Alice Lauder: a sketch

Chapter I. They

all said it would never do ; and, as a matter of fact, it didn't. There was some comfort in that — to the other people. Whether it was at all consoling to Alice Lauder to know that the inevitable result had been foreseen, prophesied, deplored, and commiserated by the whole of her acquaintances on board ship, is another matter ; yet, as often as she went over the whole affair in her thoughts, she declared to herself that she could not have acted differently, even from the very beginning. The beginning of it all was not a very cheerful day for a beginning. The mail steamer "Suez" had put into this forlorn Australian port for a few hours, to pick up the mails and to take in any incidental passengers who might easily be anxious to get away from St. Paul's Bay. The white deck of the vessel was always kept in a state of supernatural neatness and shininess.

Every coil of rope was tidied up to a hairpin, every brass plate and moulding shone with more than Dutch brilliancy; indeed, the rites of cleanliness and order were carried out to a counsel of perfection on board the "Suez;" yet even this perfection could not make her deck appear a cheerful home on such a day. The passengers, who for the most part had been on board for eight or nine days, and who now felt to the manner born, superciliously gazed at the land, or hung listlessly over the bulwarks, vainly seeking what they could devour in the way of amusement. But there was very little to amuse them either in the weather or the surroundings. Under a sad, misty sky, the horn-shaped land locked harbour looked all one uniform tint of faded grey, except for an occasional gleam of orange or purple, like stains of iron-mould, as the heavy water moved with the tide.

The wind was blowing from the land in a persistent melancholy spirit; it was not strong enough to stir up the waves to strife, but it kept up a dreary sort of strumming in the rigging; and the few grey green, thin-leaved trees that grew near the beach stooped and hobbled, like old crones driven before the blast, and bent nearly double with age and fatigue. Sometimes a swift, transitory gust of rain flew over the ship, but soon relapsed into the indefinite saline mist that seemed to pervade both earth and sky. A few scattered white houses with wet iron roofs, a white light house on the north side of the harbour, and the mute sunburnt forest rising tier above tier till it rolled away into the horizon — these were all the visible attractions of St. Paul's, W.A. Some times a quick glance of sunshine alighted on the bushy hills far inland, and showed out their ashy-white network of dead trees, or flashed on the flying splinters of rain close at hand ; but there was something pallid and cheerless even in that momentary brightness.

" It's very Australian," said Lady May Carr, who was the leading lady of this voyage, to her companion, a tall young Englishman with a grave, handsome face. Lady May was tall, too, and fair and robust. She was a very good imitation of a pretty woman, but her eyes and eye lashes, hair and complexion, were all exactly the same tint — a sort of whitey-brown sugar-paper shade. Nevertheless, she possessed in perfection the well-born, well-trained, well-preserved ap pearance of the superior travelling English woman. Everything she had on was evidently the right thing ; if anything, it was too right. This was before the advent of tailor-made figures ; yet there was a sort of prophetic tailor's finish in her severe yachting dress and profes sional cloth cap. Her hair was arranged in that neat mathematical formula which no woman, however talented, can produce by her own un aided fingers.

Only a lady's maid, and a very clever one at that, could have turned out those whitey-brown braids and puffs in such polished completeness on board ship. She looked rather contemptuously through her eyeglass at the only passenger from St. Paul's, a young lady who was just then coming on board, and mount ing the steps as if she were being led to execu tion; and, indeed, it was evident to the unaided vision that everything about the new-comer was in the wrong, passively if not actively wrong. Her thin, shiny black silk at once declared the fact of having seen better days, but it need not have been decked out with cheap fringe and unfortunate ornaments. The feathers in her hat were weak and drooping, as if they had been curled and recurled with great care and trouble, but could not keep it up a moment longer.

