“Second act, ladies and gentlemen!” cried Packer, at precisely ten
o'clock the next morning.
About a dozen actors were chatting in small groups upon the stage;
three or four paced singly, muttering and mildly gesticulating, with
the fretful preoccupation of people trying to remember; two or three,
seated, bent over their typewritten “sides,” studying intently; and a
few, invisible from the auditorium, were scattered about the rearward
rooms and passageways. Talbot Potter, himself, was nowhere to be seen,
and, what was even more important to one tumultuously beating heart “in
front,” neither was Wanda Malone. Mr. Stewart Canby in a silvery
new suit, wearing a white border to his waistcoat collar and other
decorations proper to a new playwright, sat in the centre of the front
row of the orchestra. Yesterday he had taken a seat about nine rows
back.
He bore no surface signs of the wear and tear of a witches' night;
riding his runaway play and fighting the enchantment that was upon him.
Elastic twenty-seven does not mark a bedless session with violet arcs
below its eyes;--what violet a witch had used upon Stewart Canby this
morning appeared as a dewey boutonniere in the lapel of his new coat; he
was that far gone.
Miss Ellsling and a youth of the company took their places near the
front of the stage and began the rehearsal of the second act with a
dialogue that led up to the entrance of the star with the “ingenue,”
both of whom still remained out of the playwright's range of vision.
As the moment for their appearance drew near, Canby became, to his own
rage, almost uncontrollably agitated. Miss Ellsling's scene, which he
should have followed carefully, meant nothing to him but a ticking off
of the seconds before he should behold with his physical eyes the
living presence of the fairy ghost that had put a spell upon him. He was
tremulous all over.
Miss Ellsling and her companion came to a full stop and stood waiting.
Thereupon Packer went to the rear of the stage, leaned through an open
doorway, and spoke deferentially:
“Mr. Potter? All ready, sir. All ready, Miss--ah--Malone?”
Then he stepped back with the air of an unimportant person making way
for his betters to pass before him, while Canby's eyes fixed themselves
glassily upon the shabby old doorway through which an actual, breathing
Wanda Malone was to come.
But he was destined not to see her appear in that expectant frame.
Twenty years before--though he had forgotten it--in a dazzling room
where there was a Christmas tree, he had uttered a shriek of ecstatic
timidity just as a jingling Santa Claus began to emerge from behind
the tree, and he had run out of the room and out of the house. He did
exactly the same thing now, though this time the shriek was not vocal.
Suffocating, he fled up the aisle and out into the lobby. There he
addressed himself distractedly but plainly:
“Jackass!”
Breathing heavily, he went out to the wide front steps of the theatre
and stood, sunlit Broadway swimming before him.
“Hello, Canby!”
A shabby, shaggy, pale young man, with hot eyes, checked his ardent gait
and paused, extending a cordial, thin hand, the fingers browned at the
sides by cigarettes smoked to the bitter end. “Rieger,” he said. “Arnold
Rieger. Remember me at the old Ink Club meetings before we broke up?”
“Yes,” said Canby dimly. “Yes. The old Ink Club. I came out for a breath
of air. Just a breath.”
“We used to settle the universe in that little back restaurant room,”
said Rieger. “Not one of use had ever got a thing into print--and me, I
haven't yet, for that matter. Editors still hate my stuff. I've kept my
oath, though; I've never compromised--never for a moment.”
“Yes,” Canby responded feebly, wondering what the man was talking about.
Wanda Malone was surely on the stage, now. If he turned, walked about
thirty feet, and opened a door, he would see her--hear her speaking!
“I've had news of your success,” said Rieger. “I saw in the paper that
Talbot Potter was to put on a play you'd written. I congratulate you.
That man's a great artist, but he never seems to get a good play; he's
always much, much greater than his part. I'm sure you've given him a
real play at last. I remember your principles: Realism; no compromise!
The truth; no shirking it, no tampering with it! You've struck out for
that--you've never compro--”
“No. Oh, no,” said Canby, waking up a little. “Of course you've got to
make a little change or two in plays. You see, you've got to make an
actor like a play or he won't play it, and if he won't play it you
haven't got any play--you've only got some typewriting.”
