BEHIND THE SCENES.
To Violet Westford scarcely anything could have been more trying than
the ordeal which she now had to undergo. What scene could be more
strange to this delicate-minded, home-bred, carefully nurtured girl,
than the busy world behind the curtain in a great London theatre?
The door-keeper of the Circenses received the card which she
presented to him, and, after uttering some half-sulky, half-insolent
remark, gave her into the charge of a dirty boy, who was to take
her upstairs to the stage, where she would find Mr. Maltravers, the
stage-manager.
Poor Violet was almost bewildered by the many dark passages along
which her conductor led her. There seemed scarcely a gleam of the
summer sunlight in all the great building, and the underground
passages smelt like vaults or charnel-houses--charnel-houses in
which there was a perpetual escape of gas, mingled with that odour
of corduroy and shoe-leather which the working classes are apt to
leave behind them, and which a very witty lady once spoke of as their
_esprit de corps_.
At last the dirty boy led the way up a little break-neck staircase,
opened a slamming wooden door, and ushered Violet into a corner,
where crowds of shabbily dressed men and women were lounging amongst
heaps of piled-up scenery.
These men and women were the inferiors and subordinates of the
company--the banner bearers and supernumeraries who appear in grand
processions, and the ill-paid girls who fill up the stage in crowded
scenes.
Many of these girls were dressed neatly and plainly; others were
distinguished by a tawdry shabbiness--a cheap finery of costume; but
there were some girls whom Violet saw lounging together in little
groups, whose attire would have scarcely seemed out of place upon
women of rank and wealth--handsome girls some of them; and they
looked at the stranger’s shabby mourning dress with a supercilious
stare.
Violet had to stand for some time amongst these different groups,
waiting until it should please the stage-manager to come to her.
That gentleman was working as hard as it is possible for a man to
work; running from one side of the great stage to the other; giving
directions here, there, and everywhere; abusing those whose stupidity
or neglect annoyed him; giving a hasty word of praise now and then;
answering questions, writing letters, correcting the rough proofs of
playbills, looking at scenery; stooping over the orchestra to say a
few words to the _répétiteur_; and appearing to do a dozen things at
once, so quickly did he pass from one task to another.
Little by little Violet became accustomed to the half-darkness of the
place, which was only illumined by the glare of a row of lamps at the
edge of the stage, technically known as the “float.”
As she grew better able to distinguish objects around her, she felt
still more keenly the strangeness of her position. The handsomely
attired girls stared at her, always with the same supercilious gaze;
and at last one of them, after looking at her fixedly for some
time, addressed her. She was a beautiful, dark-eyed, Jewish-looking
girl, and her costume was more extravagant than that of any of her
companions.
A train of mauve moire antique, bordered with a deep flounce of the
richest block lace, trailed upon the dirty boards of the theatre.
Over this dress the Jewess wore a lace shawl of the costliest
description; and a small white-chip bonnet, adorned with mauve
feathers and silver butterflies, crowned her queen-like head.
She was a magnificent looking woman--a woman who might have
graced a throne; but there was something almost terrible in her
beauty--something that sent a thrill of indefinable pain and terror
through the heart of the thoughtful observer.
Her dark eyes had an ominous lustre; there was a hectic bloom upon
her oval cheek, and that cheek, perfect though its outline still was,
had a sunken look that presaged ill.
A physician would have said that the stamp of decay was upon this
splendid creature, the foreshadowing of an early death.
“Pray, are you engaged here?” she asked of Violet; “because, unless
you are engaged, you will not be allowed to stand in this wing. It is
against the rules for strangers to hang about the theatre.”
There was an insolence in the girl’s tone which aroused Violet
Westford’s innate dignity.
She replied very quietly, but with perfect self-possession.
“I am here because I have been told to come here,” she said.
“By whom?”
“By Mr. Maltravers.”
“O, indeed!” exclaimed the Jewess; “then in that case I suppose you
are engaged?”
“I believe so.”
“For what?”
“To appear in the new burlesque.”
The Jewess flushed crimson, and an angry light gleamed in her
splendid eyes.
“What!” she exclaimed, “then I suppose you are to be the Queen of
Beauty in the grand tableau?”
“So Mr. Maltravers told me.”
The Jewess laughed--a hollow laugh, that was very painful to hear.
To sit in the golden temple, as the representative of all that is
lovely, the observed of all observers, had been Esther Vanberg’s
ambition. She was the handsomest girl in the theatre, and she fully
expected to be chosen for this distinction. So when she found a
stranger was about to be engaged, she flew to Mr. Maltravers, and
complained to him bitterly of an arrangement which she declared to be
a deliberate insult to herself.
The stage-manager was a thorough man of the world, accustomed to deal
with all the different airs and graces of the company under his rule.
