The gentleman with spectacles adjusted the bridge of his nose and made a scribble upon a parchment that seemed to Evelina far weightier than Holy Writ itself. She stood, frozen in the centre of the stage, her hands clammy against the fragile paper she clutched, as though her very fate were inked upon that trembling script.
"Is that all your art?" asked the third arbiter, a man broad of frame, whose voice bore the languid drawl of one long wearied by unremarkable supplicants. "We require not mere declamation, child, but life itself."
"I—I can give more, sir," Evelina hastened, her throat parched, "if you but allow me one final attempt."
"Final?" echoed the lady with sharp eyes, arching a brow most disdainfully. "We have scarce time for the middling, let alone indulgence for the failing. Yet—very well. Show us thy passion, if any flicker remain."
Her heart thundered like the roll of distant drums. She steadied herself, raised her chin, and began anew—her voice richer, her movements alive with the fervour she had kindled in solitude a hundred nights past.
For a brief span, the words soared. Evelina felt them escape her lips not as memorised recitation, but as living fire, born of her own anguish. She dared a glance at the table, hoping to glimpse some spark of admiration.
Alas, the gentleman with spectacles yawned discreetly, concealing it with his hand. The broad man examined his pocket-watch. The lady's gaze remained fixed, yet colder now, like moonlight upon snow.
Evelina faltered. The flame waned.
A silence followed her last word, a silence that stretched intolerably until at last the lady declared:
"There is effort. There is strain. Yet there is no truth."
"No truth?" Evelina's voice cracked as she echoed the damning phrase.
"Thy tears are painted," the lady replied, her tone as merciless as a surgeon's knife. "Thy grief rehearsed. It is performance without soul."
Her knees near buckled beneath her. "But, madam, the soul is mine own—"
"Next!" the gentleman with spectacles barked, his hand already waving her dismissal.
It was over.
She descended as one in a dream, her ears filled with the rising rustle of another hopeful ascending the stage. How easily she was replaced, how swiftly forgotten.
In the corridor beyond, Evelina pressed her palms against the chill wall, her breath fluttering like a trapped bird. She scarcely noted when a young man, pale and gaunt, approached and stooped to retrieve her fallen script.
"You dropped this," he murmured, extending the wrinkled pages.
She accepted them with trembling fingers. "I thank you, sir."
His smile was faint, sorrowful. "They are merciless within, are they not? I was dismissed ere I spoke three lines."
"Then you know this sting," Evelina whispered.
He inclined his head. "Indeed. Yet I return again upon the morrow. Rejection is their sport; endurance, ours. If we abandon the field, they triumph."
His words lingered, noble in intent, though Evelina's spirit was too bruised to embrace them. She forced a wan smile, but her heart echoed naught but despair.
When he departed, she remained, her back still against the stone, whispering to herself:
"Rejection their sport, endurance mine? Nay—my endurance is spent. How many wounds may one soul suffer before it perishes unseen?"
Her eyes brimmed. She pressed her brow to the cold wall, as though its indifference might cool the fever of humiliation burning within her. In that lonely passage, she seemed not a maiden of flesh and hope, but a shadow cast aside by brighter lights that refused her place amongst them.
The chamber grew darker with each passing moment, the pallid glow of twilight retreating until only the dim lamp upon her desk warded off the blackness. Evelina, still upon her knees, pressed her face to her clasped hands, her shoulders trembling with suppressed sobs. At length she rose, staggering as though from some fever, and crossed to the looking-glass once more.
The cracked pane yielded her reflection in fractured semblance, each shard of image a cruel echo of her broken spirit. One fragment displayed the swollen eyes of despair, another the trembling lips of shame, a third the pale cheeks of exhaustion. Together they formed a portrait she scarce recognised as her own.
"Thou art divided, Evelina," she whispered. "Fragmented, as this mirror. A creature not whole, and therefore unfit to play whole souls upon a stage."
