‘I say, Miss O’Carroll,’ gasped the Lieutenant, ‘you are expert at this schottische. I haven’t quite got the this and the that of it yet.’
‘We danced quite a lot at the convent.’ Her eyes were following Thomas.
‘You surprise me. Isn’t it rather wicked? That is, new?’
‘It is worse than wicked,’ said Sterrin whose eyes were on Winifred, free to hop around openly with Young Thomas.
‘You amaze me, Miss O’Carroll. It is scarcely all that wicked.’
She looked at him for the first time. What was he talking about? ‘Oh, I mean the waltz. It was forbidden. The nuns thought it was sensuous.’
‘Oh!’ There was something deucedly disturbing about such a word on the lips of a young lady. This alcove business was disturbing, too. ‘I say Miss O’Carroll, oh. I’m so sorry. One, two, three. One—two—three. I mean there’s no need to be afraid. Winifred and I won’t peach.’
There was a group of girls round Young Thomas. She wanted to go over and pull him away from them. Why hadn’t he written? Why has he let this trap close around me? ‘You can trust us.’ Her eyes returned to her partner. Jove, they were stunning! They had gone purple because their owner wanted to scream; wanted to hit him.
‘Are you trying to make a bargain with me?’ she asked. ‘I’m afraid I don’t huckster.’ He sweated embarrassment down his side-whiskers, lost his one—two—three and hopped over his sword.
‘Oh, perish the thought, Miss O’Carroll.’ Damn it she needn’t be so glacial. Dancing towards her tryst with one gentleman; on the eve of her wedding to another! And this tryst in the alcove was not meant for a farewell. Sounded more like a beginning. An elopement, perhaps. What a tophole infectious thought. Perhaps Winifred might not have to be immune from its contagion.
In the alcove Young Thomas had indeed been thinking of elopement. ‘But, Sterrin,’ he resumed where they had left off, ‘’Tis an ungodly sacrifice. The price is too high. Oh, my dove of the storm.’ He took her in his arms and murmured into her hair. ‘You were never designed for his aviary.’ She wanted to stay there, her troubled head on his breast, for ever. She felt like a storm-tossed boat that had come at last to harbour. Then into her peace came a vision of James Keating’s face bending over her; of herself placing her hand in solemn pledge into the hand of the man to whom she had fled from Keating. She lifted her face. ‘I’ve made my bargain—’ She gave a twisted smile. ‘I’ve just told Lieutenant O’Hara that I don’t huckster, but I have huckstered for Kilsheelin. I must stand by my word.’
‘You have not huckstered, Sterrin. Like great people you have played for great stakes. Kilsheelin and its folks in return for the fairest flower of all its dynasty. But I won’t let that happen. There must be a way out.’
She put a hand on either side of his face. ‘Young Thomas, if it were just for myself I should not have bartered; but those others; so helpless! They are all like people reprieved. No, there is no way out of this.’
‘You must come away with me.’ He stepped back and seized her hand. ‘I have found you when I thought that I had lost you for ever. I won’t let you go. When is the wedding day?’
‘Tomorrow fortnight.’
‘That gives me time. I must play in London in two days’ time. I have arranged for a man to come and meet me here early in the morning before I leave. Bergin. He was with me in the gold fields. He is an escaped convict. He escaped on to the ship that was to have brought me to the settlement—never mind about that now; there is so much that we have to explain to each other. Meantime I believe that I can do something to save Kilsheelin. Don’t think that it is no concern of mine, the only home I’ve known; that gave me bread and life—and love! Do you think that I would let the others, the kitchen family, go on the shaughraun? No, we’ll hold Kilsheelin.’
Winifred Murray peeped through the palm fronds. ‘Oh, Joachim, look at Sterrin’s face! She must have decided to elope.’
Joachim looked. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘see what elopement does for a girl. One would never think that she was the same person.’
* Pronounced ‘plaumaus’—flattery or soft-talk.
† Bilberries.
43
Thomas repeated the cue but his colleague, Henry Monteith, failed to respond. The audience didn’t seem to notice. They were thrilled by Thomas’s performance in the revival of Bertram. From pit to gallery the applause surged up and down. In the boxes fashionable ladies were rising to acclaim the great American actor. Under the tumult Thomas again threw the cue to the actor who should be struggling to his feet for the curtain line.
