World of Wonders Page 19

  “What do I mean? That I was constantly aware of her, and what I believed to be her spirit transfigured everything around me. I held wonderful mental conversations with her, and although they didn’t make much sense they gave me a new attitude toward myself. I told you I put aside any notion of picking a pocket in order to refresh my exchequer because of her. What was stranger was that I felt in quite a different way about the poor slut that helped the escape-artist who kicked me; he was rough with her, I knew, and I pitied her, though I had taken no notice of her before then. It was the dawn of chivalry in me, coming rather late in life. Most men, unless they are assembled on the lowest, turnip-like principle, have a spell of chivalry at some time in their lives. Usually it comes at about sixteen. I understand boys quite often wish they had a chance to die for the one they love, to show that their devotion stops at nothing. Dying wasn’t my line; a good religious start in life had given me too much respect for death to permit any extravagance of that sort. But I wanted to live for Lady Tresize, and I was overjoyed by the notion that, if I could do whatever Holroyd and Sir John wanted, I might be able to manage it.

  “It wasn’t lunacy. She had that effect, in lesser measure, on a lot of people, as I found out when I joined the Tresize Company. Everybody called Sir John ‘Guvnor’, because that was his style; lots of heads of theatrical companies were called Guvnor. But they called Lady Tresize ‘Milady’. It would have been reasonable enough for her maid to do that, but everybody did it, and it was respectful, and affectionately mocking at the same time. She understood both the affection and the mockery, because Milady was no fool.

  “Five days is a long time to be cut off from Paradise, and I had nothing to occupy my time. I suppose I walked close to a hundred miles through the London streets. What else was there to do? I bummed around the Victoria and Albert Museum quite a lot, looking at the clocks and watches, but I wasn’t dressed for it and I suppose a young tough who hung around for hours made the guards nervous. I looked like a ruffian, and I suppose I was one, and I held no grudge when I was politely warned away. I saw a few free sights—churches and the like—but they meant little to me. I liked the streets best, so I walked and stared, and slept in a Salvation Army hostel for indigents. But I was no indigent; I was rich in feeling, and that was a luxury I had rarely known.

  “As the Monday drew near when I was to present myself again I worried a lot about my clothes. All I owned was what I stood up in, and my very poor things were a good protective covering in the streets, where I looked like a thousand others, but they weren’t what I needed for a great step upward in the theatrical world. There was nothing to be done, and with my experience I knew my best plan was to present an appearance of honest poverty, so I spent some money on a bath, and washed the handkerchief I wore around my throat in the bathwater, and got a street shoeshine boy to do what he could with my dreadful shoes, which were almost falling apart.

  “When the day came, I was well ahead of time, and had my first taste of a theatrical rehearsal. Milady didn’t appear at it, and that was a heavy disappointment, but there was plenty to take in, all the same.

  “It was education by observation. Nobody paid any heed to me. Holroyd nodded when I went into the room, and told me to keep out of the way, so I sat on a windowsill and watched. Men and women appeared very promptly to time, and a stage manager set out a few chairs to mark entrances and limits to the stage on the bare floor. Bang on the stroke of ten Sir John came in, and sat down in a chair behind a table, tapped twice with a silver pencil, and they went to work.

  “You know what early rehearsals are like. You would never guess they were getting up a play. People wandered on and off the stage area, reading from sheets of paper that were bound up in brown covers; they mumbled and made mistakes as if they had never seen print before. Sir John mumbled worse than anyone. He had a way of talking that I could hardly believe belonged to a human being, because almost everything he said was cast in an interrogative tone, and was muddled up with a lot of ‘Eh?’ and ‘Mphm?’ and a queer noise he made high up in the back of his nose that sounded like ‘Quonk?’ But the actors seemed used to it and amid all the muttering and quonking a good deal of work seemed to be done. Now and then Sir John himself would appear in a scene, and then the muttering sank almost to inaudibility. Very soon I was bored.

