Massonville 1878
The following day, Juliet went through her chores distractedly. She had not yet formulated an entire plan, but she knew she had to get to James Honeycutt before Lavinia did. She knocked on the door of his office several times during the afternoon, but he was never inside. The rest of the company went home to have supper, but she lingered at the theater, continuing her watch.
The sun set, supper was served in the restaurant, and the other actors returned to get ready for the night's performance, but James's office was still empty. Juliet was becoming frantic. One worry crowded out all others: had Lavinia already spoken to her stepson? She had said she was going to wait until the evening's performance was finished, but she could have changed her mind. Juliet knocked on the office door and could have screamed in frustration when there was still no answer.
To add to her troubles, the elderly stage manager, who would be responsible for single-handedly running the evening's performance backstage, seemed to be unwell. She helped him with the setting of the drops and the gaslights—tasks that would have been done by carpenters and set-shifters in a properly staffed theater—and told him to take a walk outside to revive himself. Meanwhile she ran backstage to call the half hour herself. As she passed by the stage door, she looked into the narrow hallway just in time to see James finally going into his office. But it was too late to talk to him; she had to get into costume because she was on in the first act.
However, she was free for all of the second act. It started with Romie and the Heavy Woman in two long scenes, and then there was a duel with the Juvenile Man, followed by a five-page monologue for her poor brother. Romie always approached this speech with loathing, although it invariably went well with the house. The monologue brought down the second-act curtain. Since Juliet's character was offstage for all of this, she would have more than enough time to speak with James.
Under normal circumstances, once a play had started, Juliet liked to sit quietly when she was not onstage. Other actors whiled away their free time with gossip and card games in the greenroom, but that was not her way. The actor Tommaso Salvini once said that he walked into his characters before every performance and stayed in them until the end, and, while she would not have dreamed of comparing herself with that great man, she felt as he did.
But on this night, as soon as the curtain came down for the first entr'acte, she made her way to James's office. Her role in the play was that of a courtesan, a piece of incredible good luck as far as she was concerned. Her costume was made with an especially low décolletage, and she had applied her rouge with a deliberately heavy hand to further coarsen her appearance. If James Honeycutt was like most ordinary people, he had preconceived notions about the character and morality of theater folk. She intended to play on those prejudices.
She could not have said James was pleased to see her when she walked boldly into his office, but he greeted her with civility. Clearly, Lavinia had not yet spoken to him—another piece of good luck. He did not offer Juliet a seat, but she sat anyway, smiling genially and watching him as he settled himself in his large green chair. He had been drinking, that much was obvious from the careful way he moved, but in what condition was he? If certain inhibitions had been loosened, he might not respond with the righteous indignation she needed. However, there was nothing she could do but go ahead.
“I have here a list of requirements, ” she said as she reached down into the front of her gown for the piece of paper she had put there. Had anyone done that bit of business off the stage since the Restoration?
“Requirements? Forgive me, but I don't understand …” In spite of himself James's eyes were on her hand and bodice. However, there was more than a little disgust in those eyes. Good, she would not be forced to call for help before she'd had a chance to put her scheme into effect.
“Requirements for when my brother and I take over the theater.” She pulled out a heavily scented piece of notepaper on which she had scrawled the most extravagant requests she could think of, and laid it in front of him. The wealthiest theater manager in New York would have been scandalized by the cost implied. “We will want an orchestra for the incidental music in the theater, and one for the lobby in the front. I will need a maid to dress me, my brother will also have his own personal dresser, and I think two additional dressers for the rest of the company will suffice. Also, we must have at least five carpenters and set-shifters, as well as a gas man, and a property master.”
James seemed incapable of speech.
“The lobby and the theater auditorium are quite hideous. We must redecorate them.” It was actually hard to say that, given the beauty of the opera house. “And the backstage is unsafe. The riggings, for example, have been put in haphazardly.” That last was true. The riggings had been reworked to accommodate some additional drops required by the last troupe that had performed in the theater, and the work had been done cheaply, without thought. The rope used for lowering and raising the curtain was located at the front of one side of the stage, while the rope that operated the trapdoor was at the front of the opposite side. The ropes used to fly in the drops were set on either side of the stage in no logical order, and none of the ropes were marked, which was an invitation for mishaps. It was only a question of time before a company of actors playing Julius Caesar would find themselves in front of a setting for East Lynne.
