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.




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