Books: Harlequin and Columbine
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Booth Tarkington >> Harlequin and Columbine
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She clapped her hands together in a gesture of such spirit and
fire that Canby could have thrown his hat in the air and
cheered, she had lifted him so clear of his timidity.
"Bravo!" he cried again. "Bravo!"
At that she blushed. "What a little goose I am!" she cried.
"Playing the orator! Mr. Canby, you mustn't mind--"
"I won't!"
"It's because I'm so happy," she explained--to his way of
thinking, divinely. "I'm so happy I just pour out everything. I
want to sing every minute. You see, it seemed such a long while
that I was waiting for my chance. Some of us wait forever, Mr.
Canby, and I was so afraid mine might never come. If it hadn't
come now it might never have come. If I'd missed this one, I
might never have had another. It frightens me to think of it--
and I oughtn't to be thinking of it! I ought to be spending all
my time on my knees thanking God that old Mr. Packer got it into
his head that 'The Little Minister' was a play about the
Baptists!"
"I don't see--"
"If he hadn't," she said, "I wouldn't be here!"
"God bless old Mr. Packer!"
"I hope you mean it, Mr. Canby." She blushed again, because
there was no possible doubt that he meant it. "It seems a
miracle to me that I am here, and that my chance is here with
me, at last. It's twice as good a chance as it was yesterday,
thanks to you. You've given me such beautiful new things to do
and such beautiful new things to say. How I'll work at it! After
rehearsal this afternoon I'll learn every word of it in the
tunnel before I get to my station in Brooklyn. That's funny,
too, isn't it; the first time I've ever been to New York I go
and board over in Brooklyn! But it's a beautiful place to study,
and by the time I get home I'll know the lines and have all the
rest of the time for the real work: trying to make myself into a
faraway picture of the adorable girl you had in your mind when
you wrote it. You see--"
She checked herself again. "Oh! Oh!" she said, half-laughing,
half-ashamed. "I've never talked so much in my life! You see it
seems to me that the whole world has just burst into bloom!"
She radiated a happiness that was almost tangible; it was a glow
so real it seemed to warm and light that dingy old passageway.
Certainly it warmed and lighted the young man who stood there
with her. For him, too, the whole world was transfigured, and
life just an orchard to walk through in perpetual April morning.
The voice of Packer proclaimed: "Two o'clock, ladies and
gentlemen! Rehearsal two o'clock this afternoon!"
The next moment he looked into the passageway. "This afternoon's
rehearsal, two o'clock, Miss--ahh--Malone. Oh, Mr. Canby, Mr.
Potter wants you to go to lunch with him and Mr. Tinker. He's
waiting. This way, Mr. Canby."
"In a moment," said the young playwright. "Miss Malone, you
spoke of your going home to work at making yourself into 'the
adorable girl' I had in my mind when I wrote your part. It
oughtn't"--he faltered, growing red--"it oughtn't to take much--
much work!"
And, breathless, he followed the genially waiting Packer.
X
"Your overcoat, Mr. Potter!" called that faithful servitor as
Potter was going out through the theatre with old Tinker and
Canby. "You've forgotten your overcoat, sir."
"I don't want it."
"Yes sir; but it's a little raw to-day." He leaped down into the
orchestra from the high stage, striking his knee upon a chair
with violence, but, pausing not an instant for that, came
running up the aisle carrying the overcoat. "You might want it
after you get out into the air, Mr. Potter. I'm sure Mr. Tinker
or Mr. Canby won't mind taking charge of it for you until you
feel like putting it on."
"Lord! Don't make such a fuss, Packer. Put it on me--put it on
me!"
He extended his arms behind him, and was enveloped solicitously
and reverently in the garment.
"Confound him!" said Potter good-humouredly, as they came out
into the lobby. "It is chilly; he's usually right, the idiot!"
