A Fallen Star: a story of society and the stage

Chapter I. Spjrst

was ;l balualy evening late in the month of .May. psIM The London season was at its height. St. James' ■■-'■JL-'i Street, Waterloo Place, and Regent Street were ill tos__«j thronged, with a brilliant and fashionable crowd. At every few steps you came upon some well-known celebrity. Members of Parliament, guardsmen, peers, artists and popular journalists stood on the steps of fashionable clubs smoking havannas and discussing the current topics of the day, Well appointed equipages rolled along, conveying beauti ful and high-born women to the ball-room and other aristocratic haunts of dissipation. The causeways were thronged with pedestrians, gentle men in evening dress, old men with iron-grey moustaches and battered, dissolute countenances, youths just fresh from school on whose faces, pale and guiltless of a beard, vice had already imprinted its unmistakeable signs.

Girls— some of them singularly handsome — vending spring flowers, the grace and purity of which transported us in thought from the beat, luxury, excitement and A pleasures of Metropolitan life to the quiet country with its green fields, umbrageous trees and rustic cottages that seem to be the abodes of peace, contentment and virtue. Faded milliners worn out and exhausted with long hours of work carrying home to stately residences rich dresses that are to enhance the pink and alabaster loveliness of haughty beauties ; shivering, slinking mendicants, whose meek appeals for charity, and ragged wretchedness, are unnoticed by the gay and thoughtless pedestrians — selfish pleasure having no compassion for human griefs and misery. Pickpockets masked in fashionable attire but whose coarse features and roving, restless eyes reveal their nefarious designs ; and there, too, in full force are the nymphs of the pave — the French lorette with her dainty dress and graceful carriage ; the Italian courtezan with her dark flashing eyes ; the German harlot with thick-set figure, light complexion and straw-coloured hair; the English wanton tall and slim, a graceless creature with bold eyes, a coarse tongue and hard lines about her cruel sensuous mouth.

Up above this scene of glitter, gaiety, splendour and profligacy ; over the heads of the idle and the dissolute, those who had come up to town to see life, those who were in search of pleasure and adventure and those who, net in hand, were in search of their prey — up in the cloudless sky shone the everlasting stars. No eye, however, was raised to contemplate their brightness. They had less attraction for the men and women who on that evening moved in eager, restless streams along the West-end streets, than the flashing gems, the showy dresses, the graceful figures, the sparkling eyes, and the softly spoken words, sweet as honey, deadly as arsenic, of adulation and passion. For a moment a poet might forget the sordid crowds that floated round, and raise his dreamy eyes to the heavens studded with trembling, scintillating jewels, to muse on their unsullied splendour, and essay to fathom their mystery ; or an outcast girl who had grown weary of sin, and whose hollow heart was haunted with despair, might lift her sad woe-begone eyes to those orbs of light which are the signets on the fingers of the Almighty, and the luminous scroll in which He has written on the open page of the firmament the wondrous story of His power and compassion, and think to herself that they were the same stars that used to shine down in silent lustre upon the humble cottage on the wild Yorkshire moor where her father and mother dwelt before her dishonour broke their hearts, and they were carried to the churchyard.

But none, save such as these, vouchsafed a hasty glance, or gave a passing thought to that azure dome whereon time graves no wrinkles, and the burning eyes which look down upon modern Babylon as they did upon the grandeur of Athens, and on the Circean orgies of degenerate Rome. Ages do not dim their lustre, and they shed their solemn, holy, golden, glorious light to-night upon fair women arrayed for conquest, and vieing with each other in ignoble rivalry, as they did upon Eve, when in unconscious innocence, she reclined in the bowers of Eden naked and not ashamed. Rivers stray from their channels, mountains are shattered by earthquakes, undermined by waters or worn by the stress of the elements ; forests dis appear and cities rise upon their places, cities again are tumbled into ruins ; all the works of man perish like their fiamer ; and on those of Nature herself throughout the habitable globe, is written mutability, The entire aspect of the earth, whether waste or culti vated, peopled or solitary, is perpetually undergoing trans formation.