On one arm she carried a worn but excellent shawl of real cashmere, which might have covered a multitude of sins, but that some evil genius had sewn on a garnishing of imitation ermine, which gave the last touch to her failure. Little could be seen of her face, but her eyes were tearful, and she looked as if in the last extremity of shyness and sorrow. The occasion of her sorrow was apparently the parting with her father — a father whose long hair and velvet coat and general air of slipshoddiness proclaimed him aloud as one of those broken-down geniuses who are so often turned off to sink or swim — and who generally sink — in Australian waters. He made his adieu to his daughter in a very ill-timed theatrical manner, with a flourish of tin trum pets as it were, and a waving of hands, just as if he were going off the stage two steps to the bar, to the ghost-tune in the " Corsican Brothers " on a crowded benefit night.

The girl's face was very white, but she sup pressed her sobs, and the expression of her eyes, as she held her father's hand and gazed on him in silent farewell, made Arthur Campbell turn away with an uncomfortable sensation of sympathy. " What a guy ! I wonder she does not go second-class," observed Lady May, in her clear, high-toned accents, which were always thought to be so aristocratic. Perhaps they were rather too clear on this occasion, for the girl heard her, and looked at the speaker, or rather over her, with a swift glance of sad, yet supreme disdain. The other passengers noted this little passage with amusement, and not without a pleased consciousness that for once in her life Lady May had been put down by the silent reproof of a shabby young person in moulting feathers and imitation fur.

Lady May, who was a good-natured person in the main, smiled at Arthur Campbell and re sumed her conversation in perhaps slightly lowered tones, while the new passenger waved her hand towards the boat, now leaving the ship's neighbourhood, and went away slowly and sadly to her cabin ; and the " Suez " cheer fully made a start towards the Indian Ocean, leaving behind her the white lighthouse and lonely forests of St. Paul's, more forlorn and solitary than ever as they faded away into the sad grey distance.

Chapter II. It

happened that the " Suez " had great good fortune in her homeward trip on this occasion. Day after day passed by in a robe of pale diaphanous turquoise, a cool, milky haze on the horizon the only shadow of cloud. Peacefully the ship climbed up the same blue hill day after day, and night after night, a smooth breeze meeting her as she moved, and giving some life to the lotus-eater's paradise of the travellers. But there was literally nothing to do, and very little to think of. " Blue sunny sky above ; below, A blue and sunny sea." The prestige of Lady May's position rather weighed on the more plebeian sort, and few of these had the energy either to quarrel or to make love under those long, cold grey eyes, and longer, colder nose. Little was seen of the new passenger at first. She seemed to find her own resources sufficient for herself, and spent most of her time in reading, or making notes in a cramped musical notation in a shabby note book.

By degrees, however, her shyness wore off, and ber personality began to make itself felt. The captain, a kindly, courteous gentle man of the old school (of which there are so few pupils left), always conscientiously divided his attentions to a hairbreadth (according to precedence) among his passengers ; and he made a point of looking after Miss Lauder. He was rather aghast at finding that she knew no one on board, and had not even been committed to his experienced care. Casting about for a suitable chaperon, he selected a large, broad featured matron, " by the name of Wigs," who, in a panoply of steel beads and whalebone, which would have defended Minerva herself, sat all day long in a painfully upright position, knitting from her elbows, and gazing benevolently over the ocean. Mrs. Wigs was charmed to take the young lady under her protecting wing ; and for the rest of the voyage she sat, clothed in a little brief authority and a great deal of brown moire, as near as possible to her young charge, listening with evident enjoyment to the conversation about her, but taking no part in it.

