YES, “Obedience” is a fine play. I'm glad they've revived it. Did you
know that the first time it was produced, Morgan Edwards played the part
of Dunbar? It's rather an odd story.
I never think of Edwards without remembering the dark, creaky stairs in
that boarding-house on Seventy-third Street. That was where I first met
him. We had a comical habit of always encountering on the stairs. We
would pass with that rather ridiculous murmur and sidling obeisance
of two people who don't know each other but want to be polite. I was
interested in him at once. Even on the shadowy stairway I could see that
he had a fine head, and there was something curiously attractive about
his pale, preoccupied face. There was a touch of the unworldly about
him, and a touch of the tragic, too. You know how you divine things
about people. “He has troubles of his own” was the banal phrase that
came into my mind. Also there was something queerly familiar about him.
I wondered if I had seen Him before, or only imagined him. I was busy
writing, at that time, and my mind was peopled with energetic phantoms.
The thought struck me that perhaps he was someone I had invented for a
story, but had never given life to. I wondered, was this pale and rather
reproachful spectre going to haunt me until the tale was written? At any
rate, whatever the story was, I had forgotten it.
One day, as I creaked up the first flight, I saw that he was standing at
the head of the stairs, waiting for me to pass. A door was open
behind him, and there was light enough to see him clearly. Tall, thin,
beautifully shaven on a fine angular jaw that would not be easy to
shave, I was surprised to see an air of sudden cheerfulness about him
that was almost incongruous. Having thought of him only as a sort
of melancholy hallucination living on a dingy stairway, it was quite
startling to see him with his face lit up like a lyric poet's, a glow of
mundane exhilaration in his eyes. For the first time in our meetings
he looked as though to speak to him would not break in upon his secret
thoughts. He was the kind of chap, you know, who usually looked as
though he was busy thinking. I remember what I said because it was so
inane. Some people don't like to cross on the stairs. I looked up as I
came to the turn in the steps, and said, “Superstitious?” He smiled and
said “No, I guess not!”
“Only in the literal sense, at this moment,” I said. An absurd remark,
and a horrible pun which I regretted at once, for I thought I would have
to explain it. Nothing more humiliating than having to explain a bad
pun. But if I didn't explain it, it would seem rude. He looked puzzled,
then his face lit up charmingly. “Superstitious--standing above you, eh?
I never thought of the meaning before!”
I came up the last steps. “Pardon the vile pun,” I said. Then I knew
where I had seen him before, and recognized him. “Aren't you Morgan
Edwards?” I asked. “Yes,” he said.
“I thought so. I remember you in 'After Dinner'. I wrote the notice in
the _Observer_ .”
“By Jove, did you? I _am_ glad to meet you. I think that was the nicest
thing any one ever said.” His gaunt and pensive face showed a quick
flash of that direct and honest friendliness which is so appealing. We
found that we were both living on the fourth floor. For similar reasons,
undoubtedly. I'm afraid he thought, at first, that I was a dramatic
critic of standing. Afterward I explained that the “After Dinner” notice
had been only a fluke. I was on the _Observer_ when the show was put on,
and one of the dramatic men happened to be ill.
Wait a minute: give me a chance! I'll tell it exactly as it came to
me, in snips and shreds. At first I didn't pay much attention. I had
problems of my own that summer. You know what a fourth-floor hall
bedroom is in hot weather. I had given up my newspaper job, and was
trying to finish a novel. I couldn't work late at night, when it was
cool, because if I kept my typewriter going after nine-thirty the old
maid in the next room used to pound on the partition. I didn't get on
very well with the work, and the money was running low. Every now and
then I would meet Edwards in the hall. He looked ill and worried, and
I used to think there was a touching pathos in his careful neatness.
My own habits run the other way--my Palm Beach suit was a wreck, I
remember--but Edwards was always immaculate. I could see--having made
it my business to observe details--how cunningly he had mended his cuffs
and soft collars. Poor devil! I used to see him going out about noon,
with his cane and Panama hat. I dare say he scrubbed his hat with his
toothbrush. Summer is a hard time for an actor who hasn't had a job
all spring. Of course there are the pictures, and summer stock, but I
gathered that he had been ill, and then had turned down several offers
of that sort on account of something coming along that he had great
hopes for. I remembered his really outstanding work in “After Dinner”,
that satiric comedy that fell dead the winter before. Most of the
critics gave it a good roasting, but knowing what I do now I expect the
real trouble was poor direction. Fagan was the director, and what did he
know of sophisticated comedy? As I say, I had reviewed the piece for
the _Observer_, and had been greatly struck by Edwards's playing. Not a
leading part, but exquisitely done.
