CHAPTER XXX

Dick Sheridan believed that his ingenuity would be taxed to the uttermost to invent plausible answers to satisfy the curiosity of the many people who would be questioning him on the subject of Mr. Long’s meeting with Captain Mathews. When he had to make up so many replies to the questions put to him regarding the duels that had never been contemplated, what would he not have to do in respect of this meeting, which had actually taken place, though without an exchange of shots? His reasoning on this basis showed that he had but an imperfect acquaintance with the methods of the good people of Bath. He should have known that, having had two duels to talk about within the previous fortnight, and having, moreover, found out that neither of these encounters had taken place, they would lose all interest in duels real or imaginary. But that was just the view the people of Bath took of the incident. If any tale of the interrupted encounter—surely a most piquant topic!—reached the ears of the gossips of the Pump Room and the Parade, they were reticent on the subject. Not one question was put to Dick respecting Mr. Long and Captain Mathews, the fact being that all Bath was talking about quite another matter—namely, the infatuation of Mrs. Abington.

What a freak it was to be sure! There was the most charming actress of the day (her day had lasted a pretty long while), at whose feet had sat in vain some of the most distinguished men then living, infatuated with that young Linley, neglecting her engagements at Mr. Colman’s theatre, laughing at Mr. Cumberland, who had one of his most lugubrious comedies ready for her to breathe into it the spirit of life, and all on account of a youth who was certainly (they said) utterly incapable of appreciating her varied charms.

Mr. Colman had posted down from London to reason with her: in spite of his experience, he was still of the impression that a woman in love would listen to reason—and that woman an actress too! He made a step forward (he thought) in his knowledge of women and actresses, when he had had a talk with Mrs. Abington.

And Mr. Cumberland—— But then, Mr. Cumberland knew nothing whatever about the nature of men and women; he had taken the pains to prove this by the production of a dozen comedies—so that when he tried to wheedle her by obvious flatteries, she laughed in his face, and that annoyed Mr. Cumberland greatly; for he thought that laughter was always out of place except during the performance of one of his comedies, though people said that that was the only time when laughter was impossible.

Poor Tom Linley (the men who envied him alluded to him as poor Tom Linley) was having the finishing touch put to his education, all sensible people agreed. The wits said that he would learn more of what music meant by listening to Mrs. Abington’s voice, than he would by studying all the masters of harmony, from Palestrina to Handel.

Of course the scandal-mongers made a scandal out of this latest whim of Mrs. Abington, but the lovely lady was so well accustomed to be the centre of a cocoon of scandal (she had a good deal of the nature of the butterfly about her), she did not mind. She only wondered what Dick Sheridan thought of Tom Linley’s being the hero of so fascinating a scandal. She wondered how long it would be before Dick Sheridan would become jealous of the position to which his friend had been advanced. She judged of Dick Sheridan from her previous knowledge of him; but as the days went on, she began to feel that a change had come over him.

And then Mrs. Abington became a little reckless; for whenever she and Tom Linley were in the same room as Dick, her laugh was a little louder than usual and a good deal less melodious; and the way she allowed her eyes to rest on Tom’s face when she knew that Dick was looking, was rather too pictorial for everyday life, some people thought, and these were the people who said, “Poor Tom Linley!”

But there came a day when Tom Linley was announced to play at a concert. He was to take the violin part in a concerto, and to play in two duets with the harpsichord; but these selections had to be omitted from the programme, the fact being that Master Tom had that day gone a-driving into the country with Mrs. Abington.

It was a very pretty scene in high comedy, that in which the actress got the promise of the youth who had buried his heart in his violin, to fling his music-book to the unmelodious winds in order to take up the Book of Life and turn over its glowing pages with her. She had told him that she wished to take a drive into the country the next day, and had expressed the hope that he would act as her protector.

Of course he replied that it would be to him a trip to the Delectable Mountains to be by her side, or something to that effect; but he pointed playfully (now and again Tom could become playful, though never in the artless spirit of Mrs. Abington) at the bill of the concert in which his name figured.

What had the fact of his name being on the bill to do with the question of his coming with her? she inquired in a sweetly simple way, with artless open eyes.

