Chapter XI

Joan’s beatific state continued with but a few brief eclipses. She had been instructed to ’phone to Mr. Clark, the ‘Vivi’ stage-manager, directly she arrived at Albany, and an appointment was then given her to be at the theatre the following morning, Friday, at eleven. The girl’s face was glowing with pleasure and excitement as she and her grandmother set out after breakfast. It was, indeed, a perfect winter’s day. Even an American city grew beautiful with this powdering of snow, glittering in the bright sunlight, while the dry, pure air seemed to bring the stimulation of the new world. And then the goal that lay before them! If she had found the animated, frosty streets a delight, the theatre, although dark and dusty and deserted at that morning hour, was even more exciting, more wonderful. Only twice before had she entered her magic kingdom; never had she set foot on the stage. It may be that the dim, shrouded auditorium, empty save for one or two cleaners, was fuller of significance for her than if it had been lighted and filled. This was her unknown future, the girl felt vaguely; it opened before her big with mysterious possibility. Was fame, perhaps, coming to her out of that dim house, she wondered? She was almost grateful to Mr. Clark for keeping them waiting nearly an hour. It gave her time to control her emotion. When the stage-manager did, at last, arrive, he took the form of a little, colourless man of a depressed and irritable mien, the result of many years contact with leading ladies. It was said, indeed, that Mr. Clark’s one incursion into epigram had been on hearing Emerson’s famous injunction “to hitch your waggon to a star.” “Mighty jolting business,” the poor manager had murmured ruefully; “guess mine have all been shooting stars.” The flurry of his manner was increased by a superfluous consciousness of overwhelming rush. In a futile attempt always to do to-day what might better be put off till to-morrow, he was permanently behind time. “Good morning,” he now exclaimed breathlessly, and began to search among a mass of littered properties. “Now, where’s your part? I put it here for you all ready yesterday.--I want you to see the next few performances from the front.--Ask at the box-office for a pass.--You are to study Miss Bransom and copy her rendering as closely as possible.--When you’ve got your words, Mr. Terence and Mr. Montgomery will run through the business with you; they are the two leading male characters; most of your scenes are with them.” All this time the unfortunate man had been punctuating his instructions with dives into a débris of tea-sets, cigar-lighters, fans, artificial flowers, and other bric-a-brac that strewed the table. Now he suddenly gave an exclamation of triumph, and, pushing aside four empty halves of cocoanut shells, on the use of which Joan was vainly speculating, produced a thin brown-paper-covered booklet. “Here you are, Miss--er--North.” He held it out undecidedly, not knowing to which of the two ladies it should be presented.

There was a hardly perceptible pause. Joan was still too unused to her new name to respond to it automatically. She had chosen ‘North’ as being in harmony with her grandmother’s ‘Miss West’; they’d box the theatrical compass between them, she had laughingly urged. Now she took the script and opened it eagerly. To her dismay it was not the play; it was merely her own part. The cues were given indeed, but only as disjointed and meaningless half lines. “I must have a complete copy,” she gasped. “I know absolutely nothing about this piece.”

“You’ll have to be satisfied with that, Miss North. There are only two complete scripts in America.” Mr. Clark’s tone was curt. It wasn’t for subordinates to make such demands.

“But I can’t understudy without understanding!” Joan protested indignantly. “Surely, I can at least read the complete play here.”

Mrs. Lennox saw the growing irritation in the stage-manager’s face. “Why, Joan dear, you’ll hear the whole play to-night,” she interposed hurriedly. “You’re lucky to get that chance.” When she got her granddaughter outside, she felt that, for the child’s own sake, the etiquette of the theatre must be explained to her. “You must remember, darling, that there are three classes in the theatrical world--the star, the manager, and the company.” Mrs. Lennox hesitated a moment, and then went on almost wittily: “The star may say anything and have nothing said to her. The company-may say nothing and have anything said to them. As for the manager, he says anything or nothing according to circumstances. He’s a slave to the star, but a sultan to the company. And an understudy hardly even ranks among the company! Yet there you were talking to Mr. Clark as if you had attained stellar rank!”

Joan took the reproof better than her grandmother had expected. “I’ll try and remember, Granny, that I’m only sub-human,” she said meekly; “a mere worm--not even a glow-worm. Ought I to go down on my knees every time Miss Bransom deigns to speak to me?”

