“How can anybody live God?”
“By living as well as they can with themselves. It doesn’t always look very well to the bystanders. Truth to yourself, I suppose you’d call it. Following your nose. But don’t expect me to explain. My dad was the explainer. He could go on about living in God’s light till your head swam. Duw, he was a fine preacher! A true God-intoxicated man. But he thought God had one, single, unwinking light for everybody, and that was where he and I fell out.”
“Now that I’ve said what you made me say—don’t you say anything?”
“Yes. I say it won’t do. Suppose I took you up on it, and we had an affair, you loving and me using you as long as it lasted—which wouldn’t be long. It would be a cheat. I haven’t time or inclination for that, and when it finished you would be bitter, and you’re quite bitter enough already. What about Gunilla? Did you love her?”
“It wasn’t the same.”
“No love ever is the same as any other. The lucky ones get the big thing. You know—’The silver link, the silken tie’—but it’s not common. That’s one of the big mistakes, you know—that everybody loves in the same way and that everybody may have a great love. You might as well say that everybody can compose a great symphony. A lot of love is misery; bad weather punctuated by occasional flashes of sunlight. Look at this opera we’re busy with; the love in it is pretty rough. Its not the best of Arthurs life, or Lancelot’s, or Guenevere’s.”
“It’s the best of Elaines.”
“Elaine wasn’t a gifted musician, so don’t try that on. She had your trouble, though. ‘Fantasy’s hot fire, / Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly.’ You set those words to some very good music. Didn’t you learn anything from them? Schnak, if you and I set out on a love affair, you’d have had enough of it in two weeks.”
“Because I’m ugly! Because my looks make everybody sick! It isn’t fair! It’s a curse! That Cornish bitch, and Nilla and Dulcy all look great and they can do anything with you, or any man! I’ll kill myself!”
“No, you won’t. You’ve got other fish to fry. But truth is truth, Schnak; you’re no beauty queen and that’s just something you have to put up with, and it isn’t the worst affliction, let me tell you. What do you suppose Nilla looked like at your age? A big gawk, I’ll bet. Now she’s marvellous. When you’re her age, you’ll be totally different. Success will have given you a new look. You’ll be a kind of distinguished goblin, I expect.”
Schnak howled again, and hid her face in the pillows.
“I’m sorry if that hurt your feelings, but you see, Schnak old girl, I’m under considerable stress myself. Everybody says I have to talk to you, and be nice to you, though I protest I hadn’t an inkling of the way you felt about me, and I won’t take any responsibility. I can’t run the risk of feeding your flame, and making things worse. So I’m talking entirely against my inclination. You know how I am; I love to talk and talk as gaudily as I can, just for the pleasure it gives me. But with you, I’m trying to speak on oath, you see. Not a word I don’t truly mean. If I let myself go, I could rave on about the Livery of Hell, and the demon’s dunghill, and all the rest of it. Welsh rhetoric is part of me, and my curse is that the world is full of literal-minded morlocks who don’t understand, and think I’m a crook because their tongues are wrapped in burlap and mine is hinged with gold. I’ve been as honest as I know how. You see, don’t you?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. Now I must go. A million things to attend to. Get well as fast as you can; we want you on the first night, and that’s the day after tomorrow. And—Schnak, here’s a kiss. Not a romantic one, or a brotherly one, God forbid! but a friendly one. Fellow artists—isn’t that it?”
He was gone. Schnak dozed and thought, and dozed and thought, and when Gunilla came to see her late in the afternoon, she was decidedly better.
“It must have cost him a good deal to talk like that,” said Gunilla, when Schnak had given a version of what Geraint had said. “Lots of so-called lovers wouldn’t have been as direct with you, Hulda. It isn’t easy to be like Geraint.”
