THE MAN AND THE DIRECTOR
He said, "I want a talk with you," and she, thinking he meant then and
there, glanced about for a corner where they'd be tolerably secure
against the charging rushes of grips, property men and electricians, all
racing against time to get the third act struck and the first one set
and make their escape from the theater.
"Oh, I don't mean here in this bedlam," he explained with a tinge of
impatience. And then his manner changed. "I'd like, for once, a chance
to sit down with you where it's--quiet and we don't have to feel in a
hurry." He added, a second later, answering a shade of what he took to
be doubt or hesitation in her face, "You're frightfully tired I know. If
you'd rather wait till to-morrow ..."
"Oh, it wasn't that," said Rose. "I was just trying to think where a
place was where one could be quiet and needn't hurry and where two
people could talk."
He smiled. "You can leave that to me," he said. "That is, if you don't
mind a restaurant and a little supper."
"Of course I don't mind," she said. "I'd like it very much."
He nodded. "Don't rush your dressing," he suggested, as he moved away.
"I've got plenty to do."
The sextette dressed together in a sort of pen--big enough, because they
had all sorts of room down under the old Globe stage, but so far as
appointments went, decidedly primitive. The walls were of matched
boards; there was a shelf two feet wide or so around three sides of it,
to make a sort of continuous dressing-table; there were six mirrors, six
deal chairs and a few hooks. These were for your street clothes. The
stage costumes hung in neat ranks outside under the eye of the wardrobe
mistress. When you wanted to put one on you went out and got it, and if
the time allowed for the change were sufficient you took it back into
your dressing-room. Otherwise you plunged into it just where you were.
When you wanted to wash before putting on or after taking off your
make-up you went to a row of stationary wash-bowls down the corridor.
All told it wasn't a place to linger in over the indulgence of
day-dreams. But the first glimpse Rose caught, as she opened the door,
in the mirror next her own, was the entranced face of Olga Larson. The
other girls were in an advanced state of undress, intent on getting out
as quickly as they could. They were all talking straight along, of
course, but that didn't delay their operations a bit. They talked
through the towels they were wiping off the make-up with, talked bent
double over shoe-buckles, talked in little gasps as they tugged at tight
sweaty things that didn't want to come off. And they made a striking
contrast to Olga, who sat there just as she'd left the stage, without a
hook unfastened, in a rapturous reverie, waiting for Rose.
In the instant before her entrance was noticed, Rose made an effort to
shake herself together so that she should be not too inadequate to the
situation that awaited her.
She was, of course, immensely pleased over Olga's little triumph.
(For it had been a triumph. Galbraith had persuaded Goldsmith and Block
to buy the little Empire dress in maize and corn-flower; Rose had done
her hair, and Olga had been allowed to sing, on the first _encore_, the
refrain to _All Alone_, quite by herself. She'd gone up an octave on the
end of it to a high A, which in its perfect clarity had sounded about a
third higher and had brought down the house. Patricia had been furious,
of course, but was at bottom too decent to show it much and had actually
congratulated Olga when she came off. It looked as if she'd really got
her foot on the ladder.)
Well, as I said, Rose was immensely pleased about it--for the girl, who
certainly deserved a little good luck at last; for herself, whose
judgment had been vindicated, and for the show, to the success of which
the experiment had contributed. But she'd have been a good deal better
pleased if Olga could have taken her success as simply her own, instead
of being so adoringly grateful to Rose about it. Olga had been adoring
her with a somewhat embarrassing intensity ever since the night she had
locked her in her room and taught her to talk.
Rose had convicted herself here of a failure in human sympathy, and had
done her best to correct it, without much avail. The stubborn fact was
that, wishing Olga all the good fortune in the world, and being willing
to take any amount of trouble to bring it about, she didn't particularly
like her. And she flinched involuntarily, from the girl's more romantic
and sentimental manifestations. This distaste had been heightened by the
fact that along with Olga's adoration had gone a sense of
proprietorship, with its inevitable accompaniment of jealousy.
