Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (375 page)

“It’s a compliment, I know, to be asked to act,” said Frank, in great embarrassment. “But I hope you and Miss Marrable will excuse me — ”

“Certainly not. Miss Marrable and I are both remarkable for the firmness of our characters. When we say Mr. So-and-So is positively to act the part of Falkland, we positively mean it. Come in and be introduced.”

“But I never tried to act. I don’t know how.”

“Not of the slightest consequence. If you don’t know how, come to me and I’ll teach you.”

“You!” exclaimed Mr. Vanstone. “What do you know about it?”

“Pray, papa, be serious! I have the strongest internal conviction that I could act every character in the play — Falkland included. Don’t let me have to speak a second time, Frank. Come and be introduced.”

She took her father’s arm, and moved on with him to the door of the greenhouse. At the steps, she turned and looked round to see if Frank was following her. It was only the action of a moment; but in that moment her natural firmness of will rallied all its resources — strengthened itself with the influence of her beauty — commanded — and conquered. She looked lovely: the flush was tenderly bright in her cheeks; the radiant pleasure shone and sparkled in her eyes; the position of her figure, turned suddenly from the waist upward, disclosed its delicate strength, its supple firmness, its seductive, serpentine grace. “Come!” she said, with a coquettish beckoning action of her head. “Come, Frank!”

Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment. Frank was twenty last birthday. In other words, he threw aside his cigar, and followed her out of the greenhouse.

As he turned and closed the door — in the instant when he lost sight of her — his disinclination to be associated with the private theatricals revived. At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again; plucked a twig from a plant near him; broke it in his hand; and looked about him uneasily, on this side and on that. The path to the left led back to his father’s cottage — the way of escape lay open. Why not take it?

While he still hesitated, Mr. Vanstone and his daughter reached the top of the steps. Once more, Magdalen looked round — looked with her resistless beauty, with her all-conquering smile. She beckoned again; and again he followed her — up the steps, and over the threshold. The door closed on them.

So, with a trifling gesture of invitation on one side, with a trifling act of compliance on the other: so — with no knowledge in his mind, with no thought in hers, of the secret still hidden under the journey to London — they took the way which led to that secret’s discovery, through many a darker winding that was yet to come.

CHAPTER V.

MR. VANSTONE’S inquiries into the proposed theatrical entertainment at Evergreen Lodge were answered by a narrative of dramatic disasters; of which Miss Marrable impersonated the innocent cause, and in which her father and mother played the parts of chief victims.

Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrants — an only child. She had never granted a constitutional privilege to her oppressed father and mother since the time when she cut her first tooth. Her seventeenth birthday was now near at hand; she had decided on celebrating it by acting a play; had issued her orders accordingly; and had been obeyed by her docile parents as implicitly as usual. Mrs. Marrable gave up the drawing-room to be laid waste for a stage and a theater. Mr. Marrable secured the services of a respectable professional person to drill the young ladies and gentlemen, and to accept all the other responsibilities incidental to creating a dramatic world out of a domestic chaos. Having further accustomed themselves to the breaking of furniture and the staining of walls — to thumping, tumbling, hammering, and screaming; to doors always banging, and to footsteps perpetually running up and down stairs — the nominal master and mistress of the house fondly believed that their chief troubles were over. Innocent and fatal delusion! It is one thing in private society to set up the stage and choose the play — it is another thing altogether to find the actors. Hitherto, only the small preliminary annoyances proper to the occasion had shown themselves at Evergreen Lodge. The sound and serious troubles were all to come.

“The Rivals” having been chosen as the play, Miss Marrable, as a matter of course, appropriated to herself the part of “Lydia Languish.” One of her favored swains next secured “Captain Absolute,” and another laid violent hands on “Sir Lucius O’Trigger.” These two were followed by an accommodating spinster relative, who accepted the heavy dramatic responsibility of “Mrs. Malaprop” — and there the theatrical proceedings came to a pause. Nine more speaking characters were left to be fitted with representatives; and with that unavoidable necessity the serious troubles began.

All the friends of the family suddenly became unreliable people, for the first time in their lives. After encouraging the idea of the play, they declined the personal sacrifice of acting in it — or, they accepted characters, and then broke down in the effort to study them — or they volunteered to take the parts which they knew were already engaged, and declined the parts which were waiting to be acted — or they were afflicted with weak constitutions, and mischievously fell ill when they were wanted at rehearsal — or they had Puritan relatives in the background, and, after slipping into their parts cheerfully at the week’s beginning, oozed out of them penitently, under serious family pressure, at the week’s end. Meanwhile, the carpenters hammered and the scenes rose. Miss Marrable, whose temperament was sensitive, became hysterical under the strain of perpetual anxiety; the family doctor declined to answer for the nervous consequences if something was not done. Renewed efforts were made in every direction. Actors and actresses were sought with a desperate disregard of all considerations of personal fitness. Necessity, which knows no law, either in the drama or out of it, accepted a lad of eighteen as the representative of “Sir Anthony Absolute”; the stage-manager undertaking to supply the necessary wrinkles from the illimitable resources of theatrical art. A lady whose age was unknown, and whose personal appearance was stout — but whose heart was in the right place — volunteered to act the part of the sentimental “Julia,” and brought with her the dramatic qualification of habitually wearing a wig in private life. Thanks to these vigorous measures, the play was at last supplied with representatives — always excepting the two unmanageable characters of “Lucy” the waiting-maid, and “Falkland,” Julia’s jealous lover. Gentlemen came; saw Julia at rehearsal; observed her stoutness and her wig; omitted to notice that her heart was in the right place; quailed at the prospect, apologized, and retired. Ladies read the part of “Lucy”; remarked that she appeared to great advantage in the first half of the play, and faded out of it altogether in the latter half; objected to pass from the notice of the audience in that manner, when all the rest had a chance of distinguishing themselves to the end; shut up the book, apologized, and retired. In eight days more the night of performance would arrive; a phalanx of social martyrs two hundred strong had been convened to witness it; three full rehearsals were absolutely necessary; and two characters in the play were not filled yet. With this lamentable story, and with the humblest apologies for presuming on a slight acquaintance, the Marrables appeared at Combe-Raven, to appeal to the young ladies for a “Lucy,” and to the universe for a “Falkland,” with the mendicant pertinacity of a family in despair.

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 defense 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.