Paul Kelver Part 64

I told him I thought I did.

The leading lady, meeting us on our return, requested, with pretty tone of authority, everybody else to go away and leave us. There were cries of "Naughty!" The leading lady, laughing girlishly, took me by the hand and ran away with me.

"I want to talk to you," said the leading lady, as soon as we had reached a secluded seat overlooking the river, "about my part in the new opera. Now, can't you give me something original? Do."

Her pleading was so pretty, there was nothing for it but to pledge compliance.

"I am so tired of being the simple village maiden," said the leading lady; "what I want is a part with some opportunity in it--a coquettish part. I can flirt," a.s.sured me the leading lady, archly. "Try me."

I satisfied her of my perfect faith.

"You might," said the leading lady, "see your way to making the plot depend upon me. It always seems to me that the woman's part is never made enough of in comic opera. I am sure a comic opera built round a woman would be a really great success. Don't you agree with me, Mr.

Kelver," pouted the leading lady, laying her pretty hand on mine. "We are much more interesting than the men--now, aren't we?"

Personally, as I told her, I agreed with her.

The tenor, sipping tea with me on the balcony, beckoned me aside.

"About this new opera," said the tenor; "doesn't it seem to you the time has come to make more of the story--that the public might prefer a little more human interest and a little less clowning?"

I admitted that a good plot was essential.

"It seems to me," said the tenor, "that if you could write an opera round an interesting love story, you would score a success. Of course, let there be plenty of humour, but reduce it to its proper place. As a support, it is excellent; when it is made the entire structure, it is apt to be tiresome--at least, that is my view."

I replied with sincerity that there seemed to me much truth in what he said.

"Of course, so far as I am personally concerned," went on the tenor, "it is immaterial. I draw the same salary whether I'm on the stage five minutes or an hour. But when you have a man of my position in the cast, and give him next to nothing to do--well, the public are disappointed."

"Most naturally," I commented.

"The lover," whispered the tenor, noticing the careless approach towards us of the low comedian, "that's the character they are thinking about all the time--men and women both. It's human nature. Make your lover interesting--that's the secret."

Waiting for the horses to be put to, I became aware of the fact that I was standing some distance from the others in company with a tall, thin, somewhat oldish-looking man. He spoke in low, hurried tones, fearful evidently of being overheard and interrupted.

"You'll forgive me, Mr. Kelver," he said--"Trevor, Marmaduke Trevor. I play the Duke of Bayswater in the second act."

I was unable to recall him for the moment; there were quite a number of small parts in the second act. But glancing into his sensitive face, I shrank from wounding him.

"A capital performance," I lied. "It has always amused me."

He flushed with pleasure. "I made a great success some years ago," he said, "in America with a soda-water syphon, and it occurred to me that if you could, Mr. Kelver, in a natural sort of way, drop in a small part leading up to a little business with a soda-water syphon, it might help the piece."

I wrote him his soda-water scene, I am glad to remember, and insisted upon it, in spite of a good deal of opposition. Some of the critics found fault with the incident, as lacking in originality. But Marmaduke Trevor was quite right, it did help a little.

Our return journey was an exaggerated repet.i.tion of our morning drive.

Our low comedian produced hideous noises from the horn, and entered into contests of running wit with 'bus drivers--a decided mistake from his point of view, the score generally remaining with the 'bus driver.

At Hammersmith, seizing the opportunity of a block in the traffic, he a.s.sumed the role of Cheap Jack, and, standing up on the back seat, offered all our hats for sale at temptingly low prices.

"Got any ideas out of them?" asked Hodgson, when the time came for us to say good-night.

"I'm thinking, if you don't mind," I answered, "of going down into the country and writing the piece quietly, away from everybody."

"Perhaps you are right," agreed Hodgson. "Too many cooks--Be sure and have it ready for the autumn."

I wrote it with some pleasure to myself amid the Yorks.h.i.+re Wolds, and was able to read it to the whole company a.s.sembled before the close of the season. My turning of the last page was followed by a dead silence.

The leading lady was the first to speak. She asked if the clock upon the mantelpiece could be relied upon; because, if so, by leaving at once, she could just catch her train. Hodgson, consulting his watch, thought, if anything, it was a little fast. The leading lady said she hoped it was, and went. The only comforting words were spoken by the tenor. He recalled to our mind a successful comic opera produced some years before at the Philharmonic. He distinctly remembered that up to five minutes before the raising of the curtain everybody had regarded it as rubbish.

He also had a train to catch. Marmaduke Trevor, with a covert shake of the hand, urged me not to despair. The low comedian, the last to go, told Hodgson he thought he might be able to do something with parts of it, if given a free hand. Hodgson and I left alone, looked at each other.

"It's no good," said Hodgson, "from a box-office point of view. Very clever."

"How do you know it is no good from a box-office point of view?" I ventured to enquire.

"I never made a mistake in my life," replied Hodgson.

"You have produced one or two failures," I reminded him.

"And shall again," he laughed. "The right thing isn't easy to get."

"Cheer up," he added kindly, "this is only your first attempt. We must try and knock it into shape at rehearsal."

Their notion of "knocking it into shape" was knocking it to pieces.

"I'll tell you what we'll do," would say the low comedian; "we'll cut that scene out altogether." Joyously he would draw his pencil through some four or five pages of my ma.n.u.script.

"But it is essential to the story," I would argue.

"Not at all."

"But it is. It is the scene in which Roderick escapes from prison and falls in love with the gipsy."

"My dear boy, half-a-dozen words will do all that. I meet Roderick at the ball. 'Hallo, what are you doing here?' 'Oh, I have escaped from prison.' 'Good business. And how's Miriam?' 'Well and happy--she is going to be my wife!' What more do you want?"

"I have been speaking to Mr. Hodgson," would observe the leading lady, "and he agrees with me, that if instead of falling in love with Peter, I fell in love with John--"

"But John is in love with Arabella."

"Oh, we've cut out Arabella. I can sing all her songs."

The tenor would lead me into a corner. "I want you to write in a little scene for myself and Miss Duncan at the beginning of the first act. I'll talk to her about it. I think it will be rather pretty. I want her--the second time I see her--to have come out of her room on to a balcony, and to be standing there bathed in moonlight."

"But the first act takes place in the early morning."

"I've thought of that. We must alter it to the evening."

"But the opera opens with a hunting scene. People don't go hunting by moonlight."

"It will be a novelty. That's what's wanted for comic opera. The ordinary hunting scene! My dear boy, it has been done to death."