Joan Wolf (11 page)

Obediently he flipped back in his script. “Act
II?”

“No. Let’s start from the beginning.”

“You may not know your lines but I certainly
am
getting to know Garreg’s,” he replied humorously. “All right, begin with the letter.”

She got up and began to pace around the room.

“They met me in the day of success . . .” she began with energetic determination, and he followed along in the script, stopping her when she made a mistake. By the end of the day she had the lines down letter perfect. But still the character escaped her.

The night of the opening Jessica went to the theatre early and by herself. “You’ll only distract me,” she had told Linton, the glimmer of a smile in her eyes.

“Will I? Good.” Then, as she had shot him a look, half amused, half exasperated, he had given in. “All right. I’ll stay away. But afterwards we’ll go out to supper.”

“All right.”

“You are really nervous, aren’t you, Jess? I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“You’ve never seen me before
I’ve opened in a new part!” she retorted. “If you think I’m nervous now you should have seen me before I first went on as Juliet. I didn’t think
I’d be able to speak at all that night, let alone remember the lines.”

“Well, considering that it was your first time on stage, it’s understandable,” he said.

He had caught her entirely off guard. “I suppose so. At any rate I was petrified.” Then, as the magnitude of her admission hit her, her head jerked up and she stared at him warily.

His blue eyes glinted through narrowed lids. “I never did believe that story about the west of Ireland,” he said gently.

“Oh.” She thought for a minute. “Why?”

“Wexford, my darling, is on the east coast.”

Quite suddenly she grinned. “My dreadfully inadequate education comes home to roost. No, I was never in Ireland and yes, the first time I ever set foot on a stage was when I played Juliet at Covent Garden.”

“Quite a jumping-off point for a beginner,” he commented neutrally.

“It wasn’t my idea,” she replied vigorously. “I was looking for a small part, a lady of the court or something like that. It was Mr. Harris’s brilliant notion to cast me as Juliet. I even tried to talk him out of it, but he was determined.” She sighed. “I would infinitely prefer to be more anonymous. I had no intention of becoming famous. It is—rather uncomfortable at times. But, as Lady Macbeth so eloquently says, ‘What’s done is done.’”

He looked at her in silence, taking in the clear burning brightness of her, then he asked quietly the question that had haunted him. “Who are you, Jess?”

There was a long, shivering pause. He had violated her unwritten rule, not to ask questions about her background. At last she whispered, “I can’t tell you that. Someday, perhaps. Not now.”

There was another pause while he debated what to do. He loved her. He wanted to hold her. She was not really his, he knew. She might go away. It was the fear that lay deep-buried at the bottom of his happiness, that he might lose her. “Don’t you trust me?” he asked at last.

She bent her head, exposing the soft whiteness of her nape. It was a pose that made her seem very vulnerable, very young. “I can’t tell you, Philip,” she repeated helplessly. “Not yet. Please don’t ask me.”

There was a white line around his mouth. “For how long do you think you can remain anonymous? The name of Jessica O’Neill must be familiar to every literate person in England by now. I don’t know where you come from, but you are English, of that I’m sure. One day someone who knows you is going to walk into that theatre and recognize you.” She winced as if he had struck her, but he continued inexorably, “You said you did not want to become famous, but you
are
famous, Jess. Your identity can’t remain hidden forever.”

“It doesn’t need to be hidden forever,” she replied quickly. “I don’t plan to go on acting forever.”

His face was grim. This was what he had feared. “And one day you will just disappear, back to obscurity, and Jessica O’Neill will be no more?”

“That is what I planned to do,” she answered him honestly.

“And what of me, Jess? What of me?”

Slowly she raised her bent head until her eyes, wide and gray and fathomless, rested on his face. She felt as though he had a knife to her heart. For these past few days she had allowed herself to be swept along on the tide of his love, refusing to acknowledge where the sea was carrying her. There was no future for her with Philip Romney. She knew that. Once she had the money for the mortgage she would have to leave him, and the thought was terrible to her. She felt as though there were a black, deep ravine separating her from all her previous days. She knew now, now that it was too late, what it was in life that she wanted. And she could not have him. He was not for her.

