Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 574
He stamped into the theatre, walked down to the orchestra rail and began to shout at the expert artisans who were already busily at work on the stage. They responded interrogatively; he replied with exasperation, and for hours he alternately walked, brooding, up and down the aisles and returned to the rail to renew the high-pitched dialogue.
Oft-repeated phrases, sometimes bellowed in fury and sometimes wailed in agony, the playwright felt would ring in his ears in sleep, if indeed he ever slept again. “Lower your borders! Lower your borders! How many thousand times have I got to crack my voice telling you to lower your borders? You, up there! Where’s your borders?” A voice from invisible heights would reply “Got ’em lowered, sir!” and Hurley would remain unconvinced. “Lower your borders! Lower those borders! Aren’t you ever going to lower those borders?”
Frequently he became impassioned upon a necessity for amber. “Where’s the amber? Who cut out the amber? Give us that amber! Amber! Amber! Amber! Am I going to ruin my larynx again to get that amber? For the two-hundredth time where’s that amber? Hell and whiskers, will you give us that amber!”
Meanwhile there slowly appeared upon the stage the fresh-colored semblance of a sub-tropical landscape. Moss hung from trees, shrubberies hinted the South, the pillared verandah of a plantation house grew into being upon the right, and, to the left, were glimpses of a mighty river winding through a rosy sunset. By no means were the manager’s sufferings abated. “Where are those mats? Take up that green carpet! Take it up! Who said to put that carpet on the stage? Get out the mats! Green grass mats! Four hundred dollars’ worth of green grass mats! Think I paid four hundred dollars for green grass mats and then going to use a carpet? Oh, my cripes, will somebody get out those green grass mats and put ’em down there! Green grass mats! For God’s sake!”
Pinkney Monk came in, at eleven, just off the train, and sat down by the playwright in the rear row of seats. “I’ll go at it in a minute,” he explained. “Tired. Long siege with those costumes this afternoon. Guv’ner been like this all evening?”
“Yes. His worries began when he saw your name had been left off the billboard. I suppose you noticed it when you came in?”
Monk laughed absently. “Yes; he’ll straighten that out, and besides, I don’t think I need bother about it, since he doesn’t put his own name on at all. Never does. Curious man, George; and I’d rather work for him than anybody in the world. I’ll get his mats out for him in a minute or two. My, what a day!”
The exclamation, one of weariness, had no reassuring sound in anxious ears. “Was it?” Owen said. “Ah — nothing wrong? All the company’ll be here on the morning train, won’t they? All of them — ah — they’re all right, aren’t they?”
“All right?” Monk made sounds intended to convey the impression of hollow laughter. “Did anybody ever see a theatrical company that was all right? Tom Worthington’s got a cold and’ll probably be whispering by Monday night; but that’s nothing. These leading ladies with tempers!”
“Isabelle? What did she — —”
“Oh, Lord, her costumes! They couldn’t possibly be better; but I thought she’d murder old Ségur and me too before I got away. Whew, she’s in a state!”
“She is?” Owen said in a sickly voice. “But how about — how about — —”
“Your little girl? She’s a treat; the one bright spot. Happy as a lark and flying over the top of the world!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SOMERVILLE WAS A quiet town upon Sunday; the playwright woke late in the morning and heard no sound but the nasal piping of a newsboy upon the sunny pavement far below the open windows of the hotel bedroom. Then presently, when a waiter had brought breakfast, there were church bells and after the chiming there was silence again. Looking forth from a window upon a town apparently drowsing under the noon-day sun, Owen saw clean straight streets between long rows of shade trees that were now crimson and brown and yellow with autumn; but these prosperous neat vistas and the houses, the business buildings, the lawns, church spires, stables, garages, sheds, shrubberies, alleys and all that he saw were concentrated, to his view, into a single inscrutable personality. “What are you going to do to ‘Catalpa House’?” he asked this town of Somerville. “What are you going to do to ‘Catalpa House’ — and to Lily Mars?”