Rieger set his foot upon the step and rested his left forearm upon his
knee, and attitude comfortable for street debate. “Admitting the truth
of that for the sake of argument, and only for the moment, because I
don't for one instant accept such a jesuitism--”
“Yes,” said Canby dreamily. “Yes.” And, with not only apparent but
genuine unconsciousness of this one-time friend's existence, he turned
and walked back into the lobby, and presently was vaguely aware that
somebody near the street doors of the theatre seemed to be in a temper.
Somebody kept shouting “Swell-headed pup!” and “Go to the devil!”
at somebody else repeatedly, but finally went away, after reaching a
vociferous climax of even harsher epithets and instructions.
The departure of this raging unknown left the lobby quiet; Canby had
gone near to the inner doors. Listening fearfully, he heard through
these a murmurous baritone cadencing: Talbot Potter declaiming the
inwardness of “Roderick Hanscom”; and then--oh, bells of Elfland faintly
chiming!--the voice of Wanda Malone!
He pressed, trembling, against the doors, and went in.
Talbot Potter and Wanda Malone stood together, the two alone in the
great hollow space of the stage. The actors of the company, silent
and remote, watched them; old Tinker, halfway down an aisle, stood
listening; and near the proscenium two workmen, tools in their hands,
had paused in attitudes of arrested motion. Save for the voices of the
two players, the whole vast cavern of the theatre was as still as the
very self of silence. And the stirless air that filled it was charged
with necromancy.
Rehearsal is like the painted canvas without a frame; it is more like a
plaster cast, most like of all to the sculptor's hollow moulds. It needs
the bronze to bring a statue to life, and it needs the audience to bring
a play to life. Some glamour must come from one to the other; some wind
of enchantment must blow between them--there must be a magic spell. But
these two actors had produced the spell without the audience.
And yet they were only reading a wistful little love-scene that Stewart
Canby had written the night before.
Two people were falling in love with each other, neither realizing it.
And these two who played the lovers had found some hidden rhythm that
brought them together in one picture as a chord is one sound. They
played to each other and with each other instinctively; Talbot Potter
had forgotten “the smile” and all the mechanism that went with it. The
two held the little breathless silences of lovers; they broke these
silences timidly, and then their movements and voices ran together
like waters in a fountain. A radiance was about them as it is about all
lovers; they were suffused with it.
To Stewart Canby, watching, they seemed to move within a sorcerer's
circle of enchantment. Upon his disturbed mind there was dawning a
conviction that these inspired mummers were beings apart from him,
knowing things he never could know, feeling things he never could feel,
belonging to another planet whither he could never voyage, where
strange winds blew and all things lived and grew in a light beyond his
understanding. For the light that shone in the faces of these two was
“the light that never was, on sea or land.”
It had its blessing for him. From that moment, if he had known it, this
play, which was being born of so many parents, was certain of “success,”
of “popularity,” and of what quality of renown such things may bring.
And he who was to be called its author stood there a Made Man, unless
some accident befell.
Miss Ellsling spoke and came forward, another actor with her. The
scene was over. There was a clearing of throats; everybody moved. The
stage-carpenter and his assistant went away blinking, like men roused
from deep sleep. The routine of rehearsal resumed its place; and old
Tinker, who had not stirred a muscle, rubbed the back of his neck
suddenly, and came up the aisle to Canby.
“Good business!” he cried. “Did you see that little run off the stage
she made when Miss Ellsling came on? And you saw what he can do when he
wants to!”
“He?” Canby echoed. “He?”
“Played for the scene instead of himself. Oh, he can do it! He's an old
hand--got too many tricks in the bag to let her get the piece away from
him--but he's found a girl that can play with him at last, and he'll use
every value she's got. He knows good property when he sees it. She's got
a pretty good box of tricks herself; stock's the way to learn 'em, but
it's apt to take the bloom off. It hasn't taken off any of hers, the
darlin'! What do you think, Mr. Canby?”
