“When I went back to Macgregor I thought he looked at me very queerly. ‘You’re a lucky laddie, Mungo Fetch,’ said he, ‘but don’t press your luck too hard. Many a small talent has come to grief that way.’ I asked him what he meant, but he just made his Scotch noise—‘Hut’—and went on with his work.
“I don’t think I would have dared to carry the matter any further if Holroyd and Frank Moore had not borne down on Macgregor after the last act. ‘What do you think of your Mungo now?’ said Frank, and once again they began to talk exactly as if I were not standing beside them, busy with a time-sheet. ‘I think it would have been better to give him another name,’ said Macgregor; ‘a fetch is an uncanny thing, and I don’t want anything uncanny in any theatre where I am in a place of responsibility.’ But Holroyd was as near buoyant as I ever saw him. ‘Uncanny, my eye,’ he said; ‘it’s the cherry on the top of the cake. The Guvnor’s close friends were deceived. Coup de théâtre they called it; that’s French for a bloody good wheeze.’ ‘You don’t need to tell me it’s French,’ said Macgregor. ‘I’ve no use for last-minute inspirations and unrehearsed effects. Amateurism, that’s what that comes to.’
“I couldn’t be quiet. ‘Mr. Macgregor, I didn’t mean to do it,’ I said; ‘I swear it on the soul of my mother.’ ‘All right, all right, I believe you without your Papist oaths,’ said Macgregor, ‘and I’m just telling you not to presume on the resemblance any further, or you’ll be getting a word from me.’ ‘What resemblance?’ I said. ‘Don’t talk to us as if we’re fools, m’boy,’ said old Frank. ‘You know damned well you’re the living image of the Guvnor in that outfit. Or the living image of him when I first knew him, I’d better say. Don’t you hear what’s said to you? Didn’t I tell you a fortnight ago? You’re as like the Guvnor as if you were spit out of his mouth. You’re his fetch, right enough.’ ‘Dinna say that,’ shouted Macgregor, becoming very broad in his Scots; ‘haven’t I told you it’s uncanny?’ But I began to understand, and I was as horrified as Macgregor. The impudence of it! Me, looking like the Guvnor! ‘What’d I better do?’ I said, and Holroyd and old Frank laughed like a couple of loonies. ‘Just be tactful, that’s all,’ said Holroyd. ‘It’s very useful. You’re the best double the Guvnor’s ever had, and it’ll be a livelihood to you for quite a while, I dare say. But be tactful.’
“Easy to tell me to be tactful. When your soul is blasted by a sudden uprush of pride, it’s cruel hard work to be tactful. Within an hour my sense of terrible impertinence in daring to look like the Guvnor had given way to a bloating vanity. Sir John was handsome, right enough, but thousands of men are handsome. He was something far beyond that. He had a glowing splendour that made him unike anybody else—except me, it appeared, when the circumstances were right. I won’t say he had distinction, because the word has been chewed to death to describe all kinds of people who simply look frozen. Take almost any politician and put a special cravat on him and stick a monocle in his eye and he becomes the distinguished Sir Nincome Poop, M.P. Sir John wasn’t frozen and his air of splendour had nothing to do with oddity. I suppose living and breathing Romance through a long career had a great deal to do with it, but it can’t have been the whole thing. And I was his fetch! I hadn’t really understood it when Moore and Holroyd had told me in the Crown and Two Chairmen that I looked like him. I knew I was of the same height, and we were built much the same—shorter than anybody wants to be, but with a length of leg that made the difference between being small and being stumpy. In my terrible clothes and with my flash, carnie’s ways—outward evidence of the life I had led and the kind of thinking it begot in me—I never thought the resemblance went beyond a reasonable facsimile. But when Sir John and I were on equal terms—dressed and wigged alike, against the same scenery and under the same lights, and lifted into the high sweet air of Romance—his friends had been deceived by the likeness. That was a stupefying drink for Paul Dempster, alias Cass Fletcher, alias Jules LeGrand—cheap people, every one of them. Ask me to be tactful in the face of that! Ask the Prince of Wales to call you a taxi!
“With the first night at hand my new vanity would not have been noticed, even if I had been free to display it. Our opening was exciting, but orderly. Macgregor, splendid in a dinner jacket, was a perfect field officer and everything happened smartly on cue. Sir John’s first entrance brought the expected welcome from the audience, and in my new role as a great gentleman of the theatre I watched carefully while he accepted it. He did it in the old style, though I didn’t know that at the time: as he walked swiftly down the steps from the inn, calling for the ostler, he paused as though surprised at the burst of clapping; ‘My dear friends, is this generosity truly for me?’ he seemed to be saying, and then, as the applause reached its peak, he gave the least perceptible bow, not looking toward the house, but keeping within the character of André-Louis Moreau, and began calling once more, which brought silence. Easy to describe, but no small thing to do, as I learned when my time came to do it myself. Only the most accomplished actors know how to manage applause, and I was lucky to learn it from a great master.
“Milady was welcomed in the same way, but her entrance was showy, as his was not—except, of course, for that little vanity of the lighting, which was a great help. She came on with the troupe of strolling players, and it couldn’t have failed. There was C. Pengelly Spickernell on the trumpet, to begin with, and a lot of excited shouting from the inn-servants, and then further shouting from the Italian Comedians, as they strutted onstage with their travelling-wagon; Grover Paskin led on the horse that pulled the cart, and it was heaped high with drums and gaudy trunks, baskets and rolls of flags, and on the top of the heap sat Milady, making more racket than anybody as she waved a banner in the air. It would have brought a round from a Presbyterian General Assembly. The horse alone was a sure card, because an animal on the stage gives an air of opulence to a play no audience can resist, and this stage horse was famous Old Betsy, who did not perhaps remember Garrick but who had been in so many shows that she was an admired veteran. My heart grew big inside me at the wonder of it, as I watched from the wings, and my eyes moistened with love.
“They were not too moist to notice one or two things that followed. The other women in the troupe of players walked on foot. How slim they looked, and I saw that Milady, with every aid of costume, was not slim. How fresh and pretty they looked, and Milady, though extraordinary, was not fresh nor pretty. When Eugene Fitzwarren gave her his arm to descend from the cart I could not help seeing that she came down on the stage heavily, with an audible plop that she tried to cover with laughter, and the ankles she showed were undeniably thick. All right, I thought, in my fierce loyalty, what of it? She could act rings around any of them, and did it. But she was not young, and if I had been driven to the last extreme of honesty I should have had to admit that she was like nothing in the heavens above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth. I only loved her the more, and yearned for her to show how marvellous she was, though—it had to be faced—too old for Climene. She was supposed to be the daughter of old Frank Moore as Polichinelle, but I fear she looked more like his frivolous sister.