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Page 75
I suppose no woman could have been further in person, voice, and
temperament from Dumas' appealing heroine than the veteran actress who
first acquainted me with her. Her conception of the character was as heavy
and uncompromising as her diction; she bore hard on the idea and on the
consonants. At all times she was highly tragic, devoured by remorse.
Lightness of stress or behaviour was far from her. Her voice was heavy and
deep: `Ar-r-r-mond!' she would begin, as if she were summoning him to the
bar of Judgment. But the lines were enough. She had only to utter them.
They created the character in spite of her.
The heartless world which Marguerite re-entered with Varville had never
been so glittering and reckless as on the night when it gathered in
Olympe's salon for the fourth act. There were chandeliers hung from the
ceiling, I remember, many servants in livery, gaming-tables where the men
played with piles of gold, and a staircase down which the guests made their
entrance. After all the others had gathered round the card-tables and
young Duval had been warned by Prudence, Marguerite descended the staircase
with Varville; such a cloak, such a fan, such jewels--and her face! One
knew at a glance how it was with her. When Armand, with the terrible
words, `Look, all of you, I owe this woman nothing!' flung the gold and
bank-notes at the half-swooning Marguerite, Lena cowered beside me and
covered her face with her hands.
The curtain rose on the bedroom scene. By this time there wasn't a nerve
in me that hadn't been twisted. Nanine alone could have made me cry. I
loved Nanine tenderly; and Gaston, how one clung to that good fellow! The
New Year's presents were not too much; nothing could be too much now. I
wept unrestrainedly. Even the handkerchief in my breast-pocket, worn for
elegance and not at all for use, was wet through by the time that moribund
woman sank for the last time into the arms of her lover.
When we reached the door of the theatre, the streets were shining with
rain. I had prudently brought along Mrs. Harling's useful Commencement
present, and I took Lena home under its shelter. After leaving her, I
walked slowly out into the country part of the town where I lived. The
lilacs were all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after the
rain, of the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my face with a
sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and under the
showery trees, mourning for Marguerite Gauthier as if she had died only
yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840, which had sighed so much, and
which had reached me only that night, across long years and several
languages, through the person of an infirm old actress. The idea is one
that no circumstances can frustrate. Wherever and whenever that piece is
put on, it is April.
IV
HOW WELL I REMEMBER the stiff little parlour where I used to wait for Lena:
the hard horsehair furniture, bought at some auction sale, the long
mirror, the fashion-plates on the wall. If I sat down even for a moment, I
was sure to find threads and bits of coloured silk clinging to my clothes
after I went away. Lena's success puzzled me. She was so easygoing; had
none of the push and self-assertiveness that get people ahead in business.
She had come to Lincoln, a country girl, with no introductions except to
some cousins of Mrs. Thomas who lived there, and she was already making
clothes for the women of `the young married set.' Evidently she had great
natural aptitude for her work. She knew, as she said, `what people looked
well in.' She never tired of poring over fashion-books. Sometimes in the
evening I would find her alone in her work-room, draping folds of satin on
a wire figure, with a quite blissful expression of countenance. I couldn't
help thinking that the years when Lena literally hadn't enough clothes to
cover herself might have something to do with her untiring interest in
dressing the human figure. Her clients said that Lena `had style,' and
overlooked her habitual inaccuracies. She never, I discovered, finished
anything by the time she had promised, and she frequently spent more money
on materials than her customer had authorized. Once, when I arrived at six
o'clock, Lena was ushering out a fidgety mother and her awkward, overgrown
daughter. The woman detained Lena at the door to say apologetically:
`You'll try to keep it under fifty for me, won't you, Miss Lingard? You
see, she's really too young to come to an expensive dressmaker, but I knew
you could do more with her than anybody else.'
`Oh, that will be all right, Mrs. Herron. I think we'll manage to get a
good effect,' Lena replied blandly.
I thought her manner with her customers very good, and wondered where she
had learned such self-possession.
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