The rehearsal proceeded, and under that cover old Tinker came
noiselessly down the aisle and resumed his seat beside Canby, who was
uttering short, broken sighs, and appeared to have been trying with fair
success to give himself a shampoo.
“It's ruined, Mr. Tinker!” he moaned, and his accompanying gesture was
misleading, seeming to indicate that he alluded to his hair. “It's all
ruined if he sticks to these horrible lines he's put in--people told me
I ought to have it in my contract that nothing could be changed. I was
trying to make the audience see the tragedy of egoism in my play--and
how people get to hating an egoist. I made 'Roderick Hanscom' a
disagreeable character on purpose, and--oh, listen to that!”
Miss Ellsling and Talbot Potter stood alone, near the front of the
stage. “Why do you waste such goodness on me, Roderick?” Miss Ellsling
was inquiring. “It is noble and I feel that I am unworthy of you.”
“No, Mildred, believe me,” Potter read from his manuscript, “I would
rather decline the nomination and abandon my career, and go to live in
some quiet spot far from all this, than that you should know one single
moment's unhappiness, for you mean far more to me than worldly success.”
He kissed her hand with reverence, and lifted his head slowly, facing
the audience with rapt gaze; his wonderful smile--that ineffable smile
of abnegation and benignity--just beginning to dawn.
Coming from behind him, and therefore unable to see his face, Miss Wanda
Malone advanced in her character of ingenue, speaking with an effect of
gayety: “Now what are you two good people conspiring about?”
Potter stamped the floor; there was wrenched from him an incoherent
shriek containing fragments of profane words and ending distinguishably
with: “It's that Missmiss again!”
Packer impelled himself upon Miss Malone, pushing her back. “No, no,
no!” he cried. “Count ten! Count ten before you come down with that
speech. You mustn't interrupt Mr. Potter, Miss--Miss--”
“It was my cue,” she said composedly, showing her little pamphlet of
typewritten manuscript. “Wasn't I meant to speak on the cue?”
Talbot Potter recovered himself sufficiently to utter a cry of despair:
“And these are the kind of people an artist must work with!” He lifted
his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods for pity; then, with
a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of the stage and came mincing
forward evidently intending saturnine mimicry, repeating the ingenue's
speech in a mocking falsetto: “Now what are you two good people
conspiring about?” After that he whirled upon her, demanding with
ferocity: “You've got something you can think with in your head, haven't
you, Missmiss? Then what do you think of that?”
Miss Malone smiled, and it was a smile that would have gone a long way
at a college dance. Here, it made the pitying company shudder for her.
“I think it's a silly, makeshift sort of a speech,” she said cheerfully,
in which opinion the unhappy playwright out in the audience hotly
agreed. “It's a bit of threadbare archness, and if I were to play Miss
Lyston's part, I'd be glad to have it changed!”
Potter looked dazed. “Is it your idea,” he said in a ghostly voice,
“that I was asking for your impression of the dramatic and literary
value of that line?”
She seemed surprised. “Weren't you?”
It was too much for Potter. He had brilliant and unusual powers of
expression, but this was beyond them. He went to the chair beside the
little table, flung himself upon it, his legs outstretched, his arms
dangling inert, and stared haggardly upward at nothing.
Packer staggered into the breach. “You interrupted the smile,
Miss--Mi--”
“Miss Malone,” she prompted.
“You interrupted the smile, Miss Malone. Mr. Potter gives them the smile
there. You must count ten for it, after your cue. Ten--slow. Count slow.
Mark it on your sides, Miss--ah--Miss. 'Count ten for smile. Write it
down please, Miss--Miss--”
Potter spoke wearily. “Be kind enough to let me know, Packer, when you
and Missmiss can bring yourselves to permit this rehearsal to continue.”
“All ready, sir,” said Packer briskly. “All ready now, Mr. Potter.” And
upon the star's limply rising, Miss Ellsling, most tactful of leading
women, went back to his cue with a change of emphasis in her reading
that helped to restore him somewhat to his poise. “It is noble,” she
repeated, “and I feel that I am unworthy of you!”
Counting ten slowly proved to be the proper deference to the smile,
and Miss Malone was allowed to come down the stage and complete,
undisturbed, her ingenue request to know what the two good people were
conspiring about. Thereafter the rehearsal went on in a strange, unreal
peace like that of a prairie noon in the cyclone season.
“Notice that girl?” old Tinker muttered, as Wanda Malone finished
another ingenue question with a light laugh, as commanded by her
manuscript. “She's frightened but she's steady.”
“What girl?” Canby was shampooing himself feverishly and had little
interest in girls. “I made it a disagreeable character because--”
“I mean the one he's letting out on--Malone,” said Tinker. “Didn't
you notice her voice? Her laugh reminds me of Fanny Caton's--and Dora
Preston's--”
“Who?” Canby asked vaguely.
