Part 18 (2/2)
Frank recovered himself sufficiently to greet Mrs. Lascelles with customary politeness, and made Helen a ceremonious bow, without offering to shake hands. She construed the omission into a studied and gratuitous slight.
So the poor girl turned once more to the stage, leaning her cheek on her hand, and wondering sadly, almost humbly, what she had done to be so punished, tried to interest herself in the progress of the opera.
A tenor, swelling in black velvet, was expressing intense adoration of some object unknown, possibly the great chandelier, at which he trilled and quavered with unflagging persistency--lifting to it eyes, eye-brows, chest, and shoulders, rising on his toes, as if, like the skylark soaring and singing towards the light, he would fain project himself, his voice, his trunk-breeches, and his dearest affections, right through the roof!
Nor did he seem in the slightest degree influenced by suspicion or dismay, though the stage, becoming gradually darkened, filled rapidly with a.s.sa.s.sins, all wearing black cloaks, black masks, black gloves, brandis.h.i.+ng poniards, and bursting forth--as was extremely natural in a band of paid murderers stealing on their victim--into a magnificent and deafening chorus, such as caused the very curls of the Conductor to vibrate on his head, while he waved his baton to and fro in spasmodic frenzy, the crisis of a musical delirium.
It was Jin's opportunity. From her dark corner those black eyes flashed like lamps, while she murmured, under cover of the ophicleide and the big drum:
”You've never been to see us, Captain Vanguard. Rose has missed you sadly, and--and--so have I.”
A vacant chair stood by her own, so close, that her gown partly covered its cus.h.i.+on. There was obvious invitation in her gesture, while she removed the intrusive fold, and Frank dropped willingly enough into that vacant seat.
Wounded, sore, reckless, angry with one woman, he was in a mood to render the attractions of such another as Miss Ross extremely dangerous.
His attention being taken off his own grievances, the cessation of pain was in itself delightful; and I fear he had too little generosity to forbear the petty triumph of showing Miss Hallaton that others could care for him even if she did not. Besides, the act of flirting with such a professor as Jin in the dark corner of an opera-box, however dangerous, was, in itself, no unpleasant pastime; so, while Helen, cold and sick at heart, suffered herself to be deafened by chorus and orchestra, Frank, to use his own expression, ”went in a perisher, and made tremendous running with Miss Ross!”
She was an experienced angler, so perfect in the art that being in earnest rather increased her skill than otherwise. The popularity of our Italian Opera is not entirely due to its music, the best and the highest paid for in Europe. Its boxes form also a convenient territory for the prosecution of those skirmishes, which would become actual warfare but for the nature of the ground on which they take place. There are fair and dazzling visions, there are soft, sad sounds--most intoxicating when softest and saddest. There is bright glare on others, semi-obscurity for ourselves. There are sympathy, juxta-position, a common object of interest, a necessity for whispers, and a propriety in absolute silence, which is in itself the strongest possible stimulant to conversation.
Above all, there is a certain sentiment of isolation, the result of being shut up together for a definite period, that renders people mutually attractive; just as no man alive can accompany a woman, however ugly, for a long sea voyage, and not fall in love with her to a certainty.
”You don't, and you _know_ you don't!” whispered Jin, in answer to some wild remark of Frank's, drowned for all ears but her own in an outrageous crash of bra.s.s instruments. ”Though, mind, I won't have you fancy for a moment that I lump you in with the others, tie you all up in a bunch, and label you 'poison.' No, I shall not give you my poor gardenia. You'll take it on to Lady Clearwell's, I dare say. But it will never get any farther than the first pretty woman you dance with. Water!
Pooh! It would wither, poor thing, and much you'd care for it, then!
Well, if you _really_ promise----No. I won't. I never did in my life, and I won't begin! You needn't move, it's only Goldie. Now _that's_ a faithful admirer, if you like!”
It was indeed none other but this devoted swain, who, meekly entering, and paying homage stiffly enough to Mrs. Lascelles, seated himself between that lady and Helen, but afforded the former far the largest share of his attention and indisputable remarks on things in general.
The mistress of the box could not be said to be disappointed, though she wished it was somebody else, for her gla.s.ses were even now fixed on that somebody's drooping aristocratic old head, a dozen feet below her. Why did he not come up? She owed him the less grudge for this neglect, that she had a strong conviction Sir Henry Hallaton was fast asleep in his stall.
Mrs. Lascelles stifled a sigh.
”It's up-hill work--very!” she said to her own heart. ”And I'm making this other poor fellow sadly wretched. He's like the people one reads about in a novel. He never complains. I wish he would! I wish he'd scold me well, and tell me what a beast I am!”
Touching his arm with her fan, while she made some trifling observation, it cut her to the quick to observe how his face brightened up, like a dog's at the voice of its master; and for the first time Mrs. Lascelles found herself entertaining a vague suspicion that it might be unwise as well as unfeeling to throw away so much confiding adoration, to barter a reality that would last her lifetime, for a mere fancy, less tangible and less permanent than a dream. So, with half-a-dozen kind words, meaning nothing, she lifted this simple young man to the seventh heaven of transport, reaping, from her own act, the quiet satisfaction that follows such deeds of benevolence and common humanity.
Meanwhile, Frank had risen to go. Carefully abstaining from the slightest glance in Miss Hallaton's direction, he took an exceedingly affectionate leave of Miss Ross, and resumed his stall, which was next to that of Sir Henry, fastening a gardenia, with some little pretension, in his b.u.t.ton-hole.
”Been on the war-path,” thought Sir Henry, waking up from a doze and observing this lately-won decoration. ”Quick work. Taken a scalp already, and hanging it on his belt.” Then he remembered his own daughter was in the house, and meditated grimly on the deadly penalties he would exact from any man who should be so rash as to trifle with Helen; consoled, however, by the reflection that she was the last girl in the world to yield even so light a trophy as a flower to one who had not earned it in honourable and legitimate warfare.
”What's the attraction, Jin?” asked Mrs. Lascelles, with something of irritation in her tone. ”You've never taken your gla.s.ses off one spot in the stalls for the last ten minutes! Will you share the object amongst us, or must you keep it all to yourself?”
Miss Ross was never at a loss.
”It's the tower of Babel, dear,” she answered, good humouredly, ”before the confusion of tongues. Did you ever see such a head! There, two rows behind Sir Henry Hallaton. The woman in pink, with all those beads wound round her, bangles on her arms, and, I do believe, a fish-bone through her nose! I can see it, I'm sure, when she turns this way!” Thus Jin, with her gla.s.ses in her lap, with mirth and mischief in her eyes, to all appearance with no sentiment but ridicule in her heart.
Miss Ross deserved credit, I think, for unscrupulous invention and readiness of resource, also for the quickness with which she pounced on the woman in pink, a respectable matron, whose head-gear, modelled after that of a notorious Parisian impropriety, was simply such as she saw worn by ladies of her own station and repute every night of her life.
Jin would have studied this apparition perhaps more attentively, but that her whole soul was projecting itself, as it were, through her gla.s.ses, towards Frank Vanguard and his gardenia. She did not regret giving it him now. She was falling horribly in love with him. How she would have hated Helen, she thought, but that she could afford to pity her!
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