But just at that time I was absorbed in my own not-too-successful
affairs. For several years I had been saying to myself that I would do
great stuff if I could only get away from the newspaper grind for a few
months. And then, when I had saved up five hundred dollars, and buried
myself there on Seventy-third Street to write, I couldn't seem to make
any headway. I got half through the novel, and then saw that it was
paltry stuff. It was flashy, spurious, and raw. One warm evening I was
sitting at my window, smoking mournfully and watching some girls who
were laughing and talking in a big apartment house that loomed over our
lodgings like an ocean liner beside a tugboat. There was a tap at the
door. Edwards asked if he could come in. I was surprised, and pleased.
He kept very much to himself.
“Glad to see you,” I said. “Sit down and have a pipe.”
“I didn't want to intrude,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you
something. You're a literary man. Do you know anything about Arthur
Sampson?”
I had to confess that I had never heard the name. No one had, at that
time, you remember.
“He's written a play,” Edwards said. “A perfectly lovely piece of work.
I've got a part in it. By heaven, it seems too good to be true--after a
summer like this: illness, the actors' strike, and all that--to get into
something so fine. I've just read the whole script. I'm so keen about
it, I'm eager to know who the author is. I thought perhaps you might
know something about him.”
“I guess he's a new man,” I said. “What's the play called?”
“'Obedience.' You know, I've never had such a stroke of luck--it's as if
the part had been written for me.”
“Splendid,” I said, and I was honestly pleased to hear of his good
fortune. “Is it the lead?”
“Oh, no. Of course they want a big name for that. Brooks is the man. My
part is only the foil--provides the contrast, you know--on the payroll
as well as on the stage.” He laughed, a little cynically.
“Who's producing it?”
“Upton.”
“You don't mean to tell me Upton's got anything good?” I knew little
enough about theatrical matters, but even outsiders know Upton's sort
of producing, which mostly consists of musical shows where an atrocious
libretto is pulled through by an opulent chorus and plenty of eccentric
dancing. “A chorus that outstrips them all” was one of his favourite
advertising slogans.
“That's why I was wondering about the author, Sampson. This must be his
first, or he'd never have given it to Upton. Or is Upton going to turn
over a new leaf?”
“The only leaves Upton is likely to turn over are figleaves,” I said,
brutally. Upton's previous production had been called “The Figleaf
Lady”.
“That's the amazing part of it,” said Edwards. “This thing is
really exquisite. It is beautifully written: quiet, telling, nothing
irrelevant, not a false note. What will happen to it in Upton's hands,
God knows. But he seems enthusiastic. He's a likable cutthroat: let's
hope for the best. You're busy--forgive me for breaking in.”
*****
Well, of course some of you have seen “Obedience” since that time, and
you know that what Edwards told me was true. The play _was_ lovely; not
even Upton could kill it altogether. It was Sampson's first. Have any of
you read it in printed form? It reads as well as it plays. And the part
that Edwards was cast for--Dunbar--is, to any competent spectator, the
centre of the action. You remember the lead: the cold, hard, successful
hypocrite; and then Dunbar, the blundering, kindly simpleton whose
forlorn attempts to create happiness for all about him only succeed in
bringing disaster to the one he loves best. It's a great picture of a
fine mind and heart, a life of rich, generous possibilities, frittered
and wasted and worn out by the needless petty obstinacies of destiny.
And all the tragedy (this was the superb touch) because the wretched
soul never had courage enough to be unkind. What was it St. Paul, or
somebody, said about not being disobedient to the heavenly vision?
Dunbar, in the play, was obedient enough, and his heavenly vision made
his life a hell. It was the old question of conflicting loyalties. How
are you going to solve that?
I suppose the tragic farce is the most perfect conception of man's
mind--outside the higher mathematics, I dare say. Everyone knows
Sampson's touch now, but it was new then. Some of his situations came
pretty close to the nerve-roots. The pitiful absurdity of people in a
crisis, exquisite human idiocy where one can't smile because grotesque
tragedy is so close... those were the scenes that Upton's director
thought needed “working up”. But I'm getting ahead of my story.
Well, now, let me see. I'd better be a little chronological. It must
have been September, because I know I took Labour Day off and went to
Long Beach for a swim. I had just about come to the conclusion that my
novel was worthless, and that I'd better get a job of some sort. At the
far end of the boardwalk, you remember, there's a quiet hotel where one
gets away from the crowd, and where you see quite nice-looking people.
After I'd had my swim, I thought I'd stroll up that way and have supper
there. It's not a cheap place, but I had been living on lunch-counter
food all summer, and I felt I owed myself a little extravagance. I was
on my way along the boardwalk, enjoying the cool, strong whiff that
comes off the ocean toward sunset, when I saw Edwards, on the other side
of the promenade, walking with a girl. My eye caught his, and we raised
our hats. I was going on, thinking that perhaps he wasn't so badly off
as I had imagined, when to my surprise he ran after me. He looked very
haggard and ill, and seemed embarrassed.