By degrees, too, one or two others joined in, under Mrs. Wigs' matronly and protecting shadow. The funny man of the ship (every mail steamer has an amateur jester on board, as necessary as the sail-maker) soon learned to turn his melancholy close-shaven countenance towards her as often as he launched a joke, and never failed to meet an answering sparkle of amusement from under her long black eyelashes. Lady May always looked down her nose — no small distance, by the way — whenever this vulgar person tried to be facetious, and he hated her in return with a vulgar and vivacious hatred. Then one after another of the waifs and strays of travelling life, people who drift about from one place to another out of pure inanity, and who bore each other to death with their stories of hotels and railways, fastened themselves on Miss Lauder's neighbourhood, delighted to find a new victim, and poured out endless moving incidents of table d'hotes and excursion trains, of the price of tickets, the crimes of stewards, the loss of snippets of lace, or disappearances of silver ornaments from their persons, to her sympathetic and intelligent ear.

Lady May meanwhile remained serenely con temptuous of the lower depths of society, even on this little ark of existence that passed so bravely from one continent to the other. Ab sorbed in her own superiority, and accompanied by her silent, handsome friend, she lounged on the bamboo chairs, or walked the deck with that superb air of self-satisfaction which only an Englishwoman of a certain rank, supported by a lifetime of cold baths, High Church services, Parisian corset-makers, and invitations to Court, can possibly command ; and, in addition, she had the moral support of finding the best looking man on board completely at her service •so far.

Chapter III. It

happened about five o'clock of a hot Sunday afternoon that all the passengers were nearly dying out of pure boredom. They had eaten one hot dinner at the unnatural hour of three o'clock p.m., and it was morally and physically impossible to eat anything else for twenty-four hours at least. They could not go for a walk; they could not ask anyone in to tea ; they had not even the prospect of a game of cards to cheer their spirits. In this vacuum it occurred to the good captain to try and secure " a little music," in the last resort. The piano had been drawn out of the music-saloon on the outer deck, and fastened in a comfortable angle against the mast, for the convenience of the early service ; and it was generally felt that at such a time as this even the Old Hundredth played by a child of five years old would have a cheering and en nobling effect.

But there was no enterprise in the languid circle. In vain the captain went from one to another in his courteous way ; no one would break the spell of dulness which seemed to have settled down more heavily than a London fog on the ship's company that lovely tropical evening. At last Lady May took pity on the captain's entreaties, and after as many prelimi naries as if she were beginning a lawsuit, she settled herself at the piano, took off an endless number of bracelets and bangles, and carefully transacted the performance of " Strangers Yet." Her voice was a thin, reedy soprano, carefully trained, yet which seemed, somehow, to be of exactly the same whitey-brown complexion as her face; and when she had finished, though the audience were profuse in their thanks, no one went so far as to ask her to continue.

Even Arthur Campbell, who stood leaning over the ship's side, looking down on the smooth, glassy roll of the Indian Ocean, maintained a judicial silence. He was curiously sensitive to music in some forms, and, when once the spell began to work, he enjoyed it with all the infatuation of the opium-eater for his visionary delight; but the right word was not to be found apparently in in Lady May's electro-plated notes, and he seemed to find more music in the majestic rush of the vessel through the onyx-coloured water, as her black precipitous bows slowly swayed to the horizon, and the two clouds of spray that she dashed aside from her path sank and softly melted away in her wake, like a streak of white daisies in some green summer-suited pasture. There was a pause in the murmurs of polite thanksgiving, a pause of expectancy ; and, turning his head lazily without moving from his place, he saw the captain escorting another per former to the piano with the pleased but anxious demeanour of an impresario introducing a new star.

By his side Alice Lauder moved slowly and almost reluctantly, and it occurred to Camp bell, as he looked at her, that he had never really seen the new passenger before ; and, in fact, the same idea struck more than one of the little circle. She had for once discarded the time honoured black silk, and wore her one festal Sab bath gown of white flannel, which, though badly cut and worse fitted, still fell into solid picturesque folds, and by its cream-coloured mass threw a sort of reflected brightness round her face. She had taken off her hat, and, holding it in her hand, moved with a mechanical step, almost like a blind person, her eyes fixed on the horizon with an absent expression, yet bright with a consciousness of power that lighted up her face into sudden and transitory beauty. In figure and complexion she belonged to the true Australian type — thin, flexible, and tanned to the transparent brown tint which is only acquired by long intimacy with the strong sun shine and dry air of the most stimulating climate in the world.