To Canby, who hardly noticed that this dead old man had come to life,
the speech was jargon. The playwright was preoccupied with the fact that
Talbot Potter was still on the stage, would continue there until the
rather distant end of the act, and that the “ingenue,” after completing
the little run at her exit, had begun to study the manuscript of her
part, and in that absorption had disappeared through a door into the
rear passageway. Canby knew that she was not to be “on” again until the
next act, and he followed a desperate impulse.
“See a person,” he mumbled, and went out through the lobby, turned south
to the cross-street, proceeded thereby to the stage-door of the theatre,
and resolutely crossed the path of the distrustful man who lounged
there.
“Here!” called the distrustful man.
“I'm with the show,” said Canby, an expression foreign to his lips and a
clear case of inspiration. The distrustful man waved him on.
Wanda Malone was leaning against the wall at the other end of the
passageway, studying her manuscript. She did not look up until he paused
beside her.
“Miss Malone,” he began. “I have come--I have come--I have-ah--”
These were his first words to her. She did nothing more than look at him
inquiringly, but with such radiance that he floundered to a stop. There
were only two things within his power to do: he had either to cough or
to speak much too sweetly.
“There's a draught here,” she said, Christian anxiety roused by the
paroxysm which rescued him from the damning alternative. “You oughtn't
to stand here perhaps, Mr. Canby.”
“'Canby?'” he repeated inquiringly, the name seeming new to him.
“Canby?”
“You're Mr. Canby, aren't you?”
“I meant where--who--” he stammered. “How did you know?”
“The stage-manager pointed you out to me yesterday at rehearsal. I was so
excited! You're the first author I ever saw, you see. I've been in stock
where we don't see authors.”
“Do you--like it?” he said. “I mean stock. Do you like stock? How much
do you like stock? I ah--” Again he fell back upon the faithful old
device of nervous people since the world began.
“I'm sure you oughtn't to stand in this passageway,” she urged.
“No, no!” he said hurriedly. “I love it! I love it! I haven't any
cold. It's the air. That's what does it.” He nodded brightly, with the
expression of a man who knows the answer to everything. “It's bad for
me.”
“Then you--”
“No,” he said, and went back to the beginning. “I have come--I wanted
to come--I wished to say that I wi--” He put forth a manful effort which
made him master of the speech he had planned. “I want to thank you for
the way you play your part. What I wrote seemed dry stuff, but when you
act it, why, then, it seems to be--beautiful!”
“Oh! Do you think so?” she cried, her eyes bedewing ineffably. “Do you
think so?”
“Oh--I--oh!--” He got no further, and, although a stranger to the
context of this conversation might have supposed him to be speaking of
a celebrated commonwealth, Mother of Presidents, his meaning was
sufficiently clear to Wanda Malone.
“You're lovely to me,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Lovely! I'll never
forget it! I'll never forget anything that's happened to me all this
beautiful, beautiful week!”
The little kerchief she had lifted to her eyes was wet with tears not of
the stage. “It seems so foolish!” she said bravely. “It's because I'm so
happy! Everything has come all at once, this week. I'd never been in New
York before in my life. Doesn't that seem funny for a girl that's been
on the stage ever since she left school? And now I am here, all at
once I get this beautiful part you've written, and you tell me you like
it--and Mr. Potter says he likes it. Oh! Mr. Potter's just beautiful to
me! Don't you think Mr. Potter's wonderful, Mr. Canby?”
The truth about Mr. Canby's opinion of Mr. Potter at this moment was not
to the playwright's credit. However, he went only so far as to say: “I
didn't like him much yesterday afternoon.”
“Oh, no, no!” she said quickly. “That was every bit my fault. I was
frightened and it made me stupid. And he's just beautiful to me to-day!
But I'd never mind anything from a man that works with you as he does.
It's the most wonderful thing! To a woman who loves her profession for
its own sake--”
“You do, Miss Malone?”