8
It was the final dress parade, on the Friday afternoon preceding the final dress rehearsal, which was to take place the same night. In Row G of the theatre sat a little group: Geraint Powell the dominant figure, with Dulcy Ringgold as his first lieutenant and Waldo Harris on his other side; in front of them sat Gwen Larking, with both her assistants, and a gofer poised to run with messages too delicate to be shouted toward the stage. One by one the actors, dressed and made up for their roles, walked to centre stage, did little excursions to right and left, bowed, curtsied, drew weapons. Now and then Geraint shouted some request to them; when they replied they shaded their eyes against the stage light, to see him if they could. Geraint whispered comments to Dulcy, who made notes, or explained, and occasionally expostulated if he wanted something that could not be managed in the time that was left before the opening.
A queer moment, thought Darcourt, who sat further back, by himself. The moment when all that is important is how the singer looks, not how he sings; the moment when everything that can be done to make the singers look like the people they represent has been done, and whatever has not been achieved must be accepted. A moment when inexplicable transformations take place.
The two black Knights, for instance, Greenlaw and LeMoyne, who looked superb in armour and the turbans Dulcy had given them to mark them as men of the East. But Wilson Tinney, as Gareth Beaumains, simply looked dumpy, although he was not an ill-looking man in his ordinary dress. His legs were too short. When he appeared without his armour he looked like a kewpie doll in his short robe. He had made himself up with very red cheeks, doubtless to suggest a life of adventure on horseback, but the effect was merely doll-like. In his robes as Merlin, Oliver Twentyman was convincingly magical, because his legs were long; he loved dressing up, and was enjoying himself. Giles Shippen, the Lancelot, looked less like a heart-breaker in costume than out of it; he was a reasonable figure, but he had Tenor written all over him, and his big chest made him look shorter than he really was.
“Did you put lifts in his shoes?” hissed Geraint to Dulcy.
“As much as I dared, without putting him in surgical boots,” said she; “he just doesn’t look like much whatever you do.”
“Nobody will believe a woman would leave Hoizknecht for him. Hans looks magnificent.”
“Every inch a ruler,” said Dulcy; “but everybody knows women have funny tastes. Nothing to be done, I’m afraid, Geraint.”
As was to be expected, Nutcombe Puckler had a great deal to say, and was full of complaint. “Geraint, I simply can’t hear in this thing,” he said. He was referring to his camail, a headpiece of chain armour that hung down from his fool’s bonnet to his shoulders, over his ears. “If I can’t hear, I may make a false entrance and screw up. Can’t something be done?”
“The effect is splendid, Nutty. You look the perfection of a merry warrior. Dulcy will put some pads under it, just over your ears, and you’ll be all right.”
“It fidgets me,” said Nutty. “I can’t bear to have my ears covered on the stage.”
“Nutty, you’re far too much of a pro to let a little thing bother you,” said Geraint. “Give it a try tonight and if it really doesn’t work, we’ll find another way.”
“Like hell we will,” murmured Dulcy, making a note.
Among the women the assumption of costume brought about similar changes in emphasis. As Queen Guenevere, Donalda Roche looked handsome, but very much a woman of the present day, whereas Marta Ullmann, as the Lady Elaine, looked so much a creature of the Middle Ages, and so infinitely desirable, that none of the men could take their eyes off her. Clara Intrepidi, as Morgan Le Fay, looked an undoubted sorceress in her gown of changing colours and her dragon head-dress—but a sorceress who was a fugitive from some unidentified opera by Wagner. She was taller than any of the men except Hoizknecht, and her appearance suggested that when she was at home sh
e had a full suit of armour in her closet.
“Can’t be helped,” whispered Dulcy, “unless she consents to act on her knees, or sitting down all the time. Luckily she’s Arthur’s sister; great height runs in the family. Look at it that way.”
“Yes, but look at Panisi,” said Geraint. “He’s supposed to be her son, and Arthur’s son as well. Surely a child of those two would be a giant?”
“Incest makes for funny-looking children,” said Dulcy. “Use your imagination, Geraint. You did the casting, you know.”
