Lucy Carmichael

by Margaret Kennedy

The clamour off-stage had begun again. Charles felt, though he could not see, a wave of excitement go over the house. Kitty, sitting on the steps of the King’s throne, half rose, but Claudius restrained her, with a hand on her shoulder. They watched Laertes as he turned to meet his sister.

  Charles had once entered an empty room in an old house — the Manor House of Slane St. Mary’s, before the Knevetts left it, to encounter a sense of unearthly cold and horror. He knew that something had taken place there — was still taking place, and it would, in another moment, be revealed to him. He had rushed out, and had never been able to speak of it to anyone.

  The same kind of chill stole over him now as Ianthe stumbled down the stage, seeing nobody, her head bent crookedly over the burden in her sacking apron. Not that he recognised her immediately. He did not say to himself that it was Ianthe until she reached the little shrine downstage, and laid her pitiful burden upon the lowest step. He scarcely felt her to be human; she was a vision which might have appeared, had he stayed in that room. His only fear was that she might speak, and tell what she knew. That fool Laertes was begging her to speak, calling her rose of May, dear maid, and sweet sister. But she made no answer until, pointing at the step, she exclaimed in a raucous chant:

  “They bore him barefaced on the bier….”

  The King stirred uneasily on his throne. But the hunted mind had slipped away from its pursuer and she was muttering now of a wheel and a false steward. She fumbled with her flowers to deck the bier. There was a moment’s piercing terror on the word: Remembrance! She cowered, flung memory from her, and rambled on, the horror modulating into an overwhelming, an endless grief. Tears rolled down Kitty’s cheeks and Laertes relaxed from his stiff pose. Only Claudius watched, intent for a betraying word. None came. She sang the last dirge very low, and almost sweetly; then, with the same shambling step she withdrew, her head always bent a little sideways. But at the door she turned and straightened her neck. She seemed to become aware, for the first time, of other mourners. A look, not sane, but of extreme tenderness, stole across her wan features. In a changed voice she exclaimed:

  “And of all Christian souls I pray God … God be with you!”

  In the next moment she was gone — to her death.

  After a short silence, applause broke out and Lucy’s voice could be heard exclaiming:

  “Shut up! This is a rehearsal!”

  “Well!” said Charles, turning to Angera. “I couldn’t have believed it. How is she in the Nunnery scene?”

  “Very good. There is always, even at the beginning, a little look … something queer … too much gentleness, too much obedience … it’s not healthy. One feels this girl might go mad.”

  “I’d always thought her …” Charles checked himself.

  “Oh, she is a nasty girl,” agreed Angera. “But she has a gift. One can’t deny that. Only … she is not artist.”

  “What? I should have thought …”

  “I know. But wait till you have seen Rees. He is artist. He has not any colossal gift. He has talent only, but he is artist.”

  Charles remained in the box until the graveyard scene was over. He found himself unable to form any opinion of Rees; everything was an anti-climax after the shock produced by Ianthe. After a time he found himself rebelling against the memory of her. He turned to Angera, who was watching him, and nodded before Charles could speak.

  “You see? She is not artist. She doesn’t fit. She is a firework simply; somesing marvellous but all by itself. She has no mesure, no conscience. She can shatter, but she cannot raise the soul … she has no light to bring. One is spellbound, but then one rejects her.”

  “I believe you are right. What a pity! She should make the production, and I think she’ll ruin it.”

  “Poor Lucy,” agreed Angera. “It’s a very, very big mistake. So big, it has been worth making. These big mistakes, they make one think. I have an idea that all Lucy’s mistakes will be like that.”

  3

  CHARLES missed the opening night. He had to go to London for some weeks and thence to Scotland, for Lady Frances had over-tasked herself in the care of her daughter and was too unwell to travel home alone. She had been advised not to travel at all but she thought that nonsense. She had had sciatica before, and though she could not walk without pain she still walked a good deal more than many women of her age who enjoyed perfect health.

