VII
Rehearsal
We went down a back stairway that brought us to the empty stage. A light was already burning, and I remember well that my first impression was of the stage’s narrowness and considerable depth. Its back was of plaster over the outer timbers, but at either side partitions of paneling had been erected to enclose the cell-like dressing-rooms. One of the doors bore a star of white paint, evidently for Sigrid. Against the back wall leaned several open frames of wood, with rolls of canvas lying ready to be tacked on and painted into scenery.
Varduk had led the way down the stairs, and at the foot he paused to call upward to Davidson, who remained at the rear of the procession. “Fetch some chairs,” he ordered, and the tall subordinate paused to gather them. He carried down six at once, his long strong arms threaded through their open backs. Varduk showed him with silent gestures where to arrange them, and himself led Sigrid to the midmost of them, upstage center.
“Sit down, all,” he said to the rest of us. “Curtain, Davidson.” He waited while the heavy pall rolled ponderously upward against the top of the arch. “Have you got your scripts, ladies and gentlemen?”
We all had, but his hands were empty. I started to offer him my copy, but he waved it away with thanks. “I know the thing by heart,” he informed me, though with no air of boasting. Remaining still upon his feet, he looked around our seated array, capturing every eye and attention.
“The first part of Ruthven is, as we know already, in iambic pentameter—the ‘heroic verse’ that was customary and even expected in dramas of Byron’s day. However, he employs here his usual trick of breaking the earlier lines up into short, situation-building speeches. No long and involved declamations, as in so many creaky tragedies of his fellows. He wrote the same sort of opening scenes for his plays the world has already seen performed—Werner, The Two Foscari, Marino Faliero and The Deformed Transformed.”
Martha Vining cleared her throat. “Doesn’t Manfred begin with a long, measured soliloquy by the central character?”
“It does,” nodded Varduk. “I am gratified, Miss Vining, to observe that you have been studying something of Byron’s work.” He paused, and she bridled in satisfaction. “However,” he continued, somewhat maliciously, “you would be well advised to study farther, and learn that Byron stated definitely that Manfred was not written for the theater. But, returning to Ruthven, with which work we are primarily concerned, the short, lively exchanges at the beginning are Aubrey’s and Malvina’s.” He quoted from memory. “ ‘Scene, Malvina’s garden. Time, late afternoon—Aubrey, sitting at Malvina’s feet, tells his adventures.’ Very good, Mr. Connatt, take your place at Miss Holgar’s feet.”
I did so, and she smiled in comradely fashion while waiting for the others to drag their chairs away. Glancing at our scripts, we began:
“I’m no Othello, darling.”
“Yet I am
Your Desdemona. Tell me of your travels.”
“Of Anthropophagi?”
“ ‘And men whose heads
do grow beneath—’ ”
“I saw no such,
Not in all wildest Greece and Macedon.”
“Saw you no spirits?”
“None, Malvina—none.”
“Not even the vampire, he who quaffs the blood
Of life, that he may live in death?”
“Not I.
How do you know that tale?”
“I’ve read
In old romances—”
“Capital, capital,” interrupted Varduk pleasantly. “I know that the play is written in a specific meter, yet you need not speak as though it were. If anything, make the lines less rhythmic and more matter-of-fact. Remember, you are young lovers, half bantering as you woo. Let your audience relax with you. Let it feel the verse form without actually hearing.”
We continued, to the line where Aubrey tells of his travel-acquaintance Ruthven. Here the speech became definite verse:
“He is a friend who charms, but does not cheer,
One who commands, but comforts not, the world.
I do not doubt but women find him handsome,
Yet hearts must be uneasy at his glance.”
Malvina asks:
“His glance? Is it so piercing when it strikes?”
And Aubrey:
“It does not pierce—indeed, it rather weighs,
Like lead, upon the face where it is fixed.”
