Next night and next night, and again on the third night, this extraordinary spectacle was repeated. The crowds that came to the doors could not be admitted. But by this time the leading papers had felt the pulse of the people—not the excitable populace, but the steady people. With one consent they rushed at the exhibition with lance in rest. Improper was the softest insinuation. They were undoubtedly right. The moment they took this tone all the press followed, and before the week was over those who had the power had prohibited the performance.
IX
The exhibition was stopped, but the end had been attained—Lucia was famous. The manager and Aurelian had foreseen the inevitable official veto, and had prepared for it. They had arranged for her to appear as Cleopatra; it was a part which could be made to suit her admirably by leaving Shakespeare’s text out of the question, and studying spectacle instead.
It is a singular fact that Sternhold had no idea of what was going on until the fourth or fifth day. He was told that Lucia had left Stirmingham with her brother for a short visit to Paris, and paid little or no attention to it. For the first day or two the papers had been silent. At last the news reached him.
What Dodd had previously feared now happened—he was struck down with a slight attack of paralysis, which affected one side. Some persons said it was a merciful infliction, as it prevented him from witnessing his wife’s disgrace with his own eyes. They were wrong. His body was bent, but his mind was torn with contending and frenzied passions. The sense of outrage—of outrage upon his dignity—was perhaps the strongest. That after all his labour and self-denial, after long, long years of slowly building up a property such as his, which rendered him in his own estimation not one whit inferior to a king; that he should be insulted, his name dragged in the dirt, his wife a spectacle for all Paris!
Sternhold had the vaguest ideas of stage proprieties and theatrical morality. He had not a doubt but that Lucia was already an abandoned woman. There were plenty who urged upon him to commence a suit for divorce, though in reality it was extremely doubtful whether there were sufficient grounds for anything beyond a judicial separation.
But Sternhold was filled with one consuming desire—to see her with his own eyes. Whether it was this passion, or whether it was the natural strength of his constitution, certain it is that in a marvellously short time after the attack, he had himself conveyed to Paris, and sat, a miserable, haggard, broken-down old man, in a box at the theatre the same night, watching his wife upon the stage. He did this night after night. A species of fascination seemed to carry him there to sit silent, brooding over the utter wreck of his great schemes.
After a while he went suddenly back to Stirmingham without a word, without so much as seeking an interview with Lucia, or issuing any instructions as to what was to be done. He went back to his old apartments at Dodd’s Hotel. He shut himself up, refusing to see even the wretched parasites who had sown the seed of this mischief. It was an instinctive attempt to return to the old, old habit, the ancient self-concentration, apart from the world. But it failed. So soon as ever he began to read his letters, to look into his accounts, every figure, every transaction reminded him of Lucia and her extravagance; the follies she had been guilty of, and the no less greater folly he had himself yielded to in granting her every wish, thereby involving his affairs in the most hopeless confusion. The attempt failed. He rushed again from his retreat to seek her. Then he heard that she was in Vienna performing. He got there, supported by his attendants. Doubtless the physical fatigue of the journey irritated his nerves; at all events, there seems no doubt that when he reached Vienna he was for the time absolutely mad.
He went to the theatre. He saw Lucia as Godiva, just as she had been seen in Paris. He was alone in his box. Deliberately he levelled a pistol, resting the barrel upon the edge of the balustrade. As the incense of praise and adulation rose up, as the pageant moved to and fro, the deadly weapon was aimed at the central figure. He fired, and the house was in commotion.
Those who know what happens when a full theatre is alarmed and excited will require no description; those who have not seen it cannot imagine it.
A second report, and the curling smoke caused a rush to the box, and the occupant was found upon the floor, as was thought, dead. Lucia alone was calm and cool. The bullet had not passed even near her; the distance was great and the aim unsteady; the ball had struck a screen, and did no injury. She dismounted and advanced to the footlights, extended her hands, and in a few words begged the audience to be calm. Speedily they saw her thus, as it were, in their very arms.
The theatre rang with acclamation. If it had been a scene prepared it could not have succeeded better.
There were threats and loud cries of rage against the man who had fired at her.
“Do not injure him,” she said, at the top of her full, deep voice; “he is mad!” For she guessed in a moment who it was.
In a few minutes the whole thing was understood. Continental people are quick at comprehending—an old husband, a young wife—bah! An attempt first at murder, then at suicide—bah! What could he have done better calculated to put Lucia upon the pedestal of fame?
Sternhold was not dead; not even injured. The ball he had fired at himself had
