Cross Currents. A novel, etc

Chapter I

" What a voice ! " " How graceful ! " "What Avonderful eyes! My dear, they'll make her fortune ! " From all parts of the room such comments came, in tones more or less audible, more or less sincere. " She's too thin ! " " All that excitement is out of place in a room like this." " Where did the Tyrrells pick her up ?" There were about a hundred people in the rooms ; all well-dressed ; all having the unmis takeable hall-mark of " society " ; all stirred, as VOL. I. B such an assemblage is not often stirred, by one common interest. It was about half-past four o'clock in the afternoon, and the warm May sunshine, as it shone in upon them, Avas subdued and chastened by delicate Indian draperies. These had evidently been chosen with the most careful reference to the papering on the Avails, and the tinting of the ceiling, which was all, or almost all, that could be seen of the room at the moment.

The other inanimate details — equally harmonious when they were visible — were now obscured by groups of men and women, groups which shifted and changed, combined and dispersed like the pattern of a kaleidoscope, as people met one another, exchanged remarks and comments — mainly on one topic — and passed on in the same instant, as though the great object to be attained by each individual was the exchange of three words with every one in the room in turn. The air was sweet, if a little close and heavy, with the scent of quantities of flowers. Every one was interested, eager, at his or her best. John Ty7rrell, the master of the house, was an actor, successful and fashionable ; he and his sister gave only one "at home" in the course of the season, and they were by no means indiscriminate in their choice of acquaint ances.

To be seen at their house stamped an individual as " somebody," if somebody only in the world of fashion ; and with that curious homage to intellect, which is as much an instinct of humanity as it is a social phase, the shallowest titled or moneyed nonentity who crossed the Tyrrells' threshold felt vaguely that something was expected of him or her, and endeavoured, more or less impotently, according to their kind, to respond to the demand. " Selma Malet ! " The name seemed to be in the very air, so many people Avere asking the same question and receiving the same answer. " Miss Selma Malet ! " It was echoed by an old lady sitting at the end of the room with some disfavour. B ■i CROSS CURRENTS. "Selma!" she repeated, "ah, she's not an English girl. I thought not. What country woman is she, I wonder ?

These geniuses are generally Poles or Russians." She was a tall old lady, plain in countenance, and, as compared with nearly every other woman in the room, shabby in dress. Except for her height, which was commanding ; her nose, which was aquiline ; and her manner, which was slightly supercilious ; she was as unlike the typical Duchess as a woman could be. But a Duchess she was, nevertheless, and the well-preserved, elderly man to Avhom she spoke, a rather distinguished art critic, responded Avith due alacrity. " She is a Greek," he said, with the air of one who knows, though he would have been much puzzled to quote his authority ; " that is to say her mother w7as a Greek — a very beautiful Avoman with a terrific temper. She stabbed her husband in a fit of jealousy, and then died of remorse ; quite a girl she was, about two-and-twenty."

GROSS CURRENTS. 5 " Dear me ! " ejaculated his auditor, with a general air of disapprobation of such ill regulated proceedings, combined with a desire for further details. " This young Avoman takes after her mother, no doubt. It is to be hoped she will control herself better. Where has she been brought up? Ah," she Avent on, "here is Miss Tyrrell. She will tell us all about Miss Selma Malet." A woman of five or six-and-forty — the only woman visible wearing neither hat nor bonnet — detached herself suavely from the group with which she had been talking as the Duchess spoke, and came towards her. She w7as beautifully and elaborately dressed, and her whole personality, from her wonderful auburn hair to her graceful manner, was a triumph of artistic arrangement. She was not beautiful, not even pretty ; but her sallow face and light eyes seemed as essential to the completion of her whole effect as the admirably chosen colours of her gown.

She was too thin for grace, but she never made a movement which did not harmonise with everything about her. " I have been on my7 way to you really for ages," she said, sweetly, with that mixture of deference to rank and consciousness of the immeasurable superiority conferred on her by her connection with art, which was one of the secrets of Miss Tyrrell's success with society. "Did I hear yeu speaking of Miss Malet? I hope yeu were pleased ?" Whatever her private opinion might have been, the Duchess Avould have been a bold and self-confident Avoman indeed if she had ventured to confess to such bad taste as the tone in which the question was asked imputed to any one who might reply7 in the negative. "Delighted!" she replied, promptly ; "quite charmed, I assure you. Mr. Marsden," referring to the man Avho still stood by, "Mr. Marsden has been telling me her story.

