ALL OR NOTHING.

Northland Age, Volume VI, Issue 3, 6 September 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

ALL OR NOTHING.

■(Copyright.)

A THRILLING ROMANCE, By the Author of ‘'A Bitter Bondage," "Two Keys," "The Unknown Bridegroom," Ac., CHAPTER I. The Eden Theatre was crowded almost to sufiocation ; outside, a dense mass of people had struggled and fought for places ; women had been carried faiDttng from the doors, men bad found their way by strength of arm. There reigned a marvellous eonlusion—shouting, calling of cabs, the cries of the orange-sellers, the noises of the many people for whom no accommodation could be found. Inside, the house was literally trowded from floor to ceiling. The boxes were filled with beautiful women in rich dresses, whose jewels gleamed in the bright lights ; the stalls were occupied by some of the leading men in London —critics, who made or marred the fame of an actress ; authors, dramatic writers, rditors of papers, whose opinions rule half England ; celebrated novelists, whose names are knowD over all the world. The pit was a surging mass, so crowded that it did not seem possible either to breathe or move ; the galleries, the resort of the gods, unusually crowded and unusually quiet—-a house that made the fortunate manager rub his hands and congratulate himself on the happy hit be bad made. And all this excitement was caused by the simple announcement that Evelyn Romaine, Queen of the Stage, was. on that evening, to play "Marie Stuart" in a favourite drama of that name, now forgotten—a drama founded on some incident that happened when the hapless Scottish Queen was Dauphiness of France. People in those days, before the "sensation play was introduced, flocked in great, •rowds to hear "Marie Stuart," and same away better men and better women for the hearing of it. There was breathless silence in that crowded house when the curtain drew up, discovering a room in the Louvre and the Dauphin of France, with the Queen-mother, awaiting the entrance of Marie Stuart. And when she came great thunders of applause seemed to shake the theatre walls, not only from the pit and the gallery, but from the boxes and the stalls. Great ladies were not ashamed to lay aside their jewelled fans and pay due homage to the woman who stood before them. She deserved her name, for she was every inch a queen, tall and stately in figure, with grace and harmony in every movement. Critics, who considered themselves judges, said that in the beautiful lines of that perfect figure Evelyn Romaine resembled the Venus of Milo Look ing at her, one felt that she was perfect ; no one ever said * " she would be better taller or shorter, thinner or stouter." The colour of the arms and neck was exquisite as the shape. That figure was now arrayed in Royal robes. Evelyn Romaine were a dress of rich, gleaming white satin, on which was emLroidered golden fleui-de-lis. On her head she carried a small diadem, and over all was thrown « mantilla of fine,'white lace. Looking at her, one hesitates as to what country calls her child These dark eyes, the dark hair, the beautiful classic outline, the Grecian cast of feature, the passionate, dark, artistic face, are uot English, j Mere rosy, healthy beauty, full of j vivid contrasts of colour, fades in- j to nothing before hers. In that fac • cne reads not only passion, but j the power of expressing it—not only ! genius, but the power o! making j others understand that genius. The j •arnest gaze of the dark eyes seems , to be charged with electric tire. One ceases to think of her as a woman j as she stands there in such sublime i unconsciousness ; she is an artiste, a genous so gifted herself with the i "divine tire" that, others arc warm- I ed by it. For a moment she re J mains silent, perhaps half startled j by the tumult of applause, her attitude one of such unstudied, ar- | tistic grace that some people would not care if she stood there for an hour longer. She had walked on to the stage quietly, with downcast, eyes and gentle step, feeling then that she was a woman about to endure the curious gaze of hundreds of curious eyes. She hnd forgotten that noise ; the shifting crowd the eager faces bad faded away ; she saw only the gloomy Palace of Holy rood that was to be her future home, and forbidding faces whose last frown would be darkling as her bead lay on the block. She was no longer Evelyn Romaine, hut Marie Stuart, lovely and beloved—Marie ; Stuart, the idol of that brilliant j Court over whom there bung the ; dark shadow of impending doom. j A moment's silence vn that vast ! crowd ; then she spoke, and the sound of her voice seemed to thrill the great soul of the people. Clear, rich, and musical, a voice whose tones reached the most hidden depths of the heart, and there bid "long sealed-up fountains flow." During the scene that followed she was interrupted by no applause ; those who listened to her were too deeply touched for that. They hung breath- j lessly upon her every word, they drank in every movement of the beautiful figure, every change in the dark, passionate face. Then, when the scene was ended, and she withdrew, it was as though the spell that had bound them died, and they called for her with a voice she was ■bilged to hear. She reappeared, all woman then, mshing and balf-ashamed of the imult. Costly, boaouats we flu**

