The Cottenham Repertory Theatre was a dingy, ill-built house in a back
street in Cottenham. It had been a music-hall of a low class until the
earnest playgoers of Cottenham, extremely anxious about the condition
of the drama, formed themselves into a society to improve the theatre.
By dint of agitation and much hard work, they contrived to get enough
money together to take the music-hall over from its owner who was
unable to compete against the syndicate halls and was steadily drinking
himself to death in consequence, and turned it into a repertory
theatre. Their success had been moderate, for they united to their good
intentions a habit of denunciation of all plays that were not
"repertory" plays which had the effect partly of irritating the common
playgoer and partly of frightening him. All the plays that were
labelled "repertory" plays were praised by these earnest students of
the drama without any sort of discrimination, and when, as often
happened, a very poor play was produced at the Repertory Theatre, any
common playgoer who saw it and was bored by it, went away in the belief
that he was not educated up to the standard of such austere work and
resolved that he would seek his entertainment elsewhere in future. It
was to this theatre that John went on the day after his arrival in
Cottenham. The town itself depressed him immeasurably. It was the most
shapeless, nondescript, undignified town he had ever seen, and yet it
was one of the richest places in England. There was no seemliness in
its main streets; little huckstering shops hustled larger and more
pretentious shops, but all of them had an air of vivacious vulgarity.
They had not been given the look of sobriety which age gives even to
ugly streets in ugly towns. They seemed to be striving against each
other in a competition to decide which was the commonest and shoddiest
shop in the city. It seemed to John that all these Cottenham shops
dropped their aitches!... The clouds were grey when he arrived in
Cottenham, dirty-grey and very cheerless; they were still dirty-grey
when he went to the theatre, and rain fell before he reached it; and
the clouds remained in that dismal state until he quitted Cottenham
after the first performance of _Milchu and St. Patrick: A
Tragedy_. It seemed to John that they would never be otherwise than
dirty-grey, that the streets would always be wet and the shops always
clamantly vulgar.
"I wouldn't live in this place for the wide world," he said, as he
turned into the stage-door of the Repertory Theatre.
He was directed to the manager's office by the doorkeeper. The Manager
was on the stage, so the girl secretary informed him, and if Mr.
MacDermott would kindly follow her she would take him there at once. He
had never seen the stage side of the proscenium before, and although
the place was dark and he stumbled over properties, he felt enormously
interested in what he saw.
"Is that the scenery?" he said to the secretary as they passed some
tawdry looking flats lying against the walls of the scene-dock.
"Yes," she answered. "It looks awful in the daylight, doesn't it? But
when the footlights are on and the limes are lit, you'd be surprised to
see how fine it looks. They say that common materials look better in
limelight than good things do. Funny, isn't it?"
She led him on to the stage and brought him to the manager.
"This is Mr. MacDermott," she said to a tall, lean, worried man who was
standing immediately in front of the footlights, directing the
rehearsal which was then beginning.
"Oh, ah, yes!" said the manager, and then he turned to John. "I'm
Gidney," he said.
John murmured a politeness.
"Now, let me introduce you to people!" He turned to the players, all of
whom had that appearance of depression which actors habitually wear in
daylight, as if they felt naked and ashamed without their grease-paint.
"This is the author of the play," he exclaimed to them. "Mr.
MacDermott!" He led John to each of the players, naming them as he did
so, and each of them murmured that he or she was delighted to have the
pleasure!...
"I think if you were to sit in the front row of the stalls, Mr.
MacDermott!" said Gidney, "while the rehearsal proceeds, that would be
best. You can tell me at the end of each act what alterations or
suggestions you wish to propose!"
"Very good," said John, feeling his spirits running rapidly into his
boots. What were these cheerless people going to do with the play over
which he had laboured and sweated for weeks and weeks?...