Olga bridled every time she found Rose chatting with another member of
the chorus, and when, up in Milwaukee, Patricia had invited her, along
with Anabel, to come up to her room for a little supper after rehearsal,
Olga had been sulky and injured for the whole of the next day.
It was something deeper in Rose than a mere surface distaste that made
all this--the caresses, as well as the sulky exactions--repellent to
her. And to-night, with her mind full of Rodney--full of that strange
hope that disguised itself as fear, the repulsion was stronger than
ever. She made an effort to conquer it. It would be a shame to throw a
wet blanket on the girl's attempt to enjoy her triumph in her own way.
So Rose kissed her and told her how pleased she was, and good-humoredly
forbore to disclaim, except as her wide smile did it for her, Olga's
extravagant protestations of undying love and gratitude. Rose injected
common-sense considerations where she could. Olga had better get out of
that frock before she ruined it with grease paint, and unless she at
least began to dress pretty soon she'd find herself locked up for the
night in the theater.
"I wouldn't care," Olga said. "You'd be locked up, too. Because you
aren't any further along than I am."
"I'm going to be, though," said Rose, "in about two minutes." The
thought of what John Galbraith's disgust would be, in spite of his
good-natured assurance she needn't hurry, if she really kept him
waiting, set her at her task with flying fingers.
"There's no use hurrying," Olga commented on this burst of speed,
"because you're going to wait for me. This is my night. We'll have a
little table all by ourselves at Max's and then you'll come up and sleep
with me to-night."
An instinct prompted Rose to defer the necessary negative to this
suggestion until the last of the other girls, who was just then pinning
on her hat, should have gone. When the door clicked, she said she was
sorry but the plan couldn't be carried out.
Olga looked at her intensely. "I need you to-night," she said, "and if
you care anything about me at all you'll come."
"I'd come if I could," said Rose, "but it can't be managed. I've
promised to do something else."
Olga's face paled a little and her eyes burned. "So that's it, is it?"
she said furiously. "You're going out with Galbraith." She went on to
say more than that, but her meaning was plain at the first words.
Rose looked at her a little incredulous, quite cool, so far as her mind
went (because, of course, Olga's accusation was merely grotesque) but
curiously and most unpleasantly stirred, disgusted almost to the point
of nausea. She stopped the tirade, not because she cared what the girl
was saying, but because she couldn't stay in the room with a person
making that sort of an exhibition of herself. It took no more than half
a dozen words to accomplish this result. The mere fact that she spoke,
after that rather long blank period of speechlessness, and the cold
blaze of her blue eyes that accompanied her words, effected more than
the words themselves. And then, in a tempest of tears and
self-reproaches, Olga repented--a phase of the situation which was
worse, almost, than the former one, because it couldn't be dealt with
quite so summarily.
But Rose went on dressing as fast as she could all the while, and at
last, long before Olga had begun putting on her street clothes, she was
ready to go. With her hand on the door-latch she paused.
"I am going to have supper with Mr. Galbraith," she said. "He told me
there was something he wanted to talk to me about." And with that she
let herself out of the room, indifferent to the effect these last words
of hers might produce.
She caught sight of Galbraith down at the end of the corridor waiting
for her, but she paused a moment, pulled in a long breath and grinned at
herself. In the state of mind she was in just then, divided between her
impatience to get back to her own room where her thoughts could be free
to run upon the one theme they welcomed, and her wrath and disgust over
the scene Olga had just subjected her to, the poor man was in danger of
having a pretty unsatisfactory sort of hour with her. She must brace up
and really try to be nice to him.
So through all the preliminaries to the real talk which he'd said he
wanted with her, she was consciously as cordial and friendly as she knew
how to be. She said she hoped she hadn't kept him waiting too long, and
when he apologized for taking her out through the stage door and the
alley, with the explanation that the front of the house was by this time
locked, she made a good-humored reference to the fact that the alley and
the stage door were now her natural walk in life, and that it was just
as well she shouldn't be spoiled with liberties.
