"Of course, I'm quite without experience. I think you're rash in
crediting me with a dramatic instinct. I'm not sure that I even know
what you mean. But I'll look through it again and see if I can be of
any use."
"Do! and, mind you, do with it as you like; turn it inside out; cut it
to pieces; anything! I know you'll make a first-rate thing of it. And I
tell you what, we'll announce ourselves as joint authors."
In a weak moment--he certainly had very seductive eyes!--I yielded what
amounted to a tacit consent. I read his play again, and came to the
conclusion that while, as it stood, it was absolute rubbish, it yet
contained that of which something might be made. I re-wrote the thing
from beginning to end. What a time I had while I was in the throes of
composition! and what a time everyone else had who came within a mile
of me! I was scarcely on speaking terms with a single creature, and
when anyone tried to speak to me I felt like biting them.
When it was finished Mr Spencer was in ecstasies.
"It's splendid! magnificent! there's nothing like it on the London
stage!" I admit that I thought that that was possible. "There's no
mistake about it, not the slightest shred of a scintilla of doubt,
we've written a masterpiece!"
The "we" was good, and as for the "masterpiece," it was becoming
plainer and plainer that Mr Frank Spencer was one of those persons who
are easily pleased; which, as that sort is exceedingly rare, was, after
all, a fault on the right side.
"Everybody," he went on, "will be enraptured with it; they won't be
able to help it; they're absolutely bound to be."
I wished I felt as certain of that as he did. Indeed I doubted so much
if rapture would represent the state of mind of a certain gentleman
that, in the daily letter which I always wrote to him, I never even
hinted that I was engaged on a work of collaboration; though, for a
time, that work filled my mind to the extinction of everything else.
"Now," continued my co-author, "the thing is to cast it, and, mind you,
this will want casting, this will; no round pegs in square holes. We
don't want to have a fine play spoilt by anyone incapable; everyone
will have to be as good as we can get."
Although he spoke as if it would be a task of the most delicate
kind--and, for my part, I did not see how, in the neighbourhood of West
Marden, we were going to cast it at all; yet, in actual practice he
seemed to me to make nothing of the matter. When he came with what he
called the "proposed cast" I was really amazed.
"Do you seriously mean, Mr Spencer, that these are the people whom you
suggest should act in our play?"
"Certainly. I've thought this thing out right to the bed-rock, and I
assure you that we couldn't do better. Of course, you must remember
that I shall do a good bit myself. I fancy you'll be surprised when you
see me act. I haven't much voice, but it isn't voice, you know, that's
wanted in this sort of thing; and though I can't say that I'm a regular
dancer I can throw my feet about in a way that'll tickle 'em. And then
there's you--you'll be our winning card; the star of the evening.
You'll carry off the thing on your own shoulders, with me to help you.
The others, they'll just fill in the picture, as it were."
"I do hope, Mr Spencer, that you won't rely on me too much. I've told
you, again and again, that I've never acted in my life, and have not
the faintest notion if I can or can't."
Putting his hands into his trouser pockets he tried to patronise me as
if he were a wiseacre of two hundred instead of a mere child of twenty.
"My dear Miss Wilson, I know an actress when I see one."
"You have an odd way of expressing yourself. I hope that you don't mean
that when you see me you see an actress; because I assure you that I
trust that you do nothing of the kind."
I wondered what George would think and say if he heard that
hare-brained young simpleton accusing me of looking like an actress.
"You give my words a wrong construction. I only meant to express my
profound conviction that in your hands everything will be perfectly
safe."
"I can only say, Mr Spencer, that I hope you're right, because when I
think of some of the people whose names you have put upon this piece of
paper I have my doubts. I see you have Mrs Lascelles to act Dora
Egerton, who is supposed to be a young girl, and who has to both sing
and dance. I should imagine that Mrs Lascelles never sang a note; her
speaking voice is as hoarse as a crow's. And as for dancing, why, she
must weigh I don't know what, and is well past forty."
"There's nothing else Mrs Lascelles could act."
"Nothing else she could act! Act! I'm perfectly convinced that she
can't act anything."
Mr Spencer winked, which was a reprehensible habit--one of several
which I was meaning to tell him I objected to.
"She'll take two rows of reserved seats."
"Indeed, is that her qualification? Then am I to take it that the
qualifications of all the rest of the people whom you have down on your
piece of paper are of a similar kind?"
His manner immediately became confidential; he was very fond of
becoming confidential. It was a fondness which I was commencing to
perceive that it might become advisable to check before it went too
far. There were moments when I never knew what he was going to say. I
felt that he might say anything.
"You see, between ourselves, on the strict QT, it's like this; if we
want to make the show the howling success it ought to be, what we've
got to do is to see that everyone in the cast represents money."
"I don't understand."