The row had had one startling and most desirable effect. Gertrude, perhaps by some process of emotive transference, now gave out her offstage line with all the venom of a fishwife.
“But darling,” reasoned Destiny Meade, a few minutes later, devouring Peregrine with her great black lamps. “Hopping. Me? On my first entrance? I mean—actually? I mean what an entrance! Hopping!”
“Destiny, love, it’s like I said. He had a thing about it.”
“Who did?”
“Sheakespeare, darling. About a breathless, panting, jigging, hopping woman with a white face and pitchball eyes and blue veins.”
“How peculiar of him.”
“The thing is, for him it was all an expression of sexual attraction.”
“I don’t see how I can do a sexy thing if I come on playing hopscotch and puffing and blowing like a whale. Truly.”
“Destiny: listen to what he wrote. Listen.
‘I saw her once
Hop forty paces through the public street;
And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,
That she did make defect perfection,
And, breathless, power breathe forth.’
“That’s why I’ve made her fall off her horse and come hopping up the lane.”
“Was he sort of kinky?”
“Certainly not,” Marcus interrupted.
“Well, I only wondered. Gloves and everything.”
“Listen, darling. Here you are. Laughing and out of breath—”
“And hopping. Honestly!”
“All right,” said Marcus. “We know what you mean, but listen. You’re marvellous. Your colour’s coming and going and your bosom’s heaving. He has an entirely normal reaction, Destiny darling: you send him. You do see, don’t you? You send me.”
“With my hopping?”
“Yes,” he said irritably. “That and all the rest of it. Come on, darling, do. Make your entrance to me.”
“Yes, Destiny,” Peregrine said. “Destiny, listen. You’re in a velvet habit with your bosom exposed, a little plumed hat and soft little boots and you’re lovely, lovely, lovely. And young Dr. Hall has gone out to help you and is supporting you. Charles—come and support her. Yes: like that. Leave her as free as possible. Now: the door opens and we see you. Fabulous. You’re in a shaft of sunlight. And he sees you. Shakespeare does. And you speak. Right? Right, Destiny? You say—go on, dear.”
“Here I come upon your privacy, Master Shakespeare, hopping over your doorstep like a starling.”
“Yes, and at once, at that very moment, you know you’ve limed him.”
“Limed?”
“Caught.”
“Am I keen?”
“Yes. You’re pleased. You know he’s famous. And you want to show him off to W.H. You come forward, Marco, under compulsion, and offer your help. Staring at her. And you go to him, Destiny, and skip and half-fall and fetch up laughing and clinging to him. He’s terribly, terribly still. Oh, yes, Marco, yes. Dead right. Wonderful. And Destiny, darling, that’s right. You know? It’s right. It’s what we want.”
“Can I sit down or do I keep going indefinitely panting away on his chest?”
“Look into his face. Give him the whole job. Laugh. No, not that sort of a laugh, dear. Not loud. Deep down in your throat!”
“More sexy?”
“Yes,” Peregrine said and ran his hands through his hair. “That’s right. More sexy.”
“And then I sit down?”
“Yes. He helps you down. Centre. Hall pushes the chair forward. Charles?”
“Could it,” Marcus intervened, “be left of centre, dear boy? I mean I only suggest it because it’ll be easier for Dessy and I think it’ll make a better picture. I can put her down. Like this.” He did so with infinite grace and himself occupied centre stage.
“I think I like it better the other way, Marco, darling. Could we try it the other way, Perry? This feels false, a bit, to me.”
They jockeyed about for star positions. Peregrine made the final decision in Knight’s favour. It really was better that way. Gertrude came on and then Emily, very nice as Joan Hart, and finally Harry Grove, behaving himself and giving a bright, glancing indication of Mr. W.H. Peregrine began to feel that perhaps he had not written a bad play and that, given a bit of luck, he might, after all, hold the company together.
He was aware, in the back of his consciousness, that someone had come into the stalls. The actors were all on stage and he supposed it must be Winter Meyer or perhaps Jeremy, who often looked in, particularly when Destiny was rehearsing.
They ran the whole scene without interruption and followed it with an earlier one between Emily, Marcus and the ineffable Trevor in which the boy Hamnet, on his eleventh birthday, received and wore his grandfather’s present of a pair of embroidered cheveril gloves. Marcus and Peregrine had succeeded in cowing the more offensive exhibitionisms of Trevor and the scene went quite well. They broke for luncheon. Peregrine kept Harry Grove back and gave him a wigging which he took so cheerfully that it lost half its sting. He then left and Peregrine saw with concern that Destiny had waited for him. Where then was Marcus Knight and what had become of his proprietary interest in his leading lady? As if in explanation, Peregrine heard Destiny say: “Darling, the King Dolphin’s got a pompous feast with someone at the Garrick. Where shall we go?”
The new curtain was half-lowered, the working lights went out, the stage-manager left and the stage-door banged distantly.
Peregrine turned to go out by front-of-house.
He came face to face with Mr. Conducis.
It was exactly as if the clock had been set back a year and three weeks and he again dripped fetid water along the aisle of a bombed theatre. Mr. Conducis seemed to wear the same impeccable clothes and to be seized with the same indefinable oddness of behaviour. He even took the same involuntary step backwards, almost as if Peregrine was going to accuse him of something.
“I have watched your practice,” he said as if Peregrine were learning the piano. “If you have a moment to spare there is a matter I want to discuss with you. Perhaps in your office?”
“Of course, sir,” Peregrine said. “I’m sorry I didn’t see you had come in.”
Mr. Conducis paid no attention to this. He was looking, without evidence of any kind of reaction, at the now resplendent auditorium: at the crimson curtain, the chandeliers, the freshly gilt scrollwork, and the shrouded and expectant stalls.
“The restoration is satisfactory?” he asked.
“Entirely so. We shall be ready on time, sir.”
“Will you lead the way?”
Peregrine remembered that on their former encounter Mr. Conducis had seemed to dislike being followed. He led the way upstairs to the office, opened the door and found Winter Meyer in residence, dictating letters. Peregrine made a complicated but apparently eloquent face and Meyer got to his feet in a hurry.
Mr. Conducis walked in looking at nothing and nobody.
“This is our Manager, sir. Mr. Winter Meyer, Mr. Conducis.”
“Oh, yes. Good morning,” said Mr. Conducis. Without giving an impression of discourtesy he turned away. “Really, old boy,” as Mr. Meyer afterwards remarked. “He might have been giving me the chance to follow my own big nose instead of backing out of The Presence.”
In a matter of seconds Mr. Meyer and the secretary had gone to lunch.
“Will you sit down, sir?”
“No, thank you. I shall not be long. In reference to the glove and documents: I am told that their authenticity is established.”
“Yes.”
“You have based your piece upon these objects?”