“Good heavens, sweet lady, surely you must see that I cannot be at the concert and in your carriage at the same time?” he cried.

“Did I assert that you could?” she asked. “All I did was to ask you to be my protector to-morrow. I did not say a word about your going to the concert. What is the concert to me—to you or me, Tom?”

“Nothing—oh, nothing!” he cried, and she allowed him to kiss her hand. “’Tis nothing. Have not I proved it by refraining from attending a single practice of the instruments, thereby making my father furious?”

“Then if the concert be nothing to you, am I something less than nothing?” she cried.

“Ah, you are everything—everything, only—— Heavens, if I were to absent myself my prospects would be ruined!”

“Ah, ’tis the old story!” sighed the lady,—there was more indignation in her sigh than Mr. Burke could incorporate in one of his speeches on the Marriage Act,—“the old story: a man’s ambition against a woman’s affection! Go to your concert, sir, but never let me see your face again.”

“Dear child!” he cried,—he sometimes called her “dear child,” because she was not (he thought) more than two years older than himself,—“cannot you see that when my name is printed——”

“Do you presume to instruct me on these points, sir?” she cried. “Does not all the world know that my name is down in every playbill that Mr. Colman prints, as a member of his company? and yet—— But you have taught me my duty. I shall go back to London to-morrow. I thank you, sir, for having given me a lesson. O man, man! always cruel!—always ready to slight the poor, trustful creature who gives up all for your sake.”

She dissolved into tears, and he was kneeling by her side, trying to catch the hand which she withheld from him, and all the time swearing that she was everything to him—his life, his soul, his hope, his future....

And so the pieces in which Tom Linley was to take part at the concert were omitted from the performance, and the manager assured Mr. Linley that his son’s career, so far as Bath was concerned, was at an end.

Mr. Linley that evening—at one moment weeping in the arms of his daughter, at another pacing the room declaring passionately that Tom need never again look near his house, that he would turn him out neck and crop into the street—said some severely accurate things about Mrs. Abington and the stage generally, and the Linley household was in a condition bordering on distraction.

But Mrs. Abington, sitting in an attitude of inimitable grace upon her little gilded sofa, passing her fingers through Tom’s curls as he sat on a stool at her feet, was in no way disturbed by the condition of things in Pierrepont Street, the fact being that she was just at that moment thinking more of Mrs. Abington than of any one else in the world. She knew that the next day every one in Bath would be talking about the completeness of her conquest of the ardent young musical genius who, it was well known, held the theory that there was nothing in the world worth living for save only music. She wondered what Dick Sheridan would think now. And she was quite right so far as her speculations in regard to Bath were concerned. Every one was talking of how she had been the ruin of Tom Linley, and most of the men who talked of it, envied Tom most heartily; all the women who talked of it, envied Mrs. Abington her taste in dress.

And as for Dick Sheridan—well, Dick was for quite an hour of that morning doing his best to comfort Betsy Linley in the grief that had overwhelmed her family. She had written to Dick to come to her, and he had obeyed. He found her alone, and, though not in tears, very close to the weeping point. He saw, when he had looked into her face, that she had not slept all night for weeping. She never looked lovelier than when bearing the signs of recent tears.

“O Dick, Dick, is not this dreadful?” she cried. “You have heard of it—of course you have heard of it? All Bath is talking of it to-day.”

Dick acknowledged that he had heard of Tom’s disappointing the audience at the concert-room the previous day, and of the roars of laughter that had greeted the manager’s announcement that Mr. Tom Linley had unfortunately contracted a severe indisposition which would, the doctors declared, prevent his appearing that day. He had not heard, however, that the manager, smarting from the ridicule of the audience, had told Mr. Linley that his son was to consider his career as a musician closed, so far as Bath was concerned.

“But ’tis so indeed; father told us so,” said Betsy. “Oh, poor father! what he has been called on by Heaven to suffer! How dismal his early life was! But he freed himself by his own genius from that life and its associations, and then, just when happiness seemed at the point of coming to him, he finds that he has instructed me in vain,—that was a great blow to him, Dick—oh, what a disappointment! But what was it compared to this? O Dick, Dick, something must be done to save Tom!”

