CHAPTER XXVII.

DOUBTFUL.

Without taking off either bonnet or cloak, Annie Brunel, on reaching home that night, went at once to Mrs. Christmas's room, and flung herself down on the edge of the bed where the poor old woman lay, ailing and languid.

"Oh, mother, mother," cried the girl, "I can never go to the theatre any more!"

She buried her face in the bed-clothes, and only stretched out her hand for sympathy. The old woman tried to put her arm round the girl's neck, but relinquished the attempt with a sigh.

"What is to become of us, Miss Annie?"

"I don't know--I don't know," she said, almost wildly, "and why should I care any longer?"

"What new trouble is this that has fallen on us?" said Mrs. Christmas, faintly. "Why do you speak like that?"

"Because I don't know what to say, mother--because I would rather die than go to the theatre again--and he says I must. I cannot go--I cannot go--and there is no one to help me!"

The old woman turned her eyes--and they looked large in the shrivelled and weakly face--on her companion.

"Annie, you won't tell me what is the matter. Why should you hate the stage? Hasn't it been kind to you? Wasn't it kind to your mother--for many a long year, when she and you depended on it for your lives? The stage is a kind home for many a poor creature whom the world has cast out--and you, Miss Annie, who have been in a theatre all your life, what has taken you now? The newspapers?"

The girl only shook her head.

"Because the business isn't good?"

No answer.

"Has Mr. Melton been saying anything----?"

"I tell you, mother," said the girl, passionately, "that I will not go upon the stage, because I hate it! And I hate the people--I hate them for staring at me, and making me ashamed of myself. I hate them because they are rich, and happy, and full of their own concerns--indeed, mother, I can't tell you--I only know that I will never go on the stage again, let them do what they like. Oh, to feel their eyes on me, and to know that I am only there for their amusement, and to know that I cannot compel them to--to anything but sit and compassionately admire my dress, and my efforts to please them. I can't bear it, Lady Jane--I can't bear it."

And here she broke out into a fit of hysterical sobbing.

"My poor dear, when I should be strong and ready to comfort you, here I am weaker and more helpless than yourself. But don't go back to the theatre, sweetheart, until your taste for it returns----"

"It will never return. I hate the thought of it."

"But it may. And in the meantime haven't we over 40*l.* in the house of good savings?"

"That is nothing to what I must undertake to give Mr. Melton if I break my engagement. But I don't mind that much, Lady Jane--I don't mind anything except going back there, and you must never ask me to go back. Say that you won't! We shall get along somehow----"

"My darling, how can you imagine I would seek to send you back?"

Annie Brunel did not sleep much that night; but by the morning she had recovered all her wonted courage and self-composure. Indeed, it was with a new and singular sense of freedom and cheerfulness that she rose to find the world before her, her own path through it as yet uncertain and full of risks. But she was now mistress of herself; she went to bid Mrs. Christmas good morning with a blithe air, and then, as every Englishwoman does under such circumstances, she sent for the _Times_.

She had no definite impression about her capabilities for earning her living out of the dramatic profession; but she expected to find all the requisite suggestions in the _Times_. Here was column after column of proffered employment; surely one little bit might be allotted to her. So she sate down hopefully before the big sheet, and proceeded to put a well-defined cross opposite each advertisement which she imagined offered her a fair chance.

While she was thus engaged, Count Schoenstein's brougham was announced; and a few minutes thereafter, the Count, having sent up his card, was permitted to enter the room.

Outwardly his appearance was elaborate, and he wore a single deep crimson rose in the lapel of his tightly-buttoned frock-coat. His eyes, however, were a little anxious. And it was soon apparent that he had for the present relinquished his grand manner.

"I am delighted to see you looking so well," he said, "and I hope Mrs. Christmas is also the better for her holiday----"

"Poor Lady Jane is very ill," said Miss Brunel, "though she will scarcely admit it."

"Have I disturbed your political studies?" he asked, looking at the open newspaper.

"I have been reading the advertisements of situations," she said, frankly.

