The sound of Will Oliver’s curfew died low in Ailie’s mind, the countenance of Bell grew dim: she heard, instead, the clear young voice of Bud among the scenery and sat with an enraptured audience. “If you are all so anxious for it, then—” she said, and the deed was done!
She did not rue it when the night of Bud’s performance came, and her niece as the hapless young Bretagne welcomed the Dauphin before the city gates: she gloried in the natural poignancy that marked the painful scene with Hubert come to torture, but she almost rued it when Molyneux, having escorted them in an inexplicable silence home, broke out at last in fervent praise of his discovery as soon as the girl had left them for her bed.
“I’ve kept clutch of myself with considerable difficulty,” he said, “for I didn’t want to spoil girly’s sleep or swell her head, but I want to tell you, Millicent, and you, Miss Ailie, that I’ve Found my Star! Why, say! she’s out of sight! She was the only actor in all that company to-night who didn’t know she was in Camberwell: she was right in the middle of medieval France from start to finish, and when she was picked up dead at the end of the fourth act she was so stone-cold and stiff with thinking it she scared the company. I suspect, Miss Ailie, that you’re going to lose that girl!”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
It was a wet night in November. With a chuckle of horse’s hoofs on shining streets, Dan Dyce, with Bell and Ailie, drove from Molyneux’s fine new home to the temple of his former dreams—the proud Imperial. They sat in silence in the darkness of the cab, and in silence drifted into the entrance-hall of the theatre to mingle with the pompous world incongruously—with loud vain-glorious men, who bore to the eye of Bell some spirit of abandonment and mockery, with women lovely by the gift of God, or with dead-white faces, wax-red lips, and stealthy sidelong eyes. One there was who, passing before them, released a great fur cloak from her shoulders with a sudden movement, and, as it slowly slipped down her marble back, threatened an utter nakedness that made Bell gasp and clutch at her sister’s arm.
“Look!” said Ailie eagerly—before them was a portrait of a woman in the dress of Desdemona. The face had some suggestion that at times it might be childlike and serene, but had been caught in a moment of alarm and fire, and the full black eyes held in their orbs some frightful apprehension, the slightly parted lips expressed a soul’s mute cry.
“What is it? Who is it?” asked Bell, pausing before the picture with a stound of fear.
“It is Bud,” said Ailie, feeling proud and sorrowful—for why she could not tell. “There is the name: ‘Winifred Wallace.’”
Bell wrung her hands in the shelter of her mantle and stood bewildered, searching for the well-known lineaments.
“Let us go up,” said Dan softly, with no heed for the jostling people, for ever self-possessed, sorrowful to guess at his sister’s mind.