The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral. —Hamlet.
The Matrons, otherwise denominated lady patronesses, met in committee, Miss Mohun being of course the soul and spirit of all, though Mrs. Ellesmere, as the wife of the rector of old Rockstone Church, was the president, Lady Flight, one of the most interested, was there, also Lady Merrifield, dragged in to secure that there was nothing decided on contrary to old-world instincts, Mrs. Grinstead, in right of the musical element that her brother promised, the beautiful Mrs. Henderson, to represent the marble works, Mrs. Simmonds of the Cliff Hotel, the Mayoress, and other notables.
The time was fixed for the first week in August, the only one when engagements would permit the Rotherwood family to be present for the opening, and when the regatta was apt to fill Rockquay with visitors. The place was to be the top of the cliffs of Rockstone, where the gardens of the Cliff Hotel, of Beechcroft Cottage, Rocca Marina, and Carrara, belonging respectively to Miss Mohun, Mr. White, and Captain Henderson, lay close together separated by low walls, and each with a private door opening on a path along the top of the cliffs. They could easily be made to communicate together, by planks laid over the boundaries, and they had lawns adapted for tents, etc., and Rocca Marina rejoiced in a shrubbery and conservatories that were a show in themselves, and would be kindly lent by Mr. and Mrs. White, though health compelled them to be absent and to resort to Gastein. The hotel likewise had a large well-kept garden, where what Mrs. Simmonds called a pavilion, “quite mediaeval,” was in course of erection, and could be thrown open on the great day.
It was rather “tea-gardenish,” but it could be made available for the representation of The Outlaw’s Isle. Lancelot made a hurried visit to study the place, and review the forces, and decided that it was practicable. There could be a gallery at one end for the spectators, and the outer end toward the bay could be transformed into a stage, with room for the orchestra, and if the weather were favourable the real sea could be shown in the background. The scenes had been painted by the clever fingers at Vale Leston. It remained to cast the parts. Lancelot himself would be Prospero, otherwise Alaster Maclan, and likewise conductor, bringing with him the school-master of Vale Leston, who could supply his part as conductor when he was on the stage. His little boy Felix would be Ariel, the other elves could be selected from the school-children, and the local Choral Society would supply the wreckers and the wrecked. But the demur was over Briggs, a retired purser, who had always had a monopoly of sea-songs, and who looked on the boatswain as his right, and was likely to roar every one down. Ferdinand would be Gerald, under the name of Angus, but the difficulty was his Miranda—Mona as she was called. The Vanderkists could not be asked to perform in public, nor would Sir Jasper Merrifield have consented to his daughters doing so, even if they could have sung, and it had been privately agreed that none of the other young ladies of Rockquay could be brought forward, especially as there was no other grown-up female character.
“My wife might undertake it,” said Lancelot, “but her voice is not her strong point, and she would be rather substantial for a Miranda.”
“It would be rather like finding a mother instead of a wife—with all respect to my Aunt Daisy,” laughed Gerald.
“By the bye, I’m sure I once heard a voice, somewhere down by the sea, that would be perfect,” exclaimed Lance. “Sweet and powerful, fresh and young, just what is essential. I heard it when I was in quest of crabs with my boy.”
“I know!” exclaimed Gerald, “the Little Butterfly, as they call her!”
“At a cigar-shop,” said Lance.
“Mrs. Schnetterling’s. Not very respectable,” put in Lady Flight.
“Decidedly attractive to the little boys, though,” said Gerald. “Sweets, fishing-tackle, foreign stamps, cigars. I went in once to see whether Adrian was up to mischief there, and the Mother Butterfly looked at me as if I had seven heads; but I just got a glimpse of the girl, and, as my uncle says, she would make an ideal Mona, or Miranda.”
“Lydia Schnetterling,” exclaimed Mr. Flight. “She is a very pretty girl with a nice voice. You remember her, Miss Mohun, at our concerts? A lovely fairy.”
“I remember her well. I thought she was foreign, and a Roman Catholic.”
“So her mother professes—a Hungarian. The school officer sent her to school, and she did very well there, Sunday-school and all, and was a monitor. She was even confirmed. Her name is really Ludmilla, and Lida is the correct contraction. But when I wanted her to be apprenticed as a pupil-teacher, the mother suddenly objected that she is a Roman Catholic, but I very much doubt the woman’s having any religion at all. I wrote to the priest about her, but I believe he could make nothing of her. Still, Lydia is a very nice girl—comes to church, and has not given up the Choral Society.”
“She is a remarkably nice good girl,” added Mrs. Henderson. “She came to me, and entreated that I would speak for her to be taken on at the marble works.”
“You have her there?”
“Yes; but I am much afraid that her talents do not lie in the way of high promotion, and I think if she does not get wages enough to satisfy her mother, she is in dread of being made to sing at public-houses and music-halls.”
“That nice refined girl!”
“Yes; I am sure the idea is dreadful to her.”
“Could you not put her in the way of getting trained?” asked Gerald of his uncle.
“I must hear her first.”
