Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 563
“I?” he said incredulously. “What in the world do you want me to — —”
“Won’t you? Just come and stand beside me here.”
Then, as in obviously dismal astonishment he did what she asked, both Allan and the vociferous Ord applauded, shouting loudly, “Author! Author! Author!”
Instantly the manager, sitting next to Ord, became red with rage. “Joe! What do you think human ears are made of? For God’s sake!” Moreover, he seemed to add, not orally yet all too plainly, by his expression and attitude, the intimation that it was bad enough to have to sit through the performance about to take place before him; he didn’t intend to bear any additional torture, especially not from his own people. Glancing at him pallidly, Owen felt that whatever the nature of Lily’s intended exhibition it couldn’t well begin under unhappier auspices. As for being forced to take part in it himself, he suffered but wasn’t a snob; he’d sink as calmly as he could with his mother and her stage-struck protégée.
Lily was explaining to the semicircle. “It’s the silliest little charade— ‘a poor thing but mine own’ — and made up one day when I was trying to amuse my mother, who’s an invalid; so don’t hate me too much for it! It’s two syllables and the whole word all in one scene, and really too dreadfully foolish!” She laughed deprecatingly and turned to Owen. “For the first part of it you must look mockingly imperious, if you don’t mind. Fold your arms as if you were terribly satisfied with yourself — —”
“What? Oh — all right.” He folded his arms and so far as he was able complied with her instruction to look mockingly imperious.
“That’s it,” she said approvingly. “Now we’ll begin.” She turned her back to him, took two steps away, halted, gave him over her shoulder a sly estimating look, the glance of a dangerous shrew planning action, then abruptly turned upon him, frowning, pointed at him and spoke in a fierce voice. “ ’Let him that moved you hither remove you hence! I am too light for such a swain as you to catch. If I be waspish, best beware my sting!’ ” She took a long stride that brought her close to him, and, with a sweeping arm, struck him upon the breast. “ ’If you strike me, you are no gentleman!’ ” she cried sharply, as if in a little fear of his reprisal; then, breathless but reassured, she became mocking. “ ’What is your crest? A coxcomb? This is my fashion, when I see a crab. Say you Sunday is our wedding-day? I’ll see thee hang’d on Sunday first!’ ” She walked away from him, let her shoulders droop, put her hands against her cheeks, looked upward deploringly and spoke in a voice that quavered with pathos yet seemed to rail against herself.
“He’ll woo a thousand, ‘point the day of marriage,
Make friends, invite them, and proclaim the banns;
Yet never means to wed where he hath wooed.
Now must the world point at poor Katherine,
And say,— ‘Lo, there is mad Petruchio’s wife,
If it would please him come and marry her.’”
This seemed to end a phase in both her acting and the charade. She returned to Owen, who was still holding his posture, and said to him with a timid air, appealingly and as if aside, “Now, if you can, will you begin to look as if you approved of me and even — if it’s possible — even as if you liked me a little?”
Suddenly and to his own surprise he found himself able to do both with a good grace. This dreaded philanthropic experiment of his mother’s was strangely enough turning out not badly. Lily wasn’t over-gesticulative; she was neither too much anything nor too little anything, and he was not ashamed of her, omitting to ask why he should have expected to be ashamed of her, since she was not his. He perceived that she must have taken readily to his mother’s coaching and that the coaching must have been excellent. More, Lily had caught the genuine attention of her audience; that was plain. Of course these professional actors would show polite indulgence to a pretty girl who played a charade for them; but there was something like eagerness in their silence as they watched her.
Her manner changed. She stood beside him humbly, looked up at him timidly and spoke with an imploring gentleness.
“And be it moon, or sun, or what you please:
And if you please to call it a rush candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.”
She came closer to him, put her fingers fearfully yet tenderly upon his arm and spoke with a placativeness so eloquently clear that he guessed her little charade— “placate” of course, he saw it was; she was playing Kate from The Taming of the Shrew and now wistfully placated him, a dumb Petruchio.