“It will cost dearly to straighten it out, I'm afraid,” Juliet went on. This was not true. All that was needed to avoid a disaster was to tie differently colored flags to the rigging ropes to avoid confusion. But James's face had gone red in a most gratifying way. “I know the expenses will be high, but Romie and I are artists and—”
The man suddenly seemed to find his tongue. “What is … this nonsense? Did you not hear me say there will be no theater standing here in a month? And as for you and your brother taking it over …” His look suggested he smelled something rotting.
Now was her cue to play confusion, which she did extremely well. “Oh mercy…. Did Lavvy not tell you? But she said …” She looked around the room wildly, then snatched up the piece of notepaper. “There is no necessity for you to see this yet. ” She paused with the paper in hand, looking at it as if thinking, and counted slowly to three. Then she favored him with a hapless smile and thrust it at him. “But the cat's out of the bag now, and perhaps that's not bad. Since we are going to be related.”
“What?” James Honeycutt could roar almost as loudly as Papa.
“Why, Lavvy and my brother, you know. Surely you must have seen how it is with them. I must say I have never seen Romie manage so quickly to— Oh!” She stopped as if seeing his outrage for the first time.
“Are you telling me that your brother and my stepmother … ?”
Now was the time to play alarm. She got out of her chair and began sidling to the door in the hangdog manner of Charles Dickens's character Uriah Heep—if Heep had been female. “I think you should speak to Lavvy—Lavinia, that is.”
“I am speaking to you!”
Babbling came next, which, she'd been told, was another of her better effects. “They are betrothed, and I assure you Romie is sincere. This is a very different case from that silly girl in Cincinnati, or those others who— but never mind that. And as for the mill you wanted, Lavvy says you will get over that. It is very exciting to manage a theater and I am sure you will enjoy it.”
“Manage a theater? Me?”
“A theater company, I should have said. You already have the theater. It may not become profitable for a few years, but one learns to get by.”
“Are you telling me that my stepmother has agreed to this?”
Juliet tittered. “She wishes to please my brother, you see. As she is to become his wife.”
James looked as if he were about to have an apoplectic attack. It was time to make her exit. She picked up the piece of paper, which sat unread on his desk, and, making the gesture as vulgar as she could, she stuffed it down her bodice. “There will be time enough after the wedding to talk about our new theater,” she said. “And the expenses.”
On that nearly perfect line, she let herself out of the office.
Out in the lobby, Juliet couldn't decide if she wanted to get as far away from the opera house as her feet would take her, or dash into the restaurant and order champagne to toast herself. But she could do neither. She had to go up to her dressing room and wait for Act Two to end. She still didn't have a final plan for saving Romie—and herself—from his madness, but le bon Dieu provided for tomorrow if one provided for today. And today she had made a good beginning.
She was starting for the backstage when the restaurant door opened and Lavinia came into the lobby. She was dressed in her decorous half-mourning mauve gown again, and from the way she paused to brace herself before walking toward James's office, it seemed that she had decided not to wait until after the play ended to speak with him. Abandoning all thoughts of her dressing room, Juliet hid in the shadows behind a pillar to watch what would unfold.
At the office door Lavinia hesitated again. She was nervous—that was clear. She smoothed her dress over her waist, dabbed at her face with a cambric handkerchief, and patted at her already perfect hair. Finally, she pulled back her shoulders, fixed a bright smile on her lovely lips, and walked into the lion's den.
Juliet ran over to eavesdrop. The door was too thick for her to hear words, but soon there was the satisfying sound of angry voices shouting. Lavinia would not be bringing her stepson to her way of thinking anytime soon. Pleased with her handiwork, Juliet moved away from the office door, just as it flew open—barely giving her time to retreat behind her pillar again.
“I will tell Romie!” Lavinia shouted over her shoulder as she ran out of the office. “We will find a way!” The office door slammed behind her as she raced across the hallway, opened the stage door, and went in. Juliet followed quickly behind her.
