Doctor Cupid: A Novel
'Oh! it is you, is it? How many of you are there?--because we are pretty
full here; and I suppose you do not mean to sit upon our knees.'
'There is nothing I should like better!' cries Lady Betty friskily. 'You
are looking perfectly delightful to-night; all the more so because your
fender is quite on one side. Come now, do not be ill-natured, but make
room for me; you know I am not very----'
Peggy hears the voice break off abruptly; and involuntarily her eyes,
hitherto glued to the back of the chair in front of her, snatch a hasty
glance in Lady Betty's direction. She has turned away, and is addressing
Mr. Hartley in an altered and hurried key.
'After all, I hope you will not think me very changeable, but I believe
I should like to sit a little farther back; one sees better, and hears
better, and gets a better general idea.'
'She is going away!' whispers Prue, with a long quivering sigh of
relief. 'Oh, I was so frightened! I thought she was going to take my
chair. Why did she go? She could not have seen us!'
But this is not quite the conclusion arrived at by Peggy, as her eyes
follow Betty's retreating figure--Betty, with her
'Little head
Sunning with curls'
that go to bed in a box--Betty, with the docile Harborough and a couple
of Guardsmen at her heels; and--without John Talbot! That for one chance
evening she should happen to lack his attendance is, after all, but
small evidence against his being still riveted with her fetters; but
Peggy's heart swells with a disproportionate elation at the discovery.
There is, alas! not much likelihood of poor Prue's feeling a like
expansion; for scarcely has she finished drawing the long breath caused
her by Betty's retreat, than the seat which the latter had spared is
approached, settled upon, and irrevocably occupied--poor Prue's barriers
politely but ruthlessly swept away.
She has attempted a hurried protest, but it has not been even heard; and
now it is too late, for a bell has rung. The curtain has swept aloft,
with less of hesitation and dubiousness as to the result than is
generally the case with amateur curtains, and discloses to view the
second Miss Hartley seated under the rustic berceau of a wayside Italian
wine-shop, in peasant's cap and bodice, soliloquising rather nervously
and at some length. What is the drift of that soliloquy; or of the
dialogue that follows with a person of a bandit nature, whom it takes
some moments for his acquaintance to decipher into a young man Hartley;
or of the jiggy catchy songs with which the piece is freely
interspersed, Peggy will never know to her last day.
Before her eyes, indeed, there is a phantasmagoria of people going and
coming in a blaze of light--of more be-peasanted Misses Hartley, with
more banditted brothers; in her ears a brisk dialogue that must be
funny, judging from the roars of laughter coming from behind her; of
smart galloping quartettes and trios that must be humorous and musical,
from the storm of applause and encores that greet them. But to her brain
penetrate none of the gay and smiling images conveyed by her senses. Her
brain is wholly occupied by the painful and impossible effort to calm
Prue, whose agitation, rendered more unmanageable by the weakness of her
state of health and the lack of any habit of self-government, threatens
to become uncontrollable.
'Oh, Peggy, why has not he come? What has become of him? Where can he
be?' she keeps moaningly whispering.
Peggy has taken hold of one of her sister's feverish hands, whose dry
fire is felt even through her glove, and presses it now and again.
'He will be here directly,' she answers soothingly; 'no doubt he could
not get away. You heard how useful he has been! Probably he is helping
them behind the scenes. Do not you think that you could try to look a
little less miserable? I am so afraid that people will remark it.'
'If he is behind the scenes,' moans Prue, not paying any heed to,
evidently hardly hearing, this gentle admonition, 'he is with her. You
see that she is not acting either! Wherever they are, they are together!
Oh, Peggy, I think I shall die of misery!'
The close of her sentence is drowned in a tempest of riotous applause,
and Peggy's eyes involuntarily turn to the stage, to learn the cause.
One of the performers, who has been throughout pre-eminently the funny
man of the piece, is singing a solo, accompanied by many facetious
gestures. The drift of the song is the excessive happiness of the
singer--a theme which is enlarged upon through half a dozen successive
verses:
'The lark is blithe,
And the summer fly;
Blithe is the cricket,
And blithe am I.
None so blithe, so blithe as I!'
Peggy happens to have some acquaintance with the singer off the stage;
knows him to be sickly, melancholy, poor; to-night racked with
neuralgia, yet obliged to do his little tricks, and go through his small
antics, on penalty of banishment from that society, his sole _raison
d'etre_ in which is his gift of making people laugh.
'La Comedie Humaine!' she says to herself--'La Comedie Humaine!'
CHAPTER XXXIV
'We men may say more, swear more; but indeed,
Our shows are more than will, for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.'
The Hartleys are wise enough to avoid the error so common amongst
amateur actors and managers, of prolonging their treat until pleasure is
turned into weariness. They are obviously mindful of the fact that among
their audience are a number of dancing feet, whose owners not even the
acting of Rachel or Mrs. Siddons would indemnify, in their own opinion,
for having the fair proportions of their dancing hours thrown away. The
operetta has only three acts, and is followed by no farce or afterpiece.