“I will bring her up to the Choral Society tonight,” said Mr. Flight.
“What did you call her?” said Geraldine.
“Some German or foreign name, Schnetterling, and the school calls her Lydia.”
At that moment the council was invaded, as it sat in Miss Mohun’s drawing-room, upon rugs and wicker chairs, to be refreshed with tea. In burst a whole army of Merrifields, headed by little Primrose, now a tall girl of twelve years old, more the pet of the family than any of her elders had been allowed to be. Her cry was—
“Oh, mamma, mamma, here’s the very one for the captain of the buccaneers!”
The startling announcement was followed by the appearance of a tall, stalwart, handsome young man of a certain naval aspect, whom Lady Merrifield introduced as Captain Armytage.
“We must congratulate him, Gillian,” she said. “I see you are gazetted as commander.”
Primrose, who had something of the licence of the youngest, observed—
“We have been telling him all about it. He used to be Oliver Cromwell in ‘How Do You Like It?’ and now he will be a buccaneer!”
“Oliver Cromwell, you silly child!” burst out Gillian, with a little shake, while the rest fell into fits of laughing.
“I fear it was a less distinguished part,” said Captain Armytage.
“May I understand that you will help us?” said Lancelot. “I heard of you at Devereux Castle.”
“I don’t think you heard much of my capabilities, especially musical ones. I was the stick of the party,” said Captain Armytage.
It was explained that Captain Armytage had actually arrived that afternoon at the Cliff Hotel, and had walked over to call at Clipstone, whence he found the young ladies setting out to walk to Rockstone. He could not deny that he had acted and sung, though, as he said, his performance in both cases was vile. Little Miss Primrose had most comically taken upon her to patronize him, and to offer him as buccaneer captain had been a freak of her own, hardly to be accounted for, except that Purser Briggs’s unsuitableness had been discussed in her presence.
“Primrose is getting to be a horrid little forward thing,” observed Gillian to her aunt.
“A child of the present,” said Miss Mohun. “Infant England! But her suggestion seems to be highly opportune.”
“I don’t believe he can sing,” growled Gillian, “and it will be just an excuse for his hanging about here.”
There was something in Gillian’s “savagery” which gave Aunt Jane a curious impression, but she kept it to herself.
Late in the evening Lance appeared in his sister’s drawing-room with—
“I have more hopes of it. I did not think it was feasible when Anna wrote to me, but I see my way better now. That parson, Flight, has a good notion of drilling, and that recruit of the little Merrifield girl, Captain Armytage, is worth having.”
“If he roared like a sucking dove we would have him, only to silence that awful boatswain,” said Gerald; “and as to the little Cigaretta, she is a born prima donna.”
“Your Miranda? Are you content with her?” said his aunt.
“She is to the manner born. Lovely voice, acts like a dragon, and has an instinct how to stand and how to hold her hands.”
“Coming in drolly with her prim dress and bearing. Though she was dreadfully frightened,” said Lance. “Being half-foreign accounts for something, I suppose, but it is odd how she reminds me of some one. No doubt it is of some singer at a concert. What did they say was her name?”
“Ludmilla Schnetterling, the Little Butterfly they call her. Foreign on both sides apparently,” said Gerald. “Those dainty ankles never were bred on English clods.”
“I wonder what her mother is,” said Mrs. Grinstead.
“By the bye, I think it must have been her mother that I saw that morning when little Felix dragged me to a cigar-shop in quest of an ornamental crab—a handsome, slatternly hag sort of woman, who might have been on the stage,” said Lance.
“Sells fishing-tackle, twine, all sorts,” came from Adrian.
“Have you been there?” asked his sister, rather disturbed.
“Of course! All the fellows go! It is the jolliest place for”—he paused a moment—“candies and ginger-beer.”
“I should have thought there were nicer places!” sighed Anna.
“You have yet to learn that there is a period of life when it is a joy to slip out of as much civilization as possible,” said Lance, putting his sentence in involved form so as to be the less understood by the boys.
“Did you say that Flight had got hold of them?” asked Clement.
“Hardly. They are R.C.‘s, it seems; and as to the Mother Butterfly, I should think there was not much to get hold of in her; but Mrs. Henderson takes interest in her marble-workers, and the girl is the sort of refined, impressible creature that one longs to save, if possible. To-morrow I am going to put you all through your parts, Master Gerald, so don’t you be out of the way.”
“One submits to one’s fate,” said Gerald, “hoping that virtue may be its own reward, as it is in the matter of ‘The Inspector’s Tour’, which the ‘Censor’ accepts, really enthusiastically for a paper, though the Mouse-trap would have found it—what shall I say?—a weasel in their snare.”
“Does it indeed?” cried Anna, delighted. “I saw there was a letter by this last post.”
“Aye—invites more from the same pen,” he replied lazily.
“Too much of weasel for the ‘Pursuivant’ even?” said Geraldine.
“Yes,” said Lance; “these young things are apt to tear our old traps and flags to pieces. By the bye, who is this Captain Armytage, who happily will limit Purser Briggs to ‘We split, we split, we split,’ or something analogous?”