Inwardly fuming, Thomas improvised a line and signalled the stagehands. As the curtain came down he called impatiently to the man on the floor. ‘Come on, Harry! Get ready to take the curtain.’ This was the consequence of treating a cough with whiskey. And this was the actor who was to understudy him on Wednesday while he dashed to Ireland. To Ireland and Sterrin! By Heaven, it would be a pity for the man who would impede those plans.
Thomas swept towards the clamour beyond the curtain but was halted by the sound of a gasp. The principals were lining in from the wings for the first curtain. The leading lady was pointing dramatically, at the same time swooning backwards on to the shoulder of the handsome juvenile who was staring open-mouthed over her head.
Then Thomas saw what she was pointing at. Henry was lying on the stage, his hands fluttering around his throat. Thomas dropped on his knees and supported the actor’s head. Blood flowed from his mouth. The man tried to say something but only a bubble of blood came through lips that were stuck together by yellow ochre and congealed blood. At last the words came and Thomas stooped to catch the pitiful apology. ‘I’m s-sorry-Mr. Young. I-I tried to cov—’ His head fell back on to Thomas’s arm.
Through the curtains the unappeased audience roared for ‘Young! Mr. Young! Thomas Young!’ Critics who had come prepared to see a passion torn to resplendent tatters had been first puzzled and then fascinated by his technique of restraint and under-emphasis. They stampeded with the rest for the pleasure of his thrilling voice in a curtain speech.
He spoke quietly, just a few words and when he turned to go there was a roar of disappointment. ‘Call that a speech, Guvnor?’ yelled a galleryite who was settling down to enjoy the cadence for a bit of extra good measure. The bills had prepared them for a famous actor but not for a person and personality who was worth paying to see without any performance.
Reluctantly, Thomas was forced to divulge that one of his cast had taken ill. Only then was he allowed to go. He stepped back. Behind the curtain the actor whose name was billed below his own was making his last exit between two stagehands. Poor Henry Monteith would not be taking his bow. Thomas, following the procession amid silent actors and props, suddenly realised the full impact of this catastrophe.
Who would understudy him on Wednesday evening? The programme would have to be changed. All the preparations would have to be scrapped, except his plan to return for Sterrin. Nothing short of his own death would alter that plan!
The players, weary from the strain of their first London audience, shocked by Henry’s sudden death, were startled on their way to the stage door by the callboy summoning a complete all-cast muster. They looked at each other. Did this mean that Mr. Young was giving them his usual stage party after all? It wasn’t like him, not in these circumstances. They turned without enthusiasm and grouped together as far as possible from the freshly-washed boards.
Thomas addressed them crisply. ‘You all know by now that Mr. Monteith is dead. But “the play goes on”. Perhaps it was that tradition that contributed to his death. While he lay in the swoon scene a fit of coughing caused a suffusion of blood that he retained until it smothered him.’ He broke off on the point of uttering ‘needlessly’, and turned away, sickened, not from the sight of the bloodstains but of himself mouthing platitudes about poor Henry’s unnecessary death from false delicacy and misplaced heroics. Out of the shadowy void of the proscenium S
terrin’s face shimmered towards him. He turned and paced the deserted end of the stage, then turned in a swirl to face the silent group.
‘The play must go on.’ His vehemence was startling. ‘But not tonight’s play,’ he continued. ‘You did not know that I had arranged with Henry—Mr. Monteith—to understudy me on Wednesday for a few nights, I must return to Ireland on business...’ An explosive ‘Gawney’ from Alcium Beracium Conceptionez Duignan interrupted him. ‘And I am putting on the new piece Romance at the Crossroads. It went over well the one night we played it before we left America. Audiences don’t like their tragedies too distressingly realistic. We must give them something to laugh away tonight’s realism. So, everyone on the stage tomorrow morning at nine. Goodnight.’ He moved off then stopped. ‘I’m sorry that we couldn’t have our usual little celebration tonight. Heaven knows, you all deserve one. You must only drink poor Henry’s funeral ale. God rest his soul!’
