"Well, little father, don't you think he's fine?" said a young
actor-student to Yakovlef, the patriarch of provincial actors, who was
taking the part of the king.
The two were standing together on the staircase which led from the
dressing-rooms to the stage.
Yakovlef pursed and bit his full thick lips.
"Fine! Fine! But all the same, he acts as a boy. Those who saw Mochalof
play Hamlet wouldn't marvel at this. I, brother, was just such a little
chap as you are when I had the happiness of seeing him first. And when
I come to die, I shall look back on that as the most blessed moment of
my life. When he got up from the floor of the stage and said:
"'Let the stricken deer go weep'
the audience rose as one man, hardly daring to breathe. And now watch
carefully how Kostromsky takes that very scene."
"You're very hard to please, Valerie Nikolaitch."
"Not at all. But you watch him; to tell you the truth, I can't. Do you
think I am watching _him_?"
"Well, who then?"
"Ah, brother, look at Ophelia. There's an actress for you!"
"But Valerie Nikolaitch, she's only a student."
"Idiot! Don't mind that. You didn't notice how she said the words:
"'He spoke to me of love, but was so tender,
So timid, and so reverent.'[1]
Of course you didn't. And I've been nearly thirty years on the stage,
and I tell you I've never heard anything like it. She's got talent. You
mark my words, in the fourth act she'll have such a success that your
Kostromsky will be in a fury. You see!"
[1]
Perhaps--"He hath, my lord, of late made many
tenders
Of his affection to me."
The Russian lines do not clearly correspond to any of
Shakespeare's.--ED.
V
The play went on. The old man's prophecy was abundantly fulfilled. The
enthusiasm of Kostromsky only lasted out the first act. It could not
be roused again by repeated calls before the curtain, by applause, or
by the gaze of his enormous crowd of admirers, who thronged into the
wings to look at him with gentle reverence. There now remained in him
only the very smallest store of that energy and feeling which he had
expended with such royal generosity three years ago on every act.
He had wasted his now insignificant store in the first act, when he
had been intoxicated by the loud cries of welcome and applause from
the public. His will was weakened, his nerves unbraced, and not even
increased doses of alcohol could revive him. The imperceptible ties
which had connected him with his audience at first were gradually
weakening, and, though the applause at the end of the second act was as
sincere as at the end of the first, yet it was clear that the people
were applauding, not him, but the charm of his name and fame.
Meanwhile, each time she appeared on the stage, Ophelia--Yureva
--progressed in favour. This hitherto unnoticed girl,
who had previously played only very minor parts, was now, as it were,
working a miracle. She seemed a living impersonation of the real
daughter of Polonius, a gentle, tender, obedient daughter, with deep
hidden feeling and great love in her soul, empoisoned by the venom
of grief.
The audience did not yet applaud Yureva, but they watched her, and
whenever she came on the stage the whole theatre calmed down to
attention. She herself had no suspicion that she was in competition
with the great actor, and taking from him attention and success, and
even the spectators themselves were unconscious of the struggle.
The third act was fatal for Kostromsky. His appearance in it was
preceded by the short scene in which the king and Polonius agree to
hide themselves and listen to the conversation between Hamlet and
Ophelia, in order to judge of the real reason of the prince's madness.
Kostromsky came out from the wings with slow steps, his hands crossed
upon his breast, his head bent low, his stockings unfastened and the
right one coming down.
"To be or not to be--that is the question."
He spoke almost inaudibly, all overborne by serious thought, and did
not notice Ophelia, who sat at the back of the stage with an open book
on her knee.
This famous soliloquy had always been one of Kostromsky's show places.
Some years ago, in this very town and this very theatre, after he had
finished this speech by his invocation to Ophelia, there had been for a
moment that strange and marvellous silence which speaks more eloquently
than the noisiest applause. And then everyone in the theatre had gone
into an ecstasy of applause, from the humblest person in the back row
of the gallery to the exquisites in the private boxes.
Alas, now both Kostromsky himself and his audience remained cold and
unmoved, though he was not yet conscious of it.
"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution,
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action,"
he went on, gesticulating and changing his intonation from old memory.
And he thought to himself that when he saw Ophelia he would go down on
his knees in front of her and say the final words of his speech, and
that the audience would weep and cry out with a sweet foolishness.
And there was Ophelia. He turned to the audience with a cautious
warning "Soft you, now!" and then walking swiftly across the stage he
knelt down and exclaimed:
"--Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd,"
and then got up immediately, expecting a burst of applause.
But there was no applause. The public were puzzled, quite unmoved, and
all their attention was turned on Ophelia.
For some seconds he could think of nothing; it was only when he
heard at his side a gentle girl's voice asking, "Prince, are you
well?"--a voice which trembled with the tears of sorrow for a love
destroyed--that, in a momentary flash, he understood all.
It was a moment of awful enlightenment. Kostromsky recognised it
clearly and mercilessly--the indifference of the public; his own
irrevocable past; the certainty of the near approach of the end to his
noisy but short-lived fame.
Oh, with what hatred did he look upon this girl, so graceful,
beautiful, innocent, and--tormenting thought--so full of talent. He
would have liked to throw himself upon her, beat her, throw her on
the ground and stamp with his feet upon that delicate face, with its
large dark eyes looking up at him with love and pity. But he restrained
himself, and answered in lowered tones:
"I humbly thank you; well, well, well."
After this scene Kostromsky was recalled, but he heard, much louder
than his own name, the shouts from the gallery, full with students, for
Yureva, who, however, refused to appear.