CHAPTER II.

MISS ST. ALBANS BREAKS HER ENGAGEMENT.

AMID the many distractions of an editorial life, Mr. Desmond contrived to remember the promise made to his old tutor. He proved the warmth of his interest in Miss Alford’s dramatic career by an immediate appeal to the genial manager of the Theatre Royal, Pall Mall, and received in reply Mr. Hartstone’s assurance that the first vacancy in the young-lady department should be placed at Miss St. Albans’ disposal.

“Bovisbrook has just sent me a charming little adaptation of _Côtelettes sautées chez Vefour_,” wrote Mr. Hartstone, in conclusion; “and as I find there are six young ladies in the caste--_ces dames_ of the Quartier Breda, I believe, in the original, but very cleverly transmogrified by Bovisbrook into school-girls from a Peckham academy, who go to dine with an old West-Indian uncle at Verey’s--I think I could manage to find an engagement for Miss St. Albans as early as March, when my Christmas burlesque will have had its run.”

“As early as March!” said Mr. Desmond, as he read this letter; “and what is to become of that poor stage-struck little girl between this and March? Well, I suppose she can go back to Market Deeping, and shine as Pauline and Juliet, until the _côtelettes sautées_ piece is produced.”

Having received a favourable reply from the lessee of the Pall Mall, Mr. Desmond’s next duty was to communicate its contents to the expectant father and daughter. At first, he thought of enclosing Hartstone’s friendly epistle, with a few lines from himself; but, on reflection, he decided against this plan of action.

“Lucy might form exaggerated expectations from Hartstone’s letter,” he said to himself. “I think I had better see her.”

There were no parties in Mr. Desmond’s world just now. Every one worthy of a fashionable editor’s consideration was out of town, and the gentleman had his evenings to himself. It was over his solitary dinner-table that Mr. Desmond arrived at this conclusion; and it was to the Oxford Road Theatre that he bent his steps after dinner, knowing that he was most likely to find Lucy Alford there.

The play was “The Stranger.” He went into the dingy dress-circle for half an hour, and saw Mrs. Haller play her penitent scene with the Countess. Miss St. Albans looked very pretty as she grovelled at the feet of her kindly patroness, dressed in white muslin which was in the last stage of limpness, and with a penitential white-lace cap upon her girlish head. He waited patiently through the rest of the play, and went to the green-room after the last dismal scene, impressed with the conviction that Lucy Alford was one of the dearest and prettiest of girls, but not yet on the high-road to becoming a Siddons.

He found poor little Mrs. Haller alone in the green-room, with a book in her hand, and with a very plaintive expression of countenance. She brightened a little on recognizing the visitor; but while shaking hands with her, Mr. Desmond perceived that her eyes were red, as with much weeping.

“I did not think you felt the character so deeply,” he said; “those real tears are a very good sign for a young actress.”

Lucy shook her head, despondently.

“It isn’t that,” she said; “I-I-was c-c-crying bec-c-cause I am n-not to play J-J-J-Julia!”

Hereupon she fairly broke down and sobbed aloud, to the consternation of Mr. Desmond, who did not know how to console this poor weeping maiden. The sight of a woman’s tears was always very painful to him; and for this young childlike creature he felt a pity that was especially tender.

“My dear little girl,” he said, “pray don’t cry. Tell me all about this business. Who is Julia?--what is Julia?--and why are you not to play Julia?”

“It’s Julia in the “Hunchback”--Sheridan Knowles’s “Hunchback,” you know,” replied Miss St. Albans, conquering her emotion with a stupendous effort, and telling her story with a most piteous air. “I was looking forward so to playing that very part. I played Juliet at Market Deeping, you know, and the _Deeping Advertiser_ said the kindest things about me,--that I reminded him of Miss O’Neill--though I can’t exactly imagine how the critic on the _Advertiser_ could remember Miss O’Neill’s acting, as he is not yet nineteen years of age. And I have such pretty dresses for Julia--a silver-gray silk, that was poor mamma’s wedding-dress, and is not so _very_ scanty, as I wear it looped up over a white muslin petticoat, in the King Charles style, you know. And just when I was so pleased at the idea that the piece was going to be done, Mr. de Mortemar came to me and told me, quite cruelly, that I am not to play Julia. And there is a young lady coming to play the part--at least, she is not very young--an amateur lady, who comes in a brougham with two horses, and whose dresses, they say, cost hundreds of pounds.”

