Candidly, if you were to ask me what I think of amateur acting
generally, and charades in peculiar, I should tell you that in my
opinion there is a very considerable compartment down below devoted
exclusively to this peculiar form of torment. There the amateurs
will do great things on a fiery stage; and the misguided people who
have encouraged them during this life must make up their minds to
sit solidly in red-hot stalls, without backs, through an eternity
of indifferent acting. It is a source of satisfaction to me that I
only helped to perform one charade in my life--which I ruined. And
yet it seems rough to be jubilant about it, because that particular
entertainment did two really great things for me--one in the little
affair of Millicent Warne, the other touching Greensmith.
You don’t know Greensmith? Thank God for it; but let the thought that
he still lives, and is loose, and may on some occasion cross your own
path, chasten you when you are going strong and feel inclined to get
above yourself. The time of these events being Christmas, I will not
say what I think of Greensmith here, but merely hint that he is the
smallest man and the biggest hound that ever cast a black spell on a
pleasant party. His conceit is gigantic, his manners are loathsome,
his ancestry runs into a Jew pedlar in the second generation and stops
there. He has more opinions and less information than a Board School
teacher. He is, moreover, a worm, and also a bounder. He lies, and he
would break all the ten commandments every week of his life had he
the pluck to do so. But if he may be allowed a strong point, it is
cowardice. He wears an eyeglass with difficulty, waxes the points of
an indifferent moustache, sports a red tie by day, diamonds by night,
and is, to conclude, within the bounds of charity, the most unutterably
deplorable parody of a human being that Nature ever turned out during a
moment of weakness. So much for a mere judicial summary of Greensmith.
If you want my private opinion concerning him, you can have it when
this present blessed season of peace and good will has passed into
limbo. I can’t blackguard a man at Christmas-time.
Greensmith and I joined old General Warne’s house-party about the
third week in December. How Greensmith got in nobody ascertained
with certainty, but I fancy his purse had something to do with it.
Retired army men, with plenty of energy and nothing to occupy their
minds, either spend their time in religious enterprises or mercantile
ones; they dabble in missions and Church work, or stocks and shares,
according to the bent of their genius. General Warne was one of those
who go off to play in the City. There he met the ineffable Greensmith,
and with some lack of wisdom invited the thing to spend Christmas at
his place in Warwickshire. Now, mind you, I judge of every Johnnie by
himself, and I was utterly unprejudiced in the matter of Greensmith
when I first met him. I knew by the number and nature of the rings on
his hand as he held it out that he wasn’t a gentleman; still, I told
myself, this might be his misfortune and not his fault. A mere error
of taste in jewellery is nothing. But when he opened his mouth, the
horrible inner nature of the person appeared. He had the start of me
by two days; yet his manners must have led you to suppose that he had
enjoyed the privilege of knowing General Warne, his daughter, and his
wife since they were born.
Now, I really did enjoy such a position so far as the General’s
family was concerned. At five years of age I had proposed marriage
to Millicent Warne and been accepted. Later on, when I was ten, the
engagement was broken off by mutual understanding; but four years
afterwards, when I had reached the age of fourteen, she twelve, and
when we were both pretty well alive to the hollowness of the world,
the engagement was renewed. I only mention this trifle to show what
my relations with the Warnes amounted to. At the beginning of this
narrative Millicent and I had been for many years detached. Our
friendship was still sincere, but platonic, and we could discuss
our romances without emotion. Indeed, on the very occasion of this
house-party we had a conversation upon the subject of marriage. I was
now twenty, Millicent two years younger, and we drew bright pictures
of the single state, and encouraged one another to be resolute in our
lofty ambition of sticking to it.
Well, you can see for yourself what I’m coming to; the Greensmith,
with an amount of indecent haste impossible to a human being of any
refinement or judgment, fell head over heels in love with Millicent
Warne. His pretensions were merely those of the pocket; his appearance
would have made the most ancient and amorous spinster think twice;
his age placed him upon the confines of sere and yellow, for he was
thirty-four. How he lorded it over everybody on the strength of his
five thousand a year! How he explained that he was better mounted,
groomed, dressed, educated, and mentally equipped than any other man
at that time within the confines of Warwickshire! And all the time I
knew that when I came of age, next year, I should be able to swamp him
even in the matter of filthy lucre, as I did now in the matter of brain
power. Not that I am anything worth mentioning mentally; but the man
with one eye is king where all else are blind, and I at least had sense
to know that I was not much better than a fool, whereas Greensmith was
that pitiable spectacle, a fool who thinks himself a wise man.
Of course, I saw the growing intimacy and the barefaced way in which
Millicent tolerated him, especially in my presence. I spoke about it
more than once, and to my surprise, Miss Warne took up an attitude of
indifference. We did not quarrel, because I am a man with whom it
is impossible for a woman to be on bad terms; but we differed, and I
watched the flirtation, for it was hardly less, with some discomfort.