“Don’t be absurd!” Mrs. Lennox laughed. “But do be careful with Miss Bransom. Whatever happens, you mustn’t argue with her or contradict her. If she gives you any hints as to your playing, accept them gratefully. You needn’t act on them if you don’t want. For if ever you do get a chance to appear, it will be because she is sick, so she won’t be there to see how you do it.”

“Oh, Granny, what duplicity! I should never have thought it of you!” Joan gurgled with amusement.

“But I’m not saying you won’t get a lot from Miss Bransom,” Mrs. Lennox expostulated. “I’ve never seen her play myself, but I’ve always heard her technique’s fine. Only just bear in mind, if you put up a star’s back, somehow or other you soon find yourself out of the company.”

“I suppose those stellar heights are rather demoralising.” Joan’s voice was reflective. “No wonder it turns their heads! Is there no solitary person who dares to talk down to a star?”

“One, perhaps.” Mrs. Lennox laughed again. “The stage carpenter! We’re all at his mercy.”

“Well, when I’m a star--if the carpenter will let me--I shall insist on each member of the company having a complete copy of the play.” Joan returned to her original grievance. “I never heard anything so silly as giving a person that parrot stuff to learn! I don’t mean to look at it until I’ve heard the whole play to-night. Even that is very unsatisfactory, for I’ll sense it first through Miss Bransom’s personality, instead of my own.”

To this resolution Joan adhered. The little brown typescript was not so much as opened. The next few hours was spent in seeing the sights of Albany. The vaunted State Capitol left Joan unimpressed, but riding there in a street car, a hitherto unknown dissipation, was quite thrilling. “Oh, Granny, what a heap of things rich people have to go without,” she whispered. Probably with the girl’s dramatic talent, it had been a real, if unconscious, deprivation to be limited to one class of society and its dependents--as she had long ago told her father, she wanted ‘lots of people.’ A ‘dago’ with a plenitude of babies and bundles now got out of the car. “Did you see her gestures? They were a perfect study!” Joan exclaimed excitedly to her grandmother. “It _is_ a luxury not to have money!”

She genuinely meant it. To John Vandeleur’s daughter, poverty was the novelty, the adventure. When they had arrived the night before, it had struck her as positively romantic to select an hotel because it was cheap and not because it was dear. In some indefinable way, the girl’s modest little room seemed to make her free of that great company of artists and thinkers who have worked and suffered down the centuries. “But after all, my dear,” Mrs. Lennox wisely commented, when her granddaughter had tried to put this thought into words, “though most geniuses have lived in garrets, living in a garret doesn’t make you a genius!”

And although Joan was thus enjoying the theory of economy, she did not seem very successful in the practice. Like any other accomplishment it needs training. They had not gone far in their sight-seeing before the girl turned, almost unconsciously, into one of the best restaurants in Albany. “This is just right, Granny,” she laughed. “I am starving.”

The lunch came to nearly three dollars. Mrs. Lennox paid the bill ruefully. However, on the first day she would not say anything. And they certainly needed the meal. As it was, the grandmother grew very tired before the afternoon was over, though nothing seemed to damp Joan’s vigour. She was almost dancing with joy as they walked back to the hotel. “Now, I’ll buy a few magazines and we’ll have a nice, comfortable read: then dinner and down to the theatre,” she cried.

Yes, it had all been pleasant enough, but Mrs. Lennox felt rather uneasy, as she lay down for a short rest, preparatory to the evening’s outing. Apart from expense, Joan ought to have spent the afternoon in studying her part. Suppose Miss Bransom should be taken ill the next day! Of course, it was highly improbable, but it might occur. It was ridiculous of her granddaughter to have taken up this standpoint of not studying the part until she could get the whole. Why, once in the old days, Mrs. Lennox remembered, she had come to the first performance of a play without the faintest notion of what it was about. Of course, that was only a fit-up company, very different from the ‘Vivi’ one, but still Joan mustn’t give herself airs. Perhaps it was only that she was shirking the grind. Suppose, after all, the child’s enthusiasm did not carry her through the learning of this very long and heavy part. Whatever should they do then, with their boats burnt behind them, the harassed grandmother asked herself?

