My Antonia

by Willa Cather

  III

  IN LINCOLN THE BEST part of the theatrical season came late, when thegood companies stopped off there for one-night stands, after theirlong runs in New York and Chicago. That spring Lena went with me tosee Joseph Jefferson in 'Rip Van Winkle,' and to a war play called'Shenandoah.' She was inflexible about paying for her own seat; saidshe was in business now, and she wouldn't have a schoolboy spendinghis money on her. I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything waswonderful to her, and everything was true. It was like going to revivalmeetings with someone who was always being converted. She handed herfeelings over to the actors with a kind of fatalistic resignation.Accessories of costume and scene meant much more to her than to me.She sat entranced through 'Robin Hood' and hung upon the lips of thecontralto who sang, 'Oh, Promise Me!'

  Toward the end of April, the billboards, which I watched anxiously inthose days, bloomed out one morning with gleaming white posters on whichtwo names were impressively printed in blue Gothic letters: the name ofan actress of whom I had often heard, and the name 'Camille.'

  I called at the Raleigh Block for Lena on Saturday evening, and wewalked down to the theatre. The weather was warm and sultry and put usboth in a holiday humour. We arrived early, because Lena liked to watchthe people come in. There was a note on the programme, saying that the'incidental music' would be from the opera 'Traviata,' which was madefrom the same story as the play. We had neither of us read the play, andwe did not know what it was about--though I seemed to remember havingheard it was a piece in which great actresses shone. 'The Count of MonteCristo,' which I had seen James O'Neill play that winter, was by theonly Alexandre Dumas I knew. This play, I saw, was by his son, and Iexpected a family resemblance. A couple of jack-rabbits, run in off theprairie, could not have been more innocent of what awaited them thanwere Lena and I.

  Our excitement began with the rise of the curtain, when the moodyVarville, seated before the fire, interrogated Nanine. Decidedly, therewas a new tang about this dialogue. I had never heard in the theatrelines that were alive, that presupposed and took for granted, like thosewhich passed between Varville and Marguerite in the brief encounterbefore her friends entered. This introduced the most brilliant, worldly,the most enchantingly gay scene I had ever looked upon. I had never seenchampagne bottles opened on the stage before--indeed, I had never seenthem opened anywhere. The memory of that supper makes me hungry now;the sight of it then, when I had only a students' boarding-house dinnerbehind me, was delicate torment. I seem to remember gilded chairs andtables (arranged hurriedly by footmen in white gloves and stockings),linen of dazzling whiteness, glittering glass, silver dishes, a greatbowl of fruit, and the reddest of roses. The room was invaded bybeautiful women and dashing young men, laughing and talking together.The men were dressed more or less after the period in which the play waswritten; the women were not. I saw no inconsistency. Their talk seemedto open to one the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentencemade one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged one's horizon.One could experience excess and satiety without the inconvenienceof learning what to do with one's hands in a drawing-room! When thecharacters all spoke at once and I missed some of the phrases theyflashed at each other, I was in misery. I strained my ears and eyes tocatch every exclamation.

  The actress who played Marguerite was even then old-fashioned, thoughhistoric. She had been a member of Daly's famous New York company, andafterward a 'star' under his direction. She was a woman who could not betaught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carriedwith people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was notsqueamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and aphysique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty--I thinkshe was lame--I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine.Her Armand was disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth,perplexed in the extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly inher power to fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed heryoung, ardent, reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avidof pleasure. I wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waistedArmand in the frilled shirt to convince her that there was still loyaltyand devotion in the world. Her sudden illness, when the gaiety was atits height, her pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against her lips,the cough she smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept playing thepiano lightly--it all wrung my heart. But not so much as her cynicismin the long dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I fromquestioning her unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleadedwith her--accompanied by the orchestra in the old 'Traviata' duet,'misterioso, misterios' altero!'--she maintained her bitter scepticism,and the curtain fell on her dancing recklessly with the others, afterArmand had been sent away with his flower.

  Between the acts we had no time to forget. The orchestra kept sawingaway at the 'Traviata' music, so joyous and sad, so thin and far-away,so clap-trap and yet so heart-breaking. After the second act I left Lenain tearful contemplation of the ceiling, and went out into the lobbyto smoke. As I walked about there I congratulated myself that I hadnot brought some Lincoln girl who would talk during the waits about thejunior dances, or whether the cadets would camp at Plattsmouth. Lena wasat least a woman, and I was a man.

  Through the scene between Marguerite and the elder Duval, Lena weptunceasingly, and I sat helpless to prevent the closing of that chapterof idyllic love, dreading the return of the young man whose ineffablehappiness was only to be the measure of his fall.

  I suppose no woman could have been further in person, voice, andtemperament from Dumas' appealing heroine than the veteran actress whofirst acquainted me with her. Her conception of the character was asheavy and uncompromising as her diction; she bore hard on the ideaand on the consonants. At all times she was highly tragic, devoured byremorse. Lightness of stress or behaviour was far from her. Her voicewas heavy and deep: 'Ar-r-r-mond!' she would begin, as if she weresummoning him to the bar of Judgment. But the lines were enough. She hadonly to utter them. They created the character in spite of her.

  The heartless world which Marguerite re-entered with Varville had neverbeen so glittering and reckless as on the night when it gathered inOlympe's salon for the fourth act. There were chandeliers hung from theceiling, I remember, many servants in livery, gaming-tables where themen played with piles of gold, and a staircase down which the guestsmade their entrance. After all the others had gathered round thecard-tables and young Duval had been warned by Prudence, Margueritedescended the staircase with Varville; such a cloak, such a fan, suchjewels--and her face! One knew at a glance how it was with her. WhenArmand, with the terrible words, 'Look, all of you, I owe this womannothing!' 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 nervein me that hadn't been twisted. Nanine alone could have made me cry. Iloved Nanine tenderly; and Gaston, how one clung to that good fellow!The New Year's presents were not too much; nothing could be too muchnow. I wept unrestrainedly. Even the handkerchief in my breast-pocket,worn for elegance and not at all for use, was wet through by the timethat 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 withrain. I had prudently brought along Mrs. Harling's useful Commencementpresent, and I took Lena home under its shelter. After leaving her, Iwalked slowly out into the country part of the town where I lived. Thelilacs were all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after therain, of the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my facewith a sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and underthe showery trees, mourning for Marguerite Gauthier as if she had diedonly yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840, which had sighed somuch, and which had reached me only that night, across long years andseveral languages, through the person of an infirm old actress. The ideais one that no circumstances can frustrate. Wherever and whenever thatpiece is pu
t on, it is April.