The heavenly bodies alone appear to us the identical luminaries in size, lustre, movement, and relative position which they appeared to Adam and Eve in paradise. They appear to us the same as they did to Noah and his family, when they descended from the ark in the silence of an unpeopled world ; and as they did to the builders of Babel, when the latter projected a tower whose top should reach heaven. In the same battle array the stars appear to us as they were seen by Deborah and Barak, when the stars in their courses fought against Sisera ; in the same sparkling constellations as they were seen by the Psalmist, compelling him to exclaim ; " When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him ? or the son of man that Thou visitest him ?

" Once more — and 0, how touching is the thought ! — the stars, the unchanging stars appear to us with the same placid magnificence as they were seen by the Redeemer of the World when having sent the multitude away He went up into a mountain for prayer. Our story opens in the month of May, and in the year 1852. The hour was close upon the stroke of eleven. A young man might have been observed sauntering down Regent Street. There was nothing in his attire, which denoted that he belonged to the lower middle class, to attract attention ; but his bearing and countenance were such as to be almost certain to arrest notice. He walked along the pavement with a sprightly, gay, jovial, almost reckless air. His bright, florid, face was all sunshine, and his light blue eyes danced in mirth under his flaxen curls and felt hat which he wore on one side of his head in a careless rakish fashion.

His figure was slight and a little above the average height. His forehead and features generally indicated intellect, sensibility and easy good nature. The favourable impression conveyed by the rest of the face was considerably diminished by the expression of weakness and irresolution which lurked about the small characterless mouth, which expression was not hidden by the slight silken moustache which adorned the upper lip. This young man, clad in a suit of speckled tweed, moved though the crowded street as though he had not a care in the world, or had suddenly dropped down from some world of innocence and happiness into the midst of scheming, giddy, vicious, luxurious, splendid, wonderful London ! He looked with an approving and appreciative eye at the many handsome faces that for a moment encountered his gaze and then were lost in the mighty sea of human life that rolled around him.

He had a cheery word and ready shilling for the white-faced beggar with a baby sleeping in her arms and another clinging to her tattered dress ; and he had coppers in abundance for the gamins who besought his charity. He, at any rate, did some good on that night, and must have seemed a veritable fairy prince in the eyes of the downcast, miserable, wretches whose squalid misery he so spontaneously relieved. The dole he distributed might be prompted by no higher or worthier motive than thoughtless, prodigal good nature ; but in the world men are so numerous and the kindnesses they perform compared with their oppor tunities, so few, that it is neither wise nor gracious to look too inquisitively into the reasons that actuate the generous and humane actions we see done. If things appear to be gold accept them as such without question ; if men do kind and humane actions that shed a lustre on our common humanity and that hide the unsighty deformities of our nature, poor and ruined as it is, under something like a robe of light, credit them with the best intentions.

Better that a thousand hypocrites should go unchallenged than that one good and honest man should suffer from false, unfounded and foul suspicions, misconstructions and aspersions. If men sometimes do good instigated by base purposes, remember a settling day will surely come and be content with that. This young man, whose free and careless manner and jovial appearance had attracted our attention, sauntered slowly, looking at everything that met his view, with what seemed to be infinite satisfaction, down Regent-street and, turning into the Haymarket, directed his course towards the Palladium Theatre. Having arrived at that temple of the drama he passed by the public entrance over which an electric star cast a white, ghastly light, almost as brilliant but without the warm, golden tinge of that of the sun, and where huge placards announced, in red letters a foot high, that the famous Italian tragedienne, Evadne Colonna, would appear every evening in "Cleopatra," a gorgeous spectacular performance adapted from Shakespeare's cele brated play, aud went about forty yards up a narrow side street to the stage door, where nearly a hundred persons were collected for the purpose of seeing the distinguished actress leave the building.

