"I really, sir, scarcely know—"
"O, any one will point out Holly-Hock House," said the father. "The cabman is sure to know it."
"I am so happy you have agreed to come," said the daughter, who had again careered within earshot of our talk. "I shall expect you on Friday."
What was to be done? I bowed—and the bargain was closed.
CHAPTER XII.
I must have been asleep when Catsbach came home, if that night he came home at all. Frightful dreams haunted me all night. A thousand demons came down on me, like the Guards at Waterloo, all playing on broken-winded flutes. Twenty Hamlets, all in sable hat and tumbled silk stockings, whistled "To be, or not to be," through the same detestable instrument. Then I dreamt of Emily Pybus, and instantly she turned into Miss Claribel in the costume of Ophelia. All the scenes of my past life jumbled themselves up into one confused mass. Well-known faces looked in upon me from all sides of the room—Mr Montalban, the old schoolmaster at Puddlecombe, the examiners, Miss de la Rose, and Fitz-Edward—all piping and screaming on that inevitable flute. It showed that a deep blow on my vanity had been inflicted by my failure at Mr Willox's ball. I tried when I awoke to remember whether I had taken opium, I felt so feverish and confused; but the excitement was caused by my injured self-love; and, waking as well as sleeping, I entertained a frantic hatred against Mr Hooker. I determined to take counsel of Catsbach, to whom I had hitherto confided all parts of my history, with the sole concealment of names. I resolved to lay the whole case before him, and ask his advice how to proceed. Should I go to Muswell Hill and take the very office of tutor in music which I had already so indignantly refused in literature and classics? I found I was very much changed since then—or rather that Emily was more attractive, as a pupil, than I had thought her at fourteen years old. There was romance also in becoming acquainted with her in a fictitious character; and I felt less degraded as an unsuccessful musician than I had felt as a disappointed schoolboy. But Catsbach should decide upon it all. In the morning, however, a note was put into my hands—"The incident last night," he said, "makes it too dangerous for us to attend at private parties. You will never be able to preserve your incog. I have got some intimation of the whereabouts of Ellinor. You won't see me for two days. Meantime, go on with rehearsal with Miss Claribel, and on Thursday take her to Chatham. The 'Paragon Royal' will be in ecstasy at your approach, for I have said you will give them five pounds and a supper after the play. I shall be there in plenty of time for the overture, but at present I am off to Guildford, where I suspect my charmer keeps a school. The mistress has been described to me as a perfect angel; and what can be a closer description of my Ellinor? Take care of Miss Claribel's arts. Beauty is a fading flower. So am I.—Augustus Tooks." I followed the advice contained in this letter, and perfected myself in Hamlet. Miss Claribel herself began to have hopes of my success; and my mother, in the midst of her rapture with my performance, only insisted more and more on a strict preservation of my incognito. My uncle, she said, was about to return to England. She did not know how he might like to hear that his nephew had gone upon the stage. The Paragon Royal had scarcely a grander sound than the Stepney Star. Critics might be hostile; for all literary people, she heard, were unjust; and, at all events, I was to appear as Julian Gray till my position was fairly assured, and I could announce myself as the Shakspeare and Garrick of modern times. I smiled at all these cautions; I smiled at the hostility of the critics; I frowned at the possibility of a failure; I started when I heard her allusion to my uncle; in fact, I found that I was a regular playactor, and that I went through the gamut of stamps and facemakings exactly like Messrs Martingdale and Fitz-Edward. Miss Claribel laughed. "You rehearse very well," she said, "even when you are not repeating your part. You have immense command of feature, as much, I should say, as Grimaldi; but then he never attempted the tragic."
"I don't quite understand your meaning, Miss Claribel," I said, looking as dignified as Coriolanus when he banished the Romans. "Do you mean that I grimace too much?"
"Certainly, if you grimace at all. There is no surer sign of a man being a mere actor, than a reliance on scorning lips and upturned eyebrows. It is not natural. The words and passion must force their own way from the heart, and make their mark on the countenance at the moment of the burst. When you see a man throw himself back with his arms stretched out, his one leg forward, his mouth gaping, and his eyes ready to fall out of his head, in expectation of a ghost or some other dreadful sight, he is a mere conventional figure of fright, with no terror or apprehension whatever within. He should wait for the apparition; he should show the pit the first glimpse he gets of it; through his eyes they should see the undefined horror grow into consistency; and without the palpable presence either of the murdered Banquo or of Hamlet's father, they should feel a graveyard air about them, and see the dreadful shadow take shape and form. This is not produced by starts and grins."
"Then, in heaven's name! how is it produced?"
"By feeling it, by seeing it, by believing it."