CHAPTER XII.

I must have been asleep when Catsbach came home, if that night he came home at all. Frightful dreams haunted me all night. A thousand demons came down on me, like the Guards at Waterloo, all playing on broken-winded flutes. Twenty Hamlets, all in sable hat and tumbled silk stockings, whistled "To be, or not to be," through the same detestable instrument. Then I dreamt of Emily Pybus, and instantly she turned into Miss Claribel in the costume of Ophelia. All the scenes of my past life jumbled themselves up into one confused mass. Well-known faces looked in upon me from all sides of the room--Mr Montalban, the old schoolmaster at Puddlecombe, the examiners, Miss de la Rose, and Fitz-Edward--all piping and screaming on that inevitable flute. It showed that a deep blow on my vanity had been inflicted by my failure at Mr Willox's ball. I tried when I awoke to remember whether I had taken opium, I felt so feverish and confused; but the excitement was caused by my injured self-love; and, waking as well as sleeping, I entertained a frantic hatred against Mr Hooker. I determined to take counsel of Catsbach, to whom I had hitherto confided all parts of my history, with the sole concealment of names. I resolved to lay the whole case before him, and ask his advice how to proceed. Should I go to Muswell Hill and take the very office of tutor in music which I had already so indignantly refused in literature and classics? I found I was very much changed since then--or rather that Emily was more attractive, as a pupil, than I had thought her at fourteen years old. There was romance also in becoming acquainted with her in a fictitious character; and I felt less degraded as an unsuccessful musician than I had felt as a disappointed schoolboy. But Catsbach should decide upon it all. In the morning, however, a note was put into my hands--"The incident last night," he said, "makes it too dangerous for us to attend at private parties. You will never be able to preserve your incog. I have got some intimation of the whereabouts of Ellinor. You won't see me for two days. Meantime, go on with rehearsal with Miss Claribel, and on Thursday take her to Chatham. The 'Paragon Royal' will be in ecstasy at your approach, for I have said you will give them five pounds and a supper after the play. I shall be there in plenty of time for the overture, but at present I am off to Guildford, where I suspect my charmer keeps a school. The mistress has been described to me as a perfect angel; and what can be a closer description of my Ellinor? Take care of Miss Claribel's arts. Beauty is a fading flower. So am I.--AUGUSTUS TOOKS." I followed the advice contained in this letter, and perfected myself in Hamlet. Miss Claribel herself began to have hopes of my success; and my mother, in the midst of her rapture with my performance, only insisted more and more on a strict preservation of my incognito. My uncle, she said, was about to return to England. She did not know how he might like to hear that his nephew had gone upon the stage. The Paragon Royal had scarcely a grander sound than the Stepney Star. Critics might be hostile; for all literary people, she heard, were unjust; and, at all events, I was to appear as Julian Gray till my position was fairly assured, and I could announce myself as the Shakspeare and Garrick of modern times. I smiled at all these cautions; I smiled at the hostility of the critics; I frowned at the possibility of a failure; I started when I heard her allusion to my uncle; in fact, I found that I was a regular playactor, and that I went through the gamut of stamps and facemakings exactly like Messrs Martingdale and Fitz-Edward. Miss Claribel laughed. "You rehearse very well," she said, "even when you are not repeating your part. You have immense command of feature, as much, I should say, as Grimaldi; but then he never attempted the tragic."

"I don't quite understand your meaning, Miss Claribel," I said, looking as dignified as Coriolanus when he banished the Romans. "Do you mean that I grimace too much?"

"Certainly, if you grimace at all. There is no surer sign of a man being a mere actor, than a reliance on scorning lips and upturned eyebrows. It is not natural. The words and passion must force their own way from the heart, and make their mark on the countenance at the moment of the burst. When you see a man throw himself back with his arms stretched out, his one leg forward, his mouth gaping, and his eyes ready to fall out of his head, in expectation of a ghost or some other dreadful sight, he is a mere conventional figure of fright, with no terror or apprehension whatever within. He should wait for the apparition; he should show the pit the first glimpse he gets of it; through his eyes they should see the undefined horror grow into consistency; and without the palpable presence either of the murdered Banquo or of Hamlet's father, they should feel a graveyard air about them, and see the dreadful shadow take shape and form. This is not produced by starts and grins."

"Then, in heaven's name! how is it produced?"

"By feeling it, by seeing it, by believing it."

"I feel it, see it, believe it, and my eyebrows ascend, my mouth opens, my arms stretch out."

