Gwen Larking twisted the lucky ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. Nothing would have persuaded her to admit that it was a lucky ring. She was a Stage Manager, devoted to certainty, not luck. But it was in truth a lucky ring, a Renaissance cameo, a gift from a former lover, and all the gofers knew it, and had somewhere found lucky rings of their own, for Gwen was their ideal.
Darcourt did not hear the half-hour call, because he was in the favourite restaurant, entertaining two eminent critics. Arthur and Maria had refused to do anything of the sort, but the line between eminent critic from New York and distinguished guest is so fine that Darcourt had decided he had better give them dinner. Very, very eminent critics can eat and drink any amount, without in the least compromising their impartiality of opinion, and have indeed been known to bite the hand that has fed them, without noticing. Darcourt was aware of this, but thought a modest dinner would give him a chance to provide the critics with some information.
In the case of Claude Applegarth, who was undoubtedly the most popular and widely read of New York critics, information was cast on stony ground, for Mr. Applegarth had been a critic of the theatre arts too long to be concerned with the background of anything. The wisecrack was his speciality; that was what his readers expected of him and was he not, after all, himself a popular entertainer? He would not have attended Arthur if it had not been that his annual visit to the Shakespearean portion of the Festival coincided with this opening so closely that it could not decently be neglected. Not that opera was his thing, at all; it was in the criticism of musicals that he was felt as a great and usually blighting influence.
It was a different matter with Robin Adair, whose word on opera was—well, not law, but rather the judgement of the Recording Angel. A notable musicologist, a translator of libretti, a man of formidable culture, and—rarest attribute of all—a real lover of opera, he was avid for any information Darcourt could give him, and questioned like a cross-examiner.
“The details I have received are just vague enough to provoke a thousand questions,” he said. “The libretto, for instance. If Hoffmann had gone no further than sketching the work, how much of a libretto existed? Had Planché any hand in it? I hope not. He ruined Oberon with his jokey nonsense. Is there a coherent libretto?”“I gather from Dr. Dahl-Soot that the word ‘sketch’ is somewhat too dismissive for what Hoffmann left in the way of music. There was a good deal of it, all of which is in the score. The basis of it, in fact.”
“Yes, but the libretto. It can’t have been finished. Who has done it?”
“As you will see from the program, I have.”
“Ah? And on what basis? Original work of your own? You see, of course, that if this is to be considered as the completion of a work by Hoffmann—dead in, when was it, 1822?—the libretto is of greatest importance. There must be a congruity of style not at all easy to achieve. Do you think you have managed that?”
“Not really for me to say,” said Darcourt. “But I may tell you this: by far the greatest part of the libretto is either drawn exactly from, or slightly adapted from, the work of a poet of undoubted genius who was Hoffmann’s contemporary and devout co-religionist in romanticism.”
“And his name is—?”
“I am sure that a man of your reputation for out-of-the-way scholarship will recognize his hand at once.”
“A puzzle? How delightful! I love a puzzle. I shall see you afterward and give you my guess, and you must say if I am right.”
“Do you think we might have just a little more champagne?” said Mr. Applegarth. “Now listen: whoever wrote the bloody words, there has never been a good play or musical about King Arthur. Look at Camelot. A turkey.”
“A fairly tough old bird by now,” said Mr. Adair.
“Nevertheless, a turkey. I said it then and I say it now. A turkey.”
“Tell me something about this Cornish Foundation,” said Mr. Adair. “I understand it’s a man and a woman with a dummy board. They have ambitious ideas about patronage.”
“They can’t have enough money for anything really big,” said Mr. Applegarth, who now had a second bottle of champagne and was somewhat less morose. “The modern Medici! That’s what they all want. Won’t work in the modern world.”
“Oh, surely fine things have been done by patrons even during this year,” said Mr. Adair.
“Listen,” said Mr. Applegarth. “Patronage only worked when artists were humble. Some of ‘em wore livery. An art patron today is a victim. The artists will crucify him and mock him and caricature him and strip him naked, if he hasn’t got the drop on them from the start. Only when the Medici or the Esterhazys had their heel on the artist’s neck did it work. Admit artists to equality and the jig’s up, because they don’t believe in equality. Only in their own superiority. Sons of bitches!” he said, gloomily filling his glass.
“The Cornishes have tried very much to leave the artists to their own devices in this affair,” said Darcourt. “I must admit they feel that they have been somewhat shouldered aside by the artists.”
“You don’t surprise me at all,” said Mr. Applegarth.
“Ah, well—the artistic temperament. Not all sweetness and light,” said Mr. Adair, rather as though he felt he had a foot in the artist’s world.
“I see that its half past six,” said Darcourt. “Perhaps we should be getting to the theatre. Seven-o’clock curtain, you know.”
“I hate these early curtains,” said Mr. Applegarth. “They ruin dinner.”
“Oh come along, Claude,” said Mr. Adair. “It’s for our benefit you know. Early curtain so the critics can make their deadline.”
“Not on a Saturday night,” said Mr. Applegarth, who had passed from the morose, through the sardonic, to the combative stage of critical preparation. “Bloody Arthur. Why can’t they leave him in his grave?”
“Nobody knows where his grave is,” said Mr. Adair, Scottish fount of information as he was.
“It’ll be on this stage, tonight,” said Mr. Applegarth, obviously ready to assure that it should be so.
Gwen had called the quarter-hour. From the dressing-rooms could be heard the humming, the buzzing, now and then the full-throated vocalization, of singers getting their voices under command. In front of the curtain early birds among the audience—the kind of people who like lots of time to study their programs—could be heard arriving. Up and down the corridors among the dressing-rooms walked Hans Hoizknecht, wishing the company good luck. “Hals und beinbruch!” he shouted, and if it was a man, he gave him a sharp knee in the rump.
In the wings, out of earshot of Gwen Larking, Albert Greenlaw was about his favourite sport of instructing the gofers in the lore and tradition of the theatre. They stood about him, devouring the fine Belgian chocolates they had been given earlier by Oliver Twentyman, who believed in first-night presents, especially to the humbler members of the company.
“I don’t know if I ought to tell you,” he said, “because it is not the thing little girls ought to know. But if you’re really set on a stage career—”
“Oh yes, Albert. Be a sport. Tell us.”
“Well then, honey-child, you ought to know about critics. There are some in the audience tonight who are of the cream of that very creamy cream. And you can tell those real ones from the fellows who are just from local papers by one infallible sign, and it is this.” His voice sank to a whisper. “They never go to the John.”
“Not during the show?” said the prettiest gofer.
“Not ever. From womb to tomb—not ever. Nobody has ever met a critic in the Men’s, anywhere on this earth.”