“Look here,” he said, “it's frightfully awkward: I must have had my
pocket picked somehow. I've lost my railroad tickets and everything.
Could you possibly lend me enough to get back to town? I've got a lady
with me, too.”
I didn't need to count my money to know how much I had. It was just
about five dollars, and, as you know, that doesn't go far at Long Beach.
I told him how I stood. “I can give you enough for the railroad fares,
and glad to,” I said. “But how about supper?”
“Oh, we're not hungry,” he said; “we had a big lunch.” I knew this was
probably bravado, but I liked him for saying it. While I was feeling
in my pocket for some bills, and wondering how to pass them over to him
unobtrusively, he said, “I'd like to introduce you to Miss Cunningham.
We're going to be married in the autumn.”
You may have seen Sylvia Cunningham? If so, you know how lovely she is.
Not pretty but with the simple charm that beauty can't----
Well, that's trite! She'll never be a great actress, but in the rôle of
Sylvia Cunningham she's perfect. I hate to call her slender--it's
such an overworked word, but what other is there? Dark hair and clear,
amberlucent brown eyes, and a slow, searching way of talking, as if she
were really trying to put thought into speech. She, too, poor child, had
had a bad summer, I guessed: there was a neat little mend in her glove.
She was very friendly--I think Edwards must have told her about that
_Observer_ notice. I saw that they were both much humiliated at their
mishap, and I judged that genial frankness would carry off the situation
best.
“Life among the artists!” I said. “What are our assets?”
“I've got seventeen cents,” said Edwards. It was a mark of fine
breeding, I thought, that he did not insist upon saying how much it was
that he had lost.
Miss Cunningham began to open her purse. “I have----”
“Nonsense!” I said. “What you have doesn't enter into the audit. In
the vulgar phrase, your money's no good. I've got five dollars and a
quarter. Now I suggest we go to Jamaica and get supper there, and then
go back to town by trolley. It'll be an adventure.”
Well, that was what we did, and very jolly it was. You know how it is:
artists and actors and manicure girls and newspapermen are accustomed to
ups and downs of pocket; and when they have a misery in the right-hand
trouser they make up for it in a spirit of genial comradeship. Jamaica
is an entertaining place. In a little lunchroom, which I remembered from
a time when I covered a story out that way, we had excellent ham and
eggs, and a good talk.
As we sat in that little white-tiled restaurant, I couldn't help
watching Edwards. I don't know how to make this plain to you, but our
talk, which was cheerful enough, was the least important part of the
occasion. Talk tells so little, anyway: most of it's a mere stumbling
in an almost foreign tongue when it comes to expressing the inward pangs
and certainties that make up life. I had a feeling, as I saw those
two, that I was coming closer than ever before to something urgent and
fundamental in the human riddle. I thought that I had never seen a man
so completely in love. When he looked at her there was a sort of--well,
a sort of possession upon him, an enthusiasm, in the true sense of that
strange word. I thought to myself that Keats must have looked at Fanny
Brawne in just that way. And--you know what writers are--I must confess
that my observation of these two began to turn into “copy” in my mind.
I was wondering whether they might not give me a hint for my stalled
novel.
There are some engaged couples that make it a point of honour to be a
bit off-hand and jocose when any one else is with them. Just to show,
I suppose, how sure they are of each other. And somehow I had expected
actors, to whom the outward gestures of passion are a mere professional
accomplishment, to be a little blasé or polished in such matters. But
there was a perfect candour and simplicity about them that touched
me keenly. Their relation seemed a lovely thing. Too lovely, and too
intense perhaps, to be entirely happy, I thought, for I could see in
Edwards's face that his whole life and mind were wrapped up in it. I may
have been fanciful, but at that time I was seeing the human panorama not
for itself but as a reflection of my own amateurish scribblings. In
my novel I had been working on the theory--not an original one, of
course--that the essence of tragedy is fixing one's passion too deeply
on anything in life. In other words, that happiness only comes to those
who do not take life too seriously. Destiny, determined not to give up
its secrets, always maims or destroys those who press it too closely. As
we laughed and enjoyed ourselves over our meal, I was wondering whether
Edwards, with his strange air of honourable sorrow, was a proof of my
doctrine.
Of course we talked about the new play. Edwards had persuaded Upton to
give Miss Cunningham a place in the cast, and she was radiant about it.
Her eyes were like pansies as she spoke of it. I remember one thing she
said:
“Isn't it wonderful? Morgan and I are together again. You know how
much it means to us, for if the show has a run we can get married this
winter.”
