by George Moore
‘The curtain is just going up, Miss Leslie,’ cried the call boy.
‘All right,’ cried the prima donna, throwing the hare’s-foot to the dresser, ‘I must be off now. We’ll talk of this to-morrow.’
Immediately after the stately figure of Beaumont entered. Putting her black bag down with a thump on the table she exclaimed:
‘Good heavens! not dressed yet! My God! you’ll be late.’
‘Late for what?’ asked Kate in astonishment.
‘Didn’t Mr. Lennox tell you that you had to sing my song, the market-woman’s song, in the first act?’
‘No, I heard nothing of it.’
‘Then for goodness’ sake make haste. Here, stick your face out. I’ll do your make-up while the dresser laces you. But you’ll be able to manage the song, won’t you? It’s quite impossible for me to get dressed in time. I can’t understand Mr. Lennox not having told you.’
‘Oh yes, I shall be able to get through it — at least I hope so,’ Kate answered, trembling with the sudden excitement of the news. ‘I think I know all the words except the encore verse.’
‘Oh, you won’t need that,’ said Beaumont, betrayed by a twinge of professional jealousy. ‘Now turn the other cheek. By Jove! we’ve no time to lose; they’re just finishing the wedding chorus. If you’re late it won’t be my fault. I sent down word to the theatre to ask if you’d sing my song in the first act, as I had some friends coming down from London to see me. You know the Marquis of Shoreham — has been a friend of mine for years. That’ll do for the left eye.’
‘If you put out your leg a little further I’ll pull your stocking, and then you’ll be all right,’ said the dresser, and just staying a moment to pull up her garters in a sort of nervous trance, she rushed on to the stage, followed into the wings by Beaumont, who had come to hear how the song would go.
She was a complete success, and got a double encore from an enthusiastic pit. But in Madame Favart she had nothing to do, and wearied waiting in the chorus for another chance which never came, for after her success with the fish-wife’s song in Madame Angot, Beaumont took good care not to give her another chance. What was to be done? Dick said he couldn’t sack the principals.
‘Kate could play Serpolette as it was never played before,’ exclaimed Montgomery, ‘and I see no reason why she shouldn’t understudy Leslie.’
‘But What’s-her-name is understudying it.’
‘Why shouldn’t there be two understudies?’
Dick could advance no reason, and once begun, the studies proceeded gaily. Apparently deeply interested, Dick lay back in the armchair smoking perpetual cigarettes. Montgomery hammered with nervous vigour at the piano, and Kate stood by his side, her soul burning in the ardours of her task. She would have preferred the part of Germaine; it would have better suited her gentle mind than the frisky Serpolette; but it seemed vain to hope for illness or any accident that would prevent Beaumont from playing. True, Leslie was often imprudent, and praying for a bronchial visitation they watched at night to see how she was wrapped up.
As soon as Kate knew the music, a rehearsal was called for her to go through the business, and it was then that the long-smouldering indignation broke out against her. In the first place the girl who till now had been entrusted with the understudy, and had likewise lived in the hopes of coughs and colds, burst into floods of passionate tears and storms of violent words. She attacked Kate vigorously, and the scene was doubly unpleasant, as it took place in the presence of everybody. Bitter references were made to dying and deserted husbands, and all the acridness of the chorus-girl was squeezed into allusions anent the Divorce Court. This was as disagreeable for Dick as for Kate. The rehearsal had to be dismissed, and the lady in question was sent back to London. Sympathy at first ran very strongly on the side of the weak, and the ladies of the theatre were united in their efforts to make it as disagreeable as possible for Kate. But she bore up courageously, and after a time her continual refusal to rehearse the part again won a reaction in her favour; and when Miss Leslie’s cold began to grow worse, and it became clear that someone must understudy Serpolette, the part fell without opposition to her share.
