MY TRIUMPH
_(James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)_
On the morning of the day for which the production had been fixed, it
dawned upon me that I had to meet Mrs. Goodwin and Margaret at
Waterloo. All through the busy days of rehearsal, even on those awful
days when everything went wrong and actresses, breaking down, sobbed in
the wings and refused to be comforted, I had dimly recognised the fact
that when I met Margaret I should have to be honest with her. Plans for
evasion had been half-matured by my inventive faculties, only to be
discarded, unpolished, on account of the insistent claims of the
endless rehearsals. To have concocted a story with which to persuade
Margaret that I stood to lose money if the play succeeded would have
been a clear day’s work. And I had no clear days.
But this was not all. There was another reason. Somehow my sentiments
with regard to her were changing again. It was as if I were awaking
from some dream. I felt as if my eyes had been blindfolded to prevent
me seeing Margaret as she really was, and that now the bandage had been
removed. As the day of production drew nearer, and the play began to
take shape, I caught myself sincerely admiring the girl who could hit
off, first shot, the exact shade of drivel which the London stage
required. What culture, what excessive brain-power she must have. How
absurdly _naïve_, how impossibly melodramatic, how maudlinly
sentimental, how improbable—in fact, how altogether womanly she must
have grown.
Womanly! That did it. I felt that she was womanly. And it came about
that it was my Margaret of the Cobo shrimping journeys that I was
prepared to welcome as I drove that morning to Waterloo Station.
And so, when the train rolled in, and the Goodwins alighted, and
Margaret kissed me, by an extraordinarily lucky chance I found that I
loved her more dearly than ever.
That _première_ is still fresh in my memory.
Mrs. Goodwin, Margaret, and myself occupied the stage box, and in
various parts of the house I could see the familiar faces of those whom
I had invited as my guests.
I felt it was the supreme event of my life. It was _the_ moment. And
surely I should have spoilt it all unless my old-time friends had been
sitting near me.
Eva and Julian were with Mr. and Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell in the box
opposite us. To the Barrel Club I had sent the first row of the dress
circle. It was expensive, but worth it. Hatton and Sidney Price were in
the stalls. Tom Blake had preferred a free pass to the gallery. Kit and
Malim were at the back of the upper circle (this was, Malim told me,
Kit’s own choice).
One by one the members of the orchestra took their places for the
overture, and it was to the appropriate strains of “Land of Hope and
Glory” that the curtain rose on the first act of my play.
The first act, I should mention (though it is no doubt superfluous to
do so) is bright and suggestive, but ends on a clear, firm note of
pathos. That is why, as soon as the lights went up, I levelled my
glasses at the eyes of the critics. Certainly in two cases, and, I
think, in a third, I caught the glint of tear-drops. One critic was
blowing his nose, another sobbed like a child, and I had a hurried
vision of a third staggering out to the foyer with his hand to his
eyes. Margaret was removing her own tears with a handkerchief. Mrs.
Goodwin’s unmoved face may have hidden a lacerated soul, but she did
not betray herself. Hers may have been the thoughts that lie too deep
for tears. At any rate, she did not weep. Instead, she drew from her
reticule the fragmentary writings of an early Portuguese author. These
she perused during the present and succeeding _entr’actes_.
Pressing Margaret’s hand, I walked round to the Gunton-Cresswells’s box
to see what effect the act had had on them. One glance at their faces
was enough. They were long and hard. “This is a real compliment,” I
said to myself, for the whole party cut me dead. I withdrew, delighted.
They had come, of course, to assist at my failure. I had often observed
to Julian how curiously lacking I was in dramatic instinct, and Julian
had predicted to Eva and her aunt and uncle a glorious fiasco. They
were furious at their hopes being so egregiously disappointed. Had they
dreamt of a success they would have declined to be present. Indeed,
half-way through Act Two, I saw them creeping away into the night.
The Barrel Club I discovered in the bar. As I approached, I heard
Michael declare that “there’d not been such an act produced since his
show was put on at——” He was interrupted by old Maundrell asserting
that “the business arranged for valet reminded him of a story about
Leopold Lewis.”
They, too, added their quota to my cup of pleasure by being distinctly
frigid.
Ascending to the gallery I found another compliment awaiting me. Tom
Blake was fast asleep. The quality of Blake’s intellect was in inverse
ratio to that of Mrs. Goodwin. Neither of them appreciated the stuff
that suited so well the tastes of the million; and it was consequently
quite consistent that while Mrs. Goodwin dozed in spirit Tom Blake
should snore in reality.
With Hatton and Price I did not come into contact. I noticed, however,
that they wore an expression of relief at the enthusiastic reception my
play had received.
But an encounter with Kit and Malim was altogether charming. They had
had some slight quarrel on the way to the theatre, and had found a
means of reconciliation in their mutual emotion at the pathos of the
first act’s finale. They were now sitting hand in hand telling each
other how sorry they were. They congratulated me warmly.
A couple of hours more, and the curtain had fallen.
The roar, the frenzied scene, the picture of a vast audience, half-mad
with excitement—how it all comes back to me.
And now, as I sit in this quiet smoking-room of a St. Peter’s Port
hotel, I hear again the shout of “Author!” I see myself again stepping
forward from the wings. That short appearance of mine, that brief
speech behind the footlights fixed my future....
“James Orlebar Cloyster, the plutocratic playwright, to Margaret, only
daughter of the late Eugene Grandison Goodwin, LL.D.”