“Love it?” she cried. “Is there anything like it in the world?”
“I might have known you felt that, from your acting,” he said, managing
somehow to be coherent, though it was difficult.
“Oh, but we all do!” she protested eagerly. “I believe all actors love
it more than they love life itself. Don't think I mean those that never
grew up out of their 'show-off' time in childhood. Those don't count,
in what I mean, any more than the 'show-girls' and heaven knows what not
that the newspapers call 'actresses'. Oh, Mr. Canby, I mean the people
with the art and the fire born in them: those who must come to the stage
and who ought to and who do. It isn't because we want to be 'looked at'
that we go on the stage and starve to stay there! It's because we want
to make pictures--to make pictures of characters in plays for people
in audiences. It's like being a sculptor or painter; only we paint and
model with ourselves--and we're different from sculptors and painters
because they do their work in quiet studios, while we do ours under
the tension of great crowds watching every stroke we make--and, oh, the
exhilaration when they show us we make the right stroke!”
“Bravo!” he said. “Bravo!”
“Isn't it the greatest of all the arts? Isn't it?” she went on with the
same glowing eagerness. “We feed our nerves to it, and our lives to it,
and are glad! It makes us different from other people. But what of
that? Don't we give ourselves? Don't we live and die just to make
these pictures for the world? Oughtn't the world to be thankful for us?
Oughtn't it? Oh, it is, Mr. Canby; it is thankful for us; and I, for
one, never forget that a Prime Minister of England was proud to warm
Davy Garrick's breeches at the grate for him!”
She clapped her hands together in a gesture of such spirit and fire that
Canby could have thrown his hat in the air and cheered, she had lifted
him so clear of his timidity.
“Bravo!” he cried again. “Bravo!”
At that she blushed. “What a little goose I am!” she cried. “Playing the
orator! Mr. Canby, you mustn't mind--”
“I won't!”
“It's because I'm so happy,” she explained--to his way of thinking,
divinely. “I'm so happy I just pour out everything. I want to sing every
minute. You see, it seemed such a long while that I was waiting for my
chance. Some of us wait forever, Mr. Canby, and I was so afraid mine
might never come. If it hadn't come now it might never have come. If
I'd missed this one, I might never have had another. It frightens me to
think of it--and I oughtn't to be thinking of it! I ought to be spending
all my time on my knees thanking God that old Mr. Packer got it into his
head that 'The Little Minister' was a play about the Baptists!”
“I don't see--”
“If he hadn't,” she said, “I wouldn't be here!”
“God bless old Mr. Packer!”
“I hope you mean it, Mr. Canby.” She blushed again, because there was
no possible doubt that he meant it. “It seems a miracle to me that I am
here, and that my chance is here with me, at last. It's twice as good
a chance as it was yesterday, thanks to you. You've given me such
beautiful new things to do and such beautiful new things to say. How
I'll work at it! After rehearsal this afternoon I'll learn every word of
it in the tunnel before I get to my station in Brooklyn. That's funny,
too, isn't it; the first time I've ever been to New York I go and board
over in Brooklyn! But it's a beautiful place to study, and by the time
I get home I'll know the lines and have all the rest of the time for the
real work: trying to make myself into a faraway picture of the adorable
girl you had in your mind when you wrote it. You see--”
She checked herself again. “Oh! Oh!” she said, half-laughing,
half-ashamed. “I've never talked so much in my life! You see it seems to
me that the whole world has just burst into bloom!”
She radiated a happiness that was almost tangible; it was a glow so
real it seemed to warm and light that dingy old passageway. Certainly it
warmed and lighted the young man who stood there with her. For him,
too, the whole world was transfigured, and life just an orchard to walk
through in perpetual April morning.
The voice of Packer proclaimed: “Two o'clock, ladies and gentlemen!
Rehearsal two o'clock this afternoon!”
The next moment he looked into the passageway. “This afternoon's
rehearsal, two o'clock, Miss--ahh--Malone. Oh, Mr. Canby, Mr. Potter
wants you to go to lunch with him and Mr. Tinker. He's waiting. This
way, Mr. Canby.”
