Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Potter halted, bursting into speech less monosyllabic but no less vehement: “Mr. Tinker, did you ever see Mounet-Sully?”

  “No.”

  “Did you, Mr. Canby?”

  “No.”

  “Mewnay-Sooyay!” Potter mimicked the pronunciation of his adviser. “‘Mewnay-Sooyay! Of coss I don’t say YOU could ever be another Mewnay-Sooyay!’ Ass! I’ll tell you what Mounet-Sully’s ‘technique’ amounts to, Mr. Tinker. It’s yell! Just yell, yell, yell! Does he think I can’t yell! Why, Packer could open his mouth like a hippopotamus and yell through a part! Ass!”

  “Was that young man a-a critic?” Canby asked.

  “No!” shouted Potter. “There aren’t any!”

  “He writes about theatrical matters,” said Carson Tinker. “Talky-talk writing: ‘the drama’— ‘temperament’— ‘people of cultivation’ — quotes Latin or Italian or something. ‘Technique’ is his star word; he plays ‘technique’ for a hand every other line. Doesn’t do any harm; in fact, I think he does us a good deal of good. Lots of people read that talky-talk writing nowadays. Not in New York, but in road-towns, where they have plenty of time. This fellow’s never against any show much, unless he takes a notion. You slip ‘dolsy far nienty’ or something about Danty or logarithms somewhere into your play, where it won’t delay the action much, and he’ll be for you.”

  Canby nodded and laughed eagerly. Tinker seemed to take it for granted that “Roderick Hanscom” was to be produced in spite of “another play I have been considering.”

  “There aren’t any critics, I tell you!” Potter stormed. “Mounet-Sully!”

  “Well,” said old Tinker quietly, “I’d like to believe it, but people making a living that way have ruined a good many million dollars’ worth of property in this town. Some of it was very good property.” He paused, and added: “Some of it was mine, too.”

  “Good property?” said the playwright with fresh uneasiness. “You mean the critics sometimes ruin a good play?”

  “How do they know a good play — or good acting?” Tinker returned placidly. “Every play you ever saw in your life, some people in the audience said they thought it was good; some said it was bad. How do critics know any more about it than anybody else? For instance, how can anybody that hasn’t been in the business tell what’s good acting and what’s a good part?”

  “But a critic — aren’t critics in the bus—”

  “No. They aren’t theatrical people,” said Tinker dryly. “They’re writers.”

  “But some of them must have studied from the inside,” Canby urged, feeling that “Roderick Hanscom’s” chances were getting slighter and slighter. “Some of them must have either been managers for a while, or actors — or had plays pro—”

  “No,” said Tinker. “If they had they wouldn’t do for critics. They wouldn’t have the heart.”

  “They oughtn’t to have so much power!” the young man exclaimed passionately. “Think of a playwright working on his play — two years, maybe — night after night — and then, all in one swoop, these fellows that you say don’t know anything—”

  “Power!” Potter laughed contemptuously. “Tinker, you’re in your dotage! Look at what I’ve done: Haven’t I made my way in spite of everything they could do to stifle me? And have I ever compromised for one moment? Haven’t I gone my own way, absolutely?”

  “Yes.” Tinker’s face was more cryptic than usual. “Yes, indeed!”

  “Power! Haven’t I made them eat out of my hand? Look at that ass — glad to crawl in here and nibble a crust from my table to-night! Ass!” He had halted for a second in front of the manager, but resumed his pacing with a mutter of subterranean thunder: “Mounet-Sully!”

  “Hasn’t the public got a mind?” cried Canby. “Doesn’t the public understand that a good play might be ruined by these scoundrels?”

  Old Tinker returned his chartreuse glass to the case whence it came, a miniature sedan chair in silver and painted silk. “The public?” he said. “I’ve never been able to find out what that was. Just about the time I decided it was a trained sheep it turned out to be a cyclone. You think it’s intelligent, and it plays the fool; you decide it’s a fool, and it turns out to know more than you do. You make love to it, and it may sidle up and kiss you — or give you a good, hard kick!”

  “But if we make this a good play—”

  “It won’t be a play at all,” said Tinker, “unless the public thinks it’s a good one. A play isn’t something you read; it’s something actors do on a stage; and they can’t afford to do it unless the public pays to watch ’em. If it won’t buy tickets, you haven’t got a play; you’ve only got some typewriting.”

  Canby glanced involuntarily at the blue-covered manuscript he had placed upon a table beside him. It had a guilty look.

  “I get confused,” he said. “If the public’s so flighty, why does it take so much stock in what these wolves print about a play?”

