CHAPTER IV.

THE ACTRESS.

It was near midnight when an unusually notable and brilliant little party sate down to supper in the largest hall of an hotel in the neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Brilliant the meeting was, for beneath the strong lights shone the long white table with its gleaming crystal, and silver, and flowers; and notable it was in that the persons sitting there were, every one of them, marked by an obvious individualism of face and dress. They wore no mere company of cultivated nothings, as like each other in brain, costume, and manner, as the wine-gla.s.ses before them; scarcely a man or woman of them had not his or her own special character rendered apparent by this or that peculiarity of facial line or intentional adornment.

But there was one woman there-or girl, rather, for she was clearly not over twenty-whose character you could not easily catch. You might watch the expression of her eyes, listen to her bright, rapid, cheerful talk, and study her bearing towards her a.s.sociates; and then confess that there was something elusive about her-she had not exhibited her real nature to you-you knew nothing of her but those superficial characteristics which were no index to the spirit underneath.

Slight in figure, and somewhat pale and dark, there was nevertheless a certain dignity about her features, and a stateliness in her gestures, which gave an almost ma.s.sive grandeur to her appearance. Then her magnificent black hair lay around the clear, calm face, which was rendered the more intensely spiritual by large eyes of a deep and tender grey. They were eyes, under these long eyelashes, capable of a great sadness, and yet they were not sad. There seemed to play around the beautiful, intellectual face a bright, superficial, unconscious vivacity; and she herself appeared to take a quite infantine interest in the cheerful trivialities around her. For the rest, she was dressed in a gleaming white _moire_, with tight sleeves which came down to her tiny wrists, and there ended in a faint line of blue; and through the great braided ma.s.ses of her black hair there was wound a thick cord of twisted silver, which also had a thread of blue cunningly interwoven with it.

The artistic possibilities of her fine face and complexion were made the most of; for she _was_ an artist, one of the few true artists who have been seen upon our modern stage.

This was Miss Annie Brunel, who in three months from the date of her arrival in this country had won the heart of London. The young American actress, with her slight and nervous physique, her beautiful head, and the dark l.u.s.tre of her eyes, was photographed, lithographed, and written about everywhere: people went and wept covertly beneath the spell of her voice; for once unanimity prevailed among all the critics who were worth attention, and they said that the new actress was a woman of genius.

Who could doubt it that had witnessed the utter self-abandonment of her impersonations? She did not come upon the stage with a thought about her jewellery, a consciousness of her splendid hair, and an eye to the critical corner of the stalls. On the stage she was no longer mistress of herself. Her eyes deepened until they were almost black; her face was stirred with the white light of pa.s.sion; and her words were instinct with the tenderness which thrills a theatre to its core. When the sudden intensity died down, when she resumed her ordinary speech and dress, she seemed to have come out of a trance. Not a trace remained of that fire and those intonations, which were the result of unconscious creation; her eyes resumed their serene, happy indifference, her face its pleased, childlike expression. Swift, active, dexterous she was, full of all sorts of genial and merry activities; that kindling of the eye and tremor of the voice belonged to the dream-life she led elsewhere.

The supper was rather a nondescript affair, resembling the little entertainment sometimes given by an author on the production of his new piece. As the play, however, in which Miss Brunel had just appeared was "Romeo and Juliet," there was a little difficulty about the author's being present to perform the ordinary duties; and so the manager's very good friend, the Graf von Schonstein, had stepped in and offered to play the part of host on the occasion.

The Graf, indeed, occupied the chair-a large and corpulent man, with a broad, fair face, small blue eyes, red hands, a frilled shirt, flowered waistcoat, and much jewellery. He had made the acquaintance of Miss Brunel during the previous year in America, and lost no time in renewing it now that she had so suddenly become famous in England. Of the Graf, who it may be mentioned was once a respectable tea-broker in Thames Street, E.C., we shall hear more.