Turning from Broadway, at the corner, they went over to Fifth
Avenue, where Potter's unconsciousness of the people who
recognized and stared at him was, as usual, one of the finest
things he did, either upon the stage or "off." Superb
performance as it was, it went for nothing with Stewart Canby,
who did not even see it, for he walked entranced, not in a town,
but through orchards in bloom.
If Wanda Malone had remained with him, clear and insistent after
yesterday's impersonal vision of her at rehearsal, what was she
now, when every tremulous lilt of the zither-string voice, and
every little gesture of the impulsive hands, and every eager
change of the glowing face, were fresh and living, in all their
beautiful reality, but a matter of minutes past? He no longer
resisted the bewitchment; he wanted all of it. His companions
and himself were as trees walking, and when they had taken their
seats at a table in the men's restaurant of a hotel where he had
never been, he was not roused from his rapturous apathy even by
the conduct of probably the most remarkable maitre d'hotel in
the world.
"You don't git 'em!" said this personage briefly, when Potter
had ordered chops and "oeufs a la creole" and lettuce salad,
from a card. "You got to eat partridge and asparagus tips
salad!"
And he went away, leaving the terrible Potter resigned and
unrebellious.
The partridge was undeniable when it came; a stuffed man would
have eaten it. But Talbot Potter and his two guests did little
more than nibble it; they neither ate nor talked, and yet they
looked anything but unhappy. Detached from their surroundings,
as they sat over their coffee, they might have been taken to be
three poetic gentlemen listening to a serenade.
After a long and apparently satisfactory silence, Talbot Potter
looked at his watch, but not, as it proved, to see if it was
time to return to the theatre, his ensuing action being to send
a messenger to procure a fresh orchid to take the place of the
one that had begun to droop a little from his buttonhold. He
attached the new one with an attentive gravity shared by his
companions.
"Good thing, a boutonniere," he explained. "Lighten it up a
little. Rehearsal's dry work, usually. Thinking about it last
night. Why not lighten it up a little? Why shouldn't an actor
dress as well for a company of strangers at a reception? Ought
to make it as cheerful as we can."
"Yes," said Tinker, nodding. "Something in that. I believe they
work better. I must say I never saw much better work than those
people were doing this morning. It was a fine rehearsal."
"It's a fine company," Potter said warmly. "They're the best
people I ever had. They're all good, every one of them, and
they're putting their hearts into this play. It's the kind of
work that makes me proud to be an actor. I am proud to be an
actor! Is there anything better?" He touched the young
playwright on the arm, a gesture that hinted affection. "Stewart
Canby," he said, "I want to tell you I think we're going to make
a big thing out of this play. It's going to be the best I've
ever done. It's going to be beautiful!"
From the doorway into the lobby of the hotel there came a pretty
sound of girlish voices whispering and laughing excitedly, and,
glancing that way, the three men beheld a group of peering
nymphs who fled, delighted.
"Ladies stop to rubber at Mr. Potter," explained the remarkable
headwaiter over the star's shoulder. "Mr. Potter, it's time you
got marrit, anyhow. You git marrit, you don't git stared at so
much!" He paused not for a reply, but hastened away to
countermand the order of another customer.
"Married," said Potter musingly. "Well, there is such a thing as
remaining a bachelor too long--even for an actor."
"Widower, either," assented Mr. Tinker as from a gentle reverie.
"A man's never too old to get married."
His employer looked at him somewhat disapprovingly, but said
nothing; and presently the three rose, without vocal suggestion
from any of them, and strolled thoughtfully back to the
theatre, pausing a moment by the way, while Tinker bought a
white carnation for his buttonhole. There was a good deal, he
remarked absent-mindedly, in what Mr. Potter had said about
lightening up a rehearsal.
Probably there never was a more lightened-up rehearsal than that
afternoon's. Potter's amiability continued;--nay, it increased:
he was cordial; he was angelic; he was exalted and
unprecedented. A stranger would have thought Packer the person
in control; and the actors, losing their nervousness, were
allowed to display not only their energy but their intelligence.
