Chapter 6

“I tell you I'm going to buy a farm!” He sprang up, went to the mantel and struck it a startling blow with his fist, which appeared to calm him somewhat--for a moment. “I've been thinking of it for a long time. I ought never to have been in this business at all, and I'm going to live in the country. Oh, I'm in my right mind!” He paused to glare indignantly in response to old Tinker's steady gaze. “Of course you think 'something's happened' to upset me. Well, nothing has. Nothing of the slightest consequence has occurred since I saw you at rehearsal. Can't a man be allowed to think? I just came home here and got to thinking of the kind of life I lead--and I decided that I'm tired of it. And I'm not going to lead it any longer. That's all.”

“Ah,” said Tinker quietly. “Nerves.”

Talbot Potter appealed to the universe with a passionate gesture. “Nerves!” he cried bitterly. “Yes, that's what they say when an actor dares to think. 'Go on! Play your part! Be a marionette forever!' That's what you tell us! 'Slave for your living, you sordid little puppet! Squirm and sweat and strut, but don't you ever dare to think!' You tell us that because you know if we ever did stop to think for one instant about ourselves you wouldn't have any actors! Actors! Faugh! What do we get, I ask you?”

He strode close to Tinker and shook a frantic forefinger within a foot of the quiet old fellow's face.

“What do I get?” he demanded, passionately. “Do you think it means anything to me that some fat old woman sees me making love to a sawdust actress at a matinee and then goes home and hates her fat old husband across the dinner-table?”

He returned to the fireplace, seeming appeased, at least infinitesimally, by this thought. “There wouldn't even be that, except for the mystery. It's only because I'm mysterious to them--the way a man always thinks the girl he doesn't know is prettier than the one he's with. What's that got to do with acting? What is acting, anyhow?” His voice rose passionately again. “I'll tell you one thing it is: It's the most sordid profession in this devilish world!”

He strode to the centre of the room. “It's at the bottom--in the muck! That's where it is. And it ought to be! What am I, out there on that silly platform they call a stage? A fool, that's all, making faces, and pretending to be somebody with another name, for two dollars! A monkey-on-a-stick for the children! Of course the world despises us! Why shouldn't it? It calls us mummers and mountebanks, and that's what we are! Buffoons! We aren't men and women at all--we're strolling players! We're gypsies! One of us marries a broker's daughter and her relatives say she's married 'a damned actor!' That's what they say--'a damned actor!' Great heavens, Tinker, can't a man get tired of being called a 'damned actor' without your making all this uproar over it--squalling 'nerves' in my face till I wish I was dead and done with it!”

He went back to the fireplace again, but omitted another dolorous stroke upon the mantel. “And look at the women in the profession,” he continued, as he turned to face his visitors. “My soul! Look at them! Nothing but sawdust--sawdust--sawdust! Do you expect to go on acting with sawdust? Making sawdust love with sawdust? Sawdust, I tell you! Sawdust--sawdust--saw--”

“Oh, no,” said Tinker easily. “Not all. Not by any means. No.”

“Show me one that isn't sawdust!” the tragedian cried fiercely. “Show me just one!”

“We-ll,” said Tinker with extraordinary deliberation, “to start near home: Wanda Malone.”

Potter burst into terrible laughter. “All sawdust! That's why I discharged her this afternoon.”

“You what?” Canby shouted incredulously.

“I dismissed her from my company,” said Potter with a startling change to icy calmness. “I dismissed her from my company this afternoon.”

Old Tinker leaned forward. “You didn't!”

Potter's iciness increased. “Shall I repeat it? I was obliged to dismiss Miss Wanda Malone from my company, this afternoon, after rehearsal.”

“Why?” Canby gasped.

“Because,” said Potter, with the same calmness, “she has an utterly commonplace mind.”

Canby rose in agitation, quite unable, for that moment, to speak; but Tinker, still leaning forward, gazing intently at the face of the actor, made a low, long-drawn sound of wonder and affirmation, the slow exclamation of a man comprehending what amazes him. “So that's it!”

“Besides being intensely ordinary,” said Potter, with superiority, “I discovered that she is deceitful. That had nothing whatever to do with my decision to leave the stage.” He whirled upon Tinker suddenly, and shouted: “No matter what you think!”

“No,” said Tinker. “No matter.”

Potter laughed. “Talbot Potter leaves the stage because a little 'ingenue' understudy tries to break the rules of his company! Likely, isn't it?”

“Looks so,” said old Tinker.

“Does it?” retorted Potter with rising fury. “Then I'll tell you, since you seem not to know it, that I'm not going to leave the stage! Can't a man give vent to his feelings once in his life without being caught up and held to it by every old school-teacher that's stumbled into the 'show-business' by mistake! We're going right on with this play, I tell you; we rehearse it to-morrow morning just the same as if this hadn't happened. Only there will be a new 'ingenue' in Miss Malone's place. People can't break iron rules in my company. Maybe they could in Mounet-Sully's, but they can't in mine!”

“What rule did she break?” Canby's voice was unsteady. “What rule?”

“Yes,” Tinker urged. “Tell us what it was.”

“After rehearsal,” the star began with dignity, “I was--I--” He paused. “I was disappointed in her.”

“Ye-es?” drawled Tinker encouragingly.

