Revenge! Part 33

"Very well. She stabs you in a spot so vital that you die in a few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing, you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward, you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa, which you fall upon, and, finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice, your clinched hand comes with a thud on the boards, and all is over."

"Admirably described, Carlos. Lord! I wish my audience paid such attention to my efforts as you do. Now you claim this is all wrong, do you?"

"All wrong."

"Suppose she stabbed you, what would _you_ do?"

"I would plunge forward on my face--dead."

"Great heavens! What would become of your curtain?"

"Oh, hang the curtain!"

"It's all very well for you to maledict the curtain, Carl, but you must work up to it. Your curtain would come down, and your friends in the gallery wouldn't know what had happened. Now I go through the evolutions you so graphically describe, and the audience gets time to take in the situation. They say, chuckling to themselves, 'that villain's got his dose at last, and serve him right too.' They want to enjoy his struggles, while the heroine stands grimly at the door taking care that he doesn't get away. Then when my fist comes down flop on the stage and they realise that I am indeed done for, the yell of triumph that goes up is something delicious to hear."

"That's just the point, Dupre. I claim the actor has no right to hear applause--that he should not know there is such a thing as an audience.

His business is to portray life exactly as it is."

"You can't portray life in a death scene, Carl."

"Dupre, I lose all patience with you, or rather I would did I not know that you are much deeper than you would have us suppose. You apparently won't see that I am very much in earnest about this."

"Of course you are, my boy; and that is one reason why you will become a very great actor. I was ambitious myself once, but as we grow older"

--Dupre shrugged his shoulders--"well, we begin to have an eye on box- office receipts. I think you sometimes forget that I am a good deal older than you are."

"You mean I am a fool, and that I may learn wisdom with age. I quite admit you are a better actor than I am; in fact I said so only a moment ago, but----"

"'You wrong me, Brutus; I said an elder soldier, not a better.' But I will take you on your own ground. Have you ever seen a man stabbed or shot through the heart?"

"I never have, but I know mighty well he wouldn't undo his necktie afterwards."

Dupre threw back his head and laughed.

"Who is flippant now?" he asked. "I don't undo my necktie, I merely tear off my collar, which a dying man may surely be permitted to do.

But until you have seen a man die from such a stab as I receive every night, I don't understand how you can justly find fault with my rendition of the tragedy. I imagine, you know, that the truth lies between the two extremes. The man done to death would likely not make such a fuss as I make, nor would he depart so quickly as you say he would, without giving the gallery G.o.ds a show for their money. But here we are at the theatre, Carlos, and this acrimonious debate is closed-- until we take our next walk together."

In front of the theatre, soldiers were on duty, marching up and down with muskets on their shoulders, to show that the state was mighty and could take charge of a theatre as well as conduct a war. There were many loungers about, which might have indicated to a person who did not know, that there would be a good house when the play began. The two actors met the manager in the throng near the door.

"How are prospects to-night?" asked Dupre.

"Very poor," replied the manager. "Not half a dozen seats have been sold."

"Then it isn't worth while beginning?"

"We must begin," said the manager, lowering his voice, "the President has ordered me not to close the theatre."

"Oh, hang the President!" cried Lemoine impatiently. "Why doesn't he put a stop to the war, and then the theatre would remain open of its own accord."

"He is doing his best to put a stop to the war, only his army does not carry out his orders as implicitly as our manager does," said Dupre, smiling at the other's vehemence.

"Balmeceda is a fool," retorted the younger actor. "If he were out of the way, the war would not last another day. I believe he is playing a losing game, anyhow. It's a pity he hasn't to go to the front himself, and then a stray bullet might find him and put an end to the war, which would save the lives of many better men."

"I say, Lemoine, I wish you wouldn't talk like that," expostulated the manager gently, "especially when there are so many listeners."

"Oh! the larger my audience, the better I like it," rejoined Lemoine.

"I have all an actor's vanity in that respect. I say what I think, and I don't care who hears me."

"Yes, but you forget that we are, in a measure, guests of this country, and we should not abuse our hosts, or the man who represents them."

"Ah, does he represent them? It seems to me you beg the whole question; that's just what the war is about. The general opinion is that Balmeceda misrepresents them, and that the country would be glad to be rid of him."

"That may all be," said the manager almost in a whisper, for he was a man evidently inclined towards peace; "but it does not rest with us to say so. We are French, and I think, therefore, it is better not to express an opinion."

"I'm not French," cried Lemoine. "I'm a native Chilian, and I have a right to abuse my own country if I choose to do so."

"All the more reason, then," said the manager, looking timorously over his shoulder--"all the more reason that you should be careful what you say."

"I suppose," said Dupre, by way of putting an end to the discussion, "it is time for us to get our war-paint on. Come along, Lemoine, and lecture me on our common art, and stop talking politics, if the nonsense you utter about Chili and its president is politics."

The two actors entered the theatre; they occupied the same dressing- room, and the volatile Lemoine talked incessantly.

Although there were but few people in the stalls the gallery was well filled, as was usually the case.

When going on for the last act in the final scene, Dupre whispered a word to the man who controlled the falling of the curtain, and when the actor, as the villain of the piece, received the fatal knife-thrust from the ill-used heroine, he plunged forward on his face and died without a struggle, to the amazement of the manager, who was watching the play from the front of the house, and to the evident bewilderment of the gallery, who had counted on an exciting struggle with death.

Much as they desired the cutting off of the villain, they were not pleased to see him so suddenly s.h.i.+ft his worlds without an agonising realisation of the fact that he was quitting an existence in which he had done nothing but evil. The curtain came down upon the climax, but there was no applause, and the audience silently filtered out into the street.

"There," said Dupre, when he returned to his dressing-room; "I hope you are satisfied now, Lemoine, and if you are, you are the only satisfied person in the house. I fell perfectly flat, as you suggested, and you must have seen that the climax of the play fell flat also."

"Nevertheless," persisted Lemoine, stoutly, "it was the true rendering of the part."

As they were talking the manager came into their dressing-room. "Good heavens, Dupre!" he said, "why did you end the piece in that idiotic way? What on earth got into you?"

"The knife," said Dupre, flippantly. "It went directly through the heart, and Lemoine here insists that when that happens a man should fall dead instantly. I did it to please Lemoine."

"But you spoiled your curtain," protested the manager.

"Yes, I knew that would happen, and I told Lemoine so; but he insists on art for art's sake. You must expostulate with Lemoine, although I don't mind telling you both frankly that I don't intend to die in that way again."

"Well, I hope not," replied the manager. "I don't want you to kill the play as well as yourself, you know, Dupre."

Lemoine, whose face had by this time become restored to its normal appearance, retorted hotly--

"It all goes to show how we are surrounded and hampered by the traditions of the stage. The gallery wants to see a man die all over the place, and so the victim has to scatter the furniture about and make a fool of himself generally, when he should quietly succ.u.mb to a well-deserved blow. You ask any physician and he will tell you that a man stabbed or shot through the heart collapses at once. There is no jumping-jack business in such a case. He doesn't play at leapfrog with the chairs and sofas, but sinks instantly to the floor and is done for."

"Come along, Lemoine," cried Dupre, putting on his coat, "and stop talking nonsense. True art consists in a judicious blending of the preconceived ideas of the gallery with the usual facts of the case. An instantaneous photograph of a trotting-horse is doubtless technically and absolutely correct, yet it is not a true picture of the animal in motion."

"Then you admit," said Lemoine, quickly, "that I am technically correct in what I state about the result of such a wound."