Books: Harlequin and Columbine
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Booth Tarkington >> Harlequin and Columbine
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But he got no respite from the siege, and was still incessantly
beleaguered when he encountered the marble severities of the
Pantheon Apartments' entrance hall and those of its field-marshal,
who paraded him stonily to the elevator. Mr. Potter's apartment was
upon the twelfth floor, a facet stated in a monosyllable by the
field-marshal, and confirmed, upon the opening of the cage at that
height, by Mr. Potter's voice melodiously belling a flourish of
laughter on the other side of a closed door bearing his card. It was
rich laughter, cadenced and deep and loud, but so musically
modulated that, though it might never seem impromptu, even old
Carson Tinker had once declared that he liked to listen to it almost
as much as Potter did.
Old Carson Tinker was listening to it now, as Canby discovered,
after a lisping Japanese had announced him at the doorway of a
cream-coloured Louis Sixteenth salon: an exquisite apartment,
delicately personalized here and there by luxurious fragilities
which would have done charmingly, on the stage, for a marquise's
boudoir. Old Tinker, in evening dress, sat uncomfortably,
sideways, upon the edge of a wicker and brocade "chaise lounge,"
finishing a tiny glass of chartreuse, while Talbot Potter, in
the middle of the room, took leave of a second guest who had
been dining with him.
Potter was concluding the rendition of hilarity which had
penetrated to the outer hall, and, merely waving the playwright
toward Tinker, swept the same gesture upward to complete it by
resting a cordial hand upon the departing guest's shoulder. This
personage, a wasp-figured, languorous youth, with pale
plastered hair over a talcum face, flicked his host lightly upon
the breast with a pair of white gloves.
"None the less, Pottuh," he said, "why shouldn't you play Othello
as a mulatto? I maintain, you see, it would be taking a step in
technique; they'd get the face, you see. Then I want you to do
something really and truly big: Oedipus. Why not Oedipus? Think of
giving the States a thing like Oedipus done as you could do it! Of
coss, I don't say you could ever be another Mewnay-Sooyay. No. I
don't go that far. You haven't Mewnay-Sooyay's technique. But you
could give us just the savour of Attic culture--at least the savour,
you see. The mere savour would be something. Why should you keep on
producing these cheap little plays they foist on you? Oh, I know you
always score a personal success in the wahst of them, but they've
never given you a Big character--and the play, outside of you, is
always piffle. Of coss, you know what I've always wanted you to do,
what I've constantly insisted in print: Rostand. You commission
Rostand to do one of his magnificent things for you and we serious
men will do our part. Now, my duh good chap, I must be getting on,
or the little gel will be telephoning all round the town!" He turned
to the door, pausing upon the threshold. "Now, don't let any of
these cheap little fellows foist any of their cheap little plays on
you. This for my stirrup-cup: you cable Rostand tomorrow. Drop the
cheap little things and cable Rostand. Tell him I suggested it, if
you like." He disappeared in the hallway, calling back: "My duh
Pottuh, good-night!" And the outer door was heard to close.
Canby, feeling a natural prejudice against this personage,
glanced uneasily at Talbot Potter's face and was surprised to
find that fine bit of modelling contorted with rage. The sight
of this emotion was reassuring, but its source was a mystery,
for it had seemed to the playwright that the wasp-waisted
youth's remarks--though horribly damaging to the cheap little
Canbys with their cheap little "Roderick Hanscoms"--were on the
whole rather flattering to the subject of them, and betokened a
real interest in his career.
"Ass!" said Potter.
Canby exhaled a breath of relief. He began to feel that it might
be possible to like this man.
"Ass!" said Potter, striding up and down the room. "Ass! Ass!
Ass! Ass!"
And Canby felt easier and happier. He foresaw, too, that there
would be no cabling to Rostand, a thing he had naively feared,
for a moment, as imminent.
Potter halted, bursting into speech less monosyllabic but no
less vehement: "Mr. Tinker, did you ever see Mounet-Sully?"
"No."
"Did you, Mr. Canby?"
"No."
"Mewnay-Sooyay!" Potter mimicked the pronunciation of his
adviser. "'Mewnay-Sooyay! Of coss I don't say YOU could ever be
another Mewnay-Sooyay!' Ass! I'll tell you what Mounet-Sully's
'technique' amounts to, Mr. Tinker. It's yell! Just yell, yell,
yell! Does he think I can't yell! Why, Packer could open his
mouth like a hippopotamus and yell through a part! Ass!"
"Was that young man a-a critic?" Canby asked.
"No!" shouted Potter. "There aren't any!"
