The Argosy — page 209: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

192 A Marriage from the Stage. and that insulting bonhommie with which prosperous mediocrity is ever ready to tease the genius forced to gain its daily bread in full view of the public. When one night at the Theatre Royal a certain yabriel di Vilna was planning afresh a visionary introduction to the object of his worship, he little dreamed that the handsome, light- haired Englishman whose head protruded from the next box was Claudia’s accepted lover, and that the oath he was swearing again and again in his native Italian would soon be converted into an unconscious perjury. So when the long-coveted introduction was to have taken place, and the goddess brought down from her pedestal, di Vilna learned to his bitter disappointment that only the day before the beautiful prima donna had broken her engagement with the manager of the Theatre Royal, and was on her way to England as Mrs. Arthur Raughan. The two runaways came to The Limes direct from Italy, as the leaves were falling from the trees and the chilly autumn winds moaning round the house. ‘‘T have chosen between you and a great career, Arthur,” whispered Claudia, as Raughan helped his wife out of the carriage and led her into her new home. ‘You shall never repent your choice,” returned Arthur, smiling. “No?” replied Claudia, looking at him and taking no notice of the new surroundings that were to become a part of her life. ‘‘ Before long you will look back upon your stage life as impos- sible ; you will even wonder how you could have endured it,” said he, looking with satisfaction round his ancestral hall. Claudia’s face shadowed slightly. ‘‘ I shall always look back upon the past with respect. ‘The expression of noble or deep emotions in music is as grand, and I sometimes think grander, than anything else in life,” she said, with a half sigh. ‘Arthur Raughan hated arguments. ‘You must admire these decorations, my darling,” he said. ‘“‘ Here are more than twenty brushes on this wall, and there is my grandfather’s old sword, hung up over the portrait of the Duke of Wellington.” Claudia pressed his hand, but in spite of her newly-found love a chill crept over her. ‘T will admire everything, even the weather,” she said, smiling as well as she could, ‘‘ only I must rest first. Remember what a long journey we have made.” As might have been expected: as Raughan’s distant relatives, as his visiting acquaintances, as all his friends expected: the young man would soon find out the fatal mistake he had committed, the unwise step he had taken. An opera singer does not easily fall into the ways of the orthodox country squire’s wife ; she does not take naturally to distributing alms among villagers, nor does she always find herself at home on horseback full pelt after the hounds. A life which had called all her physical activities into play, CONnMIEOOOKS (E(©)