ROMEO AND JULIET.
The Leading Lady was fond of money, and the theatre was doing so well
that her dividend every week was a very handsome one, three times as
much as she could expect to get elsewhere; but what woman is prudent
when her vanity is hurt? A man with a large bump of caution
occasionally hangs back, and calculates consequences. A woman never
does. The Leading Lady in a towering passion confronted Mr. Hart, the
manager, at the end of the performance.
"Here comes a tragedy," thought he, as he looked into her wrathful
eyes. There was a smile on his face, nevertheless.
"I leave the company!" she said abruptly, with heaving bosom.
"My dear lady!" remonstrated the manager.
"To-morrow. I shall take a place in the coach that starts at eight
o'clock."
She knew well enough what the result would be if she left; the company
would collapse. A man might be spared, and his place filled, or his
parts doubled, but the loss of a woman would inflict irreparable
injury upon the prospects of the theatre. Mr. Hart knew this also.
"You don't forget," he said gravely, "that we have your signature, and
that if you leave without consent we can make you pay heavy damages!"
"That for my signature! that for your heavy damages!" Each time she
snapped a disdainful finger.
"My dear lady," he said, in a soothing tone, "you are excited, you are
overstrained. We have taxed you a little hardly. We'll play light
pieces for a night or two, and give you a rest."
Inconsiderate man He could not more successfully have fanned the flame
in her breast.
"You'll play no light pieces to give me a rest! Play light pieces, and
give _her_ the opportunity of taking leading characters! The shameless
hussy! Not if I know it!"
Mr. Hart began to understand. This colloquy was taking place on the
stage; the theatre was clear, the curtain was up. Down the stairs
which led to the ladies' dressing-room tripped Margaret, fresh, and
bright, and happy, with her bunch of flowers in her hand.
"Good night, Mr. Hart," she cried gaily.
In the shadow of the door which led on to the stage a man was waiting
for her--Philip. They met, clasped hands--her supple fingers lay in
Philip's great palm as in a nest, and he imprisoned them, be
sure!--and walked out, side by side, chatting confidentially, with
their heads close together. The Leading Lady saw this, and her anger
rose higher; but still it was bitter gall to her to reflect that if
she went away, the field would be clear for her rival.
Mr. Hart felt that he was on the horns of a difficulty; he could spare
neither one nor the other of the ladies.
"You're the manager of this company," said the Leading Lady, "and you
ought long ago to have put down such shameless goings on. Did you see
the way they went out together, and do you think people are blind? We
shall be the talk of the town; but I'll not be implicated in it. My
name musn't be used lightly." The manager smiled grimly. "I leave
to-morrow. Understand that."
"I decline to understand it. You will fulfil your engagement, and if
it is necessary for me to take steps to prevent your departure, I must
do so for the sake of the others. I will swear a declaration against
you!"
He was aware that he was talking the most arrant nonsense, but he
relied on the feminine mind to assist him with its fears, and with its
ignorance of legal subtleties.
"I shall be sorry to do so against a lady whom I esteem and respect so
much, and of whose talents I have so high an opinion, but no other
course will be open to me. If I allowed you to go, the diggers would
rise against me. And quite right they would be! Why, my dear lady," he
said, cunningly, "you know as well as I do that we are nothing without
you--that you are the soul of the company--that there is not your
equal on the colonial stage!"
The Leading Lady began to soften beneath the influence of such gross
flattery, but it would not do to give way at once.
"I will _not_ stop to be insulted!"
"No one _shall_ insult you."
"But some one has--you know who--and she shall not do so again--no,
not if you swear a million declarations!"
"Come, now, tell me all about it," said the manager, taking her arm,
and walking slowly with her up and down the stage. "By the way, the
Honourable Mr. Simpson, the Warden of Moonlight Flat, said last
night, when you were playing Ophelia--you know him; he was in the
theatre with the Commissioner of the Goldfields and the Resident
Magistrate----"
"Yes, yes," said the Leading Lady impatiently, "what did he say?"
"That your Ophelia was equal to anything he had seen on the London
stage, and that he believed you would create a sensation there. He is
first cousin to the Earl of Badmington, you know, who has a theatre in
London. I thought you would like to hear it. He is very anxious to
make your acquaintance--as all gentlemen of taste and refinement would
be."
He glanced slyly at the Leading Lady, whose head was nodding gently up
and down, in sweet contentment.
"And now, my dear lady, tell me your grievance."