The stage became a cheery workshop, where ambition flourished
and kindness was the rule. For thus did the starry happiness
that glowed within the beatific bosom of the little "ingenue"
make Arcady around her.
At four o'clock Talbot Potter stepped to the front of the stage
and lifted his hand benevolently. "That will do for to-day," he
said, facing the company. "Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. I
have never had a better rehearsal, and I think it is only your
due to say you have pleased me very much, indeed. I cannot tell
you how much. I feel strongly assured of our success in this
play. Again I thank you. Ladies and gentlemen"--he waved his
hand in dismissal--"till to-morrow morning."
"By Joles!" old Carson Tinker muttered. "I never knew anything
like it!"
"Oh--ah--Packer," called the star, as the actors moved toward
the doors. "Packer, ask Miss--Malone to wait a moment. I want--
I'd like to go over a little business in the next act before
tomorrow."
"Yes, Mr. Potter?" It was she who answered, turning eagerly to
him.
"In a moment, Miss Malone." He spoke to the stage-manager in a
low tone, and the latter came down into the auditorium, where
Canby and Tinker had remained in their seats.
"He says for you not to wait, gentlemen. There's nothing more to
do this afternoon, and he may be detained quite a time."
The violet boutonniere and the white carnation went somewhat
reluctantly up the aisle together, and, after a last glance back
at the stage from the doorway, found themselves in the colder
air of the lobby, a little wilted.
Bidding Tinker farewell, on the steps of the theatre, Canby
walked briskly out to the Park, and there, abating his energy,
paced the loneliest paths he could find until long after dark.
They were not lonely for him; a radiant presence went with him
through the twilight. She was all about him: in the blue
brightness of the afterglow, in the haze of the meadow
stretches, and in the elusive woodland scents that vanished as
he caught them;--she was in the rosy vapour wreaths on the high
horizon, in the laughter of children playing somewhere in the
darkness, in the twinkling of the lights that began to show--for
now she was wherever a lover finds his lady, and that is
everywhere. He went over and over their talk of the morning,
rehearsing wonderful things he would say to her upon the
morrow, and taking the liberty of suggesting replies from her
even more wonderful. It was a rhapsody; he was as happy as Tom
o'Bedlam.
By and by, he went to a restaurant in the Park and ordered food
to be brought him. Then, after looking at it with an expression
of fixed animation for half an hour, he paid for it and went
home. He let himself into the boarding-house quietly, having
hazy impressions that he was not popular there, also that it
might be embarrassing to encounter Miss Cornish in the hall;
and, after reconnoitering the stairway, went cautiously up to
his room.
Three minutes later he came bounding down again, stricken white,
and not caring if he encountered the devil. On his table he had
found a package--the complete manuscript of "Roderick Hanscom"
and this scrawl:
Canby,
I can't produce your play--everything off.
Y'rs,
Tal't P'r.
XI
Carson Tinker was in the elevator at the Pantheon, and the
operator was closing the door thereof, about to ascend, but
delayed upon a sound of running footsteps and a call of "Up!"
Stewart Canby plunged into the cage; his hat, clutched in his
hand, disclosing emphatically that he had been at his hair
again.
"What's he mean?" he demanded fiercely. "What have I done?"
"What's the matter?" inquired the calm Tinker.
"What's he called it off for?"
"Called what off?"
"The play! My play!"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen him
since rehearsal. His Japanese boy called me on the telephone a
little while ago and told me he wanted to see me."
"He did?" cried the distracted Canby. "The Japanese boy wanted
to see--"
"No," Tinker corrected. "He did."
"And you haven't heard--"
"Twelfth," urged the operator, having opened the door. "Twelfth,
if you please, gentlemen."
"I haven't heard anything to cause excitement," said Tinker,
stepping out. "I haven't heard anything at all." He pressed the
tiny disc beside the door of Potter's apartment. "What's upset
you?"