These fears, at least, were soon at rest. Mrs. Lennox and Joan duly went to ‘Vivi’ that evening. The following day was Saturday with its two performances, and they were at both. A box was given to them, for the house needed ‘dressing,’ and Joan sat there, watching, in a state of speechless and rigid concentration. Each time they came out, she was so white that her grandmother felt quite alarmed. All Sunday and Monday the girl locked herself impenetrably into her little hotel bedroom; fortunately, there was steam heat. At last at ten o’clock in the evening of the latter day she emerged and came to her grandmother’s room. “I’ve more or less got hold of it now, though of course it wants heaps of polishing,” she murmured. Her smile was happy although weary. Indeed, she looked strangely dazed and wide-eyed.

“My dear, have you slept at all these last two nights? You look absolutely worn out,” her grandmother remonstrated.

“Oh, that’s all right, Granny. I’m going to have a solid twelve hours to-night! Don’t worry. You remember Mr. Clark’s message that I was to be at the theatre for rehearsal at eleven to-morrow--that’s partly why I wanted to get on with my part. You’ll be coming too, won’t you?” As Joan bent down to kiss her grandmother good-night, she gave a lurch and caught hold of the back of the chair. “Why, I’m quite dizzy. How funny! Yes, I’ve had supper--lots. I only want to go to bed. Good-night, darling. Oh, Granny! it’s wonderful to feel that one can do something. I’m just satisfied. It is bliss.”

Although Joan was happy, Mrs. Lennox was far from being so. For her part, the night brought little rest. She was as agitated now over Joan’s industry, as she had been three days ago over her idleness. The child’s health would never stand it, she felt anxiously. Moreover their financial position was worrying in the extreme. Joan jubilantly considered that they were living with extraordinary economy, and it was true that the hotel was humble. Yet even here the joint expenses amounted to over five dollars a day. Joan’s little salary would not go far at this rate, Mrs. Lennox told herself; neither was her own three hundred dollars at the bank inexhaustible. How had she managed in the old days, she wondered? She must have got out of practice in economy.

But there was one thing that exercised Mrs. Lennox even more than the money question, even more than Joan’s health, and that was the character of the play at which her granddaughter was slaving. Had she grown unduly fussy in her old age? she asked herself. The fact remained that she hated Joan’s doing this piece--a French adaptation based perilously on the eternal triangle. Certainly it was well written--powerful indeed--this was apparent even in the mauled translation. The third act was one of the strongest that Mrs. Lennox had ever heard. For a mature actress like Miss Bransom it was a fine opportunity--but for her little Joan! And what would John Vandeleur say if he knew? A sick dismay came over Mrs. Lennox at the mere idea.

Besides, could Joan do it? So the grandmother’s thoughts ran on in a crescendo of misery. What possible experience had the child had to enable her to render a part of this sort? If only her granddaughter had agreed to go through the piece with her, as they had always done in the past! But no, Joan had said that it was already coloured enough by Miss Bransom’s conception; unless she hammered the rest out alone, she would be like Æsop’s old man with his donkey. The fact was the child seemed to have no conception of the difficulty of the piece, nor even of its impropriety. Why, the first time they saw it, Mrs. Lennox reminded herself, when she had expressed her distaste Joan had stared in absolute surprise. “But, of course, ‘Vivi’ is a beast,” she had said in her schoolgirl phraseology. Later, perhaps to reassure her grandmother, she had recalled the fact of their once having studied “Medea” together--“and she wasn’t a Sunday school teacher either.” Indeed far from disliking the play, Joan had expressed her satisfaction with it. “I was afraid from the name that it might be one of those inane things, all dresses and dancing, that I’ve read about in the critiques. They must be so impossible to act. But Vivi is corking!” The child’s complacency could only be due to her lack of understanding, poor Mrs. Lennox told herself, as she lay tossing during the long, wakeful night. And if Joan didn’t understand the part, how could she act it? She might be an absolute failure. They would turn her down to-morrow at the first rehearsal.

