The rehearsal now began, and in much trepidation I waited to see Carr come on. The moment he appeared all anxiety vanished; the other actors were rea.s.sured, and acted their best. A few pa.s.sages had to be repeated, a few positions altered, but it was obvious that Carr could act, and act well; though, curiously enough, he looked less gentlemanlike and well-bred when acting with Charles than he had done when he was the best among a very mixed set on the steamer.
"You act beautifully, Mr. Carr!" said Aurelia, when it was over.
"Doesn"t he, Ralph?"
"Doesn"t he?" replied Ralph, hot but good-humored. "I am sure, Carr, we are most grateful to you."
"So am I," said Charles. "Your death agonies, Carr, are a credit to human nature. No great vulgar writhings with legs all over the stage, like Denis; but a chaste, refined wriggle, and all was over. It is a pleasure to kill a man who dies in such a gentlemanlike manner. If only Evelyn will keep a little closer to me when I am on my wicked baronial knees, I shall be quite happy. You hear, Evelyn?"
"How you can joke at this moment," said Evelyn, who looked pale and nervous, "I cannot think. I don"t believe I shall be able to remember a word when it comes to the point."
"Stage-fever coming on already," said Charles, in a different tone. "Ah!
it is your first appearance, is it not? Go and rest now, and you will be all right when the time comes. I have a vision of a great success, and a call before the curtain, and bouquets, and other delights. Only go and rest now." And he went to light a candle for her. He seemed very thoughtful for Evelyn.
It was the signal for all of us to disperse, the ladies to their rooms, the men to the only retreat left to them, the smoking-room. As Aurelia went up-stairs I saw her beckon Ralph and whisper to him:
"Am I really to wear them?"
"Wear what, my angel? The jewels! Why, good gracious, I had quite forgotten them. Of course I want you to wear them."
"So do I, dreadfully," she replied, with a killing glance over the bal.u.s.ters. "Only if I am, you must bring them down in good time, and put them on in the greenroom. I hope you have got them somewhere safe."
"Safe as a church," replied Ralph, forgetting that in these days the simile was not a good one. "Father has them in his strong-box. I will ask him to get them out--at least all that could be worn--and I will give them a rub up before you wear them."
"Ah!" said Charles, sadly, as we walked up-stairs, "if only I had known Sir John!"
CHAPTER VII.
It was nearly eight o"clock when I came down. The play was to begin at eight. The hall, which was brilliantly lighted, was one moving ma.s.s of black coats, with here and there a red one, and evening-dresses many colored--the people in them, chatting, bowing, laughing, being ushered to their places. Lady Mary and Sir George Danvers side by side received their guests at the foot of the grand staircase, Lady Mary, resplendent in diamond tiara and riviere, smiling as if she could never frown; Sir George upright, courteous, a trifle stiff, as most English country gentlemen feel it inc.u.mbent on themselves to be on such occasions.
Presently the continual roll of the carriages outside ceased, the lamps were toned down, the orchestra struck up, and Sir George and Lady Mary took their seats, looking round with anxious satisfaction at the hall crowded with people. People lined the walls; chairs were being lifted over the heads of the sitting for some who were still standing; cushions were being arranged on the billiard-table at the back for a covey of white waistcoats who arrived late; the staircase was already crowded with servants; the whole place was crammed.
I wondered how they were getting on behind the scenes, and slipping out of the hall, I traversed the great gold and white drawing-room, prepared for dancing, and peeped into the morning-room, which, with the adjoining library, had been given up to the actors. They were all a.s.sembled in the morning-room, however, waiting for one of the elder ladies who had not come down. The prompter was getting fidgety, and walking about. The two scene-shifters, pale, weary-looking men, who had come down with the scenery, were sitting in the wings, perfectly apathetic amid the general excitement. Charles and several other actors were standing round a footman who was opening champagne bottles at a surprising rate. I saw Charles take a gla.s.s to Evelyn, who was shivering with a sharp attack of stage-fever in an arm-chair, looking over her part. She smiled gratefully, but as she did so her eyes wandered to the other side of the room, where Ralph, on his knees before Aurelia, was fastening a diamond star in her dress. Diamonds, rubies, and emeralds flashed in her hair, and on her white neck and arms. Ralph was fixing the last ornament onto her shoulder with wire off a champagne bottle, there being no clasp to hold it in its place. I saw Evelyn turn away again, and Charles, who was watching her, suddenly went off to the fire, and began to complain of the cold, and of the thinness of his silk stockings.
The elder lady--"the heavy mother," as Charles irreverently called her--now arrived; the orchestra, which was giving a final flourish, was begged in a hoa.r.s.e whisper to keep going a few minutes longer; eyes were applied to the hole in the curtain, and then, every one being a.s.sembled, it was felt by all that the awful moment had come at last. A more miserable-looking set of people I never saw. I always imagined that the actors behind the scenes were as gay off the stage as on it; but I found to my astonishment that they were all suffering more or less from severe mental depression. Ralph and Aurelia were now sitting ruefully together on an ottoman beside the painting table, littered with its various rouges and creams and stage appliances. Even Charles, who had established Evelyn on a chair in the wings at the side she had to come on from, and was now drinking champagne with due regard to his paint--even Charles owned to being nervous.