The group consisted of fast young men, well-to-do farmers and yeomen from the shires whose healthy countenances bespoke their manner of life, and whose garments, cut in a style half groom, and half squire, plainly showed that they had just come up from the country. Women, some of them very pretty in a wax doll kind of fashion, but with little or no expression in their countenances, which had a low, vicious, dissolute look, the combined result of naturally evil propensities that had been allowed to assert themselves without check, and the wild dissolute life they led ; there was also a sprinkling of honest workmen ia their every-day attire, with their wives or sweethearts hanging upon their arms. The crowd were eager to catch a glimpse of the Colonna ; as she was the rage in the theatrical world, her name was on every tongue, her photograph in every printseller's window, lithographs and immense posters made her notorious, and endless were the fables in circulation respecting her origin, eccentricities, private life, salary, special tastes, immoralities, and grandeur.

Her brougham was drawn up to receive her. Two high-spirited chesnut horses, that pawed the ground impatiently, were rare specimens of equine beauty, and the carriage, with its silken hangings and velvet cushions, a very bower of luxury. After waiting ten minutes, or at the longest a quarter of an hour, the group clustered round the stage entrance were rewarded for their patience by the appearance of the illustrious thespian. The lady, who was leaning on the arm of a distinguished-looking mau about forty years of age, was somewhat above the medium stature, slim and angular, but she carried herself with great grace, and her dark face, though by no means handsome, was striking and expressive, lighted up by sombre brown eyes, dreamy, eloquent, and full of fire and passion. A lace kerchief was thrown gracefully over her head, and her slight, elegant figure was wrapped in an ample cloak of sealskin.

The young man, whom we met in Regent-street, and whose blithe and confident mien had so much impressed us, as soon as he saw the lady issue from the stage-door, smiling upon and chatting gaily with her handsome escort, on whose refined, colourless, and languid features was un mistakably stamped the aristocrat, rushed upon the pair, and looking fiercely at the gentleman, said to the actress, " Take my arm, Evadne ; I will see you home." The tragedienne hesitated and appeared to be frightened, but without losing her composure, she replied in quiet tones to the rude address of the young man : " This gentleman is a great patron of the drama, and an old friend of mine, and I have invited him to supper at my house. Do not be silly, Ernest, and make a scene." Her voice was singularly rich and flexible, and she spoke fluently and without the accent of a foreigner.

" I will accompany you, but he shall not," peremptorily insisted the young man ; and, as he uttered the words, he roughly pushed the gentleman on one side, and com pelled the actress to take his arm. The white face of the man who was thus grossly in sulted flushed crimson ; his soft, amiable eyes flashed in a threatening manner, and he raised a small well-shaped hand, on which a magnificent brilliant glittered, as if about to strike the insolent aggressor ; controlling himself, however, with an admirable effort, he dropped his menacing attitude, and said, in cold, haughty tones : " Sir, if you be a gentleman, which your unwarrantable outrage in the presence of this lady would seem to belie, you will not refuse to acquaint me with your name." To this request the young man deigned to give no answer, but conducted the actress towards the carriage.

He opened the door, and was about to assist her to enter it, when the gentleman laid his haud slightly on her arm, and inquired, " Is it your wish, Evadne, that I should retire, and that this gentleman" — the word was spoken with marked emphasis — " should be your escort ? " The lady appeared to be in the deepest distress ; her grand, mobile face was scarlet. In her confusion she stammered out : " I hope, my Lord, you will pardon what has occurred to-night. I apologise to you for this gentle man's rudeness ; he must have strangely forgotten himself, or indulged, perhaps, too freely in wine at dinner, to have acted in this outrageous manner. He is a very old friend of mine ; and I think it would be better if your Lordship did not go with me. After all your kindnesses, it seems cruel to treat you in this manner- I am ashamed of myself.

