Love’s a Stage

by Laura London

  Rivington was not without experience with the female sex, as his father had bluntly pointed out, but his associations had been with women of quite a different order. Young ladies of his own class were invariably presented to him with careful prior advice from their mamas; he was a brilliant matrimonial catch and on no account was Miss X to say or do anything that might prejudice her chances. The fruit of these strictures was that in Richard’s company the youthful damsels would find themselves covered with awkward blushes, able only to stammer inarticulate agreement with any overtures Mr. Rivington might choose to make. Being himself unselfconscious and direct, it was not surprising that Rivington found such behavior irritating. Thus, he had attained the interesting age of twenty-three with a remarkably untouched heart. Or so it had been until he befriended Frances. Not that he was in love with her; instinctively he knew that if he had been, his feelings toward David would have been closer to a blue-bright rage than the rational exasperation he possessed now. Dammit, why must Landry callously play off his tricks on a girl who was so obviously naïve? Rivington had never seen him doing anything like it before. He could only conclude that the attraction David felt toward her must be unusually powerful—the worse for Frances!

  To top it off, here was his father cheering Frances on about a return to the Lane. It had seemed safe to repeat David’s message. Richard was sure that she would have said no if it had not been for his father’s unfortunate, if well-meaning, interference. Useless to explain anything to Captain Zephyr—Rivington’s father had long held revolutionary views on the encouragement of women’s participation in the arts. The excellent mind of Hannah More! Mary Shelley’s imagination! Richard’s own mother was a noted satirical essayist and his sister’s poetry had earned a congratulatory word of praise from Lord Byron himself. It was one thing, though, Richard knew, to pursue intellectual interests from the pedestal of Wealth and Rank; it was another to take a bit role on the public stage. Nor was it likely that Frances’ mind would be the section of her nubile anatomy to cause the most excitement among her audience.

  Rivington tried gently to probe for the reason that compelled Frances to risk herself in pursuit of Kennan. She looked uncertain, as though she might confide in him, then announced with an air of apologetic bravura that this was nothing to do with Edward Kennan. In fact, she had decided that she would really like to become an actress. It was such a poor excuse for a lie that Rivington warned her tartly that he had grave doubts about her ability to carry off such an extended charade. Still, he did what he could for her. Frances received a frank and pithy lecture on what sections of the theater she must not enter to avoid contact with the bucks in search of comely actresses willing to make an after-hours appearance in their bedchambers. He wished that he were able to convey her safely back and forth from the theater, but to be seen in his company would have given rise to exactly the kind of speculation about her character that he wished her to be spared. Instead, he saw to the hire of a reputably operated sedan chair and warned Frances to ride with no one else.

  Chapter Seven

  Before the elapse of her first afternoon at the Lane, Frances discovered that she had no latent flair for the drama. It was fortunate that her assigned part was a small, undemanding role as the daughter of the house in the one-act comical farce coyly styled A New Way to Get Married, or Give a Man Luck and Throw Him in the Sea, which, so the bill of play claimed, would stir the audience to “right merrie mirth.” Her lines were three: “Papa, I did not see Baron Ogle kiss Mama,” “Watch out, Lord Wineflesh, the chandelier is falling!” and “It must have got in when I forgot to close the door.” After her first walk-through of the part, Charles Scott had no eulogies. Her language was stilted, her stage manner self-conscious, her sense of dramatic timing—atrocious. It had taken her more than forty-five seconds to enter the scene after she’d received her cue. Very well! thought Frances, determined to do better. At her next entrance, she rushed onstage with such sincere eagerness that she collided by accident with a catapult left on the wings from last Wednesday’s performance of Zadoc the Sorcerer, or The Princes of Persia. The misstep caused the release of a large basketful of paper bats, which rained vengefully upon the actor who had just delivered Frances’ cue: “And here is our beautiful daughter now.”

