The Actress in High Life Part 27

Maiden, the suns.h.i.+ne of thine eye, Flas.h.i.+ng my joyous waves along, The magic of thy soul-lit smile, Have waked my murmuring voice to song.

Winding through Hispania's mountains, Watering her sunburnt plains, I, from earliest time, have gladdened Dwellers on these wide domains.

I have watched succeeding races, Peopling my fertile strand, Marked each varying lovely model, Moulded by Nature's plastic hand.

Striving still to reach perfection, Ruthless, she broke each beauteous mould; Some blemish still deformed her creature, Some alloy still defiled her gold.

The Iberian girl has often bathed, Her limbs in my delighted flood, And no Acteon came to startle This very Dian of the wood.

The stately Roman maid has loitered, Pensive, upon my flowering sh.o.r.e, Shedding some pearly drops to think, Italia she may see no more.

While gazing on my placid face, She meditates her distant home; And rears, as upon Tiber's banks, The towers of imperial Rome.

The blue-eyed daughter of the Goth, Fresh from her northern forest-home, In rude n.o.bility of race, Foreshadowed her who now has come.

The loveliest offspring of the Moor Beside my moon-lit current sat; And, sighing, sung her hopeless love, In strains, that I remember yet.

The Christian knight, in captive chains, The conqueror of her heart has proved; His own, in far Castilian bower, He bears her blandishments unmoved.

Thus Nature tried her 'prentice hand, Become, at last, an artist true; In inspiration's happiest mood, She tried again, and moulded you.

Maiden, from my crystal surface, May thy image never fade; Longing, longing, to embrace thee, I, alas! embrace a shade.

Fainter glows each beauteous image, Thy beauty vanis.h.i.+ng before; I will clasp thy lovely shadow, Fate will grant to me no more.

If the verses were not very good, L'Isle was ready to acknowledge it; but, in fact, he had not the fear of criticism before his eyes; for when did lady ever criticise verses made in her praise? But he had reckoned without his host. Though Lady Mabel recited them exceedingly well, in a way that showed that she must have read them over many times, and dwelt upon them, there was an under-current of ridicule running through her tones and action--for she had personified the river-G.o.d--and when she was done, she criticised them with merciless irony.

"This is no timid rhymster," she exclaimed, "but a true poet of the Spanish school: No figure is too bold for him. A mere versifier would have likened a lady's eyes to earthly diamonds or heavenly stars; the blessed sun itself is not too bright for our poet's purpose.--My timid fancy dared not follow his soaring wing; to me at the first glance, the 'stately Roman maid' was building her mimic Rome on the banks of the Guadiana with solid stone and tough cement, and I saddened at the sight of her labors. To come down to the mechanism of the verse," she continued, "besides a false rhyme or two, the measure halts a little.--But we must not forget that the river-G.o.d is taking a poetical stroll in the shackles of a foreign tongue. In this case we have good a.s.surance that the poet has never been out of his own country, and to the _eye_ of a foreigner 'flood' and 'wood' and 'home'

and 'come' are perfect rhymes. We must deal gently with the poet while 'trying his 'prentice hand,' hoping better things when he shall 'become an artist true;' and when we remember that to the national taste sublimity is represented by bombast, artifice takes the place of nature, and sense is sacrificed to sound, the love of the _ore rotundo_ demanding mouth-filling words at any price, we cannot fail to discover the genuine Spanish beauties of the piece. I only wonder that in his chronological picture of the races he should omit to display the Phoenician, Jewish and Gipsy maidens to our admiring eyes."

"Heyday!" exclaimed Colonel Bradshawe, who now came in with Major Warren, while she was still standing in the middle of the floor, with the paper raised in her hand, "Is this a rehearsal? Are we to have private theatricals, with Lady Mabel for first and sole actress? With songs interspersed for her as _prima donna_? Pray let me come in as one of the _dramatis personae_."

"It is no play!" said Lady Mabel, much confused. "I have just been throwing away my powers of elocution in an attempt to make Colonel L'Isle perceive the beauties of a piece of model poetry, moulded in the purest Spanish taste. I thought him gifted with some poetic feeling, but he shows not the slightest sense of its peculiar merits."

L'Isle, though much out of countenance, had kept his seat through the recitation, but now got up looking little pleased with it.

"Try me," said Major Warren. "You may be more successful in finding a critic."

"I never suspected you of any critical ac.u.men," said Lady Mabel; "and so could not be disappointed."

"Do not overlook me," said Bradshawe. "Poetry is the expression of natural feeling, in a state of exaltation. Now, I am always in an exalted state of feeling in your company, and may be just now a very capable judge."