What can you think of me ? I am sorry ; indeed, I am, my lord." This little speech was delivered with evident concern and grief, and coming as it did from the lips of an eminently seductive woman, did not fail to mollify the ruffled temper of the naturally indignant gentleman. " Do not say another word, Evadne," responded his lordship. " For your sake, I could condone a much greater injury than I have suffered at the hands of this hot-headed and unreasonable young gentleman." And with a pleasant smile upon his lips, and a kindly light in his eyes, he raised his hat, and then quietly walked away. The lady then stepped into her brougham, and the young man, seating himself by her side, the horses started at a rapid trot for the suburban residence of the actress. In a very short space of time they had left the streets with their crowds, confusion, and vehicles moving hither and thither, threading their way with difficulty and many A FALLEN STAK. delays, along the almost blocked thoroughfares, the cabmen at every pause genially chaffing one another from their high perches behind the hansoms.

Passing out of the lights and noise of London, the mettlesome horses careered swiftly over the country road. Wheeling round, the carriage passed through the open gates, and sped up the gravelled drive through the garden, startling the birds from their dormitories in the foliage of the trees, to the door of the villa. The room into which the actress conducted her com panion was a handsome and unique apartment, shaped like an octagon. The ceiling was of cedar, adorned with gilt mouldings. The lower half of the panels of the wall were painted a deep red, the upper half a light sky-blue on which glistened golden stars. Round the room there was a purple cornice, edged with gold. The curtain over the open window, through which stole the fragrance of sleeping flowers, and the cool, fresh night-air, so agreeable to the senses after the hot and vitiated atmosphere of the theatre, was of primrose-coloured silk.

The room, at one end, opened into a conservatory, built like a Turkish kiosk, with a tessellated floor and filled with ferns and tropical plants, and a small fountain played in the centre, and amidst the ferns and flowers stood small marble statues, and hung in airy cages birds of sweetest song and rarest plumage. In this small but exquisite apartment were two or three Etruscan vases, about five feet in height, placed near the walls, a cabinet covered with rare old china, and a small oak bookcase filled with a choice collection of famous poets, dramatists, and essayists. As soon as the servant, who ushered them into the room lamp in hand, had retired, the lady posed herself in a graceful, reclining attitude upon a couch, aud the gentle man threw himself into a capacious easy chair, mixed him self a glass of brandy and water, and proceeded to light a cigar- Stimulated by his example the jaded actress took from a silver case that stood on a consol table close to her shoulder, a cigarette of Russian tobacco, and applying a wax taper to the end, began to puff the fragrant weed.

The soft light of the shaded lamp fell upon her face and form. She had removed the sealskin cloak from her figure, and the lace kerchief from her head. She was dressed in crimson silk, with black velvet facings, and an ample collar of the finest and whitest lace round her neck, fastened in front with a diamond star. Her com plexion was a dark olive with a ruddy tinge upon the cheeks. Her forehead was broad, but not high. Her eyes were almond-shaped, beautiful, haughty, tender, passionate. Her mouth was large — too large for her face. The chin and lower jaw were massive, and out of proportion with the upper part of the countenance, indicating a strong animal nature. Her nose was large, but hollow towards the tip. Her hair was black, glossy, and rippling. The features taken singly were not good, but looked at as a whole, the effect was imposing ; they indicated intellect, power, and emotion.

It was a face which the eye would seek again and again ; a face to make one think and wonder ; a face the possessor of which could not play an insignificant part on the world's stage; a grand, noble, heroic part, or perhaps a vicious and criminal one, but not insignificant. Her figure owing to its thinness, approaching almost to meagreness, made her look taller than she really was ; and it had none of those soft undulations, or plump roundness, which in the eyes of many connoisseurs, are among the prime attractions in female loveliness. Her figure was in fact, gaunt and angular ; but she carried herself erect, her neck well arched, and all her movements were characterised by inimitable grace. Her voice was full, soft, rich, and modulated with the most finished elocution ; and when she laughed, she displayed two rows of teeth, regular, small and white as pearls, and her deep, passionate, glowing eyes, and every line of her countenance, seemed to revel and dance with glee, roguish ness, and sunshine.

