Part 18

The young dramatist expressed his belief that perhaps an apron would be a proper thing for the house-keeper to wear in the first act.

"But not a cap, I hope?" urged Mrs. Castleman.

Carpenter doubted if a cap would be necessary.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Castleman. "You see, I have always hitherto been associated with the legitimate, and I really don't quite know what to do with this sort of thing." Then she suddenly paused, only to break out again impetuously: "Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Carpenter, really I did not mean to imply that this charming play of yours is not legitimate--"

The dramatic author laughed. "You needn't apologize," he declared; "I'm inclined to think that 'Touch and Go' is so illegitimate now that its own parents can't recognize it!"

At last the rehearsal of the second act began, the two authors sitting at the little table with the stage-manager.

Sherrington consulted them once or twice in regard to the omission of a line here and there.

"Cut it down to the bone when you can--that's what I say," he explained; "what you cut out can't make people yawn."

But once he stopped the rehearsal to suggest that a speech be written in. "You've got to make that complication mighty clear," he declared, "and this is the place to do it, I think. If you want them to understand that Dresser here is going to mistake Marvin for Fostelle in the next scene, you had better give him another line now to lead up to it."

The two authors consulted hastily, and Carpenter, drawing out a note-book and a pencil, hurriedly wrote a sentence, which he showed to Brackett.

"That'll do it," said Sherrington; and he read it aloud to Dresser, who borrowed Carpenter's pencil and wrote in the line on the manuscript of his part, wondering aloud whether he should ever remember it on the first night.

A few minutes later Sherrington again interrupted the actors to insist that the sunset effect should be adjusted carefully to accompany the spoken dialogue.

"I want a soft, rosy tinge on Fostelle in this scene," he explained.

"Quite right," laughed the black-eyed star; "that ought to be becoming to my style of beauty."

"And I want it to contrast with the blue moonlight in the scene with Marvin," said the stage-manager.

"Quite right again," Miss Daisy Fostelle commented. "I'll take the centre of the stage, and you will order calciums for one!"

"We had better go back to your entrance, I think," Sherrington decided, "and take the whole scene over."

The actors and actresses obediently resumed the positions they had occupied when Miss Daisy Fostelle made her first appearance in that act. The cue for her entrance was given, and she came forward with a burst of artificial laughter.

"That laugh was very good," Sherrington declared--"better than it was last time; but you must make it as hollow as you can. Remember the situation: your best young man has gone back on you and you are trying to keep a stiff upper-lip--but your heart is breaking all the same. See?"

The star repeated the laugh, and it was more obviously artificial.

"That's it, my dear," said the stage-manager. "Now keep it up till you cross, and then drop into that chair there, and then you let the laugh die away into a sob."

The star went back to the rustic gate by which she had entered, laughed again, and came forward; then she crossed the stage, sank upon a seat, and choked with a sob.

Carpenter stepped forward and whispered into Sherrington's ear, whereupon Miss Fostelle sat upright instantly and very suspiciously asked, "What's that? I'd rather have you say it out loud than whisper it!"

The young dramatist explained at once.

"I was only suggesting to Sherrington that perhaps it would be better if that seat were turned a little so that you were not so sideways: then the audience would get a full view of your face here."

"It would be a pity to deprive them of that, I'll admit," said the mollified actress, as she and the stage-manager slightly turned the rustic chair.

Then she dropped into the seat and repeated her sob.

Miss Marvin stepped upon the stage, and remarked to space, "What a lovely evening, and how glorious the sunset!" Then she stood silently watching.

Miss Daisy Fostelle sobbed again, and, in tones heavy-laden with tears, she said, "What have I to live for now?" Looking back at the other actress she remarked, in her ordinary voice, "You will give me time to pick myself up here, won't you?" Then she went on, in the former tear-stained accents, "What have I left to live for now? My heart is broken! My heart is broken!" Again she resumed her every-day tones to ask the stage-manager: "Is that all right? Am I far enough around now?"

