'My . . . God! You bet I will!' yelled the tipstaff.
And all the while, through all charges and retreats, Mahala's golden voice pealed on:
Boyle's too old and too conventional. She dates about Beerbohm Tree. Are you going to have J. Wilkes Booth for Mercutio? Why, this child Beth Merriday could play Juliet better than that old--'
From the door, Miss Carpet jeered, 'Mrs. Lumley Boyle to see Mr. Deacon.'
'--devil!' Mahala finished, and looked haughty.
A small, slight woman, all eyes, walked in. They were black eyes, full of life and anger; like the eyes of Bethel and of Adrian Satori, only more so. She wore a coat of which you could never remember anything except that it was old but had once been very expensive. She stood turning the eyes on Mahala, whose knees grew feeble and her voice puling as she intoned, 'Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Boyle? Raw day, isn't it? I've got to be running on, Andy--Mr. Satori--Bethel. See you all soon. That's a wonderful picture of you in Stage, Mrs. Boyle. Good-bye, all--goo-oo-ood-bye!'
Bethel slipped up to Andy to whisper, 'Shall I go now?'
'No, no! Now least of all, dear. Adrian and I need somebody with sense in these troublous times that are about to occur right now.'
But Mrs. Boyle didn't really want many things--what she did want, she wanted earnestly and eloquently, but they did not go beyond:
A run-of-the-play contract, whereby she could not be discharged except for barratry, treason or miscegenation.
Billing--not at all on her own behalf, but for dear Andy's sake, to sell the play--as follows:
MRS. LUMLEY BOYLE
The world's most distinguished tragedienne
in
Romeo and Juliet
with Andrew Deacon, Mahala Vale,
Mabel Staghorn, Hugh Challis, and cast
of famous New York and London actors.
Dressing rooms A and B, both, in all theatres--B for her maid, her shoes and her dog.
Pullman drawing-room for herself and section for her maid, on all overnight jumps.
And to be present at all interviews, to tell the reporters--since her modesty prevented her doing it herself--what Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson had said to her.
No cuts in any of her speeches, no matter what cuts there might be in the lines of the groundlings.
Johnnie Walker whisky--black label, not red, remember, black label--provided and paid for by the management, to be present in all her dressing-rooms, hotel suites and train drawing-rooms.
But, as she was an old trouper, just an old trouper, just one of the cast and as democratic as a streetwalker, that was all she wanted.
When Mrs. Boyle was gone, Andy and Satori stretched in chairs, their legs thrust out far before them, and were wan and silent.
Bethel was inspired to bring them whisky-sodas. 'Poor darling!' she murmured to Andy.
'Oh, bless you, of course I remember now, it's Merriday,' said Andy.
But he said nothing about a job for her. And she would have been so willing to go along on the tour, even without Johnnie Walker, black label.
The designer of sets and costumes was a Mr. William Schnable, a businesslike person with a red moustache and eight-sided spectacle lenses. He marched in with a portfolio of scene drawings. The play was to have a unit set, with Romanesque mock-plaster portals and a number of balcony, archway and window units which could be shuffled for quick changes. Bethel wondered why, in a modern-costume Romeo, they should use the old, bogus, Shaftesbury Avenue-Italian for the sets, but, unbidden, feeling that she belonged here now, she brought Mr. Schnable a drink and handsomely sat back and shut up.
Andy, Satori and Schnable showed that there was life in this stage venture by immediately falling into a derogatory argument about costumes. Schnable was for having Romeo wear a contemporary Italian army officer's uniform. Andy yelled that this would look like Fascist propaganda. Schnable said that anything else would look like Communist propaganda. Satori said, with what seemed like considerable reasonableness, that they were both crazy, and that Romeo should be the most elegant young clubman that could be turned out by the best Fifth Avenue tailors, and wear a dinner jacket and an opera hat for the balcony scene. Andy announced that he would be double-damned if he'd recite 'Oh that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek' in a boiled shirt and a natty gent's bow tie. Romeo was so great an aristocrat that he could wear whatever he liked. He was going to wander through the play in grey flannel bags, with a tweed jacket and a soft shirt; maybe he'd change his tie from act to act, but he wasn't so sure about even that, and . . .
And weapons. The three stage maniacs came almost to the use of weapons themselves as they debated what should be used in place of rapiers, which would be absurd with modern costumes. Revolvers--blackjacks--brass knuckles--stray bottles and brickbats? And then stilettos; yes, Tybalt would kill Mercutio with a stiletto. But the first fight between Tybalt and Benvolio should be with plain hearty fists.
They were still denouncing one another at seven o'clock, when Miss Carpet indicated that she had to go home, that she had had the telephone calls switched on to Mr. Deacon's suite, and that there still were three young actors waiting across the hall, to read for the role of Mercutio.
I've taken a look at them. No good. No good at all. Why don't you chase 'em away?' said Satori.
'Oh, the poor devils, let's give 'em a chance, anyway,' insisted Andy. 'Besides! How do you know they're no good, just glancing at 'em? The psychic Satori! Come on, let's read 'em now--Bill Schnable and Bethel and you and I.'
'Oh, please no! It wouldn't be fair for me to listen to them reading,' Bethel protested.
'You'll have a good fresh point of view,' said Andy. 'You may beat Adrian and me all hollow. And can't you stay and have dinner with me?'
'I'd lovetobut,' said Bethel dutifully.
'So you think this batch are no good?' Andy sighed to Satori. 'Tempot, the agent, swore they were all three of 'em better than Gielgud. We've got to have a Mercutio, right away. Look, Adrian! I've got a brain wave. Let's see if Zed Wintergeist is engaged. Know his work?'
'Yes. I directed him in a Shaw festival. He's a clever actor, lots of power, intelligent, but he's a sea lawyer. He criticizes everybody and everything. He's a mutineer.'
'I know. I played with him in The Light Goes Out. But he's not effeminate, and he can act--anything from King Lear to David, the Shepherd Boy. I'm going to give him a call, anyway. Bethel, sweet! Will you please find Wintergeist's address--remember him?--the angelic roughneck that came out of the rain at Grampion and invited himself to our party? His address is in my little red book there on the piano--no, I guess it's upstairs on the bureau in my room--no, I think I saw it last in the phonograph--well, anyway, darling, find it and get him on the phone for me, while I bring in the boys for the reading.'
She did--chasing the little red book to Miss Carpet's desk across the hall, and then chasing Zed from his cheap-sounding address far over in the West Forties to the Tavern Restaurant to backstage at Pins and Needles to a small select dinner party of two hundred people in Sol Gadto's one-room-and-toilet apartment.
Yes. Zed would condescend to come and see Mr. Andrew Deacon. When? Oh, nineish--if he was still sober.
Schnable had reasonably escaped, but Andy, Satori, and Bethel dragged three deep chairs into line, as an audience, tried to look profound, and listened to three several actors trying in turn to read the most unreadable lines of Mercutio.