Nineteen Impressions/The Empty Theatre

OOKS like dirty weather comin'," remarked my new acquaintance. He shielded his eyes with a stiff, histrionic gesture of his right hand, and stared out over the sea.

I nodded carelessly. I was tired of him. It had amused me for a quarter of an hour to listen to his pretence of familiarity with the place. But I had seen through him before he spoke to me. The new brown brogues, the colours of his blazer, colours that were not reproduced on the band of his straw hat, the scarlet sunburn of his face with its peeling skin, these things among others marked him as the cockney clerk on his fortnight's holiday.

And when he had come and had sat down beside me, his little attempt to assume the air of an habitué had amused me. I had encouraged him, pretended to believe the things that he had approached at first by innuendo. At my encouragement he had grown bolder, had hinted that he was a resident, that he had his own boat on the beach, he had talked of winter storms and shipwrecks, and of how the summer trippers were sometimes rather a nuisance.

A worse actor I never saw; the very gesture with which he shaded his eyes had been obviously learnt in a London theatre. And his ignorance of the technicalities necessary for the part he played was colossal. The porpoises that had come earlier in the week, he referred to as "seals," and he had told me that they were "nearly always there in the winter." He said they "got quite tame then, when there were no trippers." He threw in any word that he fancied would give an air of verisimilitude to his speech. "Smack" and "cutter" were introduced whenever possible, and even such innocent words as "shingle" and "breakwater." But his triumphant phrase was "dirty weather," no doubt he had learnt it from the boatmen. He condescended to explain it for the benefit of my inferential ignorance.

"We call it 'dirty weather' down 'ere," he said, "what you mean by wet weather in London."

I nodded again, I was quite bored with him, and ready to welcome the storm that had been slowly working up from the South.

"Well, I think I'll be gettin' aboard afore it comes," he remarked after a pause. "We get it very 'eavy 'ere sometimes, even in the summer."

I saw that he really intended to go,—I wondered if he were afraid that that blazer of his would not stand a wetting, already the chocolate stripe of it was showing a trifle rusty in places—and although he had wearied me, I bore him no ill-will; I meant to send him back happy to his lodgings.

"You really think it's going to rain, then?" I said pleasantly.

He cast one more glance at the horizon. "Certain," he told me, with the air of an expert. "We shall 'ave dirty weather afore noon."

"Of course you get to know the signs of it, living here all the year round," I said.

"We do," he acknowledged, looking plausibly weatherwise.

"I shall stop here to see the beginning of it," I told him. "I am staying at the hotel, so I shall only have to cross the parade."

"Take my advice, and don't stay out too long," he returned.

I sat on the parade, watching the play of light on the overwhelming masses of cumulus that pushed up so steadily to blot out the sun.

An hour ago the summit of each curve had been white and silver. The clouds had lain then on the distant horizon, a little continent of snow mountains, soft and pretty, explorable land of fairy imagination. Then as the summits rose imperceptibly from the sea, the white of them had been touched with saffron, and the hollows growing blacker showed deeps and abysses of immense vacancy. But saffron toned to copper as the enormous heights towered up towards the zenith and, below, the illusion of solid mountain was lost in a level darkness of slate-black cloud, that showed an unbroken background to the wisps of grey which here and there wonderfully floated across the gloom.

And as I watched and saw the horizon drowned in the impending sky, the shadows came racing towards me across the sea, swift harbingers of the coming storm. I knew that behind that hurrying darkness would come a wall of rain like a white mist that would presently shut me in to a little world bounded by the foam of the breakers that monotonously roared upon the shingle.

Even the thoughtless crowd upon the beach was beginning to move. I heard the shrill call of nursemaids and mothers. The flickering panorama of life on the sands was steadying down to a definable purpose and movement. It seemed to me as if I had been shifted back into the depths of time and seen the unrelated play of individuals absorbed into the broad development of history.

A sense of detachment grew upon me. I felt removed from the minutiae of existence, uplifted and magnificent. I believed that I was one with the storm, and that I could see my own insignificant body still sitting foolishly on the parade, an atom of humanity barely distinguishable from the eager excited people that bustled and clattered past, a dismayed rout flying to sanctuary.

A voice at my side startled and jarred me. I became suddenly conscious of the crash of a wave upon the shingle, of sounds that had been miraculously arrested and that now broke out afresh. I realised also, that my sight of the rout had been a vision of frozen attitudes; now I saw a crowd no longer, but moving individuals. I noticed a little troupe of singers hastily packing their simple properties.

"I too was once an actor," the awakening voice had said. "One of the millions that make up the population of the world."

I did not look up, but some strangeness in the sound of the voice held my attention, some indefinable clearness of utterance that overrode the sullen, reiterant attack of the sea upon the beach, the threat of the advancing squall (I could see a sudden thread of breakers lighting the distance of the shadowed sea), the clatter of hurrying feet upon the parade, the excited cries and interested exchange of comment on the imminence of so remarkable a storm.