“This fall,” Edwards amended.
“Morgan's part is fine,” she went on, after a look at him that made even
a hardened reporter feel that he had no right to be there. “It's really
the big thing in the play for any one who can understand. It's just made
for him.”
She was thoughtful a moment, and then added: “It's _too much_ made for
him, that's the only trouble. You're living with him, Mr. Roberts. Don't
let him take it too hard. He thinks of nothing else.”
I made some jocular remark, I forget what. Edwards was silent for a
minute. Then he said: “If you knew how I've longed for a part like
that--a part that I could really lose myself in.”
“I shouldn't care,” I said, “to lose myself in a part. Suppose I
couldn't find myself again when the time came?”
He turned to me earnestly.
“You're not an actor, Roberts, so perhaps you hardly understand what it
means to find a play that's _real_--more real than everyday life. What
I mean is this: everyday life is so damned haphazard, troubled by a
thousand distractions and subject to every sort of cruel chance. We just
fumble along and never know what's coming next. But in a play, a good
play, it's all worked out beforehand, you can see the action progressing
under clear guidance. What a relief it is to be able to sink yourself in
your part, to live it and breathe it and get away for awhile from this
pitiless self-consciousness that tags around with us. You remember what
they used to say about Booth: that it wasn't Booth playing Hamlet, but
Hamlet playing Booth.”
*****
The next day, I remember, I tied up my manuscript neatly in a brown
paper parcel, marked it _Literary Remains of Leonard Roberts_ (I was
childish enough to think that the alliteration would please my literary
executor, if there should be such a person), put it away in my trunk,
and went down to Park Row to see if there were any jobs to be had.
Of course it was the usual story. I had been out of the game for
six months, and Park Row seemed to have survived the blow with great
courage. At the _Observer_ office they charitably gave me some books to
review. As I came uptown on the subway I was reflecting on the change a
few hours had made in my condition. That morning I had been an author, a
novelist if you please; and now I was not even a reporter, but that
most deplorable of all Grub Street figures, a hack reviewer. It was
mid-afternoon, and I hadn't had any lunch yet. In a fit of sulks I
went into Browne's, sat down in a corner, and ordered a chop and some
shandygaff. As I ate, I looked over the books with a peevish eye. Never
mind, I said to myself, I will write such brilliant, withering, and
scorching reviews that in six months the Authors' League will be
offering me hush money. I was framing the opening paragraph of my first
article when Johnson, whom I had known on the _Observer_, stopped at my
table. He was one of the newspaper men who had left Park Row to go into
professional publicity work. There had been a time when I sneered at
such a declension.
“Hullo, Leonard,” he said. “What are you doing nowadays?”
I told him, irritably, that I was writing a serial for one of the
women's magazines. There is no statement that puts envious awe into a
newspaper man so surely as that. But I also admitted that if he knew of
a good job I might be persuaded to listen to details.
“As it happens,” he said, “I do. Upton, the theatrical producer, is
looking for a press agent. He tells me he's got something unusual under
way, and he wants a highbrow blurb-artist. He says his regular roughneck
is no good for this kind of show. Something by a new writer, rather out
of Upton's ordinary line, I guess.”
“Is it 'Obedience'?”
“That's it. I couldn't remember the name.” As soon as I had finished
my lunch I went round to Upton's office. It was high up in a building
overlooking Longacre Square, where the elevators were crowded with the
people of that quaint and spurious world. The men I found particularly
fascinating--you know the type, so very young in figure, often so old
and hard and dry in face, with their lively tweeds, starched blue or
green collars, silver-gray ties, and straight-brushed, purply-black
hair. It was my first introduction to the realms of theatrical
producing, and I must confess that I found Mr. Upton's office very
entertaining with its air of elaborate and transparent bunkum. I sat
underneath a coloured enlarged photo of the Garden of Eden ballet in
“The Figleaf Lady” and surveyed the small anteroom. It was all intensely
unreal. Those framed photographs, on which were scrawled _To Harry
Upton, the Best of His Kind_, or some such inscriptions, and signed by
dramatists I had never heard of; the typist pounding out contracts;
the architect's drawing of the projected Upton Theatre at Broadway and
Fiftieth Street, showing a line of people at the box office--all this, I
knew by instinct, meant nothing. The dramatists whose photographs I saw
would never write a real play; the Upton Theatre, even if it should be
built, would not house anything but “burlettas,” and the typed contracts
were not worth so much carbon paper. As for Mr. Upton himself, one
couldn't help loving him: he was such a disarming, enthusiastic, shrewd,
unreliable bandit. To abbreviate, he took me on as a member of his
“publicity staff” (consisting of myself and a typewriter, as far as I
could see) at one hundred dollars a week. His private office had three
ingenious exits; going out by one of them, I found myself in a little
alcove with the typewriter and plenty of stationery. Rehearsals of
“Obedience” had started that morning, Upton had told me; so before I
went home that afternoon I had typed and sent off the following pregnant
paragraph for the next day's papers:
Henry Upton's first dramatic production of the season, “Obedience,”
by Arthur Sampson, began making elbow room for itself at rehearsals
yesterday. Keith Brooks will play the leading rôle, supported by Lillian
Llewellyn, Sylvia Cunningham, Morgan Edwards, and other distinguished
players.
