No Name - Wilkie Collins (free e books to read online .TXT) 📗

her. It’s a thousand pities she hasn’t got a better part!”

“It’s a thousand mercies she’s no more to do than she has,” muttered Miss Garth, overhearing him. “As things are, the people can’t well turn her head with applause. She’s out of the play in the second act⁠—that’s one comfort!”

No well-regulated mind ever draws its inferences in a hurry; Miss Garth’s mind was well regulated; therefore, logically speaking, Miss Garth ought to have been superior to the weakness of rushing at conclusions. She had committed that error, nevertheless, under present circumstances. In plainer terms, the consoling reflection which had just occurred to her assumed that the play had by this time survived all its disasters, and entered on its long-deferred career of success. The play had done nothing of the sort. Misfortune and the Marrable family had not parted company yet.

When the rehearsal was over, nobody observed that the stout lady with the wig privately withdrew herself from the company; and when she was afterward missed from the table of refreshments, which Mr. Marrable’s hospitality kept ready spread in a room near the theater, nobody imagined that there was any serious reason for her absence. It was not till the ladies and gentlemen assembled for the next rehearsal that the true state of the case was impressed on the minds of the company. At the appointed hour no Julia appeared. In her stead, Mrs. Marrable portentously approached the stage, with an open letter in her hand. She was naturally a lady of the mildest good breeding: she was mistress of every bland conventionality in the English language⁠—but disasters and dramatic influences combined, threw even this harmless matron off her balance at last. For the first time in her life Mrs. Marrable indulged in vehement gesture, and used strong language. She handed the letter sternly, at arms-length, to her daughter. “My dear,” she said, with an aspect of awful composure, “we are under a Curse.” Before the amazed dramatic company could petition for an explanation, she turned and left the room. The manager’s professional eye followed her out respectfully⁠—he looked as if he approved of the exit, from a theatrical point of view.

What new misfortune had befallen the play? The last and worst of all misfortunes had assailed it. The stout lady had resigned her part.

Not maliciously. Her heart, which had been in the right place throughout, remained inflexibly in the right place still. Her explanation of the circumstances proved this, if nothing else did. The letter began with a statement: She had overheard, at the last rehearsal (quite unintentionally), personal remarks of which she was the subject. They might, or might not, have had reference to her⁠—hair; and her⁠—figure. She would not distress Mrs. Marrable by repeating them. Neither would she mention names, because it was foreign to her nature to make bad worse. The only course at all consistent with her own self-respect was to resign her part. She enclosed it, accordingly, to Mrs. Marrable, with many apologies for her presumption in undertaking a youthful character, at⁠—what a gentleman was pleased to term⁠—her Age; and with what two ladies were rude enough to characterize as her disadvantages of⁠—hair, and⁠—figure. A younger and more attractive representative of Julia would no doubt be easily found. In the meantime, all persons concerned had her full forgiveness, to which she would only beg leave to add her best and kindest wishes for the success of the play.

In four nights more the play was to be performed. If ever any human enterprise stood in need of good wishes to help it, that enterprise was unquestionably the theatrical entertainment at Evergreen Lodge!

One armchair was allowed on the stage; and into that armchair Miss Marrable sank, preparatory to a fit of hysterics. Magdalen stepped forward at the first convulsion; snatched the letter from Miss Marrable’s hand; and stopped the threatened catastrophe.

“She’s an ugly, bald-headed, malicious, middle-aged wretch!” said Magdalen, tearing the letter into fragments, and tossing them over the heads of the company. “But I can tell her one thing⁠—she shan’t spoil the play. I’ll act Julia.”

“Bravo!” cried the chorus of gentlemen⁠—the anonymous gentleman who had helped to do the mischief (otherwise Mr. Francis Clare) loudest of all.

“If you want the truth, I don’t shrink from owning it,” continued Magdalen. “I’m one of the ladies she means. I said she had a head like a mop, and a waist like a bolster. So she has.”

“I am the other lady,” added the spinster relative. “But I only said she was too stout for the part.”

“I am the gentleman,” chimed in Frank, stimulated by the force of example. “I said nothing⁠—I only agreed with the ladies.”

Here Miss Garth seized her opportunity, and addressed the stage loudly from the pit.

“Stop! Stop!” she said. “You can’t settle the difficulty that way. If Magdalen plays Julia, who is to play Lucy?”

Miss Marrable sank back in the armchair, and gave way to the second convulsion.

“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Magdalen, “the thing’s simple enough, I’ll act Julia and Lucy both together.”

The manager was consulted on the spot. Suppressing Lucy’s first entrance, and turning the short dialogue about the novels into a soliloquy for Lydia Languish, appeared to be the only changes of importance necessary to the accomplishment of Magdalen’s project. Lucy’s two telling scenes, at the end of the first and second acts, were sufficiently removed from the scenes in which Julia appeared to give time for the necessary transformations in dress. Even Miss Garth, though she tried hard to find them, could put no fresh obstacles in the way. The question was settled in five minutes, and the rehearsal went on; Magdalen learning Julia’s stage situations with the book in her hand, and announcing afterward, on the journey home, that she proposed sitting up all night to study the new part. Frank thereupon expressed his fears that she would have no time left to help him through his theatrical difficulties. She tapped him on the shoulder coquettishly with her part. “You foolish fellow, how am I to do