He shrugged his shoulders, paid the handsome Jewess some very
high-flown compliments, but told her he wanted her to fill another
part of the tableau, and that he must have a new lady for the Queen
of Beauty.
The truth of the matter was, that in the opinion of Mr. Maltravers
the beauty of Esther Vanberg was on the wane. She was very well known
to the regular audience at the Circenses, and, handsome though she
was, people might be, perhaps, just a little tired of her beauty.
Beyond this, there was something in Esther’s beauty that was almost
demoniac in character--something which reflected the reckless
wildness of her life and the violence of her temper. Mr. Maltravers
had the eye of an artist. His taste in the composition of a stage
picture was scarcely inferior to that of Vestris herself, beneath
whose despotic sway he had served his apprenticeship in the art of
stage management. For the central figure of his tableau he wanted a
woman whose beauty should possess the charm of youth and innocence.
Thus it was that he had been peculiarly struck by the appearance of
Violet Westford. He was a hard, worldly-minded man of business, but
he was devoted to the dramatic art, and he held the interests of the
theatre before every other consideration.
He came off the stage presently, and made his way to the spot where
Esther and Violet were standing.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said to Violet, addressing her with
a fatherly familiarity that was entirely free from impertinence.
“I’m very glad to see you. You’ve made up your mind to accept the
engagement?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well, then; go upstairs to the wardrobe--any one will show you
the way--and ask Mrs. Clements to measure you for your new dress.
You can take this,” he added, scrawling a few words in pencil on the
back of a card. “Mrs. C. knows all about the dress. There, run along,
that’s a good girl.”
Before Violet could reply, Mr. Maltravers had returned to the centre
of the stage, and was busy among the scene-shifters. A good-natured
looking, gentle-voiced girl, very simply but yet very neatly
dressed, who had been sitting in a dark corner of the side-scenes
working crochet, came forward and offered to conduct Violet to the
wardrobe-room, and the two set out together.
It was a long journey--up staircases that seemed interminable to
Violet; but at last they arrived at a great, bare whitewashed
apartment, immediately under the roof of the theatre--an apartment
which was littered from one end to the other with scraps of
gorgeous-hued satin and glittering tissue, spangles, ribbons, and
gold-lace. About twenty women were at work here, and to one of these
Violet was conducted.
Mr. Maltravers’s card produced an immediate effect. The
wardrobe-mistress left her work, and proceeded to take Violet’s
measure for the dress. She was in raptures with the young girl’s
appearance, and told her she would look lovely in a robe of silver
tissue, spangled with stars, and with draperies of rose-coloured
crape.
“The dress will be perfection, miss, _per_fection, and will just suit
your beautiful fair skin. Now don’t you let any of the ballet-ladies
persuade you to plaster your face with _blanc de perle_, or _blanc
Rosati_, or _blanc de_ something, as most of them do, until their
faces have about us much expression as you’ll see in a whitewashed
wall. I shall take great pains with the costume, for I know Mr.
Maltravers has set his heart upon the Temple of Beauty being a great
success. My youngest little girl is to be one of the Cupids, and
she does nothing but talk of it at home. She went on in last year’s
pantomime as the Singing Oyster, and did _so_ well, bless her dear
little heart!”
To Violet all this talk was utterly strange. Already she began to
look forward with fear to her first appearance on a public stage; but
for the sake of those she loved she would have dared more than the
ordeal before her.
She went downstairs, and at the back of the stage met Mr. Maltravers,
who told her to come at ten o’clock the next morning for the
rehearsal of the new burlesque.
“O, by the bye,” he said, “what name shall I put down in the cast?
You never told me your name.”
“My name is Wes----,” Violet began; but she stopped abruptly,
remembering that the subordinate position she was about to occupy in
that theatre would be a kind of disgrace to her lost father’s name.
The stage-manager seemed to guess the nature of her scruples.
“You are not obliged to give me your real name, my dear,” he said
kindly; “if you like to take a false name, you can do so. Most
actresses and ladies of the ballet assume false names: they have
generally some relations or friends who object to their appearance
on the stage--straitlaced people, you know, who fancy that the
stage-door is the entrance to a kind of Tophet.”
“You are very good, sir. I should not wish my position here to be
known,” Violet faltered. “I honour and admire the dramatic art, and
those who profess it; but as my position in the theatre will be a
very humble one, I shall be glad to keep my name a secret. You can
call me Watson, if you please, Mr. Maltravers.”
“Very well, my dear; so be it. You will be known here as Miss Watson.
And don’t you be put out if Esther Vanberg gives herself airs because
you’ve been chosen for the best place in the tableau. You just attend
to your business, and if Vanberg annoys you, come to me, and I’ll
take my lady down a peg or two.”