This statement of circumstances – addressed to an audience which included a father of Mr Vanstone’s disposition, and a daughter of Magdalen’s temperament – produced the result which might have been anticipated from the first.
Either misinterpreting, or disregarding, the ominous silence preserved by his wife and Miss Garth, Mr Vanstone not only gave Magdalen permission to assist the forlorn dramatic company, but accepted an invitation to witness the performance for Norah and himself. Mrs Vanstone declined accompanying them on account of her health: and Miss Garth only engaged to make one among the audience, conditionally on not being wanted at home. The parts of Lucy and Falkland (which the distressed family carried about with them everywhere, like incidental maladies) were handed to their representatives on the spot. Frank’s faint remonstrances were rejected without a hearing; the days and hours of rehearsal were carefully noted down on the covers of the parts; and the Marrables took their leave, with a perfect explosion of thanks – father, mother and daughter sowing their expressions of gratitude broadcast, from the drawing-room door to the garden-gates.
As soon as the carriage had driven away, Magdalen presented herself to the general observation under an entirely new aspect.
‘If any more visitors call to-day,’ she said, with the profoundest gravity of look and manner, ‘I am not at home. This is a far more serious matter than any of you suppose. Go somewhere by yourself, Frank, and read over your part, and don’t let your attention wander if you can possibly help it. I shall not be accessible before the evening. If you will come here – with papa’s permission – after tea, my views on the subject of Falkland will be at your disposal. Thomas! whatever else the gardener does, he is not to make any floricultural noises under my window. For the rest of the afternoon, I shall be immersed in study – and the quieter the house is, the more obliged I shall feel to everybody.’
Before Miss Garth’s battery of reproof could open fire, before the first outburst of Mr Vanstone’s hearty laughter could escape his lips, she bowed to them with imperturbable gravity; ascended the house-steps for the first time in her life, at a walk instead of a run; and retired then and there to the bedroom regions. Frank’s helpless astonishment at her disappearance, added a new element of absurdity to the scene. He stood first on one leg and then on the other; rolling and unrolling his part, and looking piteously in the faces of the friends about him. ‘I know I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘May I come in after tea, and hear Magdalen’s views? Thank you – I’ll look in about eight. Don’t tell my father about this acting, please: I should never hear the last of it.’ Those were the only words he had spirit enough to utter. He drifted away aimlessly in the direction of the shrubbery, with the part hanging open in his hand – the most incapable of Falklands, and the most helpless of mankind.
Frank’s departure left the family by themselves, and was the signal accordingly for an attack on Mr Vanstone’s inveterate carelessness in the exercise of his paternal authority.
‘What could you possibly be thinking of, Andrew, when you gave your consent?’ said Mrs Vanstone. ‘Surely my silence was a sufficient warning to you to say No?’
‘A mistake, Mr Vanstone,’ chimed in Miss Garth. ‘Made with the best intentions – but a mistake for all that.’
‘It may be a mistake,’ said Norah, taking her father’s part, as usual. ‘But I really don‘t see how papa, or any one else, could have declined, under the circumstances.’
‘Quite right, my dear,’ observed Mr Vanstone. ‘The circumstances, as you say, were dead against me. Here were these unfortunate people in a scrape on one side; and Magdalen, on the other, mad to act. I couldn’t say I had methodistical objections – I’ve nothing methodistical about me. What other excuse could I make? The Marrables are respectable people, and keep the best company in Clifton. What harm can she get in their house? If you come to prudence and that sort of thing – why shouldn’t Magdalen do what Miss Marrable does? There! there! let the poor things act, and amuse themselves. We were their age once – and it’s no use making a fuss – and that’s all I’ve got to say about it.’
With that characteristic defence of his own conduct, Mr Vanstone sauntered back to the greenhouse to smoke another cigar.
‘I didn’t say so to papa,’ said Norah, taking her mother’s arm on the way back to the house, ‘but the bad result of the acting, in my opinion, will be the familiarity it is sure to encourage between Magdalen and Francis Clare.’
‘You are prejudiced against Frank, my love,’ said Mrs Vanstone.
Norah’s soft, secret, hazel eyes sank to the ground; she said no more. Her opinions were unchangeable – but she never disputed with anybody. She had the great failing of a reserved nature – the failing of obstinacy; and the great merit – the merit of silence. ‘What is your head running on now?’ thought Miss Garth, casting a sharp look at Norah’s dark, downcast face. ‘You’re one of the impenetrable sort. Give me Magdalen, with all her perversities; I can see daylight through her. You’re as dark as night.’