“An amateur lady! That is rather curious. And why does Mr. de Mortemar wish that she should play Julia?”

“Mr. Johnson says she will pay him a great deal of money for the privilege. The houses have been, oh, so bad, and Mr. de Mortemar is very angry to find he doesn’t draw. He says there’s a cabal against him.”

“Indeed! And this amateur lady comes to his relief, with her dresses that cost hundreds of pounds! I should have thought that an amateur lady, who keeps her brougham and pair, would scarcely care to make her _début_ at the Oxford Road Theatre. Have you seen this lady?”

“Yes. She has been to rehearsal; and she has been here in the evening to see the call for the next day. I dare say she will come this evening. She is very haughty, and takes no more notice of me than if I were the ground under her feet; and, oh, you should see the heels of her boots!”

“She must be a vulgar, presuming person, in spite of her boots and her brougham. But if I were you, I should not trouble myself at all about her or the character she is to play. It will only be one leaf stolen from your laurels.”

He said this with a smile, in which there was some shade of sadness. There was something very sad to his eyes in the spectacle of this girlish struggler in the great battle of life, and in the thought of that frail foundation whereon her hopes rested.

“She never can be a great actress, with such poor opportunities as she can have,” he said to himself; “and she will go on from year to year hoping against hope, patiently enduring the same drudgery, living down perpetual disappointments, until some day, when she is sixty years of age, she will break her heart all at once because some petty provincial manager refuses her the _rôle_ of Juliet, after she has played it for forty years, like the actress in the old story. Poor little Lucy! She is not the kind of woman before whose indomitable courage all obstacles must succumb. She was made to be happy in a bright home.”

“Hark!” cried the young lady of whom he was thinking, “there is Miss Ida Courtenay talking to Mr. de Mortemar.”

“Miss Ida Courtenay?”

“Yes; the amateur lady who is to play Julia.”

“Oh, indeed! her name is Ida Courtenay; and she comes to the theatre in her brougham, and wears unimaginable heels to her boots. I think a Cuvier of social science might describe the species of the lady from those particulars.”

Lucy only stared on hearing this remark, which was not intended for her comprehension.

“At eleven!” cried a loud, coarse voice without; “quite impossible. I shall be engaged till one. You must call the “Hunchback” at half-past one.”

“It will be rather inconvenient,” murmured the brilliant De Mortemar, in a respectful, nay even obsequious tone of voice.

“Oh, bother your inconvenience! The piece must be rehearsed at half-past one, or not at all, as far as I am concerned. _I_ don’t want a rehearsal. It’s for your people the rehearsal is wanted. I’m sure your Helen is such an abominable stick that I expect to be cut up in my scenes with her, if I don’t take care.”

“Oh!” cried Miss Alford, with a little gasp.

“Who is the lady that plays Helen so badly?” asked Mr. Desmond.

“It’s--it’s I who am to play Helen,” exclaimed poor Lucy. “Isn’t it shameful of her to say that? I was letter-perfect yesterday when we rehearsed--I was, indeed, Mr. Desmond. And Miss Courtenay read her part all through the piece. And now she says--oh, it’s really too bad--”

A mighty rushing sound, as of a Niagara of moire antique, heralded the approach of the lady in question, who bounced into the green-room, and swept past Mr. Desmond with the air of a Semiramis in high-heeled boots. She was a tall stalwart personage of about thirty-five years of age, and she was as handsome as rouge, pearl-powder, painted lips, painted nostrils, painted eyelids, painted eyebrows, and a liberal supply of false hair could make her. The share that nature had in her beauty was limited to a pair of fierce black eyes, which might have been sufficiently large and lustrous without the aid of Indian ink or belladonna; and the outline of a figure which the masculine critic usually denominates “fine.” Mauve moire antique, a white-lace burnous, and a bonnet from the Burlington Arcade, did the rest; and the general result was a very resplendent creature, of a type which has become too familiar to the eyes of English citizens and citizenesses in this latter half of the nineteenth century.

Towards this lady Mr. de Mortemar’s manner exhibited a deference which was somewhat surprising, and not a little displeasing, to the editor of the _Areopagus_.

