“I hope Miss Vanstone knows her part?” whispered Mrs. Marrable,
anxiously addressing herself to Miss Garth, in a corner of the theater.
“If airs and graces make an actress, ma’am, Magdalen’s performance will
astonish us all.” With that reply, Miss Garth took out her work, and
seated herself, on guard, in the center of the pit.
The manager perched himself, book in hand, on a stool close in front of
the stage. He was an active little man, of a sweet and cheerful temper;
and he gave the signal to begin with as patient an interest in the
proceedings as if they had caused him no trouble in the past and
promised him no difficulty in the future. The two characters which
opened the comedy of The Rivals, “Fag” and “The Coachman,” appeared on
the scene—looked many sizes too tall for their canvas background, which
represented a “Street in Bath”—exhibited the customary inability to
manage their own arms, legs, and voices—went out severally at the wrong
exits—and expressed their perfect approval of results, so far, by
laughing heartily behind the scenes. “Silence, gentlemen, if you
please,” remonstrated the cheerful manager. “As loud as you like _on_
the stage, but the audience mustn’t hear you _off_ it. Miss Marrable
ready? Miss Vanstone ready? Easy there with the ‘Street in Bath’; it’s
going up crooked! Face this way, Miss Marrable; full face, if you
please. Miss Vanstone—” he checked himself suddenly. “Curious,” he
said, under his breath—“she fronts the audience of her own accord!”
Lucy opened the scene in these words: “Indeed, ma’am, I traversed half
the town in search of it: I don’t believe there’s a circulating library
in Bath I haven’t been at.” The manager started in his chair. “My heart
alive! she speaks out without telling!” The dialogue went on. Lucy
produced the novels for Miss Lydia Languish’s private reading from
under her cloak. The manager rose excitably to his feet. Marvelous! No
hurry with the books; no dropping them. She looked at the titles before
she announced them to her mistress; she set down “Humphrey Clinker” on
“The Tears of Sensibility” with a smart little smack which pointed the
antithesis. One moment—and she announced Julia’s visit; another—and she
dropped the brisk waiting-maid’s courtesy; a third—and she was off the
stage on the side set down for her in the book. The manager wheeled
round on his stool, and looked hard at Miss Garth. “I beg your pardon,
ma’am,” he said. “Miss Marrable told me, before we began, that this was
the young lady’s first attempt. It can’t be, surely!”
“It is,” replied Miss Garth, reflecting the manager’s look of amazement
on her own face. Was it possible that Magdalen’s unintelligible
industry in the study of her part really sprang from a serious interest
in her occupation—an interest which implied a natural fitness for it?
The rehearsal went on. The stout lady with the wig (and the excellent
heart) personated the sentimental Julia from an inveterately tragic
point of view, and used her handkerchief distractedly in the first
scene. The spinster relative felt Mrs. Malaprop’s mistakes in language
so seriously, and took such extraordinary pains with her blunders, that
they sounded more like exercises in elocution than anything else. The
unhappy lad who led the forlorn hope of the company, in the person of
“Sir Anthony Absolute,” expressed the age and irascibility of his
character by tottering incessantly at the knees, and thumping the stage
perpetually with his stick. Slowly and clumsily, with constant
interruptions and interminable mistakes, the first act dragged on,
until Lucy appeared again to end it in soliloquy, with the confession
of her assumed simplicity and the praise of her own cunning.
Here the stage artifice of the situation presented difficulties which
Magdalen had not encountered in the first scene—and here, her total
want of experience led her into more than one palpable mistake. The
stage-manager, with an eagerness which he had not shown in the case of
any other member of the company, interfered immediately, and set her
right. At one point she was to pause, and take a turn on the stage—she
did it. At another, she was to stop, toss her head, and look pertly at
the audience—she did it. When she took out the paper to read the list
of the presents she had received, could she give it a tap with her
finger (Yes)? And lead off with a little laugh (Yes—after twice
trying)? Could she read the different items with a sly look at the end
of each sentence, straight at the pit (Yes, straight at the pit, and as
sly as you please)? The manager’s cheerful face beamed with approval.