"So they would if you saw a house on fire. These are the hereditary exponents of surprise and fear; but a ghost creates a different feeling; it ought to be differently expressed: not surprise--it is above it: not fear--for neither Macbeth nor Hamlet are capable of such a feeling; but awe--something very different from any other state of mind they ever experienced before. They should move little, speak low, make no faces, and, above all things, show that the sentiment comes from within. It will find its way, by sympathy, to the pit. They will see the propriety of making little noise in presence of a murdered general or a buried king. Martingdale roars as if he were in presence of a murdered bull, and was triumphing over its death. He bellows as if he felt he had conquered a rival, and now had all the noise to himself. But more: I would invest the whole character of Hamlet with an atmosphere of the supernatural. No man who had held parley with the dead, and was marshalled on to a great act by invisible hands, should ever be without an impression of the awful presence. I would make him throw inquiring glances round, even in his talk with the gravedigger. That ghost should never leave the eyes of the pit; present or absent, the supernatural should rule the stage. When Hamlet is silent, he should be _distrait_--inattentive to what is going on, and holding inward converse with his unearthly visitor. Don't you think he went really mad? To be sure he did. Who wouldn't, if night and day he were haunted by a ghost, commanding him to commit a murder, to revenge a father, to break the heart of the girl who loved him? Of course he went mad, though I don't found that belief on the crumpled state of his stocking, but on the broad ground that no man can see ghosts, and hear strange voices from the other world, and see a dreadful action forced on him of which he doesn't know the result, and yet remain as firm in his pulse, and collected in his faculties, as a chairman of Quarter Sessions, or an alderman at a city feast."

"I fear, Miss Claribel, you form such an estimate of an actor's requirements, that you will never fulfil your own expectations." I spoke with a slight tone of displeasure.

"You are very severe," she replied; "but I will fulfil my own expectations, for they are not very high. I will enter into Ophelia's feelings--they shall enter into me; and I and Ophelia shall be one and indivisible."

"Now, you are not afraid of the 'mannerism' you spoke of some days ago?"

"It is the rock people who enter into a character are apt to split on; but I will endeavour to bear Juliet and Desdemona, and Viola, all with a difference."

"We shall see," I said, in no good humour. "On Thursday we shall go down to the Paragon Royal. My mother will go and be spectatress of the fight; and, come what may, I will show the world a true reading of the noble Dane." Miss Claribel smiled, and so did my mother, exemplifying the numerous meanings that can be conveyed by that position of the lips. Miss Claribel's was the more beautiful mouth, but I liked the expression of my mother's more.

I pass over the preparations, the journey, the disappointment at the sight of the ugly street and hideous building in which our fortunes were to be tried. At six I was dressed and on the stage, Miss Claribel in her dressing-room, my mother in a stage-box; not a soul in the pit, nobody at the door; two orange-women standing beside their baskets near the orchestra, and the whole house, as seen by me through a hole in the green curtain, deserted and uncomfortable in the extreme. The manager, a most polite little gentleman, who was great in comedy, and enacted the part of Osric, was at my side. I pointed out the discouraging aspect of the theatre. "O, you'll see in half an hour," he said, "crowds filling every seat. My Osric is a poor part, but very popular."

Polonius joined us, an old man, who at Christmas was a great favourite as Pantaloon in the pantomime.

"It will be a great house, I feel sure," he mumbled through his toothless gums. "Old Jack Ivory as Polonius is sure to draw." Not one of them attributed the expected multitude in any respect to the debutant in Hamlet, or the beauty of the Ophelia.

"The worst thing I see about it is, that the band with your friend, the foreign gentleman, has not arrived," said Count Osric; "and if a Paragon audience are disappointed, they always throw ginger-beer bottles at the manager's head. I wish we had opened in Coriolanus: I should have worn a helmet."

"I feel quite certain my friend, Mr Catsbach, will not disappoint us," I said; "and from the present appearance of the boxes, pit, and gallery, I think I may congratulate you on the small number of bottles you will have to sustain."

"Wait a little, I beg, my dear sir; Osric has never failed me yet, and the artisans and mechanics are not able to appear here much before seven."

"The nobility and gentry?" I inquired.

"O, some of the garrison will come in after mess, at half price, in time to make bets on the fencing scene."

"I am glad they take so deep an interest," I began.

"Lor' bless ye! they very often jump on the stage and take a turn with Laertes themselves; and once a very curious thing happened: Two of the young officers gave ten shillings apiece to the Hamlet to tire Laertes down. Hamlet was an excellent fencer. He wouldn't on any account accept the button on any part of his clothes--there was no palpable hit--the whole house took a great interest in the Shaksperian drama, and half-crowns were posted in all parts of the boxes on the bout. I was afraid the buttons might come off the foils, and made them exchange their rapiers for single-stick. Laertes at last planted a hit on Hamlet's nose, and upwards of £20 changed hands on the occasion. Hamlet drew every night after that for three weeks, until the colonel-commandant interfered, and we were driven from the bard of Avon to the "Miller and his Men." There is no freedom for the legitimate drama; but I hope to-night, sir, the tragic muse will be reinstated on these boards. I expect a great house, for I have let it be pretty generally known that you are a master of fence."