But it was in the remarkable face of Evadne Colonna, that lay her indescribable charm. " How very foolish of you ! " said the actress with a vexed expression about her bent brows, but in a not unkind tone, casting her dark eyes full upon her companion. The young man, who had perfectly recovered his equanimity, and was meditatively watching the wreaths of light blue smoke, as they ascended from his cigar and were lost in the air, replied : " I know I acted like au ass, but the fact of the matter is, I forget myself ; and my blood unreasonably boils when I see a man paying attentions to you ; and he who was with you to-night is a handsome fellow, and will I suppose if I do not keep my wits about me, take my place." " I don't think he has any wish to do that," rejoined Evadne gravely ; and then with an arch smile upon her lips, she continued : "But suppose a policeman should have come upon the scene, and my lord had given you in charge ?

You would not have found a cell at Bow Street as pleasant as this room. And then to have appeared before the magistrate in the morning, and to be fined five shillings for having been drunk and disorderly ! — Or suppose you receive a cartel in the morning, and have to fight a duel. My lord is an old soldier, and will not brook an insult." "Nonsense, Evadne," said the young man. "The days of duelling are gone by. But who is he ? You call him a lord." "Why, is it possible you do not know him ? He is Lord Belton ; and the affair is to me most unpleasant, because he is the lessee of the Palladium, and I draw a very hand some salary. Yesterday his treasurer gave me a cheque for £200 which I must go into the city to-morrow to cash." " I am very sorry for what has occurred," answered the young man, with anything but an expression of contrition upon his open and engaging countenance, " I ought to apologise to him."

"I am sure you ought," said she, "and be thankful, too, if you can extricate yourself from the disagreeable business in so easy a way." " Perhaps you will do it for me ? Proud as you are, you would manage it better than I should," he suggested. Animated with conversation, and with a shade of annoy ance upon her smiling countenance, Evadne Colonna looked bewitching. The young man rose from his chair, and would have ended the discussion with a kiss of amnesty, in the luscious sweetness of which all cause of vexation should have been forgotten. The lady, however, though she was by no means provoked by his overtures, gently, but firmly pushed him from her ; and he was too madly in love with her to persist in any measure that was in the least degree distasteful to the alluring woman whose veritable slave he was.

He was as much in her toils as was Hercules in those of Omphale, when, laying down the arms of the warrior, he worked and spun with her distaff. He was as heavily chained as any convict. He had lost his freedom ; he lived but in the glance of his dark-browed m istress — her eye was his sun, — her smile, his heaven. Would. a day come when he would feel the weight of his gyves, a day when he would loathe his captivity, aud her dark orbs would lose their lustre, and fascination, and the face that was once his heaven be to him as void and unattractive as the black midnight sky in which there shines not a single star to relieve the darkness of the earth ? 'Ms

Chapter II

A NARROW, dusty, dirty street, not far from the -*--*- Mansion House, into which the sun in summer ineffectually attempted to shed a few genial rays, so closely packed were the houses, and so dense was the smoke, a little, gloomy, uncomfortable street composed chiefly of offices, in which the dust and grime stood in thick coats upon the glass of the windows excluding the little natural light there was outside from entering the interior ; forlorn miserable looking tenements, that appeared to have been deserted by their more prosperous and fashionable relatives at the West End, in the rooms of which cobwebs hung unmolested on the walls, and spiders wove their subtile webs, and patiently waited for their victims. The spiders were characteristic of the places, aud might have been appropriately chosen by the occupiers as an emblematic device ; for in these dingy, shabby little rooms many a cunning plan was concocted, and many a net cleverly spread to catch the unwary, — human spiders laying traps for the unthinking flies of their own species.

