Cruel Barbara Allen | Page 3

lease, but she respected Christopher's opinion more highly than that of the Eeverend Paul. There was yet a sense of wickedness in the thought which assailed her, and her heart beat violently as she ascended the steps which led to Mrs. Lochleven Cameron's door. She dried her eyes, summoned her resolution, and rang the bell. A pale-faced lady of stately carriage opened the door.
'I wish,' said little Barbara, with a beating heart, 'to see Mrs. Cameron.'
'Pray enter,' returned the lady in tones so deep that she might have been a gentleman in disguise.
Barbara entered, and the deep-voiced lady closed the door, and led the way into a scantily furnished parlour, which held, amongst other objects, a rickety-looking grand piano of ancient make.
'Be seated,' said the deep-voiced lady. 'I am Mrs. Lochleven Cameron. What are your wishes?'
There was just a suspicion of Dublin in Mrs. Cameron's rich and rolling tones.
'You prepare pupils for the stage?' said Barbara. Her own clear and sweet voice sounded strange to her, as though it belonged to somebody else, but she spoke with outward calm.
'Do you wish to take lessons?' asked the lady.
'If I can afford to pay your terms,' said little Barbara.
'What can you do?' asked Mrs. Cameron with stage solemnity. 'Have you had any practice? Can you sing?'
'I do not know what I can do,' said Barbara. 'I can sing a little.'
'Let me hear you,' said the deep voice; and the lady, with a regal gesture, threw open the grand piano.
Barbara drew off her thread gloves and lifted her veil, and then, sitting down to the piano, sang the piteous ballad of the Four Marys. Barbara knew nothing of the easy emotions of people of the stage, and she was almost frightened when, looking up timidly at the conclusion of the song, she saw that Mrs. Cameron was crying.
'Wait here a time, my dear,' said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron, regally business-like in spite of her tears, but with the suggestion of Dublin a trifle more developed in her voice.
She swept from the room, and closed the door behind her; and Barbara, not yet rid of the feeling that she was somebody else, heard Mrs. Cameron's voice, somewhat subdued, calling 'Joe.'
'What is it?' asked another deep voice, wherein the influences of Dublin and the stage together struggled.
'Come down,' said Mrs. Cameron; and in answer to this summons a solemn footstep was heard upon the stair. Barbara heard the sound of a whispered conference outside, and then, the door being opened, Mrs. Cameron ushered in a gentleman tall and lank and sombre, like Mrs. Cameron, he was very pale, but in his case the pallor of his cheeks was intensified by the blackness of his hair and the purple-black bloom upon his chin and upper lip. He looked to Barbara like an undertaker who mourned the stagnation of trade. To you or me he would have looked like what he was, a second or third-rate tragedian.
'I have not yet the pleasure of your name,' said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron, addressing Barbara.
'My name is Barbara Allen,' said Barbara, speaking it unconsciously as though it were a line of an old ballad.
'This, Miss Allen,' said Mrs. Cameron with a sweep of the right hand which might have served to introduce a landscape, 'is Mr. Lochleven Cameron.'
Barbara rose and curtsied, and Mr. Lochleven Cameron bowed. Barbara concluded that this was not the gentleman who had been called downstairs as 'Joe.'
'Will you' sing that little ballad over again, Miss Allen?' asked Mrs. Cameron, gravely seating herself.
Barbara sang the ballad over again, and sang it rather better than before.
Mrs. Cameron cried again, and Mr. Cameron said 'Bravo!' at the finish.
'Now,' said Mrs. Cameron, 'do you know anything sprightly?' she pronounced it 'sproightly,' but she was off her guard.
Barbara, by this time only enough excited to do her best, sang 'Come lasses and lads,' and sang it like herself, with honest mirth and rural roguishness. For without knowing it, this young lady was a born actress, and did by nature and beautifully what others are taught to do awkwardly.
'You'll have to broaden the style a little for the theatre,' said the trag��dienne, 'but for a small room nothing could be better.'
'I venture to predict,' said the tragedian, 'that Miss Allen will become an ornament to the profession.'
'I am afraid,' said Barbara, rising from the piano, 'that after all I may be only wasting your time. I have not asked your terms, and--I am--I have not much money.'
'Miss Allen,' said the tragedian, 'unless I am much mistaken, you will not long have to mourn that unpleasant condition of affairs.'
'Are your parents aware of your design, Miss Allen?' This from the lady.
'I have no parents,' faltered Barbara. 'I am living with my uncle.'
'Does he know your wishes in this matter?'
'No,' said Barbara, and the feeling of