Ten. The Audition
Ten
The Audition
SIXTH DAY AT SEA
June 21, 1865
Several men showed up in the ladies’ saloon to audition for the role of Charles Darnay opposite Charlotte Stevenson as Lucie Manette. This was no surprise to the play’s suspicious director, and a potential casting decision that she vowed to repeal if the men onstage failed to behave. Louisa May Alcott, on board ship at least, was proving to be the most effective chaperone of all.
Haslett Nelson had played many roles while at the Jesuit all-boys school St. Joe’s Prep, often cast as the comeliest female characters with his slender hips and longish hair, yet he was the last man left in the room to audition. Finally, Louisa called out his name with a resigned air.
Charlotte began the scene by taking his hands in hers according to Lu’s script. In an instant, Haz no longer saw her as the angel at the table behind him during meal seatings, or the play as a chance to move closer. Instead, she was Lucie Manette, supplicating her new husband, Charles Darnay, to be kinder to family friend Sydney Carton—the wrinkle being her kindest of character’s knowledge of Carton’s undying affection for her.
Lucie: My husband, there is scarcely a hope that Sydney’s character or fortunes are reparable now. But I am sure he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous.
(Clings to Darnay, laying her head upon his breast, then raises her eyes to his.)
“Now I’ll put my head down, like so,” Charlotte gamely whispered to him.
Having only ever performed in all-male school productions, Haz was shocked to discover that his heart did not race as “the angel” clung to him, head against his breast. He was not thinking with his own head or heart, but rather his stomach, that center of intuition that had saved him from a stray Confederate bullet in the nick of time. Haz had excelled at school sports for the same reason: He saw things just before they happened. He knew where things were heading right after they flew.
Haz also knew that, for all Louisa did not want him to win the role, she did want more from this scene than mere newlywed bliss. The other men auditioning had simply grabbed Charlotte in their arms and proclaimed their love. But through gesture, tone, and placement, Haz was determined to bring out more: Darnay’s intentional blindness to whatever shapeless bond existed between Carton and his wife, along with his natural aristocratic confidence that all was right with his world—the very notion that Dickens in the book was about to entirely upend.
Lucie: Dearest heart, remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery.
Darnay : I will always remember it, dear heart—I will remember it for as long as I live.
Charlotte communicated to Haz throughout the scene with gestures of her own: a slight nod of the head to one side, the raising of a palm, and always with her eyes—an actor’s greatest weapon. Haz could tell that she wanted him to succeed, which made him want to work even harder in return. They seemed united in their intuitive approach to acting, their similar choices, their shared ideas for improving the production. What was that Latin phrase, ad idem—a meeting of the minds? It certainly wasn’t physical attraction. It was a creative union so instant that it bypassed the signs of attraction altogether. It didn’t need the allure of sex to exist—and this rendered the moment entirely sexless. The bachelor bookseller didn’t know it yet, but he was about to make his first female friend.
Fortunately, not even Miss Alcott could deny the attractiveness of Haz to everyone else in the women-only room. Lu might fiercely protect her actors, wanting them all to shine, but she also wanted to raise as much money as possible for the victims of the Staplehurst rail disaster. Once auditions were complete, Alcott proclaimed Haslett Nelson in the role of the heroic, fallen French aristocrat Charles Darnay.
Rehearsals were moved from the ladies-only saloon to the dining hall, where a new stage was eagerly assembled by two of the crew at Charlotte Stevenson’s request. This wooden platform pitched one step above the floor of curved oak planks, just low enough that stacked tables and chairs could easily be restored there in time for meal seatings, but high enough that more than a few actors would come close to tripping off the stage while caught up in performing.
When Charlotte and Haslett resumed rehearsing together on the makeshift stage, the entire room quieted down. There was something undeniably electric about unattached and handsome young people being permitted to stand close, to embrace, even—should their director permit it—to feign a kiss. All this at a time when the half-inch sight of a woman’s naked wrist above her glove could drive a man to distraction.
Louisa ascended the stage alongside Charlotte and Haz to position them like dolls, playing with the blond ringlets that framed Charlie’s exquisite face, firmly guiding Haz’s hips closer to hers. In fact, Lu ruled over the entire production with a confidence born of dozens of home theatrical productions and an enthusiasm that was zealous almost to a fault.
