The Soul of Countess Adrian/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
A Modern Mystic.
A strong impression had been created by Miss Beatrice Brett's performance, which its abrupt and somewhat tragic termination appeared to have strengthened rather than lessened. The party broke up very soon afterwards, and Mrs. Walcot Valbry had the agreeable conviction of having furnished Bohemia with a sensation. Later on, the subject was freely discussed at Sir Donald Urquhart's supper. A good many of Mrs. Walcot Valbry's guests had gone on to Eaton Place. Miravoglia was there, revelling in a peculiarly choice preparation of Neapolitan maccaroni, which was one of the features of these repasts. Miravoglia would dine or sup at no house where there was not maccaroni. A certain distinguished actor-manager was there—that same Cosway Keele of whom Mrs. Valbry had spoken. Cosway Keele's approval was highly coveted by young actors and actresses. Another actor-manager of lesser distinction was there also. So was the chief interviewer on the staff of an important weekly paper; and so, too, was the editor of a popular society journal—a gentleman versed in traditions of the drama, who did not scruple to declare that he saw in the young American a coming Rachel. The secondary actor-manager plied Miravoglia with questions about the Improvisatrice in the intervals of maccaroni and draughts of Chianti. Cosway Keele smiled to himself in a brooding manner. It was quite evident that managerial curiosity had been baited.
Among the guests less directly interested, conversation soon drifted off to other topics. Sir Donald Urquhart's suppers were always lively and unconventional. They had an agreeably mingled flavour of the chicory of Bohemia and the mocha of fashion. All the women were pretty, entertaining, and becomingly dressed. Most of the men were well bred; all had in some way or other made their mark. The talk was a finely distilled essence of art, science, politics, and society. Sir Donald was rich; the appointments of his house were in perfect taste. Softly shaded electric drops lighted the rooms. The pictures and bric-à-brac were historic. The supper-table, with its hothouse flowers, its Venetian glass and delicate equipments, was a harmony in colour which had been composed by a Royal Academician. Sir Donald had the reputation of being a confirmed bachelor, and though he announced his engagement to Countess Adrian, few of his friends took it seriously. She was seated at his right; but her attention seemed chiefly directed to an elderly gentleman next her, with a grey beard, piercing brown eyes, and an altogether odd and powerful face—the same person who had brought back Beatrice Brett to consciousness; no other, indeed, than the celebrated Maddox Challis, Socialist, mystic, novelist, and philosopher, who, an ascetic in the East, was in London one of the wittiest and most agreeable of diners out. Lendon, who knew him slightly in that phase of his curious personality, was seated on his other side, and exchanged a few words with him as Countess Adrian bent forward to speak to some one across the table.
"You will be glad to hear," he said, "that Miss Brett had quite recovered when I left her. She was going home with her aunt."
"Ah! yes, I knew she would recover quickly. It was nothing serious, except in the sense of being an unhappy augury for her future. She is a very interesting young lady: I should like to see something more of her."
"I have no doubt that Professor Viall would be delighted to give you the opportunity," said Lendon.
"Unfortunately, it is impossible. I am on the eve of one of my pilgrimages to the East. If you know Miss Brett well enough, advise her to be careful. She will be a great actress, but it may be at the expense of what is more valuable even than fame."
"You mean that she is too nervous and highly wrought for the wear and tear of such a career?"
"I mean that she is one of those strange and rarely endowed beings whose garment of flesh is but a thin and ineffectual shield against spiritual onslaughts, and who under certain conditions would be almost defenceless against malignant influences, or even against a magnetism of a different and more dominant nature than her own. In the old days such beings were called Sibyls; they were isolated from contaminating currents, and were guarded by the priests, who made use of their peculiar gifts as something sacred. The fashion of Sibyls has gone out, as well as the knowledge that trained them. Nowadays they are called mediums, and are let loose upon society to be its destruction and their own."
Countess Adrian leaned back again, and, turning to Challis, interrupted the conversation.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Challis, but I have heard nothing so interesting for a long time as the account of those hypnotic experiments in Paris. Please go on."
Lendon strained his ears to listen, but at that moment the lady next him awoke to the fact of his existence, and began questioning him about his late tour, and the mystic's low-toned utterances lost themselves in a confused murmur. Countess Adrian appeared to find them absorbing; she sat forward with her elbow on the table, eating nothing, and with neither eyes nor ears for any other person. Presently the babble on Lendon's left set itself in another direction, and he made out that Mr. Challis and Countess Adrian were still discussing hypnotism, and the possibility of a strong vitality absorbing into itself a weaker nature than its own—a question in which Countess Adrian seemed intensely interested.
