DRAMATIC INTELLIGENCE.
A few days later Basil Maclaine was thrown into a perfect fever of excitement by receiving a note, very cordially worded, from Sabine Venables. This was more than he had hoped almost! He was getting into the very thick of Good Society now, and no mistake. He was beginning to be recognised. Last Wednesday he had been introduced to no end of the Best People at Mrs. Bouverie-Barton’s ‘little gathering’ of two hundred souls; and to-day, here was what the heiress of Hurst Croft herself wrote to him — and on a tiny pink sheet of notepaper, too, with her crest and monogram in gold and colours:
‘Dear Mr. Maclaine,
‘I’ve only just learned from Mr. Hubert Harrison, who is good enough to assist me in my little project, that you’re quite a great swell at amateur theatricals; and as we are going to get up a Pastoral Play in the grounds at Hurst Croft, I venture to ask you whether we might count upon your kind aid in arranging the piece, and, if possible, also in taking a part for us. The performance will take place about July 20, and the play we have chosen is “As You Like It.” As far as yet arranged, the cast will include Lord Adalbert Montgomery as Orlando, Mr. Harrison as Jaques, Miss Weatherley as Celia, and myself as Rosalind. We wonder whether it would suit you to undertake the part of Touchstone — which Mr. Harrison says you would render admirably. If you could do us the favour of answering at an early date, you would greatly oblige
‘Yours very sincerely,
‘Sabine Estelle Venables.’
Basil Maclaine leant back in his chair as he read that note in a delicious ecstasy of self-congratulation. To be sure, there were drawbacks and difficulties in the way; he didn’t for one moment disguise them from himself.
Bertie Montgomery was to have the part of Orlando — the part that allowed him to play most tenderly upon the Rosalind’s feelings; the part that anybody with a spark of regard for the heiress’s heart (and Basil Maclaine had fallen really in love with her, in his own way) would most have chosen for himself, and most have regretted to see falling to the share of his more fortunate rival. But there was no help for that. No doubt Old Affability, the typical British Philistine, her papa (who seemed to Basil Maclaine a perfect model of all that an elderly English gentleman of the banking persuasion ought to be), had settled that if ‘As You Like It’ was to come off at all in his grounds, nobody but Lord Adalbert should play Orlando to his daughter’s Rosalind. And quite right, too — from the papa’s point of view, Basil thought to himself frankly; for he was candid enough to admit, after all, that if he were a papa, and banking were his profession, he would like his daughters to marry among the very Highest and Noblest in the land — the Best and Greatest. It must be such a consolation to one’s declining years, you know, to feel one’s self the father-in-law of a Duke’s brother!
But then Touchstone! He could have wished, indeed, it had been any other part in the play but Touchstone. To be sure, the make-up was most becoming to him, with his dark complexion and black moustache; but the part itself was certainly not a dignified one. He hated comedy — though he succeeded best in it. Hubert Harrison was to be the Jaques. He’d have liked Jaques well enough; there was sentiment in that, and philosophy, too; and melancholy is so gentlemanly! But the Fool of the play! It was really most unkind of her to put him off, black moustache and all, with making love in by-play to that ridiculous Audrey!
Still, it’s something to be asked to take part in a Pastoral Play at all — pastoral plays were just then very fashionable — and it’s something to have your name mixed up with a lord’s and to be reported in Truth, and to feel that if you’re only playing the fool, you’re playing it, at least, in the very Best Society. Basil Maclaine was by no means unsusceptible to these varied charms; and when he wrote back, as he meant to do, ‘I shall be only too delighted,’ the phrase would contain a degree of truth that is very unusual with it.
Linda came in to clear away breakfast as he was still gazing with admiration at the crest and monogram. In the simplicity of his heart (for, like most of his kind, Basil was, after all, a simple-hearted young man, who expected the whole world to feel about everything exactly as he did), he handed her the letter. Linda read it through with careful scrutiny. ‘You won’t be able to get away from the office for the rehearsals, will you?’ was her first practical comment.
Basil, who had expected hushed awe and congratulation at so magnificent a programme, gazed back at her, almost speechless. ‘Oh yes,’ he answered, after a pause. ‘For an affair like this, I can manage to make arrangements. It’s the sort of thing one doesn’t get asked to every day, Linda.’
‘They might have invited you to take a better part than Touchstone,’ the girl went on, her pride for her lover a little piqued by the selection. ‘But I suppose it’s all right. Whatever part you’re cast for you always act so admirably.’
‘And then, look at the company!’ Basil answered with pride. ‘Lord Adalbert Montgomery!’
‘So I see,’ Linda said, without a tinge of admiration in her voice, exactly as if the man were a mere Tom, Dick, or Harry. ‘And Miss Venables is to be Rosalind. I ... I’m glad you’re not her Orlando. It’s such a ridiculous position for a man to have to assume — all that sighing and love-song making about a woman you don’t really care a pin for.’
Basil Maclaine stared hard at her with a sudden twinge of his accusing conscience. Could the girl actually think he was in love with her in the sort of way that would interfere with his making love in real earnest to Sabine Venables? He took Linda’s hand, unresisted this time, in his. ‘She’s a very pretty girl, Linda,’ he said, gently pressing it.
‘So I hear,’ Linda answered, looking him back in the face fearlessly; for it never even occurred to her honest heart what Basil was driving at.
‘And very rich,’ Basil went on, imagining he was disillusioning her.
‘Very rich,’ Linda replied, with a certain proud intonation in her clear, deep voice. ‘And the sort of girl any man might be glad to sell himself for.’
