There was a ripple of amusement. Miss Delacourt heard it, flushed
defiance in an un-Cordelia-like manner, and tore through the concluding
lines. She got on well enough in the short responses, but the critics
were waiting—as was Brainard, with trepidation—to see what the girl would
make of her next long speech.
Alas! Miss Louisiana sailed in, as she would have said, to paint the
lines. She drew herself up in all her girlish dignity.
I yet beseech your majesty,
If for I want that glib and oily part
To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend
I’ll do’t before I speak—that you make known—
A frightened look came over the girl’s face. “She is rattled,” Brainard
said to himself, “and will break!”
Evidently the audience thought so, too, and there was a painful hush, in
which MacNaughton’s efforts to whisper the words from the side could be
heard.
“It is no—no—oh, hang it all, how does the talk go?” Louisiana muttered
audibly, swinging on her heel toward the wings.
There was a roar of laughter from the house. With one contemptuous
glance at the audience, Cordelia walked deliberately into the wings, and,
returning in fierce haste, finished her speech. As she made her exit at
the end of the scene, she jerked the train of her dress and gave it a
kick in good vaudeville style. The galleries caught fire, and began to
stamp and hoot. Louisiana turned and distinctly made a face, as a child
might, at her tormentors. The applause was furious. It lasted so long
that to resume the play with any degree of seriousness seemed utterly
impossible.
At the end of the act, the manager pushed the unwilling Cordelia out upon
the stage. She made a sulky little bow and another face. There were
calls and whistles. She was a hit. But _Lear_!
Brainard, laughing in spite of himself, bit his lips with mortification.
After this nothing could bring the audience to take the performance
seriously. The galleries began to guy Warner, and to exchange repartee
with the fool.
Fortunately, Cordelia did not appear during the next two acts. When she
came on at the conclusion of the fourth act, for the affecting scene with
the blind king, the gallery received her uproariously. She was white,
with set lips, and she threw herself into her lines with a fine scorn of
the mirthful house. When her memory failed her, she cut or improvised
with fluent inspiration.
“She’s acting!” Farson whispered in amazement to Brainard.
“Yes, she’s acting, but they don’t know it!”
For the house, having amused itself once with Miss Delacourt, refused to
take her seriously, and was ready to explode with derisive mirth at any
unconventional gesture, any wrong accent. Poor Louisiana gave them
enough openings; but she held herself steadily, and was winning her way
with the sweetness of her voice and her real charm, when, alas, there
came a long, hard line. She wavered, tried to bluff it out, but broke
down, burst into tears, and fled to the wings.
“Poor child! It was too much for her,” Brainard murmured, while Farson
tried to hiss down the laughter.
It would not down, however. Finally Brainard rose and walked down the
aisle to the front. Holding up his hand to still the noise, he said:
“Miss Delacourt came to us merely as a pupil. We were compelled to ask
her to take the difficult rôle of Cordelia at five hours’ notice, owing
to the sudden illness of Miss Leroy. I think that Miss Delacourt
deserves our thanks and our sympathy, instead of these jeers.”
There was silence, but _Lear_ was doomed. The critics had left, and
others followed. Those that stayed until the curtain swept together for
the last time snickered contemptuously over the affair. Louisiana had
saved the occasion from dismal dullness; she had turned _Lear_ into a
farce!