The rehearsal had started when she reached the theatre. As she enteredthe dark auditorium, voices came to her with that thin and reedy effectwhich is produced by people talking in an empty building. She sat downat the back of the house, and, as her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom,was able to see Gerald sitting in the front row beside a man with a baldhead fringed with orange hair whom she took correctly to be Mr. Bunbury,the producer. Dotted about the house in ones and twos were members ofthe company whose presence was not required in the first act. On thestage, Elsa Doland, looking very attractive, was playing a scene with aman in a bowler hat. She was speaking a line, as Sally came in.
"Why, what do you mean, father?"
"Tiddly-omty-om," was the bowler-hatted one's surprising reply."Tiddly-omty-om... long speech ending in 'find me in the library.' Andexit," said the man in the bowler hat, starting to do so.
For the first time Sally became aware of the atmosphere of nerves.Mr. Bunbury, who seemed to be a man of temperament, picked up hiswalking-stick, which was leaning against the next seat, and flung itwith some violence across the house.
"For God's sake!" said Mr. Bunbury.
"Now what?" inquired the bowler hat, interested, pausing hallway acrossthe stage.
"Do speak the lines, Teddy," exclaimed Gerald. "Don't skip them in thatsloppy fashion."
"You don't want me to go over the whole thing?" asked the bowler hat,amazed.
"Yes!"
"Not the whole damn thing?" queried the bowler hat, fighting withincredulity.
"This is a rehearsal," snapped Mr. Bunbury. "If we are not going to doit properly, what's the use of doing it at all?"
This seemed to strike the erring Teddy, if not as reasonable, at anyrate as one way of looking at it. He delivered the speech in an injuredtone and shuffled off. The atmosphere of tenseness was unmistakable now.Sally could feel it. The world of the theatre is simply a large nurseryand its inhabitants children who readily become fretful if anything goeswrong. The waiting and the uncertainty, the loafing about in strangehotels in a strange city, the dreary rehearsing of lines which had beenpolished to the last syllable more than a week ago--these things hadsapped the nerve of the Primrose Way company and demoralization had setin. It would require only a trifle to produce an explosion.
Elsa Doland now moved to the door, pressed a bell, and, taking amagazine from the table, sat down in a chair near the footlights.A moment later, in answer to the ring, a young woman entered, to begreeted instantly by an impassioned bellow from Mr. Bunbury.
"Miss Winch!"
The new arrival stopped and looked out over the footlights, not in thepained manner of the man in the bowler hat, but with the sort ofgenial indulgence of one who has come to a juvenile party to amuse thechildren. She was a square, wholesome, good-humoured looking girl witha serious face, the gravity of which was contradicted by the faint smilethat seemed to lurk about the corner of her mouth. She was certainly notpretty, and Sally, watching her with keen interest, was surprised thatFillmore had had the sense to disregard surface homeliness and recognizeher charm. Deep down in Fillmore, Sally decided, there must lurk anunsuspected vein of intelligence.
"Hello?" said Miss Winch, amiably.
Mr. Bunbury seemed profoundly moved.
"Miss Winch, did I or did I not ask you to refrain from chewing gumduring rehearsal?"
"That's right, so you did," admitted Miss Winch, chummily.
"Then why are you doing it?"
Fillmore's fiancee revolved the criticized refreshment about her tonguefor a moment before replying.
"Bit o' business," she announced, at length.
"What do you mean, a bit of business?"
"Character stuff," explained Miss Winch in her pleasant, drawling voice."Thought it out myself. Maids chew gum, you know."
Mr. Bunbury ruffled his orange hair in an over-wrought manner with thepalm of his right hand.
"Have you ever seen a maid?" he asked, despairingly.
"Yes, sir. And they chew gum."
"I mean a parlour-maid in a smart house," moaned Mr. Bunbury. "Do youimagine for a moment that in a house such as this is supposed to be theparlour-maid would be allowed to come into the drawing-room champingthat disgusting, beastly stuff?"
Miss Winch considered the point.
"Maybe you're right." She brightened. "Listen! Great idea! Mr. Fostercan write in a line for Elsa, calling me down, and another giving mea good come-back, and then another for Elsa saying something else, andthen something really funny for me, and so on. We can work it up into abig comic scene. Five or six minutes, all laughs."
This ingenious suggestion had the effect of depriving the producermomentarily of speech, and while he was struggling for utterance, theredashed out from the wings a gorgeous being in blue velvet and a hat ofsuch unimpeachable smartness that Sally ached at the sight of it with aspasm of pure envy.
"Say!"