In striking contrast with its ungenteel, and neglected fellows was the bank of Newcome & Co. The front of the building was handsome and imposing. The interior of the building enhanced the favourable impression made by the exterior. In a large saloon, with a high vaulted roof, and cupola, well provided with gas-jets, screened with large green shades, sat along the walls, a dozen clerks at small desks of dark mahogany, with huge folios before them, writing and casting up accounts. At a long, massive semi-circular counter stand eight or ten clerks transacting business with the customers. The door is continually opening and shutting. A constant stream of people are elbowing and pushing to get up to the clerks, and moving in and out. Pretty young ladies to whom John Bull shows but little gallantry when he is bent upon business and who have to rough it like the rest ; old, wizen-faced men, with bloodless countenances and feeble, attenuated bodies, clad in threadbare black ; exquisites from Belgravia who look with unutterable disgust upon the whole scene> but whose exigencies — necessity knows no law — compel them to go into the City to recruit their finances though they do it with as much reluctance and as ill a grace as did the Israelites go down to Egypt to buy corn ; eager, worried, hurried clerks, with whom time is as precious as money, and ruddy-cheeked, plump office-boys, with cheques to cash, and who have not yet been smitten with the business mania that makes the road to the grave, while it abridges it, one of cares and thorns, of anxious days and sleepless nights.

And, as the clerks do business over the counter, aud the human stream incessantly tides in and flows out, on all sides, there is, in this temple of Mammon, the sweetest of all sounds to those who gather there, the rattle of gold. "Gold! gold! gold! gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammer'd and roll'd; Heavy to get and light to hold ; Hoarded, barter'd, bought and sold, Stolen, borrowed, squander'd, doled ; Spurned by the young, but hugg'd by the old To the very verge of the church-yard mould ; Price of many a crime untold ; Gold ! gold ! gold ! gold ! Good or bad a thousand fold! How widely its agencies vary, — To save — to ruin — to curse — to bless — As even its minted coins express, — Now stamp'd with the image of good queon Bess, And now of a bloody Mary." A green baize door on the side of the counter reserved for the bank-officials, led to an inner room, the sanctum of the great banker.

The room looked snug and comfortable, and wore a substantial and cheery aspect, although it was totally destitute of ornament, and was no better furnished than the generality of first-class waiting rooms at railway depots. In the centre stood an oblong mahogany table of considerable dimensions, with a carafe of water and a tumbler upon it. Half-a-dozen chairs of the same wood placed against the walls, together with two capacious arm chairs near the table, were the only appliances of comfort in the room, if we except the mirror that hung over the fire-place. The banker himself was seated at the table, busily engaged in mastering the contents of a pile of letters. Robert Newcome was about sixty years of age, of a cor pulent build, and his well-brushed clothes of superfine black cloth, gold-rimmed eye-glasses, and snow-white beard of patriarchal lengths gave him a venerable and eminently respectable appearance.

His forehead was well formed, his features good, his eyes shrewd and piercing ; but they had a shifty, cold, cunning, steel-like expression, and the mouth was large, hard, and ungenial. It could hardly he called the face of a philanthropist. And Robert Newcome was, in sooth, a hard, long-headed man of business with no superfluous generosity to loosen his purse-strings, and no I! imagination to make him deflect a hair's breadth from his practical mode of life. Such as he was, Robert Newcome had been successful beyond his fellows, one of the wealthiest men in the city, a member of Parliament, aud governor of many public institutions. He was as eminent in the religious world, as in the mercantile, and his voice was often heard at Exeter Hall. A frigid unsympathetic man, with a chill heart, and no kindly impulses, his religion was a matter of calculation.

He attended church regularlv, presided at religious meetings, and subscribed handsomely to public charities from motives of policy. These things were with him a matter of business ; he considered them a good investment. He was not drawn — irresistibly drawn, as the clouds draw moisture from the sea, to the performance of good works by any sympathy for suffering humanity, or by a soul charged with inexpressible emotions of love and gratitude to that great and glorious Being whose mercy is over all His works, and whose compassion for His creatures endures from age to age. A common man, of base parentage with little or no education, without any of the high gifts of genius, incapable of originating, even of understanding a fine idea, Robert Newcome was within the sound of Bow Bells, and far beyond the purlieus of the citv, possessed of greater power than any earl, baron, or duke of the empire; for in England, money is power; money is kings, lords, aud commons ; money is the real nobility, and bankers are the true ministry, and determine questions of peace, and war, and make treaties.