What shall Cordelia do? Love, and be silent.
It was Louisiana in walk and bearing,—the swagger from Iole, Kansas,—but the voice was rich and sweet, with an unpremeditated, girlish modulation that suggested depths of feeling unsuspected.
The audience, puzzled, was respectful through Cordelia’s humble replies, until the young actress essayed her first long speech:
You have begot me, bred me, loved me; I Return those duties back as are right fit . . . Haply when I shall wed, That lord must take my—my—
Louisiana stumbled at the word, then brought out triumphantly:
There was a ripple of amusement. Miss Delacourt heard it, flushed defiance in an un-Cordelia-like manner, and tore through the concluding lines. She got on well enough in the short responses, but the critics were waiting—as was Brainard, with trepidation—to see what the girl would make of her next long speech.
Alas! Miss Louisiana sailed in, as she would have said, to paint the lines. She drew herself up in all her girlish dignity.
I yet beseech your majesty, If for I want that glib and oily part To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend I’ll do’t before I speak—that you make known—
A frightened look came over the girl’s face. “She is rattled,” Brainard said to himself, “and will break!”
Evidently the audience thought so, too, and there was a painful hush, in which MacNaughton’s efforts to whisper the words from the side could be heard.
“It is no—no—oh, hang it all, how does the talk go?” Louisiana muttered audibly, swinging on her heel toward the wings.
There was a roar of laughter from the house. With one contemptuous glance at the audience, Cordelia walked deliberately into the wings, and, returning in fierce haste, finished her speech. As she made her exit at the end of the scene, she jerked the train of her dress and gave it a kick in good vaudeville style. The galleries caught fire, and began to stamp and hoot. Louisiana turned and distinctly made a face, as a child might, at her tormentors. The applause was furious. It lasted so long that to resume the play with any degree of seriousness seemed utterly impossible.
At the end of the act, the manager pushed the unwilling Cordelia out upon the stage. She made a sulky little bow and another face. There were calls and whistles. She was a hit. But _Lear_!