“Good evening, sir,” said the provincial Roscius, on perceiving Laurence. “I am gratified to find you again a witness of our performance. You will have observed a wide difference of style between my Claude and my Stranger. Those two characters mark, if I may be permitted the expression, the opposite poles of my dramatic sphere. Claude, the lover, belongs to my torrid zone; Steinforth, the outraged husband, locked in the icy armour of his pride--snow-bound, as I may say, by the bitter drift of woe--is my polar region. I venture to hope that you were struck by the different phases of passion in my silent recognition of Mrs. Haller. My provincial critics have been good enough to assure me that the whole gamut of emotional feeling is run by me in that situation.”

“I fear that I am scarcely qualified to form a judgment upon your acting, Mr. de Mortemar,” the editor replied, very coldly; “I was not very attentive to the performance this evening. I came to the theatre only to see Miss Al--Miss St. Albans--whose father is one of my earliest friends. I am sorry to find that she has reason to consider herself somewhat ill-used by your stage-manager in the matter of a certain caste of the _Hunchback_.”

The attention of Miss Ida Courtenay had, until this moment, been occupied by some official documents stuck against a little board upon the mantelpiece; but on hearing these words pronounced in a very audible manner by Mr. Desmond, she turned abruptly, and glared at that gentleman with all the ferocity of which her fine eyes were capable. She lived among people with whom this kind of glare generally proved effective, and she expected to subjugate Mr. Desmond as easily as it was her wont to subjugate the weak-minded individuals with whom she consorted.

She found, to her mortification, that in this case she had glared in vain. The editor of the _Areopagus_ did not flinch before the angry glances of this Semiramis of Lodge Road, but calmly awaited Mr. de Mortemar’s explanation.

“I am my own stage-manager,” replied that gentleman, with offended majesty; “and I have yet to learn by what right Miss St. Albans considers herself ill-treated in this theatre. This is not the return which I expected from a young lady for whom my influence alone could have secured a hearing from a London audience.”

“Pray do not let us have any high-flown talk of that kind, Mr. de Mortemar,” said Laurence, with some slight impatience of tone. “I am quite sure that you would not have engaged Miss St. Albans if it had not suited you to do so. I believe you engaged her for what is technically called leading business--the whole of the leading business.”

“There was no written engagement. I offered to engage Miss St. Albans, and she was only too glad to accept my offer. Until this time she has played the complete range of leading characters.”

“Indeed! Then, as there is no formal engagement, and as you have found a lady who wishes to supersede Miss St. Albans, I suppose there can be no objection to this young lady’s withdrawal from your company?”

Lucy looked terribly alarmed by this speech.

“I--I wouldn’t inconvenience Mr. de Mortemar for the world,” she faltered; but Laurence would not allow her to say more.

“You must let me act for you in this matter, Miss Alford,” he said. “As I am your father’s friend, and as I am rather more experienced in theatrical matters than he is, I shall venture to take this affair into my own hands. You may consider yourself free to cast your pieces without reference to this young lady, Mr. de Mortemar; she will not again act in your theatre.”

“But she must act in my theatre!” cried the infuriated tragedian. “Do you suppose you are to come here interfering with my arrangements, and taking away my actresses, in this manner? You ignore me in your paper, and then you come and insult me in my green-room. Really, this is a little too bad!”

“I think some of your arrangements are a little too bad, Mr. de Mortemar. I will be answerable for any legal penalty you may be able to inflict upon Miss St. Albans, whose engagement I hold to be no engagement at all. For the rest, you have Miss Courtenay, who will, no doubt, be delighted to play a round of characters.”

“Oh, indeed!” cried that lady, with ironical politeness; “you’re monstrously wise about other people’s business, upon my word, sir. But, though I’ve seen a good deal of cool impudence in my life, I never witnessed cooler impudence than I’ve seen in this room to-night. If you knew what you were talking about, you’d know that I play Julia in the _Hunchback_, and Constance in the _Love-Chase_, and play nothing else. My dresses for those two characters were made for me by Madame Carabine Nourrisson, of Paris, and I should be sorry to tell you what they cost.”

