_Polonius_. The actors are come hither, my lord.
_Hamlet_. Buz, buz.
_Polonius_. Upon my honour.
_Hamlet. Then came each actor on his ass._
_Polonious_. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,
history, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or
poem unlimited... these are the only men.
Being thus benetted round with villanies,--
Or I could make a prologue to my brains,
They had begun the play,--I sat me down.
... Wilt thou know
The effect...?--_Hamlet_.
|UPON the evening of the Thursday week after the arrival of that
steamer with two companies of the Bayonetteers at Durban, the town of
Pietermaritzburg was convulsed with the prospect of the entertainment
that was to take place in its midst, for Miss Lottie Vincent had not
passed the preceding week in a condition of dramatic abstraction.
She was by no means so wrapped up in the part she had undertaken
to represent as to be unable to give the necessary attention to the
securing of an audience.
It would seem to a casual _entrepreneur_ visiting Pietermaritzburg that
a large audience might be assured for an entertainment possessing even
the minimum of attractiveness, for the town appears to be of an immense
size--that is, for a South African town. The colonial Romulus and
Remus have shown at all times very lordly notions on the subject of
boundaries, and, being subject to none of those restrictions as to
the cost of every square foot of territory which have such a cramping
influence upon the founders of municipalities at home, they exercise
their grand ideas in the most extensive way. The streets of an early
colonial town are broad roads, and the spaces between the houses are so
great as almost to justify the criticism of those narrow-minded visitors
who call the town straggling. At one time Pietermaritzburg may have been
straggling, but it certainly did not strike Oswin Markham as being so
when he saw it now for the first time on his arrival. He felt that it
had got less of a Dutch look about it than Cape Town, and though that
towering and overshadowing impression which Table Mountain gives to Cape
Town was absent, yet the circle of hills about Pietermaritzburg seemed
to him--and his fancy was not particularly original--to give the town
almost that nestling appearance which by tradition is the natural
characteristic of an English village.
But if an _entrepreneur_ should calculate the probable numerical value
of an audience in Pietermaritzburg from a casual walk through the
streets, he would find that his assumption had been founded upon
an erroneous basis. The streets are long and in fact noble, but the
inhabitants available for fulfilling the duties of an audience at a
dramatic entertainment are out of all proportion few. Two difficulties
are to be contended with in making up audiences in South Africa: the
first is getting the people in, and the second is keeping people out. As
a rule the races of different colour do not amalgamate with sufficient
ease to allow of a mixed audience being pervaded with a common sympathy.
A white man seated between a Hottentot and a Kafir will scarcely be
brought to admit that he has had a pleasant evening, even though the
performance on the stage is of a choice character. A single Zulu will
make his presence easily perceptible in a room full of white people,
even though he should remain silent and in a secluded corner; while a
Hottentot, a Kafir, and a Zulu constitute a _bouquet d'Afrique_, the
savour of which is apt to divert the attention of any one in their
neighbourhood from the realistic effect of a garden scene upon the
stage.
Miss Lottie, being well aware that the audience-forming material in the
town was small in proportion to the extent of the streets, set herself
with her usual animation about the task of disposing of the remaining
tickets. She fancied that she understood something of the system to be
pursued with success amongst the burghers. She felt it to be her duty to
pay a round of visits to the houses where she had been intimate in the
days of her previous residence at the garrison; and she contrived to
impress upon her friends that the ties of old acquaintance should be
consolidated by the purchase of a number of her tickets. She visited
several families who, she knew, had been endeavouring for a long time
to work themselves into the military section of the town's society, and
after hinting to them that the officers of the Bayonetteers would
remain in the lowest spirits until they had made the acquaintance of the
individual members of each of those families, she invariably disposed of
a ticket to the individual member whose friendship was so longed for at
the garrison. As for the tradesmen of the town, she managed without any
difficulty, or even without forgetting her own standing, to make them
aware of the possible benefits that would accrue to the business of the
town under the patronage of the officers of the Bayonetteers; and so,
instead of having to beg of the tradesmen to support the deserving
charity on account of which she was taking such a large amount of
trouble, she found herself thanked for the permission she generously
accorded to these worthy men to purchase places for the evening.
She certainly deserved well of the deserving charity, and the old
field-officers, who rolled their eyes and pulled their moustaches,
recollecting the former labours of Miss Lottie, had got as imperfect
a knowledge of the proportions of her toil and reward as the less
good-natured of their wives who alluded to the trouble she was taking as
if it was not wholly disinterested. Lottie certainly took a vast amount
of trouble, and if Oswin Markham only appeared at the beginning of each
rehearsal and left at the conclusion, the success of the performance was
not at all jeopardised by his action.