Most romantic, really7." Miss Tyrrell turned to Mr. Marsden with her most artistic smile. " Which is your version ? " she said. " There is the Irish peasant version, the Italian princess version, the Greek version, and — poor Selma! — of course, the barmaid version. Which is yours ? " The late authoritative biographer glanced from the expectant Duchess to his hostess with an expression which was anything but amiable. " I'm afraid I must confess to what you call the Greek version," he said, with a forced laugh. " Have I really been misinformed ? " " EAerybody seems to have been misin formed," said Miss Tyrrell, lightly ; " it is impossible to say how* it has happened." Miss Tyrrell Avas perhaps hardly speaking the un varnished truth when she said these words. " The facts are really ridiculously7 simple," she continued.

" Selma Malet is an English girl, and a lady, neither in the depths of poverty nor rolling in riches. Her father was a man of quiet literary tastes, and one of my brother's oldest friends. Her mother was without characteristics of any kind, and died a natural death about two years ago. Her father died — also a natural and uninteresting death — about three months later. All the interest attached to Selma Malet centres in herself alone. My brother expects great things of her. I hope you agree with him, Mr. Marsden ? " "Dear me!" ejaculated the Duchess once more, alluding to the very simple story Miss Tyrrell had told. " Really ; is that all ? Well, one would never think it from her — her appear ance, and — and her — manner. Dear me ! " Miss Tyrrell smiled. " It might be better for her," she said, " if one of these romantic stories did belong to her ; there is so much attraction to some people about a romance.

But I don't know, after all, that we have not been just a little overdone with Russians, and Swedes, and barmaids, and Countesses. Such a beautiful artistic feeling as Selma Malet's seems to me the more interest ing, when it developes itself in such an unexpected quarter. A young English lady7 and an artist are curiously incompatible terms ! " "Do you believe her to have great things in her, Miss Tyrrell ? I have only heard her once, remember." Miss Tyrrell turned and laid a long, thin hand emphatically on the speaker's arm. "Mr. Marsden," she said, "I believe her to be a genius. She has a feeling and an en thusiasm for the artistic, which I have never seen equalled. She absolutely lives for her art alone, and I have very little doubt that her artistic career will be positively triumphant.

I shall -be much surprised if she is not the sensation of next season. What delicacy, what force, what resource she has already ! " " Very7 true," responded the gentleman thus harangued. His tone was somewhat absent, and his cogitations resulted, a moment later, in his saying in a tone he had not yet used, a tone of serious, business-like interest : " Will Miss Malet recite again, or has she gone ? I've not seen her about the room. Will you intro duce me?" "Oh, I do hope we may hear her again," added the Duchess, with quite new enthusiasm ; "do bring her here, and let me make her acquaintance, my dear Miss Tyrrell." Miss Tyrrell looked round the room. " I hardly know Avhether she will recite again," she said ; " she is very nervous and sensitive. I do not see her at this moment. But I will speak to my brother."

"There he is," returned the Duchess, " talking to those American girls. Mr. Tyrrell is never lost in a crowd." The Duchess was right. There were men in the room taller, many men louder in talk and more lavish in gesture, than their host ; but there Avas that about John Tyrrell which seemed to act like a magnet on the consciousness of every one near him. He was a man of about three-and-forty, hardly above the average height, but admirably proportioned, and with a quiet, unobtrusive grace of movement and gesture which is seldom seen in a man, except as the result of careful stage training. His face and head Avere very striking. Twenty years earlier, London — particularly feminine London — had raved about his beauty; his wonderful eyes, his perfect features, his admir able colouring had taken the public by storm.

Behind all this physical perfection there had chanced to be a powerful and active brain, and everything that time had taken from him was more than compensated by the added strength, dignity, and intellectuality which it had. brought. The smooth-shaven, perfectly moulded mouth and chin — though there were people who said that John Tyrrell's mouth was his worst point — were far stronger and more striking in the man of three-and-forty, than they had been in the youth of three-and-twenty ; the dark, ex pressive eyes were no less attractive for the lines of thought which marked the forehead above them. The boy's manner had been fasci nating ; the man's manner was irresistible. His sister threaded her way through the crowd, and touched him lightly on the arm. " Come and speak to the Duchess," she said ; " she is anxious to hear Selma again.

Where is she ? " John Tyrrell laughed. " Down in the tea-room being improved by Lady Dunstan," he said. " Where is the Duchess ? " The voice Avas the only one of the yeunger John Tyrrell's good points to which time had not been kind. Great as was the effect he could still produce with it on the stage, in familiar conversation, Avhen he AA7as at no special pains to control it, it was occasionally harder than he was in the least aware of. He crossed the room with his sister, stayed for a few minutes talking to the Duchess, and then left the room. As he disappeared, one of those curious magnetic currents by which such assemblages are sometimes touched, ran through the room, and everybody informed every7body else that Miss Selma Malet was going to recite again. There Avas a subdued murmur of expectancy ; an eager, interested rearrangement of groups ; and then a sudden silence and stillness.