Followed the story, which I have outlined elsewhere, of the encounter with bandits and Ruthven’s apparent sacrifice of himself to cover Aubrey’s retreat. Then Martha Vining, as the maid Bridget, spoke to announce Ruthven’s coming, and upon the heels of her speech Varduk moved stiffly toward us.
“Aubrey!” he cried, in a rich, ringing tone such as fills theaters, and not at all like his ordinary gentle voice. I made my due response:
“Have you lived, Ruthven? But the horde
Of outlaw warriors compassed you and struck—”
In the role of Ruthven, Varduk’s interruption was as natural and decisive as when, in ordinary conversation, he neatly cut another’s speech in two with a remark of his own. I have already quoted this reply of Ruthven’s:
“I faced them, and who seeks my face seeks death.”
He was speaking the line, of course, without script, and his eyes held mine. Despite myself, I almost staggered under the weight of his glance. It was like that which Aubrey actually credits to Ruthven—lead-heavy instead of piercing, difficult to support.
The rehearsal went on, with Ruthven’s seduction of Bridget and his court to the nervous but fascinated Malvina. In the end, as I have synopsized earlier, came his secret and miraculous revival from seeming death. Varduk delivered the final rather terrifying speech magnificently, and then abruptly doffed his Ruthven manner to smile congratulations all around.
“It’s more than a month to our opening date in July,” he said, “and yet I would be willing to present this play as a finished play, no later than this day week. Miss Holgar, may I voice my special appreciation? Mr. Connatt, your confessed fear of your own inadequacy is proven groundless. Bravo, Miss Vining—and you, Davidson.” His final tag of praise to his subordinate seemed almost grudging. “Now for the second act of the thing. No verse this time, my friends. Finish the rehearsal as well as you have begun.”
“Wait,” I said. “How about properties? I simulated the club-stroke in the first act, but this time I need a sword. For the sake of feeling the action better—”
“Yes, of course,” granted Varduk. “There’s one in the corner dressing-room.” He pointed. “Go fetch it, Davidson.”
Davidson complied. The sword was a cross-hilt affair, old but keen and bright.
“This isn’t a prop at all,” I half objected. “It’s the real thing. Won’t it be dangerous?”
“Oh, I think we can risk it,” Varduk replied carelessly. “Let’s get on with the rehearsal. A hundred years later, in the same garden. Swithin and Mary, descendants of Aubrey and Malvina, onstage.”
We continued. The opening, again with Sigrid and myself a-wooing, was lively and even brilliant. Martha Vining, in her role of the centenarian Bridget, skilfully cracked her voice and infused a witch-like quality into her telling of the Aubrey-Ruthven tale. Again the entrance of Ruthven, his suavity and apparent friendliness, his manner changing as he is revealed as the resurrected fiend of another age; finally the clash with me, as Swithin.
I spoke my line—“My ancestor killed you once, Ruthven. I can do the same today.” Then I poked at him with the sword.
Varduk smiled and interjected, “Rather a languid thrust, that, Mr. Connatt. Do you think it will seem serious from the viewpoint of our audience?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was afraid I might hurt you.”
“Fear nothing, Mr. Connatt. Take the speech and the swordplay again.”
I did so, but he laughed almost in scorn. “You still put no life into the thrust.” He spread his hands, as if to offer himself as a target. “Once more. Don’t be an old woman.”
Losing a bit of my temper, I made a genuine lunge. My right foot glided forward and my weight shifted to follow my point. But in mid-motion I knew myself for a danger-dealing fool, tried to recover, failed, and slipped.
I almost fell at full length—would have fallen had Varduk not been standing in my way. My sword-point, completely out of control, drove at the center of his breast—I felt it tear through cloth, through flesh—
A moment later his slender hands had caught my floundering body and pushed it back upon its feet. My sword, wedged in something, snatched its hilt from my hand. Sick and horrified, I saw it protruding from the midst of Varduk’s body. Behind me I heard the choked squeal of Martha Vining, and an oath from Jake Switz. I swayed, my vision seemed to swim in smoky liquid, and I suppose I was well on the way to an unmasculine swoon. But a light chuckle, in Varduk’s familiar manner, saved me from collapsing.