And now every minute of the day was given to learning or thinking out in her inner consciousness some portion of her part. In the middle of her breakfast she would hurriedly lay down her cup with a clink in the saucer and say, ‘Look here, Dick; tell me how I’m to do that run in — my first entrance, you know.’
‘What are your words, dear?’
‘“Who speaks ill of Serpolette?”’
The breakfast-table would then be pushed out of the way and the entrance rehearsed. Dick seemed never to weary, and the run was practised over and over again. Coming home from the theatre at night, it was always a question of this effect and that effect; of whether Leslie might not have scored a point if she had accentuated the lifting of her skirt in the famous song.
That was, as Dick declared, the ‘number of grip’; and often, at two o’clock in the morning, just as she was getting into bed, Kate, in her chemise, would begin to sing:
‘“Look at me here! look at me there!
Criticize me everywhere!
From head to feet I am most sweet,
And most perfect and complete.”’
There was a scene in the first act in which Serpolette had to run screaming with laughter away from her cross old uncle, Gaspard, and dodge him, hiding behind the Baillie, and to do this effectively required a certain chic, a gaiety, which Kate did not seem able to summon up; and this was the weak place in her rendering of the part. ‘You’re all right for a minute, and then you sober down into a Germaine,’ Dick would say, at the end of a long and critical conversation. The business she learned to ‘parrot.’ Dick taught her the gestures and the intonations of voice to be used, and when she had mastered these Dick said he would back her to go through the part quite as well as Leslie.
Leslie! The word was now constantly in their minds. Would her cold get worse or better? was the question discussed most frequently between Dick, Kate, and Montgomery. Sometimes it was better, sometimes worse; but at the moment of their greatest despondency the welcome news came that she had slipped downstairs and sprained her foot badly.
‘Oh, the poor thing!’ said Kate; ‘I’m so sorry. Had I known that was — —’
‘Was going to happen you wouldn’t have learnt the part,’ exclaimed Montgomery, with his loud, vacant laugh.
She beat her foot impatiently on the ground, and after a long silence she said, ‘I shall go and see her.’
‘You’d much better run through your music with Montgomery, and don’t forget to see the dresser about your dress. And, for God’s sake, do try and put a bit of gaiety into the part. Serpolette is a bit of a romp, you know.’
‘Try to put a bit of gaiety into the part,’ rang in Kate’s ears unceasingly. It haunted her as she took in the waist of Leslie’s dress, while she leaned over Montgomery’s shoulder at the piano or listened to his conversation. He was enthusiastic, and she thought it very pretty of him to say, ‘I’m glad to have had a share in your first success. No one ever forgets that — that’s sure to be remembered.’
It was the nearest thing to a profession of love he had ever made, but she was preoccupied with other thoughts, and had to send him away for a last time to study the dialogue before the glass.
‘Try to put a little gaiety into the part. Serpolette is a romp, you know.’
‘Yes, a romp; but what is a romp?’ Kate asked herself; and she strove to realize in detail that which she had accepted till now in outline.
XVI
‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,’ said Mr. Hayes, who had been pushed, much against his will, before the curtain of the Theatre Royal, Bristol, to make the following statement, ‘I’m sorry to inform you that in consequence of indisposition — that is to say, the accidental spraining of her ankle — Miss Leslie will not be able to appear to-night. Your kind indulgence is therefore requested for Miss D’A
rcy, who has, on the shortest notice, consented to play the part of Serpolette.’
‘Did yer ever ‘ear of anyone spraining an ankle on purpose?’ asked a scene-shifter.
‘Hush!’ said the gas-man, ‘he’ll ‘ear you.’
Amid murmurs of applause, Mr. Hayes backed into the wings.
‘Well, was it all right?’ he asked Dick.
‘Right, my boy, I should think it was; there was a touch of Gladstone in your accidentally sprained ankle.’
‘What do you mean?’ said the discomfited acting manager.