“Then, God be blessed, it is the blessed sun: —
But sun it is not, when you say it is not,
And the moon changes even as your mind,
What you will have it named, even that it is;
And so, it shall be so for Katherine.”
She lifted her head, bringing her face nearer to his, and, smiling ineffably, let her brown lashes cover the hazel eyes for a moment; then they rose, almost dazing him with the revelation of an unfathomably sweet meekness.
“Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband. . .
And place your hand below your husband’s foot;
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.”
For a perceptible instant longer she held him in a spell, her ardent face close to his and that worshipping look still upon it, while all through him there seemed to tingle a strange exhilaration, a feeling not to be identified with his mere great relief that after all she hadn’t made herself and his mother and him ridiculous.
Suddenly she laughed, swept downward in a curtsey so deep it made her half his height, jumped up and ran to a vacant chair near Mrs. Gilbert.
Already old Ord was thundering, “Bis! Bis! Bis!” and there was lively applause from the whole company. Allan jovially pulled Lily out of her chair to “take the call,” he said; she made her curtsey again to freshened applause, and Miss Hoyt, guessing the charade, shouted, “Placate! Placate! Why, it’s bully!” Ord discovered that young Mr. Lancey, least in years of the “Skylark” cast, was still somewhat puzzled, not by the charade but because he had never before heard of the comedy upon which it was founded; whereupon the sardonic laughter of the vociferous relic once more became unbearable in the manager’s ear.
Hurley jumped up from his chair and uttered a scream of rage and pain. “Joe! Will somebody block up that grotto! Nobody wants to see all your back teeth! My God!” He pointed to a glisteningly laden table against the wall. “Fill him! Drown him!” Then, less vehement but apparently not less embittered, he addressed the company at large. “I should think you’d all feel like a lot of cigar store Indians! On my soul, I should! Sit here and see an amateur with no pretensions to know anything about the calling you’re supposed to be following and she makes you all look like thirty cents! My God!”
In seeming fury he strode to the table he had recommended for the suppression of Ord and filled an assuaging glass for himself; while talk and laughter, beginning apprehensively after his outburst, took courage and again became general in the room. Mrs. Gilbert, excited in her triumph, drew Owen aside for a moment as soon as she could. “I didn’t tell you beforehand because you’d have been worried and — —”
“And because I’d have been afraid and would have tried to stop you,” he admitted. “Of course I’m only a fool of a man. I ought to have remembered that women are always dashingly doing things that men won’t try because the things are impossible. I ought to have realized how much cleverer you are than I am and have seen what you could do with her — when all I did was just give up!”
“No, no!” she said. “What you can do comes now. You heard what he said. Wasn’t that really pretty tremendous — from a manager? Ah, look at her, dear! Isn’t it lovely — did you ever see a face so eager? Strike while the iron’s hot, Owen!”
“You mean ask him to take her name now?”
“ ’Take her name’! No!” Mrs. Gilbert exclaimed, though she kept her voice low. “Good heavens, no! Tell him you want to write a part into your play for her!”
Owen looked uncertain. “You don’t know him; he’s incalculable. Of course I’ll try it, but — —”
“I should think so!” she said. “Of course you will!”
He had misgivings, and also found it difficult to get a word apart with Hurley who had taken the stage director into a corner and begun a discussion of details for the production of “Catalpa House”. Owen made an effort to interrupt, but was waved away, and the discussion became more emphatic and exclusive, continued interminably. He did not find his opportunity until the radiant Lily had left the room (to be driven home by Nelson in her “dear blessed Aunt Anne’s” little brougham) and most of the grateful and exuberant theatrical party were surrounding Mrs. Gilbert before departure. Turning diplomatist, he scooped a handful of cigars from an open box on a table and pressed them upon the manager.