He was summoned down to the lobby of the hotel. O’Mahoney, the lively “advance man” for “Catalpa House”, waited there, and, with a wink of a twinkling eye, presented Mr. Leland, a blond shy spectacled boy apparently twenty, dramatic critic of the Somerville Times. Young Mr. Leland timidly asked questions and the interview was as long as it was vague and ineffective. To the playwright, indeed, it seemed to be lasting all afternoon; but finally, seeing old Briggs going toward the elevator, he jumped up from the leather divan he occupied with the critic. “Man I’ve got to see,” he said hurriedly, and strode across the lobby to join the stage manager.
“Briggs! The cast — they’re all right and all here?”
“Yes, of course all here, Mr. Gilbert. Got in at noon. Just going up now to hold the book on them while they run through their lines in the mezzanine parlor.”
“I suppose some of them are staying here in this hotel?”
“Well, I’m not, myself,” Briggs said apologetically. “Of course Mr. Allan and Miss Hedrington are here, and Mr. Vokes. Miss Lebrun and Miss Carlin and the three boys and Joe Ord and I, and Miss Bement, the understudy, are at ‘The National’, a very good place, rather more moderate — ah — I had meant to take the liberty of advising Miss Mars — ah — —” He hesitated uneasily, then went on, “I think probably Miss Lebrun already had spoken to her on the subject, and perhaps I should have done so, too, in view of the expense here and Miss Mars’s rather limited salary. But of course it wasn’t my affair, really. Yes, she’s staying here, too.”
Owen made a hasty mental computation. Hurley had been liberal, he knew, in setting the novice’s pay at seventy-five dollars a week, to begin on the morrow; but four days at five dollars a day for her room, and, on top of that, the charges of the surprisingly expensive restaurant — half the week bade fair to consume half the salary. The prospects, then, for a cook’s wages, a trained nurse’s pay, the rent of half of a double house, heat, light, sustenance and, above all, the redemption of a note at the bank, appeared to be bleak and Lily’s arithmetic feeble.
However, he was to have no chance that day to give her a hint in the matter, or in other matters that troubled him more. He did not see her until she came upon the stage in the dress rehearsal late in the evening, and, during the harrowing hours that followed, he was never near her. Amber and the lowering of borders still irked the manager; he was not appeased upon these subjects until almost ten o’clock, when he at last permitted the curtain to be lowered, then raised again to begin the dress rehearsal.
Within the minute he was at the orchestra rail, shouting, “Where’s that carafe? Where’s Smith? Bring Smith out here! Good heavens, Pink, where’s Smith? Props! Where’s the carafe that ought to be on that table on the verandah? Oh, my cripes, how’s Joe going to pour liquor out of a carafe if there isn’t any and no carafe in the first place to pour it out of? Expect him to pour nothing out of nothing? He’s a good man; but I give you my word he can’t do it! Oh, my cripes!”
The property man disappeared to search for the carafe, returned to report that it had been left in New York, sought again meekly after receiving virulent instructions so to do, returned with it, set it in place and came forward with voluble apologies, which were ill received. Altogether, the matter of the carafe was to the fore during half an hour, after which the curtain was lowered, then raised, and the rehearsal began again. It moved smoothly for five minutes; then Lily made her entrance and the playwright, suddenly breathless, was preoccupied with the altering yet curiously becoming effect of her gorgeous auburn wig, with its flowing tubular curls curved upon fine white shoulders above a satin bodice of the year Eighteen-thirty.
She had just begun to speak when Pinkney Monk stepped forth from painted shrubberies and said, “One minute, dear!” He advanced toward the footlights, holding his open hand across his nose to shield his eyes as he peered into the dark auditorium. “George — —”
“Oh, for God’s sake! What’s the matter now? What are you stopping it for, Pink?”
Monk looked distressed. “Ah — she — if you’d come up here a minute, George — —”
“Come up there? What for?”
It was Isabelle who answered. “I’ll show you!” she cried, and came rushing from the wings to display herself in an elaborate pale green silk dress of the period of the play. “Look at me!”
“I am!” Hurley responded testily. “You couldn’t look better. You’re beautiful! Go back there and make your entrance.”
