LEADS TO A MEETING.
“Don't be nervous,” said the O'Kelly, “and don't try to do too much. You
have a very fair voice, but it's not powerful. Keep cool and open your
mouth.”
It was eleven o'clock in the morning. We were standing at the entrance
of the narrow court leading to the stage door. For a fortnight past the
O'Kelly had been coaching me. It had been nervous work for both of us,
but especially for the O'Kelly. Mrs. O'Kelly, a thin, acid-looking lady,
of whom I once or twice had caught a glimpse while promenading Belsize
Square awaiting the O'Kelly's signal, was a serious-minded lady, with a
conscientious objection to all music not of a sacred character. With the
hope of winning the O'Kelly from one at least of his sinful tendencies,
the piano had been got rid of, and its place in the drawing-room filled
by an American organ of exceptionally lugubrious tone. With this we
had had to make shift, and though the O'Kelly--a veritable musical
genius--had succeeded in evolving from it an accompaniment to “Sally in
Our Alley” less misleading and confusing than might otherwise have been
the case, the result had not been to lighten our labours. My rendering
of the famous ballad had, in consequence, acquired a dolefulness not
intended by the composer. Sung as I sang it, the theme became, to employ
a definition since grown hackneyed as applied to Art, a problem ballad.
Involuntarily one wondered whether the marriage would turn out as
satisfactorily as the young man appeared to anticipate. Was there not,
when one came to think of it, a melancholy, a pessimism ingrained within
the temperament of the complainful hero that would ill assort with
those instincts toward frivolity the careful observer could not avoid
discerning in the charming yet nevertheless somewhat shallow character
of Sally.
“Lighter, lighter. Not so soulful,” would demand the O'Kelly, as the
solemn notes rolled jerkily from the groaning instrument beneath his
hands.
Once we were nearly caught, Mrs. O'Kelly returning from a district
visitors' committee meeting earlier than was expected. Hastily I was
hidden in a small conservatory adjutting from the first floor landing,
where, crouching behind flower-pots, I listened in fear and trembling to
the severe cross-examination of the O'Kelly.
“William, do not prevaricate. It was not a hymn.”
“Me dear, so much depends upon the time. Let me give ye an example of
what I mean.”
“William, pray in my presence not to play tricks with sacred melodies.
If you have no respect for religion, please remember that I have.
Besides, why should you be playing hymns in any time at ten o'clock
in the morning? It is not like you, William, and I do not credit your
explanation. And you were singing. I distinctly heard the word 'Sally'
as I opened the door.”
“Salvation, me dear,” corrected the O'Kelly.
“Your enunciation, William, is not usually so much at fault.”
“A little hoarseness, me dear,” explained the O'Kelly.
“Your voice did not sound hoarse. Perhaps it will be better if we do not
pursue the subject further.”
With this the O'Kelly appeared to agree.
“A lady a little difficult to get on with when ye're feeling well and
strong,” so the O'Kelly would explain her; “but if ye happen to be ill,
one of the kindest, most devoted of women. When I was down with typhoid
three years ago, a tenderer nurse no man could have had. I shall never
forget it. And so she would be again to-morrow, if there was anything
serious the matter with me.”
I murmured the well-known quotation.
“Mrs. O'Kelly to a T,” concurred the O'Kelly. “I sometimes wonder if
Lady Scott may not have been the same sort of woman.”
“The unfortunate part of it is,” continued the O'Kelly, “that I'm such
a healthy beggar; it don't give her a chance. If I were only a chronic
invalid, now, there's nothing that woman would not do to make me happy.
As it is--” The O'Kelly struck a chord. We resumed our studies.
But to return to our conversation at the stage door.
“Meet me at the Cheshire Cheese at one o'clock,” said the O'Kelly,
shaking hands. “If ye don't get on here, we'll try something else; but
I've spoken to Hodgson, and I think ye will. Good luck to ye!”
He went his way and I mine. In a glass box just behind the door a
curved-nose, round-eyed little man, looking like an angry bird in a
cage, demanded of me my business. I showed him my letter of appointment.
“Up the passage, across the stage, along the corridor, first floor,
second door on the right,” he instructed me in one breath, and shut the
window with a snap.
