A RISING STAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9714, 9 January 1895, Page 3

A RISING STAR.

BY DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY, Author of "Bob Martin's Little Girl," "By the Gates of the Sea," "Coals of Fire '' ' Cynic Fortune," " The Way of the World," etc.

CHAPTER (Continued.)

Esther rolled the type-written pages spitefully, and walked from the room scarlet under this reproof. She had been ten weeks away from home, and during the whole of thab time had met with little else than flattery and an obsequious obedience. She was extraordinarily swifb to receive new impressions and to take new colours, so thab when a thing had lasted for ten weeks ib looked a3 if it had been going on for ever. She walked to the stage door, her little feet tapping indignation all the way, her hands and teeth clenched in wrath against Francis for his rudeness. Thab good creature, Mrs. Jordan, awaited her in the stage door-keeper's lodge, and noting her angry face led the way in silence to the neat and unpretentious little brougham which stood waiting outside. Mrs. Jordan had already learned to respect her young charge's temper. Esther had quite forgotten her first disgust for this excellent lady, and fed willingly and even greedily on the gross mounds of flattery she laid before her, but she had not been long in finding that she had the power to frighten her protectress. Mrs. Jordan blessed her bars daily for the chance which had thrown Esther in her way and had enabled her to exchange her squalid apartments in Long Acre for the sweet seclusion of Limesborough Gardens, and the contents of the little flat bottle for a collar which held an unfailing supply ■of the choicest liqueurs and wines. Tho flat bottle had oftentimes broughb comfort, but there is a difference between comfort and downright luxury, and Mrs. Jordan was the woman to appreciate it. She waited in silence for Esther to expose her grievance, or to cheer up without speaking of it, ready to fit herself with instant suppleness to any mood her companion might assume, and cautiously screening her face by the light of an occasional gas lamp, Esther said nothing until home was reached, bub one foot kept up a rigid tattoo on the floor of the brougham, so marked and angry that even the thick and fleecy rug failed altogether to deaden its note. When the house was reached the girl flung out of the carriage, walked singly along the hall and up tho stairs, and banged the door of her boudoir behind her so noisily thab the sound echoed through the house like a small clap of thunder. Tho Albino page boy closed the outer door decorously, and withdrew towards his own quarters. Mrs. Jordan arrested him. _ - , ~ " 'As 'is grace been 'ere this evenin' ? "No, mum." " Is he expected?" " I can't tell, mum." "Ah, well, you can toll your mother I'll have my bit of supper downstairs with 'er this evening. I'll go and take my bonnet off, and I'll be down in a minute." " Very good, mum," said the page boy, Btanding immovable for further orders until she went away. The good lady mounted the stairs and ventured a feeble tap ab Esther's door. She received no answer, bub could hear the inmate of the room marching up and down like a little raged tigress. At each extremity of the room she turned with a swirl of rustling skirts, and it was only after a minute s pause that her chaperon found courage to open tho door. She thrust her head in with an ingratiatory smile, and found some trouble in maintaining thab expression in view of Esther's look. " Is there anything you'd like me to do for you, deary ?" she inquired in hor oiliest manner. ... " No," said Esther, shortly, without pausing in her walk. " Are you quite sure, Fairy dear ? len b there anything as I can bring you ?" Esther, for solo answer, launched the paper-bound parb at Mrs. Jordan 8 head so vindictively, and with so clear an accuracy, that it knocked the good woman's bonnet off, and at this tho young lady had a sudden access of laughter, which turned as suddenly to tears. There was a fine bout of hysteria after this, with cutting of stay laces, slapping of hands, and burning of feathers. The