Rupert Godwin

BEHIND THE SCENES.

To Violet Westford scarcely anything could have been more trying than the ordeal which she now had to undergo. What scene could be more strange to this delicate-minded, home-bred, carefully nurtured girl, than the busy world behind the curtain in a great London theatre?

The door-keeper of the Circenses received the card which she presented to him, and, after uttering some half-sulky, half-insolent remark, gave her into the charge of a dirty boy, who was to take her upstairs to the stage, where she would find Mr. Maltravers, the stage-manager.

Poor Violet was almost bewildered by the many dark passages along which her conductor led her. There seemed scarcely a gleam of the summer sunlight in all the great building, and the underground passages smelt like vaults or charnel-houses—charnel-houses in which there was a perpetual escape of gas, mingled with that odour of corduroy and shoe-leather which the working classes are apt to leave behind them, and which a very witty lady once spoke of as their esprit de corps.

At last the dirty boy led the way up a little break-neck staircase, opened a slamming wooden door, and ushered Violet into a corner, where crowds of shabbily dressed men and women were lounging amongst heaps of piled-up scenery.

These men and women were the inferiors and subordinates of the company—the banner bearers and supernumeraries who appear in grand processions, and the ill-paid girls who fill up the stage in crowded scenes.

Many of these girls were dressed neatly and plainly; others were distinguished by a tawdry shabbiness—a cheap finery of costume; but there were some girls whom Violet saw lounging together in little groups, whose attire would have scarcely seemed out of place upon women of rank and wealth—handsome girls some of them; and they looked at the stranger’s shabby mourning dress with a supercilious stare.

Violet had to stand for some time amongst these different groups, waiting until it should please the stage-manager to come to her.

That gentleman was working as hard as it is possible for a man to work; running from one side of the great stage to the other; giving directions here, there, and everywhere; abusing those whose stupidity or neglect annoyed him; giving a hasty word of praise now and then; answering questions, writing letters, correcting the rough proofs of playbills, looking at scenery; stooping over the orchestra to say a few words to the répétiteur; and appearing to do a dozen things at once, so quickly did he pass from one task to another.

Little by little Violet became accustomed to the half-darkness of the place, which was only illumined by the glare of a row of lamps at the edge of the stage, technically known as the “float.”

As she grew better able to distinguish objects around her, she felt still more keenly the strangeness of her position. The handsomely attired girls stared at her, always with the same supercilious gaze; and at last one of them, after looking at her fixedly for some time, addressed her. She was a beautiful, dark-eyed, Jewish-looking girl, and her costume was more extravagant than that of any of her companions.

A train of mauve moire antique, bordered with a deep flounce of the richest block lace, trailed upon the dirty boards of the theatre. Over this dress the Jewess wore a lace shawl of the costliest description; and a small white-chip bonnet, adorned with mauve feathers and silver butterflies, crowned her queen-like head.

She was a magnificent looking woman—a woman who might have graced a throne; but there was something almost terrible in her beauty—something that sent a thrill of indefinable pain and terror through the heart of the thoughtful observer.

Her dark eyes had an ominous lustre; there was a hectic bloom upon her oval cheek, and that cheek, perfect though its outline still was, had a sunken look that presaged ill.

A physician would have said that the stamp of decay was upon this splendid creature, the foreshadowing of an early death.

“Pray, are you engaged here?” she asked of Violet; “because, unless you are engaged, you will not be allowed to stand in this wing. It is against the rules for strangers to hang about the theatre.”

There was an insolence in the girl’s tone which aroused Violet Westford’s innate dignity.

She replied very quietly, but with perfect self-possession.

“I am here because I have been told to come here,” she said.

“By whom?”

“By Mr. Maltravers.”

“O, indeed!” exclaimed the Jewess; “then in that case I suppose you are engaged?”

“I believe so.”

“For what?”

“To appear in the new burlesque.”

The Jewess flushed crimson, and an angry light gleamed in her splendid eyes.

“What!” she exclaimed, “then I suppose you are to be the Queen of Beauty in the grand tableau?”

“So Mr. Maltravers told me.”

The Jewess laughed—a hollow laugh, that was very painful to hear. To sit in the golden temple, as the representative of all that is lovely, the observed of all observers, had been Esther Vanberg’s ambition. She was the handsomest girl in the theatre, and she fully expected to be chosen for this distinction. So when she found a stranger was about to be engaged, she flew to Mr. Maltravers, and complained to him bitterly of an arrangement which she declared to be a deliberate insult to herself.

The stage-manager was a thorough man of the world, accustomed to deal with all the different airs and graces of the company under his rule.