There was a curious, curved platform at one end of the room which had been designed by Miss Tyrrell for such occasions as the present. Two or three Avhite leather chairs, shaped in imitation of the Greeks' stone seats, Avere placed upon it, several tall palms stood about, and the piano was rendered as Grecian as circum stances would allow by a leopard skin which was thrown across it. In the midst of these artistic incongruities ; facing the fashionable, curious crowd, as the hush fell upon it ; there stood a tall, girlish figure in a green gown. She paused a moment, motionless, every line of her simple, unconscious pose absolutely graceful with the natural grace of perfectly proportioned youth ; and then her eyes, which had been a little shy, and even frightened, as they rested on the roAvs of faces before her, darkened and deepened as she looked away into space ; the hot colour, which had rushed to her cheeks in that moment of embarrassment, faded ; and, Avith her lovely lips whitening moment by moment with the force of the passion her imagination created in her, she began to recite.

Her voice, low and intense as she began, rose and thrilled with emotion. The people before her were nothing to her ; the occasion, the interest she excited were nothing to her ; her very individuality was swept from her in her intense realisation of the burning lines she uttered. Her beautiful, sensitive face, quiver ingly responsive to every shade of emotion ; her delicate, expressive voice, and slight, graceful gesture ; seemed to be the natural and inevitable handmaidens of the genius within her — hand maidens of which she was utterly unconscious. She was utterly unconscious, also, of the charm they possessed for those who could have been touched by nothing deeper. Even in that well-dressed crowd there were two or three on whom the poAver in her laid an irresistible spell ; but against the majority — never in favour of deep emotion — the passionate feeling beat itself in vain.

Selma Malet was very beautiful, and very graceful ; she was also John Tyrrell's protegee, and she was to be the sensation of next season ; in all these capacities she was interesting, and the rows of curious, admiring faces remained curious and admiring to the end. But of the striving, consuming genius so near them, and yet so infinitely distant, they had no conception. Society can appraise talents, it worships success ; genius in embryo it ignores or distrusts. The broken, despairing voice ceased ; the quivering face relaxed ; the far-away gaze died out of the great, dark eyes ; and Selma Malet moved hurriedly off the platform as the room filled with the sound of the polite applause which is all such an audience has to bestow. There was no one knowm to her near her as she came down into the room, and the girl was making rapidly and instinctively for the door, when a hand was laid upon her arm.

She raised her eyes with a violent start ; they were full of tears, and she was trembling from head to foot. " Please let me go now," she murmured, "One moment, Selma," returned John Tyrrell, " Mrs. Norman wishes to be introduced to you." " Oh, please- But the girl broke off. A very old lady with white hair, and eyes from which no years could steal the beauty, was standing close beside her. " My dear," she said, kindly, taking the cold, shaking hand in both her own, " I will not keep you. I loved and worked at the art you have chosen for very many years before you were born, and I want to tell you Avhat pleasure you have given me." " I did so badly," faltered the girl Her voice, Avith the passion gone from it, was very musical and youthful. "Yes, in one sense you did badly. You are very yeung, and your power is very great.

It will take many years of hard work before you can do it justice." All consciousness of herself and her sur roundings seemed to fall away from Selma. She looked straight into the fine old face, without attempting to Avithdraw her hand, which trembled no longer. " I know," she said, simply. " I mean to work." " If you Avork, if your ambition is worthy of your genius, and your life is worthy of both, I think you will be the finest actress of your age. My dear, be true to yourself. Good-bye." With a sudden impulse, strange and pretty to see in any one so old, the greatest actress of a generation past bent forward and kissed the girl on the forehead. VOL. I. c Aii hour later John Tyrrell, having seen the last of his guests depart, turned to his sister, who Avas sinking into the nearest seat Avith a sigh of relief.

"Very7 Avell done indeed, Sybilla," he said. "Flowers admirable, as usual, and the tea and things capitally managed. Did every one come l. " I think so," answered his sister, languidly ; " every one except Lady Fanshawe. I am glad you are satisfied." " I really don't knoAv why we asked Lady Fanshawe," returned her brother. " She's no use. Where is Selma ? " Miss Tyrrell looked round the room. " I've no notion," she said. " I told her we would send her home. John, I think — though it is very touching to see the dear child so carried aAvay — I really think she should try to be a little less entetee. I could hardly introduce her at all ; and she seems to have nothing to say. An artist, even such a young one, should at least be able to talk of her art. She hardly understands the obligations of her position as yet.