“I believe,” said Gerald, “that he joined the Wills-of-the-Wisp, that company which was got up by Sir Lewis Willingham, and played at Devereux Castle a year or two ago. Some one told me they were wonderfully effective for amateurs.”
“That explains the acquaintance with Lady Merrifield,” said Mrs. Grinstead.
“Oh, yes,” said Anna. “Mysie told me all about it; and how Mr. David Merrifield married the nicest of them all, and how much they liked this Captain Armytage.”
“Was not Mysie there when he arrived?”
“No, she was gone to see the Henderson children, but Gillian looked a whole sheaf of daggers at him. You know what black brows Gillian has, and she drew them down like thunder,” and Anna imitated as well as her fair open brows would permit, “turning as red as fire all the time.”
“That certainly means something,” said Geraldine, laughing.
“I should like to see Gillian in love,” laughed Anna; “and I really think she is afraid of it, she looked so fierce.”
The next evening there was time for a grand review in the parish school-room of all possible performers on the spot. In the midst, however, a sudden fancy flashed across Lancelot that there was something curiously similar between those two young people who occupied the stage, or what was meant to be such. Their gestures corresponded to one another, their voices had the same ring, and their eyes wore almost of the same dark colour. Now Gerald’s eyes had always been the only part of him that was not Underwood, and had never quite accorded with his fair complexion.
“Hungarian, I suppose,” said Lance to himself, but he was not quite satisfied.
What struck him as strange was that though dreadfully shy and frightened when off the stage, as soon as she appeared upon it, though not yet in costume, she seemed to lose all consciousness that she was not Mona.
Perhaps Mrs. Henderson could have told him. Her husband being manager and partner at Mr. White’s marble works, she had always taken great interest in the young women employed, had actually attended to their instruction, assisted in judging of their designs, and used these business relations to bring them into inner contact with her, so that her influence had become very valuable. She was at the little room which she still kept at the office, when there was a knock at the door, and “Miss Schnetterling” begged to speak to her. She felt particularly tender towards the girl, who was evidently doing her best in a trying and dangerous position, and after the first words it came out—
“Oh, Mrs. Henderson, do you think I must be Mona?”
“Have you any real objection, Lydia? Mr. Flight and all of them seem to wish it.”
“Yes, and I can’t bear not to oblige Mr. Flight, who has been so good, so good!” cried Lydia, with a foreign gesture, clasping her hands. “Indeed, perhaps my mother would not let me off. That is what frightens me. But if you or some real lady could put me aside they could not object.”
“I do not understand you, my dear. You would meet with no unpleasantness from any one concerned, and you can be with the fairy children. Are you shy? You were not so in the fairy scenes last winter—you acted very nicely.”
“Oh yes, I liked it then. It carries me away; but—oh! I am afraid!”
“Please tell me, my dear.”
Lydia lowered her voice.
“I must tell you, Mrs. Henderson, mother was a singer in public once, and a dancer; and oh! they were so cruel to her, beat her, and starved her, and ill-used her. She used to tell me about it when I was very little, but now I have grown older, and the people like my voice, she is quite changed. She wants me to go and sing at the Herring-and-a-Half, but I won’t, I won’t—among all the tipsy men. That was why she would not let me be a pupil-teacher, and why she will not see a priest. And now—now I am sure she has a plan in her head. If I do well at this operetta, and people like me, I am sure she will get the man at the circus to take me, by force perhaps, and then it would be all her life over again, and I know that was terrible.”
Poor Ludmilla burst into tears.
“Nay, if she suffered so much she would not wish to expose you to the same.”
“I don’t know. She is in trouble about the shop—the cigars. Oh! I should not have told! You won’t—you won’t—Mrs. Henderson?”
“No, you need not fear, I have nothing to do with that.”
“I don’t think,” Lydia whispered again, “that she cares for me as she used to do when I was a little thing. Now that I care for my duty, and all that you and Mr. Flight have taught me, she is angry, and laughs at English notions. I was in hopes when I came to work here that my earnings would have satisfied her, but they don’t, and I don’t seem to get on.”
Mrs. Henderson could not say that her success was great, but she ventured as much as to tell her that Captain Henderson could prevent any attempt to send her away without her consent.
“Oh! but if my mother went too you could not hinder it.”
“Are you sixteen, my dear? Then you could not be taken against your will.”
“Not till December. And oh! that gentleman, the conductor, he knew all about it, I could see, and by and by I saw him lingering about the shop, as if he wanted to watch me.”
“Mr. Lancelot Underwood! Oh, my dear, you need not be afraid of him, he is a brother of Mrs. Grinstead’s, a connection of Miss Mohun’s; and though he is such a musician, it is quite as an amateur. But, Lydia, I do think that if you sing your best, he may very likely be able to put you in a way to make your talent available so as to satisfy your mother, without leading to anything so undesirable and dangerous as a circus.”
“Then you think I ought—”
“It is a dangerous thing to give advice, but really, my dear, I do think more good is likely to come of this than harm.”
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