 But she must not let him know. She must reassure him so that at least the weeks she had left would be hers. It was little enough happiness for a lifetime, she thought.

“What of you?” she repeated softly. “I said I was going to leave the stage, Philip. Not you. Not ever you. You’ll have to throw me out when you want me to go.”

She saw his face change at her words, his mouth taking on an expression that made her knees go weak. “I’m far more likely to chain you up,” he said roughly.

At that she laughed unsteadily. “I always thought you looked like a Viking,” she said.

“You are a prize I mean to hold onto, my darling,” he told her, and centuries of possessiveness sounded for the moment in the deep tones of his voice. She smiled but did not reply.

* * * *

Linton arrived at Covent Garden about twenty minutes before the play was scheduled to begin. He paused for a short time in front of the playbill that announced the night’s production, his eyes on the names listed and on one name in particular.

PLAYBILL
JANUARY
28,1815
COVENT
GARDEN
THEATRE

THE TRAGEDY OF
MACBETH

Duncan, King of Scotland,
Mr. Powell

Macbeth,
Mr. Garreg

Banquo,
Mr. Holland

Macduff,
Mr. Walleck

Malcolm,
Mr. Dawson
, Donalbain,
Mr. Palmer,
Lennox,
Mr. Crooke
, Ross,
Mr. Fisher
, Menteith,
Mr. Miller
, Angus,
Mr. Ray
, Caithness,
Mr. Evans
, Fleance,
Mr. Carr
, Siward,
Mr. Maddocks
, Young Siward,
Mr. Hughes

Lady Macbeth,
Miss O’Neill
Lady Macduff,
Miss Favell,
Gentlewoman,
Mrs. Brereton

 With an inscrutable face he entered the theatre and made his way to his box. He had not wanted to ask anyone to join him but he knew his solitary presence would occasion the kind of remark he most disliked, so he had invited his cousin Bertram, Bertram’s friend Sir Francis Rustington, and Lord George Litcham. The three other men were already in the box when he arrived. The theatre was filled to overflowing. “By Jove, Philip, they’ve all turned out to see Jessica tonight!” Bertram said enthusiastically.

Sir Francis shook his head sadly. “I don’t understand it. Nice girl. Marvelous girl, really. Dash it all, how’s she going to play Lady Macbeth? Woman’s a horror. We had to read the play at Harrow.” He shook his head again in bewilderment, and Linton smiled.

“I don’t think you’ll see a nice girl on the stage tonight, Francis,” he said, a flicker of irony in his voice.

“I don’t know how she can do it,” Bertram said with a shudder. “Imagine having to stand in front of all these people.”

* * * *

 Jessica was feeling the tension, but not nearly as much as Lewis Garreg. No matter how the production went, Jessica O’Neill would still be Jessica 0’Neill, the first actress of the London theatre. But if Lewis Garreg failed it was back to the provinces for him, back to poverty and oblivion. He wanted very much to succeed—much more than Jessica did. She stood next to him in the Green Room and, when his name was called, she squeezed his hand slightly. “You’ll be wonderful,” she said firmly. He smiled at her gratefully, took a deep breath, and headed for the stage.

Twenty minutes later her own call came. The curtain was down as the scenery was being changed and she took her place on center stage, a letter in her hands. She wore a black velvet gown of medieval cut. Her hair was loosely pulled off her face and coiled on her neck. She stood perfectly still, no expression on her face, and the curtain slowly began to rise. At the sight of her, standing solitary in the middle of the wide stage, the theatre erupted.