The ladies of the court were, upon the whole, a splendid group, except for Virginia Poole who, as the Lady Clarissant, looked like a woman with a grievance, as indeed she was, onstage and off. Dulcy had put some of the younger women in the cotehardie, a tight-fitting medieval bodice that showed off a fine bust to the utmost advantage.
“You’ve let your natural inclinations run away with you, haven’t you, dear?” said Geraint.
“You bet I have. Look at Polly Graves; it would be a black sin to muffle up such a splendid pair of jugs. And Esther Moss; an evocation of the mystic East? A whiff of Baghdad in Camelot?”
“They didn’t look quite that way in the designs.”
“Don’t fight your luck, Geraint. These girls are for the tired business man.”
“And woman, dear. I’m not complaining. Just surprised. You never know what’s under rehearsal clothes, do you?”
“Primrose Maybon looks good enough to eat with a silver spoon,” said Waldo.
“Too bad the women look so much better than the men,” said Gwen Larking. “But our sex does have its compensations, when we can show ‘em off.”
“Let’s see you with your trains over the arm, girls,” said Dulcy. “Left arm, Etain. That’s the girl.”
To Darcourt they all looked wonderful, even the nuisance Puckler. Dulcy had drawn heavily on Planché’s Encyclopaedia, and she had obviously studied the work of Burne-Jones, but the result was all her own. If not all the singers looked as well as they should in their costumes, the total effect was superb, because of the way in which colours called to one another, not obviously but subtly, in every grouping. This was an element in the opera of which Darcourt, the greenhorn in the theatre, could have had no idea.
When every costume had been seen in its final form, and all the notes made and all the complaints heard, Geraint called: “Before we break, I want to rehearse the curtain calls. Stand by, will you.” And when at last these tableaux had been arranged to his satisfaction—”And of course when that’s over, you, Hans, go to stage right and bring on Nilla, who takes her bow, and then, Nilla, you beckon into the wings for Schnak. And Schnak, you must come on in full fig—the fullest fig you possess—and Nilla takes your hand and you curtsy.”
“I what?”
“You curtsy. You mayn’t bow; not old enough. If you don’t know what a curtsy is, get somebody to show you. Thank you. That’s all for now. I want to see all the animal-handlers backstage right away, please.”
“But why me?” said Darcourt to an unwontedly pleading Schnak, who had sidled up to him with her request when the rehearsal was over, and the singers had gone to their dressing-rooms.
“You know what a curtsy is, don’t you?”
“I think so. But get one of the women to show you. It’s their kind of thing.”
“I don’t want to. They hate me. They’d triumph over me.”
“Nonsense, Schnak. They don’t hate you. The younger ones are probably afraid of you, because you’re so clever.”
“Please, Simon. Be a good guy, eh?”
It was the first time she had ever called him Simon, and Darcourt, whose heart was not of stone, could not say no.
“All right. Here’s a nice quiet place. So far as I can remember from my dancing-school days, it goes like this.”
They had found a dark nook backstage, near the scene-painters’ dock.
“First of all, you must stand up straight. You tend to slump, Schnak, and it won’t do if you’re going to curtsy. Then, slowly and with dignity, you sweep your right leg behind your left, and fit the knee lightly into the left leg joint. Then you descend, gently and slowly as if you were going down in an elevator, and when you get to the bottom, bend your head forward, from the neck. Keep your back straight all the time. It’s not a cringe; it’s an acknowledgement of an obligation. Now watch me.”
Rather stiffly, and with perhaps too much of the dowager in his manner, Darcourt curtsied. Schnak had a try and fell over sideways.
“It isn’t easy. And it’s very characteristic, you know. Don’t be pert, but don’t be grandiose, either. You are a great artist, acknowledging the applause of your audience. You know you are their superior in art, but they are your patrons, and they expect the high courtesy of an artist. Try again.”
Schnak tried again. This time she did not topple.
“What the hell do I do with my hands?”