Here was the best girl I had ever seen or heard of deliberately
encouraging a sort of man one did not like to see in the same
hemisphere with her.
Greensmith’s charade brought matters to a climax in a way beyond human
power to foretell. Of course, when the thing was proposed he took up
the running. What he didn’t know about charades wasn’t worth knowing;
so he undertook to write one, arrange the parts, paint the scenes,
and stage-manage. Millicent, to my amazement, threw herself into the
project very heartily, and seemed much disappointed when Greensmith
said he should not act himself.
“The author never does,” he explained. “You are my puppets for the time
being. It will take me all my time to rehearse you and lick you into
shape.”
To hear Greensmith thus talk about licking county people into shape
made my blood boil. It took Millicent two hours by the study clock to
get me to promise to play a part. But I did it, chiefly that I might
have an excuse for being present at rehearsals and so forth. A hard
frost came at the critical moment, so hunting was suspended, and we had
ample leisure for the charade.
Greensmith said, when he read his drivel to the company: “There are
three syllables, and then the whole word; four scenes in all, and each
depends upon the others. I’ve given a taste of Gilbert’s epigrammatic
style in the first scene; the second suggests the robust manner of
Jones; the third recalls Pinero.”
“And what shall you give us last,” I said, “Shakespeare?”
“No, myself,” he answered.
The word was ‘innocent,’ which Greensmith divided thus: ‘Inn,’ ‘No!’
‘Scent.’ I really forget all the details, and they don’t signify now;
but my part and Millicent’s stick in my memory, as well they may.
Why, I shall never quite understand, but Greensmith arranged that
Millicent and I should be lovers, that I should send her a letter
proposing marriage in the first scene, that she should forward me an
answer refusing my hand in the second. How little the idiot thought of
what he was doing! What absurd and Satanic conceit he had, not to see
the horrid jeopardy to his own private arrangements involved by this
manner of planning the charade!
I chucked up my part four times during the first rehearsal; I chucked
it up thirteen times in all before the night. Greensmith was entirely
responsible for the chucking; Millicent’s marvellous tact so worked
upon me that, against my better judgment, I resumed the character. He
said once:
“If you’ll only be natural, old man, you’re all right. The part fits
you like a glove. It was written for you.”
Now, seeing that the character I impersonated was a silly fool who
didn’t know his own mind, and fancied he was not in love when he was
all the time, this seemed hard enough to bear without being called ‘old
man’ by a person like Greensmith. So I threw up the part again. That
was the tenth time, or it may have been the eleventh. Anyway, Millicent
so far prevailed with me that I found myself acting on the night. The
first week in January it was; and the concern being in mediæval times,
we were all got up in costume. Greensmith wanted to have everything
archæologically correct, but they weren’t by long chalks, because
everybody would wear what he liked, and the girls too. We had a stage
and scenery out from Birmingham, and a man to paint our faces, and
another to do limelight effects on us. I remember just at the last
minute Greensmith asking me if I thought the big audience which crammed
General Warne’s hall would call for the author. I said:
“If they do, you can get away through the hall window and hide in the
park.” This stung him into retort.
He said:
“There’ll only be one target for brickbats, my boy, while you’re on the
stage. Your solitary chance is to speak my words. I don’t believe you
know your part a little bit.”
“I’m going to put some fun of my own into it,” I said, just to get his
wool off.
“They’ll laugh all right without that,” he said, looking nasty. “You’d
make a cow laugh in those things.” I had on an old fancy-dress ball
costume representing something out of Shakespeare; and I know I looked
jolly well, because Warne said so himself, but this vulgarity of
Greensmith’s set me thinking. I am the most soft-hearted brute really,
and somehow the spectacle of Greensmith in evening dress, with the
prompt-copy of his drivel in his hand, with a red silk handkerchief
sticking out of his shirt-front, green clocks to his little socks, a
bunch of violets in his buttonhole, and diamonds stuck on him wherever
the same could be placed without absolute absurdity, made my heart
bleed. I wept inwardly--not for him, but for the sweet, innocent woman
he was slowly luring into his toils. Pity is akin to love, and now I
actually found myself head over ears again! Millicent happened to be
a very pretty girl, beautifully English, with sweet eyes and a very
poetical way of walking. Besides, there was the background of romance.
At any rate I must propose once more, though somehow I felt it was too
late. Then that blighted Greensmith gave me the very idea I required.
He said:
“Well, thank goodness, the best thing in your part is the letter you’re
supposed to send proposing marriage. You can’t ruin that because it’s
all typewritten. Remember you gave it to the girl in the first scene.
Don’t go on, for mercy’s sake, and then find you’ve forgotten the
thing.”
“It’s here,” I said, showing him the letter tied up with a bit of
red silk. Then an inspiration of the sort that only comes once in a
lifetime and sometimes never at all, rolled into my mind. I cleared off
into the library, which was approached from the stage in the hall.