  So she was hoisted into a sleeper at Stirling and travelled south in considerable agony, unable to sleep, but resolutely reading Gone with the Wind, whenever Charles looked in to see how she was getting on. It was very seldom that she read a novel, but she told him that illness justified a little self-indulgence and she had heard well of this book for years. She liked it very much for most of the night, since she still supposed that the hero and heroine had not yet come in. When she discovered that they never would, and that she was expected to care what happened to Scarlett O’Hara, she liked it less.

  On arrival at Cyre Abbey she refused to go to bed, though she was unable to sit at the dinner-table. A tray was brought to her by the breakfast-room fire and there Charles joined her when he had finished his own meal.

  “Penelope has been telling me about the play,” she said. “I’m so afraid I shan’t see it; I don’t think I really can get into Ravonsbridge just now.”

  “Was it a success?” asked Charles eagerly.

  “Oh, yes,” said Penelope vaguely.

  A description of any sort was hard to get from her, for she was unobservant and had no command of words. But, when questioned, she did allow that the theatre had been fuller than usual. On reflection, she added that it had been quite full and that a lot of people had not been able to get in. She could not say whether anybody from the Works had come. A lot of rough, noisy people had come who stamped and cheered when Mr. Rees made a speech and sang Land of My Fathers in Welsh, which sounded weird.

  “Those must have been the miners from his home village,” said Charles.

  “He made a speech? This actor?” asked Lady Frances.

  “They shouted till he did,” explained Penelope. “Mr. Thornley made a speech first of course, but they went on shouting till Mr. Rees made a speech, quite short, just thanking everybody. It was rather cheek, in our Institute.”

  “Did Thornley get back?” asked Charles.

  “Oh, yes. And he’d been able to improve it a lot. It was much better than the rehearsal I saw. They’d changed all that weird business about the dead bird. She handed the flowers round properly — Ophelia did, I mean.”

  Charles expressed some concern for Ianthe. He thought it hard that she should be made to change that scene.

  “Oh. She wasn’t in it.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Ruth Hilliard did it. She was much better.”

  “What can have happened?” lamented Charles. “Were there many other changes?”

  Penelope thought not and gave him the programme.

  “Produced by F. Thornley!” he read. “I call that a shame. Miss Carmichael did all the work. She found Owen Rees.”

  Lady Frances agreed. She was furious with Mr. Thornley and intended to tell him that all his outside work must, in future, be dropped. As for unfairness to Miss Carmichael, Mr. Hayter was coming out to Cyre Abbey next morning, and he could be certain to give an unprejudiced account of the facts.

  Charles was not so certain of this. He expected that Hayter’s account would damage Thornley, and it did. Lady Frances could find no excuses for Thornley when she told the story to her children at dinner-time.

  He had come back a week before the opening and had cavilled at everything done by poor Miss Carmichael, in a most unreasonable way. For Miss Carmichael had done nothing without first consulting Mr. Hayter and Miss Frogmore, and Miss Frogmore was very much put out. As for Mr. Hayter he was really distressed; Lady Frances had never seen him so much distressed. He kept insisting that he ought to take full responsibility and that he had never dreamed that he would
be getting Miss Carmichael into trouble when he encouraged her to pursue her own ideas. They had been, in his opinion, excellent ideas, and he had never supposed that Mr. Thornley would object to them. The invitation to Owen Rees was perfectly in accordance with the provisions of the Institute, and the play had been a great success — the greatest success ever known in the annals of the Institute. There had been notices in the local Press and at Gloucester, Severnton and several neighbouring towns. It was playing to crowded houses. For the first time in years the lower town was taking some interest in an Institute production. That was, undoubtedly, because Owen Rees was in the cast.

  “I told Mr. Hayter,” said Lady Frances, “that I should have sanctioned the invitation if I had been here. It would have pleased your father; he would have been delighted that a young man from the Works should play such a part as this; it’s exactly the sort of thing he had in mind. I shall tell Mr. Thornley so. And in any case, if he objected, he should have been here to say so, not in Switzerland.”