“Keep them where your lap would be if you were sitting down. Some people wave the right hand to the side in a sweeping gesture, but that’s a bit stagy and too advanced for your age. You’re getting it. Try again. And again. Keep your head straight and look at the audience; only bow when you’re all the way down. Again. Come on. You’re getting it.”
Darcourt curtsied repeatedly to Schnak, and Schnak curtsied to Darcourt. They bobbed up and down, facing one another, somewhat like a pair of heraldic animals on either side of a coat of arms; Darcourt’s knees were beginning to whimper, but Schnak was learning one of the minor accomplishments of a public performer.
From above them came a sharp burst of applause, and a cry of Bravo. They looked up; suspended well above them, on the painting-bridge, were three or four stage-hands and Dulcy Ringgold, watching with undisguised delight.
Darcourt was too old and too wily to be disconcerted. He kissed his hand to the unexpected audience. But Schnak had fled to her dressing-room, hot with shame. She had much to learn.
9
“We hear marvellous reports about you, Simon,” said Maria as she and Arthur sat with Darcourt in the favourite restaurant. “Dulcy says it was heart-lifting to see you teaching Schnak to curtsy. She says you were très grande dame.”
“Somebody had to do it,” said Simon, “and so few women these days are up to their job as females. I think of starting a small school to teach girls the arts of enchantment. They certainly won’t learn anything from their liberated sisters.”
“We live in the age of the sweat-shirt and the jeans,” said Arthur. “Charm and manners are out. But they’ll come back. They always do. Look at the French Revolution: in a generation or two the French were all hopping around like fleas, bowing and scraping to Napoleon. People love manners, really. They admit you to one or another of a dozen secret societies.”
“Schnak must look as well as possible when she takes her bow,” said Darcourt. “Did I tell you I had a phone call from Clem Hollier? He’s going to be here tomorrow night, and he wanted to know whether he should wear dinner clothes or tails. For taking his bow, you understand.”
“Is Clem taking a bow?” said Maria. “Whatever for?”
“You may well ask. But his name appears on the program as one of the concocters of the libretto, and he seems to think that a clamorous audience will demand his appearance.”
“But did he do anything?”
“Not a damned thing. Not even as much as Penny, who simply bitched and found fault and was cross because I wouldn’t tell her where the best lines came from. But Penny is coming, in full fig, and I shouldn’t be surprised if she expects to take a bow, too.”
“Are you taking a bow, Simon?”
“I haven’t been asked, and upon the whole I think not. Nobody loves a librettist. The audience wouldn’t know who I was.”
“You can lurk in the shadows with us.”
“Oh, don’t be bitter, Arthur,” said Maria. And to Darcourt, “He’s rather touchy because we’ve been cold-shouldered so much during the last few weeks.”
“Don’t be hurt, darling. Or at least, don’t show it. I expect we’re on the program, somewhere.”
This was a moment Darcourt had been dreading. “There was a slip-up,” he said; “quite by accident the acknowledgement of the help of the Cornish Foundation was left off the program. Easily explained. The Festival generally arranges those things through its own administration, you see, and as this was a sort of special production, not quite of the Festival, though under its umbrella, there was an oversight. I didn’t see a proof till this afternoon. But don’t worry. Slips are being stuffed into every program at this moment, with the proper acknowledgement on it.”
“Typewritten, I suppose?”
“No, no; one of those wonderful modern multilith processes.”
“Same thing.”
“An understandable error.”
“Completely understandable, in the light of everything else that connects the Cornish Foundation with this opera. I don’t know why they bother. Who gives a damn, so long as the show goes on?”
“Oh, please, Arthur, the Festival is very much aware of its benefactors.”
“I suppose the benefactors take care, in the most unmistakable way, that it is so. We haven’t been aggressive enough, that’s the answer. Next time we must take care to push a little harder. We must learn the art of benefaction, though I must say I’m not looking forward to it.”
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