“What you trying to do, bribe me?” Hurley asked, staring angrily. “Want me to write Adler we ought to raise your royalty percentage?”
“You might find the cigar stand closed when you get back to the hotel, George. By the way — ah — —”
Mr. Hurley accepted the gift. “By what way? What are you mumbling about?”
“I’ve been thinking about Miss Hoyt’s part in ‘Catalpa House’,” Owen said. “She’s going to play it well, I can see that, of course; but there’s something of a gap there somehow. I’ve thought it might be a good idea to write in a secondary ingénue part and — —”
“Secondary!” Hurley interrupted fiercely. “What do you mean, secondary?”
“Ah — supplementary. I could brace up a lot of weakish points with it.”
“What? You mean you want two ingénues, like a Tom-show with two Topsys?”
“Not precisely! Please listen, George. The play’d be richer for such a part, and just to-night it struck me I knew exactly where we could find the right girl to play it.”
“What!”
“Miss Mars,” Owen said hurriedly, yet trying to speak with an air of bright discovery. “She’d be precisely what I see in such a part. You know what you thought about her, yourself, and besides, she’s terribly eager to go on the stage and wants to act and — —”
“Oh, she does!” Hurley said, in a dangerous tone. “She wants to go on the stage, does she? She wants to be a real live actress, does she?”
“Don’t get excited, George, please. Yes, she does, and you know what you said of her acting, yourself. Even in that little charade, you saw what she could do and you stood up and said — —”
“Listen!” Hurley interrupted, and then spoke slowly, with an air of profound enmity, his facial expression being that of a naturally suspicious person who discovers that a dish of sweets, just offered him, contains poison. “Listen! When she did her little charade I gave it the praise a Sunday School child ought to get for speaking his little lesson nicely, according to his little lights. If you don’t know better than to think I’d put a Sunday School child into a company of mine on account of his doing some such little thing nicely, or that I’d allow a part to be written into a play I’m producing when the damn thing’s already too long, just for the benefit of a society débutante’s vanity and her perfectly sickening desire to show herself off on the stage, why, God help you!”
“But, George, you — —”
“I praised her for her little two-minute peanut charade, so now she wants to go on the stage, does she? If I say a baby looks healthy the hell’s-imp stands right up in its perambulator and swears I’ve as good as promised him seventy-five dollars a week as a juvenile!” His voice became falsetto. “Wants to go on the stage, does she? By cripes, I might have known it! But if you think I wreck my business to please every stage-struck heiress that gets a crush on me for an evening, God help you!”
“Good heavens! She isn’t — —”
“That’s all I have to say! God help you!”
“George, please — —”
“God help you!” Truculent, the manager strode into the little group about the hostess and ended the sonorous farewells of Ord by interposing a sturdy shoulder and a brusque “Goodnight, ma’am!” Then, stamping into the hall, he snatched his hat from a table and betook himself to the night air and the waiting automobiles.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN THE MORNING Mrs. Gilbert took a more temperate view of the manager than she had expressed the night before when her son told her of Hurley’s disappointing explosion. “I believe he’s the most terrible man I ever met,” she said, at the breakfast-table. “Yet, in spite of me, I don’t dislike him. But are all managers like that?”
“Gracious, no, Mother! Some of ’em are just business men who’ll invest in whatever they think they can sell to the public, and they don’t all care much what the goods are, so there’s a market. Some of ’em are just showmen; but they do unbelievable things with a Trump of Fame made of paper — their actresses have the most jewel robberies. George Hurley’s another type. Managing is really an art for him, not a business; he rages at the stage, wails that he hates it and all the time has a passion for it. That’s why he’s so difficult. After last night, I haven’t the slightest hope of even getting him to take poor Lily’s name.”
