The Babe hesitated.
“I don’t want to interfere,” he said, “but certainly there is room for improvement in Cassandra. And I don’t want Mackay to think I am meddling with him. I would much sooner not.”
“I think Mackay wishes it,” said Propert, “only he didn’t like saying so.”
The Babe shrugged his shoulders.
“I didn’t gather that from his manner, but if you can assure me of it, I will do my best with her.”
Dr. Propert heaved a sigh of relief.
“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” he said magnanimously. “We have too many stage directors. We all of us really want you to manage the whole thing. Some one will say your part this afternoon—I will myself—if you will take the rehearsal alone. Besides, the architecture of the palace is all wrong, and I have found a fifth century statue with sandals on. There is a cast of it in the Museum, and I must get it copied. We have our hands too full.”
So that afternoon Dr. Propert read out Clytemnestra’s part, and the two other stage directors sat meekly in corners, and busied themselves with sandals, and from the centre of the stalls the Babe issued his orders, while Dr. Propert read his part in a fine sonorous voice and in a modern Greek accent, which made the Iambic lines, so said Mackay, who had made a special study of ancient metres, sound like minor Galliambics. Cassandra exhibited mild surprise when the Babe stopped her gurgling, and when he forbade her to ogle the place where the Ophicleide should be, she felt like an unanchored ship, drifting helplessly about among quicksands. So the Babe reserved her for private instruction, and told Agamemnon not to go like Agag.
There was only a fortnight more before the performance, and the Babe worked like a horse, and like Hans Müller made miracles. The casual visitor to his rooms was likely to be confronted with a raging prophetess or a credulous king, in front of whom stood the Babe showing them how to rage or how to express the extremes of credulity. Dr. Propert found enough to do in superintending the stage properties and the second stage director became a sort of benignant elderly Mercury to the Babe. Mackay alone held slightly aloof.
On the night of the first performance, there was a thick, palpable atmosphere of nerves abroad, like a London fog. Agamemnon kept repeating his first line over and over again and wiping his hands on his himation, and tried to remember that, whatever he did, he must not clear his throat before he began to speak. The calm and prosy Argive elders put by their prosiness and became peppery; Dr. Propert flew about with altar wreaths in his hands, which he deposited carefully in safe places and then forgot where he had put them. Even the placid, moon-faced Cassandra pricked her fingers violently with her fifth-century brooch. As for the watchman it was a serious matter for doubt whether his shaking knees would ever take him safely down his somewhat ricketty watch-tower. The Babe alone, on whom really the whole responsibility as well as the heaviest part rested, towered head and shoulders above the nervous fog, and was absolutely his own silly self. He caught up Agamemnon three minutes before the curtain was to rise and tried to induce him to dance a pas de quatre out of the palace, and when Agamemnon trembled so that there was imminent risk of the sandals coming off, let alone dancing, danced a pas seul himself. He set Mr. Sykes upon the altar and crowned him with roses. He said he couldn’t remember a word of his part, and proposed to act the execution of Mary Queen of Scots instead or send the audience empty away. He peeped through the spy-hole of the curtain and said the conductor hadn’t come, which sent Dr. Propert flying round to see what had happened, whereas he had been in his place for ten minutes. In fact, he crowded, as he said, into five minutes of glorious life, the fatuities of years. The effect of all this was that the rest of the company were so completely taken up with deploring his behaviour, that they quite forgot to be nervous, which was precisely the end which the Babe had in view.