Chapter 5

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,

I can't produce your play--everything off.

Y'rs,

Tal't P'r.

XI

Carson Tinker was in the elevator at the Pantheon, and the operator was closing the door thereof, about to ascend, but delayed upon a sound of running footsteps and a call of “Up!” Stewart Canby plunged into the cage; his hat, clutched in his hand, disclosing emphatically that he had been at his hair again.

“What's he mean?” he demanded fiercely. “What have I done?”

“What's the matter?” inquired the calm Tinker.

“What's he called it off for?”

“Called what off?”

“The play! My play!”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen him since rehearsal. His Japanese boy called me on the telephone a little while ago and told me he wanted to see me.”

“He did?” cried the distracted Canby. “The Japanese boy wanted to see--”

“No,” Tinker corrected. “He did.”

“And you haven't heard--”

“Twelfth,” urged the operator, having opened the door. “Twelfth, if you please, gentlemen.”

“I haven't heard anything to cause excitement,” said Tinker, stepping out. “I haven't heard anything at all.” He pressed the tiny disc beside the door of Potter's apartment. “What's upset you?”

With a pathetic gesture Canby handed him Potter's note. “What have I done? What does he think I've done to him?”

Tinker read the note and shook his head. “The Lord knows! You see he's all moods, and they change--they change any time. He knows his business, but you can't count on him. He's liable to do anything--anything at all.”

“But what reason--”

The Japanese boy, Sato, stood bobbing in the doorway.

“Mis' Potter kassee,” he said courteously. “Ve'y so'y Mis' Potter kassee nobody.”

“Can't see us?” said Tinker. “Yes, he can. You telephoned me that he wanted to see me, not over a quarter of an hour ago.”

Sato beamed upon him enthusiastically. “Yisso, yisso! See Mis' Tinker, yisso! You come in, Mis' Tinker. Ve'y so'y. Mis' Potter kassee nobody.”

“You mean he'll see Mister Tinker but won't see anybody else?” cried the playwright.

“Yisso,” said Sato, delighted. “Ve'y so'y. Mis' Potter kassee nobody.”

“I will see him. I--”

“Wait. It's all right,” Tinker reassured him soothingly. “It's all right, Sato. You go and tell Mr. Potter that I'm here and Mr. Canby came with me.”

“Yisso.” Sato stood back from the door obediently, and they passed into the hall. “You sidowm, please.”

“Tell him we're waiting in here,” said Tinker, leading the way into the cream-coloured salon.

“Yisso.” Sato disappeared.

The pretty room was exquisitely cheerful, a coal fire burning rosily in the neat little grate, but for its effect upon Canby it might have been a dentist's anteroom. He was unable to sit, and began to pace up and down, shampooing himself with both hands.

“I've racked my brains every step of the way here,” he groaned. “All I could think of was that possibly I've unconsciously paralleled some other play that I never saw. Maybe someone's told him about a plot like mine. Such things must happen--they do happen, of course--because all plots are old. But I can't believe my treatment of it could be so like--”

“I don't think it's that,” said Tinker. “It's never anything you expect--with him.”

“Well, what else can it be?” the playwright demanded. “I haven't done anything to offend him. What have I done that he should--”

“You'd better sit down,” the manager advised him. “Going plumb crazy never helped anything yet that I know of.”

“But, good heavens! How can I--”

“Sh!” whispered Tinker.

A tragic figure made its appearance upon the threshold of the inner doorway: Potter, his face set with epic woe, gloom burning in his eyes like the green fire in a tripod at a funeral of state. His plastic hair hung damp and irregular over his white brow--a wreath upon a tombstone in the rain--and his garment, from throat to ankle, was a dressing-gown of dead black, embroidered in purple; soiled, magnificent, awful. Beneath its midnight border were his bare ankles, final testimony to his desperate condition, for only in ultimate despair does a suffering man remove his trousers. The feet themselves were distractedly not of the tableau, being immersed in bedroom shoes of gay white fur shaped in a Romeo pattern; but this was the grimmest touch of all--the merry song of mad Ophelia.

“Mr. Potter!” the playwright began, “I--”

Potter turned without a word and disappeared into the room whence he came.

“Mr. Potter!” Canby started to follow. “Mr. Pot--”

“Sh!” whispered Tinker.

Potter appeared again upon the threshold In one hand he held a large goblet; in the other a bottle of Bourbon whiskey, just opened. With solemn tread he approached a delicate table, set the goblet upon it, and lifted the bottle high above.

“I am in no condition to talk to anybody,” he said hoarsely. “I am about to take my first drink of spirits in five years.”

And he tilted the bottle. The liquor clucked and guggled, plashed into the goblet, and splashed upon the table; but when he set the bottle down the glass was full to its capacious brim, and looked, upon the little “Louis Sixteenth” table, like a sot at the Trianon. Potter stepped back and pointed to it majestically.

“That,” he said, “is the size of the drink I am about to take!”

“Mr. Potter,” said Canby hotly, “will you tell me what's the matter with my play? Haven't I made every change you suggested? Haven't--”

Potter tossed his arms above his head and flung himself full length upon the chaise lounge.

“STOP it!” he shouted. “I won't be pestered. I won't! Nothing's the matter with your play!”

“Then what--”

Potter swung himself round to a sitting position and hammered with his open palm upon his knee for emphasis: “Nothing's the matter with it, I tell you! I simply won't play it!”

“Why not?”

“I simply won't play it! I don't like it!”

The playwright dropped into a chair, open-mouthed. “Will you tell me why you ever accepted it?”

“I don't like any play! I hate 'em all! I'm through with 'em all! I'm through with the whole business! 'Show-business!' Faugh!”

Old Tinker regarded him thoughtfully, then inquired: “Gone back on it?”