Elisabeth Kidd (17 page)

The majority of the party being young people with healthy and unabashed appetites, all this was quickly and appreciatively dispatched. A great many sherry-laced syllabubs also being consumed, everyone was in an even gayer mood by the end of the meal. Even Lord D’Arcy was heard to laugh at some witticism of Lizzy Daniels’s, but Sydney, who was growing decidedly shivery as the time passed, put his unnaturally high spirits down to anticipation of events yet to come.

At last, dusk began to fall. Torches stuck in the ground along the footpaths were lighted, and tiny lamps came on to wink in the trees. Several ladies went upstairs to change into their evening clothes, hoping the musicians now heard circling the grounds could be prevailed upon for some waltzes later on. Those guests eager to see what magic Lord D’Arcy would conjure up to improve on Shakespeare began to drift towards the clearing in front of a huge old oak tree, on which had been draped some netting to represent a ship, and beside which a jumble of papier-mâché rocks had been piled to simulate Prospero’s island cell.

Sydney had also excused herself after dinner, saying she would lie down to rest for a few moments before the play began, and no one noticed that when the full moon—the most spectacular of Lord D’Arcy’s lighting “effects”—came up, she had still not returned. From a grove of willows behind the cell, a trumpet called, and some figures dressed in black passed across the stage, leaving blue-shaded lanterns in strategic positions, while other servants moved chairs onto the grass for the guests to sit on.

Not all the guests were very eager to see the performance, however. Prudence Whitlatch took a sip of arrack punch, straightened her cap, and clutched at her son’s sleeve as he passed carrying a wicker chair.

“Rudolph, where is Sydney? I have not seen that provoking girl for nearly an hour now!’’

“Lord, mother, I don’t know! You haven’t gone anywhere near her all day, so why concern yourself now? Cedric will look out for her. You see—there he is now, with a lady’s shawl over his arm. It must be Miss Archer’s. Come and sit on this chair and watch the play.’’

Prue stated that she would prefer another glass of punch, thank you, and when Dolph had obediently fetched it for her, she took it with her into the summer room, sat down in one of the white-painted iron chairs—fortunately cushioned—and fell asleep.

Cedric meanwhile contemplated Sydney’s fichu, which he had found discarded on the staircase leading up to the ladies’ changing rooms. Enquiring after its owner, he was informed that Miss Archer had just gone up to lie down for half an hour and had requested not to be disturbed. Cedric took the piece of lace outside with him, thinking to return it when Sydney came down to watch the play. When she did not do so, Cedric began to experience a familiar uneasy sensation in the pit of his stomach. He folded his pocket handkerchief around the fichu and placed it temporarily in the hollow of a convenient tree. Then with the air of a man prepared for the worst, he drew a chair up to a clear vantage point near Prospero’s cell, and sat down to wait.

Lady Romney did not care to sit out in the damp merely to watch that popinjay D’Arcy—who certainly needed no encouragement from her—mangle Shakespeare. She and Mr. Standen, with Mr. Lacey and Sylvie de Lamartine, made their way to a card room and sat down to play a hand of whist. While a maid lighted a fire for them, Lady Romney glanced out the French windows at the fading light and, just for an instant, thought the reflections on the glass were playing tricks on her eyes. She seemed to see a slim figure in pale blue tights, a flowing white cambric shirt, and a blue tunic, with its face painted white except for green and blue shadows around the eyes, and white ribbons holding strands of ivy in its dark hair. But this apparition flitted by so quickly and silently that Lady Romney thought she must have imagined it. Mr. Standen said something to her; she turned back to him and smiled.

Outside, under a moonlit oak, Prospero proclaimed:

“Know thus far forth—

By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune,

Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies

Brought to this shore: and by my prescience

I find my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star; whose influence

If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes

Will ever after droop...

Come away, servant, come: I am ready now;

Approach, my Ariel, come!”

And so entered Ariel, a blue-and-white sprite, dropping out of the oak with a swift grace that made the onlookers gasp—and Prospero take an unintended step backwards. Ariel sketched a graceful bow, first to the onlookers, and then to Prospero.

“All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride

On the curl’d clouds; to thy strong bidding, task

Ariel and all his quality!’’

