Local Color Part 16

"Oh, Chester!" she wailed the words in louder key even than before.

Like the gentleman that he was, the barkeeper turned squarely round and began polis.h.i.+ng the valve of a beer pump with the palm of his moist hand. With a glance which swiftly travelled from one to another the tall cowboy gathered up his fellows and speedily they withdrew through the swinging doors, pa.s.sing the lady with faces averted, profoundly actuated all by considerations inspired of their delicate outdoor sensibilities.

Except for the detective person, husband and wife, to all intents and purposes, stood alone, face to face.

"Oh, Chester," she repeated for the third time, and now forgivingly her arms were outstretched. "Oh, Chester, how could you do it?"

"Do what, Gertrude?"

"Run away and l-l-leave me. What did you do it for?"

"Three dollars a day," he answered simply. There was no flippancy in the reply, but merely directness.

"Oh, Chester, to give up your home--your position--me--for that! Oh, what madness possessed you! Chester, come back home."

"Back home to Brooklyn? Not on your life." His tone was firmness itself. He spoke commandingly, as one who not only is master of himself but of a present situation. "Gertrude, you'd better stay here, too, now that you've come. I guess maybe I could get 'em to work you in on the regular list of extras. You'd probably film well." He eyed her appraisingly.

"But, oh, Chester, to go--as you went--with never a word--never a line to me!"

"Gertrude, you wouldn't have understood. Don't you see, honey, it's like this." He took her in his arms, even as she had meant to take him into hers, and, with small, comforting pats upon her heaving back, sought to soothe her. "It's like this--I'm before the public now. Why, Gerty, I'm in the eyes of the world."

CHAPTER VI

THE GREAT AUK

As regards the body of the house it lay mostly in shadows--the man-made, daytime shadows which somehow always seem denser and blacker than those that come in the night. The little jogs in the wall behind the boxes were just the same as coalholes. The pitched front of the balcony suggested a deformed upper jaw, biting down on darkness. Its stucco facings, s.h.i.+ning dimly, like a row of teeth, added to the illusion. At the bottom of the pit, or the family circle, or whatever it was they called it at the Cosmos Theatre, where the light was somewhat better, the backs of the seats showed b.u.mpily beneath the white cloths that covered them, like lines of graves in a pauper burying ground after a snowstorm.

A third of the way back, in this potter's field of dead-and-gone laughter, a man was hunched in a despondent posture. His att.i.tude would make you think of a lone ghost that had answered the resurrection trump too soon and now was overcome with embarra.s.sment at having been deceived by a false alarm. The brim of his hat rested on the bridge of his nose.

Belonging, as he did, to a race that is esteemed to be essentially commercial, he had the artistic face and the imaginative eyes which, as often as not, are found in those of his breed.

His name was Sam Verba. He was general director for Cohalan & Hymen, producing managers. He was watching a rehearsal of a new play, though he did not appear to be. Seemingly, if he was interested in anything at all it was in the movements of two elderly ch.o.r.e-women, who dawdled about the place deliberatively, with dust rags and brooms. Occasionally, as one of the women raised her voice shrilly to address her distant sister, he went "Sh-h! Sh-h!"--like a defective steam pipe. Following this the offender would lower her voice for a s.p.a.ce measurable by seconds.

Border lights, burning within the proscenium arch, made the stage brightly visible, revealing it as a thing homely and nude. Stage properties were piled indiscriminately at either side. Against the bare brick wall at the back, segments of scenes were stacked any-which-way, so that a strip of a drawing room set was superimposed on a strip of a kitchen and that in turn overlapped part of a wainscoted library, the result being as though an earthquake had come along and shaken one room of somebody's house into another room and that into another, and then had left them so. In sight were four women and nine men, who perched on chairs or tables or roosted, crow-fas.h.i.+on, upon the iron steps of a narrow staircase which ascended to the top tier of dressing rooms, extending along a narrow balcony above. The hour was eleven o'clock in the morning. Therefore these persons wore the injured look which people of their nocturnal profession customarily wear upon being summoned out of their beds before midday.

At a little table, teetering on rickety legs almost in the trough of the footlights, sat a man hostilely considering a typewritten script, which was so interlined, so marked and disfigured with crosses, stars, and erasures that only one person--the author of these ciphers--might read his own code and sometimes even he couldn't. The man at the table was the director, especially engaged to put on this particular piece, which was a comedy drama. He raised his head.

"All right, children," he said, "take the second act--from the beginning. Miss Cherry, Mrs. Morehead--come along. Stand by, everybody else, and, please, in Heaven's name, remember your cues--for once."

A young woman and a middle-aged woman detached themselves from one of the waiting groups and came downstage. The young woman moved eagerly to obey; she was an exceedingly pretty young woman. The other woman, having pa.s.sed her youth, strove now to re-create it in her costume. She wore a floppy hat and a rather skimpy frock, which b.u.t.toned down her back, school-girl fas.h.i.+on, and ended several inches above her ankles.

