CHAPTER I.

THE THEATER.

“I don’t see,” said Mrs. Trelane discontentedly, “why the woman could not have kept you.”

She spoke to her own reflection in the glass with an angry frown. What was the good of an exquisite toilet, of a face that did not look within ten years of its age, when seated on the sofa opposite was a grown-up daughter whose presence in the house might spoil all her own well-laid plans?

Just a week ago her only child, aged seventeen, had been returned from her cheap boarding-school with a scathing note from the principal regarding her unpaid bills. It was unbearable, even though she had forbidden the girl to be about the house or meet any of her visitors.

To-night, when the table was laid for a party of two, the presence of a third was--impossible!

“Ismay,” Mrs. Trelane turned sharply to the tall, slim figure coiled on the sofa, “couldn’t you take a maid and go out somewhere to-night? Oh, no--I can’t spare you! Well, mind you don’t let Abbotsford see you--he doesn’t know you are, you know!”

The girl looked with somber impatience at her mother in her satin gown, so great a contrast to her own shabby black serge.

“All right,” she said quietly, “but if he keeps coming here every day he is bound to find out my existence.”

“It won’t matter--by and by.” Mrs. Trelane gave a little conscious laugh and poured some peach-blossom scent on her handkerchief. Ismay, as the delicate odor reached her, moved her head as if it sickened her. Three years away from a mother who had never loved her had deadened the memory of the regret, the loneliness, that had been her portion always. But to-night she saw very clearly that she was, as always, a stone in the road of Mrs. Trelane’s life.

She got up, with a leisurely grace, and looked about her as the door-bell rang and Mrs. Trelane swished softly out of the room. She was used to being unpopular; at school no one had liked her, but yet indifference from her mother cut her.

And it was dull, deadly dull! There was nothing to read, nowhere to sit but this disordered bedroom that smelled to nausea of almonds.

A neat maid with a cross face came in at that moment and bumped down an uninviting tray of tea and bread and butter on a table, with an impertinence that was somehow galling. Ismay Trelane looked at it, and a sudden light sprang into her strangely lovely face, that was sometimes so much older than her years, as a smile came to her delicate, thin lips.

“There isn’t any room for me in mama’s life,” she thought quietly, “it’s all taken up with Lord Abbotsford! She can’t surely think he means to marry her, yet she never kept up the mask like this for any of her other admirers.”

Looking back with ungirlish wisdom into the past before she had been shoved into Mrs. Barlow’s school, she added:

“Well, it doesn’t matter! I’m not a child any more; I can amuse myself.”

She felt in the pocket of her old black frock, that was too short, for all the money she owned--ten shillings her mother had given her in a moment of generosity.

“She said to keep out of the way,” she reflected, “and I will. But I won’t sit here all the evening, and I won’t”--pride getting the better of hunger--“drink any of that horrid tea.”

She slipped on her sailor-hat and jacket, a garment that had been barely decent all summer, but was threadbare now, and with noiseless haste made her way down-stairs and out into the street.

The fresh, cool air did her good, and she walked quickly out of the quiet Brompton Square into the bustling thoroughfare of the Brompton Road.

London at night was strange to her, and she was not even sure what she wanted to do.

“I’m out, though, and that’s the main thing,” she thought cheerfully. “I think I’ll go for a drive on an omnibus! Then when I feel like it I can get off and have something to eat somewhere.”

She felt almost gay as she hailed the first bus that came thundering by, and climbed to the roof of the unwieldy thing.

How pretty it was! The long street like a shifting ribbon of light, with its never-ending stream of carriage-lamps; its procession of hansoms and carriages full of people--men chiefly--in evening dress.

“Where do you go?” she asked the conductor as she paid her fare.

“Piccadilly Circus, miss; Shaftesbury Avenue, past the Palace Theater.”

“Theater!”

Ismay’s heart gave a jump. Why not go to a theater? There was time; it could not be more than half-past eight. After that she could take a cab and go home. It was three years since she had been at a theater; but she knew the Palace was a variety place, where it did not matter what time you arrived.

The November air was cold on top of the omnibus, but the girl’s blood was warm, as she watched the surging panorama of the streets. This was life; the shifting crowd went to her head like wine; her eyes burned like stars as she looked about her at the never-ending drama of London.