The hours of the afternoon passed away, and still Magdalen remained shut up in her own room. No restless footsteps pattered on the stairs; no nimble tongue was heard chattering here, there and everywhere, from the garret to the kitchen – the house seemed hardly like itself, with the one ever-disturbing element in the family serenity suddenly withdrawn from it. Anxious to witness, with her own eyes, the reality of a transformation in which past experience still inclined her to disbelieve, Miss Garth ascended to Magdalen’s room, knocked twice at the door, received no answer, opened it and looked in.
There sat Magdalen, in an arm-chair before the long looking-glass, with all her hair let down over her shoulders; absorbed in the study of her part; and comfortably arrayed in her morning wrapper, until it was time to dress for dinner. And there behind her sat the lady’s-maid, slowly combing out the long heavy locks of her young mistress’s hair, with the sleepy resignation of a woman who had been engaged in that employment for some hours past. The sun was shining; and the green shutters outside the window were closed. The dim light fell tenderly on the two quiet seated figures; on the little white bed, with the knots of rose-coloured ribbon which looped up its curtains, and the bright dress for dinner laid ready across it; on the gaily painted bath, with its pure lining of white enamel; on the toilet-table with its sparkling trinkets, its crystal bottles, its silver bell with Cupid for a handle, its litter of little luxuries that adorn the shrine of a woman’s bedchamber. The luxurious tranquillity of the scene; the cool fragrance of flowers and perfumes in the atmosphere; the rapt attitude of Magdalen, absorbed over her reading; the monotonous regularity of movement in the maid’s hand and arm, as she drew the comb smoothly through and through her mistress’s hair – all conveyed the same soothing impression of drowsy delicious quiet. On one side of the door were the broad daylight, and the familiar realities of life. On the other, was the dreamland of Elysian serenity – the sanctuary of unruffled repose.
Miss Garth paused on the threshold, and looked into the room in silence.
Magdalen’s curious fancy for having her hair combed at all times and seasons, was among the peculiarities of her character which were notorious to everybody in the house. It was one of her father’s favourite jokes, that she reminded him, on such occasions, of a cat having her back stroked, and that he always expected, if the combing were only continued long enough, to hear her purr. Extravagant as it may seem, the comparison was not altogether inappropriate. The girl’s fervid temperament intensified the essentially feminine pleasure that most women feel in the passage of the comb through their hair, to a luxury of sensation which absorbed her in enjoyment, so serenely self-demonstrative, so drowsily deep, that it did irresistibly suggest a pet cat’s enjoyment under a caressing hand. Intimately as Miss Garth was acquainted with this peculiarity in her pupil, she now saw it asserting itself for the first time, in association with mental exertion of any kind on Magdalen’s part. Feeling, therefore, some curiosity to know how l
ong the combing and the studying had gone on together, she ventured on putting the question, first to the mistress; and (receiving no answer in that quarter) secondly to the maid.
‘All the afternoon, Miss, off and on,’ was the weary answer. ‘Miss Magdalen says it soothes her feelings and clears her mind.’
Knowing by experience that interference would be hopeless, under these circumstances, Miss Garth turned sharply and left the room. She smiled when she was outside on the landing. The female mind does occasionally – though not often – project itself into the future. Miss Garth was prophetically pitying Magdalen’s unfortunate husband.
Dinner-time presented the fair student to the family eye in the same mentally absorbed aspect. On all ordinary occasions Magdalen’s appetite would have terrified those feeble sentimentalists, who affect to ignore the all-important influence which female feeding exerts in the production of female beauty. On this occasion, she refused one dish after another with a resolution which implied the rarest of all modern martyrdoms – gastric martyrdom. ‘I have conceived the part of Lucy,’ she observed, with the demurest gravity. ‘The next difficulty is to make Frank conceive the part of Falkland. I see nothing to laugh at – you would all be serious enough if you had my responsibilities. No, papa – no wine to-day, thank you. I must keep my intelligence clear. Water, Thomas – and a little more jelly, I think, before you take it away.’