He tucked the play under his arm, and clapped his hands gayly; the
gentlemen, clustered together behind the scenes, followed his example;
the ladies looked at each other with dawning doubts whether they had
not better have left the new recruit in the retirement of private life.
Too deeply absorbed in the business of the stage to heed any of them,
Magdalen asked leave to repeat the soliloquy, and make quite sure of
her own improvement. She went all through it again without a mistake,
this time, from beginning to end; the manager celebrating her attention
to his directions by an outburst of professional approbation, which
escaped him in spite of himself. “She can take a hint!” cried the
little man, with a hearty smack of his hand on the prompt-book. “She’s
a born actress, if ever there was one yet!”
“I hope not,” said Miss Garth to herself, taking up the work which had
dropped into her lap, and looking down at it in some perplexity. Her
worst apprehension of results in connection with the theatrical
enterprise had foreboded levity of conduct with some of the
gentlemen—she had not bargained for this. Magdalen, in the capacity of
a thoughtless girl, was comparatively easy to deal with. Magdalen, in
the character of a born actress, threatened serious future
difficulties.
The rehearsal proceeded. Lucy returned to the stage for her scenes in
the second act (the last in which she appears) with Sir Lucius and Fag.
Here, again, Magdalen’s inexperience betrayed itself—and here once more
her resolution in attacking and conquering her own mistakes astonished
everybody. “Bravo!” cried the gentlemen behind the scenes, as she
steadily trampled down one blunder after another. “Ridiculous!” said
the ladies, “with such a small part as hers.” “Heaven forgive me!”
thought Miss. Garth, coming round unwillingly to the general opinion.
“I almost wish we were Papists, and I had a convent to put her in
to-morrow.” One of Mr. Marrable’s servants entered the theater as that
desperate aspiration escaped the governess. She instantly sent the man
behind the scene with a message: “Miss Vanstone has done her part in
the rehearsal; request her to come here and sit by me.” The servant
returned with a polite apology: “Miss Vanstone’s kind love, and she
begs to be excused—she’s prompting Mr. Clare.” She prompted him to such
purpose that he actually got through his part. The performances of the
other gentlemen were obtrusively imbecile. Frank was just one degree
better—he was modestly incapable; and he gained by comparison. “Thanks
to Miss Vanstone,” observed the manager, who had heard the prompting.
“She pulled him through. We shall be flat enough at night, when the
drop falls on the second act, and the audience have seen the last of
her. It’s a thousand pities she hasn’t got a better part!”
“It’s a thousand mercies she’s no more to do than she has,” muttered
Miss Garth, overhearing him. “As things are, the people can’t well turn
her head with applause. She’s out of the play in the second act—that’s
one comfort!”
No well-regulated mind ever draws its inferences in a hurry; Miss
Garth’s mind was well regulated; therefore, logically speaking, Miss
Garth ought to have been superior to the weakness of rushing at
conclusions. She had committed that error, nevertheless, under present
circumstances. In plainer terms, the consoling reflection which had
just occurred to her assumed that the play had by this time survived
all its disasters, and entered on its long-deferred career of success.
The play had done nothing of the sort. Misfortune and the Marrable
family had not parted company yet.
When the rehearsal was over, nobody observed that the stout lady with
the wig privately withdrew herself from the company; and when she was
afterward missed from the table of refreshments, which Mr. Marrable’s
hospitality kept ready spread in a room near the theater, nobody
imagined that there was any serious reason for her absence. It was not
till the ladies and gentlemen assembled for the next rehearsal that the
true state of the case was impressed on the minds of the company. At
the appointed hour no Julia appeared. In her stead, Mrs. Marrable
portentously approached the stage, with an open letter in her hand. She
was naturally a lady of the mildest good breeding: she was mistress of
every bland conventionality in the English language—but disasters and
dramatic influences combined, threw even this harmless matron off her
balance at last. For the first time in her life Mrs. Marrable indulged
in vehement gesture, and used strong language. She handed the letter
sternly, at arms-length, to her daughter. “My dear,” she said, with an
aspect of awful composure, “we are under a Curse.” Before the amazed
dramatic company could petition for an explanation, she turned and left
the room. The manager’s professional eye followed her out
respectfully—he looked as if he approved of the exit, from a theatrical
point of view.