“Oh, nobody you'd remember; some old-time actresses that had their
day--and died--long ago. This girl's voice made me think of them.”
“She may, she may,” said Canby hurriedly. “Mr. Tinker, the play is
ruined. He's tangled the whole act up so that I can't tell what it's
about myself. Instead of Roderick Hanscom's being a man that people
dislike for his conceit and selfishness he's got him absolutely turned
round. I oughtn't to allow it--but everything's so different from what
I thought it would be! He doesn't seem to know I'm here. I came prepared
to read the play to the company; I thought he'd want me to.”
“Oh, no,” said Tinker. “He never does that.”
“Why not?”
“Wastes time, for one thing. The actors don't listen except when their
own parts are being read.”
“Good gracious!”
“Their own parts are all they have to look out for,” the old man
informed him dryly. “I've known actors to play a long time in parts that
didn't appear in the last act, and they never know how the play ended.”
“Good gracious!”
“Never cared, either,” Tinker added.
“Good gr--”
“Sh! He's breaking out again!”
A shriek of agony came from the stage. “Pack-e-r-r-! Where did you
find this Missmiss understudy? Can't you get me people of experience?
I really cannot bear this kind of thing--I can not!” And Potter flung
himself upon the chair, leaving the slight figure in black standing
alone in the centre of the stage. He sprang up again, however,
surprisingly, upon the very instant of despairing collapse. “What do you
mean by this perpetual torture of me?” he wailed at her. “Don't you know
what you did?”
“No, Mr. Potter.” She looked at him bravely, but she began to grow red.
“You don't?” he cried incredulously. “You don't know what you did? You
moved! How are they going to get my face if you move? Don't you know
enough to hold a picture and not ruin it by moving?”
“There was a movement written for that cue,” she said, a little
tremulously. “The business in the script is, 'Showing that she is
touched by Roderick's nobleness, lifts handkerchief impulsive gesture to
eyes.'”
“Not,” he shouted, “not during the SMILE!”
“Oh!” she cried remorsefully. “Have I done that again?”
“'Again!' I don't know how many times you've done it!” He flung his arms
wide, with hands outspread and fingers vibrating. “You do it every time
you get the chance! You do it perpetually! You don't do anything else!
It's all you live for!”
He hurled his manuscript violently at the table, Packer making a
wonderful pick-up catch of it just as it touched the floor.
“That's all!” And the unhappy artist sank into the chair in a crumpled
stupor.
“Ten o'clock to-morrow morning, ladies and gentlemen!” Packer called
immediately, with brisk cheerfulness. “Please notice: to-morrow's
rehearsal is in the morning. Ten o'clock to-morrow morning!”
“Tell the understudy to wait, Packer,” said the star abysmally, and
Packer addressed himself to the departing backs of the company:
“Mr. Potter wants to speak to Miss--Miss--”
“Malone,” prompted the owner of the name, without resentment.
“Wait a moment, Miss Malone,” said Potter, looking up wearily. “Is Mr.
Tinker anywhere about?”
“I'm here, Mr. Potter.” Tinker came forward to the orchestra railing.
“I've been thinking about this play, Mr. Tinker,” Potter said, shaking
his head despondently. “I don't know about it. I'm very, very doubtful
about it.” He peered over Tinker's head, squinting his eyes, and seemed
for the first time to be aware of the playwright's presence. “Oh, are
you there, Mr. Canby? When did you come in?”
“I've been here all the time,” said the dishevelled Canby, coming
forward. “I supposed it was my business to be here, but-”
“Very glad to have you if you wish,” Potter interrupted gloomily. “Any
time. Any time you like. I was just telling Mr. Tinker that I don't know
about your play. I don't know if it'll do at all.”
“If you'd play it,” Canby began, “the way I wrote it--”
“In the first place,” Potter said with sudden vehemence, “it lacks
Punch! Where's your Punch in this play, Mr. Canby? Where is there any
Punch whatever in the whole four acts? Surely, after this rehearsal, you
don't mean to claim that the first act has one single ounce of Punch in
it!”
“But you've twisted this act all round,” the unhappy young man
protested. “The way you have it I can't tell what it's got to it. I
meant Roderick Hanscom to be a disagr--”
“Mr. Canby,” said the star, rising impressively, “if we played that act
the way you wrote it, we'd last just about four minutes of the opening
night. You gave me absolutely nothing to do! Other people talked at me
and I had to stand there and be talked at for twenty minutes straight,
like a blithering ninny!”
“Well, as you have it, the other actors have to stand there like
ninnies,” poor Canby retorted miserably, “while you talk at them almost
the whole time.”