I had a feeling of cheerfulness that evening. The cursed novel was no
longer on my mind, there would be a hundred dollars due me the next
week, and I was about to satisfy my long-standing curiosity to know
something about the theatre from the inside. It was one of those typical
evenings of New York loveliness: a rich, tawny, lingering light, a dry,
clear air, warm enough to be pleasantly soft and yet with a sharp tingle
in the breeze. I strolled about that bright jolly neighbourhood round
the hideous Verdi statue, bought a volume of Pinero's plays at one
of those combination book, cigar, and toy shops, and as I sat in my
favourite Milwaukee Lunch I believe (if I must be frank) that some idea
of writing a play was flitting through my mind. I got back to my room
about ten o'clock. I had just sat down to read Pinero when Edwards
tapped at the door. My mouth was open to tell him my surprising news
when I saw that he was unpleasantly agitated. First he insisted on
returning my loan, although I begged him to believe that there need be
no hurry about it.
“Rehearsals began to-day,” he said. He sat down on the bed and looked
very sombre. “The worst possible has happened,” he said. “Fagan's
directing.”
I tried to console him. Perhaps I felt that if Upton had shown such good
sense in his choice of a press representative his judgment in directors
couldn't be altogether wrong.
“Oh, well,” I said, “if the play's as good as you say, he can't hurt it
much. Upton believes in it, he won't let Fagan chop it about, will he?
And he's got a good cast--they won't need much direction: they know how
to handle that kind of thing.”
“It's plain you don't know the game,” he said. “If Upton had combed
Broadway from Herald Square to Reisenweber's, he couldn't have found
a man so superbly equipped to kill the piece. As for poor Sampson, God
help him. Fagan is a typical Broadway hanger-on, with plenty of debased
cunning of his own; not a fool at all; but the last man for this kind of
show, which needs imagination, atmosphere, delicate tone and tempo.
But that's not all of it. Fagan hates me personally. He'll get me out of
the company if he possibly can. He can do it, of course: he has Upton's
ear.”
He sat a moment, one eyebrow twitching nervously. Suddenly he cried out,
in a quivering, passionate voice which horrified and frightened me:
“I've _got_ to play Dunbar! It's my only chance. _Everything_ depends
upon it.”
Such an outcry, in a man usually so trained a master of himself, was
pitiful. I was truly shocked, and yet I was almost on the verge of
nervous laughter, I remember, when the idiotic old spinster in the
next room pounded lustily on the wall. I suppose she thought we were
revelling. I could see that he needed to talk. I tried to soothe him
with some commonplace words and a cigarette.
“No,” he said, “I know what I'm talking about. Fagan hates me. No need
to go into details. He directed 'After Dinner,' you know--and massacred
it. We had a row then... he tried to bully a girl in the company... I
threatened to thrash him. He hasn't forgotten, of course. He passed the
word round then that I ruined the show. If this were any other play
I'd have walked out as soon as I saw him. But this piece is different.
I--I've set my heart on it. My God, I'm just _meant_ for that part----”
In the hope of calming him, I asked what had happened at the first
rehearsal.
“Oh, the usual thing. We went through the first act, with the sides.
I knew my lines perfectly, the only one who did (I ought to, I've been
over them incessantly these few weeks--the thing haunts me). That seemed
to annoy Fagan. Sampson was there--a quiet little man with a bright,
thoughtful eye. For his benefit, evidently, Fagan got off his old tosh
about Victor Hugo and the preface to 'Hernani'. It's a bit of patter he
picked up somewhere, and uses to impress people with. In the middle of
it, he suddenly realized that I had heard it all before. That made him
mad. So he cut it short, and reasserted himself by saying that the first
act would have to be cut a great deal. Sampson looked pretty groggy,
but said nothing. Sampson, I can see, is my only hope. Fagan will try to
force me out of the show by hounding me until I lose my temper and quit.
He began by telling me how to cross the stage. A man who learned the
business under Frank Benson doesn't need to be taught how to walk!”
I ventured some mild sedative opinion, because I saw it did him good to
pour out his perplexity.