Although Joan could hardly have had the twelve hours’ sleep of which she had spoken, she looked quite bright and refreshed when she came down to breakfast the next morning. Indeed, it was Mrs. Lennox who now looked worn out, although Joan did not appear to notice it. It was again a beautiful morning, so Joan suggested walking, but acquiesced at once when her grandmother said there was hardly time. “I suppose unpunctuality is another of the star’s privileges,” she laughed, “and not to be indulged in by a poor, humble understudy like me!”

It certainly seemed as though haste had been unnecessary, for again there was a long wait. They found two property chairs in one of the wings, and thankfully sat down, half screened by a projecting ‘fly.’ At last male voices were heard. They came nearer in unconsciousness of the ladies’ presence,--“as though we weren’t stale enough already without this blasted rehearsing of a fresh understudy every month.” “Well, it isn’t the poor girl’s fault,” another more amiable voice rejoined.

The conversation stopped abruptly as the speakers came forward and saw its topic before them. Mr. Terence, who played the husband, had very much the same appearance as on the stage, although he now looked slightly confused. He was a man of about thirty-five, Joan judged, with sleek, black hair, good-looking, but rather heavy features, and dark eyes that were a trifle beady. His companion, Mr. Montgomery, on the other hand, was almost ludicrously changed from his professional rôle of a very dissipated and very young lover. At first sight, indeed, his slight, boyish figure still gave the impression of extreme youth, but a more careful glance revealed middle-aged lines about his face, and hair that was greying at the temples. It was in his expression, however, that lay the greatest difference. Instead of the blasé and sensuous look that the play demanded, Mr. Montgomery’s unadapted face positively glowed with human kindness as he beamed out at the world through his gold-rimmed spectacles. “He must be quite a good actor to be so different,” Joan thought with a sudden interest.

Both men had raised their hats as they stood there, although Mr. Terence’s salutation was probably more to the fur coats than to their wearers. Certainly he had not greeted any of the other understudies, of whose multiplicity he complained, with so much deference. He looked as though he were going to follow up the formality by coming forward to speak, but one of the stage hands intercepted him. “Say, Mr. Terence, the full bunch of lights for the picture at the end of Act III is off. Miss Bransom she keeps letting out her jaw about the scene not being dark enough, and now Mr. Clark says it’s to be only a calcium on her bed.”

“But I’ve got an exit. I shan’t be able to see the door,” Mr. Terence exclaimed indignantly. A lively conversation followed, of which such cryptic phrases as ‘blue borders, one to two dark’ and ‘foots with white on resistance’ reached Joan’s interested ears.

Meanwhile Mr. Montgomery, apparently tired of waiting, advanced alone. “Miss North?” he queried, with impartial geniality as he approached the ladies. She must be the younger of the two, he imagined, but in the theatrical world, age is a variable attribute, put on or taken off at will. Joan now ended Mr. Montgomery’s uncertainty by holding out her hand. “I am Miss North. This is my----” She checked herself. With a view to the grandmother’s theatrical prospects, they had decided not to reveal the relationship. “This is Miss West,” the girl amended.

“Miss West--why, it’s never Miss Frances West?” A glow of still greater friendliness suffused Mr. Montgomery’s face. “Well, I declare! You haven’t changed a particle, Miss West, since you played in ‘Biddy.’”

“I can hardly believe that!” Mrs. Lennox was obviously pleased, perhaps more at the remembrance than at the compliment. Indeed, she had been feeling a good deal out of it during these few days. Like Mahomet’s coffin she dangled between two worlds, belonging to neither. “But surely you weren’t in ‘Biddy’ too, Mr. Montgomery?” she enquired. “I don’t seem to recollect you.”

“Why, certainly, I was. Don’t you remember the crowd of youngsters who guyed you in the second act. One of ’em upset the fruit stall. That was yours to command.”

Mrs. Lennox now recalled the little man. He had, of course, really been a youth in those days. His name, however, remained unfamiliar. Mr. Montgomery explained this by saving that he had begun his dramatic career under his own name. “But it stood in the way of my ever getting a lead. You couldn’t bill ‘Jimmy Squabs’ as Romeo, don’t you know? Only somehow ‘Mr. James Montgomery’ hasn’t brought it off either. This is the nearest approach to stardom that’s ever come my way--Terence and I are both playing opposite to Miss Bransom. Mostly I’m cast for kids in round, shiny collars--you know, the stage boy whose head is too small and his pants the wrong shape at the back! My, but that Biddy of yours was a fine piece of work, Miss West! I’ve never forgotten it. And where have you been hiding yourself all these years?”