“I should be very sorry to hear it. I am too much of a political economist not to regret that money should be spent in that way. However, as you like the cream of the drama so much, Miss Courtenay, would it not be as well to try a little of the skim-milk? If you really want to be an actress, you cannot do better than extend your experience by some of the drudgery that Miss St. Albans has so industriously gone through.”

“If I want to be an actress!” cried the outraged lady. “And pray who may have told you that I want to be an actress?”

“If that is not your design, _que diable venez-vous faire dans cette galère_?”

“I don’t understand Latin, and I don’t want to,” replied the fair Ida, with a venemous look at Mr. Desmond; “but I beg to tell you that I am a lady of independent means, and that I act for my own amusement, and the amusement of my friends.”

“I have no doubt of the latter fact,” murmured Laurence, politely.

“And I have no intention whatever of sinking to a poor, weak, trodden-down drudge, in limp white muslin, like some actresses I could mention.”

“Indeed, Miss Courtenay! And are you aware that it is you, and ladies of your class, who bring discredit upon the profession which you condescend to take up for the amusement of your idle evenings? It is this--amateur--element which contaminates the atmosphere of our theatres, and the manager who fosters it is an enemy to the interests he is bound to protect.”

“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed Miss Courtenay, who was very weak in a conversational tussle, where neither fierce looks nor strong language were admissible. And then, finding herself powerless against her unknown assailant, she turned with Medea-like ferocity upon the injured and innocent Manager. “I’ll tell you what it is, Mr. de Mortemar,” she cried; “since you are so mean-spirited as to let me be insulted in this manner, I beg you to understand that I shall never enter your theatre again--no, Mr. de Mortemar, not if you were to go down on your knees to me. And you may find some one else to play Julia, and you may let your private boxes yourself, if you can, which I know you can’t; and I have the honour to wish you good evening.”

Hereupon Miss Courtenay swept out of the room. And thus it happened that at one fell swoop Mr. de Mortemar was deprived of both his heroines, much to his discomfiture; but not to his entire annihilation. The unconquerable force of conscious genius supported him in this extremity.

“I can send on my walking-lady and second-chambermaid for Julia and Helen,” he said to himself. “After all, what does it matter how the women’s parts are played? The feature of the play is my Master Walter; and I don’t suppose the audience would care what sticks I put in the other characters.”

This is how he consoled himself in the seclusion of his dressing-room, whither he retired, after bestowing upon Mr. Desmond a scathing look, but no words of reproach. The editor of the _Areopagus_ was a person whom an embryo Kean could hardly afford to offend.

Lucy Alford departed to change the penitential white muslin of Mrs. Haller for the well-worn merino dress and dark shawl and bonnet in which she came to the theatre. Before doing so, she told Mr. Desmond that it was her father’s habit to wait for her every evening at the close of the performance in the immediate neighbourhood of the stage-door.

“Then I will go and wait there with him,” said Mr. Desmond. “I must excuse myself to him for the liberty I have taken in breaking your engagement, and explain my motive for taking that liberty. I’m sure your father will approve my reasons for acting as I did.”

“I’m sure of that,” answered Lucy; and then she blushed, as she added, falteringly, “I scarcely think you would like to go to the place where papa waits for me; it is a kind of public-house, two doors from the theatre. The gentlemen of the company go there a good deal, and as papa finds it so very dull in the dress-circle when the play is over, he is obliged to go there.”

“I am not at all afraid of going there in search of him. I shall not say good-night until I have seen you comfortably seated in your cab.”

“You are very kind; but on fine nights we generally walk home. Papa likes the walk.”

She blushed as she said this; and the blush smote the very heart of Laurence Desmond. It was not the first time that he had seen those fair young cheeks crimsoned by that shame of the sinless--the sense of poverty; and the thought of those trials and humiliations which this gentle, innocent, tender creature had to bear touched him deeply.

He thought of the women he met in his own world--women who would have uttered a shriek of horror at the idea of walking in the streets of London at any hour of the day, to say nothing of the night; and here was this poor child walking every night from one end of London to the other, after mental and physical fatigue which would have prostrated those other women for a week. He thought of the extravagance, the exaction, the egotism, which he had seen in the women he met in society; and he asked himself how many among the brightest and best of those he knew were as pure and true as this girl, for whom the present was so hard a slavery, the future so dark an enigma.