They went through their parts with a lifeless facility that turned his
tragedy, he imagined, into a neat piece of machinery and left it
without any glow of emotion whatever. Now and then the ease with which
they recited their words was interrupted by forgetfulness and the
player, whose memory had failed him, would snap his fingers and call to
the prompter, "What is it?" or "Give me that line, will you?"
"How do you think it's going?" said the manager to John at the end of
the first act.
"Well, I don't know," he answered with a nervous laugh. "They aren't
putting much enthusiasm into it, are they?"
"Ah, but this is only a rehearsal. Wait till you see the dress
rehearsal!"
He felt considerably relieved. A rehearsal, of course, must be very
different from a performance. But on the night of the dress
rehearsal ... it took place on Sunday, for the stage was occupied on
week-nights by regular performances ... the players seemed to go
to pieces. All of them had difficulty in remembering their lines,
and when at the end of the last act, a piece of the scenery collapsed
upon St. Patrick, John felt that he could have cheerfully seen the
entire theatre collapse on everybody concerned with it. He went to
the grubby Temperance hotel in which he had taken a room, and gave
himself completely to gloom and despair. He felt that his play was
not quite so brilliant as he had imagined it to be, but he was not
sure that his dissatisfaction with it ought not really to be displayed
against the actors. Any play, treated as his had been treated, must seem
to be a poor piece. Gidney had appeared to be pleased with the dress
rehearsal and had wrung John's hand with great heartiness when they
separated. "Going splendidly!" he murmured. "Congratulate you. Excellent
piece!..." On the way to his hotel, he had seen a play-bill in the
window of a tobacconist's shop, and a thrill of pleasure had quickened
him as he stood in front of the glass and read his name beneath the
title of the play. He must remember to ask Gidney for a copy of the
play-bill to hang up in his flat! Now, in the dull and not very clean
bedroom of the Temperance Hotel, he felt indifferent to play-bills and
the thrill of seeing his name in print. He wished that Eleanor were
with him. They had decided that she should not be present at the first
night in Cottenham because of the expense of hotel bills and railway
fares.
"I'll see it in London," she had said bravely, trying to conceal her
disappointment. Now, however, he wished that she were with him. She had
remarkable powers of comforting. If he were depressed, Eleanor would
draw his head down to her shoulder and would soothe him into a good
temper again. There had been times since their marriage when he had
been dubious about her ... when it seemed to him that she had only a
kindly affection for him and still had not got love for him ... and the
thought filled him with resentment against her. Why could she not love
him? He was lovable enough and he loved her. A woman ought to love a
man who loved her!... Then some perception of the self-sufficiency and
the smugness of these thoughts went through his mind and he would abase
himself in spirit before her and reproach himself for unkindnesses that
he imagined he had shown to her ... hasty words that hurt her. His
temper was quick to rise, but equally quick to fall; and sometimes he
failed to realise that in the sudden outburst of anger he had said
cruel, hurting things which made no impression on him because they were
said without any feeling, but left a hard impression on those to whom
they were addressed. He had seen pain in Eleanor's eyes when he had
spoken some swift and biting word to her, and then, all repentance, he
had tried to kiss the pain from her....
To-night, in this grubby bedroom, smelling of teetotallers and grim,
forbidding people in whom are to be found none of the genial foibles of
ordinary, hearty men, he felt an excess of remorse for any unkind thing
he had ever said to Eleanor. His pessimism about his play caused him to
exaggerate the enormity of his offences. He pictured her, looking at
him with that queer air of puzzled pathos that had so impressed him
when he first saw her, and intense shame filled him when he thought
that he had done or said anything to make her look at him in that way.
Well, he would compensate her for any pain that he had caused her. He
would love her so dearly that her life would be passed in continual
sunshine and comfort. Even if she were never to return his love or to
return only a slight share of it, he would devote himself to her just
as completely as if she gave everything to him. His play might be
miserably acted and be a failure, apart from the acting, but what
mattered that! While he had Eleanor he had everything.