Chapter 2

“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.

IV

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.

VI

Canby walked fast, the clamorous dining-room seeming to pursue him, and the thought of what figure he had cut there filling him with horror of himself, though he found a little consolation in wondering if he hadn't insulted Miss Cornish because he was a genius and couldn't help doing queer things. That solace was slight, indeed; Canby was only twenty-seven, but he was frightened.

The night before he had been as eagerly happy as a boy at Christmas Eve. He had finished his last day at the office, and after initiating the youth who was to take his desk, had parted with his employer genially, but to the undeniable satisfaction of both. The new career, opening so gloriously, a month earlier, with Talbot Potter's acceptance of the play, was thus definitely adopted, and no old one left to fall back upon. And Madison Avenue, after dark, shows little to reassure a new playwright who carries in his pocket a note ending with the words, “before deciding to put on another play I have been considering.” It was Bleak Street, that night, for young Stewart Canby, and a bleak, bleak walk he took therein.

Desperate alterations were already scratched into the manuscript; plans for more and more ran overlapping one another in his mind, accompanied by phrases--echoes and fragments of Talbot Potter: “Punch! What this play needs is Punch!” “Big love scenes!” “Big scene with a man!” “Great sacrifice for a woman!” “Big-hearted, lovable fellow!” “You dog! So on, so on!” “Zowie!” He must get all this into the play and yet preserve his “third act situation,” leniently admitted to be “quite a fair” one. Slacking his gait somewhat, the tormented young man lifted his hat in order to run his hand viciously through his hair, which he seemed to blame for everything. Then he muttered, under his breath, indignantly: “Darn you, let me alone!”