'Ladies and gentlemen, I feel that my job as director is done; I feel pretty well satisfied; I'm off for New York tonight; and I turn you over to Andy--and to yourselves. You're most of you pretty good--though there isn't one of you who can't improve if he, and especially she, will just sit down and try to think what the characters that you are playing are feeling and thinking. That's all, boys and girls. You go forth into the great world, standing with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet, and God keep you from the critics and the room clerks and the autograph fiends!'
Andy took over with a hearty and optimistic address to the company.
It was, felt Bethel, a real Yale pep talk. It smelled of the football-squad quarters, of sweat and childishness. He was so very sweet about it, and so affectionate, and she was embarrassed to the point of itching.
'Fellow troupers, I've really got nothing to say,' he explained, and went ahead and said it for ten minutes . . . while Bethel irritably watched Zed leer sidewise at Tony Murphy. 'Our prospects for a smash-hit tour are better than good. My advices from the next towns on our route, Treverton and Paddock and Milwaukee and Madison, look swell, especially in party bookings. Now all I want to say is that I'm here to help any of you any way I can, twenty-four hours a day.
'I know you're all of you right on your toes, rarin' to go, and while I won't say anything about what I think of the artistic merits of our production--I guess you can guess how I feel about that--I do want to say that I'm proud there's one company where the manager isn't going off to Europe but is going to stay right with the job and with you, and where we're all working together, cards on the table, and there isn't one single feud or clique. . . .'
And all the while Zed was maliciously smiling.
On Thursday morning, with Nathan Eldred, the stage manager, directing, there was held in the lobby the first understudy rehearsal. Bethel for the first time was Juliet; Iris was alternately the Nurse and Lady Montague; Vera Cross was Lady Capulet; Eldred himself was the older men, and Tom Wherry demonstrated that he was equally unsure of his lines as Romeo, Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio and Balthasar. It was, indeed, a fairly complete mess, and Bethel thudded abruptly from pride in herself as Prologue to terror about herself as Juliet.
She had been placidly sure that she knew every word, and perhaps she did, but when Wherry-Romeo threw a line at her (after agitatedly finding the right place in his typed part, and coughing, and scraping his right foot, and beginning with 'Uh-hh-hh'), she didn't know a word in answer.
There was nothing in her skull but a dun-coloured chaos. She discovered that learning lines and keeping them learned have no especial relationship. A long speech, like 'Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face'--oh, she started it ever so brightly, but the rest of the passage was blank. 'Else--else--' Oh, what did come after that? She sat hunched and agonized till Eldred, a little bored, gave her the line, grunting, 'Else would a maiden'. She rushed triumphantly on with 'blush bepaint my cheek'--and all she knew of the rest was a large dazzling nothing.
But when they had gone through the first act, it had all come back to her.
'You kids know this stuff all right, if you'd just let yourself. You're scared of being scared. Now relax,' mumbled Eldred.
They, the juveniles, the future hopes of the stage, had come into the lobby for the rehearsal high-stepping and babbling, ready to show up poor old Mrs. Boyle and Challis and Hoy. Now they hunched over on silly little gilt chairs and suffered.
It was all fine.
'Good first understudy rehearsal. Some of you know some of the lines. Call for next Thursday, same hour--that'll be in Paddock, Illinois.'
On Tuesday evening, as Bethel and she walked to the theatre, Iris stopped at a jeweller's window and pointed to an elaborate mechanism to be carried by ladies for the repair of an evening's ravages. It was in enamel, orange with streaks of black, and it combined a vanity case, a cigarette case, a lighter and a miniature clock, of which latter two it was improbable that they would work.
'Isn't that cute?' moaned Iris. 'Gee, I wish I had it.'
'You've already got all that junk--three compacts and two cigarette cases,' said the prosaic, provincial Bethel.
'But this is the newest thing there is.'
'Hm. Like Charlotte's newest thing in the Communist party line. I'm just getting surrounded by novelties.'
'I don't know what you mean. But this combination compact--' Iris chilled her elegant little nose against the shop window. 'Lookit! They call it the "Demoiselle's D-e-l-i-t-e"--"delight", I guess that must be. Oh, that's a cunning name, isn't it! So amusing. I bet it comes right straight from Paris. Think of finding it out here in the sticks!' marvelled the daughter of Wheeling. 'Oh, travel and learn, I always say. I just got to have this. It's so sweet and original. I noticed it yesterday afternoon, and I dreamed about it last night. When we were dancing last night, after the opening, oh, we had a swell time, I told Zed Wintergeist about it--'
Bethel winced.
'--but he didn't seem interested. I don't know what I'm going to do. And it only costs twenty-five dollars.'
'Well, buy it then, if you want it so much.'
'Me? I haven't a cent. And I've got to pay up some of my debts back in New York--people do get so mean about things like that. Oh dear. Well, come on! Do you want us to be late?'
Wednesday, walking to the matinée, Bethel saw Iris and Zed stop at that jewellery window, and as she passed them, heard Iris say indignantly to Zed, 'You know I've told you, I don't allow any gentlemen to give me presents, not even innocent ones like this--isn't it just too darling!'
After the matinée, Bethel saw Andy, after certain whisperings, hand over to Zed two bank notes.
That evening, when Iris and Bethel were dressing to go out to dinner--cross and touchy after the between-performances nap--a bellboy delivered a package for Iris. Anything wrapped in tissue paper excited Iris. Squealing, she scrabbled with the wrappings and took out the black-and-orange compact.
She hugged it to her breast, crooning, as though it were a baby. She took out the card, read its inscription, blushed, and looked at Bethel with sly triumph that changed--an excellent performance before an audience of only one--into indignant innocence.
And Bethel did not dare to speak.
Iris and Zed left the theatre together that evening, following Satori's farewell, and Iris did not come home till after three. Bethel awoke to cock an eye at her and, as Iris was obviously waiting for a scene, she had a small solid pleasure in not giving it to her. At breakfast, which Iris had tempted her into the wasteful luxury of having in their room, Bethel was inspired to attack.
'Iris!'
'Eh?'
'Why did you coax Zed into giving you that compact?'
'Who said he gave it to me?'
'Why did you coax him--tease him--gold-dig him, if you like it that way!'
'Why, I never heard of such an outrageous accusation in all my life! Me coax him? Me tease him? Me gold-dig anybody? Let me tell you, Beth Merriday, I've had rich men, oh, very rich, beg for the chance to give me--uh--jewels and French perfume and hatboxes and everything, and I always said, certainly not, no one can buy my favours, and they said, why no, of course not, they just wanted to show their appreciation of me, but even so, no, I told them, a beautiful girl in my position where you haven't got a father or a brother or anybody to defend you, you've just got to be beyond criticism, I told them, and my reputation was just as dear to me as it was to Helen Hayes or a banker or anybody--'