I proceeded up the passage. It somewhat surprised me to discover that
I was not in the least excited at the thought of this, my first
introduction to “behind the scenes.”
I recall my father's asking a young soldier on his return from the
Crimea what had been his sensations at the commencement of his first
charge.
“Well,” replied the young fellow, “I was worrying all the time,
remembering I had rushed out leaving the beer tap running in the
canteen, and I could not forget it.”
So far as the stage I found my way in safety. Pausing for a moment and
glancing round, my impression was not so much disillusionment concerning
all things theatrical as realisation of my worst forebodings. In that
one moment all glamour connected with the stage fell from me, nor has it
since ever returned to me. From the tawdry decorations of the auditorium
to the childish make-belief littered around on the stage, I saw the
Theatre a painted thing of shreds and patches--the grown child's
doll's-house. The Drama may improve us, elevate us, interest and teach
us. I am sure it does; long may it flourish! But so likewise does the
dressing and undressing of dolls, the opening of the front of the house,
and the tenderly putting of them away to bed in rooms they completely
fill, train our little dears to the duties and the joys of motherhood.
Toys! what wise child despises them? Art, fiction, the musical glasses:
are they not preparing us for the time, however distant, when we shall
at last be grown up?
In a maze of ways beyond the stage I lost myself, but eventually, guided
by voices, came to a large room furnished barely with many chairs
and worn settees, and here I found some twenty to thirty ladies
and gentlemen already seated. They were of varying ages, sizes
and appearance, but all of them alike in having about them that
impossible-to-define but impossible-to-mistake suggestion of
theatricality. The men were chiefly remarkable for having no hair on
their faces, but a good deal upon their heads; the ladies, one and
all, were blessed with remarkably pink and white complexions and
exceptionally bright eyes. The conversation, carried on in subdued but
penetrating voices, was chiefly of “him” and “her.” Everybody appeared
to be on an affectionate footing with everybody else, the terms of
address being “My dear,” “My love,” “Old girl,” “Old chappie,” Christian
names--when name of any sort was needful--alone being employed. I
hesitated for a minute with the door in my hand, fearing I had stumbled
upon a family gathering. As, however, nobody seemed disconcerted at my
entry, I ventured to take a vacant seat next to an extremely small and
boyish-looking gentleman and to ask him if this was the room in which I,
an applicant for a place in the chorus of the forthcoming comic opera,
ought to be waiting.
He had large, fishy eyes, with which he looked me up and down. For such
a length of time he remained thus regarding me in silence that a massive
gentleman sitting near, who had overheard, took it upon himself to reply
in the affirmative, adding that from what he knew of Butterworth we
would all of us be waiting here a damned sight longer than any gentleman
should keep other ladies and gentlemen waiting for no reason at all.
“I think it exceedingly bad form,” observed the fishy-eyed gentleman,
in deep contralto tones, “for any gentleman to take it upon himself to
reply to a remark addressed to quite another gentleman.”
“I beg your pardon,” retorted the large gentleman. “I thought you were
asleep.”
“I think it very ill manners,” remarked the small gentlemen in the same
slow and impressive tones, “for any gentleman to tell another gentleman,
who happens to be wide awake, that he thought he was asleep.”
“Sir,” returned the massive gentleman, assuming with the help of a large
umbrella a quite Johnsonian attitude, “I decline to alter my manners to
suit your taste.”
“If you are satisfied with them,” replied the small gentleman, “I cannot
help it. But I think you are making a mistake.”
“Does anybody know what the opera is about?” asked a bright little woman
at the other end of the room.
“Does anybody ever know what a comic opera is about?” asked another
lady, whose appearance suggested experience.
“I once asked the author,” observed a weary-looking gentleman, speaking
from a corner. “His reply was: 'Well, if you had asked me at the
beginning of the rehearsals I might have been able to tell you, but
damned if I could now!'”
“It wouldn't surprise me,” observed a good-looking gentleman in a velvet
coat, “if there occurred somewhere in the proceedings a drinking chorus
for male voices.”
“Possibly, if we are good,” added a thin lady with golden hair, “the
heroine will confide to us her love troubles, which will interest us and
excite us.”