With a pathetic gesture Canby handed him Potter's note. "What
have I done? What does he think I've done to him?"
Tinker read the note and shook his head. "The Lord knows! You
see he's all moods, and they change--they change any time. He
knows his business, but you can't count on him. He's liable to
do anything--anything at all."
"But what reason--"
The Japanese boy, Sato, stood bobbing in the doorway.
"Mis' Potter kassee," he said courteously. "Ve'y so'y Mis'
Potter kassee nobody."
"Can't see us?" said Tinker. "Yes, he can. You telephoned me
that he wanted to see me, not over a quarter of an hour ago."
Sato beamed upon him enthusiastically. "Yisso, yisso! See Mis'
Tinker, yisso! You come in, Mis' Tinker. Ve'y so'y. Mis' Potter
kassee nobody."
"You mean he'll see Mister Tinker but won't see anybody else?"
cried the playwright.
"Yisso," said Sato, delighted. "Ve'y so'y. Mis' Potter kassee
nobody."
"I will see him. I--"
"Wait. It's all right," Tinker reassured him soothingly. "It's
all right, Sato. You go and tell Mr. Potter that I'm here and
Mr. Canby came with me."
"Yisso." Sato stood back from the door obediently, and they
passed into the hall. "You sidowm, please."
"Tell him we're waiting in here," said Tinker, leading the way
into the cream-coloured salon.
"Yisso." Sato disappeared.
The pretty room was exquisitely cheerful, a coal fire burning
rosily in the neat little grate, but for its effect upon Canby
it might have been a dentist's anteroom. He was unable to sit,
and began to pace up and down, shampooing himself with both
hands.
"I've racked my brains every step of the way here," he groaned.
"All I could think of was that possibly I've unconsciously
paralleled some other play that I never saw. Maybe someone's
told him about a plot like mine. Such things must happen--they
do happen, of course--because all plots are old. But I can't
believe my treatment of it could be so like--"
"I don't think it's that," said Tinker. "It's never anything you
expect--with him."
"Well, what else can it be?" the playwright demanded. "I haven't
done anything to offend him. What have I done that he should--"
"You'd better sit down," the manager advised him. "Going plumb
crazy never helped anything yet that I know of."
"But, good heavens! How can I--"
"Sh!" whispered Tinker.
A tragic figure made its appearance upon the threshold of the
inner doorway: Potter, his face set with epic woe, gloom burning
in his eyes like the green fire in a tripod at a funeral of
state. His plastic hair hung damp and irregular over his white
brow--a wreath upon a tombstone in the rain--and his garment,
from throat to ankle, was a dressing-gown of dead black,
embroidered in purple; soiled, magnificent, awful. Beneath its
midnight border were his bare ankles, final testimony to his
desperate condition, for only in ultimate despair does a
suffering man remove his trousers. The feet themselves were
distractedly not of the tableau, being immersed in bedroom shoes
of gay white fur shaped in a Romeo pattern; but this was the
grimmest touch of all--the merry song of mad Ophelia.
"Mr. Potter!" the playwright began, "I--"
Potter turned without a word and disappeared into the room
whence he came.
"Mr. Potter!" Canby started to follow. "Mr. Pot--"
"Sh!" whispered Tinker.
Potter appeared again upon the threshold In one hand he held a
large goblet; in the other a bottle of Bourbon whiskey, just
opened. With solemn tread he approached a delicate table, set
the goblet upon it, and lifted the bottle high above.
"I am in no condition to talk to anybody," he said hoarsely. "I
am about to take my first drink of spirits in five years."
And he tilted the bottle. The liquor clucked and guggled,
plashed into the goblet, and splashed upon the table; but when
he set the bottle down the glass was full to its capacious brim,
and looked, upon the little "Louis Sixteenth" table, like a sot
at the Trianon. Potter stepped back and pointed to it
majestically.
"That," he said, "is the size of the drink I am about to take!"
