GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“Mr Jack!” exclaimed Mary.

“Just so, Mr Jack,” he said, hanging his only hat, which had suffered much from wet weather and bad use on a peg behind the door. “Did you not expect him?”

Mary, about to say no, hesitated, and glanced at Lady Geraldine.

“I see you did not,” said Jack, placing his chair behind hers. “A surprise, eh?”

“An agreeable surprise,” said Mrs Herbert smoothly, with her fan before her lips.

“An accidental one,” said Lady Geraldine. “I forgot to tell Miss Sutherland that you had been good enough to promise to come.”

Mrs Herbert is laughing at me,” said Jack, goodhumoredly. “So are you. It was you who were good enough to ask me, not I who was good enough to come. Listen to the band. Those eighteen or twenty bad players cost more than six good ones would, and are not half so agreeable to listen to. Do you hear what they are playing? Can you imagine anyone writing such stuff?”

“It certainly sounds exceedingly ugly; but I am notoriously unmusical, so my opinion is not worth anything.”

“Still, so far as you can judge, you don’t like it?”

“Certainly not.”

I am beginning to like it,” said Mrs Herbert, coolly. “I am quite aware that it is one of your own compositions — or some arrangement of one.”

“Ha! ha! Souvenirs de Jack, they call it. This is what a composer has to surfer whenever he goes to a public entertainment, Lady Geraldine.”

“In revenge for which, he ungenerously lays traps for others, Mr Jack.”

“You are right,” said Jack, suddenly becoming moody. “It was ungenerous; but I shared the discomfiture. There they go at my fantasia. Accursed be the man — Hark! The dog has taken it upon himself to correct the harmony.” He ceased speaking, and leaned forward on his elbows, grinding his teeth and muttering. Mary, in low spirits herself, made an effort to soothe him.

“Surely you do not care about such a trifle as that,” she began. “What harm—”

“You call it a trifle,” he said, interrupting her threateningly.

“Certainly,” interposed Lady Geraldine, in ironically measured tones. “A composer such as you can afford to overlook an ephemeral travesty to which nobody is listening. Were I in your place, I would not suffer a thought of resentment to ruffle the calm surface of my contempt for it.”

“Wouldn’t you?” said Jack, sarcastically. “Tell me one thing. You are very rich — as rich in money as I am in music. Would you like to be robbed of a sovereign?”

“I am not fond of being robbed at all, Mr Jack.”

“Aha! Neither am I. You wouldn’t miss the sovereign — people would think you stingy for thinking about it. Perhaps I can afford to be misrepresented by a rascally fiddler for a few nights here as well as you could afford the pound. But I don’t like it.”

“You are always unanswerable,” said Lady Geraldine, good humoredly.

Jack stood up and looked round the theatre. “All the world and his wife are here tonight,” he said. That whitehaired gentleman hiding at the back of the balcony is the father of an old pupil of mine — a man cursed with an ungovernable temper. His name is Brailsford. The youth with the eyeglass in the stalls is a critic: he called me a promising young composer the other day. Who is that coming into the box nearly opposite? The Sczympliça, is it not’ I see Madame’s top-knot coming in through the inner gloom. She takes the best seat, of course, just as naturally as if she was a child at her first pantomime. There is a handsome gentleman with a fair beard dimly visible behind. It must be Master Adrian. He has a queer notion of life — he added, forgetting that he was in the presence of “that chap’s” mother.

Mrs Herbert looked round gravely at him; and Lady Geraldine frowned. He did not notice them: he was watching Mary, who had shrunk for a moment behind the curtain, but was now sitting in full view of Herbert, looking at the stage, from which the curtain had just gone up.

Nothing more was said in the box until, at a few words words pronounced behind the scenes by a strange voice. Jack uttered an inarticulate sound and stood up.

Then there came upon the stage a lady, very pretty, very elegantly dressed, a little bold in her manner, a little over-rouged, fascinating because of these slight excesses, but stamped by them as foreign to the respectable society into which she was supposed to have intruded.

“Absurd!” said Mary suddenly, after gazing incredulously at the actress for a moment. “It cannot be. And yet I verily believe it is. Lady Geraldine: is not that Madge Brailsford?”

“I really think it is,” said Lady Geraldine, using her opera glass. “How shockingly she is painted! And yet I don’t believe it is, either. That woman is evidently very clever, which Madge never was, so far as I could see. And the voice is quite different.”

“Oho!” said Jack. “It was I who found that voice for her.”

Then it is Madge,” said Mary.

“Of course it is. Rub your eyes and see for yourself.” Mary looked and looked, as if she could hardly believe it yet. At the end of the act, the principal performers, including Magdalen, were called before the curtain and heartily applauded. Jack, though contemptuous of popular demonstrations, joined in this, making as much noise as possible, and impatiently bidding Mary take off her gloves, that she might clap her hands with more effect. A moment afterwards, there was a hasty knocking at the door of the box. Mary looked across the theatre; saw that Adrian’s chair was vacant; and turned red. Jack opened the door, and admitted, not Adrian, but Mr Brailsford, who hurried to the front of the box; shook Lady Geraldine’s hand nervously; made a hasty bow right and left to Mary and Mrs Herbert; and, after making as though he had something particular to say, sat down in Jack’s chair and said nothing. He was greatly agitated.

“Well, Mr Brailsford, said Lady Geraldine, smiling. “Dare I congratulate you?”

“Not a word — not a word,” he said, as if he were half-suffocated. “I beg your pardon for coming into your box. I am a broken man — disgraced by my own daughter. My favorite daughter, sir — madame — I beg your pardon again. You can tell this young lady that she was my favorite daughter.”

“But you must not take her brilliant success in this way,” said Lady Geraldine gently,looking at him with surprise and pity. “And remember that you have other girls.”

“Psha! Whish-h-h!” hissed the old gentleman, throwing up his hand and snapping his fingers. “They arc all born fools — like their mother. She is like me, the only one who is like me. Did you ever see such impudence? A girl brought up as she was, walking out of a house in Kensington Palace Gardens onto the stage, and playing a Parisian — a French — God bless me, a drab! to the life. It was perfection. I’ve seen everybody that ever acted — years before your ladyship was born. I remember Miss O’Neill, aye, and Mrs Jordan; Mars, Rachel, Piccolomini! she’s better than any of them, except Miss O’Neill — I was young in her time. She wouldn’t be kept from it. I set my face against it. So did her mother — who could no more appreciate her than a turnip could. So did we all. We locked her up; we took her money from her; I threatened to disown her — and so I will too; but she had her way in spite of us all. Just like me: exactly like me. Why, when I was her age, I cared no more for my family than I did for Buonaparte. It’s in her blood. I should have been on the stage myself only it’s a blackguard profession; and a man who can write tragedy does not need to act it. I will turn over some of my old manuscripts; and she shall show the world what her old father can do. And did you notice how self-possessed she was? I saw the nerves under it. I felt them. Nervousness always played the devil with me. I tell you, madame — and I am qualified to speak on the subject — that she walks the stage and gives out her lines in the true old style. You don’t know these things, Miss Mary: you are too young: you never saw great acting. But I know. I had lessons from the great Young: Edmund Kean was a mountebank beside him. I was the best pupil of Charles Mayne Young, and of little Dutch Sam — but that was another matter. No true lady would paint her face and make an exhibition of herself on a public stage for money. Still, it is a most extraordinary thing that a young girl like that, without any teaching or preparation, should walk out of a drawing room onto the stage, and take London by storm.”