“In a moment,” said the young playwright. “Miss Malone, you spoke of
your going home to work at making yourself into 'the adorable girl'
I had in my mind when I wrote your part. It oughtn't”--he faltered,
growing red--“it oughtn't to take much--much work!”
And, breathless, he followed the genially waiting Packer.
X
“Your overcoat, Mr. Potter!” called that faithful servitor as Potter
was going out through the theatre with old Tinker and Canby. “You've
forgotten your overcoat, sir.”
“I don't want it.”
“Yes sir; but it's a little raw to-day.” He leaped down into the
orchestra from the high stage, striking his knee upon a chair with
violence, but, pausing not an instant for that, came running up the
aisle carrying the overcoat. “You might want it after you get out into
the air, Mr. Potter. I'm sure Mr. Tinker or Mr. Canby won't mind taking
charge of it for you until you feel like putting it on.”
“Lord! Don't make such a fuss, Packer. Put it on me--put it on me!”
He extended his arms behind him, and was enveloped solicitously and
reverently in the garment.
“Confound him!” said Potter good-humouredly, as they came out into the
lobby. “It is chilly; he's usually right, the idiot!”
Turning from Broadway, at the corner, they went over to Fifth Avenue,
where Potter's unconsciousness of the people who recognized and stared
at him was, as usual, one of the finest things he did, either upon the
stage or “off.” Superb performance as it was, it went for nothing with
Stewart Canby, who did not even see it, for he walked entranced, not in
a town, but through orchards in bloom.
If Wanda Malone had remained with him, clear and insistent after
yesterday's impersonal vision of her at rehearsal, what was she now,
when every tremulous lilt of the zither-string voice, and every little
gesture of the impulsive hands, and every eager change of the glowing
face, were fresh and living, in all their beautiful reality, but a
matter of minutes past? He no longer resisted the bewitchment; he wanted
all of it. His companions and himself were as trees walking, and when
they had taken their seats at a table in the men's restaurant of a hotel
where he had never been, he was not roused from his rapturous apathy
even by the conduct of probably the most remarkable maitre d'hotel in
the world.
“You don't git 'em!” said this personage briefly, when Potter had
ordered chops and “oeufs a la creole” and lettuce salad, from a card.
“You got to eat partridge and asparagus tips salad!”
And he went away, leaving the terrible Potter resigned and unrebellious.
The partridge was undeniable when it came; a stuffed man would have
eaten it. But Talbot Potter and his two guests did little more than
nibble it; they neither ate nor talked, and yet they looked anything
but unhappy. Detached from their surroundings, as they sat over
their coffee, they might have been taken to be three poetic gentlemen
listening to a serenade.
After a long and apparently satisfactory silence, Talbot Potter looked
at his watch, but not, as it proved, to see if it was time to return to
the theatre, his ensuing action being to send a messenger to procure
a fresh orchid to take the place of the one that had begun to droop a
little from his buttonhold. He attached the new one with an attentive
gravity shared by his companions.
“Good thing, a boutonniere,” he explained. “Lighten it up a little.
Rehearsal's dry work, usually. Thinking about it last night. Why not
lighten it up a little? Why shouldn't an actor dress as well for a
company of strangers at a reception? Ought to make it as cheerful as we
can.”
“Yes,” said Tinker, nodding. “Something in that. I believe they work
better. I must say I never saw much better work than those people were
doing this morning. It was a fine rehearsal.”
“It's a fine company,” Potter said warmly. “They're the best people I
ever had. They're all good, every one of them, and they're putting their
hearts into this play. It's the kind of work that makes me proud to
be an actor. I am proud to be an actor! Is there anything better?”
He touched the young playwright on the arm, a gesture that hinted
affection. “Stewart Canby,” he said, “I want to tell you I think we're
going to make a big thing out of this play. It's going to be the best
I've ever done. It's going to be beautiful!”
