CHAPTER IV.
A MORNING CALL.
Tonia worked at the comedy, but did not find her idea of a woman of_ton_ greatly enlarged by the women she had seen at Mrs. Mandalay's.Indeed, she began to think that her father was right, and that Mrs.Millamant--whose coarseness of speech disgusted her--was her bestmodel. Yet, disappointing as that tawdry assembly had been, she felt asif she had gained something by her brief encounter with Lord Kilrush,and her pen seemed firmer when she tried to give life and meaning tothe leading character in her play, the _role_ intended for Garrick.She had begun by making him young and foolish. She remodelled thecharacter, and made him older and wiser, and tried to give him thegrand air; evolving from her inner consciousness the personality whichher brief vision of Kilrush had suggested. Her ardent imagination mademuch out of little.
Of the man himself she scarcely thought, and would hardly haverecognized his person had they met in the street. But the ideal man sheendowed with every fascinating quality, every attracting grace.
Her father noted the improvement in her work.
"Why, this fourth act is the best we have done yet," he said, "and Ithink 'twas a wise stroke of mine to make our hero older----"
"Oh, father, 'twas my notion, you'll remember."
"You shall claim all the invention for your share, if you like, slut,so long as we concoct a piece that will satisfy Garrick, who grows moreand more finical as he gets richer and more fooled by the town. Thepart will suit him all the better now we've struck a deeper note. Hecan't wish to play schoolboys all his life."
It was three weeks after the masquerade when there came a rap at theparlour door one morning, and the maid-servant announced Lord Kilrush.
Thornton was lying on a sofa in shirt-sleeves and slippers, smoking along clay pipe, the picture of a self-indulgent sloven--that might havecome straight from Hogarth. Tonia was writing at a table by an openwindow, the June sunshine gleaming in her ebon hair. Her father hadbeen dictating and suggesting, objecting and approving, as she read herdialogue.
The visit was startling, for though Thornton was on easy terms withhis lordship, who had known him at the University, and had patronizedand employed him in his decadence, Kilrush had never crossed histhreshold till to-day. Had he come immediately after the meeting atMrs. Mandalay's, Antonia's father might have suspected evil; butThornton had flung that event into the rag-bag of old memories, andhad no thought of connecting his patron's visit with his daughter'sattractiveness. He was about as incapable of thought and memory as athinking animal can be, having lived for the past fourteen years in theimmediate present, conscious only of good days and bad days, the luckor the ill-luck of the hour, without hope in the days that were coming,or remorse for the days that were gone.
Kilrush knew the man to the marrow of his bones, and although he hadbeen profoundly impressed by Antonia's unlikeness to other women, hehad waited a month before seeking to improve her acquaintance, and thushoped to throw the paternal Argus off his guard.
Tonia laid down her pen, rose straight and tall as a June lily, andmade his lordship her queenly curtsey, blushing a lovely crimson at thethought of the liberties that rapid quill had taken with his character.
"He is not half so handsome as my Dorifleur!" she thought; "but he hasthe grand air that no words can express. Poor little Garrick! What agenius he must be, and what heels he must wear, if he is to representsuch a man!"
Kilrush returned the curtsey with a bow as lofty, and then bent overthe ink-stained fingers and kissed them, as if they had been saintlydigits in a crystal _reliquaire_.
"Does Miss Thornton concoct plays, as well as her gifted parent?" heinquired, with the smile that was so exquisitely gracious, yet notwithout the faintest hint of mockery.
"The jade has twice her father's genius," said Thornton, who hadrisen from the sofa and laid his pipe upon the hob of the wide irongrate, where a jug of wall-flowers filled the place of a winter fire."Or, perhaps I should say, twice her father's memory, for she has arepertory of Spanish and Italian plays to choose from when her Pegasushalts."
"Nay, father, I am not a thief," protested Tonia.
Kilrush glanced at the hack-scribbler, remembering that awkwardadventure with the farmer's cash-box which had brought so worthy agentleman to the treadmill, and which might have acquainted him withJack Ketch. He glanced from father to daughter, and decided thatAntonia was unacquainted with that scandalous episode in her parent'sclerical career.