“My soul!” Potter struck the table with the palm of his hand. “Do
you think anybody's going to pay two dollars to watch me listen to my
company for three hours? No, my dear man, your play's got to give me
something to do! You'll have to rewrite the second and third acts. I've
done what I could for the first, but, good God! Mr. Canby, I can't write
your whole play for you! You'll have to get some Punch into it or we'll
never be able to go on with it.”
“I don't know what you mean,” said the playwright helplessly. “I never
did know what people mean by Punch.”
“Punch? It's what grips 'em,” Potter returned with vehemence. “Punch
is what keeps 'em sitting on the edge of their seats. Big love scenes!
They've got Punch. Or a big scene with a man. Give me a big scene with a
man.” He illustrated his meaning with startling intensity, crouching and
seizing an imaginary antagonist by the throat, shaking him and snarling
between his clenched teeth, while his own throat swelled and reddened:
“Now, damn you! You dog! So on, so on, so on! Zowie!” Suddenly his
figure straightened. “Then change. See?” He became serene, almost
august. “'No! I will not soil these hands with you. So on, so on, so
on. I give you your worthless life. Go!'” He completed his generosity
by giving Canby and Tinker the smile, after which he concluded much more
cheerfully: “Something like that, Mr. Canby, and we'll have some real
Punch in your play.”
“But there isn't any chance for that kind of a scene in it,” the
playwright objected. “It's the study of an egoist, a disagree--”
“There!” exclaimed Potter. “That's it! Do you think people are going to
pay two dollars to see Talbot Potter behave like a cad? They won't do
it; they pay two dollars to see me as I am--not pretending to be the
kind of man your 'Roderick Hanscom' was. No, Mr. Canby, I accepted your
play because it has got quite a fair situation in the third act, and
because I thought I saw a chance in it to keep some of the strength of
'Roderick Hanscom' and yet make him lovable.”
“But, great heavens! if you make him lovable the character's ruined.
Besides, the audience won't want to see him lose the girl at the end and
'Donald Grey' get her!”
“No, they won't; that's it exactly,” said Potter thoughtfully. “You'll
have to fix that, Mr. Canby. 'Roderick Hanscom' will have to win her
by a great sacrifice in the last act. A great, strong, lovable man,
Mr. Canby; that's the kind of character I want to play: a big, sweet,
lovable fellow, with the heart of a child, that makes a great sacrifice
for a woman. I don't want to play 'egoists'; I don't want to play
character parts. No.” He shook his head musingly, and concluded, the
while a light of ineffable sweetness shone from his remarkable eyes:
“Mr. Canby, no! My audience comes to see Talbot Potter. You go over
these other acts and write the part so that I can play myself.”
The playwright gazed upon him, inarticulate, and Potter, shaking himself
slightly, like one aroused from a pleasant little reverie, turned to the
waiting figure of the girl.
“What is it, Miss Malone?” he asked mildly. “Did you want to speak to
me?”
“You told Mr. Packer to ask me to wait,” she said.
“Did I? Oh, yes, so I did. If you please, take off your hat and veil,
Miss Malone?”
She gave him a startled look; then, without a word, slowly obeyed.
“Ah, yes,” he said a moment later. “We'll find something else for Miss
Lyston when she recovers. You will keep the part.”
V
When Canby (with his hair smoothed) descended to the basement dining
room of his Madison Avenue boarding-house that evening, his table
comrades gave him an effective entrance; they rose, waving napkins and
cheering, and there were cries of “Author! Author!” “Speech!” and “Cher
maitre!”
The recipient of these honours bore them with an uneasiness attributed
to modesty, and making inadequate response, sat down to his soup with no
importunate appetite.
“Seriously, though,” said a bearded man opposite, who always broke into
everything with “seriously though,” or else, “all joking aside,” and had
thereby gained a reputation for conservatism and soundness--“seriously,
though, it must have been a great experience to take charge of the
rehearsal of such a company as Talbot Potter's.”
“Tell us how it felt, Canby, old boy,” said another. “How does it feel
to sit up there like a king makin' everybody step around to suit you?”
Other neighbors took it up.
“Any pretty girls in the company, Can?”
“How does it feel to be a great dramatist, old man?”
“When you goin' to hire a valet-chauffeur?”
“Better ask him when he's goin' to take us to rehearsal, to see him in
his glory.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said the hostess deprecatingly, “Miss Cornish is
trying to speak to Mr. Canby.”
Miss Cornish, a middle-aged lady in black lace, sat at her right, at the
head of the largest table, being the most paying of these paying guests,
by which virtue she held also the ingleside premiership of the parlour
overhead. She was reputed to walk much among gentles, and to have a high
taste in letters and the drama; for she was chief of an essay club, had
a hushing manner, and often quoted with precision from reviews, or from
such publishers' advertisements as contained no slang; and she was a
member of one of the leagues for patronizing the theatre in moderation.