Thus they came to perhaps the most important scene of the play--that between the Stellar Attraction (as Brackett liked to call her) and the girl Carpenter was in love with. Both actresses were well fitted to the characters they had to perform. Carpenter, who had no liking for Daisy Fostelle, was a little surprised at the judgment and skill with which she carried off the _bravura_ passages of her part; and he was not a little charmed with the delicate force the gentle Mary Marvin revealed in the contrasting character.

And so the rehearsal proceeded laboriously, Sherrington directing it autocratically, ordering certain scenes to be played more rapidly and seeing that others were taken more slowly, so that the spectators might have time to understand the situation. Now and then either Carpenter or Brackett made a suggestion or a criticism, but both yielded to Sherrington, if he was insistent. The stage-manager kept the whole company of actors up to their work, and imposed on them his understanding of that work, much as the conductor of an orchestra leads his musicians at the performance of a symphony.

When the whole act had been rehearsed, and the final scene was repeated three or four times until it ran like well-oiled clockwork, the stage was cleared so that the scenery of the third act might be set.

Sherrington accompanied Miss Marvin through the door behind the proscenium box into the dark auditorium.

"You will play that scene very well," he said, "but you've got to have confidence."

"It is a beautiful part, isn't it?" she responded, with enthusiasm. "I never had a part I could enjoy playing so much."

Carpenter was about to leave the stage to tell Mary what a delight it was to him to hear her speak the words he had written, when his collaborator tapped him on the shoulder. As he turned Harry Brackett whispered in his ear:

"Look out for the Stellar Attraction. I'm afraid she has just dropped on Marvin's part. If she once suspects that the little girl may get that scene away from her, she can make herself mightily disagreeable all round. I guess we had better go up and tell her she is a greater actress than Charlotte Cushman."

Carpenter laughingly answered: "Take care she doesn't drop on you! It would be worse if she thought you were guying her."

"There's no danger of that," Harry Brackett returned. "That Stellar Attraction of ours is a boa-constrictor for flattery--there isn't anything she won't swallow."

The two dramatic authors found Miss Daisy Fostelle standing in the wings and discussing with Dresser the personal peculiarities of another member of the dramatic profession.

As Carpenter and Brackett came up the actress was saying: "Why, she had the cheek actually to tell me I was more amusing off the stage than on--the cat! But I got even with her. I told her I was sorry I couldn't return the compliment, for she was even less amusing on the stage than off!"

The two dramatists joined in the laugh, and then Harry Brackett began.

"Is it your hated rival you are having fun with?" he asked. "Well, if she comes to see you in this play to-morrow they'll have to put a waterproof carpet into the private box, for she will weep bitter tears of despair while she's watching you in this second act of ours."

Miss Daisy Fostelle snapped her big black eyes at him and smiled with pleasure.

"Yes," she admitted. "I don't believe she will really enjoy that scene--and yet she'll have to give me a hand at the end of the act."

"She'll go through the motions, perhaps," Brackett returned, "but she won't burst a hole in her gloves." Then he slyly nudged his collaborator.

"The fact is," began Carpenter, thus admonished, "I was just going to tell Harry Brackett here that maybe we have made a mistake in writing you a high-comedy part like this--"

The actress flashed a suspicious glance at him, but he went on as if unconscious of this.

"We can see now," he continued, "that you are going to play this part so well that you will make a great hit in it, and then the critics will all be after you to play Lady Teazle and Rosalind. They'll tell you that you are only wasting your talents in modern plays and that you ought to devote yourself to the legitimate."

The suspicion faded from Miss Daisy Fostelle's face and the smile of pleasure reappeared.

"That's so," Harry Brackett declared. "You will make such a hit in this part, I'm afraid, that Sheridan and Shakespeare will be good enough for you next season. Now that would be taking the bread out of our mouths!"