"I wish to goodness Mrs. Wright would begin!" he said. "Ah, there she goes!"--as she ascended the stage steps. "There goes the bell. We are in for it now. She starts, and I come on next. Up goes the curtain. Where the devil has my book got to?"
In another moment he was in the wings, intent on his part; then I saw him throw down his book and go jauntily forward. A moment more, and there was a thunder of applause. All the actors looked at each other, and smiled a feeble smile.
"He will do," said General Marston, the Indian officer, who, now in the dress of an old-fashioned livery servant, proceeded to mount the steps.
It dawned upon me that I was missing the play, and I hurried back to find Charles convulsing the audience with the utmost coolness, and evidently enjoying himself exceedingly. Then Evelyn came on--But who cares to read a description of a play? It is sufficient to say that Aurelia looked charming, and many were the whispered comments on her magnificent jewels; but on the stage Evelyn surpa.s.sed her, as much as Aurelia surpa.s.sed Evelyn off it.
Ralph and Carr did well, but Charles was the favorite with every one, from the d.u.c.h.ess of Crushington in the front seat to the scullery-maid on the staircase. He was so bold, so wicked, so insinuating, in his plumed cap and short cloak, so elegantly refined when he wiped his sword upon his second"s handkerchief. He took every one"s heart by storm.
Ralph, who represented all the virtues, with rather thick ankles and a false mustache, was nowhere. When the curtain fell for the last time, amid great and continued applause, the "heavy mother," Ralph, Aurelia, all were well received as they pa.s.sed before it; but Charles, who appeared last, was the hero of the evening.
"He is engaged to his cousin, Miss Derrick, isn"t he?" said a lady near me, in a loud whisper to a friend.
"Hush! no. Charles can"t marry. Head over ears in debt. They say _she_ is attached to one of her cousins, but I forget which. I am not sure it was not the other one."
"Then it is the second son who is going to be married, is it? I know I heard something about one of them being engaged."
"Yes, the second son is engaged to that good-looking girl in diamonds, who acted Florence Mordaunt. A lot of money, I believe, but not much in the way of family. Grandfather sold mouse-traps in Birmingham, so people say."
"She looks like it!" replied the other, who had daughters out, and could not afford to let any praise of other girls pa.s.s. "No breeding or refinement; and she will be stout later, you will see."
The play being over, a general movement now set in towards the drawing-room, where the band was already installed, and making its presence known by an inspiriting valse tune. In a few moments twenty, thirty, forty couples were swaying to the music; Aurelia in her acting costume was dancing away with Ralph in his red stockings; Carr with the "heavy mother," and Charles in prosaic evening-dress was flying past with Evelyn, who, now that she had effaced her beautiful stage complexion, looked pale and grave as ever.
I suppose it was a capital ball. Every one seemed to enjoy it. I did not dance myself, but I liked watching the others; and after a time Charles, who had been dancing indefatigably with two school-room girls with pigtails, came and flung himself down on the other half of the ottoman on which I was sitting.
"Three times with each!" he said, in a voice of extreme exhaustion. "No favoritism. I have done for to-night now."
"What! Are you not going to dance any more?"
"No, not unless Evelyn will give me another turn later, which she probably won"t. There she goes with Lord Breakwater again. How I do dislike that young man! And look at Carr--valsing with Aurelia! He seems to be leaping on her feet a good deal, and she looks as if she were telling him so, does not she? There! they have subsided into the bay-window. I thought she would not stand it long. He does not dance as well as he acts. Heigh-ho! Come in to supper with me, Middleton. The supper-room will be emptier now, and I am dying of hunger. You must be the same, for you had no regular dinner any more than we had. Come along. We will get a certain little table for two that I know of, in the bay-window where I took the fair pigtail just now, to the evident anxiety of the parental chignon who was at the large table. We will have a good feed in peace and quietness."
In a few minutes we were established in a quiet nook in the supper-room, which was now half empty, and were making short work of everything before us.
"How well Carr acted!" said Charles at last, leaning back, and leisurely sipping his champagne. "I can think of something besides food now. Did not you think he acted well?"
"Yes," I said, "but you cut him out."
"Did I!" said Charles, absently, beckoning to some lobster salad which was pa.s.sing. "Have some? Do, Middleton. We can but die once. You won"t?
Well I will. Have you often seen Carr act before?"
"Never," I said. "I never met him till I came on board the _Bosphorus_ at----"
"Indeed! Oh! I fancied you were quite old friends."
"We made great friends on the steamer."
"Did you see much of him in London?" he asked, filling up his gla.s.s and mine.
"Not much, naturally," I said, laughing. "I was in London only two nights."
"Ah! I forgot. Very good of you, I am sure, to come down here so soon after your arrival. You would hardly have seen him at all since you landed, then?"
"Carr? Yes," I replied, thinking Charles"s talk was becoming very vague; though when I rallied him about it next day he a.s.sured me it had been very much to the point indeed. "We dined and went to the play together, and had rather a nasty accident into the bargain on our way home."
"What kind of accident?"
I told him the particulars, which seemed to interest him very much.
"And you had all those jewels of poor Sir John"s with you, no doubt,"
continued Charles. "You said you had them on you day and night. I wonder you were not relieved of them."