From the doorway into the lobby of the hotel there came a pretty sound
of girlish voices whispering and laughing excitedly, and, glancing that
way, the three men beheld a group of peering nymphs who fled, delighted.
“Ladies stop to rubber at Mr. Potter,” explained the remarkable
headwaiter over the star's shoulder. “Mr. Potter, it's time you got
marrit, anyhow. You git marrit, you don't git stared at so much!” He
paused not for a reply, but hastened away to countermand the order of
another customer.
“Married,” said Potter musingly. “Well, there is such a thing as
remaining a bachelor too long--even for an actor.”
“Widower, either,” assented Mr. Tinker as from a gentle reverie. “A
man's never too old to get married.”
His employer looked at him somewhat disapprovingly, but said nothing;
and presently the three rose, without vocal suggestion from any of them,
and strolled thoughtfully back to the theatre, pausing a moment by the
way, while Tinker bought a white carnation for his buttonhole. There was
a good deal, he remarked absent-mindedly, in what Mr. Potter had said
about lightening up a rehearsal.
Probably there never was a more lightened-up rehearsal than that
afternoon's. Potter's amiability continued;--nay, it increased: he was
cordial; he was angelic; he was exalted and unprecedented. A stranger
would have thought Packer the person in control; and the actors, losing
their nervousness, were allowed to display not only their energy but
their intelligence. The stage became a cheery workshop, where ambition
flourished and kindness was the rule. For thus did the starry happiness
that glowed within the beatific bosom of the little “ingenue” make
Arcady around her.
At four o'clock Talbot Potter stepped to the front of the stage and
lifted his hand benevolently. “That will do for to-day,” he said, facing
the company. “Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. I have never had
a better rehearsal, and I think it is only your due to say you have
pleased me very much, indeed. I cannot tell you how much. I feel
strongly assured of our success in this play. Again I thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen”--he waved his hand in dismissal--“till to-morrow
morning.”
“By Joles!” old Carson Tinker muttered. “I never knew anything like it!”
“Oh--ah--Packer,” called the star, as the actors moved toward the doors.
“Packer, ask Miss--Malone to wait a moment. I want--I'd like to go over
a little business in the next act before tomorrow.”
“Yes, Mr. Potter?” It was she who answered, turning eagerly to him.
“In a moment, Miss Malone.” He spoke to the stage-manager in a low tone,
and the latter came down into the auditorium, where Canby and Tinker had
remained in their seats.
“He says for you not to wait, gentlemen. There's nothing more to do this
afternoon, and he may be detained quite a time.”
The violet boutonniere and the white carnation went somewhat reluctantly
up the aisle together, and, after a last glance back at the stage from
the doorway, found themselves in the colder air of the lobby, a little
wilted.
Bidding Tinker farewell, on the steps of the theatre, Canby walked
briskly out to the Park, and there, abating his energy, paced the
loneliest paths he could find until long after dark. They were not
lonely for him; a radiant presence went with him through the twilight.
She was all about him: in the blue brightness of the afterglow, in the
haze of the meadow stretches, and in the elusive woodland scents that
vanished as he caught them;--she was in the rosy vapour wreaths on
the high horizon, in the laughter of children playing somewhere in the
darkness, in the twinkling of the lights that began to show--for now
she was wherever a lover finds his lady, and that is everywhere. He went
over and over their talk of the morning, rehearsing wonderful things he
would say to her upon the morrow, and taking the liberty of suggesting
replies from her even more wonderful. It was a rhapsody; he was as happy
as Tom o'Bedlam.
By and by, he went to a restaurant in the Park and ordered food to
be brought him. Then, after looking at it with an expression of fixed
animation for half an hour, he paid for it and went home. He let himself
into the boarding-house quietly, having hazy impressions that he was
not popular there, also that it might be embarrassing to encounter
Miss Cornish in the hall; and, after reconnoitering the stairway, went
cautiously up to his room.
Three minutes later he came bounding down again, stricken white, and
not caring if he encountered the devil. On his table he had found a
package--the complete manuscript of “Roderick Hanscom” and this scrawl:
Canby,