The actress laughed easily. "I don't think you would starve," she returned; "and I might, maybe--if I took to the legitimate. Not that it would be my first attempt, either, for I played Ariel in the 'Tempest' when I was a mere child. And it wasn't easy, I can tell you. Ariel's a real hard part, I think; there's a certain swing to the words, too, and you can't make up a line of your own if you get stuck, as I could in this piece of yours."

"No," Brackett confessed, solemnly, "the dialogue of 'Touch and Go' is not as rhythmic as the dialogue of the 'Tempest.'"

"And I've played Francois in 'Richelieu,' too," continued Miss Fostelle. "But I don't think I really like any of those Shakespearian parts."

"No," Brackett confessed again, with fearless gravity, "Francois is not one of Shakespeare's best parts. It wasn't worthy of you, no matter how inexperienced you were. But Rosalind, now, as Carpenter suggests, and Beatrice--"

Carpenter here guessed from Dresser's spasmodic manner that the actor was about to intervene in the conversation, and not knowing what might be the result, the younger of the dramatists dropped out of the group and managed to draw Dresser away with him.

After they had exchanged a few words Carpenter looked into the auditorium to discover where Mary Marvin might be. He saw that she was by the side of her mother, and that Mrs. Loraine and Sherrington were still engaged in an earnest conversation. He made a movement as if to leave Dresser, whereupon the comedian begged him for a moment's interview.

"It's about that speech of mine in the third act that I want to make a suggestion," said the actor. "It's a very good speech, too, and I think I can get three laughs out of it, easy. You know the speech. I mean the one about the three old maids: 'There were three old maids in our town; one was as plain as a pikestaff, and the other was as homely as a hedge fence, and the third was as ugly as sin; and whenever they all three walked out together every clock in the place stopped short. Their parents had christened them Faith and Hope and Charity; but the boys always called them Battle and Murder and Sudden Death.' Now, don't you think it would help to ring out the point more if the orchestra was to play 'Grandfather's Clock' very gently just as I say that 'every clock in the place stopped short'? What do you think? That's my own idea!"

The dramatist said nothing for a second or two, and then told the actor to consult the stage-manager, who was just returning to begin the rehearsal of the third act.

The new scene had been set swiftly and the furniture was already in place. The first of the actors to enter was the cadaverous and irritable Stark. He began glibly enough, but soon hesitated for a word, and then broke out impatiently, regardless of the presence of the two authors: "Oh, I can't get that line into my head! And I don't know what it means, either! How can you expect a man to speak such rubbish?"

As before, nobody paid any attention to this petulance, and the actor went on with his part without further comment.

Dresser then entered, and the two men proceeded to misunderstand each other in the most elaborate fashion. The character which Stark represented had reason to believe that the character that Dresser represented was the uncle of the character that Daisy Fostelle represented and was also a soldier. In like manner Dresser had reason to believe that Stark was the lady's uncle and also a sailor. They addressed each other, therefore, in sailor talk and in soldier talk; and the fun waxed fast and furious. At the height of the misunderstanding Daisy Fostelle entered unexpectedly and found herself instantly immeshed in the humorous complication, with no possibility of plausible explanation.

Once the stage-manager reminded Dresser that he had omitted a phrase. "You left out 'Confound it, man!'" he said.

"I know it," the actor explained, "but I wanted to save it to use in my next speech. It goes better there--you see if it does not."

And Sherrington decided that "Confound it, man!" was more effective in the later speech; so the transposition was authorized, to Dresser's satisfaction.

The stage-manager had this important scene of mutual misunderstanding between Stark and Dresser and Daisy Fostelle repeated twice, until every word fell glibly and every gesture seemed automatic. And so the rehearsal went to the end, Sherrington applying the finishing touches, and seeming at last to be fairly well satisfied with the result of his labors.

The final lines of the comedy were, of course, to be delivered by the star; but when the cue was given to her Miss Fostelle simply said "Tag!" everybody being aware that it is very unlucky to speak the last speech of a play at a rehearsal--as unlucky as it is to put up an umbrella on the stage, or to quote from "Macbeth."

