“OH, dear God, help me. Hear me, Jesu. Hear me and forgive me and be
offended not if what I ask is vain ... soften all hostile hearts and let
them love me—adore me!—oh Heaven, help me to please. Vouchsafe at each
_finale_ countless curtains; and in the ‘Potion Scene,’ oh Lord, pull me
through....”
Unwilling to genuflect in the presence of her maid, who would interpret
any unwontedness of gesture for first-night symptoms of fear, Miss
Sinquier lifted her face towards the bluish light of day that filtered
obliquely through the long glass-plating above.
“There’s a cat on the skylight, Smith,” was what she said as her maid
with a telegram recalled her wandering gaze to earth.
It was a telegram from her father.
“Missed conveyance York,” she read. “Bishopthorpe to-night
archiepiscopal blessings.”
“Ah, well, ...” she professionally philosophized, “there’ll be
_deadheads_ besides, I’ve no doubt.”
“Any answer, Miss?”
“Go, Smith, to the box office, and say G 2 and 3 (orchestra) have been
returned; there’s no answer,” she added, moving towards the brightly lit
dressing-room beyond.
Ensconced in an easy chair, before a folding mirror that, rich in
reflections, encompassed her screen-like about, sat Mrs. Sixsmith
pensively polishing her nails.
Miss Sinquier bit her lip.
“I thought——” she began.
“Sh——! Be Juliet now. We’re in Verona,” Mrs. Sixsmith exclaimed.
“_Fuori_ the doors.”
“Fancy finding _you._”
“Me?”
“What are you doing in _my Italy_?”
Mrs. Sixsmith threw a glance at herself in the glass. “I’m a girl
friend,” she said; “a Venetian acquaintance: someone _Julie_ met while
paddling in the Adriatic—in fact, _cara cuore_, I’m a daughter of the
Doge. Yes; I’m one of the Dolfin-Trons.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m Catarina Dolfin-Tron.”
“Kitty Tron!”
“Your own true Kate.”
“When are you going round?”
“Let me finish my hands. My manicurist has left me with such claws....
Poor little soul! When she came to my wedding-finger she just twiddled
her rasp and broke out crying. ‘To be filing people’s nails,’ she said,
‘while my husband is filing a petition!’”
“Wonderful that she could.”
“This city has its sadness. Your maid, Smith, while you were in the
other room said, ‘Oh, marm,’ she said, ‘what you must have endured; _one
Smith_ was enough for me.’”
“Poor Kate!”
“Ah, Julie ...” Mrs. Sixsmith sighed, when the door opening gently was
followed by the entry of Mrs. Smee.
“Am I disturbing you?” she asked.
“No, come in.”
“I want to tell you, my husband isn’t himself.”
“He’s ill?”
“He’s not himself.”
“In what way?”
“It’s a hard thing for a wife to confess. But for a première he’s nearly
always in wine.”
“Is he ... _much_?”
“I never knew him like it!”
Mrs. Sixsmith examined her nails.
“So violent?” she ventured.
“He’s more confused, dear, than violent,” Mrs. Smee explained. “He seems
to think we’re doing _The Tempest;_ Romeo’s tanned breast he takes for
Ferdinand’s. ‘Mind, Ferdy, boy,’ I heard him say, ‘and keep the —— out.’
Whereupon, his mind wandered to the Russian plays I love, and he ran
through some of Irina’s lines from _The Three Sisters_: ‘My soul,’ you
know she says, ‘my soul is like an expensive piano which is locked and
the key lost.’ Ah, there’s for you; Shakespeare never wrote that. He
couldn’t. Even by making piano, spinet. Oh, Russia! Russia! land of
Tchekhov, land of Andrief, of Solugub, of Korelenko, of
Artzibashef—Maria Capulet salutes thee! And then my man was moved to
sing. His love, she was in Otaheite.... But as soon as he saw me he was
back at _The Tempest_ again, calling me Caliban, Countess, and I don’t
know what.”
“Oh, how disgraceful.”
“After the performance I’ll pop home—Home!—in a drosky and shut him
out.”
“Meanwhile?”
“He’ll pass for a Friar. The Moujik!”
“Still....”
“He’ll probably be priceless; the masses always love the man who can
make them laugh.”
Miss Sinquier moved restlessly towards the door and looked out.
All was activity.
