Part 6 (2/2)

'Oh, everybody does it. I was bound to give a _matinee_ to the profession some time, and yesterday had been fixed for it for ages. But I have only given three _matinees_ altogether, and I shan't give another before my time is up.'

'That's a good hearing,' said Kendal. 'Do you get tired of the _White Lady_?'

'Yes,' she said emphatically; 'I am sick of her. But,' she added, bending forward with her hands clasped on her knee, so that what she said could be heard by Kendal only; 'have you heard, I wonder, what I have in my head for the autumn? Oh well, we must not talk of it now; I have no right to make it public yet. But I should like to tell you when we get to Nuneham, if there's an opportunity.'

'We will make one,' said Kendal, with an inward qualm. And she fell back again with a nod and a smile.

On they pa.s.sed, in the blazing suns.h.i.+ne, through Iffley lock and under the green hill crowned with Iffley village and its Norman church. The hay was out in the fields, and the air was full of it. Children, in tidy Sunday frocks, ran along the towing-path to look at them; a reflected heaven smiled upon them from the river depths; wild rose-bushes overhung the water, and here and there stray poplars rose like land-marks into the sky. The heat, after a time, deadened conversation. Forbes every now and then would break out with some comment on the moving landscape, which showed the delicacy and truth of his painter's sense, or set the boat alive with laughter by some story of the unregenerate Oxford of his own undergraduate days; but there were long stretches of silence when, except to the rowers, the world seemed asleep, and the regular fall of the oars like the pulsing of a hot dream.

It was past five before they steered into the shadow of Nuneham woods.

The meadows just ahead were a golden blaze of light, but here the shade lay deep and green on the still water, spanned by a rustic bridge, and broken every now and then by the stately whiteness of the swans. Rich steeply-rising woods shut in the left-hand bank, and foliage, gra.s.s, and wild flowers seemed suddenly to have sprung into a fuller luxuriance than elsewhere.

'It's too early for tea,' said Mrs. Stuart's clear little voice on the bank; 'at least, if we have it directly it will leave such a long time before the train starts. Wouldn't a stroll be pleasant first?'

Isabel Bretherton and Kendal only waited for the general a.s.sent before they wandered off ahead of the others. 'I should like very much to have a word with you,' she had said to him as he handed her out of the boat. And now, here they were, and, as Kendal felt, the critical moment was come.

'I only wanted to tell you,' she said, as they paused in the heart of the wood, a little out of breath after a bit of steep ascent, 'that I have got hold of a play for next October that I think you are rather specially interested in--at least, Mr. Wallace told me you had heard it all, and given him advice about it while he was writing it. I want so much to hear your ideas about it. It always seems to me that you have thought more about the stage and seen more acting than any one else I know, and I care for your opinion very much indeed--do tell me, if you will, what you thought of _Elvira!_'

'Well,' said Kendal quietly, as he made her give up her wrap to him to carry, 'there is a great deal that's fine in it. The original sketch, as the Italian author left it, was good, and Wallace has enormously improved upon it. Only--'

'Isn't it most dramatic?' she exclaimed, interrupting him; 'there are so many strong situations in it, and though one might think the subject a little unpleasant if one only heard it described, yet there is nothing in the treatment but what is n.o.ble and tragic. I have very seldom felt so stirred by anything. I find myself planning the scenes, thinking over them this way and that incessantly.'

'It is very good and friendly of you,' said Kendal warmly, 'to wish me to give you advice about it. Do you really want me to speak my full mind?'

'Of course I do,' she said eagerly; 'of course I do. I think there are one or two points in it that might be changed. I shall press Mr. Wallace to make a few alterations. I wonder what were the changes that occurred to you?'

'I wasn't thinking of changes,' said Kendal, not venturing to look at her as she walked beside him, her white dress trailing over the moss-grown path, and her large hat falling back from the brilliant flushed cheeks and queenly throat. 'I was thinking of the play itself, of how the part would really suit you.'

'Oh, I have no doubts at all about that,' she said, but with a quick look at him; 'I always feel at once when a part will suit me, and I have fallen in love with this one. It is tragic and pa.s.sionate, like the _White Lady_, but it is quite a different phase of pa.s.sion. I am tired of scolding and declaiming. _Elvira_ will give me an opportunity of showing what I can do with something soft and pathetic. I have had such difficulties in deciding upon a play to begin my October season with, and now this seems to me exactly what I want. People prefer me always in something poetical and romantic, and this is new, and the mounting of it might be quite original.'

'And yet I doubt,' said Kendal; 'I think the part of Elvira wants variety, and would it not be well for you to have more of a change?

Something with more relief in it, something which would give your lighter vein, which comes in so well in the _White Lady_, more chance?'

She frowned a little and shook her head. 'My turn is not that way. I can play a comedy part, of course--every actor ought to be able to--but I don't feel at home in it, and it never gives me pleasure to act.'

'I don't mean a pure light-comedy part, naturally, but something which would be less of a continuous tragic strain than this. Why, almost all the modern tragic plays have their pa.s.sages of relief, but the texture of _Elvira_ is so much the same throughout,--I cannot conceive a greater demand on any one. And then you must consider your company. Frankly, I cannot imagine a part less suited to Mr. Hawes than Macias; and his difficulties would react on you.'

'I can choose whom I like,' she said abruptly; 'I am not bound to Mr.

Hawes.'

'Besides,' he said cautiously, changing his ground a little, 'I should have said--only, of course, you must know much better--that it is a little risky to give the British public such very serious fare as this, and immediately after the _White Lady_. The English theatre-goer never seems to me to take kindly to medievalism--kings and knights and n.o.bles and the fifteenth century are very likely to bore him. Not that I mean to imply for a moment that the play would be a failure in point of popularity. You have got such a hold that you could carry anything through; but I am inclined to think that in _Elvira_ you would be rather fighting against wind and tide, and that, as I said before, it would be a great strain upon you.'

'The public makes no objection to Madame Desforets in Victor Hugo,' she answered quickly, even sharply. 'Her parts, so far as I know anything about them, are just these romantic parts, and she has made her enormous reputation out of them.'

Kendal hesitated. 'The French have a great tradition of them,' he said.

'Racine, after all, was a preparation for Victor Hugo.'

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