Even Clarence was caught, as he entered, into this atmosphere. He said: ‘I must leave you. Guy wants us dressed and ready by eleven o’clock,’ and he hurried off into a maze of passages to find the dressing room assigned to him.
Harriet, after standing uncertainly awhile, went in search of a familiar face, but the people she met brushed past her, too wrapped up in their players’ world to recognise her. Only Yakimov, on his way to the stage in pink tights and a cloak of rose coloured velvet, stopped and said: ‘What’s the matter, dear girl? You look worried.’
‘Everyone’s worried,’ she said. ‘The Germans have almost reached Paris.’
‘Really!’ He looked concerned a moment, then someone called him, his face cleared, and he left her for more important matters.
She hoped she might be needed to advise on the wearing of the costumes, but she was only the designer. The wardrobe mistress, a student, pins in her mouth, needle and cotton in hand, was surrounded by enquiries and complaints. Harriet stood beside her a while, hoping to be consulted, but the girl, with a brief shy smile, indicated that she could cope very well on her own.
Harriet had never encouraged the students. She had, indeed, resented their possessiveness and their demands on Guy’s time, so now she knew she had only herself to blame if they received her with respect rather than cordiality.
She came at length on Bella, who was sharing a dressing room with Andromache and Cassandra. The girls were dressing unobtrusively in the background while Bella, already dressed, sat before the glass, critically yet complacently examining her face, that was richly coloured in creams, buffs, pinks and browns. Her hair, that had grown more golden since Harriet last saw it, was caught into a golden tube and hung in a tail down her back.
Harriet said: ‘I’ve brought the chiffons.’
‘Oh, darling!’ Without taking her eyes from the glass, Bella stretched a hand in Harriet’s direction and wriggled her fingers. ‘How sweet of you!’ She threw her voice back to the girls: ‘Atenţiune! Doamna Pringle has brought us some gorgeous chiffons.’ Bella, it seemed, had taken on with her status of actress the elevated camaraderie of the green-room.
When Harriet had distributed the chiffons, she made her way back to the immense auditorium, with its gilt and claret-coloured plush, that was lit only by the light from the stage. She took a seat in the row behind Fitzsimon, Dobson and Foxy Leverett, who were dressed ready for the rehearsal. Dobson and Foxy were advising Fitzsimon that he must ensure his success in the leading rôle by padding out the front of his tights.
‘– certainly stuffing in some cotton-wool,’ said Foxy, gleeful at the thought. ‘The girls here like to see a teapot.’
On the stage Guy, dressed as Nestor, but not made up, was haranguing a line of peasants who blinked bashfully into the glare from the footlights.
Harriet whispered to Dobson: ‘What is going on?’
‘They’re the stage-hands,’ said Dobson. ‘Guy spent the afternoon explaining what was required of them and putting them through it, but just now, when he started the rehearsal, they were hopeless. They’re just indifferent, of course. They think anything will do for a pack of foreigners.’
Driven into one of his rare fits of anger, Guy had lined the men up before him. Some were in dark, shabby suits like indigent clerks, others in a mixture of city and peasant dress; one man, so thin that he had an appearance of fantastic height, wore on the point of his head a conical peasant cap. Some stood grinning in a sort of foggy wonder at being addressed, and forcibly addressed, by a foreigner in their own language. One or two looked dignified and pained: the rest stood in a stupor, any language, even their own, being barely comprehensible to them.
From what she could catch of his words, Harriet gathered that Guy was impressing on the men that tomorrow evening a great company of Rumanian Princes, aristocrats and statesmen, foreign diplomats and distinguished personages of every nationality and kind, was to be present. This was to be a tremendous occasion when every man must do not only his best, but more than his best. He must achieve a triumph that would stun the world with admiration. The honour of this great national theatre was at stake; the honour of Bucharest was at stake – nay, the honour of the whole of Rumania was in their hands.
As Guy’s voice rose, the three Legation men stopped talking among themselves and listened.
The stage-hands shuffled and coughed a bit as the force of their responsibility was revealed to them. One, a short, stout, ragged peasant with a look of congenital idiocy, grinned, unable to take Guy seriously. Guy pointed at him. ‘You!’ he cried. ‘What do you do?’
The man was a scene-shifter.
A job of supreme importance, said Guy. A job on which depended the success or failure of the whole production. Guy looked to him for his full support. The peasant grinned from side to side, but, meeting no response from his fellows, his grin faded.
‘And now,’ said Guy, stern but satisfied that by the force of his personality he had made them attend to him: ‘Now …’ and towering with his height and bulk over even the tallest of them, he began to go again through the drill of scene and lighting changes which he had worked out.
Harriet stared up at Guy, her heart melting painfully in her breast, and asked herself what it was for – this expense of energy and creative spirit. To produce an amateur play that would fill the theatre for one afternoon and one evening and be forgotten in a week. She knew she could never give herself to such an ephemeral thing. If she had her way, she would seize on Guy and canalise his zeal to make a mark on eternity. But he was a man born to expend himself like a whirlwind – and, indeed, what could one do but love him?
At midnight, while the stage-hands were still being put through their duties, Harriet went home to bed. She heard Guy and Yakimov return some time in the middle of the night. They were gone again before breakfast. That morning there was to be a final rehearsal in the theatre.
When she left the house, people seemed to be in a state of subdued confusion. They were wandering about asking each other what was happening. The red arrows had come to a stop in the window of the German Bureau. Were the German forces at a standstill? Some thought there was a lull for strategic reasons. Others said the French had pulled themselves together and were holding the line round Paris. Whatever the news might be, the Rumanian authorities, ‘to avert panic’, were withholding information and had cut the international lines.
Harriet went to the Athénée Palace garden. No one there had much to say. Even Galpin was silenced by the sense that they were approaching an end.
‘What’s going to happen to us all?’ Miss Truslove asked out of the great nothingness of their thoughts.
‘That,’ said Galpin, ‘is anybody’s guess.’
After an interval, during which the fountain’s trickle was as monotonous as silence, Mrs Ramsden said: ‘Well, there’s the play tonight. That’s something to look forward to.’
‘Do you think anyone will come?’ asked Harriet, fearful now that there would be no audience at all.
‘Of course they will,’ said Mrs Ramsden. ‘Sir Montagu will be there. The Woolleys are going. Oh, everyone’s turning up. It’s the thing, I can tell you.’
Miss Truslove said: ‘It’s nice to have something to distract us.’
The others nodded agreement. Even Galpin and Screwby had booked seats.
‘Haven’t been inside a theatre for months,’ said Galpin.
Screwby said: ‘Haven’t been in one for years.’
‘An English play,’ said Mrs Ramsden. ‘For us here, that’s quite an intellectual treat.’ She sighed and said: ‘I do like an evening at the theatre.’