the false note

HENRI DUVERNOIS

a story of the theatre, in which old age proves victorious in its battle with youth and romance

It was a stage marriage but not a marriage of the stage. Luc Bierville was famous in his way, but he was the type of actor that retains middle-class principles in spite of success. Betty Decambre was eighteen when she married him, which is equivalent to saying that he was about twenty years her senior. An austere mother took a delight in standing sentinel over her.

The night of the premiere of Cliquette the engagement took place. While the notes of the violins were dying away amid the complaining murmurs of the harp and the poetic serenity of an (artificial) moonlight night, Luc had to clasp Betty tenderly to his heart and appear to imprint on her forehead a chaste kiss. His back was to the audience, and Bierville's embrace was a very real one. Until that moment he had seemed indifferent, even cold, to her; and despite the pre-occupations of a first night, she was overcome with emotion as she realized what he had done. To save the situation, he pulled her roughly to him.

"You don't like it, my little friend?" he improvised. "That only proves your bad taste!"

This impromptu remark eventually became a part of the text of the play and in obscure parts of the country, companies playing Cliquette repeat it to this day, without suspecting the idyllic circumstances which gave rise to it.

The mother of the young actress who had watched these proceedings from the wings, appeared before Bierville bristling with indignation. She followed him into his dressingroom.

"This kind of thing won't do. I would rather take my daughter away from the stage altogether and let her starve to death, than see her make my mistake. M. Bierville, mark my words, Betty shall not disgrace me."

Luc undressed himself with serene impudence. As the mother was about to continue, he stopped her with a majestic wave of his bare arm:

"I am going to marry her," he announced.

A quarter of an hour afterwards the news became official and champagne flowed freely. It was agreed generally that they were a charming pair: she was so fair, so slender, with a little retrousse nose and pouting lips; he was so tall, so. stalwart, so well set up, with a face such as one sees on Roman coins and a certain type of coachman.

The honeymoon was glorious! They lived a romantic dream, as if the loving couple of Cliquette had become a reality. He loved her with airy confidence (as is often the case with a newly married man).

She was dreadfully jealous of her celebrated husband. When they returned home, it was no longer Betty Decambre, the little opera singer, but Mme. Bierville, who attended to the housekeeping and her husband, and only studied her parts or visited her dressmaker when her household duties had been fulfilled, the account-books were in order, and the meals planned. Her infatuation blinded her to everything else, and gave her the cruelty to say to her mother:

"Don't come to the house any more. You make a bad impression on him. ... He will imagine that in the end I shall look like you."

He accepted this unceasing devotion as a ® matter of course. Men who are sure they are being worshipped grow fat and dullwitted. That happened to Lqf.

Thus it was that he arrived at the age of forty-eight without any misgivings. Betty was then twenty-seven. Luc still played juvenile leads; he had retained his commanding stage presence and his powerful voice, but his friends noticed that he was always in a hurry to get back to his slippers and his supper of tripe or steak. Oh, the eternal love scenes on the stage with the eternal Betty! As her husband had been well-known on the stage for thirty years, it was generally inferred that she herself must be at least forty. The public got tired of them. Not that she did not look young. She had the unfailing freshness peculiar to brunettes who are made up as blondes, and her doll-like face had changed scarcely at all.

They had to go on tour, and their experience embittered them. There were many nights when the manager announced meagre receipts, and bankruptcy continually threatened the company. They were reduced to playing comedy parts, but their operetta voices failed to please, when spoken lines were necessary.

The final blow came when, during one of their sojourns in Paris, Betty was offered an engagement by another management.

"And I?" asked Bierville of the manager. "What about me?"

"How do I know? You had better rest for a time. . . . You will be all the better for having had a good quiet rest. . . ."

"Oh, I'm in no need of a rest. I'll apply elsewhere."

He was politely bowed to the door of every office he visited. Betty's engagement being a good one, he had to accept the situation. He attended his wife's rehearsals, which he watched (he believed) with an expert eye, in ironic silence. His enforced idleness weighed heavily on him. And then someone stepped into his shoes: Charvel, one of those tenors of the new school who always give one the impression of being effeminate, overamiable, with hair too carefully parted, complexion too ruddy, slimness too willowy, gracefulness carried to an extreme. He had the throaty voice so dear to the patrons of the Montmartre night places.

At first Luc found him merely ridiculous, and used to imitate him with gestures for the entertainment of his wife. Then he noticed that Betty suddenly ceased to appreciate these pleasantries, and that she was often thoughtful and dreamy. The scales fell from his eyes. Yes, she was still considerate, still attentive to her duties; but merely from habit, without the keen pleasure, the enthusiasm of other days. Idiot that he was! She always called him "my dearest" as if she were saying "my dear". She no longer kissed him except on the forehead; she was no longer jealous.

It was he who was jealous now; so desperately jealous, indeed, that he did not know whether to box this Charvel's ears or to choke him. What was he to do? Betty's behaviour was apparently correct in every way; Charvel treated her with great respect and called him, Bierville, Maestro. . . .

And yet hour by hour Betty seemed to be slipping from him. She said one day when he was present: "Charvel, that redhaired woman still writes to you, doesn't she?" and in her eyes was the look of anguish and jealousy of which he was so often the cause in bygone days. And so it became the banal, yet very terrible tragedy—a wife ceasing to love her husband, who was getting old. People were lightly humourous about it, but having played so long in operettas, Bierville took it all very seriously indeed. It is an old saying that actors remain children to the last. Bierville showed no fight, he took it lying down and in tears. And Betty, who was known in theatrical circles for her constant smile, though it had now become stereotyped, found on coming home a broken-spirited, querulous man, with swollen eyes and a red nose . . .

One evening, full of real pity, she kissed him: "Go and see Reybourg tomorrow morning; he has some good news for you." She would not explain further.

Continued on page 110

Continued from page 77

Reybourg was the manager. He welcomed Bierville with a pleasant smile.

"Ah, here is the Moestro. Lookhere, my dear Maestro, we are going to revive Cliquette . . . under the original title."

Original title! The operetta seemed to Bierville a piece that was still quite new, a thing of yesterday. . . .

"As for the part of the young lovers —confound it, man, there's a little too much of you for that! I am giving Beppo to Charvel. You will play the old shepherd."

"Never!"

"Yes, yes, it is settled."

To surrender to a hated rival the part in which he had won his laurels! To don the smock and dirty white wig of the shepherd! To undertake the stage-business which in theatrical slang is known as clowning! Nevertheless, Bierville accepted the part for the sake of being in the company, of being with Betty. Besides, there was one really good scene which he could do something with. On the evening of the dress rehearsal, when he saw Charvel clasp Betty in his arms, he could have sobbed; but that was the moment of his cue. . . .

Charvel's success was phenomenal at the dress rehearsal, but the real test came the following night. It was time for the celebrated duet.

The young tenor failed in a way that no audience pardons. Not big enough for the part, there was a terrible break in his voice, one of those squeaks that set the gallery laughing and draw murmurs from the orchestra stalls. Charvel stood there faltering out the phrases and driving the musical director to distraction.

"Bierville, it's up to you."

Bierville felt that it was one of those moments when happiness is to be won. Looking noble in his shepherd's rags he took the stage, and sang in a voice so confident, so full, so compelling, that the whole house rose to him. . . .

When the veteran singer, intoxicated, half mad with joy, breathing triumph through every pore, got back to his dressing-room, he found Betty waiting for him, very pale and looking as if she had just awakened from a dream. And as the lingering volleys of applause died away she threw her arms around his neck, and whispered:

"My dear old hero, there's nobody like you in all the world!"