Love's a Stage (24 page)
“Oh, no, not now,” admitted Landry with a cheerfulness that made Frances long to do him violence. “But in another twenty years . . .”
Frances glared at him as she tried to conjure a suitably biting retort, but Landry’s expression was so invincibly genial that she began instead to laugh.
“Not with you around always,” she said, “to burst my bubble.”
There was a moment of curious intimacy as hazel eyes gazed into green eyes; her smile faded as she realized that she’d committed the hideous faux pas of assuming he would
be
there in twenty years. Her embarrassment saw their silence as awkward, and to end it quickly, she said:
“I can’t stand here, of course! They will be expecting me in the dressing rooms.” Her hand fluttered self-consciously to her throat. “Don’t accompany me, please. P-people gossip so over the merest nothing! Good-bye! And thank you for the help you’ve been with my aunt.”
She turned and sped off through the crowd before he had time to reply. There was a common hall that strung the dressing rooms together like beads on a necklace, and as Frances entered, she saw at once that something was very wrong.
The faces of the players were stiff with distress, and Charles Scott rushed toward Frances, running his hands wildly through his disheveled hair.
“Where have you been, Brightcastle?” he shouted. “Come with me! Hurry! You’ll have to go on in the next act.”
“The next . . . but it’s not time for the farce,” said Frances.
Scott pulled her briskly after him, his hand on her elbow. “Who said anything about the farce?” he flung over his shoulder. “We’re in the middle of one of those charming little situations known as a crisis. Sheila Grant has collapsed.”
“She’s what?” exclaimed Frances, nearly tripping on a discarded bill of play.
“When she had her exit five minutes ago, she took half a glass of wine and went into a swoon.”
“Has a doctor seen her?” asked Frances.
“Of course,” snapped Scott. “The pulse is strong, her lungs are steady; the best guess he could make is that she appears to have been drugged.”
“Oh, no, it can’t be—who would have done such a thing?” said Frances.
“God knows. A rival playhouse or a competing actress perhaps. We’ll hire the runners to find out what we can tomorrow. Right now our biggest problem is filling her spot. It would take more than an hour for the understudy to arrive. By that time we’re likely to have a riot in the pit, especially when they hear they’re not going to get Sheila Grant. I’m going to have to let
you
take the final scene.”
It was a gift from the gods, a once-in-a-lifetime smile of favor from the muses. “Take ten years of my life,” went the centuries-old prayer of the bit player, “but let me have the star’s role for one night. One chance, one chance to shine before an audience so they can see the genius in me.” Frances’ near-tearful objections that she didn’t want to go on were regarded at first as an understandable fit of nerves. When her protests persisted, Frances saw that they were regarded with such suspicion that she had no choice but to silence them.
In perfect truth, Frances knew that Scott’s confidence in her ability was so slim that only the most dire necessity would have made him risk the play’s success on her meager store of talent. The play was so new, the final speech so long and complex, that except for Sheila Grant, Frances, and her understudy, not one of the Lane’s actresses knew it through.
The curtain rose. In front of it an audience angry at being deprived of the stunning Sheila Grant, their beloved favorite, shifted and stirred like a wakening beast. There was a cough from the gallery, and the snap of a snuffbox.
Frances stood alone on the stage, still and straight, her pallor subtly enhanced by the costume of Marie Antoinette’s imprisonment, a plain black silk dress with a muslin fichu over the neck, the long ends falling to the skirt front. Her unpowdered hair was tied with a black ribbon, and she wore no ornament other than a black bow and a band of velvet encircling her slender neck. Behind her loomed the twin beams of the guillotine, joined by the heavy black-steel blade, lined dramatically on the bottom by the silvery cold gleam of the cutting edge. The tall, gaunt executioner stood to the side of his instrument, dressed in the raffish style of the sans-culottes, his features hidden by an ominous black hood.
It was fortunate that when Frances began to speak, her voice was so low that the audience was forced into silence, if only to hear her words. Hecklers who would have called out were quickly shushed by their fellows.