"He writes about theatrical matters," said Carson Tinker.
"Talky-talk writing: 'the drama'--'temperament'--'people of
cultivation'--quotes Latin or Italian or something. 'Technique'
is his star word; he plays 'technique' for a hand every other
line. Doesn't do any harm; in fact, I think he does us a good
deal of good. Lots of people read that talky-talk writing
nowadays. Not in New York, but in road-towns, where they have
plenty of time. This fellow's never against any show much,
unless he takes a notion. You slip 'dolsy far nienty' or
something about Danty or logarithms somewhere into your play,
where it won't delay the action much, and he'll be for you."
Canby nodded and laughed eagerly. Tinker seemed to take it for
granted that "Roderick Hanscom" was to be produced in spite of
"another play I have been considering."
"There aren't any critics, I tell you!" Potter stormed.
"Mounet-Sully!"
"Well," said old Tinker quietly, "I'd like to believe it, but
people making a living that way have ruined a good many million
dollars' worth of property in this town. Some of it was very
good property." He paused, and added: "Some of it was mine,
too."
"Good property?" said the playwright with fresh uneasiness. "You
mean the critics sometimes ruin a good play?"
"How do they know a good play--or good acting?" Tinker returned
placidly. "Every play you ever saw in your life, some people in
the audience said they thought it was good; some said it was
bad. How do critics know any more about it than anybody else?
For instance, how can anybody that hasn't been in the business
tell what's good acting and what's a good part?"
"But a critic--aren't critics in the bus--"
"No. They aren't theatrical people," said Tinker dryly. "They're
writers."
"But some of them must have studied from the inside," Canby
urged, feeling that "Roderick Hanscom's" chances were getting
slighter and slighter. "Some of them must have either been
managers for a while, or actors--or had plays pro--"
"No," said Tinker. "If they had they wouldn't do for critics.
They wouldn't have the heart."
"They oughtn't to have so much power!" the young man exclaimed
passionately. "Think of a playwright working on his play--two
years, maybe--night after night--and then, all in one swoop,
these fellows that you say don't know anything--"
"Power!" Potter laughed contemptuously. "Tinker, you're in your
dotage! Look at what I've done: Haven't I made my way in spite
of everything they could do to stifle me? And have I ever
compromised for one moment? Haven't I gone my own way,
absolutely?"
"Yes." Tinker's face was more cryptic than usual. "Yes, indeed!"
"Power! Haven't I made them eat out of my hand? Look at that
ass--glad to crawl in here and nibble a crust from my table
to-night! Ass!" He had halted for a second in front of the manager,
but resumed his pacing with a mutter of subterranean thunder:
"Mounet-Sully!"
"Hasn't the public got a mind?" cried Canby. "Doesn't the public
understand that a good play might be ruined by these
scoundrels?"
Old Tinker returned his chartreuse glass to the case whence it
came, a miniature sedan chair in silver and painted silk. "The
public?" he said. "I've never been able to find out what that
was. Just about the time I decided it was a trained sheep it
turned out to be a cyclone. You think it's intelligent, and it
plays the fool; you decide it's a fool, and it turns out to
know more than you do. You make love to it, and it may sidle up
and kiss you--or give you a good, hard kick!"
"But if we make this a good play--"
"It won't be a play at all," said Tinker, "unless the public
thinks it's a good one. A play isn't something you read; it's
something actors do on a stage; and they can't afford to do it
unless the public pays to watch 'em. If it won't buy tickets,
you haven't got a play; you've only got some typewriting."
Canby glanced involuntarily at the blue-covered manuscript he
had placed upon a table beside him. It had a guilty look.
"I get confused," he said. "If the public's so flighty, why does
it take so much stock in what these wolves print about a play?"
"Print. That's it," old Tinker answered serenely. "Write your
opinion in a letter or say it with your mouth, and it doesn't
amount to anything. Print's different. You see some nonsense
about yourself in a newspaper, and you think I'm an idiot for
believing it. But you read nonsense about me, and you believe
it. You don't stop and think; 'That's a lie; he isn't that sort
of a man.' No. You just wonder why I'm such a darn fool."
"Then these cannibals have got us where--"
"Dotage!" Talbot Potter broke in, halting under the chandelier.