“I’ve kept her busy bringing me up,” Joan interpolated quickly.

“Oh, that’s it! And you young ladies do take some bringing up! I’ve five little girls at home myself, so I know.” Mr. Montgomery naturally assumed the relationship to be that of mother and daughter, for Joan looked quite three or four and twenty, while Mrs. Lennox’s later life of sheltered opulence had really left her almost unchanged.

Mr. Terence now joined them. In the necessary introduction that followed, Joan found herself definitely labelled as “Miss West’s daughter, Miss North.” She looked at her grandmother oddly, and in the flash of understanding that passed between them, they both realized that they had better leave it at that. “Hasn’t Clark come yet?” Mr. Terence now enquired. “That man’s unpunctuality is a perfect scandal!” The fact that he had been half an hour late himself seemed to have escaped his memory. “Clark is the worst manager I’ve ever run up against,” Mr. Terence went on wrathfully. “Why Mr. Hobson keeps him on I can’t imagine, except, I guess, Miss Bransom gives him bouquets when she writes. Clark’s one idea is to give way to the star in every mortal thing, however much he damages the piece--oh, he knows which side his bread’s buttered well enough!” The new lighting decree and his own consequent obscurity lent a bitterness to Mr. Terence’s words.

The procrastinating Clark did now at last appear, although this did not mean the commencement of the rehearsal. For, after a nod to the ladies, Mr. Clark seemed to consider this a suitable opportunity for discussing the journey to Syracuse, where the company were playing the following week. It was Mr. Montgomery who finally suggested that as they had come to rehearse, it might be as well to do it.

Mr. Clark fussily seated himself at the prompt table, with his hat well on the back of his head, and ‘Vivi’s’ first big scene began. After a sentence or two, he suddenly stopped fidgeting and looked interested. Mr. Terence had begun by gabbling his words in a low tone to save his voice for the evening, while Mr. Montgomery was introducing into his lines a fatherly gentleness almost comically inappropriate, in order to set the new understudy at her ease. Now both men dropped these affectations and began to play. Once or twice in the first scene Mr. Clark pulled up Joan for mistakes in her business. Although she accepted the improvements gratefully, the stage manager presently changed his method. “I am going to let you run straight through; I’ll take all that presently,” he announced.

The play went on. As Mr. Clark had said, it consisted almost entirely of scenes between Vivi and these two men. The few minor characters that came into it were read by the stage manager himself. At the end of the second act, he spoke to Joan again, but this time there was a new deference in his voice. “That’s not Miss Bransom’s reading of the scene,” he suggested.

“No. But it is the true one.”

There was a general though subdued laugh. “Well, I don’t know but what you’re right, Miss North, but it would be better not to mention it to Miss Bransom.” Mr. Clark’s tone was distinctly nervous, while Mrs. Lennox was trying to catch Joan’s eye in mute warning. But, despite her anxiety over the girl’s assurance, the grandmother was almost bursting with love and triumph. Her child was a genius after all, she told herself ecstatically. Whatever became of them, it was right to have eloped.

During the rest of the week Joan spent most of the day at the theatre, working over her part with Mr. Clark. Naturally she had an enormous amount to learn despite her talent--all the stage tricks, as Mr. Clark styled them. The fussy little manager was indefatigable, and Joan was deeply grateful, although she could not help realizing that he regarded her rather in the light of a promising racehorse. “Did Mr. Hobson say nothing about starring you?” he asked more than once.

Sunday was taken up with the journey to Syracuse. It was Joan’s first experience of theatrical travelling, and she was deeply interested. In her innocence she imagined that she would get to know Miss Bransom on the cars, for hitherto the acquaintance with the star had been limited to seeing her get out of her motor at the stage door and one chance meeting on the theatre stairs. Joan found, however, that they were as far removed in the train as in their respective hotels, for the star, together with Mr. Clark and Mr. Terence, was secluded from the rest of the company by the sanctity of a parlour car. Mr. Montgomery also might have aspired to this grandeur, Joan learnt with secret amusement, had he cared to spend the money; but for an understudy, such a mode of travel would evidently be considered an unheard of presumption. “And we call ourselves a democracy!” the girl laughed to her grandmother.