  Frances found that if she was looking up to avoid a piece of flying scenery that was being changed by handrope and pulley, she risked an unplanned exit through one of the stage trapdoors. When she was watching for the swinging platform at her right, its counterbalance was swerving around to smack her from the left. On her third day of rehearsal, it was Frances’ misfortune to provide the company with a free afternoon by brushing against a stack of precariously stored flats, which promptly fell and knocked over a pot of chemicals, creating an artificial smoke that hung over the theater like a pall. Scott said not a word, though his stare was baleful indeed.

  Frances was assigned to spending the greater part of her offstage time prompting Sheila Grant for her leading role in the featured attraction that was to precede the farce. This play, proclaimed a “masterpiece” by everyone in the company who had read the whole of it, was a tragedy written by Lord Landry concerning the last sad year in the life of the late French queen. It had been titled simply Marie. The most challenging moments of the role came in a speech some fifteen minutes in length to be delivered by Marie Antoinette before her execution. It was a moving declaration; subtle, and ingeniously wrought, about the fear of death. Written with sympathy, insight, maturity, and even a gentle touch of humor, it bore the hallmark of genius. Frances came to know each beautifully sculptured passage by heart as she worked with Miss Grant in one of the small rehearsal rooms below the stage. It struck Frances that the nobility and grace of the play squared ill with the ignobility of its author!

  Frances saw nothing of Lord Landry. She had braced herself for their next meeting, so when several days passed without its occurring, she experienced an emotion that bore an unpleasant similarity to disappointment. No doubt he had found his pursuit of her boring, casual and intermittent though it had been. Frances was genuinely shocked to find that reflection accompanied by a definite melancholy. Even more disturbing was the suppressed but real elation Frances felt when she learned that Landry was not consciously avoiding her, but had gone out of town. She was obliged to Captain Zephyr for the information; he paid a morning visit to Frances and told her that David had been summoned to his home in Buckinghamshire, where his younger brother (an irresistible scamp of nine years) was stricken with a mild case of the measles. Nothing would cheer the lad save a visit from his idolized older brother! Landry had gone at once. If this threw Landry’s character into kinder relief, it did nothing to mitigate his behavior to Frances, with its alarming mixture of kindness, callous seduction, and mockery. Frances was exceedingly grateful to have so many things to occupy her mind.

  The theater was a small, self-involved world where petty jealousies, gossip, and rivalries were conducted with passionate energy. The ascent to the pinnacle of the profession was arduous, the public favor fickle. Success could destroy a character as quickly and totally as failure. Frances soon learned that Landry had more friends here than a dairy has cats, while Edward Kennan was universally hated. A distant and reverent public held Kennan in the highest esteem. Kennan’s associates knew him better. He was a man who spent a fortune and more on his own comfort but paid his servants the meanest of wages. Every attention must be given to Kennan’s consequence; he might imagine himself slighted at a triviality. Last month, it was said, he had nearly caused the firing of an elderly and much loved actor, an injustice prevented only by the diplomatic intervention of Lord Landry. The unfortunate man’s offense: he had begun to speak his lines before the applause occasioned by Kennan’s entrance to the stage had ceased.

  Frances wasn’t sure whether to credit Landry’s discretion or Charles Scott’s, but she found that though Scott would direct a disagreeably knowing glance toward her at the mention of Landry’s name, sh
e had been granted the happy anonymity of having no one else at the Lane aware of her connection with Landry. As a minor cast member with limited responsibilities, Frances had opportunity and time to engage in conversation with the scenemen, the ticket sellers, and the other bit players who worked at the Lane. It wasn’t hard to get anyone to talk about Kennan. Everyone was glad of a fresh audience before whom to display his or her grievances. There was hardly a person at the Lane who had not, at one time or another, been the recipient of some petty cruelty of Kennan’s. A portrait emerged that fit the Blue Specter character—that of a ruthless and self-involved man. Most significant to Frances were the stories she heard of his high-living ways; it seemed he lived on a scale befitting someone with a key to the Crown Jewels. It was not unusual to hear of his having dropped a thousand pounds at faro in one sitting. He maintained not one, but two, elegant town carriages, with full matching teams for both and a complement of grooms and coachmen. His clothes outshone the beaux of the dandy set and were of the finest cut and fabric (there was a rumor that he never wore the same shirt twice).

