Books: Harlequin and Columbine
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Booth Tarkington >> Harlequin and Columbine
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"It's ruined, Mr. Tinker!" he moaned, and his accompanying
gesture was misleading, seeming to indicate that he alluded to
his hair. "It's all ruined if he sticks to these horrible lines
he's put in--people told me I ought to have it in my contract
that nothing could be changed. I was trying to make the audience
see the tragedy of egoism in my play--and how people get to
hating an egoist. I made 'Roderick Hanscom' a disagreeable
character on purpose, and--oh, listen to that!"
Miss Ellsling and Talbot Potter stood alone, near the front of
the stage. "Why do you waste such goodness on me, Roderick?"
Miss Ellsling was inquiring. "It is noble and I feel that I am
unworthy of you."
"No, Mildred, believe me," Potter read from his manuscript, "I
would rather decline the nomination and abandon my career, and
go to live in some quiet spot far from all this, than that you
should know one single moment's unhappiness, for you mean far
more to me than worldly success." He kissed her hand with
reverence, and lifted his head slowly, facing the audience with
rapt gaze; his wonderful smile--that ineffable smile of
abnegation and benignity--just beginning to dawn.
Coming from behind him, and therefore unable to see his face,
Miss Wanda Malone advanced in her character of ingenue, speaking
with an effect of gayety: "Now what are you two good people
conspiring about?"
Potter stamped the floor; there was wrenched from him an
incoherent shriek containing fragments of profane words and
ending distinguishably with: "It's that Missmiss again!"
Packer impelled himself upon Miss Malone, pushing her back. "No,
no, no!" he cried. "Count ten! Count ten before you come down
with that speech. You mustn't interrupt Mr. Potter, Miss--Miss--"
"It was my cue," she said composedly, showing her little
pamphlet of typewritten manuscript. "Wasn't I meant to speak on
the cue?"
Talbot Potter recovered himself sufficiently to utter a cry of
despair: "And these are the kind of people an artist must work
with!" He lifted his arms to heaven, calling upon the high gods
for pity; then, with a sudden turn of fury, ran to the back of
the stage and came mincing forward evidently intending saturnine
mimicry, repeating the ingenue's speech in a mocking falsetto:
"Now what are you two good people conspiring about?" After that
he whirled upon her, demanding with ferocity: "You've got
something you can think with in your head, haven't you,
Missmiss? Then what do you think of that?"
Miss Malone smiled, and it was a smile that would have gone a
long way at a college dance. Here, it made the pitying company
shudder for her. "I think it's a silly, makeshift sort of a
speech," she said cheerfully, in which opinion the unhappy
playwright out in the audience hotly agreed. "It's a bit of
threadbare archness, and if I were to play Miss Lyston's part,
I'd be glad to have it changed!"
Potter looked dazed. "Is it your idea," he said in a ghostly
voice, "that I was asking for your impression of the dramatic
and literary value of that line?"
She seemed surprised. "Weren't you?"
It was too much for Potter. He had brilliant and unusual powers
of expression, but this was beyond them. He went to the chair
beside the little table, flung himself upon it, his legs
outstretched, his arms dangling inert, and stared haggardly
upward at nothing.
Packer staggered into the breach. "You interrupted the smile,
Miss--Mi--"
"Miss Malone," she prompted.
"You interrupted the smile, Miss Malone. Mr. Potter gives them
the smile there. You must count ten for it, after your cue. Ten--
slow. Count slow. Mark it on your sides, Miss--ah--Miss. 'Count
ten for smile. Write it down please, Miss--Miss--"
Potter spoke wearily. "Be kind enough to let me know, Packer,
when you and Missmiss can bring yourselves to permit this
rehearsal to continue."
"All ready, sir," said Packer briskly. "All ready now, Mr.
Potter." And upon the star's limply rising, Miss Ellsling, most
tactful of leading women, went back to his cue with a change of
emphasis in her reading that helped to restore him somewhat to
his poise. "It is noble," she repeated, "and I feel that I am
unworthy of you!"
Counting ten slowly proved to be the proper deference to the
smile, and Miss Malone was allowed to come down the stage and
complete, undisturbed, her ingenue request to know what the two
good people were conspiring about. Thereafter the rehearsal went
on in a strange, unreal peace like that of a prairie noon in the
cyclone season.
"Notice that girl?" old Tinker muttered, as Wanda Malone
finished another ingenue question with a light laugh, as
commanded by her manuscript. "She's frightened but she's
steady."
"What girl?" Canby was shampooing himself feverishly and had
little interest in girls. "I made it a disagreeable character
because--"
"I mean the one he's letting out on--Malone," said Tinker.
