The next tableau, “Mary Queen of Scots on her way to Execution,” was a more ambitious one, the effect being heightened by a recitation from a gentleman with a slight lisp. It would have gone very well but for the fact that something had amused Her Majesty, Lilith, Queen of Scots, who shook with laughter as long as the picture lasted.
Then followed an illustration of Millais’s picture “Yes.” This was easy, though it was not very like the original; for, as all the male talent among the performers was occupied in making itself up for the next and more ambitious tableau, the gentleman who makes the lady say “Yes” had to be impersonated by Miss Browne, in her brother’s ulster and a burnt-cork moustache.
Then followed “The Fall of Wolsey.” This was a great success, and nobody minded that Wolsey wore a moustache, thickly coated with flour indeed, but yet perfectly visible to the naked eye. The only contretemps was the failure of memory on the part of the reciter, who spoke Wolsey’s speech from Henry VIII., got hopelessly “mixed” in the middle of it, and had to be audibly prompted by Cromwell.
The last tableau of all was, unhappily, too ambitious. It was an attempt to illustrate Long’s “Babylonian Marriage-Market”; but the presence of the realistically blacked Africans unluckily suggested a nigger entertainment on the sands to the unthinking minds among the audience, and, the contagion rapidly spreading, the curtains were hastily drawn amid a chorus of titters impossible to repress.
Then everybody, anxious to get home to eat the dinners which would, undoubtedly, be spoiling, made a rush for Mrs. Graham-Shute, and told her they had enjoyed themselves so much, and that the tableaux were beautifully done, and that she must be quite proud to have such clever daughters, and such a clever son.
And Mrs. Graham-Shute, quite happy, said, in her best Bayswater manner, that she thought they were rather good, “considering they were got up quite in a hurry, you know, and with no help at all.” And she kindly added that she was coming to live at Wyngham, and that she would get up “a lot more things” when she had settled down among the delighted inhabitants.
In the meantime, Lilith, who had had an opportunity, while posing as one of the beauties in the marriage-market, to survey the audience as well as the dim lights would allow, was running to Chris in great excitement.
“Do you know who the very handsome man is, sitting near the door?” she asked eagerly.
Chris, who was tired out, and past interest in mundane affairs, answered, wearily, that she did not know anybody, that if there was a handsome man among the audience he didn’t belong to Wyngham, where there were only ugly ones. Then Rose, who was present, spoke sedately: