“I might work this up for the stage,” he said. “It wouldn’t make a bad
situation for act two of a farce.”
“Farce!” snarled poor old Freddie.
“Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
idiot just like—that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
idiot, kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I’ll
rough it out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie.”
As we went I told him the rest of the story—the Angela part. He laid
down his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
“What!” he said. “Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made. It’s the
old ‘Tiny Hand’ business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping
child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It’s big. Child, centre.
Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
piano?”
“He can play a little of ‘The Rosary’ with one finger.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest’s all right.
Look here.” He squatted in the sand. “This stone is the girl. This bit
of seaweed’s the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue leading up
to child’s line. Child speaks like, ‘Boofer lady, does i’oo love
dadda?’ Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment.
Freddie crosses L., takes girl’s hand. Business of swallowing lump in
throat. Then big speech. ‘Ah, Marie,’ or whatever her name
is—Jane—Agnes—Angela? Very well. ‘Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too
long? A little child rebukes us! Angela!’ And so on. Freddie must work
up his own part. I’m just giving you the general outline. And we must
get a good line for the child. ‘Boofer lady, does ’oo love dadda?’
isn’t definite enough. We want something more—ah! ‘Kiss Freddie,’
that’s it. Short, crisp, and has the punch.”
“But, Jimmy, old top,” I said, “the only objection is, don’t you know,
that there’s no way of getting the girl to the cottage. She cuts
Freddie. She wouldn’t come within a mile of him.”
Jimmy frowned.
“That’s awkward,” he said. “Well, we shall have to make it an exterior
set instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach
somewhere, when we’re ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid
letter-perfect. First rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp
to-morrow.”
Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not
to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn’t
in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we
concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw
that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing
was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
“The chief difficulty,” said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the first
rehearsal, “is to establish a connection in the kid’s mind between his
line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those two
words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got
a success.”
I’ve often thought, don’t you know, how interesting it must be to be
one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning
intelligence, and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as
exciting. Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the
kid got the line out as if he’d been an old professional. And then he’d
go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
“We must hurry up, Jimmy,” I said. “The kid’s uncle may arrive any day
now and take him away.”
“And we haven’t an understudy,” said Jimmy. “There’s something in that.
We must work! My goodness, that kid’s a bad study. I’ve known
deaf-mutes who would have learned the part quicker.”
I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn’t
discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash
at his line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was
after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have
been prepared to risk it, and start the performance at the first
opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
“We’re not nearly ready,” said Jimmy. “To-day, for instance, he said
‘Kick Freddie.’ That’s not going to win any girl’s heart. And she might
do it, too. No; we must postpone production awhile yet.”
But, by George, we didn’t. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
It was nobody’s fault—certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie had
settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the house
to exercise it, when, just as we’d got out to the veranda, along came
the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual yell
at the sight of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
“Hello, baby!” she said. “Good morning,” she said to me. “May I come
up?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that
sort of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the
kid. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the
sitting-room. It was a dashed disturbing situation, don’t you know. At
any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on to the
veranda, and we hadn’t even begun to rehearse him in his part.