at the feet of the grand, beautiful gifted woman. Among others was a gorgeous wreath of white lilies, flung ; by a young and handsome man from ! one of the boxes in the lower tier. When she saw it, Evelyn Romaine looked up, a sweet, bright smile parted her lips for one half-mo-ment. Her dark eyes seemed to say, "Come !" Then the radiant figure disappeared from the stage, and it was as though the theatre was left in darkness and gloom. She stood in the green-room, the white satin falling in rich, sweeping ; masses behind her, the diadem, shin- ; ing on her queenly brow, her dark, beaatiful face yet glowing with the passion of her words, when the manager came up to her. "It is useless, Miss Romaine, for me to refuse your numerous admirers permission to come behind the scenes. Here is the Duke of Baitenon, who persists in seeing you." A change, wonderful to see, passed over her face ; the passionate glow of colour died out of it, the eyes grew darker, and the proud lips curved. "I will see him," she said. He came up to her, bowing, smiling, full of graceful flatteries and glittering compliments, then stopped abruptly as he saw the proud scorn of her beautiful face. "I have something to return to you, my Lord Duke of Baitenon," she said, slowly. "One of your servants left this at my house yesterday, with a letter. The letter I burned—the box I return." She laid it on the table near him. A dark flush overspread the duke’s face. "Miss Romaine." he whispered, "you cannot mean it. Believe me, you shall be a duchess in everything save the name." "Even should you offer me that," she replied, calmly, "1 should decline it." He looked at her in wonder. " You would decline. Miss Romaine ?" he said, breathlessly. Most assuredly. I consider my J name, although not written in his- , tory, more honourable than yours." He bent over her, his haadsome face flushed, his eyes full of an evil light, and he whispered a few words in her ear. She drew back haughtily the jewels of her diadem flashing with light. "It is enough," she said. " Our j interview is ended." With a bow as dignified and graceful as though she had been a queen dismissing an ambassador, Evelyn Romaine turned away. Discomfited and abashed, his Grace of Bairenon withdrew, with a muttered curse on his lips. Then Tiord Illingworth, considered the best judge of theatrical matters in London, came up to her. "You are excelling yourself, Miss Romaine, to-night. Your ' Marie ; Stuart’ is without peer." To him the beautiful young actress j held out her hand, with a kindly smile. "Thank you, Lord Illingworth," she said. "1 love my part, there- j fore 1 am sure to play it well." ! She conversed with him for two or i three minutes in a ,vindly. frank fashion that was irresistibly charm- ; ing ; then a step sounded outside the j green-room, and her face flushed, her : lips quivered. How often had she : :;aid to herself that even were she j lying in her grave, and that step 1 rustled in the long, thick grass, she I should hear it ? Then entered a young man, hand- j some, with a gay. debonair style ot ; beauty, a grand head, covered with j short waves of chestnut hair, a fair, ; tomely Saxon face, with large blue! eyes and sensitive lips, and he came j up to Evelyn with a smile of assur- : | ed welcome. ! "My queen," he whispered—" my j j beautiful love, 1 wish to-night that T | were David Rizzio or the Dauphin | of France, that you might smile j upon me.” ! She received him in a very different | manner from what she had shown to I his rivals. Lord Illingworth made way, for he had a shrewd suspicion I that Evelyn Romaine and the Hodj ourable Clive Noel were, to say the | least of it, very dear friends. "Yon have no need to change your j identity in order to win a smile j j from me," she said, a beautiful light ! | shining in her dark eyes. " When j | did I ever receive you with a.frown?'? | "What have you been saying to the Duke of Baitenon t 1 met him just now in a tehrible rage." Her dark, passionate face flushed. "Never mind him,” she said, "He has received his lesson.” "Has he dared to insult you ?" broke out the young man. " Oh Evelyn : This cannot go on. You must iisten to my prayers. I shall go mad if this state of things con- ; tinues." "Miss Romaine !" called the call- j boy. "I must go," she said ; "I have to ■ quarrel with the Dauphin and the Queen-mother." ’j i "! shall wait until you return," ! | be replied. "I will put it. out ot the ; | power of any man to insult you, j ! Evelyn.’ He heard the applause that greet.- 1 ed that wondrous scene, where the j 1 passion, the tire, and the genous of the young actress seemed to reach 1 its climax. She came off the stage again, but it was .only for a few minutes, during which he did not venture to speak to her, for he saw that the inspiration of her part was so strong j upon her. j "What an actress she is !" he j Raid to himself, with a sigh. "I wuuder if she will give up the stage even for me ?" She weut on again, and half an ! hour passed away. Then by the renewal ot the applause, he knew the play was ended. He waited silently until she came. She was • queen no longer ; the diadem had beeD cast at the feet of her conquerors. She was white and trembling with the amotion she could not help feeling