In point of fact, it is contained within the limits of a couple of
hours. Yet to two of its auditors it appears practically interminable.
To two amongst them it seems as if there never would be an end to its
songs, its facetious misunderstandings, and jocose makings up; and when
at length the curtain falls amid a hurricane of applause, only to be
instantly drawn up again in order that the whole of the final quartette
may be repeated, it appears as if they must have sat watching it for
nights. At last the curtain drops finally. At last there is an end to
the endless encores. The performers, in answer to the shouts which
demand them, have appeared in turn before the curtain, and made their
bows, and picked up their bouquets, with such differing degrees of grace
and _aplomb_ as their native gifts, or more or less familiarity with
the situation, allow.
The sad little merryman has cut his final caper, and made a grimace of
so surpassing a ludicrousness as will allow him to be peacefully
melancholy for the rest of the evening.
And now all eyes are turned away from the stage; all tongues are loosed.
The doors at the end of the hall are opened, and a stream of people is
beginning rapidly to issue through them. Every one has risen and is
looking about, glad to shift their position, say 'how do you do' to
their friends, and exchange comments on play and actors.
There is a general stir and buzz; a seeking out of expected friends, and
delighted greeting of unexpected ones; a reciprocal examination of
gowns, now first possible; and a universal aspiration for supper.
Milady and her girls have risen with the others. Prue, indeed, has been
the first person in the room on her legs. She is looking round, like the
rest of the world; at least, so to a casual observer it might appear.
But, alas! what is there in common between the smiling careless glances,
lighting with easy amusement on indifferent objects, and the tragic
searching--terrible in its one-ideaed intentness--of those despairing
blue eyes? Peggy has firm hold of one burning hand, and is murmuring
broken sentences of comfort into her inattentive ear.
'Yes, dear, yes! I will go with you wherever you like; but you know we
cannot quite leave milady; and he is more likely to find us here. I dare
say he has been looking at us all the while from behind the scenes,
trying to see how you were enjoying yourself.' She leaves off
hopelessly, since Prue is not listening to her. Snatches of talk,
disjointed and mixed, reach her ear.
'Jackson was the architect; built the new schools at Oxford; they always
strike one as rather like a splendid country house.'
'Thoroughly well built; made all his own bricks; sent them up to London
to be tested; best that ever were made!'
'Really nearly as good as professionals; better than some professionals;
might easily be that. They say that the one who acts best of all did not
act to-night--the eldest.'
'Why did not she, I wonder?'
'Better employed perhaps--ha! ha!'
At the same moment Peggy feels a convulsive pressure on her arm, and
hears Prue's passionately excited voice:
'There he is! at the far end of the room; he is looking for us! Oh, how
can we make him see us?'
She has raised herself on tiptoe, and is sending a look of such agonised
entreaty down the hall as, one would think, must penetrate even the mass
of shifting, buzzing humanity that intervenes between her and its
object. Perhaps it does. Perhaps the magnet that Freddy once prettily
suggested to be in the hearts of all good people drawing them together
is exercising its influence on his. At all events, in a few minutes they
see him smilingly pushing his way, stopped at every step by greetings
and compliments--for it has somehow become generally diffused through
the room that to him is to be ascribed most of the glory of the
entertainment--through the crowd. In a moment more he is before them.
'Here you are, you dear things!' he says, taking a hand of each, looking
flushed and handsome, and speaking in an excited voice. 'Did not it go
off wonderfully well?--not a hitch anywhere. Did you hear the prompter
once? No? Neither of you? I thought not; and yet if you had seen us half
an hour before the curtain drew up, you would have said that the whole
thing was going to be a fiasco.'
He stops to draw a long breath of self-congratulation.
'I kept the chair beside me as long as I could,' says Prue, in a
faltering voice; 'I did my best.'
His eye rests on her for a moment with a puzzled air--on her small face,
flushed like his own; but, alas! how differently! It is evident that for
the first second he does not comprehend her, having entirely forgotten
his own request. Then recollecting:
'How good of you, dear!' he says affectionately. 'Of course, it was a
bitter disappointment to me, too; but on occasions of this kind,' with a
slight resigned shrug, 'one must, of course, give up all idea of
individual enjoyment.'
He is such an embodiment of radiant joy as he speaks, that Margaret
cannot help darting an indignant look at him--a bolt aimed so full and
true, that it hits him right in his laughing eyes.
'Of course,' he says, reddening under it, 'I do not mean to say that
there has not been a good deal of incidental enjoyment; but _you_,
dear,' turning to Prue, with lowered voice--'you who always see things
intuitively--you will understand what a distinction there is between
pleasure and happiness--_Innigkeit_!'
She has lifted her eyes, cleared for the moment of their agonised
seeking, to his, and is beginning a little trembling eager speech to
assure him of her complete comprehension; but his own mind having
meanwhile flown off at a tangent, he breaks in upon it:
'Was not that song excellent--
"The lark is blithe,
And the summer fly"?
Quite as good as anything of Grossmith's--do not you think so! Did not
it make you laugh tremendously? Oh, I hope, dear,' with an accent of
rather pained reproach, 'that it made you laugh!'