Miss Mabel Hobson had practically every personal advantage whichnature can bestow with the exception of a musical voice. Her figure wasperfect, her face beautiful, and her hair a mass of spun gold; but hervoice in moments of emotion was the voice of a peacock.
"Say, listen to me for just one moment!"
Mr. Bunbury recovered from his trance.
"Miss Hobson! Please!"
"Yes, that's all very well..."
"You are interrupting the rehearsal."
"You bet your sorrowful existence I'm interrupting the rehearsal,"agreed Miss Hobson, with emphasis. "And, if you want to make a littleeasy money, you go and bet somebody ten seeds that I'm going tointerrupt it again every time there's any talk of writing up any darnedpart in the show except mine. Write up other people's parts? Not while Ihave my strength!"
A young man with butter-coloured hair, who had entered from the wings inclose attendance on the injured lady, attempted to calm the storm.
"Now, sweetie!"
"Oh, can it, Reggie!" said Miss Hobson, curtly.
Mr. Cracknell obediently canned it. He was not one of your brutalcave-men. He subsided into the recesses of a high collar and began tochew the knob of his stick.
"I'm the star," resumed Miss Hobson, vehemently, "and, if you thinkanybody else's part's going to be written up... well, pardon me while Ichoke with laughter! If so much as a syllable is written into anybody'spart, I walk straight out on my two feet. You won't see me go, I'll beso quick."
Mr. Bunbury sprang to his feet and waved his hands.
"For heaven's sake! Are we rehearsing, or is this a debating society?Miss Hobson, nothing is going to be written into anybody's part. Now areyou satisfied?"
"She said..."
"Oh, never mind," observed Miss Winch, equably. "It was only a randomthought. Working for the good of the show all the time. That's me."
"Now, sweetie!" pleaded Mr. Cracknell, emerging from the collar like atortoise.
Miss Hobson reluctantly allowed herself to be reassured.
"Oh, well, that's all right, then. But don't forget I know how to lookafter myself," she said, stating a fact which was abundantly obvious toall who had had the privilege of listening to her. "Any raw work, andout I walk so quick it'll make you giddy."
She retired, followed by Mr. Cracknell, and the wings swallowed her up.
"Shall I say my big speech now?" inquired Miss Winch, over thefootlights.
"Yes, yes! Get on with the rehearsal. We've wasted half the morning."
"Did you ring, madam?" said Miss Winch to Elsa, who had been reading hermagazine placidly through the late scene.
The rehearsal proceeded, and Sally watched it with a sinking heart. Itwas all wrong. Novice as she was in things theatrical, she could seethat. There was no doubt that Miss Hobson was superbly beautiful andwould have shed lustre on any part which involved the minimum of wordsand the maximum of clothes: but in the pivotal role of a serious play,her very physical attributes only served to emphasize and point herhopeless incapacity. Sally remembered Mr. Faucitt's story of the ladywho got the bir
d at Wigan. She did not see how history could fail torepeat itself. The theatrical public of America will endure much fromyouth and beauty, but there is a limit.
A shrill, passionate cry from the front row, and Mr. Bunbury was on hisfeet again. Sally could not help wondering whether things were goingparticularly wrong to-day, or whether this was one of Mr. Bunbury'sordinary mornings.
"Miss Hobson!"
The action of the drama had just brought that emotional lady on leftcentre and had taken her across to the desk which stood on the otherside of the stage. The desk was an important feature of the play, for itsymbolized the absorption in business which, exhibited by her husband,was rapidly breaking Miss Hobson's heart. He loved his desk better thanhis young wife, that was what it amounted to, and no wife can stand thatsort of thing.
"Oh, gee!" said Miss Hobson, ceasing to be the distressed wife andbecoming the offended star. "What's it this time?"
"I suggested at the last rehearsal and at the rehearsal before andthe rehearsal before that, that, on that line, you, should pick upthe paper-knife and toy negligently with it. You did it yesterday, andto-day you've forgotten it again."
"My God!" cried Miss Hobson, wounded to the quick. "If this don't beateverything! How the heck can I toy negligently with a paper-knife whenthere's no paper-knife for me to toy negligently with?"
"The paper-knife is on the desk."
"It's not on the desk."
"No paper-knife?"
"No paper-knife. And it's no good picking on me. I'm the star, not theassistant stage manager. If you're going to pick on anybody, pick onhim."
The advice appeared to strike Mr. Bunbury as good. He threw back hishead and bayed like a bloodhound.
There was a momentary pause, and then from the wings on the prompt sidethere shambled out a stout and shrinking figure, in whose hand was ascript of the play and on whose face, lit up by the footlights, thereshone a look of apprehension. It was Fillmore, the Man of Destiny.
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