For the entire week preceding the evening of the performance little
else was talked about in all sections of Maritzburgian society but the
prospects of its success. The ladies in the garrison were beginning
to be wearied of the topic of theatricals, and the colonel of the
Bayonetteers was heard to declare that he would not submit any longer to
have the regimental parades only half-officered day by day, and that
the plea of dramatic study would be insufficient in future to excuse
an absentee. But this vigorous action was probably accelerated by the
report that reached him of a certain lieutenant, who had only four lines
to speak in the play, having escaped duty for the entire week on the
grounds of the necessity for dramatic study.
At last the final nail was put in the fastenings of the scenery on the
stage, which a number of the Royal Engineers, under the guidance of
two officers and a clerk of the works, had erected; the footlights were
after considerable difficulty coaxed into flame. The officers of the
garrison and their wives made an exceedingly good front row in the
stalls, and a number of the sergeants and privates filled up the back
seats, ready to applaud, without reference to their merits at the
performance, their favourite officers when they should appear on the
stage; the intervening seats were supposed to be booked by the general
audience, and their punctuality of attendance proved that Lottie's
labours had not been in vain.
Mr. Harwood having tired of Durban, had been some days in the town, and
he walked from the hotel with Markham; for Mr. Markham, though the part
he was to play was one of most importance in the drama, did not think
it necessary to hang about the stage for the three hours preceding the
lifting of the curtain, as most of the Bayonetteers who were to act
believed to be prudent. Harwood took a seat in the second row of stalls,
for he had promised Lottie and one of the other young ladies who was
in the cast, to give each of them a candid opinion upon their
representations. For his own part he would have preferred giving his
opinion before seeing the representations, for he knew what a strain
would be put upon his candour after they were over.
When the orchestra--which was a great feature of the performance--struck
up an overture, the stage behind the curtain was crowded with figures
in top-boots and with noble hats encircled with ostrich feathers--the
element of brigandage entering largely into the construction of the
drama of the evening. Each of the figures carried a small pamphlet which
he studied every now and again, for in spite of the many missed parades,
a good deal of uncertainty as to the text of their parts pervaded the
minds of the histrionic Bayonetteers. Before the last notes of the
overture had crashed, Lottie Vincent, radiant in pearl powder and
pencilled eyebrows, wearing a plain muslin dress and white satin shoes,
her fair hair with a lovely white rose shining amongst its folds,
tripped out. Her character in the first act being that of a simple
village maiden, she was dressed with becoming consistency, every detail
down to those white satin shoes being, of course, in keeping with the
ordinary attire of simple village maidens wherever civilisation has
spread.
“For goodness' sake leave aside your books,” she said to the young men
as she came forward. “Do you mean to bring them out with you and read
from them? Surely after ten rehearsals you might be perfect.”
“Hang me, if I haven't a great mind not to appear at all in this rot,”
said one of the gentlemen in the top-boots to his companions. He had
caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror a minute previously and he did
not like the picture. “If it was not for the sake of the people who have
come I'd cut the whole affair.”
“She has done nothing but bully,” remarked a second of these desperadoes
in top-boots.
“All because that fellow Markham has shown himself to be no idiot,” said
a third.
“Count Rodolph loves her, but I'll spare him not: he dies to-night,”
remarked another, but he was only refreshing his memory on the dialogue
he was to speak.
When the gentleman who was acting as prompter saw that the stage was
cleared, he gave the signal for the orchestra to play the curtain up. At
the correct moment, and with a perfection of stage management that would
have been creditable to any dramatic establishment in the world, as
one of the Natal newspapers a few days afterwards remarked with great
justice, the curtain was raised, and an excellent village scene was
disclosed to the enthusiastic audience. Two of the personages came on
at once, and so soon as their identity was clearly established, the
soldiers began to applaud, which was doubtless very gratifying to
the two officers, from a regimental standpoint, though it somewhat
interfered with the progress of the scene. The prompter, however,
hastened to the aid of the young men who had lost themselves in that
whirlwind of applause, and the dialogue began to run easily.