He asked her if she had any preference as to where they went for supper,
and the way she acknowledged, again with a smile, that she'd rather not
go to Rector's, nor to any of the places over on Michigan Avenue, was an
admission, in candid confidence, of the existence of another half of her
life which she wished to keep, if possible, unentangled with this. She
showed herself frankly pleased with the taxi he provided, sank back
into her place in it with a sigh of clear satisfaction, and was, as far
as he could see, completely incurious about the address he gave the
chauffeur. The place he picked out was an excellent little chop-house in
one of the courts south of Van Buren Street, a place little frequented
at night--manned, indeed, after dinner, merely by the proprietor, one
waiter and a man cook in the grille, and kept open to avoid the chance
of disappointing any of the few epicurean clients who wouldn't eat
anywhere else.
But neither the neighborhood nor the loneliness of the place got even so
much as a questioning glance from Rose. She left the ordering of the
supper to him, and assented with a nod to his including with it a bottle
of sparkling Burgundy.
There is nothing quite so disconcerting as to be prepared to overcome a
resistance and then to find no resistance there; to be ready with
convincing arguments, and then not have them called for. This, very
naturally, was the plight of John Galbraith.
Rose wasn't a child even on the day when she came and asked him for a
job, and in the six weeks that had intervened since then she'd been
dressing in the same room with chorus-girls--hearing the sort of things
they talked about in the wings. Indeed, unless he was mistaken, she must
have heard them linking her own name with his. His very special interest
in her, and the way he'd shown it, promoting her to the sextette, and
giving her a chance to design the costumes, was a thing they wouldn't
have missed nor failed to put their own construction on. She must know
then what their inferences would be from the fact of his asking her out
to supper on the opening night.
What he'd been prepared to urge was that now that his connection with
the enterprise had terminated, now that he was no longer a director and
the representative of her employers, she should take him on trust simply
as a friend. He was prepared to answer protests, to offer
compromises--concessions to appearances. He'd expected her to exhibit
some shyness of the taxi. According to his unconscious ideal of the
situation she should have looked questioningly at him--hesitated, and
then let him assure her that it was all right. She should have gasped a
little when the car turned south in the dark little court below Van
Buren Street, have shrunk a little at the isolation the emptiness of the
restaurant enforced upon them, and declined, with something not far
short of panic, her share of that bottle of Burgundy. Because all these
flutters and questionings would just have opened the way for his
assurances--perfectly honest assurances, too, as far as he knew--of the
candor of his feelings and intentions toward her.
She needed a friend, that was plain enough, some one who had her best
interests honestly at heart; some one who knew the pitfalls and the
difficulties of this pilgrimage she'd so strangely set out on, and could
advise her how to avoid them. That he was, potentially, that friend, he
truly believed. And what better way could there be of convincing her of
it than by persuading her to trust him, and then proving that her trust
had not been misplaced?
But what was one to do--how was one to make a beginning when she trusted
him without any persuasion? Trusted him as a matter of course, without
the glimmer of any sort of emotion whatever; about as if he'd
been--well, say, her brother-in-law!
He was at a loss for a peg to hang his definite sense of injury upon. He
couldn't blame the girl for having trusted him, nor for proving so
perfectly adequate to the unconventional situation he'd created. He
couldn't reproach her, even in his thoughts, for the frankly expressed
pleasure she took in the leisured dignity of the little restaurant, with
its modestly sumptuous appointments (she even let him see that she
appreciated the fineness of the napery and the handsomeness of the
tableware; admitted, indeed, how sharply it contrasted with what she'd
been used to lately), nor for the real appreciation she showed of the
supper he selected.
But the moment he had been planning, counting on for days--weeks, if it
came to that--with an excitement he couldn't deny, a tensity that had
increased as the prospect of it drew nearer, was not exciting nor tense
for her. If anything, she'd relaxed a little, as if the big moment of
her day had passed--or, postponed by this affair of his, were still to
come. Once or twice when her gaze detached itself from him and rested
unfocused on the other side of the room, he saw little changes of
expression go over her face that didn't relate to him at all. He simply
wasn't in focus, that was the size of it. He had never seen her look
lovelier, more completely desirable than she did right now, dressed as
she was in her very simple street clothes and relaxed by the surrounding
quiet and comfort and her own fatigue. And yet, all alone with him as
she had so confidingly permitted herself to be, and near enough to reach
with the bare stretching out of a hand, she'd never been further away
nor seemed more unattainable.
