It was a luckless lady who helped to fulfil the prediction. Technically
she was the “ingenue”; publicly she was “Miss Carol Lyston”; legally she
was a Mrs. Surbilt, being wife to the established leading man of that
ilk, Vorly Surbilt. Miss Lyston had come to the rehearsal in a condition
of exhausted nerves, owing to her husband's having just accepted, over
her protest, a “road” engagement with a lady-star of such susceptible
gallantry she had never yet been known to resist falling in love with
her leading-man before she quarrelled with him. Miss Lyston's protest
having lasted the whole of the preceeding night, and not at all
concluding with Mr. Surbilt's departure, about breakfast-time, avowedly
to seek total anaesthesia by means of a long list of liquors, which
he named, she had spent the hours before rehearsal interviewing female
acquaintances who had been members of the susceptible lady's company--a
proceeding which indicates that she deliberately courted hysteria.
Shortly after the outraged rehearsal had been resumed, she unfortunately
uttered a loud, dry sob, startlingly irrelevant to the matter in hand.
It came during the revelation of “Roderick Hanscom's” secret, and Potter
stopped instantly.
“Who did that?”
“Miss Lyston, sir,” Packer responded loyally, such matters being part of
his duty.
The star turned to face the agitated criminal. “Miss Lyston,” he said,
delaying each syllable to pack it more solidly with ice, “will you be
good enough to inform this company if there is anything in your lines to
warrant your breaking into a speech of mine with a horrible noise like
that?”
“Nothing.”
“Then perhaps you will inform us why you do break into a speech of mine
with a horrible noise like that?”
“I only coughed, Mr. Potter,” said Miss Lyston, shaking.
“Coughed!” he repeated slowly, and then with a sudden tragic fury
shouted at the top of his splendid voice, “COUGHED!” He swung away from
her, and strode up and down the stage, struggling with emotion, while
the stricken company fastened their eyes to their strips of manuscript,
as if in study, and looked neither at him nor Miss Lyston.
“You only coughed!” He paused before her in his stride. “Is it your
purpose to cough during my speeches when this play is produced before an
audience?” He waited for no reply, but taking his head woefully in his
hands, began to pace up and down again, turning at last toward the dark
auditorium to address his invisible manager:
“Really, really, Mr. Tinker,” he cried, despairingly, “we shall have to
change some of these people. I can't act with--Mr. Tinker! Where's Mr.
Tinker? Mr. Tinker! My soul! He's gone! He always is gone when I want
him! I wonder how many men would bear what I--” But here he interrupted
himself unexpectedly. “Go on with the rehearsal! Packer, where were we?”
“Here, sir, right here,” brightly responded Packer, ready finger upon
the proper spot in the manuscript. “You had just begun, 'Nothing in this
world but that one thing can defeat my certain election and nothing but
that one thing shall de--”
“That will do,” thundered his master. “Are you going to play the part?
Get out of the way and let's get on with the act, in heaven's name! Down
stage a step, Miss Ellsling. No; I said down. A step, not a mile!
There! Now, if you consent to be ready, ladies and gentlemen. Very well.
'Nothing in this world but that one thing can defeat my certain election
and noth--'” Again he interrupted himself unexpectedly. In the middle
of the word there came a catch in his voice; he broke off, and whirling
once more upon the miserable Miss Lyston, he transfixed her with a
forefinger and a yell.
“It wasn't a cough! What was that horrible noise you made?”
Miss Lyston, being unable to reply in words, gave him for answer an
object-lesson which demonstrated plainly the nature of the horrible
noise. She broke into loud, consecutive sobs, while Potter, very little
the real cause of them, altered in expression from indignation to the
neighborhood of lunacy.
“She's doing this in purpose!” he cried. “What's the matter with her?
She's sick! Miss Lyston, you're sick! Packer, get her away--take her
away. She's sick! Send her home--send her home in a cab! Packer!”
“Yes, Mr. Potter, I'll arrange it. Don't be disturbed.”
The stage-manager was already at the sobbing lady's side, and she leaned
upon him gratefully, continuing to produce the symptoms of her illness.
“Put her in a cab at once,” said the star, somewhat recovered from
his consternation. “You can pay the cabman,” he added. “Make her as
comfortable as you can; she's really ill. Miss Lyston, you shouldn't
have tried to rehearse when you're so ill. Do everything possible for
Miss Lyston's comfort, Packer.”