The backstage was empty. The end of the act was approaching and, anticipating Romie's monologue, the rest of the cast had retired upstairs to their dressing rooms or the greenroom. On the stage, the first drop had been flown in, and Romie was standing in front of it staring off into space, gathering himself for his long speech and giving the audience a chance to catch their breath—the calm before the storm. Behind the drop, a rustle of silk indicated that Lavinia was at the back of the stage waiting for him to come off. From the sound of it, she was pacing back and forth. Romie moved downstage center and launched into his speech. Suddenly, across the stage, Juliet saw potential disaster. The stage manager was seated near the curtain rope. But either he had not heeded her about taking a restorative walk outside, or it had had a different effect from the one she'd intended, for he had dozed off. From his open mouth and heaving chest, she could see it was only a matter of time before he started snoring. More important, unless he awakened in time to ring down the curtain at the end of the act, it would stay up after Romie had ended his monologue and thrown himself onto the stage floor in a prostration of grief. Leaving her brother with the proverbial egg on his face.
Moving carefully, Juliet inched her way around the gas jets of the lights that were set in the front wing, until she was as far onstage as she dared go. She tried to signal Romie, but his back was to her. She was so absorbed by the imminent disaster that she did not hear the side stage door open and close. Nor did she hear, at first, that someone was behind her, tugging on the rigging. When she finally turned, she saw that James Honeycutt had grasped the rope that operated the trapdoor, and was pulling it. What possessed the man? She tried to move closer to him but she was blocked by the wing lights between them. For a moment James straightened up and glared at her brother on the stage, who was still facing away from them. She could barely make out the words James muttered under his breath, “… be damned … if you … act on my stage.” James was trying to bring down the curtain so Romie couldn't complete the act. But he had the wrong rope! He pulled it again, but the counterweight held it in place. Onstage, Romie heard the sound, and hesitated for a second, but then he went on. Juliet mouthed the word “trapdoor” to James, but he was not looking at her, and began loosening the counterweight. Once the rope was free he could trigger the trap by mistake. Juliet started working her way around the wing lights to reach him. That was when she heard a rustle of silk behind the drop, the sound indicating that someone was back there, pacing back and forth. Where the trapdoor was.
Afterward, Juliet told herself it took her so long to get to James because her skirt was too big to get around the gas jets easily. She told herself she hadn't shouted out because a lifetime of training had taught her never to do so during a performance. She told herself she was not sure she had heard that telltale rustle.
James triggered the trapdoor.
Lavinia's scream filled the entire opera house as she fell. Onstage, Romie froze. The stage manager woke with a start. In the house, whispered rumblings began. James was still holding the rope as if in a trance. Juliet reached him and grabbed it from him. She could smell the liquor on his breath. Obviously he'd had another glass or two in the time since she had played her little farce with him. Would he have done this if his judgment had not been so impaired? It didn't matter; he sobered up quickly.
“I meant to ring down the curtain,” he said, his eyes big and wild. “I did not intend that your brother …” Then, as the realization came to him in all its horror, he gasped, “My God, what have I done?”
“Don't think about that now, ” Juliet whispered as she pushed him away from the riggings, against the side wall of the theater.
“Lavinia?” he managed to get out.
“I'll see to her. Don't move,” she said.
A portion of the cellar under the stage was used to store the few set pieces owned by the opera house, and there was a table against one wall where the props were kept. But most of the area was an empty space with a concrete floor. The distance from the stage to that floor was about fifteen feet, with nothing to break a fall. However, there was a ladder under the trapdoor that Juliet quickly climbed down. As she went, she heard the sounds of the audience getting to its feet. The stage manager was bringing down the curtain. Soon the backstage would be crowded with people. They would want to know what had happened.
Lavinia lay at the foot of the ladder. Her perfume seemed to fill the cellar. Juliet stood over the broken body for what felt like a very long time. Above her she could hear the sound of people running. Soon someone would discover that James was backstage. They would find a man who was in a state of shock, incapable of defending himself … a man who would need her help. And suddenly, with a bright and fearful clarity, she had the rest of her plan.
Le bon Dieu will provide.
Juliet looked down at Lavinia and knew what she must do.