Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color Part 30

But Dresser made a sudden appeal: "Don't go away just as I've found you.

I've been wanting to see you all day. I've got to have your advice, and it's important."

"Well?" the dramatist responded.

"Well," repeated the young actor, "you know that bit of mine in the third act, where I have the scene with Jimmy Stark? He has to say to me, 'I think my wife's mind is breaking,' and I say, 'Are you afraid she is going to give you a piece of it?' Now, how would you read that?"

After the author had explained to the actor what seemed to him the obvious distribution of the emphasis in this speech, he was able to escape and at last to make his way upon the stage.

The scene of the first act of "Touch and Go" was set, and the stage itself was brilliantly lighted, while the auditorium was in absolute darkness. It was at least a minute before Carpenter was able to discern the circle of the balcony, shrouded in the linen draperies that protected its velvet and its gilding from the dust. Here and there in the orchestra chairs were little knots of three or four persons, perhaps twenty or thirty in all. The proscenium boxes yawned blackly. Although it was a warm evening in the early fall, the house struck Carpenter as chill and forbidding. He peered into the darkness to discover the face he was longing to see again.

Two men were talking earnestly, seated at a table in the centre of the stage near the footlights. One of these was a short man, with grizzled hair and a masterful manner. This was Sherrington, the stage-manager who had been engaged to produce the play. The other was Harry Brackett, Carpenter's collaborator in its authors.h.i.+p.

Just as the new-comer had made out in the dark house the group he was seeking and had bowed to the two ladies comprising it, Harry Brackett caught sight of him.

"Well, Will," he cried, "the Stellar Attraction is late, as usual--and we've got lots of work before us to-night, too. Sherrington isn't at all satisfied with the way they do either of the big scenes in the second act; and we've got to look out and keep them all up to their work if we want this to be anything more than a mere 'artistic success.'"

"'Artistic success!'" said Sherrington, emphatically; "why, there's money in this thing of yours--big money, too, if we can get all the laughs out of those two scenes of Daisy's in the second act. But it will take good work to get out all the laughs there ought to be, legitimately--and we've got to do it! Every laugh is worth a dollar and a half; that's what I say."

"The two scenes in the second act?" inquired Carpenter. "The one with Stark and the one with Miss Marvin, you mean?"

"The one with Marvin will be all right, I think," said the stage-manager.

"I'm not so sure of that," Harry Brackett interjected; "you insisted on her being engaged, Will, but she is very inexperienced, and I don't know how she'll get through that long scene."

"Miss Marvin is very clever," Carpenter declared, eager to defend the girl he was in love with; "and she will look the part to perfection!"

"Looking is all very well," Brackett responded, "but it is acting she will have to do in that scene in the second act."

"And she will do it too," a.s.serted the stage-manager. "You see, she's got her mother here to-night, and there isn't a sharper old stager anywhere than Kate Shannon Loraine."

"That's so," Harry Brackett admitted; "I suppose Loraine can show her daughter how to get out of that scene all there is in it."

"Shannon'll see the whole play to-night," said Sherrington, "and she'll be able to give Marvin lots of pointers to-morrow. The little girl will be all right; it's Daisy I'm more afraid of in that scene. It ought to be played high comedy, 'Lady Teazle,' way up in G--and high comedy isn't altogether in Daisy's line."

"That can't be helped now," Brackett replied; "and if the Stellar Attraction can't reach that scene it's the Stellar Attraction's own fault, isn't it? You remember, Will, how she kept telling us all the time we were writing the play that she wanted as high-toned a part as we could give her. We gave it to her, and now she's just got to stretch up to it, if she can."

"I am not afraid of that scene," Carpenter declared, "for I've always doubted whether she could really do high comedy, and that scene is written so that it will go almost as well if it's played broadly. You know there are two ways of doing Lady Teazle."

"There are no two ways about Daisy's being a great favorite," said the stage-manager. "She's accepted, and that's enough. After all, I don't suppose it matters much how she takes that scene; high or broad, the public will accept her. The part fits her like a glove, and all we've got to do is to keep everybody up to concert-pitch and get all the laughs we can. You took my advice and cut that talky scene in the third act, and now the whole act will go off like hot cakes--see if it don't.

I tell you what it is, I'll teach you two boys how to write a real farce before I've done with you!"

Harry Brackett was standing almost behind Sherrington as the stage-manager made this speech. He winked at Carpenter.

"Yes," he said, a moment later, "I think it is a pretty good piece of the kind, and I hope it will fetch them. At any rate, I don't believe even our worst enemies will praise it for its 'literary merit.'"

Carpenter laughed a little bitterly. "No," he a.s.sented, "we've got it into shape now, and I doubt if anybody insults us by saying that 'Touch and Go' is 'well written.'"

"Do you remember our joke while we were working on it last winter, Will?" asked Harry Brackett. Then turning to Sherrington he explained: "We used to say that the managers wouldn't 'touch' it, so the people couldn't 'go.'"

"It's harder to touch the manager than it is to make the public go,"

added Carpenter. "I believe that any fool can write a play, but that only a man of great genius ever succeeds in getting his play produced."

A handsome young woman with snapping black eyes walked on the stage briskly.