I then opened the letter, put P.T.O. at the bottom of Greensmith’s
idiotic stuff, and wrote on the blank sheet which followed it. What
I said is no business of yours or any other man’s. Suffice it that I
touched lightly on the past, hinted that, in my opinion, Millicent
was running frightful risks, explained that I loved her too well to
see her throw herself away on a foreign body whose name would readily
occur to her, and finally explained that my views on matrimony were
changed, and that if she thought it was good enough--well, you know
the sort of letter. If you haven’t written one, you’ve said the same
thing by word of mouth; or you will; or you ought to. The reason for
my haste was that I had already seen a proposal on Greensmith’s lips
every time he caught sight of Miss Warne. I also knew that he would
have opportunities, denied to me that night, of seeing her at the wings
and elsewhere. I hoped to get one word after the first scene was over,
however.
Millicent looked grand. Every man in the room was in love with her.
Greensmith ate her with his eyes, and forgot all about prompting until
I stuck almost immediately after my first appearance. Then he allowed
himself to swear at me in a voice which could be heard to the back
of the hall; and I told him out loud that it would be all the same a
hundred years hence; which got the best laugh in the piece.
I gave the letter to Millicent and went off, while she read it in face
of the audience. Then she turned over and read my own little piece to
herself.
“There is a postscript,” she remarked, but did not turn a hair or
show anything excepting the deep sorrow she was supposed to feel at
having to reject me. Millicent did this part so jolly well that I felt
uncomfortable. She avoided me like poison after the first scene, but
kept it up hot with Greensmith; and once I half thought she might have
told him the truth. That decided me to destroy Greensmith if my own
affair fell through, and I went on in the next scene feeling about as
little like acting as you can possibly imagine. It was the aching heart
and the green-eyed monster, and all that, hidden beneath the jester’s
motley. Then I remembered that in the course of this scene she had to
send me a letter, and for the first time in my life I felt what it is
to have nerves. Could she? Would she? Was there any chance? I felt that
there was not. Why, the brilliant and exquisite Millicent might have
captivated the noblest in the land that night.
I did not act well. I know it, and admit it frankly. Everything was in
a haze until I sat alone on the stage. Millicent had taken the letter
from her pocket, regarded me with a look of divine pity, dropped the
communication at my elbow, and departed. I just saw Greensmith through
a sort of mist. He was looking venomous, I thought. One eye dashed
malignant hatred, the other scintillated triumph.
I heard him say, “Read it, you fool!” Then I opened the letter and I
shook. It wasn’t acting, though it must have looked jolly real and
pathetic, don’t you know, from the front.
Well, I have said a thousand times since that I was very sorry. I have
apologised to everybody concerned, even Greensmith. These things will
happen. I forgot all about his precious charade in the excitement
of opening the letter; and when I saw at the bottom of a lot of
typewritten rot the three letters P.T.O., just as I had set them down
myself, I forgot everything in the world excepting Millicent. I am a
man who can usually keep his nerves in a crisis; but I didn’t then. I
just sat down in a chair and read to myself:
“_Yes! I think it is quite good enough._
“_Your loving Milly._”
And then I laughed out loud, and banged my feet on the ground, and
thumped the table, and cheered, and said “Holy Mouse! She thinks it’s
good enough! God bless her!” Mind you, I should have done just the
same if the King and all the Royal Family had been in the audience.
I forgot there was an audience. I forgot my part, my costume, my
name--everything. As for Greensmith, he might never have lived. The
audience applauded like anything, _because they’d seen Millicent write
the charade letter and knew she’d chucked me_. They thought it was so
jolly natural for a girl to change her mind like that and send another
letter. But Greensmith here made it clear that he lived.
He was boiling all the starch out of his linen with rage, and trying to
destroy me with his beady eye.
“Read the letter, you miserable, long-legged fool!” he hissed under his
breath.
“I have,” I answered, and the audience roared.
“You have not!” he said, coming round the wing in his excitement.
“She’s refused you! Now you’ve ruined everything, you stupid ass!”
This before everybody; and still I couldn’t grasp the situation, and
turned on Greensmith. “Run away, run away, my little man,” I said, with
calm superiority. “Refuses me! It’s here in black and white. She’s
_accepted_ me, and I’m the happiest Johnny alive.”
He flung down the book, gnashed his teeth, and forgot himself so far
as to try and strike me in the face. I was too happy to hurt him. I
just took him by the back of his neck somewhere, and called him a
silly little cuckoo, and slapped him and let him go. Of course the
charade ended there. It couldn’t proceed because Millicent had utterly
dislocated the plot by accepting me. A thing like that in the middle
of a drama can’t be repaired. So they dropped the curtain--and only
missed Greensmith himself by a hair. And the best judges always say it
was the finest amateur performance that they ever saw in their lives.
General Warne sat in the billiard-room and cried with laughter all
the next day; and I went about saying I was awfully sorry half the
night. Everybody in the house frankly forgave me, too, excepting only
Greensmith.
He left the next morning and sent me a serious challenge to fight a
duel soon afterwards; which I’ve got framed in oak and gold to this
day.