“Hast thou, spirit,” Prospero demanded, stepping back into center stage again, “perform’d to point the tempest that I bade thee?”

“To every article,” Ariel replied, describing the manner in which he had conjured up a storm and made “the bold waves tremble.”

Thus began the tale of the magic tempest, by which Prospero brought to his island his old enemy Antonio, thereby to reclaim his stolen birthright. Lord D’Arcy as Prospero, in white beard and black cloak and great oak staff, recited an original narrative linking the principal events of the story of
The Tempest
with one another and reading the parts of Antonio, Alonso, and Gonzalo himself, leaving the lesser parts of Caliban and the drunken fools Trinculo and Stephano to his “tricksy spirit,” Ariel.

Lord D’Arcy as impresario, however, discovered before the performance was half done that he had made a serious miscalculation in assigning these seemingly insignificant parts to the versatile Miss Archer, who in addition to acting out the broad comic parts with appropriate gestures and grimaces, danced behind the pipers Lord D’Arcy had hired to provide accompaniment to the action, and growled Caliban’s lines from under a rough frieze cloak she had borrowed from a groom in the Grosvenor Square stables. As the night grew darker and more still, her performance seemed to fill it, and Ariel and Caliban and the enchanted island came alive in the gentle forest surrounding them.

It did not escape D’Arcy’s notice either than his audience grew restive during Prospero’s longer speeches—that sort of thing had happened to him before and he thought himself inured to it—but it grated increasingly on his lacerated artist’s soul to hear the attentive silence that fell each time Ariel reappeared—light as air or fluid as water, invisible or “like a water nymph”—only to dissolve into laughter or appreciative applause at her impersonation of a drunken Caliban or her gay tune with a pipe borrowed with a wink from one of the musicians. When it came, therefore, to Prospero’s saying, “Why, that’s my dainty Ariel; I shall miss thee,” Lord D’Arcy did not sound much as if he meant it.

Sydney was not unaware of her effect on either her partner or her audience, and as Ariel she danced provokingly around Prospero, teasing, “Do you love me, master, no?”

The tale was nearly done before Prospero, recovering his dignity and anticipating the epilogue so painstakingly rehearsed before his mirror to capture all the applause due him at the finale, proclaimed thankfully:

“My Ariel, chick,

That is thy charge: then to the elements

Be free, and fare thee well!’’

There was a noise in the air above, and a stream of coloured flame fell from the sky. Stars burst over their heads as the promised fireworks—forgotten until then by all but Ariel—lighted the night. Ariel, as if airborne indeed, disappeared into the oak again, in a blue cloud.

A storm of applause and bravos burst from the onlookers, so that it was several minutes before Prospero, through gritted teeth, was able to speak his epilogue to a rapidly dispersing audience.

Those of Sir Gavin’s guests who got to bed at all after the fête were abroad again at a very early hour the following day to seek out friends who had also attended, in order to relive what had unquestionably been one of the Events of the season. Very little else was talked of that day, and the delicious mystery of the unknown Ariel added spice to every conversation.

Ariel herself was of several minds about what she had done. She could not drop peacefully off to sleep immediately after the drive home, and tossed restlessly in her bed in alternating moods of exhilaration and despair. She had done her part very well, she knew—yet D’Arcy was no doubt exceedingly angry with her. How would she face him? Still—the applause had been for her; it had been her talent that lifted the evening to magical heights, and if she never made another appearance on a stage—figuratively or literally—she could count herself an actress.

Would D’Arcy be angry enough to give her away, or would he—more likely—find some way to take her triumph to himself? If he did not give her away, she did not think she would be discovered; no one could have recognized her. Still, it was bound to be commented on sooner or later that she had not been among the onlookers to the performance. Although she had removed her costume as quickly as possible afterwards, and Daisy had looked her over carefully for traces of white face paint, she had felt very conspicuous indeed when she walked back out onto the lawn to look for her aunt and prepare to be driven home.

For Daisy, however, who had watched the entire performance from a convenient bedroom window, the evening had been unalloyed ecstasy. When she woke her weary mistress well after ten o’clock the next morning, she was still bubbling over with delight, in spite of Sydney’s barely intelligible greeting from beneath the bedclothes.