  “It was not my plan to be bored, so I looked for something to do. I was a handy fellow, and a lot younger than the stage manager, so when the chairs had to be arranged in a different pattem I nipped forward and gave him a hand, which he allowed me to do without comment. Before the rehearsal was finished I was an established chair lifter, and that was how I became an assistant stage manager. My immediate boss was a man called Macgregor, whose feet hurt; he had those solid feet that seem to be all in one piece, encased in heavy boots; he was glad enough to have somebody who would run around for him. It was from him, during a break in the work, that I found out what we were doing.

  “ ‘It’s the new piece,’ he explained. ‘Scaramouche. From the novel by Rafael Sabatini. You’ll have heard of Rafael Sabatini? You haven’t? Well, keep your lugs open and you’ll get the drift of it. Verra romantic, of course.’

  “ ‘What am I to do, Mr Macgregor?’ I asked.

  “ ‘Nobody’s told me,’ he said. ‘But from the cut of your jib I’d imagine you were the Double.’

  “ ‘Double what?’

  “ ‘The Double in Two, two,’ he said, in a very Scotch way. I learned long ago, from you, Ramsay, that it’s no use asking questions of a Scot when he speaks like that—dry as an old soda biscuit. So I held my peace.

  “I picked up a little information by listening and asking an occasional question when some of the lesser actors went downstairs to the bar for a modest lunch. After three or four days I knew that Scaramouche was laid in the period of the French Revolution, though when that was I did not know. I had never heard that the French had a revolution. I knew the Americans had had one, but so far as detail went it could have been because George Washington shot Lincoln. I was pretty strong on the kings of Israel; later history was closed to me. But the story of the play leaked out in dribbles. Sir John was a young Frenchman who was ‘born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad’; that was what one of the other actors said about him. The astonishing thing was that nobody thought it strange that Sir John was so far into middle age that he was very near to emerging from the far side of it. This young Frenchman got himself into trouble with the nobility because he had advanced notions. To conceal himself he joined a troupe of travelling actors, but his revolutionary zeal was so great that he could not hold his tongue, and denounced the aristocracy from the stage, to the scandal of everyone. When the Revolution came, which it did right on time when it was needed, he became a revolutionary leader, and was about to revenge himself on the nobleman who had vilely slain his best friend and nabbed his girl, when an elderly noblewoman was forced to declare that she was his mother and then, much against her will, further compelled to tell him that his deadly enemy whom he held at the sword’s point was—his father!

  “Verra romantic, as Macgregor said, but not so foolish as I have perhaps led you to think. I give it to you as it appeared to me on early acquaintance. I was only interested in what I was supposed to do to earn my salary. Because I now had a salary—or half a salary, because that was the pay for the rehearsal period. Holroyd had presented me with a couple of pages of wretchedly typed stuff, which was my contract. I signed it Jules LeGrand, so that it agreed with my passport. Holroyd looked a little askew at the name, and asked me if I spoke French. I was glad that I could say yes, but he gave me a pretty strong hint that I might consider finding some less foreign name for use on the stage. I couldn’t imagine why that should be, but I found out when we reached Act Two, scene two.

  “We had approached this critical point—critical for me, that’s to say—two or three times during the first week of rehearsal, and Sir John had asked the actors to ‘walk through’
it, without doing more than find their places on the stage. It was a scene in which the young revolutionary lawyer, whose name was André-Louis, was appearing on the stage with the travelling actors. They were a troupe of Italian Comedians, all of whom played strongly marked characters such as Polichinelle the old father, Climene the beautiful leading lady, Rhodomont the braggart, Leandre the lover, Pasquariel, and other figures from the Commedia dell’ Arte. I didn’t know what that was, but picked up the general idea, and it wasn’t so far away from vaudeville as you might suppose. Indeed, some of it reminded me of poor Zovene, the wretched juggler. André-Louis (that was Sir John) had assumed the role of Scaramouche, a dashing, witty scoundrel.

  “In Act Two, scene two, the Italian Comedians were giving a performance, and at the very beginning of it Scaramouche had to do some flashy juggling tricks. Later, he seized his chance to make a revolutionary speech which was not in the play as the Comedians had rehearsed it; when his great enemy and some aristocratic chums stormed the stage to punish him, he escaped by walking across the stage on a tightrope, far above their heads, making jeering gestures as he did so. Very showy. And clearly not for Sir John. So I was to appear in a costume exactly like his, do the tricks, get out of the way so Sir John could make his revolutionary speech, and take over again when it was time to walk the tightrope.

