In the great days of the English stage people didn’t go to see the plays, they went to see the players.
It didn’t matter what Kemble and Mrs Siddons acted.
The public went to see them.
And even now, though I don’t deny that if the play’s wrong you’re dished, I do contend that if the play’s right, it’s the actors the public go to see, not the play.’
‘I don’t think anyone can deny that,’ said Julia.
‘All an actress like Julia wants is a vehicle.
Give her that and she’ll do the rest.’
Julia gave the young man a delightful, but slightly deprecating smile.
‘You mustn’t take my husband too seriously.
I’m afraid we must admit that he’s partial where I’m concerned.’
‘Unless this young man is a much bigger fool than I think him he must know that there’s nothing in the way of acting that you can’t do.’
‘Oh, that’s only an idea that people have got because I take care never to do anything but what I can do.’
Presently Michael looked at his watch.
‘I think when you’ve finished your coffee, young man, we ought to be going.’
The boy gulped down what was left in his cup and Julia rose from the table.
‘You won’t forget my photograph?’
‘I think there are some in Michael’s den.
Come along and we’ll choose one.’
She took him into a fair-sized room behind the dining-room.
Though it was supposed to be Michael’s private sitting-room—‘a fellow wants a room where he can get away by himself and smoke his pipe’—it was chiefly used as a cloak-room when they had guests.
There was a noble mahogany desk on which were signed photographs of George V and Queen Mary.
Over the chimney-piece was an old copy of Lawrence’s portrait of Kemble as Hamlet.
On a small table was a pile of typescript plays.
The room was surrounded by bookshelves under which were cupboards, and from one of these Julia took a bundle of her latest photographs.
She handed one to the young man.
‘This one is not so bad.’
‘It’s lovely.’
‘Then it can’t be as like me as I thought.’
‘But it is.
It’s exactly like you.’
She gave him another sort of smile, just a trifle roguish; she lowered her eyelids for a second and then raising them gazed at him for a little with that soft expression that people described as her velvet look.
She had no object in doing this. She did it, if not mechanically, from an instinctive desire to please.
The boy was so young, so shy, he looked as if he had such a nice nature, and she would never see him again, she wanted him to have his money’s worth; she wanted him to look back on this as one of the great moments of his life.
She glanced at the photograph again.
She liked to think she looked like that.
The photographer had so posed her, with her help, as to show her at her best.
Her nose was slightly thick, but he had managed by his lighting to make it look very delicate, not a wrinkle marred the smoothness of her skin, and there was a melting look in her fine eyes.
‘All right.
You shall have this one.
You know I’m not a beautiful woman, I’m not even a very pretty one; Coquelin always used to say I had the beaut? du diable.
You understand French, don’t you?’
‘Enough for that.’
‘I’ll sign it for you.’
She sat at the desk and with her bold, flowing hand wrote: Yours sincerely, Julia Lambert.
2.
WHEN the two men had gone she looked through the photographs again before putting them back.
‘Not bad for a woman of forty-six,’ she smiled.
‘They are like me, there’s no denying that.’
She looked round the room for a mirror, but there wasn’t one.
‘These damned decorators.