A girl padded after him down the dark passage to the stage door, but Alcium Beracium Conceptionez Duignan, with his master’s cloak on his arm and obstruction on his mind, kept ahead of her. ‘Mr. Young,’ she pleaded over the valet’s shoulder. Thomas turned impatiently, but when the lamp over the open door shone down upon the girl whose soft brown eyes always recalled Lady O’Carroll, he softened. ‘What is it, Miss du Clos?’
‘Mr. Young,’ she gasped, breathless with exertion and her own temerity. ‘Who are you casting for Sally?’ Dear Heaven, was he to cope with casting jealousy at this hour of the night.
‘Why you, of course. Who else? Didn’t you play it last time...’ he stopped. She hadn’t; another girl, one he had dropped from the company had originally played Sally.
‘You see,’ exclaimed the girl. ‘You do see?’ She was urging him to see why she had been so presumptuous.
‘But,’ he said, his brows in a black line across his forehead, ‘you were in the cast?’
She nodded. ‘As young Peggy; only a few lines.’ He nodded as he remembered, but his mind was occupied with the arrangements he must settle tonight; new plans for the performances; lugubrious plans for a funeral; glorious plans for a... his heart gave a throb and a surge and his perfect teeth sparkled through a radiant smile at the amazed actress. He held his repeater to the lamp that alternated in the wind with a flash and creak and shadow movement. ‘Let me see,’ he was almost playful, ‘you have almost twenty-four hours to get into the part. You can be word-perfect in that time, can’t you. Miss du Clos?’ She could and she was.
She pored over her lines throughout the weary night as she made the role her own. Sparrows were chattering matins as she stubbed out the last of the three candles she had consumed in her all-night concentration.
‘Three candles for bad luck,’ she rose and stretched her cramped limbs. ‘But I didn’t have them lighting all together.’ She splashed water from a ewer into a basin and bathed her smarting eyes. In the mirror she noticed the network of tiny red veins in the clear blue whites of her eyes. ‘Hm! No such luxury as three-candle lighting.’ She peered closer at the red veins. ‘If I had that I wouldn’t have these now. And that horrid Miss Garland won’t show me how to bead my eyelashes. She’s too angry about not getting the part for herself to help me with make-up. Would I ever dare to ask him to make her? What use is it being word-perfect if my looks let him down. I’m supposed to be a sparkling-eyed sprite, not a bleary-eyed hag.’
Thomas, too, had spent the night in work. Soon after his talk with Dorene du Clos, he had realised that the play was too short. It would under-run timing and it was too long for a curtain-raiser. He had had to write in another scene. To make it worse, Alcium Beracium Conceptionez Duignan came into the Green Room with the news that some of the scenery for Romance at the Crossroads was still mislaid at the wharf, and added for good measure that he had heard that there was a likelihood of the Holyhead Packet not sailing tomorrow night if this wind continued. ‘Nonsense!’ snapped Thomas. ‘It has sailed in weather a thousand times worse.’
‘But it will be very late arriving, sir.’ Thomas closed his eyes and tried to think. He had planned everything with Bergin. Horses here, a hackney chaise there, a cross-country dash to make the Great Western route to Dublin while another coach containing Bergin and his faithful sweetheart would decoy pursuit towards the regular Great Southern route from Thurles. It was timed with the precision of a battle campaign. ‘I’m not the better of that last crossing yet, sir,’ said the valet and his master allowed himself the relief of a smile. Of course! Alphabet had been piling on the forebodings because he thought he was to accompany his master.
‘I shall not need you, Alphabet, on this particular—er—business,’ he remarked and resumed the correction of his script. But he heard his valet’s—
‘Oh, that kind of business!’ through the closing door.
‘Duignan!’ he roared. His valet returned, quaking. Rarely did his master use his patronymic. It was too long a journey from the first of the Christian names. ‘Just what kind of business, Alcium Beracium Conceptionez Duignan?’ The valet winced under the weight of the names he was so proud of. They didn’t sound up to the standard with that thin, slow, enunciation, and with them eyes all narrowed.
‘B-business of an important nature, I’m sure, your Honour.’
‘Exactly, now go and get me strong tea.’
The valet addressed the ever-boiling kettle. ‘Business!’ he said. He pelted a fistful of tea into the teapot. Philandering was right and proper, but this business menaced that whole delightful free structure of bachelor existence. ‘Business of a most human nature, and with red hair, I’d swear.’ The sound of his own poetry lightened his mood.