When Frank presented himself in the evening, ignorant of the first elements of his part, she took him in hand, as a middle-aged schoolmistress might have taken in hand a backward little boy. The few attempts he made to vary the sternly practical nature of the evening’s occupation by slipping in compliments sidelong, she put away from her with the contemptuous self-possession of a woman of twice her age. She literally forced him into his part. Her father fell asleep in his chair. Mrs Vanstone and Miss Garth lost their interest in the proceedings, retired to the farther end of the room, and spoke together in whispers. It grew later and later; and still Magdalen never flinched from her task – still, with equal perseverance, Norah, who had been on the watch all through the evening, kept on the watch to the end. The distrust darkened and darkened on her face as she looked at her sister and Frank; as she saw how close they sat together, devoted to the same interest and working to the same end. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to half-past eleven, before Lucy the resolute, permitted Falkland the helpless to shut up his task-book for the night. ‘She’s wonderfully clever, isn’t she?’ said Frank, taking leave of Mr Vanstone at the hall-door. ‘I’m to come tomorrow, and hear more of her views – if you have no objection. I shall never do it; don’t tell her I said so. As fast as she teaches me one speech, the other goes out of my head. Discouraging, isn’t it? Good night.’
The next day but one was the day of the first full rehearsal. On the previous evening Mrs Vanstone’s spirits had been sadly depressed. At a private interview with Miss Garth, she had referred again, of her own accord, to the subject of her letter from London – had spoken self-reproachfully of her weakness in admitting Captain Wragge’s impudent claim to a family connection with her – and had then reverted to the state of her health, and to the doubtful prospect that awaited her in the coming summer, in a tone of despondency which it was very distressing to hear. Anxious to cheer her spirits, Miss Garth had changed the conversation as soon as possible – had referred to the approaching theatrical performance – and had relieved Mrs Vanstone’s mind of all anxiety in that direction, by announcing her intention of accompanying Magdalen to each rehearsal, and of not losing sight of her until she was safely back again in her father’s house. Accordingly, when Frank presented himself at Combe-Raven on the eventful morning, there stood Miss Garth, prepared – in the interpolated character of Argus1 – to accompany Lucy and Falkland to the scene of trial. The railway conveyed the three, in excellent time, to Evergreen Lodge; and at one o’clock the rehearsal began.
Chapter Six
‘I hope Miss Vanstone knows her part?’ whispered Mrs Marrable, anxiously addressing herself to Miss Garth, in a corner of the theatre.
‘If airs and graces make an actress, ma’am, Magdalen’s performance will astonish us all.‘ With that reply, Miss Garth took out her work, and seated herself, on guard, in the centre of the pit.
The manager perched himself, book in hand, on a stool close in front of the stage. He was an active little man, of a sweet and cheerful temper; and he gave the signal to begin, with as patient an interest in the proceedings as if they had caused him no trouble in the past, and promised him no difficulty in the future. The two characters which open the comedy of The Rivals, Fag, and the Coachman, appeared on the scene – looked many sizes too tall for their canvas background, which represented a ‘Street in Bath’ – exhibited the customary inability to manage their own arms, legs and voices – went out severally at the wrong exits – and expressed their perfect approval of results, so far, by laughing heartily behind the scenes. ‘Silence, gentlemen, if you please,’ remonstrated the cheerful manager. ‘As loud as you like on the stage, but the audience mustn’t hear you off it. Miss Marrable ready? Miss Vanstone ready? Easy there with the “Street in Bath”; it’s going up crooked! Face this way, Miss Marrable; full face, if you please. Miss Vanstone –’ he checked himself suddenly. ‘Curious,’ he said, under his breath – ‘she fronts the audience of her own accord!‘ Lucy opened the scene in these words: ‘Indeed, ma’am, I traversed half the town in search of it: I don’t believe there’s a circulating library in Bath I haven’t been at.’ The manager started in his chair. ‘My heart alive! she speaks out without telling!’ The dialogue went on. Lucy produced the novels for Miss Lydia Languish’s private reading from under her cloak. The manager rose excitably to his feet. Marvellous! No hurry with the books; no dropping them. She looked at the titles before she announced them to her mistress; she set down Humphry Clinker on The Tears of Sensibility with a smart little smack which pointed the antithesis. One moment – and she announced Julia’s visit; another – and she dropped the brisk waiting-maid’s curtsey; a third – and she was off the stage on the side set down for her in the book. The manager wheeled round on his stool, and looked hard at Miss Garth. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,‘ he said. ‘Miss Marrable told me, before we began, that this was the young lady’s first attempt. It can’t be surely?’