"Not, I hope," he remarked, "with any reference to what I heard from Mr. Melton last night about your retiring from the stage?"

"Indeed, it is from no other cause," she said, cheerfully. "I have resolved not to play any more; but we cannot live without my doing something----"

"In the meantime," said the Count, drawing a letter from his pocket, "I have much pleasure in handing you this note from Mr. Melton. You will find that it releases you from your present engagement, whenever you choose to avail yourself of the power."

The young girl's face was lit up with a sudden glow of happiness and gratitude.

"How can I ever thank him for this great kindness?" she said,--"so unexpected, so generous! Indeed, I must go and see him and thank him personally; it is the greatest kindness I have received for years."

The Count was a little puzzled.

"You understand, Miss Brunel, that--that paper, you see, was not quite Mr. Melton's notion until----"

"Until you asked him? Then I am indebted to you for many kindnesses, but for this more than all. I feel as if you had given me a pair of wings. How shall I ever thank you sufficiently----?"

"_By becoming my wife._"

He had nearly uttered the words; but he did not. He felt that his mission that morning was too serious to be risked without the most cautious introduction. Besides, she was in far too good spirits to have such a suggestion made to her. He felt instinctively that, in her present mood, she would certainly laugh at him--the most frightful catastrophe that can happen to a man under the circumstances. And Count Schoenstein had sufficient acquaintance with actresses to know, that while they have the most astonishing capacity for emotion, if their sympathies be properly excited, there are no people who, in cold blood, can so accurately detect the ridiculous in a man's exterior. An actress in love forgets everything but her love; an actress not in love has the cruellest eye for the oddities or defects of figure and costume.

At the present moment, Count Schoenstein felt sure that if he spoke of love, and marriage, and so forth, Miss Brunel would be looking at the rose in his button-hole, or scanning his stiff necktie and collar, or the unblushing corpulence of his waist. In his heart he wished he had no rose in his button-hole.

It would be very easy to make fun of this poor Count (and he was aware of the fact himself) as he stood there, irresolute, diffident, anxious. But there was something almost pathetic as well as comic in his position. Consider how many vague aspirations were now concentrated upon this visit. Consider how he had thought about it as he had dressed himself many a morning, as he had gone to bed many a night; how, with a strange sort of loyalty, he had striven to exalt his motives and persuade himself that he was quite disinterested; how the dull pursuit of his life, position and influence, had been tinged with a glow of sentiment and romance by meeting this young girl.

"She has no friends," he said to himself, many a time, "neither have I. Why should not we make common cause against the indifference and hauteur of society? I can make a good husband--I would yield in all things to her wishes. And away down in Kent together--we two--even if we should live only for each other----"

The Count tried hard to keep this view of the matter before his eyes. When sometimes his errant imagination would picture his marriage with the poor actress,--then his claim, on behalf of his wife, for the estates and title of the Marquis of Knottingley's daughter--then the surprise, the chatter of the clubs, the position in society he would assume, the money he would have at his command, the easy invitations to _battues_ he could dispense like so many worthless coppers among the young lords and venerable baronets--and so forth, and so forth--he dwelt upon the prospect with an unholy and ashamed delight, and strove to banish it from his mind as a temptation of the devil.

These conflicting motives, and the long train of anticipations connected with them, only served to render his present situation the more tragic. He knew that one great crisis of his life had come; and it is not only incomparable heroes, possessed of all human graces and virtues, who meet with such crises.

"When do you propose to leave the stage?" he asked.

"I have left," she answered.

"You won't play to-night?"

"No."

"But Mr. Melton----?"

"Since he has been so kind as to give me, at your instigation, this release, must get Miss Featherstone to play 'Rosalind.' Nelly will play it very nicely, and my best wishes will go with her."

"Then I must see him instantly," said the Count, "and give him notice to get a handbill printed."

"If you would be so kind----"

But this was too bad. She intimated by her manner that she expected him to leave at once, merely for the sake of the wretched theatre. He took up the newspaper, by way of excuse, and for a minute or two glanced down its columns.