A great drop of rain burst on the flags at my feet. Everyone was running. Two of the singers were staggering up the beach carrying their concertinaed harmonium.

"But I acted on the stage as well as off," said the voice.

I turned up my coat collar and sat back. I was determined to see the assault of the storm—that first spatter of raindrops had been no more than a broken, warning volley. I could see the coming of the host a mile away, yet, a solid wall that rushed to obliterate the world.

"I was like all the others," the clear, thin voice went on, speaking, I judged, close to my ear. "I was all ambition to present a figment for myself. On the stage, I did not consider the part I played so much as what the audience thought of my acting of it. Off the stage, I hoped no one guessed that I always posed. I lived to create an illusion, a phantasm.

"I was never honest even with myself. Late at night in my cheap lodging, I would recall each foolish success of the day. I posed before the looking-glass. I wondered what my two worlds thought of me, the little world of my circle of acquaintances, the larger world of the public and the critics that saw me act my tiny parts.

"For a time I was almost satisfied. When I received praise from my fellows, I never paused to consider its insincerity; although I knew that I, myself, returned the formula of false compliment with never a thought of sincerity in my own heart.

"But as my small successes became familiar, I longed for wider recognition. In my dreams before the looking-glass, I heard the crowded theatre tumultuous with applause, I saw a host of white faces and gesticulating hands, I felt the thrill of enormous success. It all seemed so possible to me, so enchantingly possible and near.

"And my chance came almost miraculously. The cards of Fate fell into one of those rare combinations that most of us never see once in our little lives. I found myself promoted over an intermediate understudy and called upon to play the greatest of parts in a great theatre.

"I did not lack confidence. If my heart beat quicker at rehearsal, as I mouthed the wonderful words I was to speak, it was not with fear that I might misinterpret the thought of genius, but with elation at the vision of myself the cynosure of all eyes. I thought only of the effect that I should produce—even as we all do throughout life."

For a moment the voice ceased and I heard again the roar of my familiar world, and then the unknown speaker began again, in the same clear tone, without emphasis or any shade of enthusiasm.

"The theatre was packed from floor to ceiling, another consequence of the strange sequence of events that had lifted me to be the centre of that night's performance. I heard the news as I walked proudly to my dressing-room, and took all the credit to myself. I was exalted. The limit of my consciousness was filled with transcending pride. I strutted and posed before my fellow-actors, so full, then, of congratulation and flattery. I condescended unutterably when I spoke to my dresser.

"When I came on to the stage, it seemed to me that the whole world was cheering. I deigned once, prince as I was, to acknowledge their enthusiasm.

"At first I nearly lost myself in my part. But within me I was aware of a little flickering light of consciousness that perpetually prompted me to judge the effect I was producing. And that light grew brighter and more steady until as I stood in the middle of the stage mechanically giving forth the majestic lines I had never understood, I found myself trying to observe individuals in the dimly seen audience.

"And then the strange thing happened.

"I had focussed the bald head of a man who sat in the front row of the pit; a blot of more livid white against the bank of faces that rose behind it. But even as I tried to fix my eyes on that beacon it vanished, and left in its place a black void of emptiness. I shifted my gaze to the next face and that too disappeared. I closed my eyes for an instant and then dropped my regard to the figures in the more clearly lighted stalls. But there also, I could not fix a single face. Wherever I looked I saw an empty seat. And yet there was no movement of people rising and making their way out. I believed that the people were still there, but that I could not see them.

"Indeed, as I glanced in panic over the house, it seemed to me that I was playing to an empty theatre.

"I turned my back to that awful blank and faced the stage, but as it had been with the audience so was it with my fellow-actors. As I gazed at each of them, he or she faded from my sight.

"I found myself declaiming the lines '… makes mouths at the invisible event.'

"Abruptly I fell into silence, for darkness was coming upon me. One by one the lights went out until I was all alone in that great dark place; only in the middle of the stage one little candle flared and guttered in the draught.

"I discovered then that I was naked. …"

The voice ceased and I looked up, but at that moment the storm burst upon me. The rain battered my face, and the wind sprang upon me with a wild shout and pinned me to the seat. I crouched there crushed and beaten. The rain pierced me, and sea and wind combined to one terrible shriek of fury so that I trembled in fear of the awful instruments of God. I trembled there eternally, shaken by every gust, shattered by every fresh assault of hail. I thought that it was impossible I could live until the storm abated.

But gradually the horror lessened. The rain drove less cruelly, the wind permitted me a little ease of movement.

"It is passing," I said to myself, and even as I spoke it had almost passed.

And presently I was able to look up, to wipe the water from my face, to open my eyes.

There was no one on the seat beside me; the beach was empty. I was alone in a deserted world.

But on the horizon I saw below the darkness a faint band of yellow light.

Within an hour the curtain of cloud would be lifted and the play begin again.

1914.