‘I haven’t time to tell you now. Now then, girls, are you ready?’ he said, rushing on to the stage and hurriedly changing the places of the choristers. Putting his hand on a girl’s shoulder, he moved her to the right or left as his taste dictated. Then retiring abruptly, he cried, ‘Now then, up you go!’ and immediately after thirty voices in one sonority sang:
‘“In Corneville’s wide market-pla-a-ces,
Sweet servant-girls, with rosy fa-a-ces,
Wait here, wait here.”’
‘Now, then, come on. You make your entrance from the top left.’
‘I don’t think I shall ever be able to do that run in.’
‘Don’t begin to think about anything. If you don’t like the run, I’ll tell you how to do it,’ said Dick, his face lighting up with a sudden inspiration; ‘do it with a cheeky swagger, walking very slowly, like this; and then when you get quarter of the way down the stage, stop for a moment and sing, “Who speaks ill of Serpolette?” Do you see?’
‘Yes, yes, that will suit me better; I understand.’
Then standing under the sloping wing, they both listened anxiously for the cue.
‘She loves Grenicheux.’
‘There’s your cue. On you go; give me your shawl.’
The footlights dazzled her; a burst of applause rather frightened than reassured her, and a prey to a sort of dull dream, she sang her first lines. But she was a little behind the beat. Montgomery brought down his stick furiously, the répliques of the girls buffeted her ears like palms of hands, and it was not until she was halfway through the gossiping couplets, and saw Montgomery’s arm swing peacefully to and fro over the bent profiles of the musicians that she fairly recovered her presence of mind. Then came the little scene in which she runs away from her uncle Gaspard and hides behind the Baillie. And she dodged the old man with such sprightliness from one side of the stage to the other that a murmur of admiration floated over the pit, and, arising in echoes, was prolonged almost until she stepped down to the footlights to sing the legend of Serpolette.
The quaintly tripping cadences of the tune and the humour of the words, which demanded to be rather said than sung, were rendered to perfection. It was impossible not to like her when she said:
‘“I know not much of my relations,
I never saw my mother’s face;
And of preceding generations
I never found a single trace.
‘“I may have fallen from the sky,
Or blossomed in a rosebud sweet;
But all I know is this, that I
Was found by Gaspard in his wheat.”’
A smile of delight filled the theatre, and Kate felt the chilling sense of separation which exists between the public and a debutante being gradually filled in by a delicious but almost incomprehensible notion of contact — a sensation more delicate than the touch of a lover’s breath on your face. This reached a climax when she sang the third verse, and had not etiquette forbade, she would have had an encore for it alone.
‘“I often think that perhaps I may
The heiress to a kingdom be,
But as I wore no clothes that day
I brought no papers out with me.”’
These words, that had often seemed coarse in Leslie’s mouth, in Kate’s seemed adorably simple. So winning was the smile and so coquettishly conscious did she seem of the compromising nature of the statement she was making, that the entire theatre was actuated by the impulse of one thought: Oh! what a little dear you must have been lying in the wheat-field! The personality of the actress disappeared in the rosy thighs and chubby arms of the foundling, and notwithstanding the length of the song, she had to sing it twice over. Then there was an exit for her, and she rushed into the wings. Several of the girls spoke to her, but it was impossible for her to reply to them. Everything swam in and out of sight like shapes in a mist, and she could only distinguish the burly form of her lover. He wrapped a shawl about her, and a murmur of amiable words followed her, and, with her thoughts fizzing like champagne, she tried to listen to his praises.
Then followed moments in which she anxiously waited for her cues. She was nervously afraid of missing her entrance, and she dreaded spoiling her success by some mistake. But it was not until the end of the act when she stepped out of the crowd of servant-girls to sing the famous coquetting song that she reached the summit of her triumph.
Kate was about the medium height, a shade over five feet five. When she swung her little dress as she strutted on the stage she reminded you immediately of a pigeon. In her apparent thinness from time to time was revealed a surprising plumpness.