He followed the pair as they entered the passageway to the stage door;
then, Miss Lyston's demonstrations becoming less audible, he halted
abruptly, and his brow grew dark with suspicion. When Packer returned,
he beckoned him aside. “Didn't she seem all right as soon as she got out
of my sight?”
“No, sir; she seemed pretty badly upset.”
“What about?”
“Oh, something entirely outside of rehearsal, sir,” Packer answered in
haste. “Entirely outside. She wanted to know if I'd heard any gossip
about her husband lately. That's it, Mr. Potter.”
“You don't think she was shamming just to get off?”
“Oh, not at all. I--”
“Ha! She may have fooled you, Packer, or perhaps--perhaps”--he paused,
frowning--“perhaps you were trying to fool me, too. I don't know your
private life; you may have reasons to help her de--”
“Mr. Potter!” cried the distressed man. “What could be my object? I
don't know Miss Lyston off. I was only telling you the simple truth.”
“How do I know?” Potter gave him a piercing look. “People are always
trying to take advantage of me.”
“But Mr. Potter, I--”
“Don't get it into your head that I am too easy, Packer! You think
you've got a luxurious thing of it here, with me, but--” He concluded
with an ominous shake of the head in lieu of words, then returned to
the centre of the stage. “Are we to be all day getting on with this
rehearsal?”
Packer flew to the table and seized the manuscript he had left there.
“All ready, sir! 'Nothing in this world but one thing can defeat'--and
so on, so on. All ready, sir!”
The star made no reply but to gaze upon him stonily, a stare which
produced another dreadful silence. Packer tried to smile, a lamentable
sight.
“Something wrong, Mr. Potter?” he finally ventured, desperately.
The answer came in a voice cracking with emotional strain: “I wonder
how many men bear what I bear? I wonder how many men would pay a
stage-manager the salary I pay, and then do all his work for him!”
“Mr. Potter, if you'll tell me what's the matter,” Packer quavered; “if
you'll only tell me--”
“The understudy, idiot! Where is the understudy to read Miss Lyston's
part? You haven't got one! I knew it! I told you last week to engage an
understudy for the women's parts, and you haven't done it. I knew it, I
knew it! God help me, I knew it!”
“But I did, sir. I've got her here.”
Packer ran to the back of the stage, shouting loudly: “Miss-oh, Miss--I
forget-your-name! Understudy! Miss--”
“I'm here!”
It was an odd, slender voice that spoke, just behind Talbot Potter, and
he turned to stare at a little figure in black--she had come so quietly
out of the shadows of the scenery into Miss Lyston's place that no one
had noticed. She was indefinite of outline still, in the sparse light of
that cavernous place; and, with a veil lifted just to the level of her
brows, under a shadowing black hat, not much was to be clearly discerned
of her except that she was small and pale and had bright eyes. But even
the two words she spoke proved the peculiar quality of her voice: it was
like the tremolo of a zither string; and at the sound of it the actors
on each side of her instinctively moved a step back for a better view
of her, while in his lurking place old Tinker let his dry lips open
a little, which was as near as he ever came, nowadays, to a look of
interest. He had noted that this voice, sweet as rain, and vibrant, but
not loud, was the ordinary speaking voice of the understudy, and that
her “I'm here,” had sounded, soft and clear, across the deep orchestra
to the last row in the house.
“Of course!” Packer cried. “There she is, Mr. Potter! There's
Miss--Miss--”
“Is her name 'Missmiss'?” the star demanded bitterly.
“No sir. I've forgotten it, just this moment, Mr. Potter, but I've
got it. I've got it right here.” He began frantically to turn out the
contents of his pockets. “It's in my memorandum book, if I could only
find--”
“The devil, the devil!” shouted Potter. “A fine understudy you've got
for us! She sees me standing here like--like a statue--delaying the
whole rehearsal, while we wait for you to find her name, and she won't
open her lips!” He swept the air with a furious gesture, and a subtle
faint relief became manifest throughout the company at this token that
the newcomer was indeed to fill Miss Lyston's place for one rehearsal at
least. “Why don't you tell us your name?” he roared.
“I understood,” said the zither-sweet voice, “that I was never to speak
to you unless you directly asked me a question. My--”
“My soul! Have you got a name?”
“Wanda Malone.”
Potter had never heard it until that moment, but his expression showed
that he considered it another outrage.