“I won’t!” she said emotionally. “Ségur promised to make this dress over for me and he’s just got it here and you see what it looks like! Anybody could see what it looks like! If Ségur thinks I’m going to look like — —”
“Listen!” Hurley shouted. “Wait!” Then he muttered, “Now they’re beginning to go hysterical on me!” climbed up to the stage, went to Isabelle, put an arm about her benevolently and led her out of sight in the wings. Pinkney Monk followed them and there was a wait of three quarters of an hour. At the end of that time Hurley reappeared, sighing, descended to his post by the orchestra rail, the curtain was lowered, raised once more, and the rehearsal recommenced.
Dispirited, the actors fumbled for their “lines”, stammered, lost cues and bungled “stage business” — all except Lily, who was mechanically correct, going through her part with precision, though with a blithe kind of absent-mindedness. Eugene fumbled most of all, Isabelle was resentful, melancholy and careless; Monk begged them and the others despairingly and in vain for “Just a little more life!” Hurley alternately thundered and wailed; he made them go over one scene “nine times by actual count”, as O’Mahoney whispered to the crushed Owen. For crushed indeed he was, long before the miserable process closed at five in the morning. By that time he had written new “lines” into the play, upon passionate appeal from Hurley, had “cut” and altered scenes, though Monk protested that this, the eleventh hour, was too late; and all seemed confusion.
To the wearied head of the playwright, jerking upon the pillow even after daylight came, there appeared no future for “Catalpa House”. The play was a thing so nearly dead that this town of Somerville, unaided, would easily kill it; and even without the help of hotel bills Mrs. Mars and Clara would perish with it. Heaven alone knew what was in store for a girl who might do anything — anything!
Purposely, during all the sunlight hours of this disheartening Monday, he had speech with no one connected with the theatrical professions. In the afternoon he walked drearily about the town, and, when he passed by the houses of the more affluent citizens, became more despondent. Glancing sidelong at such a house, a big one of hard grey stone set in a deep lawn and glistening coldly from many plate-glass windows, he even shivered. Hard grey glistening people who lived there would probably be in the theatre to-night, staring icily at “Catalpa House”, withholding all applause and perhaps going home before the play was done. They wouldn’t care what destruction they wrought; the shattered career of a playwright wouldn’t mean anything to them, nor would the loss of Hurley’s money, nor the waste of all the excruciating thought and labor put into the building of every detail of the play.
Those people wouldn’t clap their palms together once to keep old Joe Ord, Jennie Lebrun and the rest from being out of work. Fat, cold, plate-glass people, they’d eat heavily at dinner, sit sluggishly in the theatre, and even if they knew that what they did there was in reality not merely to damn a play but to sign the death-warrants of two women who deserved to live, would they cheer “Catalpa House”? Not they! “Serve ’em right!” they’d say. “Serve the whole bunch of ’em right for coming here and expecting to entertain us two dollars’ worth with a show like this!”
A more hopeful view was expressed to him, however, during the hurried meal he had in the hotel restaurant just after dark. Ord came in, sat at his table and turned upon him the rosy light of a grand red old Roman countenance. “One dozen oysters simply,” the veteran explained. “Came over from ‘The National’ because the oysters are safe here and I thought maybe I’d run into someone like you that’d pay for ’em. Fine to lose a play because of one bad oyster. One could do it. All I ever eat before a performance, a dozen half-shell. Midnight’s the actor’s hour. I’ll trencher and flagon me then, what? Good house to-night; not much paper, either. Somerville pleased to be the dog we try it on; but don’t worry, they’re play-goers not First Nighters. They can eat apple pie without announcing it was no way to cook onion soup. They won’t shoot us cooks; they’ll like us.”
“What! You think — —”
“My boy! Do I think? I know!”
“But that awful thing last night — —”
“Awful?” Ord said, and laughed. “Best thing that could happen. Puts ’em all on their toes. Got to buck it up after that! You’ll see a great performance. Never knew it to fail. Watch Isabelle, for instance. She’ll put everything in to-night because she’s scared and knows she’s got to fight for it. Fine for to-night; but afterwards, look out! Tantrum last night over costume all plain scare. Couldn’t looked better, herself — eh, but maybe somebody else did. Lawsy, lawsy, how many times I’ve seen it!”
