THE SECOND ACT.
Klein went on with the business of his part, poking at the property
fire—a bunch of red globes buried in a grate of coke. Other characters
made their appearance, and the dialogue opened briskly.
Miss Lindner, first to pick up the silver frame, frowned as she
delivered her lines. In an undertone, aside to Klein, who was busily
engaged in dusting an already spotless piece of china, she said:
“According to the property man, I’ve got a new lover to-day. Did you
notice the change?”
She laughed—her back was to the audience—and as Dodge, the character
man, entered noisily, she made a face at him. Dodge took his art
seriously, and would not “clown” on a scene. Others of the cast, aware
of it, “kidded” him at every possible opportunity.
When Dodge stood in front of the picture, addressing it in thunderous
rage—as the play demanded he should—Klein watched him narrowly. Nothing
happened, and Klein decided mentally that the character man had not
noticed the difference between to-day’s photograph and the one used in
the previous performances.
By this time Tanner was on the scene, and for possibly ten minutes the
dialogue and the action did not concern the photograph. Then Miss
Lindner made a hurried exit, and Tanner began a soliloquy.
This was one of the longest speeches in the piece, and the best, and
Tanner delivered it with all the power and passion he could command. At
the finish, Klein, as the butler, was supposed to enter and announce a
visitor, who happened to be Metcalfe.
Just before Klein’s entrance Tanner strode across the floor and picked
up the frame. To this he was supposed to deliver the final line, which
at the same time supplied the butler’s cue.
“And as for Lord Wellingmay,” he dramatically recited, “let him beware.
I am not the man to——” He stopped so abruptly as to cause a titter to
run through the audience, who, up to this point had listened,
spellbound.
Tanner had picked up the frame at this critical moment and noticed the
photograph.
Klein, waiting in the doorway for his cue, felt his pulse quicken. The
sight of the photograph—Delmar’s photograph—had caused Tanner to
hesitate!
The wait grew longer. Fearful of the delay, and aware that his entrance
might set the dialogue moving once more, Klein stepped through the door.
“A visitor, Mr. Lemly!” he announced stiffly.
Klein’s line apparently brought Tanner back to earth again, and with a
peculiar frown he turned and took up his cue.
While they were waiting for Metcalfe to enter, Klein spoke aside to
Tanner in the way that is quite common on the stage, and which is often
done, although the audience has no idea how much private conversation
goes on among the actors during a play.
“What made you go up in the air?” he asked—and all the time a voice
whispered in his ear: “Tanner’s the man! Tanner’s the man! His actions
have proved it!”
Tanner, meanwhile, was fumbling nervously at his collar.
“I guess it—it was my nerves,” he answered. “I’ve been pounding too hard
on the next week’s part. It’s frightfully warm here, isn’t it?”
The entrance of Metcalfe interrupted the conversation. The juvenile man
dashed in and addressed his opening line to Tanner. Klein withdrew to
the background, where he arranged the decanter and the glasses on a
tray, preparatory to the next piece of business.
The dialogue between the other men continued. Both poured out their
drinks. Metcalfe, posing dramatically before the table, proposed a
toast.
But the toast was never drunk. Hardly had the words left Metcalfe’s lips
when he reeled slightly; the muscles in his throat contracted violently.
The glass slipped from his fingers and crashed upon the surface of the
polished table.
A strange hush fell upon the scene, and in the silence the steady hum of
the calciums came like the droning of a million bees.
It seemed an age must have elapsed before the strain was broken, but in
reality it could not have been more than a few seconds. Yet in that
time, swift as it was, and unexpected, too, Klein had discovered the
reason for the interruption.
Metcalfe’s eyes, at the moment of the toast, had fallen upon Delmar’s
photograph. And the sight of it had robbed him of all speech! He had
betrayed even greater agitation than had Tanner. What did it mean? What
could it mean, other than——
Like a snapping of a taut thread the tension was broken. Metcalfe, as if
suddenly aroused from a stupor, broke into a hard and forced laugh, and
he took up the regular lines of the play.
Passing close to him, bearing the tray, Klein noticed that the juvenile
man’s fingers were clenched and that he was breathing a trifle faster
than normal.
