“Yes, yes, let us go up out of this crowd,” said Ailie, but the little woman hung before the portrait fascinated. Round her washed the waves of rustling garments like a surf on the shore at home; scents wafted; English voices, almost foreign in their accent, fell upon her ear all unnoticed since she faced the sudden revelation of what her brother’s child, her darling, had become. Seekers of pleasure, killers of wholesome cares, froth of the idle world eddied around her chattering, laughing, glancing curious or contemptuous at her grey sweet face, her homely form, her simple Sabbath garments: all her heart cried out in supplication for the child that had too soon become a woman and wandered from the sanctuary of home.
“We are blocking the way here, Bell. Let us go up,” again said Ailie, gently taking her arm.
“Yes,” said her brother. “It’s not a time for contemplation of the tombs—it’s not the kirkyard, Bell. You see there are many that are anxious to get in.”
“Oh, Lennox, Lennox!” she exclaimed, indifferent to the strangers round about her, “my brother’s child! I wish—oh, I wish ye were at home! God grant ye grace and wisdom: ‘Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stumble. When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea, thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet.’”
They went up to the box that Molyneux had kept for them, to find his wife there nursing an enormous bouquet of flowers, all white as the driven snow. “A gorgeous house!” she told them. “Everybody that’s anybody, and in the front push. Half a hundred critics, two real Count Vons, a lot of benzine brougham people who never miss a first night—there are their wives, poor dears! shining same as they were Tiffany’s windows. My! ain’t our Bud going to have a happy night!”
They sat and looked for a while in silence at the scene before them, so pleasing to the mind that sought, in crowds, in light and warmth and gaiety, its happiest associations; so wanting in the great eternal calm and harmony that are out of doors in country places. Serpent eyes in facets of gems on women’s bosoms; heads made monstrous yet someway beautiful and tempting by the barber’s art; shoulders bare and bleached, devoid of lustre; others blushing as if Eve’s sudden apprehension had survived the generations. Sleek shaven faces, linen breastplates, opera-glasses, flowers, fans, a murmur of voices, and the flame over all of the enormous electrolier.
It was the first time Bell had seen a theatre. Her first thought was one of blame and pity. “‘He looked on the city and wept’!” said she. “Oh, Ailie, that it were over and we were home!”
“All to see Miss Winifred Wallace!” said Mrs Molyneux. “Think of that, Miss Dyce,—your darling niece, and she’ll be so proud and happy!”
Bell sighed. “At least she had got her own way, and I am a foolish old country-woman who had different plans.”
Dan said nothing. Ailie waited too, silent, in a feverish expectation; and from the fiddles rose a sudden melody. It seemed the only wise and sober thing in all that humming hive of gaudy insects passing, passing, passing. It gave a voice to human longings for a nobler, better world; and in it, too, were memory and tears. To the people in the box it seemed to tell Bud’s story—opening in calm sweet passages, closing in the roll of trumpet and the throb of drum. And then the lights went down, and the curtain rose upon the street in Venice.