"Here's the Stellar Attraction at last," said Harry Brackett; "now we can get down to business."

"Am I late?" the handsome young woman asked, as she came forward.

"Everybody waiting for me?"

"You are just twenty minutes late, my dear," said the stage-manager, looking at his watch, "and we are all waiting for you."

"That's all right, then," she replied, laughing lightly; "we've got all night before us, haven't we?"

The prompter clapped his hands and called out "First act!" Two clean-shaven men of indefinite age who had been sitting in the wings rose and came forward. Mr. Dresser joined them, and his manner suggested a certain increase of his ordinary nervous tension. A well-preserved elderly lady left her seat on one side of the aisles under the proscenium box and came through the door which led from the auditorium to the stage. She was followed by a slight, graceful girl, a blonde with clear gray eyes.

"Mrs. Castleman--Miss Marvin," said the prompter, seeing them; "now we are all ready."

And then the serious business of the rehearsal began. Mrs. Castleman came down to the centre of the stage and took up a newspaper and read the date of it aloud, and remarked that it was just five years since master and mistress had parted in anger, adding that neither of them had put foot inside the old house in all the five years, and yet it was not an hour from New York. Then one of the minor actors, an awkward young fellow, one of the two who had been standing in the wings, entered with a telegram, which he gave to Mrs. Castleman. She tore it open and read it aloud; the master would arrive early that evening. Then Miss Marvin, the girl with the clear blue eyes, came forward with an open letter in her hand and told Mrs. Castleman that the mistress of the house would be home again at last late that afternoon. And thus the rehearsal went on gravely, every one intent upon the business in hand. The speeches of the actors were interrupted now and then by the stage-manager. "Take the last scene over again," he might command, whereupon the performers would resume their places as before and begin again. "Don't cross till he takes the stage, my dear. And when he says, 'What is the meaning of this?' don't be in a hurry. Wait, and then say your aside, 'Can he suspect?' in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. See?"

Finally there was a jingle of sleigh-bells, and the orchestra, beginning faintly and slowly, soon worked up to a swift _forte_, and then Miss Daisy Fostelle made her first appearance through the broad door at the back of the stage. Finding that she had taken everybody by surprise, she smiled sweetly, and said, "You didn't expect me, I see--but I hope you are all glad to see me once more."

A thin, cadaverous man with a heavy, black mustache here stepped forward to face the wife he had not seen for five years. "We are all glad to see you once more," he had to say, "very glad indeed, and we are gladder still to see that you seem to be in such excellent health and such high spirits! The separation has not dimmed the brightness of your eyes, nor--" Here the tall, gaunt actor stopped and hesitated. "I don't know what's the matter with that speech," he said, impatiently, "but I can't get it into my head. I never had such tricky lines!"

The prompter gave him the word he needed, and no one else paid any attention to this out-break.

The two authors were seated at the table in the centre of the footlights, and Harry Brackett whispered to Carpenter: "Stark is getting the big head, isn't he? The idea of a mere cuff-shooter like that taking himself seriously!"

Then there followed an important scene in which the wife gave her husband a witty and vivacious account of all her doings during the five years of their separation, ending with the startling announcement that she had spent six weeks in South Dakota and had there procured a divorce from him! But there is no need to disclose here in detail the plot of "Touch and Go," as the new American comedy unfolded itself scene by scene. As the end of the act approached Sherrington pressed the actors to play more briskly so as to bring the curtain down swiftly on an unexpected but carefully prepared tableau.

When the act was over the stage manager had the final pa.s.sages repeated twice, to make sure of its going smoothly at the first performance; and then the stage was cleared so that the scene might be set for the second act.

Carpenter watched the graceful, gray-eyed girl go back into the dim auditorium and take a seat beside her mother; and his heart thumped suddenly as he found himself wondering when he would dare to tell her that he loved her and to ask her to be his wife. Then he also left the stage and dropped into the chair behind mother and daughter.

"It was very good of you to come this evening, Mrs. Loraine," he began.

"I feel as if having your daughter act in this play of mine will bring me luck somehow."

"The idea!" said Miss Marvin, smilingly.

"Mary had told me how clever the piece was," the elder actress responded, "but it is really better than she said. The dialogue is very brilliant at times, and the characters are excellently contrasted--and, what is more important, the whole thing will act! The parts carry the actors; they've got something to do which is worth while doing. It will go all right to-morrow night!"

"It's a beautiful piece," Mary Marvin declared, "and I think my part is just lovely!"

And before he could say anything in fit acknowledgment, Mrs. Loraine went on: "Yes, Mary's part is charming. And I think she will play it very well, too!"

"I'm sure of it!" he cried, unhesitatingly.

"I think there is more in it than I thought at first," said Mary's mother, "now I've seen the play, and I'll go over Mary's part with her to-night and show her what can be done with it. I'm waiting for that scene in the second act with Fostelle. I think that Mary ought to share the call after that. In fact, I'm not sure that she can't take the scene away from Fostelle."

"Oh, mother," the daughter broke in, "that would never do! I should get my two weeks' notice the next morning, shouldn't I? And I don't want to be out of an engagement just at the beginning of the season when all the companies are made up."