On the left of the chairman sate the manager, a middle-aged man, with grey hair and a melancholy face; on the right Miss Brunel, and next to her a young man of the name of Will Anerley, a friend of Count Schonstein. Then followed several members of the company, an elderly little woman who officiated as Miss Brunel's guardian, two or three critics, and a young man who spoke to n.o.body, but kept his eyes intently fixed upon a charming _soubrette_ (with whom he had quarrelled some days before) who was wickedly flirting with Mercutio. There was no lack of jest and talk down both sides of the table, for the wine-gla.s.ses were kept well filled; and occasionally there rang out, clear and full, the mellifluous laughter of the Nurse-a stout, big, red-faced woman, who had a habit of using her pocket handkerchief where a table-napkin might have been more appropriate-as she cracked her small jokes with Benvolio, who sate opposite to her. Then Friar Lawrence, who had thrown aside his robe and become comic, happened to jolt a little champagne into Lady Capulet's lap; and the angrier she grew over his carelessness, the more did the people laugh, until she herself burst out with a big, good-natured guffaw.

Meanwhile the small clique at the upper end of the table was engaged in a conversation by itself, Count Schonstein appealing to the manager vehemently:

"Was I not right in begging you to give the public Miss Brunel's 'Juliet?' There never was such a triumph, Miss Brunel; I a.s.sure you, you have taken London by storm. And with the public satisfied, will the critics object? You will not see a dissentient voice in the papers on Monday morning. What do you say to that, Mr. Helstone?"

The man whom he addressed had forsaken the cl.u.s.ter of his brother critics, and was busily engaged in amusing the pretty _soubrette_, whom he had entirely drawn away from poor Mercutio.

"Why," he said, with a faint smile, apparently bent upon puzzling the gorgeous-looking gentleman who had imprudently interrupted him, "I should be sorry to see such unanimity, for Miss Brunel's sake.

Conscientious journalism, like every conscientious journalist, knows that there are two sides to every question, and will do its best to write on both. The odds will be the truth."

"Do you mean to tell me," asked the Count, somewhat pompously, "that you have no more conscience than to advocate different things in different papers?"

"If I write what I know on one side of a subject in one paper, and write up the other side in another paper, I free myself from a charge of suppressing truth; and I--"

Whereupon the _soubrette_, with the brown curls and the wicked blue eyes, pulled his sleeve and made him upset a claret gla.s.s.

"What a clumsy creature you are," she whispered. "And what is the use of talking to that ridiculous old fool? Tell me, do you think Miss Brunel handsome?"

"I think she has the face of a woman of genius," he said, with a glance of genuine admiration.

"Bah! that means nothing. Don't you think she shows her teeth on purpose when she laughs; and then those big, soft eyes make her look affectedly sentimental. Why do you grin so? I suppose I am not as handsome as she is; but I wonder if she could put on my gloves and boots?"

"You have adorable hands and feet, Miss Featherstone; everybody allows that."

"Thank you. They say that every ugly woman has pretty hands and feet."

"Nature leaves no creature absolutely unprotected, my dear. Let me give you some vanilla cream."

"You are a brute. I hate you."

"I have generally found that when a young lady says she hates you, she means she loves you-if you have a good income."

"I have generally found that when a young lady rejects her suitor because of his want of brain, he instantly says she cast him off because of his want of money. But I wish you'd keep quiet, and let me hear what Mr. Melton is saying about next week. If he thinks I'll play the people in with a farce, as well as play in the burlesque, he is mistaken.

However, since you people have taken to write up Miss Brunel, she will order everything; and if the poor dear thinks seven too soon for her nerves after tea, I suppose she will get played whatever she wants."

"Spiteful thing! You're thinking of her handsome face and eyes and hair: why don't you look in the mirror and calm yourself?"

The little group at the head of the table had now split itself into two sections; and while Count Schonstein talked almost exclusively to Mr.

Melton, Miss Brunel was engaged in what was apparently an interesting conversation with Will Anerley, who sate next her. But a patient observer would have noticed that the stout and pompous Count kept his eyes pretty well fixed upon the pair on his right; and that he did not seem wholly pleased by the amused look which was on Miss Brunel's face as she spoke, in rather a low tone, to her companion:

"You confess you are disappointed with me. That is quite natural; but tell me how I differ from what you expected me to be."