He shrugged his shoulders, paid the handsome Jewess some very high-flown compliments, but told her he wanted her to fill another part of the tableau, and that he must have a new lady for the Queen of Beauty.

The truth of the matter was, that in the opinion of Mr. Maltravers the beauty of Esther Vanberg was on the wane. She was very well known to the regular audience at the Circenses, and, handsome though she was, people might be, perhaps, just a little tired of her beauty.

Beyond this, there was something in Esther’s beauty that was almost demoniac in character—something which reflected the reckless wildness of her life and the violence of her temper. Mr. Maltravers had the eye of an artist. His taste in the composition of a stage picture was scarcely inferior to that of Vestris herself, beneath whose despotic sway he had served his apprenticeship in the art of stage management. For the central figure of his tableau he wanted a woman whose beauty should possess the charm of youth and innocence. Thus it was that he had been peculiarly struck by the appearance of Violet Westford. He was a hard, worldly-minded man of business, but he was devoted to the dramatic art, and he held the interests of the theatre before every other consideration.

He came off the stage presently, and made his way to the spot where Esther and Violet were standing.

“Good morning, my dear,” he said to Violet, addressing her with a fatherly familiarity that was entirely free from impertinence. “I’m very glad to see you. You’ve made up your mind to accept the engagement?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, then; go upstairs to the wardrobe—any one will show you the way—and ask Mrs. Clements to measure you for your new dress. You can take this,” he added, scrawling a few words in pencil on the back of a card. “Mrs. C. knows all about the dress. There, run along, that’s a good girl.”

Before Violet could reply, Mr. Maltravers had returned to the centre of the stage, and was busy among the scene-shifters. A good-natured looking, gentle-voiced girl, very simply but yet very neatly dressed, who had been sitting in a dark corner of the side-scenes working crochet, came forward and offered to conduct Violet to the wardrobe-room, and the two set out together.

It was a long journey—up staircases that seemed interminable to Violet; but at last they arrived at a great, bare whitewashed apartment, immediately under the roof of the theatre—an apartment which was littered from one end to the other with scraps of gorgeous-hued satin and glittering tissue, spangles, ribbons, and gold-lace. About twenty women were at work here, and to one of these Violet was conducted.

Mr. Maltravers’s card produced an immediate effect. The wardrobe-mistress left her work, and proceeded to take Violet’s measure for the dress. She was in raptures with the young girl’s appearance, and told her she would look lovely in a robe of silver tissue, spangled with stars, and with draperies of rose-coloured crape.

“The dress will be perfection, miss, perfection, and will just suit your beautiful fair skin. Now don’t you let any of the ballet-ladies persuade you to plaster your face with blanc de perle, or blanc Rosati, or blanc de something, as most of them do, until their faces have about us much expression as you’ll see in a whitewashed wall. I shall take great pains with the costume, for I know Mr. Maltravers has set his heart upon the Temple of Beauty being a great success. My youngest little girl is to be one of the Cupids, and she does nothing but talk of it at home. She went on in last year’s pantomime as the Singing Oyster, and did so well, bless her dear little heart!”

To Violet all this talk was utterly strange. Already she began to look forward with fear to her first appearance on a public stage; but for the sake of those she loved she would have dared more than the ordeal before her.

She went downstairs, and at the back of the stage met Mr. Maltravers, who told her to come at ten o’clock the next morning for the rehearsal of the new burlesque.

“O, by the bye,” he said, “what name shall I put down in the cast? You never told me your name.”

“My name is Wes——,” Violet began; but she stopped abruptly, remembering that the subordinate position she was about to occupy in that theatre would be a kind of disgrace to her lost father’s name.

The stage-manager seemed to guess the nature of her scruples.

“You are not obliged to give me your real name, my dear,” he said kindly; “if you like to take a false name, you can do so. Most actresses and ladies of the ballet assume false names: they have generally some relations or friends who object to their appearance on the stage—straitlaced people, you know, who fancy that the stage-door is the entrance to a kind of Tophet.”

“You are very good, sir. I should not wish my position here to be known,” Violet faltered. “I honour and admire the dramatic art, and those who profess it; but as my position in the theatre will be a very humble one, I shall be glad to keep my name a secret. You can call me Watson, if you please, Mr. Maltravers.”

“Very well, my dear; so be it. You will be known here as Miss Watson. And don’t you be put out if Esther Vanberg gives herself airs because you’ve been chosen for the best place in the tableau. You just attend to your business, and if Vanberg annoys you, come to me, and I’ll take my lady down a peg or two.”