Her performance was not, to say the least, what the audience was expecting. Broad effects were the dramatic style of the day. Sheila Grant would have strode in magnificent melancholy from one end of the stage apron to the other, gesturing beseechingly toward the heavens. Frances was so stricken with stage fright that she could only stand in one spot, gently wringing her hands and forcing the words out through her dry throat.
As she spoke, the growing rumble of the audience peaked and began to die away, and after a few shouts of “down in front” and “quiet, please,” it ceased entirely. This so unnerved her that she forgot where she was in the speech, and had to make a long pause until she remembered her place. She felt lost on the wide stage, frightened of the crowd that seemed waiting to devour her. She closed her eyes and thought—best to speak the lines and get it over with—her presence in this play was an accident of fate, something to which she must resign herself.
The audience grew so still that she imagined they had become disgusted and had quietly left the theater; she was afraid to open her eyes to the rows of empty seats.
Then she could remember no more of her lines, and stood waiting for the shower of catcalls, boos, and (she was sure) rotting vegetables to descend upon her. The seconds ticked by, until she recalled that, yes, the audience had left the theater; and keeping her eyes closed, she took one timid step to walk from the stage. There was a rustle from the pit. Perhaps there was a straggler, someone who had fallen asleep during the last paragraphs, and Frances opened her eyes to look. To her surprise, the theater was full. She cast about agitatedly for her next course of action, and remembered: the guillotine! That is what I am to do.
It was in front of her—the gleaming blade, and hooded executioner. Frances took timorous steps toward the terrible duo, and meekly inspected the guillotine. Then she looked at the executioner—was it a different man under the hood than she had seen previously? His physical shape was different, his height perhaps a few inches shorter, his forearms less muscular. She hadn’t recalled a change in this role. She looked back to the guillotine, and at precisely the instant the executioner laid his hand on her arm to lead her to it, she noticed one horrifying circumstance: The two metal pipes that had been pushed as safety catches through the holes on either side and just above the neck rest were missing! What had formerly been a stage prop was now a true instrument of death!
She was galvanized into action by the shock and began to struggle—the executioner’s grip became more powerful; she kicked and bit and fought; the crowd began to roar and applaud, making a gargantuan ruckus. Someone must have realized that something was amiss, and the curtain came rolling down on the scene. The stage was flooded with hands running toward the struggling couple, and the mysterious executioner released Frances and ran off into the wings, swinging wildly at a pursuer.
“Bravo! Bravo! Huzzah!” The appreciation of the crowd was approaching torrential dimensions.
There was spinning confusion as the company massed on stage, examining the guillotine, expressing concern for Frances, and speculating excitedly about the identity of the false executioner. Charles Scott dispatched stagemen to search the backstage areas and ordered the company to fall into line for the curtain. He sent a callboy for Kennan, who someone said was taking his ease at a tavern across the alley.
Scott put up his hand, signaling for attention, and over the hubbub he shouted, “Ladies! Ladies and gentlemen! We have to bring up the curtain and take our bows—remember now, poise is the watchword. Theresa, straighten Miss Brightcastle’s hair ribbon. We must stay calm—a scandal like this could damage the theater’s reputation. Calm!”
A stagehand entered the near end of the stage, carrying the abandoned executioner’s mask and cape, causing a new stir of interest. Simultaneously, Edward Kennan strolled onto the stage from the opposite end, looking about curiously.
“Where have you been, Edward? It’s not like you to be late for the curtain,” said Scott. “Especially under these circumstances.”
Kennan’s smile was smugly bland. “The boy told me; much ado . . .” He gave Frances a snide look. “Someone’s been playing a practical joke on you again, Miss Brightcastle. Have you angered one of your lovers?”
Frances longed to expose him so desperately that the words burned in her throat, and she was prevented from uttering them by the lifting curtain. An avalanche of applause descended on the stage. Bow, smile, acknowledge the private boxes, step forward, throw a kiss to the pit, raise hands to the gallery. The curtain came down and went up again, and still the applause thundered. The stage became littered with fair-smelling petals as the playgoers ripped the flowers from the hands of the flowergirls and tossed them at the company. As the curtain touched down again, Frances saw Charles Scott bearing toward her. With a hand on her forearm he whisked her offstage.