“You don't know,” he said, “how the actor is at the mercy of the
director. The director is appointed by the manager and is responsible
only to him. If the director takes a dislike to one of the cast, he can
tell the manager he 'can't work with him', and get him fired that way;
or he can make the man's position impossible by ridicule and perpetual
criticism at rehearsals. He remarked to-day that I was miscast. The
fool! I've never had such a part.”
Well, we talked until after midnight, and only stopped then because I
was afraid that the spinster might begin to hammer again. In the end I
got him fairly well pacified. He was delighted when I told him that I
was going to be press agent, and I pleased him by making some memoranda
of his previous career, which I thought I could work up into a Sunday
story. To tell the truth, I did not, then, take all his distress at its
face value. I knew he had had a difficult summer, and was in a nervous,
high-strung state. I thought that his trouble was partly what we
call “actors' disease,” or (to put it more humanely) oversensitized
selfconsciousness. I promised to get round to the rehearsal the next
day.
As a matter of fact, it was several days before I was able to attend a
rehearsal. For the next morning Upton asked me to go to Atlantic City,
where he had a musical show opening, to collect data for publicity. His
regular press man was ill, and it was evident that he expected me to do
plenty of work for my hundred a week. However, it was a new and amusing
job, and I was keen to absorb as much local colour as possible. I went
to Atlantic City on the train with the “Jazz You Like It” company, took
notes of all their life histories, went in swimming with the Blandishing
Blondes quartette that afternoon, had them photographed on the sand,
took care to see that they were arrested in their one-piece suits,
bailed them out, and by dinner-time had collected enough material to
fill the trashiest Sunday paper. In the evening the show opened, and
I saw what seemed to me the most appallingly vulgar and brutally silly
spectacle that had ever disgraced a stage. I wondered how a company of
quite intelligent and amusing people could ever have been drilled
into such laborious and glittering stupidity. The gallery fell for
the Blondes, but the rest of the house suffered for the most part in
silence, and I expected to see Upton crushed to earth. When I met him
in the lobby afterward I was wondering how to condole with him. To my
surprise he was radiant. “Well, I guess we've got a knockout,” he said.
“This'll sell to the roof on Broadway.” He was right, too. Well, this
is out of the story. I simply wanted to explain that I was away from New
York for several days.
When I got back to Upton's office I was busy most of the day sending
out stuff to the papers. Then I asked the imperial young lady who
was alternately typing letters and attending to the little telephone
switchboard, where “Obedience” was rehearsing. At the Stratford, she
replied. Wondering how many of Mr. Upton's amusing and discreditable
problems were bestowed under her magnificent rippling coiffure (she was
really a stunning creature), I went round to that theatre. The middle
door was open and I slipped in. The house was dark, on the tall, naked
stage the rehearsal was proceeding. It was my first experience of this
sort of thing, and I found it extremely interesting. The stage was set
out with chairs to indicate exits and essentials of furniture; at the
back hung a huge canvas sea-scene, used in some revue that had opened
at the Stratford the night before. The electricians were tinkering
with their illuminating effects, great blazes and shafts of light
criss-crossed about the place as the rehearsal went on, much to the
annoyance of the actors. Little electric stars winked in the painted sky
portion of the blue back-drop, and men in overalls walked about gazing
at their tasks.
I sat down quietly in the gloom, about halfway down the middle aisle.
Two or three other people, whose identity I could not conjecture, sat
singly down toward the front. In the orchestra row, in shirtsleeves,
with his feet on the brass rail and a cigar in his mouth, sat a person
who, I saw, must be the renowned Fagan. Downstage were Brooks, Edwards,
and a charming creature in summery costume who was obviously the
original of the multitudinous photographs of Lillian Llewellyn. The rest
of the company were sitting about at the back, off the scene. Edwards,
who was very pale in the violent downpour of a huge bulb hanging from a
wire just overhead, was speaking as I took my seat.
“Wait a minute, folks--_wait a minute!_” cried Fagan, sharply. “Now!
You've got your situation planted, let's nail it to the cross. Mr.
Edwards!”
The actors turned, wearily, and Miss Llewellyn sat down on a chair.
Brooks stood waiting with a kind of dogged endurance. At the back of the
stage a workman was hammering on a piece of metal. Fagan pulled his legs
off the rail and climbed halfway up the little steps leading from the
orchestra pit to the proscenium.
“Mr. Edwards!” he shouted, “you're letting it drop. It's dead. Give it
to Mr. Brooks so he can pick it up and do something with it. You've got
to lift it into the domain of comedy! My God!” he cried, throwing his
cigar stub into the orchestra well, “that whole act is terrible. Take it
again from Miss Llewellyn's entrance. Mr. Edwards, try to put a little
more stuff into it. This isn't amateur theatricals.”