“Ah, but if she’s worried and — and jealous — —”
“Jealousy?” Ord swallowed an oyster with gusto. “Hah! My boy, we live by it! We stand up there in competition, face to face with those who deal us life or death. They ring the welkin for my rival, a slob with a fat part; so be it, I’ll feed him so well that at least they’ll remember me as a part of his triumph — and if I see but one slender little chance let him beware of me, for I’ll steal the scene from him! No, you’ll see a good house and a good performance to-night, no such horrible thing as’ll be before us when we open in New York to the peacocks and harpies. There they’ll drain your blood and mine to grow one extra green feather on a tail. No, no; no fear about to-night. Later — —” He paused and devoted himself to his oysters for a time; then he said quietly, “I don’t like double jealousies, though, Owen. When you add a professional one to a personal one bad harm can be done. Anything you can do to stop that — well, it might be advisable for you to come out of your shell and be a peacemaker.”
“Thank you, Joe,” Owen said. “I understand what you mean. So far I — I haven’t seemed to be up to it.”
“No,” the old actor agreed gravely. “Apparently not. Better keep trying, though, if our little troupe’s to reach New York undecimated.” He shook his head, swallowed the last of his oysters, slapped his chest briskly and rose. “Hah! Me the stag at eve that had drunk his fill — not, what? Leave that for after. Now for the buskins! My boy, you’ve written a good play; fear nothing from Somerville — we’ll dazzle these simple hinds for you. Courage mon ami, le diable est mort!”
His silk hat and walking-stick were upon a vacant chair at the table; he received them from the waiter, upon whom he bestowed a stately, negligent nod; then, with a grand air, he placed the hat upon his head a little to one side, glanced absently over the half dozen people at other tables, bowed ceremoniously to Owen, and, loudly humming “Fair eyes behold thee, Toreador!” strode magnificently out of the restaurant.
The playwright, whose depression was much increased, drank several cups of coffee, and, having eaten almost nothing, left the hotel and walked for an hour up and down Somerville’s short stretches that were bordered by lighted shop-windows. Then he turned into an alley, found the stage door of the theatre and entered it slinkingly, with the look and manner of that supposititious criminal who must ever return to the scene of his misdeed. He went to Eugene’s dressing-room, where the handsome actor, superb as a dandified gambler of the Old South, was just being completed by his “dresser”.
“Owen, what’s the matter?”
“ ’Gene, are you — are you all right?”
“Am I? Are you? What’s wrong, old boy? You look like the devil.”
Owen laughed feebly. “Oh, no — just stage-fright on behalf of the rest of you, I suppose. I do hope you — —”
“Don’t worry about my performance. I was rotten last night; but I’ve got hold of myself.” He drew Owen to the doorway and spoke in a low tone. “I’m in torture! Listen. If Isabelle asks you where I was either Friday or Saturday nights, you don’t know. Of course you naturally wouldn’t know about Saturday because you’d left New York; but about Friday you don’t know either. I thought I’d better not use last Monday night’s alibi again. She doesn’t know anything; but she ferrets. She gives me no rest. I’m in torture, I tell you, in torture! I’ll play this part, though; I’ll make them like me — you’ll see! There. I’ve got to run over my first act lines with Tommy here. Go along — and good luck to us all!”
They shook hands feverishly; Owen climbed an open iron stairway, knocked upon a dressing-room door above Eugene’s, and, bidden to enter, stepped within. Lily and Miss Lebrun sat before their wall-mirrors, deeply engaged in “making-up” their brilliantly illuminated faces. They were in costume; but Lily had not yet put on her wig, and her tan-colored hair was twisted and pinned as closely as possible to her head. Her face was coated with pink grease-paint, her lips were stained scarlet and her eyelashes gummed into black spikes; and, thus besmeared and seen at close range, with her lovely hair made into a disadvantage, she was a test for a lover’s heart. Owen’s responded with a thrilled palpitation that permitted no doubt of her possession of it. She could look her worst and he cared for her only the more.
“You’re — you’re all right — both of you?” he asked.
