For the voice rarely failed to influence its hearers, to carry you indeed a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the—then—Laureate's poem, that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend, moreover, down to the ground. It offered sympathetic expression to his own nature and temperament; so that he wooed, scoffed, blasphemed, orated, drowned in salt seas of envy and self-pity, with a simulation of sincerity as convincing to others as consolatory to himself.
And Damaris, being unlearned in the curious arts of the theatre, listened wide-eyed, spellbound, until flicked by the swishing skirts of fictitious emotion into genuine, yet covert, excitement. As the reading progressed Henrietta Frayling's presence increasingly sank into unimportance. More and more did the poem assume a personal character, of which, if the reader were hero, she—Damaris—became heroine. Marshall Wace seemed to read not to, but definitely at her; so that during more than one ardent passage, she felt herself go hot all over, as though alone with him, an acknowledged object of his adoring, despairing declarations. This she shrank from, yet—it must be owned—found stirring, strangely and not altogether unpleasantly agitating. For was not this protégé of Henrietta's—whom the latter implored her to encourage and treat kindly—something of a genius? Capable of sudden and amazing transformation, talking to you with a modesty and deference agreeably greater than that of most young men of his age; then, on an instant, changing at will, and extraordinarily voicing the accumulated wrongs, joys and sorrows of universal humanity? Could Henrietta, who usually spoke of him in tones of commiseration, not to say of patronage, be aware how remarkable he really was? Damaris wondered; regarding him, meanwhile, with innocent respect and admiration. For how tremendously much he must have experienced, how greatly he must have suffered to be able to portray drama, express profound emotion thus! That the actor's art is but glorified make-believe, the actor himself too often hollow as a drum, though loud sounding as one, never for an instant occurred to her. How should it?
Therefore when Mrs. Frayling—recollecting certain mysteries of the toilet which required attention before the arrival of her expected guests—brought the performance to an abrupt termination, Damaris felt a little taken aback, a little put about, as though someone should be guilty of talking millinery in church.
For—"Splendid, my dear Marshall, splendid," the lady softly yet emphatically interrupted him. "To-day you really surpass yourself. I never heard you read better, and I hate to be compelled to call a halt. But time has flown—look."
And she pointed to the blue and gold Sévres clock upon the mantelpiece.
"Miss Verity is an inspiring auditor," he said, none best pleased at being thus arbitrarily arrested in midcourse. "For whatever merit my reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me, Cousin Henrietta."
He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet ponderous movement—it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk—he got on to his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.
The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She, therefore, hit out—to regret her indiscretion the next moment.
"Nothing—nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but
I quite thought those cups would fall off the table—So stupid of me."
The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance. He was infuriated by his own awkwardness. Humiliated by Mrs. Frayling's warning, of which her subsequent apology failed to mitigate the disgrace. And that this should occur just in the hour of satisfied vanity, of agreeable success—and before Damaris! In her eyes he must be miserably disqualified henceforth.