"Tinker's reached his dotage!" He levelled a denouncing forefinger
at the manager. "Do you mean to tell me that if I decide to go on
with Mr. Canby's play any critic or combination or cabal of critics
can keep it from being a success? Then I tell you, you're in your
dotage! For one point, if I play this part they're going to say it's
a big thing; I don't mean the play, of course, because you must
know, yourself, Mr. Canby, we could bribe them into calling it a
strong play. We know it isn't, and they'll know it isn't. What I
mean is the characterization of 'Roderick Hanscom.' I tell you, if I
do it, they're going to call it a big thing. They aren't all maniacs
about everything made in France, thank heaven! Rostand! Ass! I'm not
playing parts with a clothespin on the end of my nose!" And again he
mimicked the departed visitor: "'This for my stirrup-cup: you cable
Rostand tomorrow.' My soul! Does he think I want to play CHICKENS?"
Sulphurously, he resumed his pacing of the floor.
Old Tinker seemed unaffected by this outburst, but for that
matter he seemed unaffected by anything. His dead gaze followed
his employer's to-and-fro striding as a cat's follows a
pendulum, but without the cat's curiosity about a pendulum. He
never interrupted when Potter was speaking; and Canby noticed
that whenever Potter talked at any length Tinker looked
thoughtful and distant, like a mechanic so accustomed to the
whirr and thunder of the machine-shop that he may indulge in
reveries there. After a moment or two the old fellow ceased to
follow the pendulum stride, and turned to the playwright.
"I'll tell you the two surest ways to make what you call the
public like a play, Mr. Canby," he said. "Nothing is sure, but
these are the nearest to it. Make 'em laugh. I mean, make 'em
laugh after they get home, or the next day in the office, any
time they get to thinking about it. The other way is to get two
actors for your lovers that the audience, young and old, can't
help falling in love with; a young actor that the females in the
audience think they'd like to marry, and a young actress that
the males all think they'd like to marry. It doesn't matter much
about the writing; just have something interfere between them
from eight-fifteen until along about twenty-five minutes after
ten. The two lovers don't necessarily have to know much about
acting, either, though of course it's better if they happen to.
The best stage-lover I ever knew, and the one that played in
the most successes, did happen to understand acting thor--"
"Who was that?" Potter interrupted fiercely. "Mounet-Sully?"
"No. I meant Dora Preston."
"Never heard of her!"
"No," said the old man. "You wouldn't. They don't put up
monuments to pretty actresses, nor write about them in school
histories. She dropped dead in her dressing-room one night
forty-two years ago. I was thinking of her to-day; something
reminded me of her."
"Was she a friend of yours, Mr. Tinker?" Canby asked.
"Friend? No. I was an usher in the old Calumet Theatre, and she
owned New York. She had this quality; every man in the audience fell
in love with her. So did the women, too, for that matter, and the
actors who played with her. When she played a love-scene, people
who'd been married thirty years would sit and watch her and hold
each other's hands--yes, with tears in their eyes. I've seen 'em.
And after the performance, one night, the stage-door keeper, a man
seventy years old, was caught kissing the latch of the door where
she'd touched it; and he was sober, too. There was something about
her looks and something about her voice you couldn't get away from.
You couldn't tell to save you what it was, but after you'd seen her
she'd seem to be with you for days, and you couldn't think much
about anything else, even if you wanted to. People used to go around
in a kind of spell; they couldn't think of anything or talk of
anything but Dora Preston. It didn't matter much what she did;
everything she did made you feel like a boy falling in love the
first time. It made you think of apple-blossoms and moonlight just
to look at her. She--"
"See here, Mr. Canby"--Talbot Potter interrupted suddenly. He
dropped into a chair and picked up the manuscript--"See here!
I've got an idea that may save this play. Suppose we let
'Roderick Hanscom' make his sacrifice, not for the heroine, but
because he's in love with the other girl--the ingenue--I've
forgotten the name you call her in the script. I mean the part
played by that little Miss Miss girl--Miss-what's-her-name--
Wanda Malone!"
Canby stared at Potter in fascinated amazement, his straining
eyes showing the whites above and below the pupils. It was the
look of a man struck dumb by a sudden marvel of telepathy.
"Why, yes," he said slowly, when he had recovered his breath, "I
believe that would be a good idea!"
VII
For two hours, responding to the manipulation of the star and
his thoroughly subjugated playwright, the character of "Roderick
Hanscom" grew nobler and nobler, speech by speech and deed by
deed, while the expression of the gentleman who was to
impersonate it became, in precise parallel with this
regeneration, sweeter and loftier and lovelier.
"A little Biblical quotation wouldn't go so bad right in there,"
he said, when they had finally established the Great Sacrifice
for a Woman. "We'll let Roderick have a line like: 'Greater love
hath no man than laying down his life to save another's.'" He
touched a page of the manuscript with his finger. "There's a
good place for it."
