"And isn't she jolly? She's dying to shout out this minute! I should think the glare of these footlights would force her eyelids open."
"Who is Grief?"
"Miss Catty Clowrie – isn't there music in that name? She makes a very good Grief – looks as if she had supped sorrow in spoonfuls."
"Is she pretty? She won't let us see her face."
"Beauty's a matter of taste," said Val, "perhaps you'll think her pretty. If you do, you will be the only one who ever thought the like. She is a nice little girl though, is Catty – the double-distilled essence of good-nature. Down goes the curtain!"
It rose next on a totally different scene, and to music solemn and sad. The stage was darkened, and made as much as possible to resemble a convent-cell. The walls were hung with religious pictures and statues, a coverless deal table held a crucifix, an open missal, and a candle which flared and guttered in the draft. On a prie-dieu before the table a figure knelt – a nun, eyes uplifted, the young face, quite colorless, raised, the hands holding her rosary, clasped in prayer. It was Evangeline – beautiful, broken-hearted Evangeline – the white face, the great dark lustrous eyes full of unspeakable woe. Fainter, sweeter and sadder the music wailed out; dimmer and dimmer paled the lights; all hushed their breathing to watch. The kneeling figure never moved, the face looked deadly pale by the flickering candle-gleam, and slowly the curtain began to descend. It was down; the tableau was over; the music closed, but for a second or two not a sound was to be heard. Then a tumult of applause broke out rapturously, and "Encore, encore!" twenty voices cried, in an ecstasy.
Captain Cavendish turned to Val with an enthusiastic face.
"By George, Blake! what a beautiful girl! Evangeline herself never was half so lovely. Who is she?"
"That's Natty," said Val, with composure. "Charley Marsh's sister."
"I never saw a lovelier face in all my life! Blake, you must give me an introduction as soon as these tableaux are over."
"All right! But you needn't fall in love with her – it's of no use."
"Why isn't it?"
"Because the cantankerous old toad who owns her will never let her get married."
"Do you mean her mother?"
"No, I don't, she doesn't live with her mother. And, besides, she has no room in her heart for any one but Charley. She idolizes him!"
"Happy fellow! That Evangeline was perfect. I never saw anything more exquisite."
"I don't believe Longfellow's Evangeline was half as good-looking as Natty," said Val. "Oh! there she is again!"
Val stopped talking. The curtain had arisen on an old scene – "Rebecca at the well." Evangeline had transformed herself into a Jewish maiden in an incredibly short space of time, and stood with her pitcher on her shoulder, looking down on Eleazer at her feet. Sandy McGregor was Eleazer, and a sorry Jew he made, but nobody except his mother looked at him. Like a young queen Rebecca stood, her eyes fixed on the bracelets and rings, her hair falling in a shower of golden bronze ripples over her bare white shoulders. One would have expected black hair with those luminous dark eyes, but no ebon tresses could have been half so magnificent as that waving mass of darkened gold.
"Nice hair, isn't it?" whispered Val. "Natty's proud of her hair and her voice beyond anything. You ought to hear her sing!"
"She sings well?" Captain Cavendish asked, his eyes fixed as if fascinated on the beautiful face.
"Like another Jenny Lind! She leads the choir up there in the cathedral, and plays the organ besides."
Captain Cavendish had a pretty pink half-blown rose in his button-hole. He took it out and flung it at her feet as the curtain was going down. He had time to see her bright dark eye turn upon it, then with a little pleased smile over the spectators in quest of the donor, and then that envious green curtain hid all again.
"Very neat and appropriate," criticised Val. "You're not going to wait for the introduction to begin your love-passage, I see, Captain Cavendish."
The captain laughed.
"Nothing like taking time by the forelock, my dear fellow. I will never be able to thank you sufficiently for bringing me here to-night!"
"You don't say so!" exclaimed Val, opening his eyes, "you never mean to say you're in love already, do you?"
"It's something very like it, then. Where are you going?"
"Behind the scenes. The next is 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' and they want me for the beanstalk," said Val, complacently, as his long legs strode over the carpet on his way to the back parlor.
There were ever so many tableaux after that – Captain Cavendish, impatient and fidgety, wondered if they would ever end. Perhaps you don't believe in love at first sight, dear reader mine; perhaps I don't myself; but Captain Cavendish, of Her Most Gracious Majesty's – th Regiment of Artillery did, and had fallen in love at first sight at least a dozen times within quarter that number of years.
Captain Cavendish had to exercise the virtue of patience for another half-hour, and then the end came.
In flocked the performers, in laughing commotion, to find themselves surrounded by the rest, and showered with congratulations. Captain Cavendish stood apart, leaning against a fauteuil, stroking his mustache thoughtfully, and looking on. Looking on one face and form only of all the dozens before him; a form tall, taller than the average height, slender, graceful, and girlish as became its owner's eighteen years; and a face inexpressibly lovely in the garish gaslight. There was nobility as well as beauty in that classic profile, that broad brow; fire in those laughing blue eyes, so dark that you nearly mistook them for black; resolution in those molded lips, the sweetest that ever were kissed. The hair alone of Nathalie Marsh would have made a plain face pretty; it hung loose over her shoulders as it had done on the stage, reaching to her waist, a cloud of spun gold, half waves, half curls, half yellow ripples.
Few could have worn this hair like that, but it was eminently becoming to Nathalie, whom everything became. Her dress was of rose color, of a tint just deeper than the rose color in her cheeks, thin and flouting, and she was entirely without ornament. A half-blown rose was fastened in the snowy lace of her corsage, a rose that had decked the buttonhole of Captain Cavendish half an hour before.
Val espied him at last and came over. "Are you making a tableau of yourself," he asked, "for a certain pair of bright eyes to admire? I saw them wandering curiously this way two or three times since we came in."
"Whose were they?"
"Miss Nathalie Marsh's. Come and be introduced."
"But she is surrounded."
"Never mind, they'll make way for you. Stand out of the way, Sandy. Lo! the conquering hero comes! Miss Marsh, let me present Captain Cavendish, of the – th; Miss Marsh, Captain Cavendish."
The music at that instant struck up a delicious waltz. Mr. Val Blake, without ceremony, laid hold of the nearest young lady he could grab.
"Come, Catty! let's take a twist or two. That's it, Cavendish! follow in our wake!"
For Captain Cavendish, having asked Miss Marsh to waltz, was leading her off, and received the encouraging nod of Val with an amused smile.
"What a character he is!" he said, looking after Val, spinning around with considerable more energy than grace; "the most unceremonious and best-natured fellow in existence."
The young lady laughed.
"Oh, everybody likes Val! Have you known him long?"
"About a year. I have seen him in Halifax frequently, and we are the greatest friends, I assure you. Damon and Pythias were nothing to us!"
"It is something new for Mr. Blake to be so enthusiastic, then. Pythias is a new rôle for him. I hope he played it better than he did Robert Bruce in that horrid tableau awhile ago."
They both laughed at the recollection. Natty scented her rose.
"Some