“It seems to me,” said the tenor, “that if you could write an opera round an interesting love story, you would score a success. Of course, let there be plenty of humour, but reduce it to its proper place. As a support, it is excellent; when it is made the entire structure, it is apt to be tiresome—at least, that is my view.”
I replied with sincerity that there seemed to me much truth in what he said.
“Of course, so far as I am personally concerned,” went on the tenor, “it is immaterial. I draw the same salary whether I'm on the stage five minutes or an hour. But when you have a man of my position in the cast, and give him next to nothing to do—well, the public are disappointed.”
“Most naturally,” I commented.
“The lover,” whispered the tenor, noticing the careless approach towards us of the low comedian, “that's the character they are thinking about all the time—men and women both. It's human nature. Make your lover interesting—that's the secret.”
Waiting for the horses to be put to, I became aware of the fact that I was standing some distance from the others in company with a tall, thin, somewhat oldish-looking man. He spoke in low, hurried tones, fearful evidently of being overheard and interrupted.
“You'll forgive me, Mr. Kelver,” he said—“Trevor, Marmaduke Trevor. I play the Duke of Bayswater in the second act.”
I was unable to recall him for the moment; there were quite a number of small parts in the second act. But glancing into his sensitive face, I shrank from wounding him.
“A capital performance,” I lied. “It has always amused me.”
He flushed with pleasure. “I made a great success some years ago,” he said, “in America with a soda-water syphon, and it occurred to me that if you could, Mr. Kelver, in a natural sort of way, drop in a small part leading up to a little business with a soda-water syphon, it might help the piece.”