"You mean to say, then," Lendon heard her ask, "that I, for instance, who have any amount of animal spirits and energy, could, if I chose to use my will-power, take possession of some peculiarly sensitive organization and control it in whatever way I pleased?"
"Not exactly," answered Mr. Challis, "though that too is quite possible. This is what I meant. Suppose a person of enormous vitality—yourself, for example—suddenly killed by accident, or it might be by heart-disease?"
"No, no. Oh, don't suppose the one fate of which I have a terror." Countess Adrian bent eagerly forward, so that Lendon, who was leaning on the table, his face in her direction, caught her eyes full. Both drew back, but the conversation continued.
"Well," said Mr. Challis, "let us not suppose that, since it is disagreeable to you."
"But tell me the case you were going to put. I know that you have all sorts of queer ideas and experiences, if you could only be persuaded to make them public."
"In this instance nothing could give me greater pleasure, since you express a desire to hear them. The case in my mind was that of a strong person, dying suddenly during a paroxysm of violent emotion, the object of the emotion being a woman of just that sensitive organization you describe."
"Well, and what then?"
"Don't you see that the intense emotion, the human clinging to life, would create a force which must be inextinguishable. That strong individuality could not be blown out in a breath. There was a moment's physical contact with the weaker frame, and a magnetic connection was established. Nature works by material as well as by spiritual law. The stronger soul expelled the feebler, and lived out the drama in another body."
"Ah! And the poor spirit that was driven forth?"
"Who knows? Perhaps it went to the limbo of unborn souls to wait for a new garment of flesh."
"What a strange man you are! I understand you, though. See! you have made Mr. Lendon think us both crazy." She pointedly leaned forward again, and her eyes purposely met those of Lendon a second time, as she addressed him. Earlier in the evening Sir Donald had presented him to her.
"Many people think me crazy," composedly replied Mr. Challis. "But surely no one would venture to suggest anything so commonplace of the Countess Adrian. I am going to say good night," he added; "for I see that the smoking stage is reached, and to take one's leave with the second cigarette is like rising during a sermon before the exordium closes—a bad compliment to be avoided. We shall not meet for some time, Countess. I start for Palestine immediately."
He rose. His wiry grey beard touched her shoulder, as he said something in a low tone, at which she shook her head and smiled. Then he glided unobtrusively behind his host's chair, made his farewell and vanished.
"A remarkable man!" observed Lendon, taking the vacant place.
Countess Adrian merely nodded. There was a general stir just then. Chairs were being pushed back, couples were pairing, and they were drawing up lounges round the blazing fire in an inner smoking-room, separated from that in which they had supped by a screen of Eastern carving. Sir Donald was pressing upon his lady guests some especially choice Russian cigarettes. He noticed that Countess Adrian and Lendon had moved from the table together, and smiled in the indifferent way that with him expressed approval. It was difficult to realise that he was in love with the lady, but indifferentism is the hall-mark of a certain type of London man.
"You'll find it more comfortable in there," he said. "Let me recommend the liqueur."
Countess Adrian placed herself upon a divan, partially screened by draperies of Turkish brocade, and looked at Lendon above her yellow fan. He seated himself also.
"I have your permission?" he asked, fixing his cigarette in its holder.
"Of course. My own sky-parlour is often redolent of smoke, even at this hour. I live at the very top of Queen Anne's Mansions. Mr. Lendon, come and see me, won't you? I've a particular reason for wanting to know more of you."
He expressed his gratification and at the same time his curiosity as to the reason she spoke of.
"I will tell you," she answered. "I know that you once did a very noble action to a woman who repaid you with base ingratitude. I have seen your portrait. I have read some of your letters. You will understand what I mean when I tell you that circumstances once brought me into contact with Jessie Harford."
Lendon winced. The episode in his life to which she alluded was one fall of pain. When much younger, he had fallen romantically in love with his model—a young married woman deserted by her husband, and living a life of temptation that must have inevitably led to ruin. Lendon saved this woman, for a time at any rate, from her tempters, from herself, and, it must be added, from his own worst self also. He could not marry her, and he idealized her too much to offer her anything less than marriage. For five years he was her loyal friend. He asked from her no reward. He never spoke to her of his love, but honestly did his best to live it down. He found her a companion of her own sex, and placed her in a position to earn a safe and honourable livelihood. After five years she betrayed his trust in the basest and most ungrateful manner. Even still he saw in her the traces of a better nature; he sought her out, forgave her, and started her afresh. Again she deceived him, and this time sank beyond hope of redemption. It was, he afterwards learned, during the brief period of her reclamation that Countess Adrian became acquainted with her.