Under the light her dyed hair shone with the brilliancy of a new copper saucepan. There were fine, puckery lines at her eyes. Her skin, though, had the smooth texture which comes, some say, from the grease paint, and others say from plenty of sleep.

She held in one hand a flimsy, blue-backed sheaf; it was her part in this play. Having that wisdom in her calling which comes of long experience, she would read from it until automatically she had acquired it without prolonged mental effort; would let her trained and docile memory sop up the speeches by processes of absorption. Miss Cherry carried no ma.n.u.script; she didn't need it. She had been sitting up nights, studying her lines. For she, the poor thing, was newly escaped from a dramatic school. Mrs. Morehead wanted to make a living. Miss Cherry wanted to make a hit.

These two began the opening scene of the act and, between them, carried it forward. Miss Cherry as the daughter, was playing it in rehearsal, exactly as she expected to play it before an audience, putting in gestures, inflections, short catches of the breath, emotional gasps--all the illusions, all the business of the part. On the other hand, Mrs.

Morehead appeared to have but one ambition in her present employment and that was to get it over with as speedily as possible. After this contrasted fas.h.i.+on, then, they progressed to a certain dramatic juncture:

"But, mother," said Miss Cherry, her arms extended in a carefully-thought-out att.i.tude of girlish bewilderment, "what am I to do?"

Mrs. Morehead glanced down, refres.h.i.+ng her memory by a glance into the blue booklet.

"My child," she said, "leave it to destiny."

She said this in the tone of a person of rather indifferent appet.i.te, ordering toast and tea for breakfast.

A pause ensued here.

"My child," repeated Mrs. Morehead, glancing over her shoulder impatiently, but speaking still in the same voice, "leave it to destiny."

"Well, well----" snapped the man at the little table, "that's the cue, 'leave it to destiny.' Come on, McVey? Come a-w-n, McVey? Where's McVey?" He raised his voice fretfully.

A nervous, thin man hurried down the stage.

"Oh, there you are. Go ahead, McVey. You're keeping everybody waiting.

Didn't I tell you you'd have to read the grandfather's part to-day?"

"No, sir, you didn't," said McVey, aggrieved.

"Well, anyhow, I meant to," said his superior.

"But I'm reading Miss Gifford's part this morning," said McVey, who was the a.s.sistant stage manager. "She had to go to see about her costumes."

"You'll have to read 'em both, then," ordered the special director.

"Anyhow, the parts don't conflict--they're not on the stage together during this act. Do the best you can. Now let's go back and take those last two sides over again."

Vibrantly and with the proper gesture in the proper place, Miss Cherry repeated her speech. Wearily and without gestures, Mrs. Morehead repeated hers. The fl.u.s.tered McVey, holding the absentee Miss Gifford's part in one hand and the mythical grandfather's in the other, circled upstage and, coming hurriedly down, stepped in between them.

"No, no, no," barked the director, "don't come on that way--you'll throw both these ladies out. Come on at the upper side of that blue chair, Mac; that's the door. This is supposed to be a house. You can't walk right through the side of a house without upsetting things. You realize that, don't you? Once more--back again to 'leave it to destiny.'"

The rehearsal went on by the customary process of advancing a foot and a half, then retreating a foot, then re-advancing two feet. The novices in the cast were prodigal of their energy, but the veterans saved themselves against what they knew was coming later, when they would need all they had of strength and more, besides.

A young man let himself in through the box-office door and stood in that drafty, inky-black s.p.a.ce the theatrical folks call the front of the house and the public call the back of the house. Coming out of the sunlight into this cave of the winds, he was blinded at first. He blinked until he peered out the shape of Verba, slumped down midway of a sheeted stretch of orchestra chairs, and he felt his way down the centre aisle and slipped into a place alongside the silent, broody figure. The newcomer was the author of the play, named Offutt; his age was less than thirty; and his manner was cheerful, as befitting an author who is less than thirty and has placed a play with an established firm.

"Well," he said, "how's everything going?"

"Rotten, thank you!" said Verba, continuing to stare straight ahead.

"We're still shy one grandfather, if that should be of any interest to you."

"But you had Grainger engaged--I thought that was all settled last night," said the playwright.

"That tired business man? Huh!" said Verba expressively. "By the time he'd got through fussing over the style of contract he wanted, in case he liked the part and we liked him in it, and then quarrelling about the salary he was to get, and then arguing out how high up the list his name was to appear in the billing, your friend Grainger was completely exhausted.

"And then, on top of that, he discovered we were going to Chicago after the opening in Rochester, and he balked. Said his following was here in New York. Said he'd supposed we were coming right in here after the opening instead of fussing round on the road. Said he couldn't think of being kept out of New York at the beginning of the season unless he got at least seventy-five more a week. Said he'd go back to vaudeville first. Said he had a swell offer from the two-a-day shops anyhow.

"Then I said a few things to Grainger and he walked out on me. His following!--do you get that? Grainger could carry all the following he's got in the top of his hat and still have plenty of room left for his head. So there you are, my son--within ten days of the tryout and n.o.body on hand to play dear old grandfather for you! And n.o.body in sight either--in case anybody should happen to ask you."