She might have made a far deeper impression this afternoon than she has done, I'm afraid ; and first impressions are so importaut to a young artist." John Tyrrell looked at his sister with the faintest possible curl of the lip. " I don't agree with you," he said. " She could hardly have done better if she had known Avhat she was doing. You need not distress yourself, Sybilla ; it won't last long, this ab sorption of hers. One season will make her all you could wish. By Jove ! What a position she Avill have ! " He turned as he spoke, carelessly enough, and went out of the room, downstairs, and opened a door at the end of a long passage, leading into a small room, from which the fast fading daylight had nearly departed. It was difficult to say, at first sight, what there was about the room which gave an inc stantaneous impression that it belonged to a man.

There was about it none of the usual characteristics. It was not untidy, nor was it bare ; on the contrary, it was carefully fitted up with old oak ; all the appointments were as tasteful as in a woman's sitting-room, the pic tures on the walls — principally proof-engravings of famous pictures, with the artist's inscription to John Tyrrell — would have been quite as good company for an actress as for an actor. The only detail in the room which could by no possibility be connected wdth a woman was the writing-table, and that one feature stamped the whole room at once as the workshop of a practical man. It seemed to its owner at first that the room was empty, and he paused on the threshold, with his hand on the lock. " Selma ! " he said. There was a slight movement near the window, and Selma Malet, who was sitting in a great oak chair, hidden from him by its high, wide back, as she looked out at the evening sky. looked round to him.

" I am here," she said, softly, and there was a little tremble in her voice. John Ty7rrell shut the door, and, crossing the room, rested his arms on the back of the chair in Avhich she sat. " What are you doing here ? " he said Selma rested her elbow on the arm of the chair, and leant her cheek on her hand. " I — I Avanted to think," she said. " I always think best in this room ; I've learnt so much here. I'm afraid I must be stupid — really very stupid, you know." "Why?" " Because I do that thing so badly — oh, so badly. It seems as if all your help and teaching were of no use. I — I do try." The Ioav, girlish voice broke suspiciously, and the man looked down on her in silence for a moment, Avith a curve of his mouth which was half pity, half cynicism. "Look up at me, Selma," he said. He waited until the girl turned her head and raised her eyes with a little, deprecating smile at the tears that filled them, and then he said : "You did not do badly.

I have never heard you do better ; and you pleased me very much." A rush of bright colour swept over the sensitive, upturned face, and the eyes danced as the tears fell from them. " Really ? Really ? " she cried, with an im pulsive clasp of her hands on the arm of the chair. " Oh, if you are satisfied Avith me, I am happy always, because I knoAv that yeu know." For one moment, as he met those almost worshipping young eyes, his own Avere touched Avith an indefinable expression which curiously suggested regret. "Yes," he said, slowly, "yes, I do know." " And you really think — you're not vexed ? -you really think I can ? " The look, AvhateAer it had meant, from Avhatever source it had sprung, disappeared from John Tyrrell's face. Its ordinary expression was even accentuated, and his voice was perhaps harder than usual as he answered : " I know you can.

If you do as I tell you, you shall." He paused a moment, and then he asked, with a keen look at her : "You've not told me how you've enjoyed the afternoon ? " " The afternoon ? " echoed Selma, vaguely. " Oh, the people ! Well, I was so vexed with myself that I didn't think much. But now I do think about it — it sounds horribly rude — I'm afraid I haven't enjoyed it at all. Oh, Mrs. Norman was nice ; " and the ready colour came into her cheeks again. " I love her ! What did she mean, I Avonder ? Of course one means to Avork. And you really Avere pleased," she repeated, as she rose and stretched out her hands to him impulsively. " Oh, I am the happiest girl in London. Now I must fly home, Helen will think I'm lost. I wish she could have come ; she Avas so disappointed." She looked, indeed, radiantly happy, as she " flew," as she expressed it, upstairs to say good bye to Miss Tyrrell, as she "flew" into a cab, and out again into a small house in Hampstead.

" Is Miss Helen in ? " she asked the servant who opened the door. " Where is she ? No, I won't have tea, thanks," and she ran lightly upstairs. " Helen ! " she called ; " Nell, Nell ! " A door on the landing above opened quickly, and another girl's voice, very like her own, but rather older and less exquisitely" modulated, answered eagerly : " I'm here, dear ; come along ; " and a short, bright-looking girl appeared at the top of the stairs. Selma rushed up to her, and kissed her impetuously. " I'm late," she said ; " have you been in long, Nellie ? " " Not long," returned her sister. " Well, have you enjoyed it?" "I'm in the seventh heaven," answered Selma. " Mr. Tyrrell was very pleased ; really, very pleased, you know. I Avas very miserable. I thought I had done disgracefully. No, Nell, it isn't nonsense.

