The Lowest Rung Part 14

"She did," interposed Marion harshly.

"Wouldn't she have quarrelled and made it up again? Would she have been quite so hard on him?"

"Yes, she would. Think, just think what she must have suffered in the third act, the scene at the Savoy, when, loving him as she did, trusting him as she did, she saw him come in with----"

"Well, I expect you know best," said Lenore, whose interest seemed to flag suddenly; "anyhow, she suffered, poor thing. Women like her always do, I think." She rose slowly. "I may as well go and dress. I suppose we shall be here till midnight."

The orchestra struck up.

"Anyhow, she suffered."

The violins caught up the words and dinned them over and over again into Marion's ears. Women like Maggie, women with deep hearts like herself--for was not Maggie herself?--they always suffered, always suffered, always!--said the violins.

The manager suddenly appeared in front of the curtain and walked swiftly over the little bridge from the stage to the stalls. He was a small, st.u.r.dy, thin-lipped, choleric man, who looked as if he were made up of energy; energy distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that his hat was really a gla.s.s stopper, which might fly off at any moment.

It was off now. There had evidently been an explosion. He held a note in his hand.

"Montgomery has given up the part," he said. "He was odd at rehearsal yesterday. I felt there was something wrong. He said he had no show. Now he says he's too ill to come--bronchitis."

The sense of disaster which had been hanging over Marion all day slipped and engulfed her like an avalanche. She felt paralysed.

"Then the play can't go on?" she said.

"If it had to happen, better to-night than to-morrow night," said the manager. "Montgomery is as slippery as an eel. I don't suppose he has got bronchitis; but I have no doubt if I rushed over there at this moment, I should find him in bed with a steam-kettle. He would play the part."

"What will you do?" gasped Marion.

"Do?" he said. "Do? There's only one thing to do. Go through with the play! It will start in two minutes, and we shall see what the understudy can make of it. He's as clever as he can stick, and he's word perfect, at any rate."

"Who is he?"

"A Mr. Delacour; at least, that's his stage name. He's been in America for the last five years. Clever enough, but a rolling stone. He's not to be depended on, poor devil; but it's Hobson's choice--we've got to depend on him."

The manager sat down beside her and clapped his hands.

The lights suddenly burned up behind the curtain, the curtain rose and the play began.

Some plays, some books, some men and women, possess a mysterious force which, for lack of a better word, we call vitality. Those who possess it not call it by all manner of ugly names. But, nevertheless, it is the great gift, the power that overcomes, which makes life on a large scale possible, which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. Most of us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. We deal in creep-mouse sentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence to live, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, compare notes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the art of growing old.

But others go through life, and spend themselves on it, piece by piece, with ardour as they go. These are the teachers--only they never teach.

They know. If we want to learn anything, we can watch them. And some of us, again--and this is the hardest fate of all--come into life inadequately equipped, not provisioned for a prolonged journey. What little we have, and what little there is of us, we expend on the first part of life, and having nothing left for middle age.

Such a woman was Marion. She had talent, and she had, besides--as the manager beside her had divined--one live play in her. But he doubted whether she had more than one. She looked insolvent, a dweller in the past, crippled by an acute memory. No doubt it was this self-regarding memory which had resulted in the play. It was obviously a personal experience, and as she was rich enough to share the risk of producing it, he was more than ready to put it on. It was full of faults; it was melodramatic, it was amateurish, but it was pa.s.sionately alive. The pit and the gallery would love it; and if the stalls found it a little cheap, what of that? He had considerable _flair_. He believed it would succeed.

He glanced once or twice furtively at the handsome, unhappy-looking, richly furred woman beside him--no longer young, "past youth, but not past pa.s.sion," with much of the charm of youth lingering in her graceful erectness, her pretty hair, her delicate pallor.

She had told him feverishly that the only thing she cared for--had ever cared for--was art, success, fame. He had heard something like it often before.

He wished, with a half-sigh, that a little of that uneasy, egotistic ambition might have been instilled into the heart of Lenore, for whom he had a compa.s.sionate, bottled-up attachment of many years' standing.

Poor Lenore! What an actress, and what a hopelessly womanly woman, still mourning the providential demise of an impossible brother who had lived on her.

She was on the stage now, looking about seventeen, all youth and garden hat and white muslin.

Marion's face twitched. She was living her own youth over again.

There was a pause. Lenore picked a rose to gain time, and looked into the wings.

"Delacour!" roared the manager, bouncing up in his stall and then sitting down again.

"We cut it here," said Lenore, advancing to the footlights, "and he doesn't know. It is not his fault. He's waiting for his cue. See, Mr.

Delacour! Leave out that bit about the daisies, and come on at 'happiness.'"

The understudy came on, and Marion's heart thrust suddenly at her like a rapier, and left her for dead, staring in front of her.

This was no understudy. This was the original George of the drama when it was first acted. Marion saw the lover of her youth come on and kiss Lenore's hand, with the same gesture with which he had once kissed hers--in the suns.h.i.+ne, in a Kentish garden, beside a lavender bush, with a b.u.mble bee in it, ten endless years ago.

He was hardly changed--a little thinner, perhaps, but not a day older in his paint; the same reckless, debonair creature whom Marion had loved, who had wounded her and grieved her, whom she had discarded at last with bitter anger, whom she had never forgotten, whom she remembered with anguish.

The curtain was down before she recovered herself, and the conductor was waving his baton.

The manager turned to her with some excitement.

"If only he can keep it up!" he said. "Delacour puts life into the love-making. He makes love well, don't you think?"

"Admirably."

"If only he can keep it up!" repeated the manager.

Through the two acts which followed, the understudy kept it up. He did more. He acted with an intensity that made the rest of the play somewhat colourless. At the end of the scene at the Savoy, just before the curtain fell, he added a sentence of his own.

In a second, before she knew what she had done, Marion had sprung to her feet, and had said in a harsh, loud voice:

"That last sentence is not in the part."

The play stopped. The hurrying waiters with dishes stood stock still and gaped, as astonished as if the interruption had been in real life. Some of the supers at the little tables in the background got up to see what was happening.

Delacour, winegla.s.s in hand, came forward to the footlights, and their eyes met.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "You say it is not in the part. I thought it was. I will omit it in future."

"You will do no such thing!" bawled the manager, leaping to his feet and shaking his fist at him. "Omit it! Why, Miss Wright, it's an inspiration. Gets him the whole sympathy just at the critical moment.

And what a curtain! Good G.o.d! What a curtain!"

"Isn't it?" said Lenore. "Leave out my bit at the end altogether, and make _that_ the curtain. Don't you agree, Miss Wright? And, look here, Mr. Delacour, take the front centre here."

"Start again at 'falsehood,'" said the manager briskly to Lenore. "Now, then, everybody. Sit down at the back there. Now----"