As she came back from one of these momentary excursions she found him
staring at her, and with a faint flush and a smile of contrition she
pulled herself back, as it were, into his presence.
"I know you're tired," he said bruskly. "But I fancied you'd be tireder
in the morning and I have to leave for New York on the fast train. So,
you see, it was now or never." Strangely enough, that got her. She
stared at him a little incredulous, almost in consternation.
"Do you mean you're going away?" she asked. "To-morrow?"
"Of course," he said rather sharply. "I've nothing more to stay around
here for." He added, as she still seemed not to have got it through her
head. "My contract with Goldsmith and Block ended to-night, with the
opening performance."
"Of course," she said in deprecation of her stupidity, "I didn't think
you were going to stay indefinitely--as long as the show ran. And yet I
never thought of your going away. It's always seemed that you were the
show--or, rather, that the show was you; just something that you made
go. It doesn't seem possible that it can keep on going with you not
there."
The sincerity of that made it a really fine compliment--just the sort
of compliment he'd appreciate. But--the old perversity again--the very
freedom with which she said it spoiled it for him.
"I may be missed," he said--it was more of a growl really--"but I shan't
be regretted. There's always a sort of Hallelujah chorus set up by the
company when they realize I'm gone."
"I shall regret it very much," said Rose. The words would have set his
blood on fire if she'd just faltered over them. But she didn't. She was
hopelessly serene about it. "You're the person who's made this six weeks
bearable and, in a way, wonderful. I never could thank you enough for
the things you've done for me, though I hope I may try to some time."
"I don't want any thanks," he said. And this was completely true. It was
something very different from gratitude that he wanted. But he realized
how abominably ungracious his words sounded, and hastened to amend them.
"What I mean is that you don't owe me any. Anything I've done that's
worked out to your advantage was done because I believed it was to the
advantage of the men who hired me--beginning with the afternoon when I
first took you on in the chorus."
This didn't satisfy him either. Rose said nothing. He had indeed left
her nothing to say. But there was a look of perplexity in her eyes--as
if she were casting about for some stupidly tactless act or omission of
her own to account for his surliness--that made him recant altogether.
"I don't know why in the world I should have said a thing like that!" he
burst out. "It wasn't true. I've wanted to do things for you--wanted to
do more than I could, and I want to still. You've done a lot to make
this show go, as well as it did, in more ways than you know about. It
wasn't for me, personally, that you did it. But all the same, I'm
grateful. And it's to convince you of that that I asked you to come
around here to-night."
She really lighted up over his praise, thanked him for it very
prettily. But then, after a little silence, she went on reflectively,
"It was, in a way, for you, personally, that I was working all the time.
I don't know if I can explain that, though I think I understand it
myself. But just because you wanted things so hard--you were so
perfectly determined that something should happen in a certain way--I
just _had_ to help bring it about, or try to. It would have been
exciting enough just to see that things were wrong and to watch them
coming right. But taking hold one's self and helping a little to make
them come right was--well, as I said, wonderful."
"Well," he said--and now he was brusk again--"I hope Goldsmith and Block
are satisfied. They won't be; of course, unless the thing runs forty
weeks. But that isn't what I want to talk about. I want to talk about
you. I want to know what you're aiming at. I don't mean to-morrow or
next week. You'll stay with this piece, I suppose, as long as the run
lasts. But in the end, what's the idea? Do you want to be an actress?"
He had kept on going after that first question of his, because it was
obvious the girl wasn't ready to answer. She seemed to be struggling to
get the bearings of a perfectly new idea. At length she gave him the
clue.