“Oh, miss!” Daisy breathed, her plump cheeks aglow. “Everyone is talking about you!’’

At that, Sydney sat bolt upright in bed and looked horrified. “About me?”

“Oh, no, miss—I mean they’re all talking about the play! No one recognized you. It was all I could do sometimes to keep my tongue between my teeth this morning, but I wouldn’t give you away, miss. Oh, here is a package and a note for you from Mr. Maitland.’’

“Is he here?” Sydney asked, wrapping a robe around herself and sitting down at her dressing table.

“No, miss. He said that I was to let you sleep, but that I was to give you his note as soon as you were awake.’’

As Daisy brushed her mistress’s tangled hair, Sydney opened the small brown parcel addressed to her in Cedric’s handwriting—he had evidently wrapped it himself—and out fell her lace fichu. Sinking suddenly back into despair on seeing it and remembering where she had lost it, she tore open Cedric’s note. On it was the single word, “Brava!’’

“Oh, no!”

“What’s wrong, miss?” Daisy asked, all solicitude. “It isn’t bad news?”

“The worst!” Sydney waved the note at her. “He knows! Cedric has guessed it was I who played Ariel. Who else must not also have guessed?’’

“Well, miss,” Daisy said matter-of-factly, pushing a last pin securely into Sydney’s hair, “I don’t see that anyone else need have recognized you, just because Mr. Maitland did. I mean, he knows you best, doesn’t he?”

“Carl and Robin will know, then!” Sydney cried, picking up a handkerchief and preparing to burst dramatically into tears.

“Oh, I don’t think Mr. Robert will, miss,” Daisy said reasonably. “He doesn’t notice much. And even if Mr. Carlton recognized you—which is no sure thing, since he was looking at Miss Forsythe all evening, if you will pardon my mentioning that, miss—he is far too mannerly to say anything about it.”

This point of view soothed Sydney somewhat, but she sniffed into her handkerchief and said darkly, “Lord D’Arcy will tell!”

“No, miss, that he won’t. He’s jealous of you as it is.”

This was a consideration that Sydney had not fully appreciated before, but she gave some thought to it as, a little more calmly, she dressed to face the world again. Perhaps Daisy was right. D’Arcy would very likely wrap his corsair’s cloak around himself and slink off to Greece again. Carl would hold his tongue, and Cedric—dear Cedric, from whom she could conceal nothing, but who still thought she deserved a
Brava!
—would surely never give her away if she asked him not to.

Thus fortified, Sydney went about her morning’s business, looking a little pale but otherwise no different—at least not so Robin would notice, for he presented her with her first test when he burst in on her having her hair rebrushed and refined by Monsieur Antoine, and exclaimed, “Syd! Famous news! You’ll never guess.”

Sydney suppressed a shudder, and assured her cousin that she very likely would not guess, so he might as well get to the point.

“Carl and Janine have got engaged—and her mother gave her blessing!”

This was temporarily diverting. “She never! However did Carl persuade her?”

Robin pulled a hassock up to Sydney’s chair and settled himself inelegantly but comfortably on it. Monsieur Antoine took a fastidious step to one side and fixed a malevolent Gallic glare on young Mr. Wendt, which went quite unappreciated.

“He didn’t,” Robin exclaimed. “Janine did. Told her mama Carl knew a bishop that’d marry them by special license, and that if she didn’t give her consent she wouldn’t be invited to the wedding. Dug in her heels, Janine did. She’s a great gun.”

“
Does
Carl know a bishop ?’’

“As a matter of fact, he does—which oughtn’t to be surprising, I suppose. I think Mrs. de Lamartine was more impressed with that than anything. Janine says she’ll probably change her mind half a dozen times before the wedding, but they’ll keep her to her word. Oh”—Robin flashed his engaging grin at her—”I wasn’t supposed to tell you all this, so you’ll let them do it all over again, won’t you?”

Sydney laughed. “Of course I will—and thank you for coming to tell me, Robin. I’m happy to know one or two people at least will be talking of something other than the play today!”

“What about the play?”

“Oh, never mind! Go away, you distracting boy, and let Monsieur Antoine finish my hair.’’