Mr. Regis's salary continued just the same, whether that handsome old black-walnut-and-crimson-velvet theatre, the Sherman Square, provided a new play every week or was dark the whole year through. The local Carl Frazee jabbered to Andy that Mr. Regis preferred the latter--it gave him less to do. He particularly disliked any unusual attraction, like Romeo in grey bags, that required attentive publicity, but his favourite phrase about almost every star was, 'He don't mean a dime in the box office'.
Thus, this season, Sir Cedric Hardwicke in Shadow and Substance, Cornelia Otis Skinner in Candida, Frank Craven in Our Town, they none of them to Sam Lee Regis meant 'a dime in the box office'. That gave the serene old gentleman--who had a large moustache, and yet chewed gum during the moments when he was not slumbering in his old leather chair in the theatre office--an excuse for spending almost nothing on advertising, a topic which Andy was discussing with him, warmly.
This expense the company and the theatre were supposed to share equally, but as Mr. Regis looked at it, it wasn't an expense at all, but just a bad idea.
Mr. Regis droned, 'Boyle don't mean a cent in the box office, and that old ham you got playing the Watchman and Apothecary, say, when he wriggled his nose--it's made of rubber, ain't it?--I had the first good laugh I've had since George Cohan was in town. Now there's a show that is something--singin' and dancin'. Why don't you get a show like that, Mr. Deacon? Shakespeare!'
The less Andy thought of Sam Lee Regis, the more he was irritated that Nooks should give Mr. Regis such an opening. But nothing happened in Paddock; nothing till Dubuque.
There Bethel was called to Andy's dressing-room before the evening performance.
Andy looked massive in his loose green silk dressing-gown (slightly spotty with brown face powder and cold cream), but he sounded feeble.
'Kitten, I need some advice bad. I've never been so scared. I've got to fire old Nooks--'
'Oh, you can't!'
'I'll have to, Beth.'
'But it'll kill him! He's so proud of his technique. He told me you were thinking of him for Capulet, if Challis ever quit. And he's showed me twice now the line in the Milwaukee Sentinel that said he was "a stalwart actor of the old school". And he's been sending money home--his wife has been paying the rent for the first time in a year, he told me, and he wants to start a rep theatre . . . and he bought me an ice-cream soda!'
'Don't I know it, kitten! It's murder. He's probably five years older than he claims to be. Maybe he'll never get another job. But if I don't do it, he'll murder the whole company, and our tour, and throw twenty-eight people out of work. Because he's getting worse, and he just won't change. But I don't know how to tell the poor gaffer. I wouldn't mind facing Lyle and Tony, but this--Nooks is like an old man crazy in love with a young girl.'
Then she knew.
Andy was inconceivably hoping that she would do his slaughtering for him. Between contempt for his weakness and pride in his sensitiveness and happiness in his turning to her not as the star to a baby understudy but as one trusty friend to another, she was dizzy.
She spoke anxiously. 'Can't you pension him off or something? Maybe money will help to heal the pride.'
'My Beth that's growing up so! You'll be doing Juliet and Boyle understudying you, before we hit Broadway, but--No, I can't even pension Nooks. Sweet, I'm going to tell you something that nobody knows except Tertius Tully and me. I'm nearly broke. If our business don't get better, we'll have to close in three-four more weeks.'
It was like telling a dancing passenger that the ship was afire and sinking. 'Oh no!' was all she could do.
'Don't tell anybody--and I mean that. Ever since our summer in Grampion, I've always sort of felt that you and I were confidants, even if we have had a whole mess of Mahalas and Zeds keeping us apart. And now--it's a comfort to confess to you. I spent a lot on the sets and costumes in the first place, and ever since we opened, I've spent more on advertising than usual, and I'm paying big salaries--most of the company are getting more than they ever did in their lives.
'About six thousand a week is the very least we can get along on, with railroad fares, and trucking the scenery, and what the union truck drivers and loaders charge us. Well, our first week, in Belluca, we did make expenses--with exactly ten cents over, which I sent to my mother, who's had it mounted in diamonds. But these last two weeks we've been losing. I thought that, with the one-night stands, we'd catch up. Everybody told me that all the farmers for sixty miles around would leap in their Fords and drive through blizzards to see Romeo Meets Juliet. Well, either they got sand in their carburettors or they preferred to stay home and listen to the radio, and maybe they're right. I can stand it a little while yet, but--And one thing you can help me with, darling. If we do pull through, I've got to have the most unwavering loyalty from every member of the company. Nobody can let down, on stage or off. I say this to you, kitten, because I know you're always loyal, and maybe you can influence the ones that aren't.'
And he looked at her. And she looked at him. And both waited. And at last she got out, 'Andy, would you like me to fire Nooks for you?'
'I don't think I could let you do that . . . I won't pretend it wouldn't be a big relief. Could you really stand doing it, chick?'
'Maybe it would be easier for me than for you, Andy. I'm not so much involved.'
'Maybe it would. I certainly'd appreciate it. Take him out and buy him a drink, before we go to the train to-night, and spring it gently--but I know you would. And tell him that besides his regular two weeks' notice, I'll give him two weeks' extra pay. And agree with him that I'm a bum and don't appreciate good acting when I see it.'
The prologue was rather shaky that night, and the epilogue a sob. She had invited Nooks out 'for a little supper'; he had accepted with such grandiloquent gratitude that she felt like a woman spy tempting a benign admiral.
With a hope that Andy would regard it as business expense and repay the fabulous cost, she took Mr. Nooks to the Kungsholm Swedish-American Restaurant, in Dubuque; which has coloured tablecoths, smörgåsbord, and waitresses in that colourful peasant costume which is apparently the same in Sweden, Hungary, Albania and Iceland. They had glasses of piercing aquavit and plates of sausages, and just as Bethel was trying to bring out the noose tactfully, Wyndham beamed and cried happily:
'I'm sorry that I've been too busy helping Andy get the company launched into a sound interpretation of Shakespeare to see much of you, my dear. I have noticed how pleasant you are to everybody, even to pompous old hams like Challis and Miss Staghorn, and I do hope that after this little fling at play-acting, you'll be able to settle down with a nice husband.
'It's a hard life, the drayma, and now that it's in the hands of the vicious commercial managers on the one hand, and on the other, upstarts like the Group Theatre and Cheryl Crawford and Antoinette Perry and Margaret Webster--women directing and managing--! I've known periods of despondency when I didn't think I would ever be appreciated again, and in a way I'm very grateful to our young friend Andy Deacon--no actor, poor lad, and a terrible interpreter of the wings of poetry, but he means so well, and I'm delighted to help him out.
'And I won't pretend to you, with your fresh young face looking at me, and I can't tell you how touched and gratified I am to have you blow me to supper this way and to find there are still a few young people who revere the technic and integrity of a Professional, and I won't deny that I've been very glad of this opportunity, however small, though perhaps it would have been better for the show if they had cast me as Capulet, instead of that Englishman, Challis, with his old-fashioned delivery, and so--