  Frances knew his salary from the Lane, and while he was the highest-paid actor in the British Isles and had an allowance from the Duke of Fowleby to boot, Frances was willing to bet that the two combined could never have supported the half of his luxuries. Discreet questioning of other company members showed that none of them much cared about Kennan’s finances. It was widely supposed that he derived income from unknown investments, but it was Frances’ opinion that Kennan lived too high to have a penny to invest. She became convinced that Kennan’s “investments” were a mythology that he had carefully evolved to disguise the ill-gotten profits from his career as the Blue Specter, and she grew daily more confident that she would eventually discover his Achilles heel.

  It was with this goal in mind that Frances sat in the cavernous basement storeroom, eagerly encouraging Miss Freelove, the wardrobe mistress, to declaim on the subject of Edward Kennan. Miss Freelove belied the rather lurid implications of her name by leading a life of irreproachable middle-aged spinsterhood and holding the male sex in utter abhorrence. The two ladies had been sitting on low three-legged stools making an inventory of costumes used three years ago in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Miss Freelove was folding Puck’s green shirt into a neat pillow as she said:

  “There’s never been another actor in the theater to match his conceit! Believe me, I have less trouble with Sheila Grant. You take his costume in Landry’s newest, Marie. Kennan is to play Robespierre—very well. What happens when I finished his coat? He says the tails are too long—but as soon as I had them hemmed, he said they were too short! Then he complained that the waist was too tight. I let it out a mere half inch, and you know what he said? The fit was too loose!” Miss Freelove bent close to Frances, took a careful glance around the obviously deserted room, and whispered in a confidential tone, “I know something about Kennan unbeknownst to another living soul! Can I trust you, Miss Brightcastle?”

  Frances felt her hopeful heart skip a beat as she nodded vigorously.

  “Kennan is not what he appears to be!” whispered Miss Freelove. “I have to pad his shoulders and chest with buckram to plump out his scrawny figure. Like a plucked chicken he is, without his jacket!”

  Disappointed, Frances forced herself to smile wanly as a sceneman appeared with the news that Miss Freelove was wanted onstage to repair a ripped flounce. Frances finished the inventory task alone, then gave herself liberty to wander for a few minutes through the fascinating chamber.

  It was a room filled with a thousand dreams. To her right was a temple of ancient Greece, its plaster columns finished only on one side; to her left, a forest of sketchy trees which had never seen the sun. A huge screen painting of a sea battle leaned against the wall. King Arthur’s round table—nicked, scratched, and piled high with debris—was standing in the corner. There was a maze of age-darkened wardrobes filled with costumes for wood nymphs, Chinese princesses, and nuns. One could find a gown for Marie de Medici, Joan of Arc, Isabel of Navarre, or the Fair Maid of Perth. Frances drew a silver-painted wooden sword from its scabbard and made a brave flourish in the air, imagining herself the martyred warrior saint leading the French armies at Patay. Feint, thrust, a bit of fancy footwork, and she retired the blade. Then she picked up a gilded chalice. Placing a hand on her forehead, she became Socrates drinking the fatal cup. In her death throes, she collapsed against an old chest, dislodging an object which clanked to the floor.

  Giggling at her own clumsiness, she bent to find she had knocked over an iron lantern, the wick encased in a glass globe of a particularly acid shade of blue. Memory stirred within Frances—the lantern was exactly like the one she had seen in the Blue Specter’s hand the night on the beach! She examined the chest the lantern had been resting on. Though it was in a particularly dusty and abandoned corner of the storeroom, the top looked as if it had recently been cleaned. With Pandora’s trembling fingers, she opened the lid. There, lying neatly folded on a costume pile, lay the cloak and mask of the Blue Specter. She stared in amazement at her unexpected discovery, holding the cloak to the light that filtered through a small street-level window.