in such truth ; the long, dark hair was all unbound, and fell over the gleaming satin like a dark veil ; the dark eyes were full of tears, the lips tremulous with emotion. As he went to her, she held up one white hand. “Hush !" she said. “Wait a few minutes before you speak to me, Clive, I am ‘ Marie Stuart' still ; wait until the glamour dies away." He stood watching her with curious eyes ; it was as though she became transformed. The fire and the passion, the tears in her eyes, the trembling of her lips ceased ; slowly she resumed her usual expression, and then turned to him with a slight shiver and a deep sigh. “It always takes me some minutes to forget my assumed character and remember my own.” “Would you rather have been Marie Stuart than Evelyn Ptomaine?’’ he asked. “No," she replied, a sudden flush covering her face, “ not i! it be really true that you love me." CHAPTER 11. Evelyn Romaine had never been anything but an actress. As a child she was the delight of all her companions and the wonder of her gentle mother. The grand smile of a “soul of flame in a body of gauze" applied to her. As a child she was delicate, fragile, and often ailing. Yet she drank in with marvellous avidity all the beauties and marvels or the world of fiction and poetry. She pondered over the heroines of Shakespeare ; she studied their words, she entered into the ideas that produced them ; she entered, as it were, their very heart and soul until she forgot her own identity, and lost all. self-consciousness to her art. # “A born actress," all said who knew her. “You must let her go on the stage, Mrs. Romaine." And Mrs. Romaine, who from her quiet, village home had been accus tomed to consider an actress as outside the pale of civilisation, looked with wonder and consternation on thf beautiful young girl who differed so greatly from all those around her. Mr. Romaine had been for many years curate of the pretty little town of Glen Dale, in Gloucestershire. He was in his fortieth year when he married the pretty, gentle daughter of the only lawyer the town could boast. One little daughter, Evelyn, was given to them, and when she was three years old Mr. Romaine died. His widow and child lived in the pretty cottage where his peaceful, blameless life had been spent. The good curate had but one weakness, and be bad indulged it —that was reading. He left behind him a rare library—good and costly editions of Shakespeare, of Spenser, of Milton, of the old-time poets whose verses still ring through the world. And this library formed Evelyn Romaine’s character. She spent entire days there. Her mother entering, and seeing the child with shining eyes looking over one of Shakespeare’s grand dramas, would say : “ Evelyn, you are trying your eyes." The girl would look up at her, dazed and bewildered, as one brought suddenly from an ideal world. “ Listen, mamma !" she would cry. with flushing face and brightening eyes. “This is Queen Katherine of Arragon before the king. Such grand words ! Listen " Then throwing her whole soul into the part, she would stand up and repeat it with such perfect and appropriate gestures that geutle Mrs. Romaine would stand aghast, wondering who the child took after, and what would become of her. She was sent to the only ladies' school that Glen Dale could boast ; but she was not in the least like other children. Music she learned rapidly ; history was a favourite study ; but the. organs of ideality, of veneration, were too strongly developed. She never lived a true child’s life—it was all one ideal dream. There were times when the governess would look bewildered and the pupils delighted, listening to Evelyn Romaine. A dry passage of history became in her hands a glowing romance, mythology a grand epic poem. Not. understanding this wondrous gift of ideality, there were times when the worthy governess really thought the girl slightly deranged. If she wrote a theme it was full of qrilliant fancies—wild, romantic theories. She resemhled no other child in that quiet, sleepy town of Glen Dale. The wind had a voice for her, and it. was full of music—from the sweetest whisper that ever thrilled a rose, to the mightiest tempest that bent the branches of the trees. She loved it all. She had a fashion, in the solemn. golden hush of summer uights, of laying her face on the thick, soft grass and listening to the vague, sweet murmur that touches the heart as no other sound ever does. She had a way of listening to the sound of raindrops pattering on green leaves—to the ripple of the brook —to the song of the river—to the tiny drops of water that fell Irorn the fountain. "What did she hear 7" Other girls asked her, and she answered by a bright, sweet smile. The dew in the bright mornings, the' evening gloaming, the glory of the sun, the song of the birds, the fragrance of flowers, the solenm silence of starlit night, the solemn hush of deep green woods, filled her heart and soul with a vague, delicious rapture. “What did she see in it all ?" young girls asked, and she could not tell them. She did not know, in those early day£, that all nature, all beauty, spoke to her because God had giveD her some of the divine tire men call genius. In her beautiful dream-world she lived pure and peaceful, the passionate 1 eart still sleeping, the passionate sojil still at sleeping, the passionate soul-still at rest. Gentle Mrs. Romaine looked at