“By Jupiter, you two make a handsome pair,” Louisa proclaimed, proud of her skill at casting, which extended to her own. She had given herself the roles of both Miss Pross, Lucie Manette’s governess from childhood—as devoted to her charge as Shakespeare’s nurse in Romeo and Juliet —and Madame Defarge, the wily and willful French revolutionary who knits the names of traitors in a scarf while watching their heads roll from the guillotine. Until the right man— if the right man—could be found, Lu Alcott continued to play Sydney Carton as well. Such was her intensity onstage, Haz looked as disconcerted by their scene together as he had been inspired by his and Charlotte’s:
Carton: Do you remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than usual?
Darnay: I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that you were.
Carton: Well, at any rate, you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good and never will. Still, if you could endure to have this worthless fellow come and go in your fine home, as useless and unornamental as a piece of furniture…
Lu broke character to announce to the room, “Sydney Carton, that sly dog indeed—he’s asking to be allowed to still sit and visit with Lucie, now that she’s Darnay’s wife. How rich!”
Near the dining hall entrance, as far from the stage as possible, Justice Thomas Nash observed the theatrics with a detached air. He had no inclination to perform; his current roles—lawyer, chaperone, persona non grata—were plenty enough for him. For six days at sea, he had been avoiding the Stevenson sisters, hoping that the ladies’ saloon would keep them fully occupied by their own sex. As he now watched Charlotte intimately rehearsing with Haz, Nash could only wonder at what William Stevenson would say about his trusted substitute’s capabilities.
Nash slunk out of the dining room and ascended the narrow stairs to the main deck. He filled his pipe with tobacco from a passing steward before beginning his seven circuits of the ship. Walking at a slower pace than usual, Nash ruminated over the other unique role he had inadvertently found himself in—protector in absentia. He had almost completed his prescribed one mile when, rounding the corner to starboard, he came face-to-face at last with one of his self-appointed charges.
“You’re a poor excuse for a chaperone!” Charlotte immediately burst out. “Six days on ship and we haven’t had a word from you yet.”
Nash had to laugh. As his eyes met hers, he could feel the iciness of those last weeks in Boston finally begin to melt away. Nash had always appreciated how Charlotte, the mercurial one in the Stevenson family, was also very quick to forget a slight. She moved forward in life, never back, just like Lu, and the propulsive energy of the ship and all its doings appeared to suit her own. With her lips and cheeks brightened by the ocean wind, Charlotte Stevenson had never looked lovelier.
“I’m to exercise the lungs. Director’s orders.”
Nash turned about and fell in step next to her. “How are rehearsals?”
“Lu’s reining in the men.” Charlotte tightened the ribbon on her straw bonnet against the mid-Atlantic wind.
“I saw the Nelsons had joined.”
“Are you angling to do so as well?”
“My days of amateur theatrics are well behind me.”
“That’s a shame. Lu thinks you would make a capital Sydney Carton.”
“What do you think?”
She stopped walking to look him up and down, pretending to assess him for the first time. “Well, you certainly possess his sacrificial nature, coming on ship as you did.”
He chose not to answer her—wasn’t even sure how to. Noticing the latest instalment of Our Mutual Friend peeking from her reticule, he asked instead, “Will you try to see Dickens perform in London while you are—”
“Justice Nash, let’s speak truthfully.” Only Charlotte ever interrupted him like this, as if determined to take him to account. “What exactly did you promise my father in coming?”
“There wasn’t time. As you can imagine, William was in a most panicked state—I jumped on board without thinking. I knew I could.”
“Yes, you are lucky enough for that. Not like Harry and I.” She placed her hand over his extended forearm as they rounded the corner to a blast of wind. “Meanwhile Denham Scott travels at the pleasure of Captain Norris himself.”
“Would you and Henrietta like to dine at the captain’s table? I’d be pleased to arrange it.”
“No, we’re a merry group at dinner as we are.”
“Miss Alcott is certainly full of high spirits.”
“We so enjoy her company.” Charlotte paused again. “As she so enjoys yours—on your walks.”
Nash fell silent at her hinting tone, which inwardly disturbed him. Accustomed to fielding the overtures of Boston society mothers of unmarried daughters, he was usually adept at recognizing the earliest signs of female interest. Louisa Alcott, however, remained surprisingly difficult to read, for all her cheerfulness and open manners. Hardest to decipher was the pain behind her eyes—dark, impenetrable eyes which drooped sadly at the corners, no matter the width of her smile.
When they had completed a full circuit of the deck, Charlotte released his arm and loosened her bonnet, causing it to fall back from her face. “I must return to rehearsals. But we have made up, you and I?”
“I didn’t know we were fighting.”
“Didn’t you?” she teased, tucking a loose golden strand of hair away from her brow. “No wonder I won, then.”
“What did you win?”
“I think that remains to be seen.”
She left him standing there in a cross sea, the wind hitting him from two very different directions.