  “This would take some neat managing. When Macgregor said, ‘Curtain up,’ I leapt onto the stage area from the audience’s right, and danced toward the left, juggling some plates; when Polichinelle broke the plates with his stick, causing a lot of clatter and uproar, I pretended to dodge behind his cloak, and Sir John popped into sight immediately afterward. Sounds simple, but as we had to pretend to have the plates, and the cloak, and everything else, I found it confusing. The tightrope trick was ‘walked’ in the same way; Sir John was always talking about ‘walking’ something when we weren’t ready to do it in reality. At the critical moment when the aristocrats rushed the stage, Sir John retreated slowly toward the left side, keeping them off with a stick; then he hopped backward onto a chair—which I must say he did with astonishing spryness—and there was a flurry of cloaks, during which he got out of the way and I emerged above on the tightrope, having stepped out on it from the wings. Easy, you would say, for an old carnival hand? But it wasn’t easy at all, and after a few days it looked as if I would lose my job. Even when we were ‘walking’, I couldn’t satisfy Sir John.

  “As usual, nobody said anything to me, but I knew what was up one morning when Holroyd appeared with a fellow who was obviously an acrobat and Sir John talked with him. I hung around, officiously helping Macgregor, and heard what was said, or enough of it. The acrobat seemed to be very set on something he wanted, and it wasn’t long before he was on his way, and Sir John was in an exceedingly bad temper. All through the rehearsal he bullied everybody. He bullied Miss Adele Chesterton, the pretty girl who played the second romantic interest; she was new to the stage and a natural focus for temper. He bullied old Frank Moore, who played Polichinelle, and was a very old hand and an extraordinarily nice person. He was crusty with Holroyd and chivvied Macgregor. He didn’t shout or swear, but he was impatient and exacting, and his annoyance was so thick it cut down the visibility in the room to about half, like dark smoke. When the time came to rehearse Two, two, he said he would leave it out for that day, and he brought the rehearsal to an early close. Holroyd asked me to wait after the others had gone, but not to hang around. So I kept out of the way near the door while Sir John, Holroyd, and Milady held a summit conference at the farther end of the room.

  “I couldn’t hear much of what they said, but it was about me, and it was hottish. Holroyd kept saying things like, ‘You won’t get a real pro to agree to leaving his name off the bills,’ and ‘It’s not as easy to get a fair resemblance as you might suppose—not under the conditions.’ Milady had a real stage voice, and when she spoke her lowest it was still as clear as a bell at my end of the room, and her talk was all variations on ‘Give the poor fellow chance, Jack—everybody must have at least one chance.’ But of Sir John I could hear nothing. He had a stage voice, too, and knew how far it could be heard, so when he was being confidential he mumbled on purpose and threw in a lot of Eh and Quonk, which seemed to convey meaning to people who knew him.

  “After ten minutes Milady said, so loudly that there could be no pretence that I was not to hear, ‘Trust me, Jack. He’s lucky for us. He has a lucky face. I’m never wrong. And if I can’t get him right, we’ll say no more about it.’ Then she swept down the room to me, using the umbrella, with more style than you’d think possible, as a walking-stick, and said, ‘Come with me, my dear boy; we must have a very intimate talk.’ Then something struck her, and she turned to the two men; ‘I haven’t a penny,’ she said, and from the way both Sir John and Holroyd jumped forward to press pound notes on her you could tell they were both devoted to her. That made me feel warmly toward them, even though they had been talking about sacking me a minute before.