“That is exactly the way to do it, Mr. Connatt,” he said in a tone of well-bred applause.
He drew the steel free—I think that he had to wrench rather hard—and then stepped forward to extend the hilt.
“There’s blood on it,” I mumbled sickly.
“Oh, that?” he glanced down at the blade. “Just a deceit for the sake of realism. You arranged the false-blood device splendidly, Davidson.” He pushed the hilt into my slack grasp. “Look, the imitation gore is already evaporating.”
So it was, like dew on a hot stone. Already the blade shone bright and clean.
“Very good,” said Varduk. “Climax now. Miss Holgar, I think it is your line.”
She, too, had been horrified by the seeming catastrophe, but she came gamely up to the bit where Mary pleads for Swithin’s life, offering herself as the price. Half a dozen exchanges between Ruthven and Mary, thus:
“You give yourself up, then?”
“I do.”
“You renounce your former manners, hopes and wishes?”
“I do.”
“You will swear so, upon the book yonder?” (Here Ruthven points to a Bible, open on the garden-seat.)
“I do.” (Mary touches the Bible.)
“You submit to the powers I represent?”
“I know only the power to which I pray. ‘Our Father, which wert in heaven—’ ”
Sigrid, as I say, had done well up to now, but here she broke off. “It isn’t correct there,” she pointed out. “The prayer should read, ‘art in heaven.’ Perhaps the script was copied wrongly.”
“No,” said Martha Vining. “It’s ‘wert in heaven’ on mine.”
“And on mine,” I added.
Varduk had frowned a moment, as if perplexed, but he spoke decisively. “As a matter of fact, it’s in the original. Byron undoubtedly meant it to be so, to show Mary’s agitation.”
Sigrid had been reading ahead. “Farther down in the same prayer, it says almost the same thing—‘Thy will be done on earth as it was in heaven.’ It should be, ‘is in heaven.’ ”
I had found the same deviation in my own copy. “Byron hardly meant Mary’s agitation to extend so far,” I argued.
“Since when, Mr. Connatt,” inquired Varduk silkily, “did you become an authority on what Byron meant, here or elsewhere in his writings? You’re being, not only a critic, but a clairvoyant.”
I felt my cheeks glowing, and I met his heavy, mocking gaze as levelly as I could. “I don’t like sacrilegious mistakes,” I said, “and I don’t like being snubbed, sir.”
Davidson stepped to Varduk’s side. “You can’t talk to him like that, Connatt,” he warned me.
Davidson was a good four inches taller than I, and more muscular, but at the moment I welcomed the idea of fighting him. I moved a step forward.
“Mr. Davidson,” I said to him, “I don’t welcome dictation from you, not on anything I choose to do or say.”
Sigrid cried out in protest, and Varduk lifted up a hand. He smiled, too, in a dazzling manner.
“I think,” he said in sudden good humor, “that we are all tired and shaken. Perhaps it’s due to the unintentional realism of that incident with the sword—I saw several faces grow pale. Suppose we say that the rehearsals won’t include so dangerous-looking an attack hereafter; we’ll save the trick for the public performance itself. And we’ll stop work now; in any case, it’s supposed to be unlucky to speak the last line of a play in rehearsal. Shall we all go and get some rest?”
He turned to Sigrid and offered his arm. She took it, and they walked side by side out of the stage door and away. Martha Vining followed at their heels, while Davidson lingered to turn out the lights. Jake and I left together for our own boathouse loft. The moon was up, and I jumped when leaves shimmered in its light—I remembered Jake’s story about the amorphous lurkers in the thickets.
But nothing challenged us, and we went silently to bed, though I, at least, lay wakeful for hours.