“Enough of that for now,” he said. “Landry’s arranged for a private coach to carry you home.”
“
Landry’s
arranged! I shan’t go. Someone’s just tried to take my life and . . .”
Scott interrupted. “Which is exactly why you’d better be conveyed safely home until we’ve had time to investigate. Edgar Murphy, who plays the executioner, was found unconscious, bound, and gagged in the prop room, and no one’s caught the imposter.”
“Mr. Scott, there’s no need to investigate. I know who’s tried to kill me. Where’s Richard Rivington? Have you seen him? I must talk to him at once.”
Scott looked like a person taxed beyond endurance. “Rivington, is it now? Listen to me; if you want to play fast and loose with Landry, don’t involve me or the theater in it. Good God, girl, Landry is the last person I want to alienate.”
“Pleasing Lord Landry is not my object!”
“Well, it
is
an object of mine!” said Scott, looking harassed. “Keeping Landry happy is everyone’s concern here, or he’ll have his next play produced at Covent Garden. Are you miffed because he hasn’t come to see you himself? He didn’t want to endanger your reputation; this is the first time I’ve seen him show that much concern for anyone. He gave me strict instructions to personally see you into the coach and deliver you safely inside your own door, and you’re coming with me if I have to drag you.”
“I—but what of my role in the farce?” she said with some confusion. “Who’s going to fill it?”
“Don’t worry about your role in the farce,” he snapped. “Any twit can fill it.”
It had been a highhanded maneuver, decided Frances, for Landry to have ordered her hustled home; that he should have the audacity to assign her a bodyguard was outrageous. When Frances arrived at the sumptuous town carriage she was handed inside by a short man with massive shoulders, undulating biceps, a broken nose, and a merry eye, who announced himself as Nick Vent, at your service, and that Lord Landry had said he was to accompany Miss Brightcastle and watch over her house for the night, begging the lady’s pardon. The carriage door had been closed, the mysterious Mr. Vent had scrambled nimbly to the box beside the coachman, and the horses put forward before Frances’ indignation had time to crystalize into a protest. However, by the time they reached Miss Isles’ front door, she was more than ready to give Mr. Vent his good-bye. She was not sure why Lord Landry should take the responsibility of providing her with a guard, but it was an action taken entirely without her knowledge or consent; Mr. Vent should consider himself released from any task contracted by Lord Landry.
She swept into the house and up the stairs, but when, a quarter hour later the yap of a prowling dog caused her to glance out of the window, she observed that Mr. Vent, far from having respected her dictates, instead had taken a stalwart post by the entrance door. A sigh of exasperation escaped her as she went downstairs to try to make him go away again, receiving only a cheerful negative shake of the head in return. Mr. Vent, as it happened, was Lord Landry’s groom. And, as it happened, the son of Lord Landry’s
father’s
groom; and before that, Mr. Vent’s grandfather had been Lord Landry’s grandfather’s—Frances put up her hand to stop the onslaught of genealogy. Mr. Vent would have her to understand that he would do naught to distress a lady, but when His Lordship sent him to a task—well! Nick Vent had never come short in his duty. In the end, Frances was forced to resign herself to the presence of the immovable Mr. Vent. The dictates of conscience would not allow her to leave him to cool his heels on the frigid pavement all night. She asked him if he wished to step into her aunt’s parlor and partake, if he would care for it, of a light supper. Mr. Vent was agreeable. His shoulders were so wide he had to turn partially sideways to get through her aunt’s parlor door, and Frances began to fear for the knickknacks. The grace and care with which he made his way to the small tea table put her fears to rest. It was no small thing to sustain that substantial frame, and to Frances’ awe and Henrietta’s admiration, Mr. Vent put away a quantity of salmon, some cold tongue, a pyramid of strawberries, three biscuits, two Seville oranges, and a dish of boiled cucumbers. To wine he said no; coffee would be just the thing, if it were not too much trouble. That’s what was needed to keep a man awake at night. Frances made note that it was not through any wish of hers that Mr. Vent would spend a slumberless night, adding that she was sorry to find Mr. Vent in the thrall of an employer who would expect such a thing.