Edwards turned as though about to speak, but he clenched his fist and
kept silent. Brooks, however, was less patient.
“Pardon me, Mr. Fagan,” he said, in a clear, ironical tone. “But I
should like to ask a question, if you will allow me. You speak, very
forcibly, of lifting it into the domain of comedy. That seems a curious
phrase for this scene. Is it intended to be comic? If so, I must have
misconstrued the author's directions in the script.”
Brooks was too well-known a performer for Fagan to bully. Brooks was “on
the lights”--in other words, when the show's electric signboard went
up, it would carry his name. Around his presence hung the mystic aura
of five hundred dollars a week, quite enough in itself to make Fagan
respectful. The director seemed a little startled by the star's caustic
accent. As a matter of fact, I don't suppose he had ever read the script
as a whole. I remembered that after the first rehearsal Edwards told me
that Fagan had admitted not having read the play. He said he preferred
to “pick up the dialogue as they went along”. This reference to the
author must have seemed to him unaccountably eccentric. I daresay he had
forgotten that there was such a person.
He threw up his hands in mock surrender. “All right, all right, if
that's the way you take it, I've got nothing to say. Play it your own
way, folks. Mr. Edwards, you're killing Mr. Brooks's scene there. Give
him time to come down and get his effect.”
Again I saw Edwards lift his head as though about to retort, but Brooks
whispered something to him. Fagan came back to his seat in the front row
and lit a fresh cigar. “Take it from Miss Llewellyn's first entrance,”
he shouted.
Miss Cunningham and a third man came forward and the five regrouped
themselves. The rehearsal resumed. I watched with a curious tingle of
excitement. The dialogue meant little to me, plunging in at the middle
of the act, but I could not miss the passionate quality of Edwards's
playing. Even Brooks, a polished but very cold actor, caught the warmth.
Their speeches had the rich vibrance of anger. I was really startled
at the power and velocity of the performance, considering that they had
only rehearsed a week. As I watched, someone leaned over my shoulder
from behind and whispered: “What do you think of Dunbar?”
My eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom. I turned and saw a little man
with a thin face and lifted eyebrows which gave him a quaint expression
of perpetual surprise. I was so absorbed in the scene that at first I
hardly understood.
“Dunbar--? Oh, Edwards?” I whispered. “I think he's corking--fine.”
At that moment Edwards was in the middle of a speech. Miss Cunningham
had just said something. Edwards, going toward her, had put his hand on
her shoulder and was replying in a tone of peculiar tenderness. Fagan's
loud voice broke in.
“Dunbar! Mr. Edwards! I can't let you do it like that. You make me hold
up this scene every time. Now get it right. This is a bit of comedy, not
sob stuff. Try to be a bit facetious, if you can. You're not making love
to the girl--not yet!”
There was a moment of silence. Those on the stage stood still, oddly
like children halted in the middle of a game. I don't suppose Fagan's
words were deliberately intended as a personal insult, but seemed to
himself a legitimate comment on the action of the piece. I think his
offences came more often from boorish obtuseness than calculated
malice. But the brutal interruption, coming after a long and difficult
afternoon, strained the players' nerves to snapping. Brooks sat down
with an air of calculated nonchalance and took out a cigarette. Then a
tinkling hammering began again somewhere up in the flies. Edwards was
flushed.
“For God's sake stop that infernal racket up there,” he cried. Then,
coming down to the unlit gutter of footlights, he said quietly:
“Mr. Fagan, I've studied this part rather more carefully than you have.
If the author is in the house, I'd like to appeal to him as to whether
my conception is correct.”
There was such a quiver of passion in his voice that even Fagan seemed
taken aback.
“What's got into you folks to-day?” he growled. “Oh, very well. Is Mr.
Sampson here?”
The little man behind me got up and walked down the aisle in an
embarrassed way.
“Mr. Author,” said Fagan, “have you been watching the rehearsal?”
Sampson murmured something.
“Is Mr. Edwards doing the part as you want it done?”
“Mr. Edwards is perfectly right,” said Sampson.
“Thank you, sir,” said Edwards from the stage. “Fagan, when you are
ready to conduct rehearsals like a gentleman, I will be here.” He turned
and walked off the stage.
Brooks snapped his cigarette case to, and the sharp click seemed to
bring the scene to an end. Fagan picked up his coat from the seat beside
him. “Bolshevism!” he said. “All right, folks, ten o'clock to-morrow,
here. Miss Cunningham, will you tell Mr. Edwards ten o'clock tomorrow?”
This last might be taken either as a surly apology, or as an added
insult. Rather subtle for Fagan, I thought. As I was getting out of my
seat, the director and a venomous-looking young man whom I had seen in
and out of Upton's office walked up the aisle together. Sampson was just
behind them. I could see that the director was either furiously angry,
or else (more likely) deemed it his duty to pretend to be.