She looked beautiful as she said it, in that native pride of her womanhood that was perfectly natural to her. It was a shot fired at random, but it took effect. Basil was holding her hand in his own. All men are human — especially, I have observed, when a beautiful woman’s hand is clasped tight in theirs. Basil faltered, and was lost. ‘But not half so pretty or half so good as you, Linda,’ he murmured, much lower.
‘Thank you,’ Linda answered, and pressed his hand back. Then she felt this had gone quite far enough for the present; and in her matter-of-fact way she lifted the tray, and glided from the room. Basil glanced after her with an approving look. ‘Viewed merely as a woman,’ he said to himself frankly, with unwonted candour, ‘upon my word, she’s worth a round dozen of the other one! If she were only in one’s own position in life, now. But there! one mustn’t be a fool. Hang it all! one must marry a woman, at least, whose relations one wouldn’t be ashamed of before one’s own children.’
And the things of which Basil Maclaine would have been ashamed were not petty meannesses or vulgarities of ingrained nature, but the crime of poverty or the misdemeanour of living outside Society. Noblesse oblige; and he felt that much was now demanded of a Government servant who had begun to mix with the Best People.
For the next week or two, however, in the intervals which the daily service of his country allowed him, Basil Maclaine was perpetually down at Hurst Croft, arranging and rehearsing for ‘As You Like It.’ The evenings were long just then; and by taking the first train after office hours he was able to get three hours of daylight in the country still, and to rehearse to his heart’s content with the rest of the company.
These meetings on the lawn at Hurst Croft did him two good turns. In the first place, they allowed him to see a great deal of Sabine Venables, who was courtesy itself to him. And, in the second place, they enabled him, by dexterous railway arrangements, to improve his acquaintance with Bertie Montgomery. He was quite in the swim of things now, he said to himself each day gaily.
But as there is a thorn to every rose, it must be added in justice that Basil would have enjoyed the rehearsals a vast deal more if it had not been for the constant presence of Hubert Harrison, who discussed minor points of detail in private far more often than was necessary with Sabine Venables, and of his brother Douglas, who cast a glance of disapproval upon Basil himself whenever he ventured to bask too freely in the sunshine of the heiress’s fickle favour. Nor did he care for the frequent paternal supervision of Old Affability himself, whose bland City smile — too much like a superior banking version of the draper’s assistant’s for Basil’s own austere fancy — asserted itself for ever in the foreground, with all the pertinacity of a Cheshire cat, when Sabine ventured for a moment to talk to anybody on earth except the favoured scion of a ducal house. Indeed, in more than one particular, Basil found Old Affability very much in the way. Especially as regarded that pale little creature who was cast for Celia, and in whom the master of Hurst Croft appeared to feel a fatherly interest out of all proportion, Basil thought, to her face or fortune.
This feeble little girl was named Woodbine Weatherley; she had been at school with Sabine, and, being ‘intellectual,’ as they call it, had afterwards gone to Girton, where her mind, such as it was, had wholly got the better of her frail small body. She was Woodbine by name, and Woodbine by nature. She seemed specially intended by Providence to cling for support to somebody or something; but, unhappily, so far as Basil could perceive, Providence had unkindly neglected to provide her with anybody or anything in particular to cling to. Mr. Venables insisted she should take the part of Celia; and she was well cast for it — if she was to be cast at all — for there was no other character in the whole play she could possibly have been entrusted with. Basil accepted her aid politely, though with a very bad grace, and did his best to mould her by continued training into a passable Celia. She would have preferred a Greek play herself, she said; she thought she could act Antigone; but, failing that, she really did her level best for Shakespeare.
All through the rehearsals, however, no matter what else went right or wrong, Old Affability, regardless for the moment of the thrilling fact that Consols had closed at ninety-four and seven-eights for the account, appeared to concern himself about two things alone — whether Lord Adalbert and Sabine were conferring together enough over their respective parts, and whether Woodbine Weatherley was having full justice done to her talent by stage-manager and fellow-actors or actresses.
‘Papa’s so kind to her,’ Sabine said, when Basil made some laughing remark to the heiress one day about his obvious solicitude that Miss Weatherley should receive her due share of applause. ‘He’s very good, you know, in his way, to poor people, papa is. He likes to befriend them. Woodbine’s an orphan, I suppose you’ve heard, and she wants to be a high school teacher, or something of the sort — all the girls nowadays are mad to be high school teachers or else hospital nurses; it’s the craze of the moment. They call it a mission. But papa thinks she’s not quite strong enough for missions, and he’d like to find her some easier work. Poor little thing, she has a hard life of it, I’m afraid! There’s not enough of her for any man ever to fall in love with, of course; so she’s not likely to marry: and she isn’t strong enough to earn her own living, I think; so I dare say in the end we shall have to keep her. She won’t cost much to keep, that’s one good thing. It’s positively dreadful to see her at dinner. She takes a tiny little slice off a chicken’s breast, and then leaves the best part of it, and never digests the remainder. She’s a sort of chameleon, I believe, or is it a salamander? She lives off air, flavoured with notes on the Greek tragedians.’
‘Is she so learned, then?’ Basil asked, with a superior smile.
‘Learned!’ Sabine rejoined. ‘Why, I should rather think so. She’s nothing else. She’s got the classics on the brain, and all she thinks about on earth is Æschylus and the practice of the Christian virtues. As if those were the kind of things men ever care for!’
An heiress is always much franker in admissions of this sort than any other unmarried woman. She’s so accustomed to being openly hunted herself as fair game that she accepts marriage with bland acquiescence as the obvious end of all feminine pursuits and all feminine existence.