The door at the further end of the room opened and a name was called.
An elderly lady rose and went out.
“Poor old Gertie!” remarked sympathetically the thin lady with the
golden hair. “I'm told that she really had a voice once.”
“When poor young Bond first came to London,” said the massive gentleman
who was sitting on my left, “I remember his telling me he applied to
Lord Barrymore's 'tiger,' Alexander Lee, I mean, of course, who was then
running the Strand Theatre, for a place in the chorus. Lee heard him
sing two lines, and then jumped up. 'Thanks, that'll do; good morning,'
says Lee. Bond knew he had got a good voice, so he asked Lee what was
wrong. 'What's wrong?' shouts Lee. 'Do you think I hire a chorus to show
up my principals?'”
“Having regard to the company present,” commented the fishy-eyed
gentleman, “I consider that anecdote as distinctly lacking in tact.”
The feeling of the company appeared to be with the fish-eyed young man.
For the next half hour the door at the further end of the room continued
to open and close, devouring, ogre-fashion, each time some dainty human
morsel, now chorus gentleman, now chorus lady. Conversation among our
thinning ranks became more fitful, a growing anxiety making for silence.
At length, “Mr. Horace Moncrieff” called the voice of the unseen Charon.
In common with the rest, I glanced round languidly to see what sort of
man “Mr. Horace Moncrieff” might be. The door was pushed open further.
Charon, now revealed as a pale-faced young man with a drooping
moustache, put his head into the room and repeated impatiently his
invitation to the apparently coy Moncrieff. It suddenly occurred to me
that I was Mr. Horace Moncrieff.
“So glad you've found yourself,” said the pale-faced young man, as I
joined him at the door. “Please don't lose yourself again; we're rather
pressed for time.”
I crossed with him through a deserted refreshment bar--one of the
saddest of sights--into a room beyond. A melancholy-looking gentleman
was seated at the piano. Beside him stood a tall, handsome man, who
was opening and reading rapidly from a bundle of letters he held in his
hand. A big, burly, bored-looking gentleman was making desperate
efforts to be amused at the staccato conversation of a sharp-faced,
restless-eyed gentleman, whose peculiarity was that he never by any
chance looked at the person to whom he was talking, but always at
something or somebody else.
“Moncrieff?” enquired the tall, handsome man--whom I later discovered to
be Mr. Hodgson, the manager--without raising his eyes from his letters.
The pale-faced gentleman responded for me.
“Fire away,” said Mr. Hodgson.
“What is it?” asked of me wearily the melancholy gentleman at the piano.
“'Sally in Our Alley,'” I replied.
“What are you?” interrupted Mr. Hodgson. He had never once looked at me,
and did not now.
“A tenor,” I replied. “Not a full tenor,” I added, remembering the
O'Kelly's instructions.
“Utterly impossible to fill a tenor,” remarked the restless-eyed
gentleman, looking at me and speaking to the worried-looking gentleman.
“Ever tried?”
Everybody laughed, with the exception of the melancholy gentleman at the
piano, Mr. Hodgson throwing in his contribution without raising his eyes
from his letters. Throughout the proceedings the restless-eyed gentleman
continued to make humorous observations of this nature, at which
everybody laughed, excepting always the melancholy pianist--a short,
sharp, mechanical laugh, devoid of the least suggestion of amusement.
The restless-eyed gentleman, it appeared, was the leading low comedian
of the theatre.
“Go on,” said the melancholy gentleman, and commenced the accompaniment.
“Tell me when he's going to begin,” remarked Mr. Hodgson at the
conclusion of the first verse.
“He has a fair voice,” said my accompanist. “He's evidently nervous.”
“There is a prejudice throughout theatrical audiences,” observed Mr.
Hodgson, “in favour of a voice they can hear. That is all I am trying to
impress upon him.”
The second verse, so I imagined, I sang in the voice of a trumpet. The
burly gentleman--the translator of the French libretto, as he turned
out to be; the author of the English version, as he preferred to
be called--acknowledged to having distinctly detected a sound. The
restless-eyed comedian suggested an announcement from the stage
requesting strict silence during my part of the performance.