After that one startled blush and conscious smile, the cause whereofhe knew not, she was as unconcerned in his lordship's company to-dayas she had been at Mrs. Mandalay's. She gave him no _minauderies_,no downcast eyelids or shy glances; but sat looking at him with apleased interest while he talked of the day's news with her father, andanswered him frankly and brightly when he discussed her own literarywork.
"You are very young to write plays," he said.
"I wrote plays when I was five years younger," she answered, laughing,"and gave them to Betty to light the fires."
"And your father warmed his legs before the dramatic pyre, and neverknew 'twas the flame of genius?"
"She was a fool to burn her trash," said Thornton. "I might have made avolume of it--'Tragedies and Comedies, by a young lady of fifteen.'"
"I'll warrant Shakespeare burnt a stack of balderdash before he wrote_The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, poor stuff as it is," said Kilrush.
"Is your lordship so very sure 'tis poor stuff?" asked Tonia.
"If it wasn't, don't you think Garrick would have produced it? He lovesShakespeare--a vastly respectable poet whose plays he can act withoutpaying for them. Be sure you let me know when your comedy is to beproduced, madam, for I should die of vexation not to be present at thefirst performance."
"Alas! there is a great gulf between a written play and an acted one,"sighed Tonia. "Mr. Garrick may not like it. But 'tis more my father'splay than mine, my lord. He finds the ideas, and I provide the words."
"She has a spontaneous eloquence that takes my breath away. But forthe machinery, the fabric of the piece, the arrangement of the scenes,the method, the taste, the scope of the characters, and their actionupon one another, I confess myself the author," Thornton said, inhis grandiloquent way, having assumed his company manner, a style ofconversation which he kept for persons of quality.
"I doubt Miss Thornton is fonder of study than of pleasure, or I shouldhave seen her at Mrs. Mandalay's again----"
"I hate the place," interjected Tonia; "and if women of fashion are alllike the painted wretches I saw there----"
"They all paint--white lead is the rule and a clean-washed face theexception," said Kilrush; "but 'twould not be fair to judge the _beaumonde_ by the herd you saw t'other night. Mrs. Mandalay's is an _ollapodrida_ of good and bad company. Your father must initiate you in thepleasures of Ranelagh."
"I have had enough of such pleasures. I had a curiosity--likeFatima's--to see a world that was hid from me. But for pleasure Iprefer the fireside, and a novel by Richardson. If he would but give usa new Clarissa!"
"You admire Clarissa?"
"I adore, I revere her!"
"A pious simpleton who stood in the way of her own happiness. Why, inthe name of all that's reasonable, did she refuse to marry Lovelace,when he was willing?"
Tonia flashed an indignant look at him.
"If she could have stooped to marry him she would have proved herselfat heart a wanton!" she said, with an outspoken force that startledKilrush.
Hitherto he had met only two kinds of women--the strictly virtuous,who affected an Arcadian innocence and whose talk was insupportablydull, and the women whose easy morals allowed the widest scope forconversation; but here was a girl of undoubted modesty, who was notafraid to argue upon a hazardous theme.
"You admire Clarissa for her piety, perhaps?" he said. "That is whatour fine ladies pretend to appreciate, though they are most of themheathens."
"I admire her for her self-respect," answered Tonia. "That is herhighest qua
lity. When was there ever a temper so meek, joined with suchfortitude, such heroic resolve?"
"She was a proud, self-willed minx," said Kilrush, entranced with thevivid expression of her face, with the fire in her speech.
"'Twas a woman's pride in her womanhood, a woman fighting against herarch enemy----"
"The man who loved her?"
"The man she loved. 'Twas that made the struggle desperate. She knewshe loved him."
"If she had been kinder, now, and had let love conquer?" insinuatedKilrush.
"She would not have been Clarissa; she would not have been thelong-suffering angel, the martyr in virtue's cause."
"Prythee, my lord, do not laugh at my daughter's high-flownsentiments," said Thornton. "I have done my best to educate her reason;but while there are romancers like Samuel Richardson to instil folly'tis difficult to rear a sensible woman."
"That warmth of sentiment is more delightful than all your cold reason,Thornton; but I compliment you on the education which has made thisyoung lady to tower above her sex."