Her daughter in silent amazement. Whence had she that wondrous genius, that grand imagination, that graceful fancy, that unutterable harmony of mind and soul ? Whence had she that da-rk, passionate, beautiful face, so spirited, so ideal—that figure so full of youthful grace and majesty ? What was to become of her in aworld so cruel and selfish as to dislike anything original ? What would she be fit for, in these active, commonplace times ? The question did not puzzle the gentle lady long. The March winds were cruel to her, and when Evelyn was fifteen Mrs. Romaine was laid to rest in the pretty churchyard at. the foot of the hill. She was not left quite alone; a cousin o! her mother’s—Mrs. Boswell—a widow, who had a hard life of toil and trouble, came to live with her. Evelyn inherited from her mother a small income o! eighty pounds per annum ; that, with the little cottage, was more than sufficient for her.

Another year, spent in dreamland in silence and study, in the worship of the true and the beautiful—then to Evelyn Romaine came the inspiration of her life. Where would her love of the ideal, her wondrous power of conceiving character, her love for the poetic and the romantic, be gratified ? On the stage, in the grand realms of fancy—there she could be a queen. She told Mrs. Boswell of her plan, and that lady agreed, as she did in everything that Evelyn proposed. The furniture and the little cottage were sold, and the two went up to London. Perhaps Mr. Chipperden, the manager of the Eden Theatre, was never more surprised in his life than on the day when Evelyn Romaine introduced herself to him. She went to the theatre and asked to see him. He came, and was struck with the dark, artistic beauty of her face, the deep, rich music of her voice. “I want to go on the stage, sir,” she said, simply. “I believe I should make a good actress.” “You would make a very beautiful one,” was the manager’s comment to himself. He asked her what she had studied, where she had been. In a few moments he had heard the simple story of her life, and recognised the fact that before him stood a girl endowed with genius. He asked her to give him some specimens of her ability. Throwing herself heart and soul, as she always did, into the words, she recited some passages from that masterpiece, “Romeo and Juliet.”