  “What are you doing?” The voice came from the doorway. She whirled, to confront the viciously scowling aspect of Edward Kennan.

  “I—I . . .” she choked out as he strode across the room. Upon reaching her, he clamped a hand on the wrist holding the cloak, lifting it with a steady twist. His eyes looked like stones.

  Into this ghastly tension came Lord Landry’s voice, light, affable, and impervious to the hostile undertones.

  “Hello, Miss Brightcastle. I see you’ve met Edward Kennan.”

  “Do you know this girl?” said Kennan.

  “Scott introduced us upstairs,” lied Landry smoothly, and received a grateful look from Frances. “Miss Brightcastle wanted to see the headdress and jewelry Sheila wore in Cleopatra. I’m afraid I misdirected her—they’re in that chest at the other end, I believe.” Landry’s casual tone did much to allay Kennan’s suspicions. The actor let go of Frances’ wrist and bowed slightly, as if in apology. The madness left his face, and he said testily:

  “Very well, but these are valuable props and we can’t have them mulled by inexperienced hands.”

  “Isn’t Miss Brightcastle holding the costume you wore in Sorcery, Edward?” said Landry. “You needn’t worry that she’ll mistreat any costume you’ve worn, Edward. She’s one of your most fervent . . . followers.”

  This promptly reminded Frances that Landry’s sense of humor made him, at best, a capricious ally. She managed a simulated smile as Kennan extended his hand to her, apparently soothed by the reflected credit of Landry’s acceptance of Frances and by the playwright’s agile flattery.

  “Ah,” said Kennan, “I have seen you about . . . in the farce, are you not? A new face! And you take an interest in my career, do you?”

  “Closer than you imagine,” murmured Landry.

  Frances hoped her hand was steady as she received Kennan’s. “I feel you are the most interesting actor in the theater.”

  There were footsteps in the hall, and then Sheila Grant appeared in the doorway.

  “David! Scott said I should find you down here. I’m delighted to see you back in London!”

  Frances stood with cold hands clasped loosely before her, a tightness building in her chest, as she watched Miss Grant give herself into Landry’s arms for a kiss of greeting. Insanity for the parson’s daughter from Beachy Hill to care who the renowned Lord Landry chose to kiss!

  Miss Grant gave a shiver of pleasure and danced coyly out of Landry’s arms. “Have the measles been put to rout?”

  “The measles,” said Landry, “never had a chance. We’re a healthy lot. But I hear you’re to be beheaded.”

  Sheila made a pretense of fussing with his cravat. “There’s no bearing it! Could you not have talked Scott out of the idea?”

  “My dear Sheila, I only
write the words. Scott does as he likes with the production. He was very enthusiastic about the new touch. He fancies himself as catering to the popular taste, so it seems.” Landry gave Kennan his effortless, winning smile. “I hear it was your idea, Edward.”

  Kennan smiled back—a canine smile, the lips rolling over his teeth. “The appropriate flourish to end Marie. When Marie Antoinette finishes her monologue on death, she will turn, walk toward the back of the stage as though in a trance, and drop to her knees before . . .” He pointed dramatically to a tall, shrouded object at the back of the room and strode over to it. With both hands he pulled a dust cover away to reveal—a guillotine! It was apparently in operating order, still surrounded by wood shavings at its base, the serviceable blade poised for its assigned task. Kennan basked proudly in the little shriek given by Miss Grant at the sight of the machine.

  “It’s hideous,” exclaimed Frances involuntarily.

  “But so effective, don’t you think?” Kennan grinned at her and ran a finger carefully across the length of the blade. “Sheila will lay her head here”—he indicated the stock below the blade—” the apron lights darken, and then the blade falls, appearing to decapitate the pitiful Marie. We bring down the curtain as the blade emits a satisfying clang. A brilliant ending!”

  “A smarmy ending,” retorted Sheila, and studied the contraption with a disdainful eye. She threaded her slender arm through Landry’s and smiled enticingly at him. “And after all your beautiful lines . . .”