In a very little while I was again walking by the Bellman House,
completely togged out in new apparel from head to heel.
Mackworth was still standing there, and he laughed with astonishment at
the lightning-quick change in my appearance....
"You're a card, Gregory!"
He afterward repeated the story with gusto....
* * * * *
The day before the night of our first performance at the Bowersby Opera
House, Jack Travers, always turning up, came to me with a smile of faint
sarcasm on his face--
"How's the great actor, eh?"
"Don't be an ass, Jack!"
"I've got a good proposition to make for advertising the show--and
there'll be a lot of fun in it, too....
"Suppose we kidnap you, take you out somewhere in the country--then,
after a day or so--find you bound, in a farm house....
"Of course it would compel them to put off the performances for a few
days ... but look at the excitement; and the stories in the papers!...
afterwards you could go on tour through all the principal cities of
Kansas."
The idea fascinated me, in spite of myself....
"But how about Dineen? He'd go nearly crazy!"
"There's where a lot of the fun would come in. And to see the way Gertie
Black, the elocution teacher, would carry on!..."
But after a long pause of temptation I shook my head in negation of the
suggestion....
It _would_ be a lark, but I had pledged Dineen that I would give him no
more trouble with my vagaries....
And, besides, I didn't trust Jack Travers--once they had me in their
power, he and his kidnappers might hide me away for several weeks ... to
"bust up" the play entirely; would, I wisely reflected, be, to Travers,
even a greater joke than merely to delay its production.
And I wanted this time to show my enemies that I could be depended on in
affairs of moment....
* * * * *
We had to have recourse to Kansas City for our costumes. And we were
more fortunate in them than the cast of _She Stoops to Conquer_ had been
the year before....
Costumes had then been rented for them which left the children
mysteriously itching, driven to the inexplicable necessity of scratching
in embarrassing localities....
The poor girls especially were terror-stricken ... and many of the boys
were too innocent to conjecture what was the matter ... at first they
thought that the rented costumes had imparted some obscure skin disease
to the entire company ... and word was conveyed to the costuming firm
that they were to be sued....
But when it was discovered that an indecent sort of vermin was the
cause, the case was dropped....
Suit could not be conducted on such grounds....
But the joke was passed around and caused considerable merriment among
the wise ones.
* * * * *
The only thing I allowed the elocution teacher and directress to do was
to put on my make-up for me ... including the sticking to my face of a
close Van Dyke beard....
I refused to avail myself of her instruction for acting, as I perceived
that was all bosh....
* * * * *
The curtain went up, I sitting there, the orchestra softly breathing
Massenet's _Elegy_--meant to be the music sent from the spirit world,
the melody that I, Iistral, heard, whenever my dead mistress was
present....
The orchestra finished the melody. It stopped and left the house in
expectancy.
A mistake had been made on the entrance-cue of little Lisel, my
child-nephew.
There I sat, in my strange robe, like a bath-robe, with stars cast over
it, waiting.