"Have you any fixed plans about what you mean to do?" he asked.

"None whatever," she replied. "Indeed I am in no hurry. You have no idea how I love this sense of freedom you have just given me, and I mean to enjoy it for a little time."

"But after then?"

She shrugged her shoulders, and smiled: he thought he had never seen her look so charming.

"You don't know what lies before you," he said, gravely, "if you think of battling single-handed against the crowds of London. You don't know the thousands who are far more eager in the fight for bread than you are; because you haven't experienced the necessity yet----"

"I have fought for my bread ever since my poor mother died," she said.

"With exceptional advantages, and these you now abandon. My dear Miss Brunel," he added, earnestly, "you don't know what you're doing. I shudder to think of the future that you seem to have chalked out for yourself. On the other hand, I see a probable future for you in which you would not have to depend upon any one for your support; you would be independent of those people whom you profess to dislike; you would be rich, happy, with plenty of amusement, nothing to trouble you, and you would also secure a pleasant home for Mrs. Christmas----"

"Have you imagined all that out of one of these advertisements?" she asked, with a smile.

"No, Miss Brunel," said the Count, whose earnestness gave him an eloquence which certainly did not often characterise his speech. "Can't you guess what I mean? I am sure you know how I esteem you--you must have seen it--and perhaps you guessed what feelings lay behind that--and--and--now you are alone, as it were, you have no friends--why not accept my home, and become my wife?"

"Your wife?" she repeated, suddenly becoming quite grave, and looking down.

"Yes," he said, delighted to find that she did not get up in a towering passion, as he had seen so many ladies do, under similar circumstances, on the stage. "I hope you do not feel offended. I have spoken too abruptly, perhaps--but now it is out, let me beg of you to listen to me. Look at this, Miss Brunel, fairly: I don't think I have an unkind disposition--I am sincerely attached to you--you are alone, as I say, with scarcely a friend--we have many tastes in common, and as I should have nothing to do but invent amusements for you, I think we should lead an agreeable life. I am not a very young man, but on the other hand I haven't my way to make in the world. You don't like the stage. I am glad of it. It assures me that if you would only think well of my proposal, we should lead a very agreeable life. I'm sure we should have a pleasant agreeable life; for, after all,--it is absurd to mention this just now, perhaps--but one has a good deal of latitude in 30,000*l.* a year--and you don't have to trouble your mind--and if the most devoted affection can make you happy, then happy you'll be."

Annie Brunel sate quite silent, and not very much affected or put out. She had been in good spirits all the morning, had been nerving herself for a heroic and cheerful view of the future; and now here was something to engage her imagination! There is no woman in the world, whatever her training may have been, who, under such circumstances, and with such a picturesque offer held out to her, would refuse at least to regard and try to realise the prospect.

"You are very kind," she said, "to do me so much honour. But you are too kind. You wish to prevent my being subjected to the hardships of being poor and having to work for a living, and you think the easiest way to do that is to make me the mistress of all your money----"

"I declare, Miss Brunel, you wrong me," said the Count, warmly. "Money has nothing to do with it. I mentioned these things as inducements--unwisely, perhaps. Indeed it has nothing to do with it. Won't you believe me when I say that I could hope for no greater fortune and blessing in the world, if neither you nor I had a farthing of money, than to make you my wife?"

"I am afraid you would be sadly disappointed," she said, with a smile.

"Will you let me risk that?" he said, eagerly, and trying to take her hand.

She withdrew her hand, and rose.

"I can't tell you yet," she said; "I can scarcely believe that we are talking seriously. But you have been always very kind, and I'm very much obliged to you----"

"Miss Brunel," said the Count, hurriedly--he did not like to hear a lady say she was much obliged by his offer of 30,000*l.* a year--"don't make any abrupt decision, if you have not made up your mind. At any rate, you don't refuse to consider the matter? I knew you would at least do me that justice--in a week's time, perhaps----"

She gave him her hand, as he lifted his hat and cane, and he gratefully bowed over it, and ventured to kiss it; and then he took his leave, with a radiant smile on his face as he went downstairs.