house reeked with pungent smoke, and His Grace the Duke of Belisle arriving by the time the storm was over withdrew swiftly to his own carriage. The Albino family had prepared an excellent supper, and Esther, in company with Mrs. Jordan and the servant, eat down to ib in the kitchen in a state of mild deshabille. She had volubly exposed all her injuries before the meal was over, and found Jordan sycophantic enough even to satisfy her exigent fancy. The excellent servitors of the household said nothing, and displayed no emotion of any sort. They ate and drank in a perfectly decorous and respectable j fashion, and Esther's most familiar actions ! failed to draw them from the accurate semblance of respect with which they treated her. , „ , . ~ " You send a wire to old Bel in the morning," said Esther, addressing the housekeeper, " and say I want to see him. He s gob to put this straight for me, and I'll see he does it." , " Very well, miss, said the housekeeper, and all. tho upper windows of the house having been thrown open for the last hour or two to free the place of tho smell of burned feathers Miss Delacour retired to resb, flushed with the anticipation of victory. CHAPTER XIV. Whilst the alterations were in progress ab the Sheridan, Francis continued to borrow the stage of the Frivolity for rehearsal. Miss Delacour presented herself there daily, and displayed an infinite variety of temper, of which the stage-manager took no more notice than if she had been 111 another hemisphere. Tho lady selected to play the title role had once been fresh and pretty, perhaps nearly as pretty as Esther herself, but that had been a long time ago' Deep crow's feet had invaded the corners of her eyes, her cheek had lost its natural (and had taken an artificial) bloom, and the gold of her hair was obviously less duo to nature than to somebody's auricanious hair-dye. The poor lady, in point of fact, was five-and-forty, and looked every year of her age, except behind the footlights, where she continued somehow to expunge the facial record of some score of winters. She was tarb with Esther, partly because she thought the girl had been unduly promoted, and partly because, in the scenes they played together, Esther's genuine youth and beauty seemed likely to eclipse her faded imitation both of one and the other. Now and again at rehearsal Miss Delacour provoked herself to the display of a spark of vivacity for the sake of showing the elder that if she chose to do ib she could act her down, bub on the whole she did her work in a very perfunctory fashion, and more than once came into collision with Francis, whom she found as impassive as a brick wall. " Not a bib like ib!" Francis would say. " Take that speech again." Esther would obey with a sullen defiance in every tone and every feature of her faco. " Worse than ever," was Francis' verdict. " Try back. You know perfectly well what's wanted, Miss Delacour, and you ( must do it. Try back." Once more Esther would . obey, taking care to render no obedience. Then Francis would take her part from her, assume her place, and walk through the business with a grotesque assumption of all the calineriea and cajoleries the scene was intended to express. » " That's how I wanb it!" At the fourth or fifth lesson Miss Delacour, out of sheer weariness of the contest, would give him something like what he wished for, and possibly would flash into some convincing bit of comedy, which showed how well she could have played the whole scene if she had been disposed to do ib. The rehearsals had been in progress for a week when the inevitable storm came. The stage was all bare save for stacks of dusty scenery piled against the walls. A > dozen gas jets flared dimly in the obscured daylight from a T piece in front of the footlights, and lefb the: proscenium corners ot the stage in shadow. The Little Widow had seen off her lover, and awaited the arrival of her maid. No maid appeared; and, the call-boy ran hither and thither, shouting " Miss Dolacour 1" : Francis, with the ftrst act of the manuscript in hand, tapped a too impatiently on th© stage and joined 1118 voice to tl*e call-boy's.