What new misfortune had befallen the play? The last and worst of all
misfortunes had assailed it. The stout lady had resigned her part.
Not maliciously. Her heart, which had been in the right place
throughout, remained inflexibly in the right place still. Her
explanation of the circumstances proved this, if nothing else did. The
letter began with a statement: She had overheard, at the last rehearsal
(quite unintentionally), personal remarks of which she was the subject.
They might, or might not, have had reference to her—Hair; and
her—Figure. She would not distress Mrs. Marrable by repeating them.
Neither would she mention names, because it was foreign to her nature
to make bad worse. The only course at all consistent with her own
self-respect was to resign her part. She inclosed it, accordingly, to
Mrs. Marrable, with many apologies for her presumption in undertaking a
youthful character, at—what a gentleman was pleased to term—her Age;
and with what two ladies were rude enough to characterize as her
disadvantages of—Hair, and—Figure. A younger and more attractive
representative of Julia would no doubt be easily found. In the
meantime, all persons concerned had her full forgiveness, to which she
would only beg leave to add her best and kindest wishes for the success
of the play.
In four nights more the play was to be performed. If ever any human
enterprise stood in need of good wishes to help it, that enterprise was
unquestionably the theatrical entertainment at Evergreen Lodge!
One arm-chair was allowed on the stage; and into that arm-chair Miss
Marrable sank, preparatory to a fit of hysterics. Magdalen stepped
forward at the first convulsion; snatched the letter from Miss
Marrable’s hand; and stopped the threatened catastrophe.
“She’s an ugly, bald-headed, malicious, middle-aged wretch!” said
Magdalen, tearing the letter into fragments, and tossing them over the
heads of the company. “But I can tell her one thing—she shan’t spoil
the play. I’ll act Julia.”
“Bravo!” cried the chorus of gentlemen—the anonymous gentleman who had
helped to do the mischief (otherwise Mr. Francis Clare) loudest of all.
“If you want the truth, I don’t shrink from owning it,” continued
Magdalen. “I’m one of the ladies she means. I said she had a head like
a mop, and a waist like a bolster. So she has.”
“I am the other lady,” added the spinster relative. “But I only said
she was too stout for the part.”
“I am the gentleman,” chimed in Frank, stimulated by the force of
example. “I said nothing—I only agreed with the ladies.”
Here Miss Garth seized her opportunity, and addressed the stage loudly
from the pit.
“Stop! Stop!” she said. “You can’t settle the difficulty that way. If
Magdalen plays Julia, who is to play Lucy?”
Miss Marrable sank back in the arm-chair, and gave way to the second
convulsion.
“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Magdalen, “the thing’s simple enough, I’ll
act Julia and Lucy both together.”
The manager was consulted on the spot. Suppressing Lucy’s first
entrance, and turning the short dialogue about the novels into a
soliloquy for Lydia Languish, appeared to be the only changes of
importance necessary to the accomplishment of Magdalen’s project.
Lucy’s two telling scenes, at the end of the first and second acts,
were sufficiently removed from the scenes in which Julia appeared to
give time for the necessary transformations in dress. Even Miss Garth,
though she tried hard to find them, could put no fresh obstacles in the
way. The question was settled in five minutes, and the rehearsal went
on; Magdalen learning Julia’s stage situations with the book in her
hand, and announcing afterward, on the journey home, that she proposed
sitting up all night to study the new part. Frank thereupon expressed
his fears that she would have no time left to help him through his
theatrical difficulties. She tapped him on the shoulder coquettishly
with her part. “You foolish fellow, how am I to do without you? You’re
Julia’s jealous lover; you’re always making Julia cry. Come to-night,
and make me cry at tea-time. You haven’t got a venomous old woman in a
wig to act with now. It’s _my_ heart you’re to break—and of course I
shall teach you how to do it.”