"If the worst comes to the worst," said Polonius, "and the fiddlers don't make their appearance, I think old Jack Ivory can always appease a storm. Pray, sir, do you play on any instrument?"

"The flute," I said, hesitatingly, and with a look of inquiry what the object of his question could be.

"That makes it quite safe," replied Polonius; "you shall accompany me by way of an overture, for there ain't a man in England gets more applause in 'Hot Codlins' than myself."

I tried to laugh, as if I considered the proposition an excellent joke; but I have every reason to believe the wretch was serious. I began to perceive that every person engaged on the stage, though only to deliver a message, thinks himself the principal performer; he also is of opinion that there is no disparity of rank upon the boards, but that what the clown does, may also be done by the tragedian. I have no doubt Diavolo Antonio looked down on Edmund Kean. I was on the point of renewing the conversation, when an enormous noise at the pit-entrance attracted my notice. A thrill of gratification came into my heart. All regard for Shakspeare is not yet extinct, in spite of fencing Hamlets and ignorant managers. The rush into the pit was prodigious. I looked through the green curtain once more. Her Majesty's ship, the Periander, 44, had been paid off that morning, and the gallant crew and their wives filled every bench. The majority of the valiant defenders of their country were polygamists to the most undeniable amount, and seemed rather proud of the extent to which they broke the law. Those who rejoiced in single blessedness limited themselves to one wife. The trebly blessed were numerous, and the boatswain had six to share his heart and fortunes. Here I perceived the manager's perils, but not from ginger-beer. There were cans of gin and rum, that would have supplied a tavern for a week. Single bottles of whisky were brandished in the air, as on festive occasions landsmen wave their hats; and in a short time the calls for music became overpowering, and the manager sent secretly for a company of marines and a division of the police.

"If that hairy-cheeked foreigner doesn't come," said Osric, with unaffected fear, "there will be a row, like the boarding of an enemy's ship. They always think us foreigners when we wear slashed doublets; and in the war time they shipped off my predecessor, who was acting a Parisian marquis, in a cartel that was just starting with a batch of French prisoners to be exchanged. The poor man died in the hulks at Toulon, for he had been counted against an English captain, and they kept him in captivity because the captain refused to return."

I looked at my watch: it only wanted ten minutes to seven, and the storm rising every moment. If Catsbach plays me false, I shall rescue my mother, I thought, and fight my way into the street. I looked at my sword; it was of silver-gilt tin, and couldn't have committed manslaughter on the body of Tom Thumb. A universal cheer proclaimed an arrival; and I declare the first scrape of the fiddle was the sweetest music I ever heard. It gave quite a new turn to the behaviour of the sailors. They ordered "God save the Queen" and "Rule Britannia," and then roared lustily for a hornpipe. Catsbach gratified them in whatever they asked. At last they called for a gangway to be placed from the orchestra on to the stage, and proposed commencing the dramatic proceedings of the evening by a miscellaneous country dance. This, however, was not accorded--the little bell rang--and the serious overture began.

At this moment Mr Wormwood, out of breath, and enraptured apparently with my approaching triumph, caught me by the hand. "Let me introduce you," he said, "to the three greatest critics in Europe. We have hurried from London to see your _debût_. I have the highest opinion of your genius, and feel sure you will be most unanimously and ignominiously cat-called--as _we_ were."

The three gentlemen bowed, and retired into the stage-box beside my mother, to write a description of my reception. I was too indignant to speak, and suddenly the curtain rose, and the play began. The ghost was received with the most vociferous applause, and seemed to strike the naval mind as the liveliest personage in the play. His silence was considered a remarkably comic piece of character, and evidently assumed to cover his forgetfulness of the words. Many exhortations were offered to him to take another spell at the book, or spin them a yarn out of his own head. Allusions were also made to his obesity, which evidently did not accord with the forecastle's idea of a ghost; and when, in spite of all the advice and suggestion that had been offered him, he maintained an imperturbable silence, they got into a violent state of indignation at having been defrauded of the speeches; for they could not believe it possible for a personage to stalk across the stage and look so very solemn without having anything to say. Whereupon Count Osric went forward and soothed them by a solemn promise that in some of the succeeding scenes the ghost would be as talkative as they chose. Satisfied with this, they received the opening scene of the court of Denmark with several rounds of applause, which were duly responded to by each of the performers on the stage.