"It's that forty weeks," she said. "The notion of just going on--not
changing anything or improving anything; doing the same thing over and
over again for forty weeks, or even four, seems perfectly ghastly. And
yet I suppose that's what everybody in the company is hoping for--just
to keep going round and round like a horse at the end of a pole. What
I'd like to do, now that this is finished, is--well, to start another."
His eyes kindled. "That's it," he said. "That's what I've felt about you
all along. I suppose it's the reason I felt you never could be an
actress. You see the thing the way I do--the whole fun of the game is
getting the timing. Once it's got ..." He snapped his fingers; and with
an eager nod she agreed.
He was in focus now, there could he no doubt of that. But it didn't
occur to him that it was the director who was in focus, not the man.
The fact was that in evoking the director she'd banished the man--a
triumph she wasn't to realize the importance of until a good deal later.
"Well, then, look here," he said. "I've an idea that I could use you to
good advantage as a sort of personal assistant. There'll be a good deal
of work just of the sort you did with the sextette, teaching people to
talk and move about like the sort of folk they're supposed to represent.
That's coming in more and more in musical comedies, the use of the
chorus as real people in the story--accounting for their exits and
entrances. It would be done more if we could teach chorus people to act
human. Well, you can do that better than I; that's the plain truth. And
then I think after you'd got my idea of a dance number you could
probably rehearse it yourself, take some of that routine off my hands.
Under this new contract of mine, that I expect to sign in a day or two,
I'll simply have to have somebody. And then, of course, there's the
costuming. That's a great game, and I've a notion, though of course I
haven't a great deal to go by, that you could swing it. I think you've a
talent for it.
"There you are! The job will be paid from the first a great deal better
than what you've got here. And the costuming end of it, if you succeed,
would run to real money. Well, how about it?"
"But," said Rose a little breathlessly--"but don't I have to stay here
with _The Girl Up-stairs_? I couldn't just leave, could I?"
"Oh, I shan't be ready for you just yet anyway," he said. "I'll write
when I am and by that time you'll be perfectly free to give them your
two weeks' notice. By the way, haven't you some other address than care
of the theater--a permanent address somewhere?"
"Care of Miss Portia Stanton," she told him, and as he got out his card
and wrote it down, she added the California address. It recalled to his
mind that she had told him her name was Rose Stanton on the day he had
given her a job, and the memory diverted him for a moment. Then he
pulled himself back.
"They'll be annoyed, of course--Goldsmith and Block. But, after all,
you've given them more than their money's worth already. Well--will you
come if I write?"
"It seems to be too wonderful to be true," she said. "Yes, I'll come, of
course."
He sat there gazing at her in a sort of fascination. Because she was
fairly lambent with the wonder of it. Her eyes were starry, her lips a
little parted, and she was so still she seemed not even to be breathing.
But the eyes weren't looking at him. Another vision filled them. The
vision--oh, he was sure of it now!--of that "only one," whoever he was,
that mattered.
He thrust back his chair with an abruptness that startled her out of her
reverie, and the action, rough as it was, wasn't violent enough to
satisfy the sudden exasperation that seized him. If he could have
smashed the caraffe or something ...
"I won't keep you any longer," he said. "I'll have them get a taxi and
send you home."
She said she didn't want a taxi. If he'd just walk over with her to a
Clark Street car ... And she thanked him for everything, including the
supper. But all the time he could see her trying, with a perplexity
almost pathetic, to discover what she had done to change his manner
again like that.
He was thoroughly contrite about it, and he did his best to recover an
appearance of friendly good will. He didn't demur to her wish to be put
on a car, and at the crossing where they waited for it, after an almost
silent walk, he did manage to shake hands and wish her luck and tell her
she'd hear from him soon, in a way that he felt reassured her.
But he kicked his way to the curb after the car had carried her off, and
marched to his hotel in a sort of baffled fury. He didn't know exactly
what had gone wrong about the evening. He couldn't, in phrases, tell
himself just what it was he'd wanted. But he did know, with a perfectly
abysmal conviction, that he was a fool!