"Didn't you notice her voice? Her laugh reminds me of Fanny
Caton's--and Dora Preston's--"
"Who?" Canby asked vaguely.
"Oh, nobody you'd remember; some old-time actresses that had
their day--and died--long ago. This girl's voice made me think
of them."
"She may, she may," said Canby hurriedly. "Mr. Tinker, the play
is ruined. He's tangled the whole act up so that I can't tell
what it's about myself. Instead of Roderick Hanscom's being a
man that people dislike for his conceit and selfishness he's
got him absolutely turned round. I oughtn't to allow it--but
everything's so different from what I thought it would be! He
doesn't seem to know I'm here. I came prepared to read the play
to the company; I thought he'd want me to."
"Oh, no," said Tinker. "He never does that."
"Why not?"
"Wastes time, for one thing. The actors don't listen except when
their own parts are being read."
"Good gracious!"
"Their own parts are all they have to look out for," the old man
informed him dryly. "I've known actors to play a long time in
parts that didn't appear in the last act, and they never know
how the play ended."
"Good gracious!"
"Never cared, either," Tinker added.
"Good gr--"
"Sh! He's breaking out again!"
A shriek of agony came from the stage. "Pack-e-r-r-! Where did
you find this Missmiss understudy? Can't you get me people of
experience? I really cannot bear this kind of thing--I can not!"
And Potter flung himself upon the chair, leaving the slight
figure in black standing alone in the centre of the stage. He
sprang up again, however, surprisingly, upon the very instant of
despairing collapse. "What do you mean by this perpetual torture
of me?" he wailed at her. "Don't you know what you did?"
"No, Mr. Potter." She looked at him bravely, but she began to
grow red.
"You don't?" he cried incredulously. "You don't know what you
did? You moved! How are they going to get my face if you move?
Don't you know enough to hold a picture and not ruin it by
moving?"
"There was a movement written for that cue," she said, a little
tremulously. "The business in the script is, 'Showing that she
is touched by Roderick's nobleness, lifts handkerchief impulsive
gesture to eyes.'"
"Not," he shouted, "not during the SMILE!"
"Oh!" she cried remorsefully. "Have I done that again?"
"'Again!' I don't know how many times you've done it!" He flung
his arms wide, with hands outspread and fingers vibrating. "You
do it every time you get the chance! You do it perpetually! You
don't do anything else! It's all you live for!"
He hurled his manuscript violently at the table, Packer making a
wonderful pick-up catch of it just as it touched the floor.
"That's all!" And the unhappy artist sank into the chair in a
crumpled stupor.
"Ten o'clock to-morrow morning, ladies and gentlemen!" Packer
called immediately, with brisk cheerfulness. "Please notice:
to-morrow's rehearsal is in the morning. Ten o'clock to-morrow
morning!"
"Tell the understudy to wait, Packer," said the star abysmally,
and Packer addressed himself to the departing backs of the
company:
"Mr. Potter wants to speak to Miss--Miss--"
"Malone," prompted the owner of the name, without resentment.
"Wait a moment, Miss Malone," said Potter, looking up wearily.
"Is Mr. Tinker anywhere about?"
"I'm here, Mr. Potter." Tinker came forward to the orchestra
railing.
"I've been thinking about this play, Mr. Tinker," Potter said,
shaking his head despondently. "I don't know about it. I'm very,
very doubtful about it." He peered over Tinker's head, squinting
his eyes, and seemed for the first time to be aware of the
playwright's presence. "Oh, are you there, Mr. Canby? When did
you come in?"
"I've been here all the time," said the dishevelled Canby,
coming forward. "I supposed it was my business to be here, but-"
"Very glad to have you if you wish," Potter interrupted
gloomily. "Any time. Any time you like. I was just telling Mr.
Tinker that I don't know about your play. I don't know if it'll
do at all."
"If you'd play it," Canby began, "the way I wrote it--"
"In the first place," Potter said with sudden vehemence, "it
lacks Punch! Where's your Punch in this play, Mr. Canby? Where
is there any Punch whatever in the whole four acts? Surely,
after this rehearsal, you don't mean to claim that the first act
has one single ounce of Punch in it!"
"But you've twisted this act all round," the unhappy young man
protested. "The way you have it I can't tell what it's got to
it. I meant Roderick Hanscom to be a disagr--"
"Mr. Canby," said the star, rising impressively, "if we played
that act the way you wrote it, we'd last just about four minutes
of the opening night. You gave me absolutely nothing to do!
Other people talked at me and I had to stand there and be talked
at for twenty minutes straight, like a blithering ninny!"