"Mr. Potter," said Canby hotly, "will you tell me what's the
matter with my play? Haven't I made every change you suggested?
Haven't--"
Potter tossed his arms above his head and flung himself full
length upon the chaise lounge.
"STOP it!" he shouted. "I won't be pestered. I won't! Nothing's
the matter with your play!"
"Then what--"
Potter swung himself round to a sitting position and hammered
with his open palm upon his knee for emphasis: "Nothing's the
matter with it, I tell you! I simply won't play it!"
"Why not?"
"I simply won't play it! I don't like it!"
The playwright dropped into a chair, open-mouthed. "Will you
tell me why you ever accepted it?"
"I don't like any play! I hate 'em all! I'm through with 'em
all! I'm through with the whole business! 'Show-business!'
Faugh!"
Old Tinker regarded him thoughtfully, then inquired: "Gone back
on it?"
"I tell you I'm going to buy a farm!" He sprang up, went to the
mantel and struck it a startling blow with his fist, which
appeared to calm him somewhat--for a moment. "I've been thinking
of it for a long time. I ought never to have been in this
business at all, and I'm going to live in the country. Oh, I'm
in my right mind!" He paused to glare indignantly in response to
old Tinker's steady gaze. "Of course you think 'something's
happened' to upset me. Well, nothing has. Nothing of the
slightest consequence has occurred since I saw you at rehearsal.
Can't a man be allowed to think? I just came home here and got
to thinking of the kind of life I lead--and I decided that I'm
tired of it. And I'm not going to lead it any longer. That's
all."
"Ah," said Tinker quietly. "Nerves."
Talbot Potter appealed to the universe with a passionate
gesture. "Nerves!" he cried bitterly. "Yes, that's what they say
when an actor dares to think. 'Go on! Play your part! Be a
marionette forever!' That's what you tell us! 'Slave for your
living, you sordid little puppet! Squirm and sweat and strut,
but don't you ever dare to think!' You tell us that because you
know if we ever did stop to think for one instant about
ourselves you wouldn't have any actors! Actors! Faugh! What do
we get, I ask you?"
He strode close to Tinker and shook a frantic forefinger within
a foot of the quiet old fellow's face.
"What do I get?" he demanded, passionately. "Do you think it
means anything to me that some fat old woman sees me making love
to a sawdust actress at a matinee and then goes home and hates
her fat old husband across the dinner-table?"
He returned to the fireplace, seeming appeased, at least
infinitesimally, by this thought. "There wouldn't even be that,
except for the mystery. It's only because I'm mysterious to
them--the way a man always thinks the girl he doesn't know is
prettier than the one he's with. What's that got to do with
acting? What is acting, anyhow?" His voice rose passionately
again. "I'll tell you one thing it is: It's the most sordid
profession in this devilish world!"
He strode to the centre of the room. "It's at the bottom--in the
muck! That's where it is. And it ought to be! What am I, out
there on that silly platform they call a stage? A fool, that's
all, making faces, and pretending to be somebody with another
name, for two dollars! A monkey-on-a-stick for the children! Of
course the world despises us! Why shouldn't it? It calls us
mummers and mountebanks, and that's what we are! Buffoons! We
aren't men and women at all--we're strolling players! We're
gypsies! One of us marries a broker's daughter and her relatives
say she's married 'a damned actor!' That's what they say--'a
damned actor!' Great heavens, Tinker, can't a man get tired of
being called a 'damned actor' without your making all this
uproar over it--squalling 'nerves' in my face till I wish I was
dead and done with it!"
He went back to the fireplace again, but omitted another
dolorous stroke upon the mantel. "And look at the women in the
profession," he continued, as he turned to face his visitors.
"My soul! Look at them! Nothing but sawdust--sawdust--sawdust!
Do you expect to go on acting with sawdust? Making sawdust love
with sawdust? Sawdust, I tell you! Sawdust--sawdust--saw--"
"Oh, no," said Tinker easily. "Not all. Not by any means. No."