"It's yours as well as mine, but if you like to stand it, I shan't. If
bouquets of flowers are to be thrown on the stage, they must be thrown
to me--do you understand, sir? to _me_, as the Leading Lady, and as
the star of the company!"
It happened that Mr. Hart had been busy elsewhere during the episode
that had very nearly brought the ship to wreck, and had heard nothing
of it. He asked the Leading Lady for an explanation, which was given
to him.
"And if you don't stop these shameful goings-on," were her concluding
words, "I give you fair warning, I will not stay with you. _I_ have a
character to lose, thank God!"
Which was to be construed in so many queer ways, that Mr. Hart could
scarcely refrain from laughing. "Confound Master Philip!" he thought,
and said aloud, "Well, well, my dear creature, I will see to it. And
no flowers shall be thrown--by Mr. Philip Rowe, at all events--on the
stage to any one but you."
This difficulty being soothed over, he went in search of Philip Rowe,
and found him leaning against a fence outside the hotel, gazing up at
a light in a bedroom window on the first floor.
"Rehearsing 'Romeo and Juliet?'" asked Mr. Hart kindly, taking the
young man's arm.
Philip blushed, and stammered some unintelligible words.
"That _is_ her window, Philip," said Mr. Hart, "so you will not make
the same ridiculous mistake that I did for a fortnight together,
gazing up every night at the light in my lady's bedroom, and working
myself into a state of gushing sentimentalism over the slender waist
and the graceful turn of the head I saw shadowed on the blind, until I
discovered that I had been watching the bedroom window of a black
footman."
This was a piece of pure invention on the part of Mr. Hart.
Philip, having nothing to say in reply, shifted one foot over another
restlessly. If he could have retired with a good grace, he would have
done so, but Mr. Hart had hold of his arm. Mr. Hart continued:
"Putting sentiment aside, a nice scrape you were almost getting me
into to-night. Ah! you may stare, but I should like to know what you
mean by throwing flowers to my singing Chambermaid--who is not by any
means clever, let me tell you, and will never make her fortune on the
stage--when we have in our company a lady who plays leading
characters, and who knows every line of Juliet's part?"
"Ho, ho!" laughed Philip; "Juliet was a girl of sixteen or seventeen,
and your Leading Lady is forty."
"Woe for your life if you said so in her presence!" exclaimed Mr.
Hart, with a quiet chuckle; "it would not be worth a moment's
purchase. Forty, sir! and what if she is forty?--which she is not by
five years--she is the only woman that can play Juliet to your Romeo."
"Hush!" whispered Philip. "She is opening the window."
Margaret, alone, in her white dress, was indeed opening the window.
She did not know--not she!--that her lover was below, nor that her
form could be seen, for she had extinguished the light in the room.
Her shadow might be discerned, but what is there in a shadow? She sat
down by the window, and rested her head on her arm. The graceful
outlines of her arm and neck and bended head were clearly visible, and
the lover feasted his eyes upon them. She held in her hand the
flowers which Philip had thrown her! Her lips were upon the tender
leaves--sweets to the sweet. He saw her kiss the flowers, and his soul
thrilled with rapture. The night was beautifully still; not a sound
was stirring; and as far as eye could see the white tents of the
diggers were gleaming. So Margaret sat and mused, and Philip looked on
and dreamed. Here, in the new world, but yesterday a savage waste, the
old, old story was being enacted with as much freshness as though the
world were but just created. What wonder? Because the sun has risen a
few million of times, is the dew on the leaves less sweet and pure in
the early morning's light than on that wondrous day when Adam awoke
and found Eve by his side?
So Margaret sat and mused, and Philip looked on and dreamed; and I
think that Margaret peeped through the lattice-work of her fingers,
and saw with her cunning eyes that her lover was there, worshipping
her.
How long they would have thus remained, Heaven only knows. Mr. Hart
gave them at least twenty minutes, and then touched Philip's arm.
Philip started, and Margaret at the window started also, and with a
swift happy glance outwards, and with wave of the pretty hand and arm,
closed the window. Philip was standing in the light, and Mr. Hart,
like a kind and careful friend, had crept backward in the shade; so
that Margaret, when she cast that straight swift glance in her lover's
direction, saw only him. Surely as the hand--love's white flag of
recognition--waved towards him, it had touched her lips first, and she
had sent a kiss into the air--which he received in his heart. It
stirred tender chords there, and through his veins crept love's fever,
which turns dross into gold, and makes a heaven of earth!