"No; one failure is enough for me," said Lady Mabel. "I am not in the humor to repeat it."

"Let me read it then," said Bradshawe, offering to take the paper from her hand.

Lady Mabel declined, and L'Isle tried to divert his attention. But Bradshawe's curiosity was strongly excited, and he made more than one playful attempt to get possession of the verses. Upon this, Lady Mabel went to the table near which L'Isle was standing, and pretended to hide them between the pages of one of the books there. L'Isle, anxious that they should be kept from every eye but hers, watched her closely. Could he believe his eyes? As she stooped over the table, she actually, un.o.bserved, as she thought, slipped the verses into her bosom. Bradshawe pertinaciously began to search the volumes; on which, Lady Mabel took up the largest of them, and with a grave face carried it out of the room, leaving L'Isle so well satisfied with her care for his epistle, that, by the time she came back, he was ready to bear, without flinching, any severity of criticism.

The rest of the company below being gone, Lord Strathern now entered the room. "Ah, L'Isle, I am glad to find you here; I was just about to send after you. I have this moment received a dispatch from Sir Rowland. He needs you for a special service, and this letter contains his instructions."

"Is it in verse, Papa?" asked Lady Mabel, coming close up beside her father.

"In verse, child? What are you dreaming of? Sir Rowland is a sane man, and never writes verses?"

"I thought it might be a growing custom to correspond in verse. The last letter I received was in regular stanzas."

"Who from?" asked Lord Strathern.

"A Spaniard--a genuine Spaniard, of the purest water," said Lady Mabel. "And, strange to tell, I never saw him but once in my life."

"The impudent rascal!" exclaimed his lords.h.i.+p. "I will have him horsewhipped by way of answer, a stripe for every line."

"Nay," said Lady Mabel, "a stripe for every bad line will be cutting criticism enough."

"Who is this fellow? Is it the Don Alonso Melendez you were telling me of?"

"Never mind his name, Papa. I am afraid you might have him flayed alive, while the poor fellow deserves nothing but laughter for his doggerel." And while this doggerel was secretly pressed by her bosom, she stole a look at L'Isle, and was surprised to see how little galled he seemed to be by her ridicule.

"What is the burden of Sir Rowland's verses?" she asked, addressing him.

"Very true!" exclaimed L'Isle; "I had forgotten to read it." And breaking the seal, he ran his eye hastily over the letter. "I must leave Elvas at once, and be away some days," he said, with a look of dissatisfaction.

"Sir Rowland is very fond of sending you on his errands," remarked Lord Strathern. "And, hitherto you seemed to like the extra work he gave you."

"I would be gladly excused from it just now," answered L'Isle, and in spite of himself, his eye wandered toward Lady Mabel. Lord Strathern did not observe this, but said, jestingly: "I believe you have contrived to convince Sir Rowland that none of us can do any thing so well as you can," but there was a little tone of pique in the way this was said.

"I have made no attempt to do so," L'Isle answered. "But he has given me some thing to do now, and I must set about it at once." Taking leave of Lady Mabel, he held a short private conference with his lords.h.i.+p, and, when he went out to mount his horse, found Colonel Bradshawe already in the saddle, waiting for him. This annoyed him, for he instinctively knew Bradshawe's object, and looked to be ingeniously cross-questioned as to the verses which Lady Mabel had recited, and then criticised so unsparingly. Unwilling to let Bradshawe stretch him on the rack for his amus.e.m.e.nt, L'Isle a.s.sumed the offensive, and at once broached another matter which he had much at heart.

"I wonder when we will leave Elvas," he exclaimed, abruptly. "If we stay here much longer, we will be at war with the people around us. I never knew my lord so negligent of discipline. It evidently grows upon him."

"The old gentleman," said Bradshawe, carelessly, "certainly holds the reins with a slack hand."

"He is content with preserving order in Elvas," said L'Isle; "but turns a deaf ear to almost every complaint the peasantry make against our people."

"Many of them are lies," said Bradshawe, coolly.

"And many of them are too well founded," answered L'Isle. "You are the senior officer in the brigade, and a man of no little tact. Could you not stir my lord up to looking more closely into this matter."

"I will think of it," said Bradshawe, anxious to open a more interesting subject.

"Pray think of it speedily," said L'Isle. "There is no time to be lost, and I must lose no time now. The sun has set, and I must be in Olivenca by midnight."

"What will you do there?" asked Bradshawe.

"Bait my horses on my way into Andalusia," answered L'Isle, riding off at full gallop, leaving Bradshawe much provoked at his slipping out of his hands before he could put him to the question.