“No — the brute,” Mrs. Gilbert said; but though she used this term her tone was more musing than vindictive. “Except him, all those people were so likeable and amusing; I was delighted with them. Funny — I’d supposed the ladies of the company would be all paint and powder; but they weren’t a bit. Except for a little rouge I thought I saw on Miss Hoyt’s cheeks, there wasn’t a trace of artificial color among them. I suppose they have to use so much professionally they’re glad to get away from it. Such nice, light-hearted friendly people! They seem a little different, of course — a little set apart — but attractively so, I thought. I suppose they don’t always seem light-hearted, do they?”
“Good heavens, no! When they’re down, they proclaim the abyss.”
Mrs. Gilbert looked more thoughtful. “Are there many love affairs in the companies, Owen?”
“Oh, I don’t know. About as many as there’d be in any excursion party of the same size, or in classes at co-educational institutions, I suppose. Why?”
“I thought Miss Hedrington seemed very much taken with Mr. Allan.”
“Did you?” her son asked, laughing. “I mean, did you only think so? I’d say it’s fairly evident! Poor Eugene’s had quite a surfeit of ladies’ falling in love with him; but this is one of the times when he’s been responsive. They’ve been playing opposite each other in the same companies for two years and would have married before now except that Hurley won’t have married couples in any company of his; he thinks it causes complications. Besides, both Eugene and Isabelle may be ‘starring’ before very long, and it’s usually a little better business for matinée idols, either male or female, to be thought availably single. They’re very devoted, however.”
“Yes; she seemed so,” Mrs. Gilbert said reflectively. “Miss Hedrington was the only one who didn’t appear to be genuinely enthusiastic about that poor child’s charade. She just said, ‘Quite extraordinary — for a society girl.’ Did you notice?”
“No, I didn’t happen to.”
“Perhaps under the circumstances it was natural, because Mr. Allan was so very applausive and because he seemed to be rather pointedly interested in Lily all evening.” Mrs. Gilbert sighed. “They were all really lovely to her, and you could see how strongly they felt her charm.”
“Her charm, Mother?”
“Dear me, yes!” Mrs. Gilbert returned, looking at him seriously. “I suppose that means you don’t feel it, yourself, and after all I think it’s just as well.” She laughed apologetically, and then, with a slight embarrassment, explained, “I mean — I mean of course that I want you to do all you can for her; but I — I mean she really has a tremendous charm — though I’m not quite sure that’s exactly the way to speak of it. It’s a kind of emanation — something that seems to radiate from her — and that she seems to be able to turn on and off at will, almost as one’s able to turn something on and off at a faucet. It’s like what people call a heady perfume, only this of hers reaches the heart. When she turns it on, it seems to beat upon the people within its radius, so to speak; they become intensely conscious of her to the exclusion of almost everything else and they feel she’s intensely conscious of them, too, as if she were saying to each of them, man or woman, ‘How adorable you are!’ ”
“Really?” Owen said, successfully appearing to be a little astonished. “You think so?”
“Think so? Why, I’ve seen it. Of course there must be individuals who’d be impervious to it, and, as your mother, I’m pleased that you’re one of them.” She smiled, looking at him with affectionate approbation. “That poor child is good, Owen, and in her sacrifice to her mother she’s shown a noble nature; but, though you may not have entirely realized it yet, she’s an artist and has rather an overwhelming amount of that unreasoning thing that seems to the rest of us to be sometimes angelic and sometimes destructive, both without reason, and always rather mad. I mean what we can’t define and helplessly call the ‘artistic temperament’. You’re an artist yourself, and of course you’ve got some of it; so you’re the last person in the world who should be subjected to too much of anybody else’s. I admire Lily and I care a great deal about her on her own account as well as her mother’s; but I’m glad you aren’t susceptible to that radiation of hers. She certainly did have it turned on last night, in spite of its not affecting that odious Mr. Hurley!”
“It did,” her son informed her, with some gravity. “His interpretation was that she had a ‘crush’ on him, and of course that set him twice as much against her. But she, poor thing, went away in the seventh heaven, not doubting it had all been absolutely accomplished for her.”