“She will soon tire of his society,” said Dick. “She is not a woman of sentiment: when she finds that the topic of her conquest of Tom has ceased to be talked about, she will release him.”

“That is what you said to me long ago, and yet he is not released, and people are talking more than ever,” she cried.

“We must have patience, Betsy.”

“What! do you suggest that we should do nothing—absolutely nothing? O Dick, I looked for better advice from you! What comfort is it to the friends of a prisoner immured in a dungeon to tell them that if they have patience his prison bars will rust away and he will then be free?”

“Do you fancy that my going to Mrs. Abington to plead for him will have any effect upon her? Do you really believe that all the eloquence of man has any influence upon a woman with a whim?”

“Ah, she will listen to you—you will be able to persuade her. She cares for you, Dick—I know that.”

He looked at her wonderingly. How was it possible, he asked himself, that she had found out Mrs. Abington’s secret? He himself had not found it out of his own accord, and he was a man. (He ventured to assume that such secrets were more likely to be guessed by a man than by a woman.)

“She likes me—yes, I suppose—in a way,” he said. “But I am not sure that this fact would make her the more ready to abandon a whim of the moment. On the contrary——”

“Ah, Dick, will you not help us?” she cried. “Surely if she cares about you——”

“Dear Betsy, I think we should do well to avoid giving any consideration to that particular point,” said Dick hastily. “I will go to Mrs. Abington and make an appeal to her, but ’twill not be on the ground that she cares for me; in fact, I do not at this moment know on what ground I can appeal to her.”

“But you will go? Ah, I knew that we could depend on you to do your best for us, Dick,” said she, and there passed over her face a glimpse of gladness—a flash of sunshine making more transparent the azure of her eyes. “You are the one whom I can always trust, dear Dick, because I know that you can always trust yourself.”

“I have learned that from you, my Betsy; I can stand face to face with you, and yet—I can trust myself.”

“Ah, do not say that you learned it from me,” she cried. She had turned away from him suddenly and was looking pensively at the hand which she had rested on the back of a chair. “If you could know what is in my heart, Dick, you would not talk about learning anything from me—alas—! alas!”

“You can trust your heart,” he said—“you can trust your heart, for it is true.”

“Oh, do not talk in that way—for Heaven’s sake, do not talk in that way!” she cried. “My heart—true?—ah, I fancied that I could trust myself—I fancied that I was strong, that I could do all that I had set myself to do, but—ah, Dick, my heart, my poor heart! It is not strong, it is not true, and the worst of it is that I—I myself—I cannot be true to my heart, and I am too weak to be true to my resolution.”

She was walking to and fro nervously, and now she threw herself into a chair and put her hands up to her face.

He looked at her without moving, though it was in his heart to kneel before her and, taking her hands in his own, pour out the tale of his love to her. His heart whispered to him that she would at that moment give him kiss for kiss. A month ago no power would have restrained him from kneeling to her; but now he was under the control of another power and a stronger than that which set his heart beating as it was beating. He felt the controlling influence; but—well, he thought it would not be wise to look at her any longer.

He turned away from where she was sitting; his hands were behind him and his fingers locked together. He stood looking out of the window, but seeing nothing. The room was very silent. He thought he heard a movement behind him. He thought he heard her footfalls approaching him, he thought he heard a sigh close to him—a sigh with the inflection of a sob; but still he did not move—his fingers tightened about each other. He would not turn round. His heart beat more wildly, and the rhythm of its beats made up a siren-song hard to be resisted.

But there was another power upholding him in the struggle to which he had nerved himself, and he knew that that power was love. He felt that it was his love for her that saved him—that saved her. He did not turn round.

And then there came dead silence.

He knew that she had gone.

In another moment he was kneeling beside the chair in which she had sat, kissing the place where her hand had rested. It was still warm from her touch, and he kissed it again and again, crying in a voice tremulous not with passion, but with love:

“My beloved! my beloved! You have been true—true to true love—true to the truest love!”