"Well, as you have it, the other actors have to stand there like
ninnies," poor Canby retorted miserably, "while you talk at them
almost the whole time."
"My soul!" Potter struck the table with the palm of his hand.
"Do you think anybody's going to pay two dollars to watch me
listen to my company for three hours? No, my dear man, your
play's got to give me something to do! You'll have to rewrite
the second and third acts. I've done what I could for the
first, but, good God! Mr. Canby, I can't write your whole play
for you! You'll have to get some Punch into it or we'll never be
able to go on with it."
"I don't know what you mean," said the playwright helplessly. "I
never did know what people mean by Punch."
"Punch? It's what grips 'em," Potter returned with vehemence.
"Punch is what keeps 'em sitting on the edge of their seats. Big
love scenes! They've got Punch. Or a big scene with a man. Give
me a big scene with a man." He illustrated his meaning with
startling intensity, crouching and seizing an imaginary
antagonist by the throat, shaking him and snarling between his
clenched teeth, while his own throat swelled and reddened: "Now,
damn you! You dog! So on, so on, so on! Zowie!" Suddenly his
figure straightened. "Then change. See?" He became serene,
almost august. "'No! I will not soil these hands with you. So
on, so on, so on. I give you your worthless life. Go!'" He
completed his generosity by giving Canby and Tinker the smile,
after which he concluded much more cheerfully: "Something like
that, Mr. Canby, and we'll have some real Punch in your play."
"But there isn't any chance for that kind of a scene in it," the
playwright objected. "It's the study of an egoist, a disagree--"
"There!" exclaimed Potter. "That's it! Do you think people are
going to pay two dollars to see Talbot Potter behave like a cad?
They won't do it; they pay two dollars to see me as I am--not
pretending to be the kind of man your 'Roderick Hanscom' was.
No, Mr. Canby, I accepted your play because it has got quite a
fair situation in the third act, and because I thought I saw a
chance in it to keep some of the strength of 'Roderick Hanscom'
and yet make him lovable."
"But, great heavens! if you make him lovable the character's
ruined. Besides, the audience won't want to see him lose the
girl at the end and 'Donald Grey' get her!"
"No, they won't; that's it exactly," said Potter thoughtfully.
"You'll have to fix that, Mr. Canby. 'Roderick Hanscom' will
have to win her by a great sacrifice in the last act. A great,
strong, lovable man, Mr. Canby; that's the kind of character I
want to play: a big, sweet, lovable fellow, with the heart of a
child, that makes a great sacrifice for a woman. I don't want
to play 'egoists'; I don't want to play character parts. No." He
shook his head musingly, and concluded, the while a light of
ineffable sweetness shone from his remarkable eyes: "Mr. Canby,
no! My audience comes to see Talbot Potter. You go over these
other acts and write the part so that I can play myself."
The playwright gazed upon him, inarticulate, and Potter, shaking
himself slightly, like one aroused from a pleasant little
reverie, turned to the waiting figure of the girl.
"What is it, Miss Malone?" he asked mildly. "Did you want to
speak to me?"
"You told Mr. Packer to ask me to wait," she said.
"Did I? Oh, yes, so I did. If you please, take off your hat and
veil, Miss Malone?"
She gave him a startled look; then, without a word, slowly
obeyed.
"Ah, yes," he said a moment later. "We'll find something else
for Miss Lyston when she recovers. You will keep the part."
V
When Canby (with his hair smoothed) descended to the basement
dining room of his Madison Avenue boarding-house that evening,
his table comrades gave him an effective entrance; they rose,
waving napkins and cheering, and there were cries of "Author!
Author!" "Speech!" and "Cher maitre!"
The recipient of these honours bore them with an uneasiness
attributed to modesty, and making inadequate response, sat down
to his soup with no importunate appetite.
"Seriously, though," said a bearded man opposite, who always
broke into everything with "seriously though," or else, "all
joking aside," and had thereby gained a reputation for
conservatism and soundness--"seriously, though, it must have
been a great experience to take charge of the rehearsal of such
a company as Talbot Potter's."
"Tell us how it felt, Canby, old boy," said another. "How does
it feel to sit up there like a king makin' everybody step around
to suit you?"
Other neighbors took it up.
"Any pretty girls in the company, Can?"
"How does it feel to be a great dramatist, old man?"
"When you goin' to hire a valet-chauffeur?"
"Better ask him when he's goin' to take us to rehearsal, to see
him in his glory."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," said the hostess deprecatingly, "Miss
Cornish is trying to speak to Mr. Canby."
