conveyancing business; and in ten years or so there is no knowing but that he may step into old Bingley’s shoes.’

‘And I?’ cried Margaret bitterly. ‘What am I to do? To wait for him?’

‘Certainly not; that would be hopeless indeed. The best thing you can possibly do just at present is to—I shall make arrangements forhis lodging elsewhere out of harm’s way—is to begin to forget all about him.’

‘Forget him—forget Willie? How can I?’

‘By thinking of somebody else,’ returned the antiquary coolly: ‘that I have heard is the best way. At all events it will have to be done.’

‘Do you think then a woman’s heart is like a seal, uncle, on which an image is impressed, and which, held to some fierce flame—as mine seems to be, Heaven help me, this moment—it straightway becomes a blank ready for the reception of another image? Oh, no, no, I will wait ten years for Willie, if it be necessary, but I will never forget him.’

‘He’ll forgetyouin half the time,’ was the dry rejoinder.

‘You speak falsely as well as cruelly, uncle,’ said Margaret passionately.

There had been a time when even passion could not have nerved her to speak so boldly to the antiquary; and there had been a time when if she had dared to do so the old man would have put down his foot upon suchpassion and crunched the sparks out. But just now Margaret was too full of her misery and the sense of wrong to care what she said, while her uncle on his part, though he was fully resolved to put an end to his niece’s engagement with William Henry, could not at once resume the relative position to her he had occupied before it was mooted.

‘As to my speaking falsely concerning William Henry’s fidelity,’ he answered quietly, ‘time alone can prove that: and there will be certainly plenty of time; while as to cruelty I really cannot accuse myself of having been cruel.’

‘What! when you have allowed the mutual love between your son and me for months to ripen without censure? When you have heard him call me his own ten times a day, and never reproved him for it. When you have thrown us together and left us together? And now because something has not succeeded, of the success of which you made sure, do you wish to tear us asunder and bid us forget one another. And then, ohshame, do you dare to say you are not cruel?’

The old man made her no reply, perhaps his conscience pricked him in the matter, or perhaps he perceived that it was useless to argue with her in her present excited state.

‘Have you any fault to find with Willie?’ she continued reproachfully. ‘Has he not done all he could do in this unfortunate affair? What has happened to the “Vortigern“ that he could help or hinder? Do you suppose he has deceived you because it has not succeeded?

‘Of course not,’ put in the antiquary testily; ‘the boy is honest enough, no doubt; but one must look at things from a reasonable point of view. Come, come, we can talk of these things to-morrow. It is getting late. Let us to bed.’

She answered not a word, but sat with her face bowed down on the table and hidden in her hands, while he took up his candle and left her. She remained in the same position for many minutes, when suddenly there camea gentle knock, a mere tap, at the front door. She was on her feet in a moment, with her long hair loose behind her ears, listening. It was not Willie’s knock, she knew, but it might be news of Willie. The clock on the mantelpiece had just struck two. Then came the tap again; this time a little more distinct. It was evident that her uncle had not heard it, and the servant had long gone to bed. There were many bad characters abroad in the street in those times, restrained by a very inefficient constabulary, but Margaret did not hesitate to obey this second summons. She went to the door and undid the fastenings without making the least noise.

A woman stood on the step, to judge by her figure a young one, but her face was hidden in her hood.

‘You are Margaret?’ she said, in clear sweet tones mingled with an ineffable pity.

‘I am,’ she answered, with a dreadful fear at her heart. She felt that some messenger of evil tidings stood before her.

‘I thought so; I felt sure that you wouldbe sitting up for him,’ murmured the other softly.

‘Where is he? Is he ill? Why does he not come home?’ gasped Margaret.

‘He is not ill, but he cannot come home. Let me in, and I will tell you all.’

With a gentle pressure, for Margaret’s instinct was to oppose her, the visitor made her way into the house. ‘Let me see you quite alone,’ she said; ‘somewhere where we cannot be interrupted. I have news for your private ear—I am sorry to say, bad news.’

‘And who are you?’ Margaret’s voice was antagonistic, almost defiant. She resented this woman’s coming beyond all measure, but the fear within her compelled her to listen to what she might have to say.

‘I am Mrs. Jordan,’ was the quiet reply.

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