Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/267

 256 should follow upon the traces of the woman who had deserted him. And hateful as Mrs. Berry became in his eyes, on the instant that he had heard of her cruelty to the child, it was one thing to detest an unworthy woman, and another to refuse all credence to her words. Had it chanced that Laura had just then returned, and come, not penitent as her sister had pictured her, but calmly and proudly as she left the room at Versailles, her brother-in-law might have held out no hand of greeting. Sadly enough he gazed on the sleeping child, who had innocently done so much to shake his faith in her mother. Beatrice, who had entered with him, looked at the expression in his face, and answered it by bending over Clara, and pressing her fair cheek with a kiss, which meant hope and belief, and, still more emphatically, love and protection.

“ want to compliment you, Hawkesley,” said Mr. Aventayle, the manager, as after the “reading” of the author’s new play, and the distribution of the parts, they went up from the green-room to Aventayle’s room, which has been described, “but I never heard a much better piece, or one much worse read.”

“Did I read badly?” said Hawkesley.

“I hate to say a severe thing, but anybody else in the room would have read it better. Your mind seemed to be anywhere but among the dramatis personæ, my son.”

“I dare say that it was. I have had some perplexing family business to think about.”

“Ah! Don’t you hate relations? I do. It is right and proper that we should, moreover.”

“I dare say it is,” said Hawkesley, once more taking the nobleman’s chair, “but why?”

“Do you understand natural history? Of course you’ll say you do. Well, out of any stock—say horses for instance—only two or three are really noble animals. The same rule applies to a family, and we, who are of course the noble animals of our families, have a right to contemn and despise the rest, who are rubbish. Sport that doctrine next Christmas, at a family party, when you are pretending to respect your uncles, and trying not to hate your cousins.”

So spoke Aventayle, but as in the case of many other theorists, his practice was unworthy of his enlightenment, for he maintained about a dozen relatives of every degree of consanguinity, and found employment in his theatre for half a dozen more, for which two modes of treatment he was of course elaborately abused by each set; by the first for treating them as pensioners and beggars, instead of giving them work, and by the second for exacting service from them in return for his mean pay, instead of making them an allowance, as he could do in the case of other people.

“And now,” continued the manager, “how do you like the cast?”

“I suppose that you have done the best you could.”

“That’s simply a most ungrateful, disrespectful, and intolerable way of looking at it. I have cast the piece capitally.”

“Grayling did not seem very enthusiastic, and yet that is as good a part as he ever had in his life, if he knows how to bring it up.”

“My boy, if you had three eyes, you would know better. But as you have only two, and use both of them when you are reading, you cannot observe the face of the folks you are reading at. I was watching Master Grayling, and I saw that he was perfectly happy, though much too old a bird to flutter his feathers to an author.”

“Can Heygate do that footman bit?”

“He’ll be capital. You want a stolid party, a Pyramid, don’t you?”

“If he laughs at Whelker, who can’t help gagging, the scene is spoiled.”

“He will not laugh. He has stood the fire of a man who was even harder to resist than Whelker. Years ago, he had the part of a sentinel, who was to be unmoved by anything that could be said to him—it was in one of those charming little pieces which Charles Lance used to write—in exchange, as he said, for the Pulvis Olympicus—and Heygate had a long scene with Whiston. It told so well, and the house so recognised Heygate’s share in the fun, that Whiston, who had his jealousies, determined to force the sentinel into a laugh. Night after night he tried grimaces, sudden bits of nonsense, anything that could discompose Heygate, but it was of no use—he never laughed. But one day the author was at the wing as the scene ended, and Heygate came off. His face was pale through the paint, and drops stood upon his forehead as if he had been tortured. ‘You resisted Mr. Whiston’s attacks bravely, Mr. Heygate,’ said the author. ‘Yes, Mr. Lance, I thank Providence that I had the strength to resist, sir. But,’ he added, in the tone of a man who has been plundered of all his savings, or has had his wife stolen by his best friend, ‘it is very cruel of Mr. Whiston, very cruel indeed. But, Mr. Lance, I will drop down a dead man upon that stage before I laugh at Mr. Whiston.’

“I never heard that story. I am proud to have such a hero in my service. If I had known it before, he should have had another speech or two. And now, Aventayle, what do you say about Miss Tartley?”

“Ye-e-s,” said the manager, drawing out the word, as if approaching an inevitable grievance. “I thought you would come to her. Well, she is not Mrs. Curling or Mrs. Seeley. But that’s not her fault.”

“No, it isn’t. But it is her fault that she is a lump of affectation, without a single natural action or accent, and utterly unable to learn either.”

“There are a great many people who like her, and think her very pretty and clever.”

“Who tells you such nonsense?”

“People who ought to know, because they have it direct from herself.”

“It is really too bad to have to put a character into such hands.”

“You can’t say anything against her hands—they are daintiness itself—to say nothing of the rings. Be just to her.”

“I suppose we can’t help ourselves, but she will mull the wife’s temptation scene for the sake of showing those rings. By the way, make her play