Twelve. Wandelprobe
Twelve
Wandelprobe
EIGHTH DAY AT SEA
June 23, 1865
Only two days were left until the much-anticipated charity performance to be held the final night at sea. Louisa May Alcott remained in the role of Sydney Carton for now, having rejected every one of the men who had bravely shown up to audition for the role.
“I adore Lu,” Sara-Beth whispered to Charlotte as they watched Louisa and Haz in rehearsal, “but does she really make the best Sydney of them all?”
Up onstage, Lu suddenly broke from that character and threw down her script.
“It’s all wrong!” she declared to the room, then glared at Haslett. “If only you could play both Darnay and Carton, doppelg?ngers as they are. We need someone else.…”
From the middle of the platform, Louisa slowly rotated her head like a hawk. Everyone fell quiet, watching with increasing consternation, until Lu at last settled her penetrating gaze on Justice Thomas Nash. He had stayed behind after luncheon, most of the other men having decamped to the smoking lounge for cards.
“I don’t act,” Nash offered in his defense. He was used to Miss Alcott’s meaningful looks by now.
“Oh, jiminy cricket , of course you do!” exclaimed Lu. “I’ve been in a courtroom—it’s all theatrics if you ask me. You judges are the worst of the lot.”
“Louisa!” Henrietta hushed her from offstage, but Lu persisted.
“It’s for charity!” she called out again, picking her script back up and knocking off the dust. Nash looked warily about the dining room at Louisa and all the other women staring back at him.
“I really don’t think…”
Louisa gave him another look. It was more than a dare, although it was certainly also that. It was a look that seemed to say, I know what you are about—I know what you are afraid of. He worried he was being manipulated into a dangerous situation, but at that fraught moment, resisting Louisa felt most dangerous of all.
“I suppose I could give it a try.”
Charlotte and Henrietta glanced at each other in surprise, while Lu threw her script into the air in victory.
It was fortunate for the production that Nash had developed a proficient memory from his years on the bench, because the next day’s final rehearsal would be without any script in hand. After brisk walks on deck at dawn to expand their lungs, the players returned to the dining saloon, scripts were closed, and breakfast tables made way for the makeshift stage.
With Nash agreeing to the part of dissolute London barrister Sydney Carton, casting of the male roles was finally complete. Haslett Nelson was to play Tellson’s Bank manager Jarvis Lorry, family friend of the Manettes, in addition to heroic Charles Darnay. Older brother Nicholas Nelson, with his “soft” manner, had been acclaimed by Louisa as docile Dr. Alexandre Manette, who, through the love and care of his daughter, Lucie, slowly returns to life after eighteen years imprisoned in the Bastille. Finally, Denham Scott was cast as the villains: Monsieur Defarge, a revolutionary marginally less bloodthirsty than his wife, and Darnay’s uncle, the nefarious Marquis St. Evrémonde.
Haslett Nelson had yet to fully memorize his lines like the others, but his onstage ease and charisma made up for that fact. Nash, on the other hand, was a model of self-restraint, especially in his love scenes with Charlotte ( “I think Lu might have done a better job after all!” Sara-Beth later said to her with a wicked laugh). Wooden was the word that kept coming to everyone’s mind. But Justice Thomas Nash cut a dashing romantic figure, to be sure, and ticket sales would at least be improved by that.
Throughout the script-free audition, Lu dashed about with frantic energy. Whenever someone forgot a line, she would wave her pipe in the air and correct them, Haslett Nelson loudest of all. But the entire room was surprised by who forgot their lines next.
Carton: No, Miss Manette—but if you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. You have been the last dream of my soul. I wish you to know with what sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire—a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.
Lucie: It is surely my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to make you—to have made you more unhappy than before—than you were before—
“Stop!” cried Louisa.
Nash as Carton stood with his left hand on the small table being used as a desk, shielding his eyes from Charlotte as Lucie with his right. He finally looked up to face not the woman whom his character secretly loved, but the real woman whose wrath had been invoked.
“Dash it, Charlie!” exclaimed Louisa. “You’ve said that line perfectly at least twenty times before—and your expression! Lucie is concerned—even contrite—but by no means confused about her feelings for Carton. Why, the entire plot hinges on that!” Louisa angrily tossed her head in Nash’s direction and scoffed, “As if that sly dog stood any chance at love!”