Lottie had made for herself a little loophole in the back drop-scene
through which she observed the audience. She saw that the place was
crowded to the doors--English-speaking and Dutch-speaking burghers
were in the central seats; she smiled as she noticed the aspirants to
garrison intimacies crowding up as close as possible to the officers'
wives in the front row, and she wondered if it would be necessary to
acknowledge any of them for longer than a week. Then she saw Harwood
with the faintest smile imaginable upon his face, as the young men on
the stage repeated the words of their parts without being guilty either
of the smallest mistake or the least dramatic spirit; and this time she
wondered if, when she would be going through her part and she would look
towards Harwood, she should find the same sort of smile upon his face.
She rather thought not. Then, as the time for her call approached, she
hastened round to her entrance, waiting until the poor stuff the two
young men were speaking came to an end; then, not a second past her
time, she entered, demure and ingenuous as all village maidens in satin
slippers must surely be.
She was not disappointed in her reception by the audience. The ladies
in the front stalls who had spoken, it might be, unkindly of her in
private, now showed their good nature in public, and the field officers
forgot all the irregularities she had caused in the regiment and
welcomed her heartily; while the tradesmen in the middle rows made their
applause a matter of business. The village maiden with the satin shoes
smiled in the timid, fluttered, dovelike way that is common amongst the
class, and then went on with her dialogue. She felt altogether happy,
for she knew that the young lady who was to appear in the second scene
could not possibly meet with such an expression of good feeling as she
had obtained from the audience.
And now the play might be said to have commenced in earnest. It was by
no means a piece of French frivolity, this drama, but a genuine work of
English art as it existed thirty years ago, and it was thus certain to
commend itself to the Pietermaritzburghers who liked solidity even when
it verged upon stolidity.
_Throne or Spouse_ was the title of the play, and if its incidents were
somewhat improbable and its details utterly impossible, it was not the
less agreeable to the audience. The two young men who had appeared in
top-boots on the village green had informed each other, the audience
happily overhearing, that they had been out hunting with a certain
Prince, and that they had got separated from their companions.
They embraced the moment as opportune for the discussion of a few court
affairs, such as the illness ot the monarch, and the Prince's prospects
of becoming his successor, and then they thought it would be as well to
try and find their way back to the court; so off they went. Then Miss
Vincent came on the village green and reminded herself that her name was
Marie and that she was a simple village maiden; she also recalled the
fact that she lived alone with her mother in Yonder Cottage. It seemed
to give her considerable satisfaction to reflect that, though poor, she
was, and she took it upon her to say that her mother was also, strictly
virtuous, and she wished to state in the most emphatic terms that though
she was wooed by a certain Count Rodolph, yet, as she did not love him,
she would never be his. Lottie was indeed very emphatic at this part,
and her audience applauded her determination as Marie. Curiously enough,
she had no sooner expressed herself in this fashion than one of the
Bayonetteers entered, and at the sight of him Lottie called out, “Ah,
he is here! Count Rodolph!” This the audience felt was a piece of subtle
constructive art on the part of the author. Then the new actor replied,
“Yes, Count Rodolph is here, sweet Marie, where he would ever be, by the
side of the fairest village maiden,” etc.
The new actor was attired in one of the broad hats of the
period--whatever it may have been--with a long ostrich feather. He had
an immense black moustache, and his eyebrows were exceedingly heavy. He
also wore top-boots, a long sword, and a black cloak, one fold of which
he now and again threw over his left shoulder when it worked its way
down his arm. It was not surprising that further on in the drama
the Count was found to be a dissembler; his costume fostered any
proclivities in this way that might otherwise have remained dormant.
The village maiden begged to know why the Count persecuted her with his
attentions, and he replied that he did so on account of his love for
her. She then assured him that she could never bring herself to look
on him with favour; and this naturally drew from him the energetic
declaration of his own passion for her. He concluded by asking her to be
his: she cried with emphasis, “Never!” He repeated his application, and
again she cried “Never!” and told him to begone. “You shall be mine,” he
cried, catching her by the arm. “Wretch, leave me,” she said, in all her
village-maiden dignity; he repeated his assertion, and clasped her round
the waist with ardour. Then she shrieked for help, and a few simple
villagers rushed hurriedly on the stage, but the Count drew his sword
and threatened with destruction any one who might advance. The simple
villagers thought it prudent to retire. “Ha! now, proud Marie, you are
in my power,” said the Count. “Is there no one to save me?” shrieked
Marie. “Yes, here is some one who will save you or perish in the
attempt,” came a voice from the wings, and with an agitation pervading
the sympathetic orchestra, a respectable young man in a green
hunting-suit with a horn by his side and a drawn sword in his hand,
rushed on, and was received with an outburst of applause from the
audience who, in Pietermaritzburg, as in every place else, are ever on
the side of virtue. This new actor was Oswin Markham, and it seemed that
Lottie's stories regarding the romance associated with his appearance
were successful, for not only was there much applause, but a quiet hum
of remark was heard amongst the front stalls, and it was some moments
before the business of the stage could be proceeded with.