She turned her large, l.u.s.trous eyes upon him; and there was a faint smile on her face.

"Well," he said, "on the stage you are so unlike any one I ever saw that I did not expect to find you in private life like-like any one else, in fact."

"Do you mean that I am like the young ladies you would expect to find in your friends' house, if you were asked to go and meet some strangers?"

"Precisely."

"You are too kind," she said, looking down. "I have always been taught, and I know, that private people and professional people are separated by the greatest differences of character and habits; and that if I went amongst those young ladies of whom you speak, I should feel like some dreadfully wicked person who had got into heaven by mistake and was very uncomfortable. Have you any sisters?"

"One. Well, she is not my sister, but a distant relation who has been brought up in my father's house as if she were my sister."

"Am I like her?"

"No. I mean, you are not like her in appearance; but in manner, and in what you think, and so forth, you would find her as like yourself as possible. I cannot understand your strange notion that some unaccountable barrier exists between you and other people."

"That is because you have never lived a professional life," she said.

"I know, myself, that there is the greatest difference between me now and when I am in one of my parts. Then I am almost unconscious of myself-I scarcely know what I'm doing; and now I should like to go on sitting like this, making fun with you or with anybody, or amusing myself in any way. Do you know, I fancy nothing would give me so much delight as battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k if I might have it in my own house; but I am afraid to propose such a thing to my guardian, Mrs.

Christmas, or she would think I was mad. Did you never wish you were only ten years old again, that you might get some fun without being laughed at?"

"I used constantly to go bird's-nesting in Russia, when we were too lazy to go on a regular shooting-party, and never enjoyed anything half so much. And you know cricket has been made a manly game in order to let men think themselves boys for an hour or two."

"I should like you to become acquainted with my dear old Christmas-do you see her down there?-and then you would know how a professional life alters one. It was she, not my dear mother, who taught me all the gestures, positions, and elocution which are the raw material we actresses use to deceive you. How she scolds me when I do anything that differs from her prescriptions! And indeed she cannot understand how one, in the hurry of a part, should abandon one's-self to chance, and forget the ordinary 'business.' Now the poor old creature has to content herself with a little delicate compliment or two instead of the applause of the pit; and I am sometimes put to my wits' end to say something kind to her, being her only audience. Won't you come and help me some afternoon?"

The unconscious audacity of the proposal, so quietly and so simply expressed, staggered the young man; and he could only manage to mention something about the very great pleasure it would give him to do so.

He was very much charmed with his companion; but he was forced to confess to himself that she did, after all, differ a good deal from the gentlewomen whom he was in the habit of meeting. Nor was it wonderful that she should: the daughter of an actress, brought up from her childhood among stage-traditions, driven at an early period, by her mother's death, to earn her own living, and having encountered for several years all the vicissitudes and experience of a half-vagrant life, it would have been a miracle had she not caught up some angular peculiarities from this rough-and-ready education. Anerley was amazed to find that easy audacity and frankness of speech, her waywardness and occasional eccentricity of behaviour, conjoined with an almost ridiculous simplicity. The very att.i.tude her Bohemianism led her to adopt towards the respectable in life, was in itself the result of a profound childlike ignorance; and, as he afterwards discovered, was chiefly the result of the tuition of a tender and anxious mother, who was afraid of her daughter ever straying from the folds of a profession which is so generous and kindly to the dest.i.tute and unprotected. All this, and much more, he was afterwards to learn of the young girl who had so interested him. In the meantime she seemed to him to be a spoilt child, who had something of the sensitiveness and sagacity of a woman.

"Look how he blushes," said the charming _soubrette_ to her companion.

"Who?"

"The gentleman beside Miss Brunel."

"Are you jealous, that you watch these two so closely?"

"I'm not; but I do consider him handsome-handsomer than any man I know.