She turned to fully face him next. “And you —Dickens’s text says Carton approaches Lucie with ‘a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other’—and you’re keeping ten strides from her at least!”
Louisa plopped down in frustration on the edge of the stage just as a very imposing man unexpectedly wandered in. He wore a manicured moustache that curled up at the ends and carried a gold-mounted walking stick. Louisa removed the pipe from her mouth. “Yes—are you wanting something?”
The man narrowed his eyes at her in amusement, then tipped his black silk top hat. “Richard Fawcett Robinson,” he proclaimed. “The New Adelphi. I’ve produced many a Dickens adaptation and understand today is your wandelprobe. ” Lu’s frown of confusion was missed by no one in the room. “What we in the theater call a true first rehearsal, hmm? Sans script? I heard of it earlier from Miss Gleason in the smoking lounge—we made a little wager on my attendance.” He gave a small nod in Sara-Beth’s direction and shrugged, as if to indicate he had lost the bet.
The theater impresario took a seat in the dining chair closest to the stage and held the cane between his knees with an air of expectation. Louisa waved Nash off the elevated platform, hiding none of her disappointment in his performance, and motioned Haz forward instead. “Let’s return to the scene between Lucie and Darnay in book two. A Plea .”
Haz bounced up onto the stage and immediately started reciting his lines: “ We are thoughtful tonight.…” He comfortably drew Charlotte to him with an encouraging smile, and she responded by placing her hands gently against him. Then, in a moment of improvisation, she tapped his chest several times as if to telegraph Lucie’s understanding of her womanly power (the very power Lucie unconsciously holds over Carton as well, but would never consciously admit to possessing).
Lucie: Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it?
Darnay: Will I promise? What will I not promise to my love?
(Caresses a lock of golden hair from her cheek.)
“Imagine if you lost her to the stage.” Sara-Beth Gleason stood behind Nash, twirling her closed parasol.
“Pardon me?”
“As chaperone. Imagine . Coming back to Boston with nothing—or no one—to show for it.” Nash felt his back stiffen. The Nelson brothers had clearly not been exaggerating when they had warned him about Miss Gleason. “Charlie’s wonderfully talented, don’t you think?”
“Yes, very much so.”
“And fully aware of her physical prowess onstage.” Miss Gleason tilted her head at him. “You, less so—although I suspect you possess greater talent at pretending than you let on.”
Nash knew he was no actor, courtroom theatrics or not, but Miss Gleason still hit her mark. How unconvincing he must appear to everyone, as both Sydney Carton and reluctant chaperone. Turning back to watch Charlotte and Haz, Nash felt another bothersome surge of envy, followed by a sudden, panicked thought: What if he had been chaperoning himself most of all? He recalled the famous play in Mansfield Park and all the trouble it had led to in the plot—the intimacy of acting combined with the communal nature of performing, the thrill of affecting others and the chance to feign at being someone else. What intoxicating enticement for people wishing to escape themselves—or grow closer to another.
Fawcett Robinson also watched the young couple rehearsing, his face giving nothing away, while an overly eager Louisa stood nearby mouthing every word alongside her actors. When the scene was over, she triumphantly turned to Mr. Robinson for his verdict. Robinson kept his hands firmly rested on the top of his cane, tapped it twice, then stood up.
“Very nice. Very nice indeed.” He came forward and proffered his card to a startled Charlotte. “If you are in London, young lady, you must come to see me.”
“ Nice? ” Lu exclaimed after him, her eyes lit with indignant pride on behalf of her performers. “I’ll say it’s nice!”
Noticeably recoiling at Louisa’s manner, Robinson turned and left, while Nash inwardly winced again on her behalf. He wished she had a sense of how she appeared to others. Her imagination was so robust, Nash had no doubt that at any given moment she was the protagonist in a dizzying array of stories. The captive in a castle, the runaway in the forest, the misbegotten and mistreated pauper who rises to fortune and fame. But the abrupt manner, the drab clothes, did her no favors. Only in her mind was she a star—a constellation without a firmament, a passion in need of a cause.