"That will do," said the stage-manager; "I think it will be all right to-morrow night."

And with that the rehearsal concluded and the company began to disperse.

"I hope it is all right," Harry Brackett remarked to Carpenter, "and I think it is. But I shall have a great deal more confidence after the man in the box-office shakes hands with me cordially, say, next Wednesday or Thursday, and inquires about my health. He'll know by that time whether we've got a good thing or not!"

Carpenter helped Miss Marvin to put on her light cape. Then, after her mother had joined them, they said good-night to the others and left the theatre together.

When they came out into the warm night the street was quieter than it had been when Carpenter entered the theatre. There were fewer cable-cars passing the door, and the trains on the elevated road in the avenue were now infrequent. The lights had been turned out in front of the variety show across the way, and evidently the grand sacred concert was over. The moon had sunk, and before they had gone a block the bell of the church tolled the hour of midnight.

The young man who was walking by the side of Mrs. Loraine broke the silence at last.

"Well," he asked, "what do you think of the play now?"

"I think it is a good piece of its kind," the elder actress answered--"a very good piece of its kind; and it is well staged; and it will be well acted, too. Sherrington knows how to get his best work out of everybody. Yes, it will be a success."

"Is it good for three months here now?" the young author asked, "and for the rest of the season on the road?"

"Oh yes, indeed," replied Mrs. Loraine; "yes, indeed. It's safe for a hundred nights here at least!"

They paused at the corner to wait for a cable-car, and Sherrington joined them.

This gave Carpenter a chance to lead the daughter away from the mother half a dozen steps.

"I'm so glad mother thinks the play will go," the girl began. "And mother is a very good judge, too. You ought to make a lot out of it."

The young dramatist felt that he had his chance at last.

"I've wanted to make money mainly for one reason," he returned; "I wanted to ask you to take half of it."

"Half of it?" she echoed, as though she did not understand.

"Oh, well--all of it," he responded, swiftly; "and me with it."

"Mr. Carpenter!" she cried, and her blushes made her look even lovelier than before.

"Won't you marry me?" he asked, ardently.

"Oh, I suppose I've got to say yes," she answered, "or else you'll go down on your knees here in the street!"

(1895.)

A CANDLE IN THE PLATE

Little Miss Peters had given a last look to the dinner-table with its effective decoration of autumn leaves, and she had made sure that the cards were in their proper places. She had glanced at herself in the mirror of the music-room as she passed through, and she had smiled to see the little spot of color burning in her cheek. She had taken her place modestly behind her employer, the portly hostess, and she had seen the guests arrive one by one. She had remarked the cheerful eagerness of the young Irishman for whose sake the company had gathered, and she had frankly admired his good looks. Now she was sitting silently in her seat at the table, and she was wondering what the stranger would think of them all.

It would not be quite fair to the worthy widow to say that Mrs. Canton's dinners were always ponderous; but it might be admitted that, although the cooking was ever excellent and the guests were selected from the innermost circle of Society, the bill of fare was monotonous and the conversation often lacked variety. That evening, however, there were several present who had not before been honored with invitations to dine in that exclusive mansion. Few people of fashion were back in town so early in October, and it had not been easy for Mrs. Canton to make up her complement of guests when she found that she had suddenly to honor a letter of introduction Lord Mannington had given to the Honorable Gilbert Barry, brother of Lord Punchestown. She had heard that the handsome Irishman had been a great success at Lenox, and that all the girls were wild about him. In Mannington's letter she was informed that the young man went in for slumming and all that sort of thing, and that he had been living in Toynbee Hall; she was besought, therefore, to make him acquainted with the people in New York most interested in the elevation of the lower classes.

