She existed to the end of the play.
All through the final scene her voice seemed to her more quavery and more colourless with every word, and at last, incredulously, she had the relief of stabbing herself and lying motionless and silent.
When they took the curtain calls, when Andy pushed her on for the star's call by herself, there was no spontaneous general applause but only a scattering of hard mature hands, as of grown men who had daughters like her and who were sorry for her.
Angrily, head up and proud, she made her way to her dressing-room.
Her only remark to herself was, 'Well, I flopped!'
Six or seven of the company did come in to see her. None of them said anything but a noncommittal 'Fine, you got through it all right' that was worse than damning. Only Tudor Blackwall, who had a gift for it, was able to gush: 'You were a perfect duck! I think it's wonderful that you could have got clear through when you've only been having understudy rehearsals, and not really playing in the set. I thought you were so young and sweet--the real Juliet!'
Not till after she was dressed for the street, in a Sladesburian mustard-coloured suit now growing shabby, did her real masters come in--Zed and Andy.
They looked as if each resented the other's intrusion, and then in chorus they made just the same vapid, hearty sound of 'Well!'
Andy opened up:
'You did really fine. I think it's remarkable, your being able to get through at all, with so little time for rehearsal. You didn't let us down one bit. Just--uh--swell. I haven't one word of criticism. You've carried us through the most dangerous spot of the tour. I'm sure Mrs. Boyle will be able to carry on to-morrow night. I've got a doctor working on her--I've just been talking to him on the phone. And you did--uh--swell!'
He kissed her forehead--with all the passion of a box-office treasurer. And, she noted, he said nothing more about her going on playing Juliet, about dropping Mrs. Boyle.
Well, why should he! Dear Andy! If he hadn't been the kindest person living, he would be flaying her for ruining the Great Chance.
Zed was talking:
'No, you weren't so "swell". You were pretty wooden. In fact, terrible. It's curious: talking to you, I feel as if you were at least as mature as Mrs. Boyle. You have fundamental wisdom. You know how things should be acted. Yet you have no application of your knowledge yet. It's training that you need, of course. I'd like to stick you in stock and make you play fifty roles in fifty weeks. Just now and then to-night, you really were that naive, lovely Italian kid, in love with real flesh and blood, and then you had something that no old war horse like Boyle could ever get. Boyle and her damn dog! But mostly you sounded like the radio. Too bad.'
Bethel was reflecting, 'Andy says I was good, and didn't like me. Zed says I was terrible, and liked me a lot.'
Andy boomed, 'Look, darling, I've got to hustle upstairs to the office and check some bills with Tertius. Got to be paid to-morrow. But can you wait half an hour--not more'n an hour, anyway? I'd like to buy you some food. Of course I'd be delighted to have you come, too, Zed.'
'Hang it, I can't. I promised Doug Fry, two days ago, to go out to the house of a Kansas City University prof and look over some plans with them for a Coriolanus production. Well, good luck, pet. See you to-morrow, Andy.'
She sighed, 'Oh, I don't think I'll wait, Andy. I want to get right to bed.'
On the first night of her playing Juliet, Bethel Merriday walked to the hotel by herself, a small figure alone at night in the empty business streets of a strange city.
XXXII
'I'm more sensitive than you give me credit for. I've noticed how you cock an eye at me every time you catch me long-distance telephoning. Well now, I can't do much more phoning even if I wanted to. I'm too busted,' said Andy to Beth, in the presence of his palace guard: Mahala, Zed, Hugh Challis, Doc Keezer and Tertius Tully.
'But at the same time, I've just really started my campaign to get more backing. I'm going after every poor unfortunate that I know or that my dear mother knows. Beth, you can type, can't you?'
'Yes.'
'Want to be my stenographer--unpaid--along with your acting?'
'Yes, sure.'
'I can't afford even hotel stenographers any more--and I don't want them to know too much about our difficulties, and maybe let them out to the press. So we'll start in.'
Mahala had an icy explosion.
'My dear Andy, if you want to play around with Miss Merriday all the time--'
'With who?'
'Miss Merriday!--and if you can't endure being separated from her, why don't you say so? Why all this pretence about her being a secretary? I'm sure I don't care.'
Andy let her have it. 'Maggie, your sudden anaesthesia to my charms couldn't have anything to do with the fact that now I'm just another poor young man, could it?'
'Oh, you are vile! I knew you were phony--Andrew Deacon, the great Yale amateur!--but I didn't think you could so misjudge one who's been your best and truest friend!'
Mahala swept out of the room, at her most sweeping.
All this was at mid-afternoon, in Sedalia, Missouri, on Thursday, January 5th, 1939.
Mrs. Boyle had re-arisen from her abyss of Scotch and cognac on Wednesday, the third and last day in Kansas City, and had played Juliet more wistfully, more movingly than ever before. Watching the two parts of her, the sick and trembling woman and the serene actress, move deftly on together, Bethel the Understudy again savoured her own failure.
But Andy expected the spree to be repeated. And he had thus called, in Sedalia, the meeting of his inner ring.
He went on, after Mahala had done her aristocratic out-sweeping:
'The next thing is: I've got to ask for a fifty per cent cut in all salaries over eighty dollars. I know that's like the verdict of guilty and you just wait for sentence to be pronounced and the tour ended, but I honestly believe that if the cast will vote and take this cut, we can pull through. If they won't take it, I'm finished. I'll have to put up our closing notice on next Monday. So, Doc, as Equity deputy, I want you to call a meeting of the cast after the show this evening.'
Doc hemmed, 'All right, Andy. But you know this cut will break your run-of-the-play contract with Mrs. Boyle, if she wants to take advantage of it, and she can give you her two weeks' notice.'
'I know, and I don't care.'
It is not festive for the cast of a touring company to meet and vote on the choice between taking cut salaries and seeing the closing notice put up on the call board. That notice, put up on Monday, will, unless it be taken down by Thursday night, end the tour the following Saturday night.
Andy, though he was actor and Equity member, was, as producer, not permitted to attend. And Mahala murmured that Bethel ought not to be--she was only a miserable junior member of Equity and, as Andy's new and slightly irregular secretary, was completely suspect.
Bethel glared at her and attended the meeting, in the littered storage room beneath the stage where the musicians played pinochle. They perched on a workbench, on broken chairs, on paint buckets. A few minutes ago, they had been the gentry of Verona, noble in their woes, above such sordidness as jobs and meal tickets; now they were an anxious group of workers, with street clothes not quite so fresh as when they had left New York six weeks ago.
Doc Keezer made a speech voluminous and abstruse:
'Well, boys and girls, I guess you all know why we've got together. Andy is asking for a fifty per cent cut above eighty. He's a straight guy, and he wouldn't ask for it if he could help it. Personally, I think that with the cut, the show has a chance. All in favour sig'fy raisn' ri' hand.'