She was not tall, but her throat and shoulders were beautifully moulded, and gave promise of vocal power. Many Aus tralian girls gain from the very defects of their physique — its narrowness and unsubstantial outlines — a certain airy, floating charm of movement all their own ; but Alice Lauder had by no means attained to this state of grace. She walked with an awkward school-boy slouch, and, except when seated at the piano, always appeared to have more hands and feet than were required for her own immediate use. Her yellow brown hair was badly arranged round a high Spanish comb at the top of her head, and was always coming down, without even the apology of being curly. Her eyes were blue, a deep auroral blue, and shone like silver when she was excited; they were so expressive that one almost excused the rest of her features from showing more than the usual pleasant common place of youth and health.

In time, when thought and experience should leave their un alterable stamp on those soft and malleable outlines, she might be a striking or interesting looking woman ; at present she was merely a sunburnt, badly-dressed, awkward and unfinished colonial girl. She sat down at the piano, still with the same absent, sleep-walking expression, and the pas sengers visibly brightened up a little. The stout matron leaned her head to one side, closed her eyes, and committed her soul to Providence, as she had observed the manner of musical people to be while undergoing this course of treatment, and calmly awaited the worst. The funny man rushed forward to turn over the leaves, but, finding there was no music for him to operate on, retired, visibly discom fited. Then she smiled and waited for a moment, with her fingers lightly touching the keys, as gently as if she were pressing the hand of a friend.

The piano was a new one fortunately, and it recognized and responded to her touch with instant loyalty and comprehension. She played a few harmonious chords, then suddenly flew into some wild Hungarian dance music. Sunday though it was, and heavy as were their souls with dinner and ennui, the passengers felt suddenly exhilarated. The mad delicious foreign melody circled over their heads, danced over the rigging, joined hands with the fleeting waves, c and at last seemed to die away on the horizon in one long sigh of delight and exhaustion. Then the music changed into a beautiful solemn elegy that harmonized with the fading tropical day and the magnificent rush of the ship over the " houseless ocean's heaving field ; " and then, by a gradual transition, Alice led the way into one of Schubert's most beautiful, most unearthly inspirations.

First she played the deep chords which announce the approach of death to the young and thoughtless girl, — " Gieb deiner hand, die schon und start Gebild." Then the pathetic wailing entreaty of the girl, — " Ich bin so fung ! geh lieber ! und ruhre midi nicht an ! " And again sinking lower and lower in pleading, — " und ruhre mich nicht an! " Then the deep solemn reassurance of the liberator, — " Bin freund .' und komme nicht zu strafen!" and at last the two melodies, interlocked and woven together by the consummate art of the composer, rising and falling, with inextricable joy and regret, fleeting between earth and heaven, till the music fades into a mysterious palpitating whisper, as if some eager wings were beating against a cage and struggling to be free — and then once more Death speaks in solemn consola tion, — " Give me thy hand, and trust thy soul to me !

The night is here, but dawn will soon be breaking. Be of good cheer ! Though dark my image be, Soft are my arms, and bright shall be thy waking ! " When she had finished, Alice sat perfectly still, but with a look of visionary happiness in her eyes. She knew she had played her part well — perhaps more than well. Her father was a thorough pianist, though not quite a musician, trained up in the straitest sect of the German classic school of thirty years ago. He had taught her most patiently from the time that she could play the notes with baby fingers, and day by day he gave her all that he could impart of polish and technique. She was the hope of his life, and as she grew up he recognized with joy that she had something larger than the faculty for mechanical skill, inherited with his own long flexible fingers and musician's temperament.