‘It is,’ replied Miss Garth, reflecting the manager’s look of amazement on her own face. Was it possible that Magdalen’s unintelligible industry in the study of her part, really sprang from a serious interest in her occupation – an interest which implied a natural fitness for it?
The rehearsal went on. The stout lady with the wig (and the excellent heart) personated the sentimental Julia from an inveterately tragic point of view, and used her handkerchief distractedly in the first scene. The spinster-relative felt Mrs Malaprop’s mistakes in language so seriously, and took such extraordinary pains with her blunders, that they sounded more like exercises in elocution than anything else. The unhappy lad who led the forlorn hope of the company, in the person of Sir Anthony Absolute, expressed the age and irascibility of his character by tottering incessantly at the knees, and thumping the stage perpetually with his stick. Slowly and clumsily, with constant interruptions, and interminable mistakes, the first act dragged on, until Lucy appeared again to end it in soliloquy, with the confession of her assumed simplicity and the praise of her own cunning.
Here, the stage artifice of the situation presented difficulties which Magdalen had not encountered in the first scene – and here, her total want of experience led her into more than one palpable mistake. The stage-manager, with an eagerness which he had not shown in the case of any other member of the company, interfered immediately, and set her right. At one point she was to pause, and take a turn on the stage – she did it. At another, she was to stop, toss her head and look pertly at the audience – she did it. When she took out the paper to read the list of the presents she had received, could she give it a tap with he
r finger (Yes)? And lead off with a little laugh (Yes – after twice trying)? Could she read the different items with a sly look at the end of each sentence, straight at the pit (Yes, straight at the pit, and as sly as you please)? The manager’s cheerful face beamed with approval. He tucked the play under his arm, and clapped his hands gaily; the gentlemen, clustered together behind the scenes, followed his example; the ladies looked at each other with dawning doubts whether they had not better have left the new recruit in the retirement of private life. Too deeply absorbed in the business of the stage to heed any of them, Magdalen asked leave to repeat the soliloquy, and make quite sure of her own improvement. She went all through it again, without a mistake, this time, from beginning to end; the manager celebrating her attention to his directions by an outburst of professional approbation, which escaped him in spite of himself. ‘She can take a hint!’ cried the little man, with a hearty smack of his hand on the prompt-book. ‘She’s a born actress, if ever there was one yet!’
‘I hope not,’ said Miss Garth to herself, taking up the work which had dropped into her lap, and looking down at it in some perplexity. Her worst apprehension of results in connection with the theatrical enterprise, had foreboded levity of conduct with some of the gentlemen – she had not bargained for this. Magdalen, in the capacity of a thoughtless girl, was comparatively easy to deal with. Magdalen, in the character of a born actress, threatened serious future difficulties.
The rehearsal proceeded. Lucy returned to the stage for her scenes in the second act (the last in which she appears) with Sir Lucius and Fag. Here, again, Magdalen’s inexperience betrayed itself – and here once more her resolution in attacking and conquering her own mistakes astonished everybody. ‘Bravo!’ cried the gentlemen behind the scenes, as she steadily trampled down one blunder after another. ‘Ridiculous!’ said the ladies, ‘with such a small part as hers.’ ‘Heaven forgive me!’ thought Miss Garth, coming round unwillingly to the general opinion. ‘I almost wish we were Papists, and had a convent to put her in tomorrow.’ One of Mr Marrable’s servants entered the theatre as that desperate aspiration escaped the governess. She instantly sent the man behind the scenes with a message: ‘Miss Vanstone has done her part in the rehearsal: request her to come here, and sit by me.’ The servant returned with a polite apology: ‘Miss Vanstone’s kind love, and she begs to be excused – she’s prompting Mr Clare.’ She prompted him to such purpose that he actually got through his part. The performances of the other gentlemen were obtrusively imbecile. Frank was just one degree better – he was modestly incapable; and he gained by comparison. ‘Thanks to Miss Vanstone,’ observed the manager, who had heard the prompting. ‘She pulled him through. We shall be flat enough at night, when the drop falls on the second act, and the audience have seen the last of her. It’s a thousand pities she hasn’t got a better part!’