The four days’ interval passed busily in perpetual rehearsals, public
and private. The night of performance arrived; the guests assembled;
the great dramatic experiment stood on its trial. Magdalen had made the
most of her opportunities; she had learned all that the manager could
teach her in the time. Miss Garth left her when the overture began,
sitting apart in a corner behind the scenes, serious and silent, with
her smelling-bottle in one hand, and her book in the other, resolutely
training herself for the coming ordeal, to the very last.
The play began, with all the proper accompaniments of a theatrical
performance in private life; with a crowded audience, an African
temperature, a bursting of heated lamp-glasses, and a difficulty in
drawing up the curtain. “Fag” and “the Coachman,” who opened the scene,
took leave of their memories as soon as they stepped on the stage; left
half their dialogue unspoken; came to a dead pause; were audibly
entreated by the invisible manager to “come off”; and went off
accordingly, in every respect sadder and wiser men than when they went
on. The next scene disclosed Miss Marrable as “Lydia Languish,”
gracefully seated, very pretty, beautifully dressed, accurately
mistress of the smallest words in her part; possessed, in short, of
every personal resource—except her voice. The ladies admired, the
gentlemen applauded. Nobody heard anything but the words “Speak up,
miss,” whispered by the same voice which had already entreated “Fag”
and “the Coachman” to “come off.” A responsive titter rose among the
younger spectators; checked immediately by magnanimous applause. The
temperature of the audience was rising to Blood Heat—but the national
sense of fair play was not boiled out of them yet.
In the midst of the demonstration, Magdalen quietly made her first
entrance, as “Julia.” She was dressed very plainly in dark colors, and
wore her own hair; all stage adjuncts and alterations (excepting the
slightest possible touch of rouge on her cheeks) having been kept in
reserve to disguise her the more effectually in her second part. The
grace and simplicity of her costume, the steady self-possession with
which she looked out over the eager rows of faces before her, raised a
low hum of approval and expectation. She spoke—after suppressing a
momentary tremor—with a quiet distinctness of utterance which reached
all ears, and which at once confirmed the favorable impression that her
appearance had produced. The one member of the audience who looked at
her and listened to her coldly, was her elder sister. Before the
actress of the evening had been five minutes on the stage, Norah
detected, to her own indescribable astonishment, that Magdalen had
audaciously individualized the feeble amiability of “Julia’s”
character, by seizing no less a person than herself as the model to act
it by. She saw all her own little formal peculiarities of manner and
movement unblushingly reproduced—and even the very tone of her voice so
accurately mimicked from time to time, that the accents startled her as
if she was speaking herself, with an echo on the stage. The effect of
this cool appropriation of Norah’s identity to theatrical purposes on
the audience—who only saw results—asserted itself in a storm of
applause on Magdalen’s exit. She had won two incontestable triumphs in
her first scene. By a dexterous piece of mimicry, she had made a living
reality of one of the most insipid characters in the English drama; and
she had roused to enthusiasm an audience of two hundred exiles from the
blessings of ventilation, all simmering together in their own animal
heat. Under the circumstances, where is the actress by profession who
could have done much more?
But the event of the evening was still to come. Magdalen’s disguised
re-appearance at the end of the act, in the character of “Lucy”—with
false hair and false eyebrows, with a bright-red complexion and patches
on her cheeks, with the gayest colors flaunting in her dress, and the
shrillest vivacity of voice and manner—fairly staggered the audience.
They looked down at their programmes, in which the representative of
Lucy figured under an assumed name; looked up again at the stage;
penetrated the disguise; and vented their astonishment in another round
of applause, louder and heartier even than the last. Norah herself
could not deny this time that the tribute of approbation had been well
deserved. There, forcing its way steadily through all the faults of
inexperience—there, plainly visible to the dullest of the spectators,
was the rare faculty of dramatic impersonation, expressing itself in
every look and action of this girl of eighteen, who now stood on a
stage for the first time in her life. Failing in many minor requisites
of the double task which she had undertaken, she succeeded in the one
important necessity of keeping the main distinctions of the two
characters thoroughly apart. Everybody felt that the difficulty lay
here—everybody saw the difficulty conquered—everybody echoed the
manager’s enthusiasm at rehearsal, which had hailed her as a born
actress.