This sentence of Lord Mannington's letter it was that had caused Mrs. Canton to invite Rupert de Ruyter, the novelist, for she happened to have read one of his stories about the wretched creatures living down in the Italian quarter, and she was sure he would be able to tell Mr. Barry all that the young Irishman might want to know about the slums of New York. She had been fortunate enough to get the Jimmy Suydams, too; and she knew that Mrs. Jimmy took such an interest in the poor, acting as patroness so often, and all that. Then when little Miss Peters had come in to write the invitations and to balance the check-book and to answer the accumulated notes, Mrs. Canton, having gone over the list, looked at the pretty young secretary for a minute without speaking, and then said, "It won't be easy to get just the people one wants. Why shouldn't you come, Miss Peters? You belong to one of those things, you know, what do you call them--Working Girls' Clubs--don't you?"

"I'm a working girl myself, am I not?" Miss Peters answered. "And I reckon I'm very glad I've gotten the work to do."

"Then you can tell him anything Mr. de Ruyter doesn't know about these sort of people. How absurd for the younger brother of a peer to bother himself about such things over here, isn't it?" Mrs. Canton had returned. "Then that's settled."

Although the Southern girl had not relished the way the invitation had been proffered, she had not declined it, glad to get a glimpse again of the life of luxury to which she had been a stranger since she had been earning her own living; and thus it was that she was sitting silently in her seat at the dinner-table that evening in October, with Gilbert Barry and Rupert de Ruyter opposite to her. She did not seem to notice how the young Irishman glanced across the table at her more than once with obvious admiration, or how he tried to lure her into the conversation.

It irritated Miss Peters to have Rupert de Ruyter monopolize the talk. His rather rasping voice sawed her nerves, and she detested the way he thrust forward his square chin. She listened while he chattered along, not boasting exactly, yet managing to convey the impression that he knew more than any one else. Now and again he did bring forth a picturesque fact, for which he had the kodak eye of a reporter. He had the happy-go-lucky facility of the newspaper man, and he rattled away with more than one absurd misapprehension of the reality, until he reminded her of a singer with a fine voice but unable to avoid false notes.

"I don't pretend to know New York inside-out and upsidedown," he was saying; "but it is a most fascinating study, this polyglot city of ours, and the more you push your investigations the more likely you are to make surprising discoveries. You know we have an Italian quarter here?"

This was addressed, perhaps, to the British guest, but it was Mrs. Jimmy Suydam who answered it.

"Of course we do," she said; "haven't we all read that thrilling story you wrote about it?--the story with the startling title--_A Vision of Black Despair_."

The author flushed with pride that so handsome a woman and so exclusive a leader of Society should thus praise one of his writings.

Mr. Jimmy Suydam leaned over to Mrs. Canton, at whose left he was sitting, and said, "I don't see how my wife does it, do you? She keeps up with everything, you know--reads all the books--and all that."

"I didn't mean to remind you of that little thing of mine," continued De Ruyter, with a self-satisfied air that made little Miss Peters feel as though she would like to stick a pin in him. "That's neither here nor there, though I spent two days down in the Italian quarter getting up the local color for it. But what you didn't know, any of you, I am certain, is that part of the soil of this city was imported from Italy."

"Really, now," commented the British guest, "that is very interesting, indeed. It would be from a religious motive, I suppose--just as some of the mediaeval cemeteries had earth brought from the Holy Land?"

"That would be a more romantic reason, no doubt," the story-teller explained. "But the real one is very prosaic, I fear. The Italian soil here in New York was brought over as ballast by the ships that were going to take back our bread-stuffs. There is lot after lot upon the Harlem that has been filled in with this ballast--stones mostly, but some of it is earth."

"Genoa the superb providing a foundation for imperial New York," said the young Irishman, with a little flourish--and Miss Peters guessed that De Ruyter made a mental note of the figure for future elaboration. "And has New York a volcano under the city like Naples, now?--like every great town in Europe for the matter of that. Have you a seething mass of want and misery and discontent, such as boiled over in Paris under the Commune? That's what I'm wanting to find out."