Potter sent him a vicious glance, but continued: “I had hopes of her intelligence--as an actress. She seemed to have, also, a fairly attractive personality. I felt some little--ah, interest in her, personally. There is something about her that--” Again he paused. “I talked to her--about her part--at length; and finally I--ah--said I should be glad to walk home with her, as it was after dark. She said no, she wouldn't let me take so much trouble, because she lived almost at the other end of Brooklyn. It seemed to me that--ah, she is very young--you both probably noticed that--so I said I would--that is, I offered to drive her home in a taxicab. She thanked me, but said she couldn't. She kept saying that she was sorry, but she couldn't. It seemed very peculiar, and, in fact, I insisted. I asked her if she objected to me as an escort, and she said, 'Oh, no!' and got more and more embarrassed. I wanted to know what was the matter and why she couldn't seem to like--that is, I talked very kindly to her, very kindly indeed. Nobody could have been kinder!” He cleared his throat loudly and firmly, with an angry look at Tinker. “I say nobody could have been kinder to an obscure member of the company that I was to Miss Malone. But I was decided. That's all. That's all there was to it. I was merely kind. That's all.” He waved his hand as in dismissal of the subject.

“All?” repeated Canby. “All? You haven't--”

“Oh, yes.” Potter seemed surprised at his own omission. “Oh, yes. Right in the midst of--of what I was saying--she blurted out that she couldn't let me take her home, because 'Lancelot' was waiting for her at a corner drug-store.”

“Lancelot!” There was a catch of dismay in Canby's outcry.

“That's what I said, 'Lancelot'!” cried Potter, more desolately than he intended. “It seems they've been meeting after rehearsal, in their damn corner drug-store. Lancelot!” His voice rose in fury. “If I'd known I had a man named Lancelot in my company I'd have discharged him long ago! If I'd known it was his name I'd have shot him. 'Lancelot!' He came sneaking in there just after she'd blundered it all out to me. Got uneasy because she didn't come, and came to see what was the matter. Naturally, I discharged them both, on the spot! I've never had a rule of my company broken yet--and I never will! He didn't say a word. He didn't dare.”

“Who?” shouted Canby and old Tinker together.

“Lancelot!” said Potter savagely.

“Who?”

“Packer! His first name's Lancelot, the hypocrite! L. Smith Packer! She's Mrs. Packer! They were married two days before rehearsals began. She's Mrs. L. Smith Packer!”

XII

As the sound of the furious voice stopped short, there fell a stricken silence upon these three men.

Old Carson Tinker's gaze drifted downward from his employer's face. He sat, then, gazing into the rosy little fire until something upon the lapel of his coat caught his attention--a wilted and disreputable carnation. He threw it into the fire; and, with a sombre satisfaction, watched it sizzle. This brief pleasure ended, he became expressionless and relapsed into complete mummification.

Potter cleared his throat several times, and as many times seemed about to speak, and did not; but finally, hearing a murmur from the old man gazing at the fire, he requested to be informed of its nature.

“What?” Tinker asked, feebly.

“I said: 'What are you mumbling about?'”

“Nothing.”

“What was it you said?”

“I said it was the bride-look,” said the old man gently. “That's what it was about her--the bride-look.”

“The bride-look!”

It was a word that went deep into the mourning heart of the playwright. “The bride-look!” That was it: the bride's happiness!

“She had more than that,” said Potter peevishly, but, if the others had noticed it his voice shook. “She could act! And I don't know how the devil to get along without that hypocrite. Just like her to marry the first regular man that asked her!”

Then young Stewart Canby had a vision of a room in a boarding-house far over in Brooklyn, and of two poor, brave young people there, and of a loss more actual than his own--a vision of a hard-working, careworn, stalwart Packer trying to comfort a weeping little bride who had lost her chance--the one chance--“that might never have come!”

Something leaped into generous life within him.

“I think I was almost going to ask her to marry me, to-morrow,” he said, turning to Talbot Potter. “But I'm glad Packer's the man. For years he's been a kind of nurse for you, Mr. Potter. And that's what she needs--a nurse--because she's a genius, too. And it will all be wasted if she doesn't get her chance!”

“Are you asking me to take her back?” Potter cried fiercely. “Do you think I'll break one of my iron--”

“We couldn't all have married her!” said the playwright with a fine inspiration. “But if you take her back we can all see her--every day!”

The actor gazed upon him sternly, but with sensitive lips beginning to quiver. He spoke uncertainly.

“Well,” he began. “I'm no stubborn Frenchman--”

“Do it!” cried Canby.

Then Potter's expression changed; he looked queer.

He clapped his hands loudly;--Sato appeared.

“Sato, take that stuff out.” He pointed to the untouched whiskey. “Order supper at ten o'clock--for five people. Champagne. Orchids. Get me a taxicab in half an hour.”

“Yisso!”

Tinker rose, astounded. “Taxicab? Where you--”

“To Brooklyn!” shouted Potter with shining eyes. “She'll drive with me if I bring them both, I guess, won't she?”

He began to sing:

“For to-night we'll merry, merry be! For to-night we'll merry, merry be--”

Leaping uproariously upon the aged Tinker, he caught him by the waist and waltzed him round and round the room.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Harlequin and Columbine, by Booth Tarkington