Klein was off the scene before the curtain of the act, and was touching
up his eyes when Metcalfe came into the dressing room.
In a calm and matter-of-fact way Klein sought to bring out the truth of
the affair by referring to the incident casually.
“Were you trying to reconstruct the second act?” he asked.
Metcalfe sank down into his chair and removed his wig.
“What are you getting at?” he asked curtly.
“Why, that impromptu scene over the toast,” Klein explained. “It was
good as far as it went.”
The juvenile man’s hands were still trembling as he squared himself in
his chair preparatory to removing his make-up. “I—I don’t know what—what
came over me. My nerves, I guess.”
“You looked as if you’d seen a ghost,” Klein ventured to suggest.
Metcalfe flashed him a quick glance, but Klein, bending over his mirror,
pretended not to notice it.
“I—I guess I did see a ghost,” he wavered. “Maybe I am a fool, and all
of that, but if——” He hesitated, daubing his cheeks. “Klein,” he began
once more, as if determined to relieve his mind of some weight, “I’ve
been upset ever since I joined this company. There is
something—something I’d like to talk over with you.”
“Fire away,” Klein told him, treating the statement with assumed
indifference. “I’m all ears. I suppose one of your mash notes——”
“It is nothing like that, Klein,” Metcalfe interrupted gravely. “I’m
serious for once.”
He paused, slowly unbuttoning his waistcoat. Klein waited expectantly
for him to continue, confident that whatever was troubling the juvenile
man would have a direct bearing upon Delmar’s photograph. That the
photograph had temporarily upset and confused Tanner was not to be
questioned. The excuse he had given Klein was obviously a lie. Then,
following this, had come Metcalfe’s dramatic scene, which beyond any
doubt had been prompted by the same photograph.
Yet both men avoided the real issue, and both attributed their lack of
self-control to a case of “nerves.”
“In the first place,” Metcalfe said, “on the very day I left New York——”
The door of the dressing room was at this present moment thrown open,
and Dodge stepped inside. He stood before the occupants with folded
arms, glaring from one to another.
“What’s the trouble, Dodge?” Metcalfe asked, sinking back in his chair,
plainly annoyed at the interruption.
“Matter? Matter?” Dodge burst out indignantly. “I should think you
gentlemen would be ashamed of yourselves!”
“Ashamed?” echoed Klein. “What have we—-”
“I’d like to be stage manager of this company for about five minutes,”
the character man interrupted. “That’s what I would! Such outrageous
actions as I witnessed this afternoon would not be tolerated for an
instant. You gentlemen have absolutely no respect for your
profession—none at all. To clown on a scene deliberately is beneath the
dignity of a conscientious artist.”
“He’s off,” muttered Metcalfe; then louder: “I suppose when you were
with Booth and Barrett——”
“When I was with Booth, young man,” thundered Dodge, his deep voice
rolling impressively, “we looked upon our art as a most serious matter.
In those palmy days, sir, an actor held himself above such shameful
proceedings as clowning. Mr. Booth would no more have allowed it than——”
“When I was playing the leads with ‘Too Proud to Beg,’” mocked the
juvenile man, burlesquing the other, “in the palmy days of the
melodrama, we were——”
“Say no more,” interrupted Dodge, lifting a hand. “It is not a thing to
jest over. An artistic performance should never be marred by impromptu
speeches.”
Metcalfe puckered his lips and started to whistle. Dodge glared at him
for a second, then almost turned pale under his make-up.
Metcalfe laughed. “Still superstitious, Dodge? Well, don’t take it too
hard. Let’s see; to whistle in a dressing room is a sign that the man
nearest the door will be whistled out of the company. Isn’t that it?”
But the character man stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
“I guess he took the hint,” Klein said. “To my mind, he is the one bore
in the company.”
The call boy’s voice came echoing through the hall:
“Third act! Third act!”
Klein, who was on near the opening of the act, rose to his feet.
“That’s me! I almost missed my entrance last night. If I get in late
this afternoon, Bond will fine me. I’ll talk with you later, Metcalfe.”
He hurried out of the room and down the hall to the stage.