When the end of the Introduction was near, Margaret turned back into
the room and sat down before the toilet-table to wait. She heard her
maid shut the door, and the loud music of the full orchestra and chorus
immediately sounded very faint and far away. When she looked round, she
saw that the maid had gone out and that she was quite alone.
In ten minutes the scenery would be changed; five minutes after that,
and her career would have definitely begun. She folded her whitened
hands, leaned back thoughtfully and looked into her own eyes reflected
in the mirror. The world knows very little about the great moments in
artists' lives. It sees the young prima donna step upon the stage for
the first time, smiling in the paint that perhaps hides her deadly
pallor. She is so pretty, so fresh, so ready to sing! Perhaps she looks
even beautiful; at all events, she is radiant, and looks perfectly
happy. The world easily fancies that she has just left her nearest and
dearest, her mother, her sisters, in the flies; that they have come
with her to the boundary of the Play-King's Kingdom, and are waiting to
lead her back to real life when she shall have finished her part in the
pretty illusion.
The reality is different. Sometimes it is a sad and poor reality,
rarely it is tragic; most often it is sordid, uninteresting,
matter-of-fact, possibly vulgar; it is almost surely very much simpler
than romantic people would wish it to be. As likely as not, the young
prima donna is all alone just before going on, as Margaret was, looking
at herself in the glass--this last, for one thing, is a certainty; and
she is either badly frightened or very calm, for there is no such thing
as being 'only a little' frightened the first time. That condition
sometimes comes afterwards and may last through life. But pity those
whose courage fails them the first time, for there is no more awful
sensation for a man or woman in perfect health than to stand alone
before a great audience, and suddenly to forget words, music,
everything, and to see the faces of the people in the house turned
upside down, and the chandelier swinging round like a wind mill while
all the other lights tumble into it, and to notice with horror that the
big stage is pitching and rolling like the most miserable little
steamer that ever went to sea; and to feel that if one cannot remember
one's part, one's head will certainly fly off at the neck and join the
hideous dance of jumbled heads and lights and stalls and boxes in the
general chaos.