She turned away swiftly, unable to endure her own gaze. Upon the desk lay a sheet of paper, blotched with ink and left unfinished, a testament to some earlier resolve now abandoned. She lifted it, reading by the lamp's weary glow:
'To the Esteemed Mr. Blackwood, Agent of Theatrical Pursuits—'
Here her writing ceased, broken by a great ink blot. The page trembled in her grasp.
"Folly," she murmured. "Why write, when all replies are silence? Why beg, when all doors are bolted fast?"
She crushed the paper in her hand and cast it into the grate, where the ashes of old letters slept in mute testimony to her defeats.
The stillness pressed upon her anew. She rose and paced the length of her narrow chamber, her hands clasped behind her, her head bowed. From the street below drifted the sound of laughter, voices raised in merriment, the rolling of wheels, the clatter of hooves. The world lived on, heedless of her grief.
"Am I invisible to all but misery?" she demanded of the night. "Do the stars above mark me not? Does Heaven itself turn its gaze away, ashamed of so feeble a creature?"
She approached the window, flinging it open to admit the cool night air. The city sprawled beneath her, a sea of lamps burning like false constellations, each one marking a hearth, a tavern, a theatre where merriment or glory might unfold. Yet none of those lights shone for her.
Her mind wandered, unbidden, to her father's voice—stern, unyielding, forever warning her against the frivolities of the stage.
"Evelina," he had said,
"dreams are baubles. Seek a husband, seek security, but seek not fortune upon those painted boards."
How bitterly his words now rang, echoing in cruel harmony with her own failures.
Yet then, too, came her mother's voice, soft as a lullaby: "Seek thy passion, child. Better to stumble upon the road of thy heart than walk firmly upon the path of another's choosing."
She pressed her palms to her temples, torn between the two ghosts. "Which of you speaks true?" she whispered. "The one who bade me forsake, or the one who bade me pursue? For both now war within me, and I am weary of battle."
Her feet carried her back to the bed, where she sank heavily, burying her face against the coverlet. She longed for sleep, for the sweet oblivion that might erase her shame, yet her mind refused the mercy of rest. Every syllable of the judges' scorn replayed itself with merciless precision. 'Too theatrical… No truth… Next.'
At length, she seized her pillow and pressed it against her ears, as though to banish the echoing voices. But silence brought no relief. Instead, her imagination conjured visions of those same arbiters, seated at their oaken table, laughing at her expense.
She sat upright with a cry, her breath ragged, her body trembling as though chilled to the marrow. The lamp flickered low, threatening to extinguish. Shadows stretched long across the chamber, twisting in shapes that seemed almost to mock her.
Clasping her arms about herself, Evelina whispered, "If only one soul—one kind soul—believed in me, perchance I should endure. Yet alone—alone—I am but a candle in the wind."
Her gaze fell once more upon the window, and there she perceived a solitary star piercing the veil of night. Its light was faint, dwarfed by the city's glare, yet steadfast. She rose, drawn to it, and pressed her hand to the glass.
"Art thou a sign?" she murmured, half in hope, half in derision. "Or but another cruel jest of Heaven, to show me light I cannot touch?"
Yet she could not look away. That frail spark, though distant, seemed to whisper of endurance, of unseen forces at work beyond her comprehension.
Slowly, her breathing calmed. She turned back to the room, weary yet steadier than before. She drew forth a fresh sheet of paper, dipped her pen, and began anew—not to some grand agent, but to herself.
'Let it be written this night,' she inscribed, 'that Evelina Harrow shall not yield whilst breath remain. Though rejected, though despised, though forgotten—yet I shall rise. And if the morrow bring me naught but further sorrow, let it also find me standing.'
Her hand faltered, but she forced the words to completion. When at last she laid the pen aside, a strange stillness filled her breast. She folded the paper, pressed it beneath the cracked mirror, and whispered, "Bear witness, thou broken glass. Tomorrow, I begin again."
The lamp at last guttered into darkness, leaving only the faint gleam of the solitary star beyond the window. Evelina lay upon her bed, her tears spent, her spirit bruised yet not extinguished. And somewhere in the silence, unseen, Fate stirred indeed.