The Understudy
by
The only form of human love that
atrophies the heart is the love of self.
Marion Wright sat in the centre seat of the third row of the stalls, shivering in spite of her sables. It was the dress rehearsal of her first play, that play on which she had spent herself to the verge of mental bankruptcy.
The nauseating presentiment of failure, the distaste and scorn of her own work, were upon her, which the artist never escapes, which return as acutely after twenty successes as in the hours of suspense before the first essay. Marion’s surroundings were not of a nature to reassure her. To her unaccustomed eyes the empty, dimly lit theatre, swathed and bandaged in dust-sheets, looked ominously dreary. Had any one ever laughed in this shrouded desert? The long lines of stalls huddled under their wrinkled coverings stretched before and behind her. The boxes were shapeless holes of pallid grime. It was as if a London fog had trailed its dingy veil over everything. There was a fog outside as well, and the few electric lights which had been turned up peered blurred and yellow. An immense ladder, three ladders tied together, reared itself from the stalls to the roof. Something was being done to the lights on the ceiling. Tired-looking men in overcoats were creeping into the orchestra, thrusting white faces under screened lights, and rustling papers on stands.
Marion had the theatre to herself except for a few whisperers in the back row of the stalls–her maid, an attendant, one or two actors of minor parts who did not appear in the first act, and a few costumiers.
It was fiercely cold, and she had not slept for several nights. She wished she had never been born.
A magnificent-looking woman, wearing her chin tilted slightly upwards, was squeezing herself and an immense fur coat towards her along the stalls, and sat down beside her. This was Lenore, the leading lady.
She turned a colourless, beautifully shaped face and heavy eyes with bistred lashes towards Marion.
“I suppose we shall have to wait about two hours for Mr. Montgomery,” she said apathetically.
“Does he always keep people waiting?”
“Always, since he made his great hit in The Deodars.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Mr. Montgomery does not like his part,” said the leading lady tentatively, hanging a hand in an interminable white glove over the back of the stall in front of her.
Marion’s face hardened.
“It’s not a sympathetic part,” she said, “but an artist ought not to think of that.”
“No, it’s not sympathetic,” acquiesced Lenore, turning up her fur collar. “It seems as if the principal man’s part never is sympathetic in a woman’s play. If the central figure is a woman, the men grouped round her are generally prize specimens of worms. I wonder why. In your play, now, Maggie’s everything! George does not count for much, as far as I can see. Even Maggie had not much use for him.”
“She loved him,” said the author, with asperity.
“Did she? Sometimes when I’m playing Maggie to Montgomery’s George I wonder if she did. And I just wonder now and then if I would have thrown him over as she did. I mean for good and all. It seems to me–if she’d cared for him, cared really, you know—-“
“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.”