  “Milady led the way, and I tagged behind. We went downstairs, where she poked her head into the Public Bar, which was just opening and said, in a surprisingly genial voice, considering that she was Lady Tresize talking to a barman, ‘Do you think I could have Rab Noolas for a private talk, for about half an hour, Joey?’, and the barman shouted back, ‘Whatever you say, Milady,’ and she led me into a gloomy pen, surrounded on three sides by dingy etched glass, with Saloon Bar on the door. When I closed the door behind us this appeared in reverse and I understood that we were now in Rab Noolas. The barman came behind the counter on our fourth side and asked us what it would be. ‘A pink gin, Joey,’ said Milady, and I said I’d have the same, not knowing what it was. Joey produced them, and we sat down, and from the way Milady did so I knew it was a big moment. Fraught, as they say, with consequence.

  “ ‘Let us be very frank. And I’ll be frank first, because I’m the oldest. You simply have no notion of the wonderful opportunity you have in Scaramouche. Such a superb little cameo. I say to all beginners: they aren’t tiny parts, they’re little cameos, and the way you carve them is the sign of what your whole career will be. Show me a young player who can give a superb cameo in a small part, and I’ll show you a star of the future. And yours is one of the very finest opportunities I have ever seen in my life in the theatre, because you must be so marvellous that nobody—not the sharpest-eyed critic or the most adoring fan—can distinguish you from my husband. Suddenly, before their very eyes, stands Sir John, juggling marvellously, and of course they adore him. Then, a few minutes later, they see Sir John walking the tightrope, and they see half a dozen of his little special tricks of gesture and turns of the head, and they are thunderstruck because they can’t believe that he has learned to walk the tightrope. And the marvel of it, you see, is that it’s you, all the time! You must use your imagination, my dear boy. You must see what a stunning effect it is. And what makes it possible? You do!’

  “ ‘Oh I do see all that, Milady,’ I said. ‘But Sir John isn’t pleased. I wish I knew why. I’m honestly doing the very best I can, considering that we haven’t anything to juggle with, or any tightrope. How can I do better?’

  “ ‘Ah, but you’ve put your finger on it, dear boy. I knew from the moment I saw you that you had great, great understanding—not to speak of a lucky face. You have said it yourself. You’re doing the best you can. But that’s not what’s wanted, you see. You must do the best Sir John can.’

  “ ‘But—Sir John can’t do anything,’ I said. ‘He can’t juggle and he can’t walk rope. Otherwise why would he want me?’

  “ ‘No, no; you haven’t understood. Sir John can, and will, do something absolutely extraordinary: he will make the public—the great audiences of people who come to see him in everything—believe he is doing those splendid, skilful things. He can make them want to believe he can do anything. They will quite happily accept you as him, if you can get the right rhythm.’

  “ ‘But I still don’t und
erstand. People aren’t as stupid as that. They’ll guess it’s a trick.’

  “ ‘A few, perhaps. But most of them will prefer to believe it’s a reality. That’s what the theatre’s about, you see. People want to believe that what they see is true, even if only for the time they’re in the playhouse. That’s what theatre is, don’t you understand? Showing people what they wish were true.’

  “Then I began to get the idea. I had seen that look in the faces of the people who watched Abdullah, and who saw Willard swallow needles and thread and pull it out of his mouth with the needles all dangling from the thread. I nervously asked Milady if she would like another pink gin. She said she certainly would, and gave me a pound note to pay for it. When I demurred she said, ‘No, no; you must let me pay. I’ve got more money than you, and I won’t presume on your gallantry—though I value it, my dear, don’t imagine I don’t value it.’

  “When the gins came, she continued: ‘Let us be very, very frank. Your marvellous cameo must be a great secret. If we tell everybody, we stifle some of their pleasure. You saw that young man who came this morning, and argued so tiresomely? He could juggle and he could walk the rope, quite as well as you, I expect, but he was no use whatever, because he had the spirit of a circus person; he wanted his name on the program, and he wanted featured billing. Wanted his name to come at the bottom of the bills, you see, after all the cast had been listed, “AND Trebelli”. An absurd request. Everybody would want to know who Trebelli was and they would see at once that he was the juggler and rope-walker. And Romance would fly right up the chimney. Besides which I could see that he would never deceive anyone for an instant that he was Sir John. He had a brassy, horrid personality. Now you, my dear, have the splendid qualification of having very little personality. One hardly notices you. You are almost a tabula rasa.’