So soon as he was able to speak, the Count wished to know who was the
intruder that dared to face one of the nobles of the land, and the
intruder replied in general terms, dwelling particularly upon the
fact that only those were noble who behaved nobly. He expressed an
inclination to fight with the Count, but the latter declined to
gratify him on account of the difference there was between their social
standing, and he left the stage saying, “Farewell, proud beauty, we
shall meet again.” Then he turned to the stranger, and, laying his hand
on his sword-hilt after he had thrown his cloak over his shoulder, he
cried, “We too shall meet again.”
The stranger then made some remarks to himself regarding the manner in
which he was stirred by Marie's beauty. He asked her who she was, and
she replied, truthfully enough, that she was a simple village maiden,
and that she lived in Yonder Cottage. He then told her that he was a
member of the Prince's retinue, and that he had lost his way at the
hunt; and he begged the girl to conduct him to Yonder Cottage. The girl
expressed her pleasure at being able to show him some little attention,
but she remarked that the stranger would find Yonder Cottage very
humble. She assured him, however, of the virtue of herself, and again
went so far as to speak for her mother. The stranger then made a nice
little speech about the constituents of true nobility, and went out with
Marie as the curtain fell.
The next scene was laid in Yonder Cottage; the virtuous mother being
discovered knitting, and whiling away the time by talking to herself
of the days when she was nurse to the late Queen. Then Marie and the
stranger entered, and there was a pleasant family party in Yonder
Cottage. The stranger was evidently struck with Marie, and the scene
ended by his swearing to make her his wife. The next act showed the
stranger in his true character as the Prince; his royal father has heard
of his attachment to Marie, and not being an enthusiast on the subject
of simple village maidens becoming allied to the royal house, he
threatens to cut off the entail of the kingdom--which it appeared he
had power to do--if the Prince does not relinquish Marie, and he dies
leaving a clause in his will to this effect.
The Prince rushes to Yonder Cottage--hears that Marie is carried off
by the Count--rescues her--marries her--and then the virtuous mother
confesses that the Prince is her own child, and Marie is the heiress to
the throne. No one appeared to dispute the story--Marie is consequently
Queen and her husband King, having through his proper treatment of the
girl gained the kingdom; and the curtain falls on general happiness,
Count Rodolph having committed suicide.
“Nothing could have been more successful,” said Lottie, all tremulous
with excitement, to Oswin, as they went off together amid a tumult of
applause, which was very sweet to her ears.
“I think it went off very well indeed,” said Oswin. “Your acting was
perfection, Miss Vincent.”
“Call me Marie,” she said playfully. “But we must really go before the
curtain; hear how they are applauding.”
“I think we have had enough of it,” said Oswin.
“Come along,” she cried; “I dislike it above all things, but there is
nothing for it.”
The call for Lottie and Oswin was determined, so after the soldiers had
called out their favourite officers, Oswin brought the girl forward, and
the enthusiasm was very great. Lottie then went off, and for a few
moments Markham remained alone upon the stage. He was most heartily
applauded, and, after acknowledging the compliment, he was just stepping
back, when from the centre of the seats a man's voice came, loud and
clear:
“Bravo, old boy! you're a trump wherever you turn up.”
There was a general moving of heads, and some laughter in the front
rows.
But Oswin Markham looked from where he was standing on the stage down
to the place whence that voice seemed to come. He neither laughed nor
smiled, only stepped back behind the curtain.
The stage was now crowded with the actors and their friends; everybody
was congratulating everybody else. Lottie was in the highest spirits.
“Could anything have been more successful?” she cried again to Oswin
Markham. He looked at her without answering for some moments. “I don't
know,” he said at last. “Successful? perhaps so.”
“What on earth do you mean?” she asked; “are you afraid of the Natal
critics?”
“No, I can't say I am.”
“Of what then?”
“There is a person at the door who wishes to speak to you, Mr. Markham,”
said one of the servants coming up to Oswin. “He says he doesn't carry
cards, but you will see his name here,” and he handed Oswin an envelope.
Oswin Markham read the name on the envelope and crushed it into his
pocket, saying to the servant:
“Show the--gentleman up to the room where I dressed.”
So Miss Lottie did not become aware of the origin of Mr. Markham's doubt
as to the success of the great drama _Throne or Spouse_.