  “Print. That’s it,” old Tinker answered serenely. “Write your opinion in a letter or say it with your mouth, and it doesn’t amount to anything. Print’s different. You see some nonsense about yourself in a newspaper, and you think I’m an idiot for believing it. But you read nonsense about me, and you believe it. You don’t stop and think; ‘That’s a lie; he isn’t that sort of a man.’ No. You just wonder why I’m such a darn fool.”

  “Then these cannibals have got us where—”

  “Dotage!” Talbot Potter broke in, halting under the chandelier. “Tinker’s reached his dotage!” He levelled a denouncing forefinger at the manager. “Do you mean to tell me that if I decide to go on with Mr. Canby’s play any critic or combination or cabal of critics can keep it from being a success? Then I tell you, you’re in your dotage! For one point, if I play this part they’re going to say it’s a big thing; I don’t mean the play, of course, because you must know, yourself, Mr. Canby, we could bribe them into calling it a strong play. We know it isn’t, and they’ll know it isn’t. What I mean is the characterization of ‘Roderick Hanscom.’ I tell you, if I do it, they’re going to call it a big thing. They aren’t all maniacs about everything made in France, thank heaven! Rostand! Ass! I’m not playing parts with a clothespin on the end of my nose!” And again he mimicked the departed visitor: “‘This for my stirrup-cup: you cable Rostand tomorrow.’ My soul! Does he think I want to play CHICKENS?”

  Sulphurously, he resumed his pacing of the floor.

  Old Tinker seemed unaffected by this outburst, but for that matter he seemed unaffected by anything. His dead gaze followed his employer’s to-and-fro striding as a cat’s follows a pendulum, but without the cat’s curiosity about a pendulum. He never interrupted when Potter was speaking; and Canby noticed that whenever Potter talked at any length Tinker looked thoughtful and distant, like a mechanic so accustomed to the whirr and thunder of the machine-shop that he may indulge in reveries there. After a moment or two the old fellow ceased to follow the pendulum stride, and turned to the playwright.

  “I’ll tell you the two surest ways to make what you call the public like a play, Mr. Canby,” he said. “Nothing is sure, but these are the nearest to it. Make ’em laugh. I mean, make ’em laugh after they get home, or the next day in the office, any time they get to thinking about it. The other way is to get two actors for your lovers that the audience, young and old, can’t help falling in love with; a young actor that the females in the audience think they’d like to marry, and a young actress that the males all think they’d like to marry. It doesn’t matter much about the writing; just have something interfere between them from eight-fifteen until along about twenty-five minutes after ten. The two lovers don’t necessarily have to know much about acting, either, though of course it’s better if they happen to. The best stage-lover I ever knew, and the one that played in the most successes, did happen to understand acting thor—”

  “Who was that?” Potter interrupted fiercely. “Mounet-Sully?”

  “No. I meant Dora P
reston.”

  “Never heard of her!”

  “No,” said the old man. “You wouldn’t. They don’t put up monuments to pretty actresses, nor write about them in school histories. She dropped dead in her dressing-room one night forty-two years ago. I was thinking of her to-day; something reminded me of her.”

  “Was she a friend of yours, Mr. Tinker?” Canby asked.

  “Friend? No. I was an usher in the old Calumet Theatre, and she owned New York. She had this quality; every man in the audience fell in love with her. So did the women, too, for that matter, and the actors who played with her. When she played a love-scene, people who’d been married thirty years would sit and watch her and hold each other’s hands — yes, with tears in their eyes. I’ve seen ’em. And after the performance, one night, the stage-door keeper, a man seventy years old, was caught kissing the latch of the door where she’d touched it; and he was sober, too. There was something about her looks and something about her voice you couldn’t get away from. You couldn’t tell to save you what it was, but after you’d seen her she’d seem to be with you for days, and you couldn’t think much about anything else, even if you wanted to. People used to go around in a kind of spell; they couldn’t think of anything or talk of anything but Dora Preston. It didn’t matter much what she did; everything she did made you feel like a boy falling in love the first time. It made you think of apple-blossoms and moonlight just to look at her. She—”

  “See here, Mr. Canby” — Talbot Potter interrupted suddenly. He dropped into a chair and picked up the manuscript— “See here! I’ve got an idea that may save this play. Suppose we let ‘Roderick Hanscom’ make his sacrifice, not for the heroine, but because he’s in love with the other girl — the ingenue — I’ve forgotten the name you call her in the script. I mean the part played by that little Miss Miss girl — Miss-what’s-her-name — Wanda Malone!”