Her eyes looked out into the auditorium toward the cheering throng. They passed over the professional men jammed uncomfortably together on benches in the pit, over the aristocrats in the boxes, up to the vast reaches of the gallery where sat the people. Gradually the noise died away and she bent her eyes to the paper she was holding. “They met me in the day of success,” she began, her deep, clear, resonant voice perfectly audible throughout the theatre.

She went through the speech faultlessly, as Linton, who was mentally reciting it with her, was aware. She finished and the messenger came on with news of the king’s arrival. With the entrance of the messenger something clicked in Jessica’s mind and she had it at last, that total and undistracted concentration on the character she was portraying that she had sought so vainly this last week. The theatre, the audience, Linton . . . everything fell away from her but the words she was to say.

 The messenger exited and she lifted her face, beautiful and bright and pitiless, and slowly, with terrible intensity, she began Lady Macbeth’s powerful invocation to the evil spirits. When she had finished the atmosphere in the theatre was electric and Lewis Garreg, coming on stage, met, not the Jessica he had been rehearsing with all week, but a bright angel who fixed on him eyes of possession and passion and desire.

“My dearest love,” his rich, beautifully flexible voice matched hers in power. He held her close for a moment, then looked down unflinchingly into her face. “Duncan comes here tonight.”

As the act progressed Linton looked around the theatre. It was deathly silent, not a cough, not a rustle of paper or of silk was to be heard. The full attention of the hundreds of spectators was trained on the stage, on the duel that was being fought between Macbeth’s better nature and his wife, between Lewis Garreg, who was turning in a magnificent performance, and Jessica.

He looked back to the stage. Garreg had turned away from her, his jaw set stubbornly.

Prithee peace!

I dare do all that may become a man.

Who dares do more is none.

He walked to a bench on stage left and sat down, his eyes brooding upon the ground. There was a long silence as Jessica regarded him, and then she exploded into passion and anger.

What beast was’t then

That made you break this enterprise to me?

Slowly she walked across the stage until she stood before him. She put her hands on his shoulders. He raised his head, and her gray eyes, burning and intent in her proud, determined face, held his relentlessly.

I have given suck, and know

How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me

She paused and then went on, no anger in her voice now. It was clear and cold and truthful.

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums

And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.

Beside him Linton could hear the shocked intake of Bertram’s breath. Lord George’s knuckles were white as he gripped the front of the box. On the stage Garreg began to waver.

If we should fail?

An enchanting smile lit Jessica’s face.

We fail?

But screw your courage to the sticking place,

And we’ll not fail.

The tension in the theatre was thick and palpable. On stage the last of Macbeth’s objections fell and his own ambition answered forth to his wife’s. They stood together, two passionate, proud people in the intensity of their fixed purpose, their two young, formidable faces looking for the moment strangely alike. When the curtain came down on Act I there was at least one full minute of stunned silence before the applause began.

The remainder of the play was of the same caliber. There wasn’t a person present at that performance who didn’t remember it vividly for the rest of his life: the first and only time Jessica O’Neill played Lady Macbeth. Lewis Garreg would play Macbeth many more times, and he always gave a powerful, moving performance, but never again would there be that electricity in the air, that knowledge that one was watching what the
Morning Post
would call the next day “one of the finest pieces of acting we have ever beheld, or perhaps that the stage has ever known.”

Chapter Fifteen

...
and all things keep

Time with the season; only she doth carry

June in her eyes, in her heart January.

—
THOMAS
CAREW

 After the performance Linton found Jessica in the Green Room. She was standing with Lewis Garreg, introducing him to the famous and the great who were thronging to congratulate her. Linton watched her in silence for a moment from the doorway. It was Garreg’s night as well as hers; her demeanor made that clear. The young man was obviously both, exhilarated and nervous. He had never met so many members of the nobility in his life. With some amusement Linton thought that he was clinging to Jessica as if she were a lifeline.

 Her head turned, and across the room their eyes met. Lord George, standing next to Linton, intercepted that look and, startled, turned to his friend. What he saw for a brief unguarded moment on Linton’s face made his heart begin to pound.