Miss Cornish, a middle-aged lady in black lace, sat at her
right, at the head of the largest table, being the most paying
of these paying guests, by which virtue she held also the
ingleside premiership of the parlour overhead. She was reputed
to walk much among gentles, and to have a high taste in letters
and the drama; for she was chief of an essay club, had a hushing
manner, and often quoted with precision from reviews, or from
such publishers' advertisements as contained no slang; and she
was a member of one of the leagues for patronizing the theatre
in moderation.
"Mr. Canby," said the hostess pleasantly, "Miss Cornish wishes
to--"
This obtained the attention of the assembly, while Canby, at the
other end of the room, sat back in his chair with the
unenthusiastic air of a man being served with papers.
"Yes, Miss Cornish."
Miss Cornish cleared her throat, not practically, but with culture,
as preliminary to an address. "I was saying, Mr. Canby," she began,
"that I had a suggestion to make which may not only interest you,
but certain others of us who do not enjoy equal opportunities in
some matters--as--as others of us who do. Indeed, I believe it will
interest all of us without regard to--to--to this. What I was about
to suggest was that since today you have had a very interesting
experience, not only interesting because you have entered into a
professional as well as personal friendship with one of our foremost
artists--an artist whose work is cultivated always--but also
interesting because there are some of us here whose more practical
occupations and walk in life must necessarily withhold them
from--from this. What I meant to suggest was that, as this prevents
them from--from this--would it not be a favourable opportunity for
them to--to glean some commentary upon the actual methods of a field
of art? Personally, it happens that whenever opportunities and
invitations have been--have been urged, other duties intervened, but
though, on that account never having been actually present, I am
familiar, of course, through conversation with great artists and
memoirs and--and other sources of literature--with the procedure and
etiquette of rehearsal. But others among us, no doubt through lack
of leisure, are perhaps less so than--than this. What I wished to
suggest was that, not now, but after dinner, we all assemble
quietly, in the large parlour upstairs, of which Mrs. Reibold has
kindly consented to allow us the use for the evening, for this
purpose, and that you, Mr. Canby, would then give us an informal
talk--" (She was momentarily interrupted by a deferential murmur of
"Hear! Hear!" from everybody.) "What I meant to suggest," she
resumed, smiling graciously as from a platform, "was a sort of
descriptive lecture, of course wholly informal--not so much upon
your little play itself, Mr. Canby, for I believe we are all
familiar with its subject-matter, but what would perhaps be more
improving in artistic ways would be that you give us your
impressions of this little experience of yours to-day while it is
fresh in your mind. I would suggest that you tell us, simply, and in
your own way, exactly what was the form of procedure at rehearsal,
so that those of us not so fortunate as to be already en rapport
with such matters may form a helpful and artistic idea of--of this.
I would suggest that you go into some details of this, perhaps
adding whatever anecdotes or incidents of--of--of the day--you think
would give additional value to this. I would suggest that you tell
us, for instance, how you were received upon your arrival, who took
you to the most favourable position for observing the performance,
and what was said. We should be glad to hear also, I am sure, and
artistic thoughts or--or knowledge--Mr. Potter may have let fall in
the green-room; or even a few witticisms might not be out of place,
if you should recall these. We should all like to know, I am sure,
what Mr. Potter's method of conceiving his part was. Also, does he
leave entire freedom to his company in the creation of their own
roles, or does he aid them? Many questions, no doubt, occur to all
of us. For instance: Did Mr. Potter offer you any suggestions for
changes and alterations that might aid to develop the literary and
artistic value of the pl--"
The placid voice, flowing on in gentle great content of itself
(while all the boarders gallantly refrained from eating), was
checked by an interruption which united into one shattering
impact the effects of lese-majeste and of violence.
"Couldn't! No! No parlour! Horrib--"
The words mingled in the throat of the playwright, producing an
explosion somewhere between choke and bellow, as he got upon his
feet, overturning his chair and coincidentally dislodging
several articles of china and glassware. He stood among the
ruins for one moment, publicly wiping his brow with a napkin,
then plunged, murmuring, out of the room and up the stairway;
and, before any of the company had recovered speech, the front
door was heard to slam tumultuously, its reverberations being
simultaneous with the sound of footsteps running down the stoop.
Turning northward upon the pavement, the fugitive hurriedly
passed the two lighted windows of the dining-room; they rattled
with a concussion--the outburst of suddenly released voices
beginning what was to be a protracted wake over the remains of
his reputation as a gentleman. He fled, flinging on his overcoat
as he went. In his pockets were portions of the manuscript of
his play, already distorted since rehearsal to suit the new
nobleness of "Roderick Hanscom," and among these inky sheets was
a note from Talbot Potter, received just before dinner:
Dear Mr. Canby,
Come up to my apartments at the Pantheon after dinner and let me
see what changes you have been able to make in the second and
third acts. I should like to look at them before deciding to put
on another play I have been considering.