“We shall break for lunch!” cried Louisa as the doors to the dining room swung closed behind Robinson. The tables were put back in place and the performers soon joined by the one P.M. luncheon seating. On the menu was veal consommé, a buffet of salmon, shrimp, and herring, a main course of liver, lamb, or pigeon with French potatoes and succotash spinach, and vanilla pudding or lemon cream tarts for dessert.
Little of it appealed to Charlotte Stevenson, however, who was too excited by Robinson’s invitation to eat. The minute the tables were cleared, she stepped back onstage to resume rehearsing. Closing her eyes, she again became Lucie Manette, this time reuniting in France with her physician father, now a shoemaker in a garret who cannot stand the light, his years in the Bastille having rendered him weak in both mind and spirit.
Alone onstage, Charlotte cried out Lucie’s heartbreaking words of realization at her father’s continued infirmity, then dropped passionately to her knees as Lu had directed. There was the sound of a snap, then another cry—the high heel of the boot rolled along the stage—Charlotte tumbled down from it.
Haslett and Nash rushed forward from their positions on either side of the stage, but Louisa Alcott quickly bounded by them both. She was first to help Charlotte up, then gently removed the broken boot to examine her right foot.
“There’s no break!” Lu loudly proclaimed to everyone’s relief, but Charlotte was unable to put any pressure on the limb all the same.
“This is a disaster!” Lu exclaimed next.
There was only one day left to find a new Lucie Manette.
The Nelson brothers had not visited the smoking room during their time on ship, where men gathered for cards as much as for pipes and cigars. Gambling held no appeal for Nick, whose riskiest move since the war had been to write to an aging sea captain without invitation, and Haz was happily preoccupied by the amateur theatrics in which he starred. But following Louisa’s panicked declaration, Haz headed directly for the men’s lounge, knowing that this was where he would find Sara-Beth.
She sat at a table in the center of the room playing vingt-et-un , her winnings in a little pile before her lithe but quick hands. She was also the standing victor at nines, the less formal shipboard betting over the number of miles covered every twenty-four hours at sea. Sara-Beth’s chaperone was said to wait outside the wheelhouse door each morning to collect from the increasingly peevish men.
“Haz—over here!” Sara-Beth patted the seat next to hers. “Take a hand.”
Haz came over and removed his hat. “Miss Gleason, may I have a second of your time?”
Sara-Beth stood up and motioned to the elderly woman standing behind her to protect the pile of winnings. Before now, Haz had not seen this paid companion in Sara-Beth’s vicinity and wondered if she was actually on board as Sara-Beth’s silent shill—the very antithesis of a chaperone.
“Haz, you look worried—what is it?”
“It’s the play. Charlotte’s injured herself and can’t go on, and Lu is desperate for a new Lucie Manette. We wondered if you might—”
“But aren’t you playing her husband, Charles Darnay?” Sara-Beth immediately interrupted him, eyes aglow. “How enticing of you to ask—and out of character!” She looked about at the smoking room, the men fearing her return to the casino table, the little pile of winnings that would only grow with time. “Very well, Haz. I will do it, but on one condition.”
Haz gritted his teeth.
“You must commit fully to your role.”
But to everyone’s surprise, Sara-Beth Gleason—despite her success at cards—was a disaster onstage.
Haz rehearsed his lines opposite her with a sinking heart. When someone got everything that they wanted simply by being themselves, there was clearly no need to ever transcend or alter their manner. Sara-Beth had never spent a second of her life considering her own behavior in relation to others, and so Sara-Beth did not become Lucie Manette onstage, the perfect Victorian wife and mother—Lucie Manette became the unstoppable and voracious Sara-Beth instead. The effect was completely jarring for everyone watching, Haz most of all.
He found he could not meet her eyes onstage. There was none of his usual ease of manner or playing to the audience: she stirred up emotions in him far too large for that small space. Haz might have sailed to get away from Sara-Beth, but was learning—to his utter dismay—that she followed him everywhere he went. He never saw her coming.
His thoughts whirled around onstage like a child’s spinning top. He had lost all sense of himself let alone of Darnay, the character he played. Eventually Louisa Alcott stood up, threw down her pipe in disgust at them both, and called everyone to the floor. Haz gritted his teeth again.
“I’m afraid there’s only one solution,” Lu announced. “ I must play Miss Lucie Manette.”