Miss Bretherton

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

When he next met Wallace, that hopeful, bright-tempered person had entirely recovered his cheerfulness. Miss Bretherton, he reported, had attacked the subject of Elvira with him, but so lightly that he had no opportunity for saying any of the skilful things he had prepared.

'She evidently did not want the question seriously opened,' he said, 'so I followed your advice and let it alone, and since then she has been charming both to Agnes and me. I feel myself as much of a brute as ever, but I see that the only thing I can do is to hold my tongue about it.' To which Kendal heartily agreed.

A few days afterwards the newspapers gave a prominent place to reports of Miss Bretherton's farewell performance. It had been a great social event. Half the distinguished people in London were present, led by royalty. London, in fact, could hardly bear to part with its favourite, and compliments, flowers, and farewells showered upon her. Kendal, who had not meant to go at the time when tickets were to be had, tried about the middle of the week after the Oxford Sunday to get a seat, but found it utterly impossible. He might have managed it by applying to her through Edward Wallace, but that he was unwilling to do, for various reasons. He told himself that, after all, it was better to let her little note and his answer close his relations with her for the present. Everywhere else but in the theatre she might still regard him as her friend; but there they could not but be antagonistic in some degree one to another, and not even intellectually did Kendal wish just now to meet her on a footing of antagonism.

So, when Saturday night came, he passed the hours of Miss Bretherton's triumph at a ministerial evening party, where it seemed to him that the air was full of her name and that half the guests were there as a pis-aller, because the Calliope could not receive them. And yet he thought he noticed in the common talk about her that criticism of her as an actress was a good deal more general than it had been at the beginning of the season. The little knot of persons with an opinion and reasons for it had gradually influenced the larger public. Nevertheless, there was no abatement whatever of the popular desire to see her, whether on the stage or in society. The engouement for her personally, for her beauty, and her fresh pure womanliness, showed no signs of yielding, and would hold out, Kendal thought, for some time, against a much stronger current of depreciation on the intellectual side than had as yet set in.

He laid down the Monday paper with a smile of self-scorn and muttered: 'I should like to know how much she remembers by this time of the prig who lectured to her in Nuneham woods a week ago!' In the evening his Pall Mall Gazette told him that Miss Bretherton had crossed the channel that morning, en route for Paris and Venice. He fell to calculating the weeks which must elapse before his sister would be in Venice, and before he could hear of any meeting between her and the Bretherton party, and wound up his calculations by deciding that London was already hot and would soon be empty, and that, as soon as he could gather together certain books he was in want of, he would carry them and his proofs down into Surrey, refuse all invitations to country houses, and devote himself to his work.

Before he left he paid a farewell call to Mrs. Stuart, who gave him full and enthusiastic accounts of Isabel Bretherton's last night, and informed him that her brother talked of following the Brethertons to Venice some time in August.

'Albert,' she said, speaking of her husband, 'declares that he cannot get away for more than three weeks, and that he must have some walking; so that, what we propose at present is to pick up Edward at Venice at the end of August, and move up all together into the mountains afterwards. Oh, Mr. Kendal,' she went on a little nervously, as if not quite knowing whether to attack the subject or not, 'it was devoted of you to throw yourself into the breach for Edward as you did at Oxford. I am afraid it must have been very disagreeable, both to you and to her. When Edward told me of it next morning it made me cold to think of it. I made up my mind that our friendship—yours and ours—with her was over. But do you know she came to call on me that very afternoon—how she made time I don't know—but she did. Naturally, I was very uncomfortable, but she began to talk of it in the calmest way while we were having tea. "Mr. Kendal was probably quite right," she said, "in thinking the part unsuited to me; anyhow, I asked him for his opinion, and I should be a poor creature to mind his giving it." And then she laughed and said that I must ask Edward to keep his eyes open for anything that would do better for her in the autumn. And since then she has behaved as if she had forgotten all about it. I never knew any one with less smallness about her.'

'No; she is a fine creature,' said Kendal, almost mechanically. How little Mrs. Stuart knew—or rather, how entirely remote she was from feeling—what had happened! It seemed to him that the emotion of that scene was still thrilling through all his pulses, yet to what ordinary little proportions had it been reduced in Mrs. Stuart's mind! He alone had seen the veil lifted, had come close to the energetic reality of the girl's nature. That Isabel Bretherton could feel so, could look so, was known only to him—the thought had pain in it, but the keenest pleasure also.

'Do you know,' said Mrs. Stuart presently, with a touch of reproach in her voice, 'that she asked for you on the last night?'

'Did she?'