"Oh, my lord, do not laugh at me. I have just learnt enough to knowthat I am ignorant," said Tonia, with her grand air--grand because socareless, as of one who is alike indifferent to the effect of her wordsand the opinion of those with whom she converses.
Kilrush prolonged his visit into a second hour, during which theconversation flitted from books to people, from romance to politics,and never hung fire. He took leave reluctantly, apologizing for havingstayed so long, and gave no hint of repeating his visit, nor wasasked to do so. But he meant to come again and again, having as hethought established himself upon a footing of intimacy. A Grub-Streethack could have no strait-laced ideas--a man who had been in jail forsomething very like larceny, and who had educated his young daughter asa free-thinker.
"She finds my conversation an agreeable relief after a ten years'_tete-a-tete_ with Thornton," he told himself, as he picked his waythrough the filth of Green Street to Leicester Fields. "But 'tis easyto see she thinks I have passed the age of loving, and is as much athome with me as if I were her grandfather. Yet 'twas a beautiful redthat flushed her cheek when I entered the room. Well, if she is pleasedto converse with me 'tis something; and I must school myself to taste aplatonic attachment. A Lovelace of seven and forty! How she would jeerat the notion!"
* * * * *
Lord Kilrush waited a fortnight before repeating his visit, and againcalled at an hour when Thornton was likely to be at home; but his thirdvisit, which followed within a week of the second, happened late inthe afternoon, when he found Antonia alone, but in no wise discomposedat the prospect of a _tete-a-tete_. She enjoyed his conversation withas frank and easy a manner as if she had been a young man, and hisequal in station; and he was careful to avoid one word or look whichmight have disturbed her serenity. It was unflattering, perhaps, to betreated so easily, accepted so frankly as a friend of mature years; butit afforded him the privilege of a companionship that was fast becominga necessity of his existence. The days that he spent away from RupertBuildings were dull and barren. His hours with Antonia had an unfailingcharm. He forgot even twinges of gout, and the burden of time--thatdread of old age and death which so often troubled his luxurioussolitude.
She grew more enchanting as she became more familiar. She treated himwith as cordial a friendship as if he had been her uncle. She wouldtalk to him with her elbows on the table, and her long tapering fingerspushing back those masses of glossy hair which the ribbon couldscarcely hold in place. Stray curls would fall over the broad whitebrow, and she had a way of tossing those random ringlets from her eyesthat he could have sworn to among a thousand women.
He told her all that was worth telling of the world in which he livedand had lived. He had been a soldier till his thirtieth year; hadtravelled much and far; had lived in Paris among the encyclopedists,and had entertained Voltaire at his house in London. He had seen everydramatic troupe worth seeing in France, Italy, and Spain; had dabbledin necromancy, and associated with savants in every science, at homeand abroad.
All his experiences interested Antonia. She had a way of entering intothe ideas of another which he had never met with in any except thehighest grade of women.
"Your kindness makes me an egotist," he said. "You ought to be themistress of a political _salon_. Faith, I can picture our partypoliticians pouring their griefs and hatreds into your ear, cheered byyour sympathy, inspired by your wit. But I doubt you must find thisprosing of mine plaguey tiresome."
"No, no, no," she cried eagerly. "I want to know what the world islike. It is pleasant to listen to one who has seen all the places andpeople I long to see."
"You will see them with your own young eyes, perhaps, some day," hesaid, smiling at her.
She shook her head despondently, and waved the suggestion away asimpossible.
One day in an expansive mood she consented to read an act of thecomedy, now finished, and waiting only Thornton's final touches, andthat spicing of the comic episodes on which he prided himself, andagainst which his daughter vainly protested.
"My father urges that we have to please three distinct audiences, andthat scenes which delight people of good breeding are _caviare_ to thepit, while the gallery wants even coarser fare, and must have somefoolery dragged in here and there to put them in good humour. I'll notread you the gallery pages."