" Miss Delacour 1' Don't keep us waiting all day long. Miss Delacour 1 Where are you • ' " Here is Miss Delacour," said the leading lady, pointing with one hand with a vivid gesture to the prompt corner. t Francis walked hurriedly to the place indicated, and there, as a matter of fact, Miss Delacour sat on a roll of carpet, with her part twisted into a spiral in her gloved hands, and both little feet sounding an I angry tattoo on the boards. "Now, then !" said Francis, " whab'3 all this about? Come along." "I sha'n't," snapped Esther. "Get somebody else to play the part. I won ; b." She rose, and dashed the manuscript upon the ground. "All right," said the manager; "that's the first satisfactory thing you've done yeb, young woman. Miss Carlton, you'll just walk through the scene with Miss Methven. You're a pretty quick sbudy, and you'll have it pretty well right by morning." The young lady thus summoned approached, took the part from the manager's outstretched hand, and joining the representative of the Little Widow in the middle of the stage, at once* began her business. Francis resumed ; his old position as if nothing had happened, and the indignant young lady in the corner was lefb to digest her own reflections. They were apparently difficult of digestion, for when she had choked in silence lor a minute or two she walked to Francis, and addressed him with her little white teeth clenched together, and her little gloved fingers holding her palms with the grip of a vice. "Do you suppose, Mr. _ Francis," she began, monstrous fine-lady-like and mincing in her voice, " that any lady, who is worth her salt, will play second fiddle to an old frump like that?" , " Don't cross there, Miss Carlton," said tho immovable Francis. "You're too early. Don't move until' ten thousand a year.' Then come down Right, to the table, and take up the workbasket." " Will you do me the honour, sir," said Esther, "to notice that I'm speaking to you ?" •• " Now the cross," said Francis, moving his head a little to watch the scene, but otherwise taking no notice of Esther's presence. "No, no, don't come down in front of the table. Get behind it. Don't show your back to the house. You give a knowing smile there, that ought to be particularly—" He had no time to finish his sentence, for Miss Delacour dashed the manuscript he held from his hands to the stage. " Do you mean to talk to me 2" she asked, in a white heat of rage. Yes—yes," he answered, drawling at the word. "I mean to talk to you, and I'd better talk at once. You've thrown up your part, and your engagement) with it. Having done that, you can go." "Suppose I won't go?" she demanded. "In that case," ho answered, with a weary want of interest, which impressed her a thousand times more than any noise or bluster could have done, " you'll be made to go." "Shall I?" cried Esther. "Jones!" said Francis, " Calcott! just come here a minute. Two shirt-sleeved men who were at work at the back of the stage advanced at his call, and Miss Delacour, recognising thus late the strong arm of authority, withdrew, drawing her figure to its full height and gathering her skirts aside with a shuddering exclamation of contemptuous disgust as she passed the Little Widow. That lady sublimely murmured " Toad !" and Esther had cleared half-a-dozen yards before the divan's retort of " Hag 1" occurred to her. She felt that it was then too late to address that Parthian shot with dignity, and so running wildly up the stone steps which led to the street, she plunged into the waiting brougham and gave the word for home. Mrs. Jordan had an excellent lunch prepared, and was ready to lend a sympathetic ear to anv story her charge might bring to her. She had the profoundesb scorn for Mis» Methven, and was prepared to relate a hundred details of that lady's career which were one and all to her discredit; and she backed Esther with so much spirit and vivacity that in a while the young lady was able to sit down to the meal with some appetite, and after a glass or two of champagne quite smoothed her ruffled feathers altogether. . , , His Grace of Belisle looked in that afternoon, and found his young protegee in high spirits. She was a little afraid of telling him what had happened, but his first question forced her hard. "And how is the new part going?" he asked, as he seated himself. " I've thrown it up," she answered, with tho utmost air o indifference she could assume. ~ " Oh," said his grace, letting fall his eyeglass and re-adjusting it, " you thrown it up, havo you? And what do you propose to do now ?" " I don't know," said Esther, carelessly. She had been a little frightened by the duke at first, but sho had ended by growing used to him, and in a week had been on terms of easy familiarity, as she was with everybody whom she knew for so long, or so short, a space of time. * At first tho idea that ho was a duke had been oppressive, but, after all, a duke turned out to be no more than a very tired and blase old gentleman, to whom ib was something of a trouble to mount a single flight of stairs, who said things which she could nob understand, and who seemed in a quiet way a good deal amused at himself for saving them, who pinched her cheek sometimes in a fatherly fashion, and who for some reason or other gavo her pretty nearly everything sho asked for. She know that he admired her, and when once she had grown used to him she displayed all her little airs and graces before him with the vanity of a peacock. On the whole ho bored her a little, and except) when she could think of something to beg from him sho took little pains to disguise 1 tho fact. The elderly gentleman found a pleasure even in her insubordination and indiffeience. He looked on her pretty much as he might have looked at a peb monkey or a kitten, or anything else mischievous and | irresponsible.

"And I suppose," said his grace, "that you don't greatly care ?" "I'm sure I don't," sho answered. "I shall find something righb enough ; and if I don't I can always go back to Mark." Within her own limits she was very keen in observation, and she had already had occasion to notice thab the mention of Mark's name was not pleasant to her aged protector. But her experience was limited as yet, and she had desired to emphasise her own independence. "Yes,',' returned his grace, quite calmly, "I suppose that is true. _ Mark would be glad to have you back again." !! He know all about the Broom household and Jing and Juniper and Herr von Nadli, and was familiar with all the history of Mr. Bonnington Wilstrop's wickedness in his dealings with the young aspirant to dramatic honours. He was accustomed to sib with a dry smile on his fine Mephiatophelian face, and watch Esther's imitations of people with whom she had been familiar in her brief experience.

[To be continued on Saturday next.