Thomas was sipping his tea when the leading lady, Miss Garland, arrived respectfully and conscientiously—she insisted— to query his wisdom in casting one so inexperienced as Miss du Clos in the exacting role of Sally. Surely someone more mature...? Over his teacup Thomas eyed the mature shelving of Miss Garland’s curves and tried to close his mind to the vision of her as the elfin Sally. ‘Too bozomatique!’ he murmured without thinking.
‘Too what, Mr. Young?’
‘Too Junoesque, Miss Garland. The piece is but a caprice to lighten a tragedy that has proved too real. A light frivol, not worthy of your,’ he eyed her front, he almost said ‘of your chest’, ‘of your presence.’
When the door closed he drained his cup and rose. ‘Fancy that boozalem flopping up and down in a slip jig at the crossroad platform.’ He turned at the sound of an obscene guffaw. ‘Are you still there, thrice-named? Go out and enquire about that scenery.’
At the rehearsal, Miss du Clos’s achievement of the night was not noticed. She had trouble with the new scene. She had soared through the original script but her tired brain could not retain the extra lines. Thomas drove her relentlessly. When she had paused a third time to rub her eyes he noticed their strained look. Probably stayed up half the night to learn, he thought, and dispatched Alphabet for more tea.
His thoughtfulness restored her more than the tea; she romped through the remainder. The dress rehearsal went without a hitch until she came on, dressed for the new scene. When Thomas had finished his own lines he hurried down front to watch and while he went the actor who was to understudy him next night came to the footlights, and called to her that her brilliant red gown looked magnificent from the stalls. Suddenly a loud groan from Thomas made her eyes flutter in a succession of uncontrollable blinks.
‘It won’t do. It won’t do at all.’ It was only now, out front that he had received the full impact of the gown. ‘Don’t you realise that you are supposed to be a country girl? That gown is altogether too smart. Too citified!’
Exhaustion made her sway and see black, but righteous anger revived her. She snatched her script and peered closely. ‘It says here, “Enter Sally decked in finery”. Surely, Mr. Young,’ she urged, looking up, ‘if I’m supposed to be appearing at the crossroads dance after a long sojourn in the city it is in character for me to wear
city finery?’
‘No, it is not,’ he roared. ‘I won’t have city finery. Go and put COW DUNG on your nose!’
A very audible titter from Miss Garland saved Dorene from sobbing outright. ‘Take those lines from the beginning again,’ he ordered. And so it went on until at last he got the perfection he demanded.
Now the words were right, but Dorene was worried about her make-up. In her dressing-room, she grasped the hard eyeblack and held it to the candle until it ran liquid. She decided to do her eyes before putting on her costume. She dipped a toothpick into the black liquid and held it over her head to fall in beaded drops on every lash. A big black splash fell on her nose and ruined her make-up. By the time it was repaired the hardened eyeblack had to be re-melted, but at last she had the marvellous effect that Miss Garland had denied her. Two black fringes weighted with gleaming beads fanned out her brown eyes making them mysteriously luminous. Dorene stared at her reflection in the mirror and dreamed of the applause she might receive tonight. In her rapt contemplation Thomas’s knock went unheard. His voice wishing her good luck brought her hastily to her feet. He gave a startled exclamation. ‘Is it possible that you are not dressed yet and you are due on the stage in exactly two minutes!’
There was a snort behind him and Miss Garland pointed over his shoulder. ‘Look, Mr. Young,’ she said with unctuous emphasis, ‘it has beaded its eyelashes!’ Thomas ignored her.
‘Miss du Clos,’ he said more gently, ‘when you are pressed for time, which no player should be—today is unusual but lightning does not strike twice—always get into your stage costume first. You can go on without make-up but you cannot go on—like that.’ She stooped in an agony to restore the fallen wrapper that had betrayed the curvings of breasts.
It was fortunate that her part called for a breathless, flying entrance. A delighted audience gave her the stimulus to maintain the tempo. She sparkled and tripped through three acts until the new scene where her sweetheart, Thomas, asked her where was his rival. She raised her arm and pointed over his shoulder but no words would come. Twice he smilingly murmured her line. ‘He’s down there in the green lane behind the orchard!’
The Big Wind Page 51