Another surprise was in store. On leaving Syracuse station Joan bought a Sunday ‘Herald.’ In it she found a two column interview with Miss Bransom, describing among other things, her arrival in the city, illustrated by several of her photographs. “How can they have got it all out so quickly?” Joan asked Mrs. Lennox in astonishment.

“You goose! It’s the advance agent. You surely don’t think the booking is all left to chance? Why every place has to be worked up first. It’s quite an art giving out the star’s interviews. If they’re meaty, people say they’re faked, and if they’re dull, the newspapers won’t give the space. So they aim at amusing naiveté--though it’s rather ridiculous at Miss Bransom’s age!”

Monday was taken up in establishing the production in the new theatre, and Joan was free to study her part. This she did in a fresh frenzy of energy, for Mr. Clark had called a rehearsal of the whole company for Tuesday morning to go through the piece with her. One member of the cast was certainly not expected at this rehearsal, and that was the star. But, as the first act was beginning, Miss Bransom’s tall and stately figure was seen in the house, moving majestically down the gangway between the empty stalls. The advance agent was with her, and she was giving him some directions in a loud, clear voice, quite regardless of the luckless performers. This was rather a characteristic of the star, and did not serve to ingratiate her with the company. Joan herself was not on the stage. Possibly if she had been, Miss Bransom would have lowered her dominating tone. For the star’s visit seemed provoked rather by an unusual friendliness towards the new understudy, than by hostility. Seeing Mrs. Lennox sitting in the second row, Miss Bransom moved over to her and took the next seat, throwing back the dust sheet with a regal gesture. “Miss West, I believe,” she said quite cordially. “Mr. Montgomery tells me that he played with you once some years ago.”

“Yes, in ‘Biddy,’” Miss West replied in a whisper.

“Of course, that was the name.” The star’s voice was still unabated. “Naturally it was long before my time--” “forty-five if she’s a day,” was Miss West’s mental interpolation--“Mr. Montgomery says the piece was very successful,” Miss Bransom continued condescendingly.

Joan now came on the stage. At least Mrs. Lennox could no longer complain of the star’s lack of attention. After the first few lines, Miss Bransom sat listening with rigid passivity. Her handsome face was inclined to be hard; as the scene went on the hardness grew more pronounced; her thin lips tightened. At the end of the third act she turned to her neighbour. “Miss North acts well, but you should warn her that she is a little inclined to rant,” she said coldly.

Mrs. Lennox had been in her usual uplift of admiration. At her companion’s words she came to earth suddenly. Not that she believed them. Joan rant! Why Miss Bransom, with all her technique and experience, could not touch this acting. Just let Joan have her chance; the audience would soon decide. But the indignant grandmother retained enough self-control not to express her sentiments aloud. Instead she replied, with a hardly perceptible touch of malice, that Joan was, of course, very young. She would improve in time.

Miss Bransom smiled, but unpleasantly. “Miss North does not give one the impression of such extreme youth,” she said and walked round to the stage and so out. A biting current of air and the unreal, grey daylight coming from the back showed that she had left the stage door open behind her. “My, ain’t she mad?” giggled the property boy as he was sent to shut the door. The suppressed whispering that had been going on among the company suddenly became a babble of talk. “Miss Bransom isn’t quite pleased with your rendering of the part, Miss North,” Mr. Montgomery observed with a smile.

“Why?” Joan was genuinely at a loss.

“Too good. When you’ve been on the stage as long as me, young lady, you’ll find it doesn’t pay the understudy to play a part for all it’s worth--leastways not when the star’s present. I’m afraid you’ll never get a chance now.”

“You bet your life she won’t,” chimed in another member of the company. “Our fair Rosamond don’t exactly push on her understudy at any time. If Miss North don’t get manœuvred out of the company altogether, she’ll be in luck.”

“Well, I believe Miss Bransom will fall sick with jealousy right away,” one of the women suggested kindly, seeing Joan’s dismayed face.

“If Miss Bransom were dead and buried, she’d play the part in her graveclothes sooner than let Miss North appear.” There was a general laugh. Mr. Clark called for the next act, and the conversation came to an end.