With a dignity befitting the crown-prince of a gallant nation, I maintained my position on the left of the king, and made no recognition of the welcome offered me in so tumultuous a manner. I observed an orange glide within a few inches of my face, and splash on the back of the royal chair; but affairs advanced so rapidly from this point that I had no time to take notice of the insult. When the king had arrived at about the middle of the first speech, a quarrel took place in the pit between two captains of the maintop, and a challenge was rapidly exchanged. A sudden whistle from the boatswain called attention to the interesting fact, and the play was suspended for a few minutes till the belligerents gave and received the satisfaction which their injured honours required. While the two captains were belabouring each other, to the admiration of all the audience, the manager slipt up to where I was standing, and whispered, "I feel greatly obliged for the five-pound note, and also for the three guineas you have left for the supper to-night; but my advice to you is to slip off the stage as fast as you can; convey the lady who accompanied you to the coach-office--and----"

"Why?" I said. "This riot will soon be over."

"A worse is coming; for a dreadful disappointment has occurred. Do as I advise you, or I won't answer that we shan't all be ducked in the river--lady, too, if she's found out to belong to your party."

"And not a word of my part yet spoken! Perhaps they will be stilled when they hear the voice of Hamlet."

"My dear sir, they've taken a disgust to you already. If you spoke, they would throw the benches at your head. There! one of the men is going to give in, and I must announce that the play is changed for three farces and some rope-dancing."

I saw the pit looking rather excited, and Bill Hatches was declared the winner. I was hurrying off the stage to change my clothes. I was stopt by Mr Wormwood and his friends. "Your attitude, my dear friend, offended them at once. It was sublime. Princes should always stand on tiptoe; it was above their comprehension. They have stamped you a great and original genius with the seal of their unqualified disapprobation. I congratulate you heartily, and feel sure of your unanimous reception in the brotherhood we have established, called the Unappreciables--entrance fee one guinea--and undying hatred to successful mediocrity."

"I have no time for such offensive absurdity," I said, and hurried away, in imitation of the whole of the Danish court, which had gone off to dress for the rope-dancing and the farce. I merely slipped my cloak over the spangled grandeurs of Elsinore, and was rushing towards the dressing-room of the ladies, to warn Miss Claribel, and place her along with my mother in safety from the predicted storm, when I heard Count Osric, now dressed as a heavy father, in a domestic drama of George I.'s time, addressing the audience, which was for a moment hushed in grim repose to hear what he had to say.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "such a grievous calamity has befallen this establishment, that it is impossible on this occasion to proceed with the play of Hamlet."

"Pipe all hands to quarters," shouted a voice at the end of the pit; "prepare for boarding;" and the obedient crew stood up, ready to cast themselves over the side of the pit, and carry the orchestra and stage, bottle in hand.

"The fact is, that a serious mishap has occurred to the representative of the innocent and beautiful Ophelia."

"'Vast with all that palaver," cried a hundred voices. "Why don't you clap all sail on her, and bring her into line?"

"She has this moment eloped with one of the fiddlers," resumed the manager, "and we throw ourselves on your indulgence, to allow us to withdraw the immortal Hamlet, and offer you 'Hot Codlings,' by your old friend Jack Ivory, in its place."

"Scoundrel!" I said, and seized the manager by the neckcloth, as he came behind the scenes after this eloquent address. "What do you mean by such ribald impertinence, inventing such an infamous lie to save your wretched theatre, and more wretched carcass, at the expense of Miss Claribel's reputation?"

"It's a perfect truth, sir; they're off; the dirty foreigner led her out of the theatre, and told me not to expect them again. I'll hold him answerable for all damage."

I contented myself with giving the heavy father a hearty shake; sent round for my mother to join me behind the scenes; and amazed, bewildered, horror-struck, and sick at heart, conducted her to the coach-office, leaving the manager to sustain the assaults of his exasperated audience as he best could.

"Miss Claribel has deceived us," said my mother.

"Not me," I said bitterly, "I suspected her to be no better than she should be, from the strange notions of acting she entertained. Besides, Catsbach warned me of her from the beginning; and betted he would prove her to be an impostor and hypocrite. He has won his bet."

"I can't believe it yet," replied my mother; "but time will show."

"If Catsbach ever comes into my presence," I said, "I will horsewhip him like a hound."

"My dear," said my mother, "I am afraid you admire Miss Claribel too much yourself."

"Psha!" I replied, "I hate her, and Catsbach more; and if I ever see them, I will tell them so."