“Palace Theater, miss.” The conductor’s voice startled her. He helped her down with a curious feeling that she was too young to be out alone. But he was reassured as he saw her move composedly under the lighted awning to the flaring entrance, where the lights shone red in the box-office. She was older than she looked, he decided, as he signaled the driver to go on.

Ismay, as the swinging doors closed behind her, stood undecided for a minute. There was a notice facing her:

“Stalls, ten shillings. Dress-circle, seven and sixpence. Upper circle, five shillings.”

Stalls were out of the question.

“One dress-circle,” she said composedly, making her way to the ticket-seller’s window through the groups of men idling in the entrance.

Most of them looked at her curiously; her strange beauty and her shabby black clothes contrasted oddly.

She read their thoughts as she turned with her ticket in her hand, and her eyes glittered with pride under her long, dark lashes.

Yet, as she followed the usher up the stairs to the dress-circle, she walked as one in a dream, and stood for a moment in a sort of daze as she was turned over to the white-capped attendant.

The whole house was in darkness except for the lights upon the stage and the constant glimmer of matches, for every one seemed to be smoking, even many of the women in the boxes.

Ismay stumbled to her seat still dazed.

Was this a theater? Had she spend nearly all of her ten shillings for this?

Two badly painted women danced between the verses of a song, and their antics seemed to amuse the crowd.

Ismay drew her skirts away from the vicinity of a French hair-dresser as she thought:

“If that is all they have to do to earn their livings I could make mine.”

Then she started angrily.

A common, flashily dressed man beside her had spoken to her. His tone offended her, and she rose and swept past him like an insulted duchess.

She walked up the steps to the third gallery, where men and women were seated at small tables, eating olives and drinking liquor. As she emerged into the bright light she stopped and leaned over the balustrade with her beautiful eyes still glowing.

“Beast!” she said under her breath, “to dare to speak to me!”

A man standing quite near her glanced at her wonderingly, and as she turned she found his eyes upon her.

“I beg your pardon,” he said civilly, “but I could not help hearing what you said.”

Ismay Trelane lifted her strange eyes and saw a face that, dreaming or waking, would haunt her to the end of her life.

Bronzed, gray-eyed, clear-cut--it came near to being the handsomest face in London. Many a woman had turned to look upon it, and some, like Ismay, carried the remembrance forever.

Something, she knew not what, made the girl tremble as she answered him.

“A man spoke to me,” she said slowly. “You do not think he will come up here, do you?”

“I spoke to you, too,” her hearer’s voice was kind but a little puzzled.

“You are different,” she said simply. “Oh,” with a little gasp, “he is coming up!”

“Stand by me and don’t look at him!” said the stranger authoritatively.

Miss Trelane moved closer to him, as she was told, and the obnoxious Frenchman, with a curious glance, passed by her.

If she had looked up just then at her new friend she would have seen that he was divided between wonder and--something else. Music-halls were an old story to him, but this girl had apparently never been in one. She looked so out of place, and yet--well, at all events, she was beautiful! Though the beauty was not that of a young girl. This face might have smiled on dead men out of Circe’s window, in strange lands long ago. For the girl’s hair was an ashy flaxen without a hint of gold; her skin was fine and milky white, and her lips so red as to be startling in her colorless face. But it was her eyes more than anything that were full of strange witchery, for they were as clear and dark a green as the new shoots of a pine-tree in the spring.

“Nonsense!” the man thought, “she is only some little milliner. But she ought not to be here.”

The girl looked up, as though she read his mind.

“I don’t like it--here. I think I’ll go home,” she said slowly.

“I think I would,” he returned, with a smile. “This is not a good place to begin with when one has never been out alone before.”

“How did you know I never was?” she asked sharply.

“Oh, I thought so!” was the answer. “But if you do wish to go home you had better let me take you down-stairs. It’s rather crowded, and--there may be more Frenchmen!”

“Home!” she looked at him queerly. “Oh, I can’t go home! It’s too--too lonely.” Her lips quivered desolately at the thought of the long hours before bedtime in that house where she was not wanted.

As she looked at him the absolute beauty of his face struck her once more. She had never spoken to a man like this; it had been a very different sort of men she had been used to seeing in her childhood. How immaculately dressed he was, and what lovely black pearls he wore as shirt-studs. “I don’t think I’ll go home at all,” she ended abruptly.