"Aren't you afraid it would sound a little--smug?" Canby asked
timidly. "The way we've got him now, Roderick seems to me to be
always seeing himself as a splendid man and sort of pointing it
out to the--"
"Good gracious!" cried Potter, astounded. "Hasn't it got to be
pointed out? The audience hasn't got a whole lifetime to study
him in; it's only got about two hours. Besides, I don't see what
you say; I don't see it at all! It seems to me I've worked him
around into being a perfectly natural character."
"I suppose you're right," said Canby, meekly scribbling.
"Biblical quotations never do any harm to the box-office,"
Potter added. "You may not get a hand on 'em, but you'll never
get a cough, either." He looked dreamily at the ceiling. "I've
often thought of doing a Biblical play. I'd have it built around
the character of St. Paul. That's one they haven't touched yet,
and it's new. I wouldn't do it with a beard and long hair. I
wouldn't use much makeup. No. Just the face as it is."
"You can do practically anything with a religious show," said
Tinker. "That's been proved. You can run in gambling and horse-
racing and ballys, and you'll get people into the house, night
after night, that think the theatre's wicked and wouldn't go to
see 'Rip Van Winkle.' They do a lot of good, too--religious
shows--just that way."
"I think I'd play it in armour," Potter continued his thought,
still gazing at the ceiling. "I believe it would be a big thing."
"It might if it was touted right," said Tinker. "It all depends
on the touting. If you get it touted to the tank towns that
you've got a play with the great religious gonzabo, then your
show's a big property. Same if you get it touted for a great
educational gonzabo. Or 'artistic.' Get it touted right for
'artistic,' and the tanks'll think they like it, even if they
don't. Look at 'Cyrano'--they liked Mansfield and his acting,
but they didn't like the show. They said they liked the show,
and thought they did, but they didn't. If they'd like it as
much as they said they did, that show would be running like
'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Speaking of that"--he paused, coughed, and
went on--"I'm glad you've got the ingenue's part straightened
out in this piece. I thought from the first it would stand a
little lengthening."
Potter, unheeding, dreamily proceeded: "In silver armour. Might
silver the hair a little--not too much. Play it as a spiritual
character, but not solemn. Wouldn't make it turgid; keep it
light. Have the whole play spiritual but light. For instance,
have room in it for a religious ingenue part--make her a younger
sister of Mary Magdalene, say, with St. Paul becoming converted
for her sake after he'd been a Roman General. I believe it's a
big idea."
Canby was growing nervous. All this seemed to be rambling
farther and farther from "Roderick Hanscom." Potter relieved his
anxiety, however, after a thoughtful sigh, by saying abruptly:
"Well, well, we can't go into a big production like that, this
late in the year. We'll have to see what can be done with
'Roderick Hanscom.'" He looked at the door, where the Japanese
was performing a shrinking curtsey. "What is it, Sato?"
"Miss Pata."
"Who?"
"Miss Pata."
A voice called from the hallway: "It's me, Mr. Potter. Packer."
"Oh, come in! Come in!"
The stage-manager made a deferential entrance. "It's about Miss--"
"Sit down, Packer."
"Thank you, Mr. Potter." Evidently considering the command a
favour, Packer sat. "I saw Miss Lyston, sir--"
"I won't turn her adrift," said his employer peevishly. "You
see, Mr. Canby, here's another of the difficulties of my
position. Miss Lyston has been with me for several years, and
for this piece we've got somebody I think will play her part
better, but I haven't any other part for Miss Lyston. And we
start so late in the season, this year, she'll probably not be
able to get anything else to do; so she's on my hands. I can't
turn people out in the snow like that. Some managers can, but I
can't. And yet I have letters begging me for all kinds of
charities every day. They don't know what my company costs me in
money like this--absolutely thrown away so far as any benefit
to me is concerned. And often I find I've been taken advantage
of, too. I shouldn't be at all surprised to find that Miss
Lyston has comfortable investments right now, and that she's
only scheming to--Packer, don't you know whether she's been
saving her salary or not? If you don't you ought to."
"I came to tell you, sir. I thought you might be relieved to
know. We don't have to bother about her, Mr. Potter. I've been
to see her at her flat, this evening, and she's as anxious to
get away from us, Mr. Potter, as we are to--"
The star rose to his feet, his face suffusing. "You sit there,"
he exclaimed, "and tell me that a member of my company finds the
association so distasteful that she wants to get away!"
"Oh, no, Mr. Potter!" the stage-manager protested. "Not that at
all! She's very sorry to go. She asked me to tell you that she
felt she was giving up a great honour, and to thank you for all
your kindness to her."