The sickness of fear was stealing over me. My voice, so it seemed to me,
disappointed at the effect it had produced, had retired, sulky, into my
boots, whence it refused to emerge.
“Your voice is all right--very good,” whispered the musical conductor.
“They want to hear the best you can do, that's all.”
At this my voice ran up my legs and out of my mouth. “Thirty shillings
a week, half salary for rehearsals. If that's all right, Mr. Catchpole
will give you your agreement. If not, very much obliged. Good morning,”
said Mr. Hodgson, still absorbed in his correspondence.
With the pale-faced young man I retired to a desk in the corner, where
a few seconds sufficed for the completion of the business. Leaving, I
sought to catch the eye of my melancholy friend, but he appeared too
sunk in dejection to notice anything. The restless-eyed comedian,
looking at the author of the English version and addressing me as
Boanerges, wished me good morning, at which the everybody laughed; and,
informed as to the way out by the pale-faced Mr. Catchpole, I left.
The first “call” was for the following Monday at two o'clock. I found
the theatre full of life and bustle. The principals, who had just
finished their own rehearsal, were talking together in a group. We
ladies and gentlemen of the chorus filled the centre of the stage. I
noticed the lady I had heard referred to as Gertie; as also the thin
lady with the golden hair. The massive gentleman and the fishy-eyed
young man were again in close proximity; so long as I knew them they
always were together, possessed, apparently, of a sympathetic antipathy
for each other. The fishy-eyed young gentleman was explaining the age at
which he thought decayed chorus singers ought, in justice to themselves
and the public, to retire from the profession; the massive gentleman,
the age and size at which he thought parcels of boys ought to be
learning manners across their mother's knee.
Mr. Hodgson, still reading letters exactly as I had left him four days
ago, stood close to the footlights. My friend, the musical director,
armed with a violin and supported by about a dozen other musicians,
occupied the orchestra. The adapter and the stage manager--a Frenchman
whom I found it good policy to mistake for a born Englishman--sat
deep in confabulation at a small table underneath a temporary gas jet.
Quarter of an hour or so passed by, and then the stage manager, becoming
suddenly in a hurry, rang a small bell furiously.
“Clear, please; all clear,” shouted a small boy, with important air
suggestive of a fox terrier; and, following the others, I retreated to
the wings.
The comedian and the leading lady--whom I knew well from the front,
but whom I should never have recognised--severed themselves from their
companions and joined Mr. Hodgson by the footlights. As a preliminary we
were sorted out, according to our sizes, into loving couples.
“Ah,” said the stage manager, casting an admiring gaze upon the
fishy-eyed young man, whose height might have been a little over five
feet two, “I have the very girl for you--a beauty!” Darting into the
group of ladies, he returned with quite the biggest specimen, a lady
of magnificent proportions, whom, with the air of the virtuous uncle
of melodrama, he bestowed upon the fishy-eyed young man. To the massive
gentleman was given a sharp-faced little lady, who at a distance
appeared quite girlish. Myself I found mated to the thin lady with the
golden hair.
At last complete, we took our places in the then approved semi-circle,
and the attenuated orchestra struck up the opening chorus. My music,
which had been sent me by post, I had gone over with the O'Kelly, and
about that I felt confident; but for the rest, ill at ease.
“I am afraid,” said the thin lady, “I must ask you to put your arm round
my waist. It's very shocking, I know, but, you see, our salary depends
upon it. Do you think you could manage it?”
I glanced into her face. A whimsical expression of fun replied to me and
drove away my shyness. I carried out her instructions to the best of my
ability.
The indefatigable stage manager ran in and out among us while we sang,
driving this couple back a foot or so, this other forward, herding this
group closer together, throughout another making space, suggesting the
idea of a sheep-dog at work.
“Very good, very good indeed,” commented Mr. Hodgson at the conclusion.
“We will go over it once more, and this time in tune.”
“And we will make love,” added the stage manager; “not like marionettes,
but like ladies and gentlemen all alive.” Seizing the lady nearest to
him, he explained to us by object lesson how the real peasant invariably
behaves when under influence of the grand passion, standing gracefully
with hands clasped upon heart, head inclined at an angle of forty-five,
his whole countenance eloquent with tender adoration.