"And you thought," she said, with a dash of cynicism in her tone, "that women are to be won by generosity! You are mistaken, my friend. There are few women with whom a bad man has not a better chance than a good one; at all events, with whom tyranny hasn't a better chance than tender devotion."
"I cannot believe that, Countess," Lendon said sadly; "and anyhow a man can't turn himself into a tyrant, if nature has not turned him out one, to win the respect of a woman—of such a woman."
"Never mind," she said; "I respect and admire you all the same. I don't believe I should ever care much about a tyrant. I should rather do all the tyranny myself—if I could."
She looked sweetly at him, gave a little sigh, and then turned the conversation on to some other subject, merely reminding him that he had promised to come to see her in Queen Anne's Mansions.
Next day Lendon went to call on Miss Brett. Of course, he went in the evening. As she had told him, Beatrice lived with her guardian and his sister, not merely in charming rooms, as she had said in her letter to him, but in a charming house in the Regent's Park, which Professor Viall had first fallen in love with and then hired. It was a small ivy-covered house, or rather cottage, standing in the midst of a little garden and grounds of its own, just out of one of the avenues of the Park, One might pass and repass a score of times and never observe that there was an isolated habitation behind that iron railing. Salisbury Plain could not give more solitude or more meditation than the dwellers in that little house could have when once they had got within its enclosure; and yet they could hear the roar of the lions in the Zoological Gardens very distinctly every now and then.
Lendon was in luck; Professor Viall and Mrs. Cubison both happened to be out at the moment of his calling, and he asked for Miss Brett, and was told she was at home. He was shown into a little sitting-room, evidently decorated and arranged by her own hand; to his quick artistic eye there were manifest touches of her individuality and her poetic taste everywhere—and she received him with the free and cordial welcome of an American girl. Perhaps if Lendon had been a connoisseur in girls and love-making, he might have wished for just a little air of embarrassment in her manner of receiving him—a faint blush, a fall of the eyelid, a tremble of the hand.
They plunged into talk, real talk, at once.
"You have a great gift," he said. "Do you know quite what your gift is?"
"Tell me what you think it is. I don't know much about it, or how it comes to me, or what it is, or how it is different from the gift of somebody else."
"You have full possession of that rarest of all dramatic arts, the art of impersonation. See what most of the men and women on the modern stage are. They are always just themselves—in different parts, in new dresses. Of course, we have some real actors, men and women who can impersonate. You are destined to a place with the very highest, for you can create a part utterly unlike your own individuality; and if you can create one, you can create twenty."
"I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "My mind seems to work in two ways. An idea springs up at once, seems almost to spring at me from the outside, leaps at me like a tiger, and then I put it into acting; just as I did last night—until that terrible Countess Adrian spoiled my work. But at other times I get an idea suggested to me and I brood and brood over it—some part, some character, you know—and it seems gradually to grow into me, and I to grow into it, and at last it has full possession of me—and then I know I am right; at least, I know that that is how I must play the part. Some other woman might have her own reading, and that might be better for her; but my idea has grown to be—myself."
"What do you think of doing in London? An improvisation or a play, or both?"
"Both, I think," she answered, somewhat hesitatingly. "I want to do the improvisation because it is something new and peculiar in this country; but I don't call it art in any high sense. Do you? It is something hysteric almost. I want to study a really great part in a great play, and see if I can do it. But, oh, if I should fail!—here in this cold crowded London; if anything—any influence should chill me!"
A sudden impression was borne in upon him. "You are thinking of the Countess Adrian?" he said.
"Yes," she replied.
In the simplest and most child-like way she put her hand upon his arm as if appealing to him for protection against some threatened danger. His pulses stirred at the touch; and then again the touch disheartened him—it was too purely friendly and appealing, and her eyes looked into his with all the frankness of an unspoiled and unconscious school-girl—if there is such a creature.
"You must conquer that odd fantasy," he answered, after a moment's pause, "and you'll not fail; at least, it will not be your fault—the fault of your intellect and your genius and your soul—if you do fail. But I should be a little afraid about your nerves and your strength. Too much of such a performance as last night's would soon wear you out. I fear it would take too much out of you. You are but a fragile girl, Miss Brett; you need looking after."
"Yes, I feel very weak sometimes," she said with a sigh—"both mentally and physically. I feel as if I should like to lean on some one. Oh, they are so kind, the Professor and Mrs. Cubison; but they are so strong and self-contained that they can't either of them give me just what I need. Am I talking nonsense and egotism?"