"Show me one that isn't sawdust!" the tragedian cried fiercely.
"Show me just one!"
"We-ll," said Tinker with extraordinary deliberation, "to start
near home: Wanda Malone."
Potter burst into terrible laughter. "All sawdust! That's why I
discharged her this afternoon."
"You what?" Canby shouted incredulously.
"I dismissed her from my company," said Potter with a startling
change to icy calmness. "I dismissed her from my company this
afternoon."
Old Tinker leaned forward. "You didn't!"
Potter's iciness increased. "Shall I repeat it? I was obliged to
dismiss Miss Wanda Malone from my company, this afternoon, after
rehearsal."
"Why?" Canby gasped.
"Because," said Potter, with the same calmness, "she has an
utterly commonplace mind."
Canby rose in agitation, quite unable, for that moment, to
speak; but Tinker, still leaning forward, gazing intently at the
face of the actor, made a low, long-drawn sound of wonder and
affirmation, the slow exclamation of a man comprehending what
amazes him. "So that's it!"
"Besides being intensely ordinary," said Potter, with
superiority, "I discovered that she is deceitful. That had
nothing whatever to do with my decision to leave the stage." He
whirled upon Tinker suddenly, and shouted: "No matter what you
think!"
"No," said Tinker. "No matter."
Potter laughed. "Talbot Potter leaves the stage because a
little 'ingenue' understudy tries to break the rules of his
company! Likely, isn't it?"
"Looks so," said old Tinker.
"Does it?" retorted Potter with rising fury. "Then I'll tell you,
since you seem not to know it, that I'm not going to leave the
stage! Can't a man give vent to his feelings once in his life
without being caught up and held to it by every old school-teacher
that's stumbled into the 'show-business' by mistake! We're going
right on with this play, I tell you; we rehearse it to-morrow
morning just the same as if this hadn't happened. Only there will be
a new 'ingenue' in Miss Malone's place. People can't break iron
rules in my company. Maybe they could in Mounet-Sully's, but they
can't in mine!"
"What rule did she break?" Canby's voice was unsteady. "What
rule?"
"Yes," Tinker urged. "Tell us what it was."
"After rehearsal," the star began with dignity, "I was--I--" He
paused. "I was disappointed in her."
"Ye-es?" drawled Tinker encouragingly.
Potter sent him a vicious glance, but continued: "I had hopes of
her intelligence--as an actress. She seemed to have, also, a
fairly attractive personality. I felt some little--ah, interest
in her, personally. There is something about her that--" Again
he paused. "I talked to her--about her part--at length; and
finally I--ah--said I should be glad to walk home with her, as
it was after dark. She said no, she wouldn't let me take so
much trouble, because she lived almost at the other end of
Brooklyn. It seemed to me that--ah, she is very young--you both
probably noticed that--so I said I would--that is, I offered to
drive her home in a taxicab. She thanked me, but said she
couldn't. She kept saying that she was sorry, but she couldn't.
It seemed very peculiar, and, in fact, I insisted. I asked her
if she objected to me as an escort, and she said, 'Oh, no!' and
got more and more embarrassed. I wanted to know what was the
matter and why she couldn't seem to like--that is, I talked very
kindly to her, very kindly indeed. Nobody could have been
kinder!" He cleared his throat loudly and firmly, with an angry
look at Tinker. "I say nobody could have been kinder to an
obscure member of the company that I was to Miss Malone. But I
was decided. That's all. That's all there was to it. I was
merely kind. That's all." He waved his hand as in dismissal of
the subject.
"All?" repeated Canby. "All? You haven't--"
"Oh, yes." Potter seemed surprised at his own omission. "Oh,
yes. Right in the midst of--of what I was saying--she blurted
out that she couldn't let me take her home, because 'Lancelot'
was waiting for her at a corner drug-store."
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