But within the last year or two a larger ambi tion had dawned upon him ; he believed that his daughter could be made into a great singer, and, recognizing that he could not deal with the training of her voice, he had at last scraped up enough money to send her home. So Alice Lauder was going out into the Old World to seek her fortune — though even the promise of being thrice Lady Mayoress of London would have fallen far short of her dreams of success. She had a curious shyness about singing to people, and especially to strangers, and no one on board the " Suez " even suspected this talent hidden under her shabby dresses and unfinished manner. Now she sat perfectly still, her lips slightly parted, and the look of restrained strength and power still lighting up her face. The passengers were really enchanted.

They had been carried far away from the narrow deck and the dull Sunday evening on the wings of music, and they fervently blessed and thanked the musician for this hour of pleasure. Only Lady May was heard to observe, " Not the first time she has played in public, or I am much mistaken." Arthur Campbell, to whom this remark was addressed, merely shook his head in silence. Perhaps he intended to agree with the con demnatory observation, perhaps he merely wished to lose nothing of the stream of melody which had been flowing over this Sunday evening Sahara. But Alice played no more that evening, and was presently seen walking up and down the deck, and listening with evident appreciation to the conversation of the funny man, who had surpassed himself that day in the festal glory of his enormously-checked waistcoat and the spotti ness of his cobalt-blue necktie.

After this little concert it may be supposed that Miss Lauder was not allowed to hide her talent under a bushel. But she showed herself a true artist as far as caprice went. Sometimes she would refuse to play, however humbly en treated; at others she seemed to be possessed by a spirit of music, and every able-bodied in habitant of the vessel, as far as duty permitted, would gather round the piano and listen like a three-years' child to her wild Bohemian waltzes and heartbreaking Scandinavian laments. Even the stewards would come to the top of the stairs and listen, and the second-class passengers looked wistfully forward from their appointed limit. And the artist was by no means insensible to her audience. She would often turn aside from all the solemnities of Handel or Beethoven to play some wailing negro melody which she knew the sailors loved, or " The Auld House at Hame," which always made the captain feel weepy; or even "Home, Sweet Home," with variations, for Mrs. Wigs, who listened to the variations with a reverence which Rubenstein himself would not have inspired.

Arthur Campbell was a most regular atten dant at these recitations, listening to — one might almost say imbibing — every note, but never speaking to the musician ; till one morning he came up to her, as she sat near the piano, idly turning over a book of music, and asked her if she ever played duets with the violin. " Yes, sometimes," she said, looking at him with a straight penetrating glance, which seemed to suit oddly with her girlish and haphazard manner and appearance. " Why, do you play ? " " Oh, I fumble away at it a bit. I have rather a good fiddle, which was given to me long ago by a man I used to know, and I would sell my soul to play on it properly. Would you like to see it ? " When he brought the case Alice opened it and fondly took up the violin with the touch of an expert. " No, I don't play myself, but my father is something of a fiddler, and I know lots of music.

Shall we try some of these early sonatas of Mozart's ? Something simple, I think, would be best." Her manner plainly said that the simplest pieces would, in all probability, be most adapted to his execution. Nevertheless, Campbell played fairly well, and really had a soul for music. Like most amateurs, he only wanted practice — what an only /—and the duet was so far a success that it required to be repeated almost every morn ing — whenever the young musician happened to be in the mood for a lesson or a rehearsal.

Chapter IV. Those

two seem to be getting on very well," observed the captain to Lady May. There was the smallest soupqon of bitterness in his tone. As captain of the " Suez " he knew his social rights, and he did not feel flattered when Lady May temporarily adopted him, now and then, as a substitute for another. Through the open door of the deck music saloon they could see the two artists absorbed in working their passage through a difficult sonata of Beethoven ; while good Mrs. Wigs sat sentinel at the outer door (for the sake of cool ness), but so placed that no syllable should escape her attentive ear. Sometimes Alice would leave off playing and vigorously beat time for a bar or two, with a vindictive air ; some times she would stop altogether, and, throwing her hands up over her ears, would rock herself to and fro with an agonized expression, when some mistake in her companion's part was more than usually heartrending.