“Not go home?” He stared at her. “My dear child, you’re talking nonsense. Do you mean that you live alone when you say it is too lonely?” He felt suddenly sorry for her, and wondered afresh who she was. Her dress was old and worn, fit for a servant out of place, but her ungloved hand lying on the red velvet rail was exquisitely white and smooth.

As he looked at her she laughed, a little delicate laugh that was somehow far older than her years.

“Yes, of course,” she said, “utter nonsense; for I can live with my mother.”

She moved away as she spoke; even if the man was as good-looking as all the gods, she would not stay talking with him after he had suggested she should go.

“Wait a moment, if you are lonely at home. I am lonely here,” he said, and he was very tall as he looked down at her with a little laugh.

“You--lonely!” her eyes darkened with surprise. “Why, you can go anywhere you like in all London, you have not to sit alone evening after evening till----”

“No, but you see I don’t know anywhere I want to go,” he interrupted. “And if we’re both here, and both lonely, why--I think we may as well talk to one another.”

They were moving slowly along the crowded promenade on their way to the stairs, and the languid grace of the girl’s steps was apparent.

“Are you tired?” he said suddenly. “You look pale.”

“I’m always pale.”

A swift intuition flashed over him.

“I don’t think,” he observed deliberately, “that you have had any dinner!”

Miss Trelane flushed--exquisitely.

The remembrance of the supper of bread and butter, which pride had made her forego, was haunting her. She had eaten nothing since tea at five o’clock.

She raised her head haughtily, as a woman of the world would have done, and caught a look on her companion’s face that made her suddenly childlike again.

“I--I didn’t wait,” she stammered.

Her companion stopped at a vacant table, and put her into a chair.

“Now that I think of it, I am hungry myself,” he observed, signaling to a waiter, and then ordering sandwiches and some liquor.

He sat looking at this waif from some other world as she ate the sandwiches; the fiery cherry brandy made her less pale, the depths of her strange eyes less somber. His first theory had been right: she was very young. But the beautiful face was prophetic of tragedy and passion; the scarlet lips cynical. She looked at him, raising slow white lids, till he seemed to see unfathomable depths in her clear green eyes.

“Do you know you are the first person who has ever been kind to me in all my life?” she said. “Tell me, why are you kind?”

There was in her voice only calm inquiry, nothing to tell him that this strange, pale girl was filled with passionate gratitude.

“I’m not kind; it is a pleasure to sit and talk to you. You forget that.” His manner was to the girl what it would have been to a duchess. “But it’s getting late, and I’m going to take you home.”

He raised his eyebrows a little as he sat by her in a hansom and heard her give the man an address in Colbourne Square; it was not exactly a haunt of poverty, and this girl was nearly out at elbows.

“You live there with your mother?” he said involuntarily.

She laughed with a curious mockery of mirth.

“Yes, but you don’t know who I am, and I won’t tell you.”

“Don’t you want to know who I am?” he asked, somewhat piqued. “My name----”

“Don’t tell me!” stopping him with a quick coldness. “I don’t want to know. You have been kind to me--I’ll remember you by that best. No one else ever was.”

“I wonder,” he said abruptly, “if I will ever see you again.”

“Do you wish to?”

He nodded, and with a sudden flash of her spirit Ismay Trelane determined to see him again if she had to tramp the world for a sight of his face.

“You won’t quite forget me, though you won’t let me tell you my name,” he said more earnestly than he knew, for her strange beauty, her strange manner, had gone a little to his head.

Ismay turned to him as the hansom stopped at her mother’s door, and looked once more at his strong, sweet face and broad shoulders.

“No! I will not forget you,” she said, with her delicate smile that was so much older than her manner. “And when I meet you again--remember, you must be glad to see me.”

“Shall I knock for you?” he asked, helping her out.

“Knock? Oh, no!” Last night she would have been afraid to go out secretly and come back openly with an utter stranger, but now there was a lightness in her dancing blood that made her utterly indifferent as to what reception she would get from her mother. The light from the street-lamps fell on her face as she put her hand in his with a gesture of dismissal, not learned, assuredly, at Mrs. Barlow’s school. But at the clasp of his strong fingers she thrilled, and knew the world would end for her before she forgot him.

She drew a long, shivering breath as she watched him drive away.

“I wish,” she thought, with a sudden vain longing, “that I had let him tell me his name! But I will find him again some day, as sure as he and I live in this world.”

She little knew how she would find him--nor what terror would make her almost forget him first--as she calmly rang at her mother’s door-bell.