“This show's no good as long as Edwards is in it,” he said, loudly,
spitting out fragments of cigar-wrapper. “That fellow's breaking up the
company. I sha'n't be able to handle 'em at all, pretty soon. This kind
of thing puts an omen on a show.”
*****
Well, that was my introduction to “Obedience”. I watched Fagan and the
hanger-on of Upton's office--one of those innumerable black-haired young
infidels who run errands for a man like Upton, hobnob with the ticket
speculators in the enigmatic argot of the box office, and seem to look
out upon the world from behind a little grill of brass railings. They
moved up the velvet slope of the passage, arguing hoarsely. Sampson
faded gently away into the darkness and disappeared through the thick
blue curtains of the foyer. An idea struck me, and I ran behind to see
the stage manager, Cervaux, who was playing one of the minor parts. I
cajoled his own copy of the script away from him, promising to return it
to the office the next morning. I wanted to read the play entire. Going
out toward the stage door, behind a big flat of scenery I came upon Miss
Cunningham. She was sitting in a rolling chair, one of those things you
see on the boardwalk at Atlantic City. There was a whole fleet of them
drawn up in the wings, they were used in that idiotic revue playing
at the Stratford. It added to the curiously unreal atmosphere of the
occasion to see her crouching there, crying, alone in the half light,
among those absurd vehicles of joy.
I intended to pass as though I hadn't seen her, but she called out to
me. If Upton could have seen her then, her honey-brown eyes glazed with
tears, black rings in her poor little pale face, he would have raised
her salary--or else fired her, I don't know which.
“Mr. Roberts,” she said, slowly and tremulously--“I don't know who else
to ask. Will you try to help Morgan?”
“Why of course,” I said. “Anything I can do----”
“You were at the rehearsal? Then you saw how Fagan treats him. It's been
like that every day. The brute! It's abominable! You know how we had set
our hearts on playing this together, Morgan and I.... Now I've almost
come to pray that Morgan will throw it up. That's what Fagan wants, of
course, but I don't care. All I want is his happiness. I said something
to him about giving up the part, but he... Mr. Roberts, I'm _worried_.
I've never seen Morgan so strange before. He's not himself. I don't know
what's the matter, I have a feeling that something-----”
The electricians were still fooling about with their spotlights, and a
great arrow of brilliance sliced across the stage and groped about us.
It blazed brutally upon her tear-stained face, and then see-sawed among
the little flock of rolling chairs. It was that shaft of light that
dispelled, once for all, the feeling I had had that this was all some
sort of theatrical gibberish, pantomime stuff intended to impress the
greenhorn press agent. For when she recoiled under the blow of that
sudden stroke of brightness I could read unquestionable trouble on her
face. There was not only perplexity, there was fear.
She was silent, turning her face away. Then she stepped down from the
chair, in a blind sort of way.
“I begged him to give it up,” she said, quietly. “He said that no
one but the author could take him out of this part. I wish the author
would.--Oh, I don't know what to wish! Morgan's making himself ill
fighting against Fagan.”
We walked across Fortieth Street together, and I escorted her as far as
a Fifth Avenue bus. As we waited for the bus she said:
“You'll probably see him to-night. Tell him about rehearsal to-morrow,
ten o'clock. He had gone before I could speak to him. You see, he's not
himself. We were to have taken supper together.”
She added something that I have never forgotten:
“The worst tragedy in the world is when lovely things get in the hands
of people who don't understand them. If you see Mr. Sampson, you might
tell him that. Some day he may write another play.”
When I got up to Seventy-third Street I tapped at Edwards's door. He was
at his table, writing. I had intended to ask him to take dinner with me,
thinking that perhaps I could help him, but his manner showed plainly
that he wanted to be alone. If I had been an old friend of his, perhaps
I could have done something; but I did not feel I knew him well enough
to force myself upon his mood.
“Fagan sent you word, rehearsal to-morrow at ten,” I said. “It sounds to
me like an apology.”
He looked at me steadily.
“You were there to-day? You will understand a little, then.”
“I understand that Fagan is a ruffian.”
“Fagan--Oh, I don't mean Fagan.” He paused and looked at the wet
point of his pen. “I was just writing a note to Sampson,” he said. He
hesitated a moment, and then tore the written sheet across several times
and dropped it in the basket.
“Oh, hell,” he said. “I can't appeal to Sampson again. I'll have to work
it out myself.--Don't imagine I take Fagan too seriously. Fagan is only
an accident. A tragic accident. That's part of my weird, as the Scotch
say. I mean, you'll understand better about Dunbar.”