Campbell always cheer fully acquiesced in her reproaches, tuned his instrument, and began again with renewed energy. While playing he leaned up against the wall, his fine head and square-made figure standing out like a portrait by Vandyke against the yellow decorations of the cabin. " Oh, he does not mean anything. He never does. That's the worst of those London men. It's not the first time he has played a duet with a pretty girl, and won't be the last if I know anything about him. But I expect his mother will look out for a big match for him. They haven't much money, but they have the dearest old house down in Greenshire ; just the place those American heiresses would give their eyes for ! But he may do better than that, per haps, by-and-by ; for he is very sweet, isn't he, captain? " " Well, I don't know about his sweetness, but he's got a good head.

I suppose he means to go into politics." " Oh yes, his Uncle Lanetop will give him a leg-up by-and-by. You know Lord Lanetop ? — he's always in the papers. He is very fond of Arthur ; quite looks on him as a son, and his own son has turned out such a black sheep, more's the pity. Why do we all have relations, ALICE LAUDER. and why are they invariably black sheep ? as Miss Sewell says in one of her dear old novels. That's what I have often wondered in my own mind. Now if we could all be born without a relation in the world, what a mercy it would be ! Don't you think so ? " Lady May had a little habit of suddenly bringing you up with a sharp turn of "Don't you think so?" just as your attention was be ginning to wander and you were getting lulled into forgetfulness by her easy conversational ambling.

" Well, I don't know. I am not sure that I quite catch your thought," said the good captain, conscientiously puzzling it out. " Would you call husbands and wives relations, for instance? " " Oh, by no manner of means ! I would not live a day with my husband, if he was a relation. He's very fond of Arthur, too, and will be overjoyed when he hears that I have had someone to look after me. It was splendid the way I caught the boy and tied him to my apron strings for the voyage. I met him one day in Brisbane ; so I said at once, ' Now I've got you, and I don't mean to let you go. Here I am wandering about alone and unprotected, with nobody but Smithson to speak a word to. So you will please come along and take my tickets ALICE LAUDER. and count my boxes, and keep your eye on my Rosella parrot and three grey cockatoos.' So he came, quite meekly.

You see I know all his people, and he likes to talk about them — par ticularly about his mother. He thinks all the world of me, but " " Oh, that won't do, that won't do at all ! We must give up Beethoven, he is too big for us." These words came in sorrowful tones from the music-saloon. " Well, let us try back to Mozart then. Those little roulades you play on the piano are delightful, and I really do know my Mozart — even you will admit that." "Oh yes, you have got the hang of some things very well, very well indeed ; but you want work — all you amateurs do. You don't know what work is. You ought to peg away — I mean practise — clean them up ! As our old 'cello used to say, ' Battle, battle ! it's the only way.' ' " But I haven't time." " You seem to have time for other things." The speaker's eye rested for an instant on Lady May's substantial figure, clothed in the most delicate, dazzling efflorescence of white cambric and embroidery, reposing in a gracefully studied attitude S. by E., and resting her neat bronze toes on the bamboo footstool of her deck-chair.

Only a woman could have guessed what that dress would cost to " do up " alone. Alice Lauder's frock had, alas ! been done up several hundred times ; the iron had entered into its soul, as it were. But it was clean and cool, and if a couple of buttons had come off in the wash, and if a bunch of " gathers " had been hastily tucked in under the waistband, what are uncon sidered trifles like these compared with an artistic soul ? Alice began to strike the keys with emphatic realization of Miriam's song : " Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously ! The horse and his rider hath he cast into the sea." From the expression of her eyes and fingers you might have imagined that she was con demning some unseen foe to the fate of the horse and his rider. What she really thought was this — " Bronze silk stockings, too, to match her shoes — what extravagances !