"Club. And, d--n it, be quick!" he said to his astonished coachman.

Arrived there, he ordered the waiter to take up to the smoking-room a bottle of the pale port which the Count was in the habit of drinking there. Then he countermanded the order.

"I needn't make a beast of myself because I feel happy," he said to himself, wisely, as he went into the dining-room. "Alfred, I'll have a bit of cold chicken, and a bottle of the wine that you flatter yourself is Chateau Yquem."

Alfred, who was a tall and stately person, with red hair and no _h_'s, was not less astonished than the Count's coachman had been. However, he brought the various dishes, and then the wine. The Count poured the beautiful amber fluid into a tumbler, and took a draught of it:

"Here's to her health, whether the wine came from Bordeaux or Biberich!"

But as a rule the Chateau Yquem of clubs is a cold drink, which never sparkled under the warm sun of France; and so, as the Count went upstairs to the smoking-room, he returned to his old love, and told them to send him a pint-bottle of port. He had already put twenty-two shillings' worth of wine into his capacious interior; and he had only to add a glass or two of port, and surround his face with the perfume of an old, hard, and dry cigar, in order to get into that happy mood when visions are born of the half-somnolent brain.

"... I have done it--I have broken the ice, and there is still hope. Her face was pleased, her smile was friendly, her soft clear eyes--fancy having that smile and those eyes at your breakfast-table every morning, to sweeten the morning air for you, and make you snap your fingers at the outside world. 'Gad, I could write poetry about her. I'll _live_ poetry--which will be something better...."

At this moment there looked into the room a handsome and dressy young gentleman who was the funny fellow of the club. He lived by his wits, and managed to make a good income, considering the material on which he had to work.

"What a courageous man--port in the forenoon!" he said, to the Count.

The other said nothing, but inwardly devoted the newcomer to the deeps of Hades.

"And smoking to our old port!"

"A cigar doesn't make much difference to club-wines, young gentleman," said the Count, grandly.

"Heard a good thing just now. Fellow was abusing Scotchmen to a Scotch tradesman, and of course Bannockburn was mentioned. 'Why,' says the Englishman, 'plenty of my countrymen were buried at Bannockburn, and there you have rich harvests of grain. Plenty of _your_ countrymen were buried at Culloden, and there you have only a barren waste. Scotchmen can't even fatten the land.'"

"Did he kill him?"

"No; the Englishman was a customer."

Once more the Count was left to his happy imaginings.

"Then the marriage," he thought to himself, "then the marriage,--the girls in white, champagne, fun, horses, and flowers, and away for France! No Trouville for me, no Etretat, no Biarritz. A quiet old Norman town, with an old inn, and an old priest; and she and I walking about like the lord and lady of the place, with all the children turning and looking at her as if she were an Italian saint come down from one of the pictures in the church. This is what I offer her--instead of what? A sempstress's garret in Camden Town, or a music-mistress's lodgings in Islington, surrounded by squalid and dingy people, glaring publichouses, smoke, foul air, wretchedness, and misery. I take her from the slums of Islington, and I lead her down into the sweet air of Kent, and I make a queen of her!"

The Count's face beamed with pleasure, and port. The very nimbleness of his own imagination tickled him--

"Look at her! In a white cool morning-dress, with her big heaps of black hair braided up, as she goes daintily down into the garden in the warm sunshine, and her little fingers are gathering a bouquet for her breast. The raw-boned wives of your country gentry, trying to cut a dash on the money they get from selling their extra fruit and potatoes, turn and look at my soft little Italian princess as she lies back in her barouche, and regards them kindly enough, God bless her! What a job I shall have to teach her her position--to let her know that now she is a lady the time for general good-humour is gone! Mrs. Anerley, yes; but none of your clergymen's wives, nor your doctors' wives, nor your cow-breeding squires' wives for her! Day after day, week after week, nothing but brightness, and pleasure, and change. All this I am going to give her in exchange for the squalor of Islington!"