"Go on!" Potter sternly bade him. "Why does she wish to leave my
company?"
"Why, it seems she's very much in love with her husband, sir,
Vorley Surbilt--"
"It doesn't seem possible," said Potter, shaking his head. "I
know him, and it sounds like something you're making up as you
go along, Packer."
"Indeed, I'm not, Mr. Potter!" the stage-manager cried, in
simple distress. "I wouldn't know how."
"Go on!"
"Well, sir, it seems Vorly Surbilt was to go out with Mrs.
Romaley, and it seems that when Miss Lyston left rehearsal she
drove around till she found him--"
"Ah! I knew she was fooling me! I knew she wasn't sick! Went to
drive with her husband, and I pay the cab bill!"
"No, no, sir! I forgot to tell you; she wouldn't let me pay it.
She took him home and put him to bed--and from what I heard on
Broadway it was time somebody did! It seems they'd had an offer
to go into a vaudeville piece together, and after she got him to
bed she telephoned the vaudeville man, and had him bring up a
contract, and they signed it, though she had to guide Vorley's
hand for him. Anyway, he's signed up all right, and so is she.
That's why she was so anxious about fixing it up with us. I
told her it would be all right."
Potter relapsed into his chair in an attitude of gloom. "So
they've begun to leave Talbot Potter's company!" he said,
nodding his head with bitter melancholy. "For vaudeville! I'd
better go to farming at once; I often think of it. What sort of
an act is it that Miss Lyston prefers to remaining with me?
Acrobatic?"
"It's a little play," said Packer. "It's from the Grand
Guignol."
"French!" Potter this simply as an added insult on the part of
Miss Lyston. "French!"
"They say it's a wonderful little thing," said Packer
innocently, but it was as if he had run a needle into his
sensitive employer. Potter instantly sprang up again with a cry
of pain.
"Of course it's wonderful! It's French; everything French is
wonderful, magnificent, Supreme! Everything French is HOLY! Good
God, Packer! You'll be telling me what my 'technique' ought to
be, next!"
He hurled himself again into the chair and moaned, then in a
dismal voice inquired; "Miss Lyston struck you as feeling that
her condition in life was distinctly improved by this ascent
into vaudeville, didn't she?"
"Oh, not at all, Mr. Potter! But, of course," Packer explained
deprecatingly, "she's pleased to have Vorly where she can keep
an eye on him. She said that though she was all broken up about
leaving the company, she expected to be very happy in looking
after him. You see, sir, it's the first time in all their
married life they've had a chance to be together except one
summer when neither of 'em could get a stock engagement."
Potter made no reply but to shake his head despondently, and
Packer sat silent in deference, as if waiting to be questioned
further. It was the playwright who presently filled the void.
"Why haven't Mr. and Mrs. Surbilt gone into the same companies,
if they care to be together? I should think they'd have made it
a point to get engagements in the same ones."
Packer looked disturbed. "It's not done much," he said.
"Besides, Vorly Surbilt plays leading parts with women stars,"
old Tinker volunteered. "You see, naturally, it wouldn't do at
all."
"Jealousy, you mean?"
"Not necessarily the kind you're thinking of. But it just
doesn't do."
"Some managers will allow married couples in their companies,"
Potter said, adding emphatically: "I won't! I never have and I
never will! Never! There's just one thing every soul in my
support has got to keep working for, and that is a high-tension
performance every night in the year. If married people are in
love with each other, they're going to think more about that
than about the fact that they're working for me. If they aren't
in love with each other, there's the devil to pay. I'd let the
best man or woman in the profession go--and they could go to
vaudeville, for all I cared!--if I had to keep their wives or
husbands travelling with us. I won't have 'em! My soul! I don't
marry, do I?"
Packer rose. "Is there anything else for me, Mr. Potter?"
"Yes. Take this interlined script, get some copies typewritten,
and see that the company's sides are changed to suit it. Be
especially careful about that young Miss--ah--Miss Malone's.
You'll find her part is altered considerably, and will be even
more, when Mr. Canby gets the dialogue for other changes
finished. He'll let you have them to-morrow. By the way, Packer,
where did you find--" He paused, stretched out his hand to the
miniature sedan chair of liqueurs, took a decanter and tiny
glass therefrom, and carefully poured himself a sparkling
emerald of creme de menthe. "Will you have something, Mr.
Canby?" he asked. "You, Tinker?"
Both declined in silence; they seemed preoccupied.
"Where did I what, Mr. Potter?" asked the stage-manager,
reminding him of the question left unfinished.
"What?"
"You said: 'By the way, where did you find--'"
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