You don't know how stupid I am ; and then he was so nice. So I know it can't have been as bad as I thought, and I don't know what to do for joy." They had passed into the drawing-room by this time, and Selma had gently pushed her sister into a chair, and was kneeling at her feet and looking into her face with shining, excited eyes. Quite suddenly she drew back a little, and her face changed. "Helen!" she said, quickly. " Dear, has — has anything happened ? " Helen's face was flushed and trembling as she looked into the happy, eager face before her ; and there was a look in her eyes which Selma had never seen there before. "What is it, darling? What is it?" she repeated, softly, kissing the hands she held in both her own. Her sister suddenly drew her very7 close and pressed her cheek against the dark, wavy hair.

"Humphrey," she whispered; "Humphrey. Selma, I am going to be his wife, dear." With a little low cry of Avonder and delight, Selma flung her arms impulsively round her sister's neck, and they clung together AA'ithout a word in an embrace Avhich was very close and Aery tender.

Chapter II

Helen and Selma Malet were, for the time being, Kving alone together in the little house at Hampstead, enjoying what the latter called an "interregnum of companions." Two years earlier the loss of their father and mother, within three months of one another, had left them very desolate. They had no brother and no other sister. They were Aery fairly Avell off, however, and after much dis cussion and some opposition from their guardian, they had set up housekeeping for themselves, finally conceding to his insistance the chaperon they had been very anxious to do Avithout. They had been fortunate in their first duenna ; they had become very fond of her and she them ; but when, about a month before the Tyrrells' "at home," she had been obliged to leave them hurriedly and her successor had proved not to be immediately forthcoming, they had persuaded their guardian — Selma best knew how — to let them "chaperon one another" in the interval.

Mr. Cornish, the guardian in question, was their father's cousin, and the only relation Helen and Selma had in England. But the Cornish family was a host in itself, numbering fifteen all told, and ranging in ages from the father, who was nearly sixty, to Elsie, the pet and baby of the family7, who was nearly six. The two girls had established themselves very near the big house which accommodated their numerous cousins, so that in the alarming crises which Avere apt to arise in the household economy — such as the intoxication of the cook, or the insubordination of the housemaid with reference to "folloAvers" — Helen invariably took sage counsel with her guardian's Avdfe, who went with both girls by the name of auntie. As a matter of fact, it Avas Mrs. Cornish, and not her easy-going husband, Avho had insisted on the chaperon, and it was also Mrs. Cornish whose permission had been absolutely necessary for the present interregnum.

Though Selma had been all her life as much at home in her cousins' house as in her own, though she had known and loved them all from her earliest childhood, they were nothing in her life but the merest background, against which the centre figure was John Tyrrell. He had been an intimate friend of her father's, even before Selma was born. He had been a part of her life as long as she could remember anything, and as long as she could remember anything it had been he and he only who had thoroughly understood and helped her. It had been John Tyrrell who had overheard the two little sisters of nine and six playing a game invented and directed by the younger, in which the tragic drowning of a doll in a washing basin formed an important feature. It was John Tyrrell who had stood almost thunder struck at the lamentation of the bereaved parent of six years, until he was roused by the frightened cry of little Helen as she besought her sister not to play "like that"; and it was John Tyrrell — a much younger John Tyrrell than the man of to-day — who had picked up the little actress as she passed from simulated to very real sobs and tears, and kissed and soothed her into quiet.

From that day there had existed a very curious and much laughed at comradeship between the young actor and the baby girl ; but her father and mother, thinking it very possible that the precocious germ of dramatic instinct might never develope, and determined that no pressure or even en couragement from without should be mistaken by Selma, as she grew older, for a vocation, had exacted from Tyrrell a promise that he would not talk to the child of his art, nor in any way Avhatever encourage her dramatic tendencies. Of Selma's first play, eight years later, John Tyrrell was the hero, and it was his acting Avhich then showed her for the first time what, as she expressed it in childish, excited language, was " the matter with her." The man who received that girlish, enthusiastic admiration, was no longer the man who had consoled the overstrung child of eight years before ; but the girl interested him, and when there Avas no longer any room for doubt as to her destiny, he took her in hand, and taught her and trained her as no other man living could have done.