He listened as if to inspiration. He easily recognized her own workas opposed to her father's, the womanly sentiment of her heroine'sspeeches, her hero's lofty views of life. He ventured a suggestion ortwo at that first reading, and finding her pleased with his hints, heinsisted on hearing the whole play, and began seriously to help her,and so breathed into her dialogue that air of the _beau monde_ whichenhances the charm of contemporary comedy. This collaboration, sodelightful to him, so interesting to her, brought them nearer to eachother than all their talk had done. He became the partner of her ideas,the sharer of her hopes. He taught her all that her father had leftuntaught--the mystery of modish manners, the laws of that society whichcalls itself good, and how and when to break them.
"For the parvenu 'tis a code of iron; for the fine gentleman there isnothing more pliable," he told her. "I have seen Chesterfield do thingsthat would make a vulgarian shudder, yet with such benign grace that noone was offended."
Thornton was with them sometimes, and they sat on the play incommittee. He, who professed to be the chief author, found himselfoverruled by the other two. They objected to most of his jokes asvulgar or stale. They would admit no hackneyed turns of speech. Thecomedy was to be a picture of life in high places.
"Begad, my lord, you'll make it too fine for the town, and 'twill beplayed to empty benches," remonstrated Thornton.
"Nothing is ever too fine for the town," answered Kilrush. "Do youthink the folks in the gallery want their own humdrum lives reflectedon the stage, or to look on at banquets of whelks and twopenny porter?The mob love splendour, Mr. Thornton, and when they have not Bajazet orRichard, they like to see the finest fine gentlemen and ladies that aplaywright can conceive."
Thornton gave way gracefully. He knew his lordship's influence at thetheatres, and he had told Garrick that Kilrush had written a third ofthe play, but would not have his name mentioned.
"'Tis no better for that," said the manager, but in his heart liked thepatrician flavour, and on reading _The Man of Mind_ owned 'twas thebest thing Thornton had written, and promised to produce it shortly.
By this time Kilrush and Antonia seemed old friends, and she lookedback and thought how dull her life must have been before she knew him.He was the only man friend she had ever had except her father. Shefound his company ever so much more interesting than Patty Lester's,so that it was only for friendship's sake she ever went to the parlourover the piazza, or bade Patty to a dish of tea in Rupert Buildings.Patty opened her great brown eyes to their widest when she heard ofKilrush's visits.
"You jeer at my ancient admirers," she said, "and now you have got on
ewith a vengeance!"
"He is no admirer--only an old friend of my father's who likes to sitand talk with me."
"Is that all? He must be very fond of you to sit in a second floorparlour. He is one of the finest gentlemen in town, and the richest. MyGeneral told me all about him."
"I thought that Irish peers were seldom rich," Tonia said carelessly,not feeling the faintest interest in her friend's fortune or position.
"This one is; and he is something more than an Irish landowner. Hismother was an East India merchant's only child, and one of the richestheiresses in England. Those Indian merchants are rank thieves, theGeneral says--thieves and slave-traders, and they used to bring homemountains of gold. But that was fifty years ago, in the good old times."
"Poor souls!" said Tonia, thinking of the slaves. "What a cruel worldit is!"
It grieved her to think that her friend's wealth had so base a source.She questioned her father on their next meal together.
"Is it true that Lord Kilrush's grandfather was a slave-trader?" sheasked.
"'S'death, child, what put such trash in your head? Miss Lavenew wasthe daughter of a Calcutta merchant who dealt with the native princesin gold and gems, and who owned a tenth share of the richest diamondmine in the East. 'Tis the West Indian merchants who sometimes take aturn at the black trade, rather than let their ships lie in harbourtill they ground on their own beef-bones."
It was a relief to know that her friend's fortune was unstained byblood.
"I do not think he would exist under the burden of such a heritage,"she said to herself, meditating upon the question in the long summerafternoons, while she sat with open windows, trying not to hear streetcries, as she bent over an Eastern story by Voltaire, which she wastranslating for one of the magazines.
Kilrush came in before her task was finished, but she laid her penaside gladly, and rose to take his hat and stick from him with herdutiful daughterly air, just as she did for her father.
"Nay, I will not have you wait upon me, when 'tis I should serve you onmy knees, as queens are served," he said.
It was seven o'clock, and he had come from a Jacobite dinner in GoldenSquare--a dinner at which the champagne and Burgundy had gone roundfreely before it came to drinking the king's health across a bowl ofwater. There was an unusual brightness in his eyes, and a faint flushupon cheeks that were more often pale.