“If he expects” remarked the massive gentleman _sotto voce_ to an
experienced-looking young lady, “a performance of Romeo thrown in, I,
for one, shall want an extra ten shillings a week.”
Casting the lady aside and seizing upon a gentleman, our stage manager
then proceeded to show the ladies how a village maiden should receive
affectionate advances: one shoulder a trifle higher than the other, body
from the waist upward gently waggling, roguish expression in left eye.
“Ah, he's a bit new to it,” replied the experienced young lady. “He'll
get over all that.”
Again we started. Whether others attempted to follow the stage manager's
directions I cannot say, my whole attention being centred upon the
fishy-eyed young man, who did, implicitly. Soon it became apparent that
the whole of us were watching the fishy-eyed young man to the utter
neglect of our own business. Mr. Hodgson even looked up from his
letters; the orchestra was playing out of time; the author of the
English version and the leading lady exchanged glances. Three people
only appeared not to be enjoying themselves: the chief comedian, the
stage manager and the fishy-eyed young gentleman himself, who pursued
his labours methodically and conscientiously. There was a whispered
confabulation between the leading low comedian, Mr. Hodgson and the
stage manager. As a result, the music ceased and the fishy-eyed young
gentleman was requested to explain what he was doing.
“Only making love,” replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman.
“You were playing the fool, sir,” retorted the leading low comedian,
severely.
“That is a very unkind remark,” replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman,
evidently hurt, “to make to a gentleman who is doing his best.”
Mr. Hodgson behind his letters was laughing. “Poor fellow,” he murmured;
“I suppose he can't help it. Go on.”
“We are not producing a pantomime, you know,” urged our comedian.
“I want to give him a chance, poor devil,” explained Mr. Hodgson in a
lower voice. “Only support of a widowed mother.”
Our comedian appeared inclined to argue; but at this point Mr. Hodgson's
correspondence became absorbing.
For the chorus the second act was a busy one. We opened as soldiers
and vivandieres, every warrior in this way possessing his own private
travelling bar. Our stage manager again explained to us by example how
a soldier behaves, first under stress of patriotic emotion, and secondly
under stress of cheap cognac, the difference being somewhat subtle:
patriotism displaying itself by slaps upon the chest, and cheap cognac
by slaps upon the forehead. A little later we were conspirators; our
stage manager, with the help of a tablecloth, showed us how to conspire.
Next we were a mob, led by the sentimental baritone; our stage manager,
ruffling his hair, expounded to us how a mob led by a sentimental
baritone would naturally behave itself. The act wound up with a fight.
Our stage manager, minus his coat, demonstrated to us how to fight and
die, the dying being a painful and dusty performance, necessitating, as
it did, much rolling about on the stage. The fishy-eyed young gentleman
throughout the whole of it was again the centre of attraction. Whether
he were solemnly slapping his chest and singing about glory, or solemnly
patting his head and singing about grapes, was immaterial: he was the
soldier for us. What the plot was about did not matter, so long as he
was in it. Who led the mob one did not care; one's desire was to see
him lead. How others fought and died was matter of no moment; to see him
slaughtered was sufficient. Whether his unconsciousness was assumed or
natural I cannot say; in either case it was admirable. An earnest young
man, over-anxious, if anything, to do his duty by his employers, was
the extent of the charge that could be brought against him. Our chief
comedian frowned and fumed; our stage manager was in despair. Mr.
Hodgson and the author of the English version, on the contrary, appeared
kindly disposed towards the gentleman. In addition to the widowed
mother, Mr. Hodgson had invented for him five younger brothers and
sisters utterly destitute but for his earnings. To deprive so exemplary
a son and brother of the means of earning a livelihood for dear ones
dependent upon him was not in Mr. Hodgson's heart. Our chief comedian
dissociated himself from all uncharitable feelings--would subscribe
towards the subsistence of the young man out of his own pocket, his
only concern being the success of the opera. The author of the English
version was convinced the young man would not accept a charity; had
known him for years--was a most sensitive creature.
The rehearsal proceeded. In the last act it became necessary for me to
kiss the thin lady.