When the drop-scene descended for the first time, Magdalen had
concentrated in herself the whole interest and attraction of the play.
The audience politely applauded Miss Marrable, as became the guests
assembled in her father’s house: and good-humoredly encouraged the
remainder of the company, to help them through a task for which they
were all, more or less, palpably unfit. But, as the play proceeded,
nothing roused them to any genuine expression of interest when Magdalen
was absent from the scene. There was no disguising it: Miss Marrable
and her bosom friends had been all hopelessly cast in the shade by the
new recruit whom they had summoned to assist them, in the capacity of
forlorn hope. And this on Miss Marrable’s own birthday! and this in her
father’s house! and this after the unutterable sacrifices of six weeks
past! Of all the domestic disasters which the thankless theatrical
enterprise had inflicted on the Marrable family, the crowning
misfortune was now consummated by Magdalen’s success.
Leaving Mr. Vanstone and Norah, on the conclusion of the play, among
the guests in the supper-room, Miss Garth went behind the scenes;
ostensibly anxious to see if she could be of any use; really bent on
ascertaining whether Magdalen’s head had been turned by the triumphs of
the evening. It would not have surprised Miss Garth if she had
discovered her pupil in the act of making terms with the manager for
her forthcoming appearance in a public theater. As events really turned
out, she found Magdalen on the stage, receiving, with gracious smiles,
a card which the manager presented to her with a professional bow.
Noticing Miss Garth’s mute look of inquiry, the civil little man
hastened to explain that the card was his own, and that he was merely
asking the favor of Miss Vanstone’s recommendation at any future
opportunity.
“This is not the last time the young lady will be concerned in private
theatricals, I’ll answer for it,” said the manager. “And if a
superintendent is wanted on the next occasion, she has kindly promised
to say a good word for me. I am always to be heard of, miss, at that
address.” Saying those words, he bowed again, and discreetly
disappeared.
Vague suspicions beset the mind of Miss Garth, and urged her to insist
on looking at the card. No more harmless morsel of pasteboard was ever
passed from one hand to another. The card contained nothing but the
manager’s name, and, under it, the name and address of a theatrical
agent in London.
“It is not worth the trouble of keeping,” said Miss Garth.
Magdalen caught her hand before she could throw the card away—possessed
herself of it the next instant—and put it in her pocket.
“I promised to recommend him,” she said—“and that’s one reason for
keeping his card. If it does nothing else, it will remind me of the
happiest evening of my life—and that’s another. Come!” she cried,
throwing her arms round Miss Garth with a feverish gayety—“congratulate
me on my success!”
“I will congratulate you when you have got over it,” said Miss Garth.
In half an hour more Magdalen had changed her dress; had joined the
guests; and had soared into an atmosphere of congratulation high above
the reach of any controlling influence that Miss Garth could exercise.
Frank, dilatory in all his proceedings, was the last of the dramatic
company who left the precincts of the stage. He made no attempt to join
Magdalen in the supper-room—but he was ready in the hall with her cloak
when the carriages were called and the party broke up.
“Oh, Frank!” she said, looking round at him as he put the cloak on her
shoulders, “I am so sorry it’s all over! Come to-morrow morning, and
let’s talk about it by ourselves.”
“In the shrubbery at ten?” asked Frank, in a whisper.
She drew up the hood of her cloak and nodded to him gayly. Miss Garth,
standing near, noticed the looks that passed between them, though the
disturbance made by the parting guests prevented her from hearing the
words. There was a soft, underlying tenderness in Magdalen’s assumed
gayety of manner—there was a sudden thoughtfulness in her face, a
confidential readiness in her hand, as she took Frank’s arm and went
out to the carriage. What did it mean? Had her passing interest in him
as her stage-pupil treacherously sown the seeds of any deeper interest
in him, as a man? Had the idle theatrical scheme, now that it was all
over, graver results to answer for than a mischievous waste of time?
The lines on Miss Garth’s face deepened and hardened: she stood lost
among the fluttering crowd around her. Norah’s warning words, addressed
to Mrs. Vanstone in the garden, recurred to her memory—and now, for the
first time, the idea dawned on her that Norah had seen the consequences
in their true light.