"I did not expect to see your lordship to-day," Tonia said, repelled byhis manner, so unlike the sober politeness to which he had accustomedher. "I thought you were going to Tunbridge Wells."
"My coach was at the door at ten o'clock this morning, the postillionsin their saddles, when I sent them all to the devil. I found 'twasimpossible to leave this stifling town."
"A return of your gout?" she asked, looking at him wonderingly.
"No, madam, 'twas not my gout, as you call it, though I never owned tomore than a transient twinge. 'Twas a disease more deadly, a maladymore killing."
He made a step towards her, wanting to clasp her to his breast in therecklessness of a long suppressed passion, but drew back at the soundof a step on the stair.
She looked at him still with the same open wonder. She could scarcelybelieve that this was Kilrush, the friend she admired and revered. Herfather came in while she stood silent, perplexed, and distressed at thetransformation.
Kilrush flung himself into an armchair with a muttered oath. Thenlooking up, he caught the expression of Tonia's face, and it soberedhim. He had been talking wildly; had offended her, his divinity, thewoman to win whom was the fixed purpose of his mind--to win her at hisown price, which was a base one. He had been tactful hitherto, hadgained her friendship, and in one unlucky moment he had dropped themask, and it might be that she would trust him no more.
"Too soon, too soon," he told himself. "I have made her like me. I mustmake her love me before I play the lover."
He let Thornton talk while he sat in a gloomy silence. It wounded himto the quick to discover that she still thought of him as an elderlyman, whose most dreaded misfortune was a fit of the gout. 'Twas tosober age she had given her confidence.
Thornton had been with Garrick, and had come home radiant. The play wasto be put in rehearsal next week, with a magnificent cast.
"But I fear your lordship is indisposed," he said, when Kilrush failedto congratulate him on his good fortune.
"My lordship suffers from a disease common to men who are growing old.I am sick of this petty life of ours, and all it holds."
"I am sorry to hear you talk like one of the Oxford Methodists," saidThornton. "It is their trick to disparage a world they have not thespirit or the fortune to enjoy."
"They have their solatium in the kingdom of saints," said Kilrush. "Idare not flatter myself with the hope of an Elysium where I shall againbe young and handsome, and capable of winning the woman I love."
"Nor do you fear any place of torment where the pleasing indiscretionsof a stormy youth are to be purged with fire," retorted Thornton, gaily.
"No, I am like you--and Miss Thornton--I stake my all upon the onlylife I know and believe in."
He glanced at Tonia to see how the materialist's barren creed sat onher bright youth. She gave a thoughtful sigh, and her eyes lookeddreamily out to the summer clouds sailing over Wren's tall steeple. Shewas thinking that if she could have accepted Mrs. Potter's creed, andbelieved in a shining city above the clouds and the stars, it wouldhave been sweet to hope for reunion with the mother whose face shecould not remember, but whose sweetness and beauty her father loved topraise, even now after nineteen years of widowhood.
"Your lordship is out of spirits," said Thornton. "Tonia shall give usa dish of tea."
"No, I will not be so troublesome. I am out of health and out ofhumour. Miss Thornton was right, I dare swear, when she suggested thegout--my gout--an old man's chronic malady. I have been dining with acrew of boisterous asses who won't believe the Stuarts are beaten, inspite of the foolish heads that are blackening on Temple Bar. _J'ai levin mauvais_, and am best at home."
He kissed Antonia's hand, that cold hand which had never thrilled athis touch, nodded good-bye to Thornton, and hurried away.
"Kilrush is not himself to-day," said Thornton.
"I'm afraid he has been taking too much wine," said Antonia. "He hadthe strangest manner, and said the strangest things."
"What things?"
"Oh, a kind of wild nonsense that meant nothing."
She was not accustomed to see any one under the influence of liquor.Her father was, by long habit, proof against all effects of the nightlypunch-bowl, and however late he came from "The Portico," he had alwayshis reasoning powers, and legs steady enough to carry him up twoflights of stairs without stumbling.
The Infidel: A Story of the Great Revival Page 4