The Count regarded himself as the best of men. At this moment, however, there strolled into the smoking-room a certain Colonel Tyrwhitt, who was connected by blood or marriage with half-a-dozen peerages, had a cousin in the Cabinet, and wore on his finger a ring given him by the decent and devout old King of Saxony. This colonel--"a poor devil I could buy up twenty times over," said the Count, many a time--walked up to the fireplace, and turning, proceeded to contemplate the Count, his wine, and cigar, as if these objects had no sensible existence. He stroked his grey moustache once or twice, yawned very openly, and then walked lazily out of the room again without having uttered a word.

"D--n him!" said the Count, mentally; "the wretched pauper, who lives by loo, and looks as grand as an emperor because he has some swell relations, who won't give him a farthing. These are the people who will be struck dumb with amazement and envy by-and-by. My time is coming.

"'Ah! my dear fellah!' says this colonel to me, some morning; 'I've heard the news. Congratulate you--all my heart. Lord Bockerminster tells me you've some wonderful shooting down in Berks.'

"'So I have,' says I; 'and I should be glad, Colonel, to ask you down, but you know my wife and I have to be rather select in our choice of visitors----'

"'What the devil do you mean?' says he.

"'Only that our list of invitations is closed for the present.'

"Suppose he gets furious? Let him! I don't know much about fencing or pistol-shooting, but I'd undertake to punch his head twenty times a week."

The Count took another sip of port, and pacified himself.

"Then the presentations to Her Majesty. I shouldn't wonder if the Queen took us up when she gets to learn Annie's story. It would be just like the Queen to make some sort of compensation; and once she saw her it would be all right. The _Court Circular_--'Osborne, May 1. Count Schoenstein and Lady Annie Knottingley had the honour of dining with the Queen and the Royal Family.' Lord Bockerminster comes up to me, and says--

"'Schoenstein, old boy, when are you going to give me a turn at your pheasants? I hear you have the best preserves in the South of England.'

"'Well, you see, my lord,' I say, carelessly, 'I have the Duke of S---- and a party of gentlemen going down on the 1st, and the Duke is so particular about the people he meets that I--you understand?'

"And why only a Duke? The Prince of Wales is as fond of pheasant-shooting as anybody else, I suppose. Why shouldn't he come down with the Princess and a party? And I'd make the papers talk of the splendid hospitality of the place, if I paid, damme, a thousand pounds for every dish. Then to see the Princess--God bless her, for she's the handsomest woman in England, bar one!--walking down on the terrace with Annie, while the Prince comes up to me and chaffs me about some blunder I made the day before. Then I say--

"'Well, your Royal Highness, if your Royal Highness was over at Schoenstein and shooting with my keepers there, perhaps you might put your foot in it too.'

"'Count Schoenstein,' says he, 'you're a good fellow and a trump, and you'll come with your pretty wife and see us at Marlborough House?'"

The Count broke into a loud and triumphant laugh, and had nearly demolished the glass in front of him by an unlucky sweep of the arm. Indeed, further than this interview with these celebrated persons, the imagination of the Count could not carry him. He could wish for nothing beyond these things except the perpetuity of them. The Prince of Wales should live for ever, if only to be his friend.

And if this ultimate and royal view of the future was even more pleasing than the immediate and personal one, it never occurred to him that there could be any material change in passing from one to the other. Annie Brunel was to be grateful and loving towards him for having taken her from "the squalor of Islington" to give her a wealthy station; she was to be equally grateful and loving when she found herself the means of securing to her husband that position and respect which he had deceived her to obtain. Such trifling points were lost in the full glory which now bathed the future that lay before his eyes. Annie Brunel had shown herself not unwilling to consent, which was equivalent to consenting; and there only remained to be reaped all the gorgeous happiness which his imagination, assisted by a tolerable quantity of wine, could conceive.