Plants for the balcony set of a rambling, twining nature, together with
a quantity of small wicker cages labelled “Atmospherics,” and containing
bats, owls, lizards, etc., were in course of being prepared.
The manageress knit her brows.
“Miss Marquis,” she called, “instead of teasing the animals, I suggest
you complete your toilet.”
“... She’d better look sharp!”
Mrs. Smee consulted her notes.
“She reminds me more of a nurse-maid than a nurse,” she murmured. “Not
what _I_ should have chosen for Juliet at all.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Miss Marquis has no stage presence. And such a poor physique—she’s too
mean.”
“Anyway, Sally’s got fine men. I never saw finer fellows. Even the
Apothecary! Fancy taking the fatal dose from a lad like that; he makes
me want to live.”
Mrs. Smee purred.
“To have interesting workmates is everything,” she said. “Hughie
Huntress, as Producer, seemed quite stunned at the subtle material at
his disposal.... In fact, he realized from the first, he told me, he
_couldn’t_ ‘produce’ all of it.”
Mrs. Sixsmith lowered her voice.
“Where did Sally find her Balthasar,” she asked, “and where did she
secure her Tybalt?”
“My dear Mrs. Sixsmith, I’m not in the management’s secrets, remember,
so much as you!”
“Or who put her in the way of Sampson and Gregory? And _where_ did she
get her Benvolio?”
“Through an agent, I don’t doubt.”
Mrs. Sixsmith threw a sidelong probing glance in the direction of the
door. Already in her heart she felt herself losing her hold. Had the
time inevitably come to make out the score?
Through the open door came a squeal.
“Sally, the owls!”
“Leave them, Réné,” Miss Sinquier ordered.
“_Dearest_, what diddlies; one has a look of old Sir Oliver!” Miss Mant
declared, coming forward into the room.
Clad in a pair of striped “culottes,” she had assumed, notwithstanding
sororal remonstrance, the conspicuous livery of Paris.
“I just looked in to thank you, darling,” she began, “for all your
sweetness and goodness.... Oh Sally, when I saw the playbill with my
name on it (right in among the gentlemen!) I thought I should have died.
Who could have guessed ever it would be a breeches part?”
“Turn round.”
“Such jealous murmurings already as there are; a-citizen-of-Verona—an
envious super without a line, whispered, as I went by, that my legs in
these tissue tights had a look of forced asparagus.”
“Nonsense.”
“Of course: I knew that, Sally. But devil take me. How I’ll hate going
back into virginals again; these trousers spoil you for skirts.”
“Sprite.”
“And I’d a trifling triumph too, darling, which I chose to ignore: just
as I was leaving my dressing-room, Jack Whorwood, all dressed up for
Tybalt, accosted me with a fatuous easy smile. ‘I want your picture,
Miss Iris, with your name on it,’ he said. ‘_Do_ you?’ I said. ‘I do,’
he said. ‘Then I fear you’ll have to,’ I said. Oh, he was cross! But all
the while, Sally, he was speaking I could feel the wolf....”
“Better be careful,” Mrs. Sixsmith snapped.
“As if I’d cater to his blue besoigns!”
“Réné, Réné?”
“Although I snubbed him,” Miss Iris murmured, stooping to examine upon
the toilet-table a beribboned aeroplane filled with sweets, “he looked
_too_ charming!”
Mrs. Smee chafed gently her hands.
“I must return to my Friar,” she said.
“He is saying the grossest, the wickedest things!”
“Mr. Smee’s sallies at times are not for young ears,” Mrs. Smee loftily
observed. “His witticisms,” she added, “aren’t for everyone.”
“My friend, Miss Tird, who came to watch me dress, was quite upset by
his cochônneries!”
“Although your little friend appears scarcely to be nine, she seems
_dazed_ by her sex and power,” Mrs. Smee unfavourably commented.
“I’ll have to go, I suppose,” Miss Sinquier sighed, “and see how matters
stand.”
“Prenez garde: for when making up, he mostly makes a palette of his
hand,” Mrs. Sixsmith said. “I happen to know—because one day he caught
hold of me.”
Mrs. Smee protruded her tongue and drew it slowly in.
“Hist!” she exclaimed.
Along the corridor the call-boy was going his rounds.
“First act beginners,” chirped he.
Miss Sinquier quivered.
“... Soften all hostile hearts and let them love me ...” she prayed.
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