“I am very sorry,” said the thin lady, “but duty is duty. It has to be
done.”
Again I followed directions. The thin lady was good enough to
congratulate me on my performance.
The last three or four rehearsals we performed in company with the
principals. Divided counsels rendered them decidedly harassing. Our
chief comedian had his views, and they were decided; the leading lady
had hers, and was generous with them. The author of the English version
possessed his also, but of these nobody took much notice. Once every
twenty minutes the stage manager washed his hands of the whole affair
and left the theatre in despair, and anybody's hat that happened to
be handy, to return a few minutes later full of renewed hope. The
sentimental baritone was sarcastic, the tenor distinctly rude to
everybody. Mr. Hodgson's method was to agree with all and listen to
none. The smaller fry of the company, together with the more pushing of
the chorus, supported each in turn, when the others were not looking. Up
to the dress rehearsal it was anybody's opera.
About one thing, and about one thing, only, had the principals fallen
into perfect agreement, and that was that the fishy-eyed young gentleman
was out of place in a romantic opera. The tenor would be making
impassioned love to the leading lady. Perception would come to both of
them that, though they might be occupying geographically the centre of
the stage, dramatically they were not. Without a shred of evidence,
yet with perfect justice, they would unhesitatingly blame for this the
fishy-eyed young man.
“I wasn't doing anything,” he would explain meekly. “I was only
looking.” It was perfectly true; that was all he was doing.
“Then don't look,” would comment the tenor.
The fishy-eyed young gentleman obediently would turn his face away from
them; and in some mysterious manner the situation would thereupon become
even yet more hopelessly ridiculous.
“My scene, I think, sir!” would thunder our chief comedian, a little
later on.
“I am only doing what I was told to do,” answered the fishy-eyed young
gentleman; and nobody could say that he was not.
“Take a circus, and run him as a side-show,” counselled our comedian.
“I am afraid he would never be any good as a side-show,” replied Mr.
Hodgson, who was reading letters.
On the first night, passing the gallery entrance on my way to the stage
door, the sight of the huge crowd assembled there waiting gave me my
first taste of artistic joy. I was a part of what they had come to see,
to praise or to condemn, to listen to, to watch. Within the theatre
there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement, amounting almost to
hysteria. The bird-like gentleman in his glass cage was fluttering,
agitated. The hands of the stage carpenters putting the finishing
touches to the scenery were trembling, their voices passionate
with anxiety; the fox-terrier-like call-boy was pale with sense of
responsibility.
I made my way to the dressing-room--a long, low, wooden corridor,
furnished from end to end with a wide shelf that served as common
dressing-table, lighted by a dozen flaring gas-jets, wire-shielded. Here
awaited us gentlemen of the chorus the wigmaker's assistant, whose duty
it was to make us up. From one to another he ran, armed with his hare's
foot, his box of paints and his bundle of crepe hair. My turn arriving,
he seized me by the head, jabbed a wig upon me, and in less than a
couple of minutes I left his hands the orthodox peasant of the stage,
white of forehead and pink of cheek, with curly moustache and lips of
coral. Glancing into the glass, I could not help feeling pleased with
myself; a moustache, without doubt, suited me.
The chorus ladies, when I met them on the stage, were a revelation
to me. Paint and powder though I knew their appearance to consist
of chiefly, yet in that hot atmosphere of the theatre, under that
artificial glare, it seemed fit and fascinating. The close approximation
to so much bare flesh, its curious, subtle odour was almost
intoxicating. Dr. Johnson's excuse to Garrick for the rarity of his
visits to the theatre recurred to me with understanding.
“How do you like my costume?” asked the thin lady with the golden hair.
“I think you--” We were standing apart behind a piece of projecting
scenery. She laid her hand upon my mouth, laughing.
“How old are you?” she asked me.
“Isn't that a rude question?” I answered. “I don't ask your age.
“Mine,” she replied, “entitles me to talk to you as I should to a boy of
my own--I had one once. Get out of this life if you can. It's bad for
a woman; it's worse still for a man. To you especially it will be
harmful.”
“Why to me in particular?”
“Because you are an exceedingly foolish little boy,” she answered, with
another laugh, “and are rather nice.”