For instance, her bosom, in a walking dress no more than an indication, in a low body assumed the roundness of a bird’s, and the white lines of her falling shoulders floated in long undulations into the blue masses of her hair. The nervous sensibility of her profession had awakened her face, and now the brown eyes laughed with the spiritual maliciousness with which we willingly endow the features of a good fairy. The hips were womanly, the ankle was only a touch of stocking, and the whole house rose to a man and roared when coquettishly lifting the skirt, she sang:
‘“Look at me here! look at me there!
Criticize me everywhere!
From head to feet I am most sweet,
And most perfect and complete.”’
The audience, principally composed of sailors — men home from months of watery weariness, nights of toil and darkness, maddened by the irritating charm of the music and the delicious modernity of Kate’s figure and dress, looked as if they were going to precipitate themselves from the galleries. Was she not the living reality of the figures posted over the hammocks in oil-smelling cabins, the prototype of the short-skirted damsels that decorated the empty match-boxes which they preserved and gazed at under the light of the stars?
Her success was enormous, and she was forced to sing
‘Look at me here!’
five times before her friends would allow the piece to proceed. At the end of the act she received an ovation. Two reporters of the local newspapers obtained permission to come behind to see her. London engagements were spoken of, and in the general enthusiasm someone talked about grand opera. Even her fellow artists forgot their jealousies, and in the nervous excitement of the moment complimented her highly. Beaumont, anxious to kick down her rival, declared, ‘That, to say the least of it, it was a better rendering of the part than Leslie’s.’ And on hearing this, Bret, whose forte was not repartee, moved away; Mortimer, in his least artificial manner, said that it was not bad for a beginning and that she’d get on if she worked at it. Dubois strutted and spoke learnedly of how the part had been played in France, and he was pleased to trace by an analysis which was difficult to follow a resemblance between Kate and Madame Judic.
The second act went equally well. And after seeing the ghosts she got a bouquet thrown to her, so cheekily did she sing the refrain:
‘For a regiment of soldiers wouldn’t make me afraid.’
She had therefore now only to maintain her prestige to the end, and when she had got her encore for the cider song, and had been recalled before the curtain at the end of the third act, with unstrung nerves she wandered to her dressing-room, thinking of what Dick would say when they got home. But the pleasures of the evening were not over yet: there was the supper, and as she came down from her dressing-room she whispered to Montgomery in the wings that they hoped to s
ee him at their place later on. He thanked her and said he would be very glad to come in a little later on, but he had some music to copy now and must away, and feeling a little disappointed that he had to leave she walked up and down the rough boards, stepping out of the way of the scene-shifters. ‘By your leave, ma’am,’ they cried, going by her with the long swinging wings. She was glad now that Montgomery had left her, for alone she could relive distinctly every moment of the performance.
As the chorus-girls crossed the stage they stopped to compliment her with a few mechanical words and a hard smile. Kate thanked them and returned to her dream all aglow and absorbed in remembrances of her success. The word ‘success’ returned in her thoughts like the refrain of a song. Yes, she had succeeded. Wherever she went she would be admired. There was something to live for at last.
The T-light flared, and she stopped and began to wonder at the invention, so absurd did it seem; and then feeling that such thoughts were a waste of time, she took up the thread of her memories and had just begun to enjoy again a certain round of applause when Beaumont and Dolly Goddard awoke her with the question, had she seen Dick? Kate tried to remember. A scene-shifter going by said that he had seen Mr. Lennox leave the theatre some twenty minutes ago.
‘I suppose he will come back for me,’ Kate said; ‘or perhaps I’d better go on? Are you coming my way?’
Beaumont and Dolly said they were and proposed that they should pop into a pub before closing time. Kate hesitated to accept the invitation, but Beaumont insisted, and as it was a question of drinking to the night’s success she consented to accompany them.
‘No, not here,’ said Beaumont, shoving the swing-doors an inch or so apart: ‘it’s too full. I’ll show you the way round by the side entrance.’