Hector tried to raise himself, but sank back dizzily, squelching in a pool of whatever it was he was lying in.
“Is it blood?” he asked, his eyes closed.
“No; I presume it is whatever you were drinking before you attempted this rash act. You appear to have had plenty of it, I must say.”
Under this unjust accusation Hector stirred a little, and the liquid foamed and seethed all about him.
“I must get help,” said Auntie Puss, and added unnecessarily, “you stay where you are.”
She went out, locked the door of The Shed and carried away the key in her pocket. Backstage she found Valentine, and plucked her by the sleeve. Then she whispered in her ear. “You must come with me at once. Most important.” But Valentine was in an extremely bad temper. Professor Vambrace, disregarding her opinion in the matter, had sneaked a stem of seven grapes upon the stage, and had attempted to eat them during the most famous speech in the play. It is not simple to eat seven grapes while speaking thirteen lines. Three grapes had undone him, and five made him sound like a man talking under water; he had desperately gulped his mouthful, and pushed in the last two grapes, but he was badly rattled by his experience, and as he tossed away the empty stem—the crown of his ingenious bit of byplay—a loud and prolonged belch had burst from the depths of his beard. There had been laughter and some ironical applause. Valentine was waiting for the Professor to come off the stage. She had something to say to him. Auntie Puss tugged at her sleeve again, and drew Valentine down so that she might whisper in her ear. A moment later they were hurrying toward The Shed.
Valentine was, as Cobbler had said, a thorough professional, and her first remarks to Hector proved it.
“What the hell do you mean by trying to kill yourself in the middle of a performance?” said she. “Before a performance, perhaps: after a performance, possibly. But what in the name of common sense possessed you to do it while you still have an entrance to make? Do you realize that there are eight hundred and thirty-two people out there, of whom seven hundred and ninety have paid admission, whose pleasure you have imperilled? Do you realize that you have very nearly ruined the effect of seven weeks’ rehearsal? Get up at once, and pull yourself together.”
Hector was startled by this display of heartlessness and bad temper, and he tried to do as he was told. But he could not rise beyond a kneeling posture, and fell down again. Valentine was contrite at once.
“I’m sorry, Mr Mackilwraith, but I’m terribly angry at that fool of a Vambrace, and I’m taking it out on you. What’s the matter? Do you feel very dreadful? What can I get for you?”
The kindness in her voice was too much for Hector, and he sobbed.
“What made you do it? Can you tell me? I’ll help you if I can.”
He tried to speak, but the only word he could say was “Griselda”, and then he wept again, hiding his face in his arm.
That was enough for Valentine, however. So the poor, silly man loved Griselda Webster, and it had brought him to this! There he lay, in a pale frothing liquid which she had, for a dreadful moment, believed to be some eccentric vital fluid of his own, but which issued from a case of broken bottles which lay near him. He was drenched, his face was smeared with makeup, and there was yellow paint in his hair. All pity for him, she dragged him to drier ground, and sat upon the floor, with his head in her lap. She wiped his face with a handkerchief.
“Poor Hector,” said she; “was it very bad?”
He nodded, and she could feel his body relax a little. Her comfort had started him back on the road to self-possession. It was for the best part wordless comfort—the warm, cherishing, unquestioning feminine sympathy which he had not known (and then, how meagrely) since his childhood—which Valentine gave him, but it drew him gently back from Death and the longing for Death. And so they sat for perhaps ten minutes, during which she said little, and he said nothing, but his face, which had been shapeless and hideous with grief, began to take on a more human look. His spirit was returning.
Larry’s voice boomed from the loud-speaker: “Everybody for Act Five please. Act Five in three minutes. Has anybody seen Gonzalo? Act Five.”
All the healing stillness left Valentine in an instant. “Oh, God!” she cried; “what do I do now?”
But almost as she spoke she had leaped to her feet. Hector’s beard was upon the table; she quickly dabbed her face with spirit gum and fastened it on. He had removed his cloak and cap before he had climbed upon the boxes. She put them upon herself. “If Sybil Thorndike could play Lear, I don’t see why I can’t play Gonzalo,” she said to Hector, and in her voice the actress had wholly supplanted the divinely tender creature who had seemed to coax him back from the realm of the dead. “Stay here; I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Transformed into a somewhat odd old gentleman, she rushed through the door. Auntie Puss was keeping faithful guard there.
“Is he all right?”
“He will be, Miss Pottinger. Don’t let anybody in.”
“You may rely on me.”
“I’m sure I may.”
“Did he say anything to you about why he tried it?”
“Yes. To you, too?”
“He was unconscious, but he mentioned a name, more than once.”
“We’d better keep that quiet, don’t you think?”
“Miss Rich, nothing could make me divulge it.”
Auntie Puss had need of all the resolution which an old-fashioned upbringing had given her, in order to keep her word. As soon as Valentine appeared upon the stage as Gonzalo, the whole cast seemed to know, magically, that Mackilwraith was ill, that there was some mystery about his illness, and that Auntie Puss had the key to the mystery. The audience suspected nothing, for they had paid little heed to Gonzalo before, and idly noted that he appeared to have come to life in the last act, although he played most of it with his back to them. But the audience did know that Roscoe Forrester had beckoned Dr Bliss from his seat, and that Dr Bliss had tiptoed out with that stealth peculiar to doctors, which is so much more noticeable than a frank exit. The play came to its end, and the cast was recalled for six bows, but Valentine did not remain with them. She ran at once to The Shed and was locked within with Hector and the doctor, while Auntie Puss stood guard at the door, and refused to say anything to anybody.
The general opinion was that Hector had had a fit. Some said it was apoplexy; others said it was heart. Geordie Shortreed, for no reason that anybody could discover, thought that it was a scandal of some kind; those quiet ones were the worst, he said with relish; perhaps it was something about a boy. The cast would not go to their dressing-rooms and change; they stood about behind the stage, chattering and gossiping and speculating, big with the mystery of The Shed. There are those, however, who had other concerns. Nellie Forrester, near to tears, rushed to Professor Vambrace.
“Oh Walter, wasn’t it awful?”
“Distressing, certainly, but it will be all right tomorrow night.”
“But how can it be?”
“I shall rehearse it all day tomorrow.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My business with the seven grapes: I shouldn’t have called it ‘awful’, myself. I’m sure the audience didn’t notice. It just needs touching up.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Indeed? I suppose you are engrossed in this nonsense about Mackilwraith.”
“I don’t know anything about him. But didn’t you see her go?”
“Who?”
“Mrs Caesar Augustus Conquergood. She left before the beginning of the fifth act. I felt so humiliated.”
“Probably she found the night air a little chilly. But don’t be distressed; there are still four performances. I’ll buy a pound of grapes tomorrow and make Pearl work with me all afternoon. I shall have my business with the grapes perfect by tomorrow night.”