An almost anonymous, fresh-faced girl named Anita Hill.
Pete Chew, a round, stupid, wistful rich young man who had taken to the drama only after having been dropped by Amherst, Rollins College, and the Schenectady Flying School.
Walter Rolf, slim, competent, decent, twenty-three or -four and a track runner. It was Walter Rolf's misfortune that, however much you tried to avoid the word 'clean' in describing him, you were sure, in the end, to pigeonhole him as a Clean Young American. He looked like a Princeton Man, and by a coincidence he was a Princeton Man, with a dash of Oxford.
Last of the crew, incredible as a student actor, was Harry Mihick.
Like Marian Croy, Harry had come to the theatre late; unlike her, he was that most portentous of bores, the yearner who knows that he is much more artistic than he is. Harry was forty; and at home, in Hannibal, Missouri, he was a bookkeeper. He was also an actor, in the Y.M.C.A. Drama Guild; a poet, in the Southwestern Christian Advocate; and a dramatist, in nothing perceptible. The gang had concluded that Harry had come to Grampion to find someone who would listen to his play plots. He would stop swimming to discuss his psyche, and he wrote poetry to all the girl students. It was pretty good poetry, too--by Richard Lovelace.
Of these apprentices, Bethel guessed that only Toni Titmus and Walter Rolf had talent. But that made two more young actors than she had ever worked with before, and she was content, though later she was to calculate that her estimate may have been too high, by two.
They all knew so very much about the theatre. As they painted and glued and hammered, and constructed the lunch counter for The Petrified Forest, they gave final verdicts:
'Claire Luce and Wally Ford were both of 'em too doggone sophisticated in Mice and Men. I wouldn't of played Claire's role that way at all. I'd of made her more awkward. You know. Small-town.'
'I didn't think Cedric Hardwicke was so hot. He made the canon so darn heartless. I felt he was showing off, all the while. Too much technique. Now if I'd had that role, I'd of shown how deeply he felt everything underneath. Of course Sir Cedric is nothing but an Englishman. How could he play an Irishman? Of course, I'm not Irish, either, but still . . .'
'I don't know how the Lunts could waste their time on foolishness like Amphitryon. I like a play that's got some social significance. Maybe if I'd been running their schedule, I'd of stood for The Sea Gull, but these French plays--Whatever you may think about the Russians, you certainly got to admit they got art!'
The practically senile Harry Mihick (aged forty) had greeted her. 'Well, Miss Merriday, I hope you're going to take advantage of this intimately associating with artists and having a chance to brush up on ideals this summer.' Nobody laughed much, either.
Listening to their wisdom, peeping in awe at Toni Titmus as she perkily revealed that she had once been introduced to Jo Mielziner, the scene designer, at Sardi's, Bethel felt that she was again a freshman.
How many more times would she find that she had graduated only into new freshmanhood? Freshman as a baby, freshman in her first year in grammar school, freshman in high school, freshman in college, freshman in a summer theatre, freshman on the professional stage--perhaps freshman in marriage and freshman as a star--would it end only with death and her awakening to freshmanhood in heaven?
But she was rescued from humility when she discovered that these airy habituées of the Nutmeg Playhouse, these blasé upper-classmen, had been here only twenty-four hours longer than herself. By the end of an hour's painting she was becoming one of them and was saying some pretty profound things about gag lines. She had discovered that if she endured their idiocies without laughing, they would stand for hers.
The sea wind ran across the rough wild grass, touching her hair; and she was really painting a stencil on real scenery; and she was in a world where she could talk about the theatre from eight a.m. to two a.m.
'I--I--I think I'm going to like it!' she burst out to the beautiful Walter Rolf.
'Sure,' he said convincingly.
It was more than good enough.
VIII
Bethel's dormitory room, a double room which she was to share with Iris Pentire of the stock company, was as utilitarian as a boxcar. It had two cots, two straight chairs, two tilted bureaus, with blisters in the paint, and a row of hooks. But to Bethel, washing up for dinner on her first evening in Grampion, it was enchantment, for on the wall was a last season's poster:
THE NUTMEG PLAYERS
Present
MISS ETHEL BARRYMORE
in
THE CONSTANT WIFE
This was no bedroom, but the anteroom to glory! Here her friend Iris Pentire and she would be queens of the stage, along with Ethel Barrymore.
Cynthia Aleshire, the scene designer, said that Iris, who would arrive to-morrow, was a phenomenon: slim, lovely, only twenty, but already a professional actress and one of the seven Equity-member professionals of the Nutmeg permanent stock company at Grampion. Iris had, reported Cynthia, been a chorus girl, a photographer's model, played stock in Baltimore, and toured in a minor part in Teacher Mustn't Slap. In fact, at only twenty, Iris had as much grilling stage experience as, a generation before, she would have had at the age of six. But as the youngest of the professional stock company, at minimum salary, Iris was to live not in the Bostonian luxury of The House but with the submarginal citizens of the dormitory.
Bethel was going to love Iris even if she hated her.
She stripped off her sweater and slacks, sang in the shower, and in the pride of blue skirt and clean white sweater she ran down to dinner.
There were sixteen student-apprentices at Grampion. They were unpaid, and classed as amateurs, but each of them was permitted by Equity to appear in three plays during the summer. Higher in the hierarchy were the permanent stock company, with Mr. Andrew Deacon and Miss Mahala Vale as leads, and other visiting professional actors and 'guest stars' who appeared in one or two out of the schedule of ten plays presented during the summer of 1938.
To-night eleven out of the sixteen apprentices had come, and were being dramatic over veal loaf, cottage-fried potatoes, coleslaw, stuffed peppers, and huckleberry pie about a table which was made of two retired barn doors resting on saw horses.
Pete Chew, the rich and roundly young, of whom it was already obvious that his best role in the theatre world would be donating scholarships to the hat-check girls in night clubs, had wondrously changed from overalls (by Abercrombie, Fitch) to chequed grey trousers, black and white shoes, and a sweater from the Isle of Uist. (But why Uist?) He had been buzzing about Toni Titmus at the workshop; now, as Bethel ventured into the dining-room, Pete looked brightly at her, approached her with a festive waddle, seized her arm and cheered, 'Uncle Pete'll sit beside you, pretty-pretty, and save you from the sharks.'
'So the poor little rich boy is going to tell another prospect how unappreciated he is,' said Marian Croy, the teacher-secretary-apprentice.
'Let him alone. Maybe he'll put money into a show for us someday!' screamed Toni.
'I don't think it's nice of you to mock a fellow-traveller on the gipsy trail of the arts,' said Harry Mihick.
Bethel listened doubtfully. But Cynthia Aleshire was talking about things called 'functionalism' and 'formalism' in stage settings, and how you can play Macbeth all up and down and under a staircase.