"You are not talking nonsense, and I specially wish to hear you talk about yourself. Yes; you do need to be looked after, you want some pillar to lean against. But," and here Lendon made a strong effort to master his emotions, to be not himself—an effort almost as strong as one of her own feats of impersonation, "you will find some one to love, and who will love you and understand you, and he will be the pillar to lean against."
She looked up to him without a gleam of surprise or a shadow of displeasure on her face; and she answered very quietly—
"Oh, no, Mr. Lendon; I don't think so at all. I am too fond of this calling of mine; I haven't room for any slighter affection. I couldn't love a man in that way, I am sure; and he would be jealous of my Art, I am certain. No, there would hardly be space enough in my life for him and for my Art."
She spoke with as unaffected a directness and simplicity as if they had only been talking of the fine weather.
"But you can't always lead this lonely kind of life," he said.
"I am never lonely—in that sense. Perhaps I could do better sometimes if I were more alone."
Lendon felt disappointed. It was clear that she cared nothing about him; never thought of him in any lover-like sense—as yet. All the while he felt more and more in love with her, felt himself becoming almost painfully absorbed in her.
"Well," he said resolutely, dropping that subject, "I want to see you create some part in a great play—something that is not familiar to our London audiences. That would be better than the Improvisation. The Improvisation takes too much out of you, I am sure. And then I feel, with you, that it is hardly Art. Am I too outspoken in my opinions?"
"Oh no! I delight to hear you tell me what I ought to do. I am sure you understand me better than—most people."
Was she going to say, "Better than any one;" and did she check herself on the words? Yes, he thought so, and he felt a thrill of delight.
"I think I understand you better than most people," he said; "and I think you have not yet got the secret of your own power—the talisman to summon it."
"Oh no, I am sure I have not. I cannot tell why I am so strong and passionate and all aflame when I am possessed of some part, and why in my common life I am so weak and easily tired, and why I long to lean on some support. An odd notion comes into my mind sometimes. I feel as if I had not quite a soul of my own; and that when I get inspired with some part it is the soul of some one else which has come in to the help of mine, or has driven mine out for the moment. You may laugh at me if you like, Mr. Lendon, I shan't be one bit angry; but I do feel like that sometimes."
"You make me think," Lendon said, "of the Italian legend about Paganini. Have you ever heard of it?"
"No, I don't think I have."
"I forget the details of the story; but the central idea was that Paganini had contrived, by some unearthly arts, to conjure the soul of his dying sweetheart into his violin, and that the marvellous music which the instrument gave out ever after was the wail of the soul eternally imprisoned within it."
"How strange!" she paid, with a little shudder. "It is an uncanny story, and yet it fascinates me."
"I want to ask you a favour," he broke off abruptly. "I want you to let me paint you as you appear in your great character."
"Oh yes," she replied; and for the first time during their talk a light flush came over her face. "But it shall be on condition, Mr. Lendon—yes, I must exact a condition."
"And the condition is?"
"That you find the great part for me."
"That is the very thing I wanted to do; I was going to ask you to let me look out a part for you."
"Oh, I shall be so delighted! I never could find one for myself; and I don't think there is any one who could find me a part that I should trust myself to—but only you."
"Then you will try the part I find for you?"
"I Will play any part you find for me. I know that I shall make it my own; I know that it will grow into me, and that I shall grow into it. Yes, I shall feel absolute trust in your choice, Mr. Lendon. Why, this is exactly what I was saying, a short time ago, that I wanted above all other things."
"What is that?" he asked in an embarrassed tone.
"Why, don't you remember?—an influence to take care of me—a pillar to lean against. And now I have my wish granted all at once. You shall be the influence to take care of me and guide me; I shall lean against the pillar of your support."
The words were sweet, ineffably sweet, to his ears; although, most assuredly, they were not words of a girl's love: they told of trust, and even, perhaps, of affection; but Beatrice Brett was evidently not thinking of love. "Never mind," he said to himself, and his heart beat a triumphant measure, "that will come in time; I know it will."
"Is it not strange," she said softly, "how well I seem to know you already, and how sure I feel that you will put me in the right way in my Art and in everything?"
"So then," he said joyously, "this is a compact between us, Miss Brett?"
"Yes; I am so glad!—a compact of friendship."
"Of friendship now," he said to his own heart; "of something better later on."
"But I think I should like you to call me Beatrice," she said; "it would sound more friendly; it would seem as if I were your pupil, and you had charge of me."
"Very well," Lendon replied; "Beatrice."
Just then Professor Viall and Mrs. Cubison came in, and the illumination seemed to go out of the scene for Lendon.