“Mr. Canby,” said the hostess pleasantly, “Miss Cornish wishes to--”
This obtained the attention of the assembly, while Canby, at the other
end of the room, sat back in his chair with the unenthusiastic air of a
man being served with papers.
“Yes, Miss Cornish.”
Miss Cornish cleared her throat, not practically, but with culture, as
preliminary to an address. “I was saying, Mr. Canby,” she began, “that
I had a suggestion to make which may not only interest you, but
certain others of us who do not enjoy equal opportunities in some
matters--as--as others of us who do. Indeed, I believe it will interest
all of us without regard to--to--to this. What I was about to suggest
was that since today you have had a very interesting experience, not
only interesting because you have entered into a professional as well
as personal friendship with one of our foremost artists--an artist whose
work is cultivated always--but also interesting because there are
some of us here whose more practical occupations and walk in life must
necessarily withhold them from--from this. What I meant to suggest
was that, as this prevents them from--from this--would it not be a
favourable opportunity for them to--to glean some commentary upon the
actual methods of a field of art? Personally, it happens that whenever
opportunities and invitations have been--have been urged, other duties
intervened, but though, on that account never having been actually
present, I am familiar, of course, through conversation with great
artists and memoirs and--and other sources of literature--with the
procedure and etiquette of rehearsal. But others among us, no doubt
through lack of leisure, are perhaps less so than--than this. What I
wished to suggest was that, not now, but after dinner, we all assemble
quietly, in the large parlour upstairs, of which Mrs. Reibold has kindly
consented to allow us the use for the evening, for this purpose, and
that you, Mr. Canby, would then give us an informal talk--” (She was
momentarily interrupted by a deferential murmur of “Hear! Hear!” from
everybody.) “What I meant to suggest,” she resumed, smiling graciously
as from a platform, “was a sort of descriptive lecture, of course wholly
informal--not so much upon your little play itself, Mr. Canby, for I
believe we are all familiar with its subject-matter, but what would
perhaps be more improving in artistic ways would be that you give us
your impressions of this little experience of yours to-day while it is
fresh in your mind. I would suggest that you tell us, simply, and in
your own way, exactly what was the form of procedure at rehearsal, so
that those of us not so fortunate as to be already en rapport with
such matters may form a helpful and artistic idea of--of this. I would
suggest that you go into some details of this, perhaps adding whatever
anecdotes or incidents of--of--of the day--you think would give
additional value to this. I would suggest that you tell us, for
instance, how you were received upon your arrival, who took you to the
most favourable position for observing the performance, and what was
said. We should be glad to hear also, I am sure, and artistic thoughts
or--or knowledge--Mr. Potter may have let fall in the green-room; or
even a few witticisms might not be out of place, if you should recall
these. We should all like to know, I am sure, what Mr. Potter's method
of conceiving his part was. Also, does he leave entire freedom to his
company in the creation of their own roles, or does he aid them? Many
questions, no doubt, occur to all of us. For instance: Did Mr. Potter
offer you any suggestions for changes and alterations that might aid to
develop the literary and artistic value of the pl--”
The placid voice, flowing on in gentle great content of itself (while
all the boarders gallantly refrained from eating), was checked by an
interruption which united into one shattering impact the effects of
lese-majeste and of violence.
“Couldn't! No! No parlour! Horrib--”
The words mingled in the throat of the playwright, producing an
explosion somewhere between choke and bellow, as he got upon his feet,
overturning his chair and coincidentally dislodging several articles of
china and glassware. He stood among the ruins for one moment, publicly
wiping his brow with a napkin, then plunged, murmuring, out of the
room and up the stairway; and, before any of the company had
recovered speech, the front door was heard to slam tumultuously, its
reverberations being simultaneous with the sound of footsteps running
down the stoop.
Turning northward upon the pavement, the fugitive hurriedly passed
the two lighted windows of the dining-room; they rattled with a
concussion--the outburst of suddenly released voices beginning what
was to be a protracted wake over the remains of his reputation as a
gentleman. He fled, flinging on his overcoat as he went. In his pockets
were portions of the manuscript of his play, already distorted since
rehearsal to suit the new nobleness of “Roderick Hanscom,” and among
these inky sheets was a note from Talbot Potter, received just before
dinner:
Dear Mr. Canby,
Come up to my apartments at the Pantheon after dinner and let me see
what changes you have been able to make in the second and third acts.
I should like to look at them before deciding to put on another play I
have been considering.
Hastily y'rs,
Tal't Potter.