Hugh Crichton's Romance. Coleridge Christabel Rose

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СКАЧАТЬ would be a study for a picture, ‘The Unwilling Actress,’” said Jem. “What say you, Hugh?”

      “Oh; it is a great success – it is very good,” said Hugh vaguely; but his face was crimson, and he felt as if he could scarcely breathe.

      The piece went on, and when the famous songs were heard in those perfect tones, when it was only necessary for her to stand and sing instead of to act, her voice and her youth and her beauty gained the day, there was a storm of applause, and a shower of bouquets fell at her feet. Hugh flung his white one, and Don Giovanni took it up and put it in her hand. Then suddenly the eyes lit up, the face was radiant, and the real passion which she had no power to assume or to mimic seemed to change her being.

      “By Jove, she is lovely!” cried Jem. The next moment she had hidden her face in the flowers, and her next notes were so faltering that they were hardly heard. Hugh felt a fury of impatience as the public interest turned to the other heroines of the piece, and yet he had time to watch Violante as she stood motionless and weary, forgetting the bye-play that should have kept her in view while she remained silent. Hugh did not think that she saw him; he could not catch her eye, and felt angrily jealous of the stage lovers.

      “Now’s the trial,” said Mr Tollemache. “Let us see how she will make a fool of Masetto.” Masetto was a fine actor as well as a good singer, and the part of Don Giovanni was played by Signor Vasari, the manager of the company himself. Even Hugh, preoccupied as he was, could not but perceive that Zerlina gave them few chances of making a point.

      “I feel just as if it was Violante herself who was unhappy,” said Emily. “She looks as if Signor Mattei had been scolding her.”

      Hugh, at any rate, felt as if it were Violante whom Don Giovanni was persecuting, and was utterly carried away by the excitement of the scene, till, just as the wild dance came to a climax, and Zerlina’s screams for help were heard, his brother touched his arm. Hugh started, and came suddenly to himself. James was gazing decorously at the stage. Hugh was conscious of having been so entirely absorbed as not to know how he might have betrayed his excitement. Of course he was in a rage with Jem for noticing it, but he sat back in his place and became aware that his hand trembled as he tried to put up his opera glasses, and that he had been biting his lip hard. He saw very little of the concluding scenes, and could not have told afterwards whether Don Giovanni died repentant or met the reward of his deeds. Even when the curtain dropped and Mademoiselle Mattei was led forward, to receive perhaps more bouquets and more “bravas” than she deserved, he felt a dull cold sense of disenchantment, though he clapped and shouted with the rest.

      “It is all very well,” said Mr Tollemache, as he cloaked his mother; “her extreme youth and her voice attract for the present, but she is too bad an actress for permanent success.”

      “She hasn’t the physical strength for it,” said Jem; “her voice will go.”

      “It is to be hoped Vasari will marry her,” said Mr Tollemache.

      “It is a very pretty opera,” said Hugh; “and I thought Donna Elvira had a fine voice.”

      “The theatre was very hot,” said Mr Tollemache, when they reached home; “has it made your head ache, Mr Crichton?”

      “No, thank you, but I’ll go to bed, I think. I don’t care for a smoke, Jem, to-night.”

      “Jem,” said Mr Tollemache, as they parted after a desultory discussion of Violante, the opera, the Matteis, and the chances of Violante’s voice being profitable to Signor Vasari, “if you and Hugh care to go on and see a bit more of Italy, to push on to Rome, for instance, for the few days you have left, you mustn’t stand on ceremony with me.”

      “Thank you,” said James. “I’ll see what Hugh says; I should like to see the – the Vatican, immensely.”

      Part 1, Chapter VII

      Brotherly Counsel

      “They were dangerous guides, the feelings – ”

      James Crichton had a certain taste for peculiarity, and anything unexpected and eccentric attracted him as much as it repels many other people. He piqued himself on his liberality, and had friends and acquaintances in many grades of society, to whom he behaved with perfectly genuine freedom and equality. He also loved everything that the word “Bohemian” implies to those classes who use it entirely ab extra. His mother’s vision of Jem’s daily life was a confused mixture of shabby velveteen, ale in queer mugs, colours which she was told to admire but thought hideous, mingled with musical instruments of all descriptions. He teased her to ask the Oxley photographer to dinner, and perpetually shocked her by revealing the social standing of acquaintances, whom he spoke of in terms of the greatest enthusiasm, till her dread was that he would marry some of “the sweet girls and perfect ladies” who supported their families by their own exertions in ways, which, though doubtless genteel, were not exactly aristocratic. She would have expected him to fall a victim to Violante at once.

      But people do not always act in the way that is expected of them, and Mrs Crichton would have been saved much uneasiness had she known that Jem’s affections, so far as they were developed, were placed on the daughter of an Archdeacon, who dressed at once fashionably and quietly, did her hair in accordance with custom and not art, was such a lady that no one ever called her lady-like, and so exactly what she ought to have been that no one would have ventured to say she was dull. Jem had a great many flirtations, but if ever a vision of the wife that years hence might reward his devotion to his work at the Foreign Office, crossed his mind that vision bore the form of Miss Helen Hayward. It takes a great deal of theory and very strong opinions to contend in practice with the instincts to which people are born; but instincts have less chance where feeling and passion rise up to do battle with them.

      James looked into Hugh’s dazzled absent eyes as they stood at his room door on their return from the opera, and felt that it was a bad moment for trying to bring him to reason; but the awkwardness of taking his elder brother to task in cold blood on the following morning made him seek for a conversation at once. So he followed him into his room and began: —

      “Did you hear what Tollemache said about going to Rome?”

      “Rome? No; do you want to go there?”

      “Why, yes! Of course. Who doesn’t?”

      “I don’t,” said Hugh quietly.

      “No; but isn’t it a pity to miss the opportunity? In short, Hugh, – I say, – you know, aren’t you coming it rather strong in that quarter?” said Jem, who was so astonished at the novel position in which he found himself that he plunged into his task of Mentor at once. “In short, suppose it was Arthur, you know, what should you say?”

      “I should say exactly what you want to say to me,” said Hugh, and made a little pause. “If I do this thing,” he went on, looking straight before him, “it will, I know, cause a great deal of vexation for the moment.”

      “It’s not that; but it could not possibly answer, Hugh, you can’t be such a fool. Go away and take time to reflect; no one is more reasonable than you.”

      Hugh roused himself as if with an effort, and, sitting down on the edge of his bed, looked up at his brother and prepared for the contest. “I will tell you all you are going to say,” he said. “This young lady – for she is a lady, Jem, and the daughter of a lady – is half a foreigner; she is only seventeen, she has no money, she has hardly any education, she has sung in public, on compulsion, and much against her will. If I marry her – ”

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