  “But did he try to throw Rees out?” asked Charles.

  “No. I don’t gather that he went as far as that. He must have realised it was too late. But I got the impression that he was not at all pleasant to Mr. Rees and would treat him as if he was a student. Mr. Rees is an experienced actor. Naturally he resented it.”

  “And Ianthe? What happened to her?”

  “She resigned the part in a huff, when Mr. Thornley insisted she must play it differently. Her understudy played it. He would have altered a great deal more, but there wasn’t time. He had to let most of it stand. I asked Mr. Hayter if he thought it ought to be called Mr. Thornley’s production, and he said no. He says a lot of people are indignant about the programme and think it most unfair. But he says Miss Carmichael has behaved very well; she has not complained at all. As soon as Mr. Thornley came back, she handed back the reins to him and never said a word when her work was undone. But, as I said to Mr. Hayter, that’s not the point. Has she, or has she not, been fairly treated? There has never been unfairness in our Institute before, that I know of. She had all this work thrust on her and she should get the credit, especially when it is such a success. We must set this right.”

  Charles felt that his mother was being manœuvred into so violent a prejudice against Thornley that he made some demur. Hayter, he suggested, might not know all the facts. Miss Carmichael might have used Thornley’s notes.

  “I shall ask her that,” said Lady Frances. “I’m going to get to the bottom of it. I’m going to hear all sides. Before I see Mr. Thornley, I’m going to send for Miss Carmichael and hear her version. I shall have her out to tea on Sunday.”

  “Couldn’t you make it lunch?” asked Charles. “I’m out to tea on Sunday.”

  “You mean you’d like to be there, dear?”

  Lady Frances was surprised and pleased. She had always wanted Charles to take some interest in Institute affairs. But she pointed out that there were no buses out from Ravonsbridge on a Sunday morning. Perhaps, however, Miss Carmichael had a bicycle.

  “I’ll drive in and fetch her,” said Charles. “If she has to come out here, on her only free day, she’d better come in comfort. And I can drop her in Ravonsbridge on my way to my tea-party, in the afternoon.”

  He was praised for his unselfishness, at which he scowled.

  “Miss Carmichael,” he said, getting up, “is a very … she is a talented and distinguished member of our Staff. She is not a scullion from the Institute canteen. I think she should be treated with courtesy.”

  He stalked off to the library, leaving his women to stare at one another.

  “How very odd of Charles! “exclaimed Lady Frances.

  “I think he’s smitten,” muttered Penelope.

  “Smitten?” repeated Lady Frances with distaste.

  “Oh, Mamma, you know perfectly well what I mean. I think he’s in love with her.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It’s not nonsense. I’ve thought so ever since that time we met her at the hotel in Severnton. I told you … when she was with her friend.”

  “I thought it was the friend who made such an impression on him.”

  “She did. But ever since then he seems to have got this absurd idea that Miss Carmichael is … well, superior to the other girls at the Institute. And she did look different, that day. I hardly recognised her. Well … you know how different the servants look when you meet them on their day off?”

  “Over-dressed? Very much made up, you mean?”

  “No-o.” Penelope could not honestly say that. “They were both very simply dressed. It was their manner. It was so … so … easy and cool. Charles went and talked to them and they treated him as if he was an equal.”

  “So he is! Don’t be such a snob, Penelope!”

  “But, Mamma, you know he’s not. I’m sure you’d have been surprised yourself. They treated him as if he was nobody.”

  Lady Frances could not believe it. Such a thing was impossible in Severnshire. She told Penelope to telephone to Miss Carmichael at the Institute, with the news that Charles would call in Sheep Lane on Sunday morning at half-past twelve and bring her out to Cyre Abbey for lunch.

  “And that,” said Lady Frances, “will give her plenty of time to get to church first.”