Hastily y'rs,
Tal't Potter.
VI
Canby walked fast, the clamorous dining-room seeming to pursue
him, and the thought of what figure he had cut there filling him
with horror of himself, though he found a little consolation in
wondering if he hadn't insulted Miss Cornish because he was a
genius and couldn't help doing queer things. That solace was
slight, indeed; Canby was only twenty-seven, but he was
frightened.
The night before he had been as eagerly happy as a boy at
Christmas Eve. He had finished his last day at the office, and
after initiating the youth who was to take his desk, had parted
with his employer genially, but to the undeniable satisfaction
of both. The new career, opening so gloriously, a month earlier,
with Talbot Potter's acceptance of the play, was thus definitely
adopted, and no old one left to fall back upon. And Madison
Avenue, after dark, shows little to reassure a new playwright
who carries in his pocket a note ending with the words, "before
deciding to put on another play I have been considering." It was
Bleak Street, that night, for young Stewart Canby, and a bleak,
bleak walk he took therein.
Desperate alterations were already scratched into the
manuscript; plans for more and more ran overlapping one another
in his mind, accompanied by phrases--echoes and fragments of
Talbot Potter: "Punch! What this play needs is Punch!" "Big love
scenes!" "Big scene with a man!" "Great sacrifice for a woman!"
"Big-hearted, lovable fellow!" "You dog! So on, so on!" "Zowie!"
He must get all this into the play and yet preserve his "third
act situation," leniently admitted to be "quite a fair" one.
Slacking his gait somewhat, the tormented young man lifted his
hat in order to run his hand viciously through his hair, which
he seemed to blame for everything. Then he muttered, under his
breath, indignantly: "Darn you, let me alone!"
Curious bedevilment! It was not Talbot Potter whom he thus
adjured: it was Wanda Malone. And yet, during the rehearsal, he
had not once thought consciously of the understudy; and he had
come away from the theatre occupied--exclusively, he would have
sworn--with the predicament in which he found himself and his
play. Surely that was enough to fill and overflow any new
playwright's mind, but, about half an hour after he had reached
his room and set to work upon the manuscript of the second act,
he discovered that he had retained, unawares, a singularly clear
impression of Miss Malone.
Then, presently, he realized that distinct pictures of her kept
coming between him and his work, and that her voice rang softly
and persistently in his ear. Over and over in that voice's
slender music--plaintive, laughing, reaching everywhere so
clearly--he heard the detested "line": "What are you two good
people conspiring about?" Over and over he saw the slow,
comprehending movement with which she removed her hat and veil
to let Talbot Potter judge her. And as she stood, with that
critic's eye searching her, Canby remembered that through some
untraceable association of ideas he had inexplicably thought of
a drawing of "Florence Dombey" in an old set of Dickens
engravings he had seen at his grandfather's in his boyhood--and
had not seen since. And he remembered the lilac bushes in bloom
on a May morning at his grandfather's. Somehow she made him
think of them, too.
And as he sat at his desk, striving to concentrate upon the
manuscript, the clearness with which Wanda Malone came before
him increased; she became more and more vivid to him, and she
would not be dismissed; she persisted and insisted, becoming
first an annoyance, and then, as he fought the witchery, a
serious detriment to his writing. She became part of every
thought about his play, and of every other thought. He did not
want her; he felt no interest in her; he had vital work to do--
and she haunted him, seemed to be in the very room with him. He
worked in spite of her, but she pursued him none the less
constantly; she had gone down the stairs to dinner with him; she
floated before him throughout the torture of Miss Cornish's
address; she was present even when he exploded and fled; she was
with him now, in this desolate walk toward Talbot Potter's
apartment--the pale, symmetrical little face and the relentless
sweet voice commandeering the attention he wanted desperately
to keep upon what he meant to say to Potter.
Once before in his life he had suffered such an experience: that
of having his thoughts possessed, against his will, by a person
he did not know and did not care to know. It had followed his
happening to see an intoxicated truck-driver lying beneath an
overturned wagon. "Easy, boys! Don' mangle me!" the man kept
begging his rescuers. And Canby recalled how "Easy, boys! Don'
mangle me!" sounded plaintively in his ears for days, bothering
him in his work at the office. Remembering it now, he felt a
spiteful satisfaction in classing that obsession with this one.
It seemed at least a step toward teaching Miss Wanda Malone to
know her place.
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