“You will do, I think,” said Mr. Clipperden, quietly. “You will require some little study, but you are, as you say, born an actress ; it is your metier.” Under his direction she studied hard for one year. She was just eighteen when she made her debut, in the Eden Theatre as Juliet—the most' perfect, perhaps, of all her impersonations. Her rare, artistic beauty, the music of her voice, the genius that was revealed in every word and action, the veiled tenderness, the deep passion, the graceful, playful manner, brought all London to her feet. The whole city went crazy over her. Never had the theatre been so crowded —never had Mr. Clipperden made so fortunate a hit. “I believe,” he said to her once, “you love acting, for acting's sake.” She opened her dark eyes with the expression of child-like wonder that characterised her. “Certainly 1 do,” she replied ; “it is not for money pr fame I play, but because i love my art.” “Then you would rather be an actress than a grand lady ?” he continued. “I would rather be an actress,” she replied, “than anything else in the wide world. I would not give up my art for anything that could be offered to me.” Words that afterwards returned to her, stabbing her like a sharp sword. Evelyn Romaine did indeed awake one morning to find herself famous. The day that followed her debut was one long dream of happiness and success.

The papers spoke of her as they seldom speak. They predicted a success seldom attained, even by the finest actresses on the stage ; they spoke of her beauty, the clear, sweet tone of her voice, so tender and persuasive, so earnest and ringing ; of the wonder of her pale, passionate, star-like face ; of the instinctive, unconscious grace of her attitude ; of the genius that seemed to pervade her and enfold her as a garment. It was a season of intoxicating success. Yet in some vague way she seemed to live outside of it. Flattery and homage never touched her ; the thunders of applause never disturbed her. The deep, inner soul of the girl was engrossed in her art. She was as unlike other. actresses now as she had been unlike other children as a girl. AH homage was paid to the innate purity ct her character, Men who spoke lightly to others bowed reverently before her ; men at the clubs who discuss every one and everything, paid instinctive respect to her name. No one made bets about her, no ooe ever asked her to cosy little dinners at the Monaco or Frascati’s ; no one ever uttered a word before hex that would not have been said before wife or child.

Bure and spiritual herself, the very atmosphere around her seemed full of purity and light. Men worshipped her ; the fire of her genius, the pathos of her passion, the tenderness of her love, the playfulness that distin ■ guisbed her, were all so many wonders to them. But no one presumed upon her position ; no one sought an introduction that she was not willing to allow. So the first passion passed, in a whirl of triumphant success, and at its close Evelyn Romaine found herself one of the queens of that English stage. Fame and gold were lavished upon her; the world lay

at her feet. uniy one thing saddened her, and that was that even in her success she was quite alone. There was neither father, mother, brother, nor sister to share in her happiness ; and the girl’s heart grew sad as she remembered she had no home ties, no one to love her, no one to love. Yet in her own way she was happy. When the season was over, she went to a pretty, quiet little waterplace with Mrs. Baswell, and remained there until it was time to return to her engagement. Mr, Clipperden found that his speculation had been one of the most fortunate that could be imagined. “It was a risky thing,” he said once, “bringing out a girl whose name had never been heard ; but it has answered well—for her and for me.” So, when Evelyn Romaine returned from St. Mary’s Bay she found herself one of the chief attractions in London. People said she resembled Beatrice in the beautiful picture of Dante and Beatrice ; that her face had the same spiritual, noble expression, her eyes the same serene light. But this year she was better known. Great ladies who had travelled and wept at her wondrous personations invited her to their houses. She might have been queen of the stage for many years but for what happened one night when she was playing Portia. 1159. (To be Continued.)