She slipped away and joined the others. The chorus was now entirely
assembled on the stage. The sound of the rapidly-filling house reached
us, softened through the thick baize curtain, a dull, continuous
droning, as of water pouring into some huge cistern. Suddenly there fell
upon our ears a startling crash; the overture had commenced. The stage
manager--more suggestive of a sheep-dog than ever, but lacking the calm
dignity, the self-possession born of conscious capability distinctive of
his prototype; a fussy, argumentative sheep-dog--rushed into the midst
of us and worried us into our positions, where the more experienced
continued to converse in whispers, the rest of us waiting nervously,
trying to remember our words. The chorus master, taking his stand with
his back to the proscenium, held his white-gloved hand in readiness. The
curtain rushed up, the house, a nightmare of white faces, appearing to
run towards us. The chorus-master's white-gloved hand flung upward. A
roar of voices struck upon my ear, but whether my own were of them
I could not say; if I were singing at all it was unconsciously,
mechanically. Later, I found myself standing in the wings beside the
thin lady; the stage was in the occupation of the principals. On my next
entrance my senses were more with me; I was able to look about me. Here
and there a strongly-marked face among the audience stood out, but the
majority were as indistinguishable as so many blades of grass. Looked at
from the stage, the house seemed no more real than from the front do the
painted faces upon a black cloth.
The curtain fell amid the usual applause, sounding to us behind it like
the rattle of tiny stones against a window-pane. Three times it rose
and fell, like the opening and shutting of a door; and then followed a
scamper for the dressing-rooms, the long corridors being filled with the
rustling of skirts and the scurrying of feet.
It was in the second act that the fishy-eyed young gentleman came into
his own. The chorus had lingered till it was quite apparent that the
tenor and the leading lady were in love with each other; then, with the
exquisite delicacy so characteristic of a chorus, foreseeing that its
further presence might be embarrassing, it turned to go, half to the
east, the other half to the west. The fishy-eyed young man, starting
from the centre, was the last to leave the stage. In another moment he
would have disappeared from view. There came a voice from the gallery,
clear, distinct, pathetic with entreaty:
“Don't go. Get behind a tree.”
The request was instantly seconded by a roar of applause from every part
of the house, followed by laughter. From that point onward the house was
chiefly concerned with the fortunes of the fishy-eyed young gentleman.
At his next entrance, disguised as a conspirator, he was welcomed
with enthusiasm, his passing away regretted loudly. At the fall of the
curtain, the tenor, furious, rushed up to him, and, shaking a fist in
his face, demanded what he meant by it.
“I wasn't doing anything,” explained the fishy-eyed young man.
“You went off sideways!” roared the tenor.
“Well, you told me not to look at you,” explained meekly the fishy-eyed
young gentleman. “I must go off somehow. I regard you as a very
difficult man to please.”
At the final fall of the curtain the house appeared divided as regarded
the merits of the opera; but for “Goggles” there was a unanimous and
enthusiastic call, and the while we were dressing a message came for
“Goggles” that Mr. Hodgson wished to see him in his private room.
“He can make a funny face, no doubt about it,” commented one gentleman,
as “Goggles” left the room.
“I defy him to make a funnier one than God Almighty's made for him,”
responded the massive gentleman.
“There's a deal in luck,” observed, with a sigh, another, a tall,
handsome young gentleman possessed of a rich bass voice.
Leaving the stage door, I encountered a group of gentlemen waiting upon
the pavement outside. Not interested in them myself, I was hurrying
past, when one laid a hand upon my shoulder. I turned. He was a big,
broad-shouldered fellow, with a dark Vandyke beard and soft, dreamy
eyes.
“Dan!” I cried.
“I thought it was you, young 'un, in the first act,” he answered. “In
the second, when you came on without a moustache, I knew it. Are you in
a hurry?”
“Not at all,” I answered. “Are you?”
“No,” he replied; “we don't go to press till Thursday, so I can write my
notice to-morrow. Come and have supper with me at the Albion and we will
talk. You look tired, young 'un.”
“No,” I assured him, “only excited--partly at meeting you.”
He laughed, and drew my arm through his.