He left the theatre, and found that the establishment of which she had spoken as “a kind of public-house,” was an actual public-house, and nothing else. He went in at that quieter and more aristocratic portal on which the mystic phrase “Jugs and Bottles” was inscribed; but even here he found a select circle engaged in the consumption of gin-and-bitters. He inquired for Mr. St. Albans--concluding that the gentleman would be best known by his daughter’s professional alias--and the old man speedily emerged from a parlour where some noisy gentlemen were playing bagatelle.

The old tutor was not a little disconcerted on beholding Laurence Desmond, and faltered a feeble apology as the two men went out into the street together.

“I am obliged to wait somewhere, you see, Desmond,” he said. “I can’t stand Harry Bestow in the farces; and I can’t hang about the green-room; Mortemar doesn’t like it. So I take a glass of bitter ale in there. The Prince of Wales is a regular theatrical house, and one hears all sorts of news about the West-end theatres.”

Mr. Desmond wondered that the bitter ale dispensed at the Prince of Wales should perfume the breath of the consumer with so powerful an odour of gin. He gave no expression to this wonder, however, but proceeded to relate what he had done in the green-room.

“Yes, very right, very right, Desmond,” said Tristram Alford, rather despondently, when he had heard all. “My little Lucy ought not to act with such a woman as that; and she can go back to Market Deeping for the new year. The journey will be expensive--but----”

“You must let me arrange that little matter in my own way,” Laurence said, kindly. “I can promise Miss Alford an engagement at the Pall Mall, in March; and in the meantime you must let me be your banker.”

“My dear friend, you are too generous--you are the soul of nobility. But how can I ever repay----”

“It is I who am under obligation to you. Can I forget that if you hadn’t made me work up my Thucydides to the highest point of perfection, those stony-hearted examiners would have inevitably ploughed me? And now let us go to the stage-door. Lucy--Miss Alford--must be ready by this time.”

The young lady was waiting for them in the shadow of the dingy portal. The night was bright and clear, and for some little distance Mr. Desmond walked by his old tutor’s side, with Lucy’s little hand on his arm. He wondered to find himself walking the obscure streets, through which Mr. Alford had mapped out a short-cut between the Oxford Road and Islington; he wondered still more to find Lucy’s hand resting so lightly, and yet so confidingly, on his coat-sleeve; and, above all, he wondered that it should seem so pleasant to him to be quite out of his own world.

He walked about a mile, and then hailed a passing cab, and placed the young lady by her father’s side. He had made one very painful discovery during the walk, and that was the fact that Tristram Alford had been drinking, and bore upon him the stamp of habitual drunkenness. This, then, was the cause of that gradual decadence which had attended the tutor’s fortunes since the days at Henley. What a man to hold the fate of a daughter in his hand! What a helpless guardian for innocent girlhood! Mr. Desmond’s heart ached as he thought of this.

“I may help them a little for the moment,” he said, to himself, “but if this man is what I believe him to be, there can be no such thing as permanent help for him or for his daughter.”

“I don’t know how to thank you for your kindness to-night,” Lucy said, as she shook hands with the editor.

“Indeed, you owe me no thanks. I only acted on the impulse of the moment. I was enraged by that woman’s impertinence, and that man’s sycophantic manner of treating her. Let me know if he makes any attempt to enforce your engagement. I don’t think he will. When are you likely to go to Market Deeping?”

“On the thirtieth, I suppose. The theatre reopens on New-Year’s day. Shall we--will papa--see you again before we go, Mr. Desmond?”

“Well, no; I fear my time--or--yes, you can breakfast with me some morning, can’t you, Alford? Say the morning after Christmas Day. Come to my chambers at nine, if that is not too early for you, and we can talk over Miss Alford’s future.”

Tristram Alford accepted this invitation with evident pleasure; but Laurence, whose hearing was very acute, heard the faintest sigh of disappointment escape the lips of Lucy, as he released her hand.

“Good-night,” he said, cheerily; “and all success at Market Deeping! I shall hope to see you when you come back to town for your engagement at the Pall Mall.”

And so they parted--Mr. Alford and his daughter to enjoy the novel luxury of a cab-ride; Laurence to walk all the way to the Temple, in an unusually thoughtful mood.