  *

  Lucy believed that she was in the dog house. She did not realise that cold meat and junket at Cyre Abbey was an unusual distinction and thought that she was going to be put on the carpet for her misdeeds. Penelope’s curt instructions over the telephone annoyed her, nor was she mollified by the fact that the Eel was calling for her, presumably in his Ravon Roadster. In a belligerent mood she took especial care over her hair and make-up; a good appearance might not impress Lady Frances but it would strengthen her own morale. When she heard the roadster draw up in Sheep Lane she sailed out deedily, determined to stand no nonsense from the Eel. Should he sulk at having to fetch her, she would pay him out by asking after his old school chums, Hallam and Pattison.

  But he greeted her with less stiffness and more cordiality than she could have thought possible, making quite a fuss of her, tucking a rug round her knees, and saying all that Penelope ought to have said about his mother’s illness, their regrets at having to bring Miss Carmichael out to Cyre Abbey, and her kindness in coming. He could be a charming Eel if he liked. She felt all the subtle flattery of haughtiness when it chooses to be cordial, and she was really concerned to know that Lady Frances was in so much pain.

  As soon as they were out of Sheep Lane he said such warm things in praise of the play, which he had now seen, that she was completely melted. He also told her of the rehearsal he had witnessed, and asked who had thought of the business with the bird.

  “Ianthe did,” said Lucy. “And I was very sorry it was changed.”

  “And that she was out?” asked Charles.

  Lucy hesitated, and then said:

  “I’m miserable for her sake. It was a dreadful blow to her. And I feel so guilty at having asked her to come back and play it. But … the play was better without her.”

  “That’s what I thought, amazing though it seemed,” said Charles. “She was brilliant. And the understudy was quite bad really. But …”

  “Ruth’s badness did less harm to the play than Ianthe’s brilliance,” interrupted Lucy. “Ianthe knocked the play to bits. She wasn’t right in it. She seemed to be made of quite different material … something isolated, that didn’t fit in.”

  “I came to the conclusion that her performance was a stunt,” said Charles. “It wasn’t art. It knocked me over at the time, and afterwards I disliked it.”

  “That’s just it. It was something quite different from what Owen did, or even Robin and Kitty. It didn’t add anything. I’d never been so clear about the real art of acting until I realised that Ianthe hasn’t got it. She imitates so well that she can give you the sensations the real thing would have. I always thought that was acting. But afterwards, when you remember it wasn’t real, the
re is something impure about it. Now an actor, even if he’s second-rate, if he has any true art, adds something to the real thing. I don’t quite know what. But it’s intensely interesting.”

  “Put it this way,” said Charles, “and it might apply to all art. Behind the real thing there is a blue-print … the design of that thing which is laid up in heaven. Which is much more real than our vulgar conception of the thing. Any art gives you a hint of that other reality. An actor, giving you a drunken porter not only gives you a drunken porter, a common object, but a touch of the drunken porter, devised by the Immortals. So that the common object becomes infused with greatness.”

  “Yes …” said Lucy, pondering. “Yes.”

  “So it was really a relief to you when she went out?”

  “Oh, I can’t tell you what a relief! Because Owen Rees was getting desperate. I think he’d have gone out if she hadn’t. And stupid people thought he was jealous because she attracted so much attention. But he was quite right. And yet, you know, I had believed she would make the play.”

  “Did Mr. Thornley alter very much, besides that?”

  “Very little. He had to work day and night to get poor Ruth coached for the part.”

  “Then allow me to say that I think your name should have been billed as producer.”

  Lucy flushed. She was growing tired of hearing this. The question of credit had never occurred to her until she saw Thornley’s name on the programme. She then realised that she had always thought of the production as her own, and was both angry and disappointed. But some of her adherents were making such a case of it that she had grown impatient.

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said hastily. “I’d much rather people shouldn’t say that. It spoils all one’s pleasure in the play’s success … it’s so petty.”

  “Perhaps I ought to warn you that my mother believes that there has been some injustice. That’s why she wants to see you.”

  “Who can have given her such an idea?”

  “Hayter,” said Charles, watching her closely.