  Canby stared at Potter in fascinated amazement, his straining eyes showing the whites above and below the pupils. It was the look of a man struck dumb by a sudden marvel of telepathy.

  “Why, yes,” he said slowly, when he had recovered his breath, “I believe that would be a good idea!”

  VII

  FOR TWO HOURS, responding to the manipulation of the star and his thoroughly subjugated playwright, the character of “Roderick Hanscom” grew nobler and nobler, speech by speech and deed by deed, while the expression of the gentleman who was to impersonate it became, in precise parallel with this regeneration, sweeter and loftier and lovelier.

  “A little Biblical quotation wouldn’t go so bad right in there,” he said, when they had finally established the Great Sacrifice for a Woman. “We’ll let Roderick have a line like: ‘Greater love hath no man than laying down his life to save another’s.’” He touched a page of the manuscript with his finger. “There’s a good place for it.”

  “Aren’t you afraid it would sound a little — smug?” Canby asked timidly. “The way we’ve got him now, Roderick seems to me to be always seeing himself as a splendid man and sort of pointing it out to the—”

  “Good gracious!” cried Potter, astounded. “Hasn’t it got to be pointed out? The audience hasn’t got a whole lifetime to study him in; it’s only got about two hours. Besides, I don’t see what you say; I don’t see it at all! It seems to me I’ve worked him around into being a perfectly natural character.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Canby, meekly scribbling.

  “Biblical quotations never do any harm to the box-office,” Potter added. “You may not get a hand on ’em, but you’ll never get a cough, either.” He looked dreamily at the ceiling. “I’ve often thought of doing a Biblical play. I’d have it built around the character of St. Paul. That’s one they haven’t touched yet, and it’s new. I wouldn’t do it with a beard and long hair. I wouldn’t use much makeup. No. Just the face as it is.”

  “You can do practically anything with a religious show,” said Tinker. “That’s been proved. You can run in gambling and horse-racing and ballys, and you’ll get people into the house, night after night, that think the theatre’s wicked and wouldn’t go to see ‘Rip Van Winkle.’ They do a lot of good, too — religious shows — just that way.”

  “I think I’d play it in armour,” Potter continued his thought, still gazing at the ceiling. “I believe it would be a big thing.”

  “It might if it was touted right,” said Tinker. “It all depends on the touting. If you get it touted to the tank towns that you’ve got a play with the great religious gonzabo, then your show’s a big property. Same if you get it touted for a great educational gonzabo. Or ‘artistic.’ Get it touted right for ‘artistic,’ and the tanks’ll think they like it, even if they don’t. Look at ‘Cyrano’ — they liked Mansfield and his acting, but they didn’t like the show. They said they liked the show, and thought they did, but they didn’t. If they’d like it as much as they said they did, that show would be running like ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ Speaking of that” — he paused, coughed, and went on— “I’m glad you’ve got the ingenue’s part straightened out in this piece. I thought from the first it would stand a little lengthening.”

  Potter, unheeding, dreamily proceeded: “In silver armour. Might silver the hair a little — not too much. Play it as a spiritual character, but not solemn. Wouldn’t make it turgid; keep it light. Have the whole play spiritual but light. For instance, have room in it for a religious ingenue part — make her a younger sister of Mary Magdalene, say, with St. Paul becoming converted for her sake after he’d been a Roman General. I believe it’s a big idea.”

  Canby was growing nervous. All this seemed to be rambling farther and farther from “Roderick Hanscom.” Potter relieved his anxiety, however, after a thoughtful sigh, by saying abruptly: “Well, well, we can’t go into a big production like that, this late in the year. We’ll have to see what can be done with ‘Roderick Hanscom.’” He looked at the door, where the Japanese was performing a shrinking curtsey. “What is it, Sato?”

  “Miss Pata.”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Pata.”

  A voice called from the hallway: “It’s me, Mr. Potter. Packer.”

  “Oh, come in! Come in!”

  The stage-manager made a deferential entrance. “It’s about Miss—”

  “Sit down, Packer.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Potter.” Evidently considering the command a favour, Packer sat. “I saw Miss Lyston, sir—”

  “I won’t turn her adrift,” said his employer peevishly. “You see, Mr. Canby, here’s another of the difficulties of my position. Miss Lyston has been with me for several years, and for this piece we’ve got somebody I think will play her part better, but I haven’t any other part for Miss Lyston. And we start so late in the season, this year, she’ll probably not be able to get anything else to do; so she’s on my hands. I can’t turn people out in the snow like that. Some managers can, but I can’t. And yet I have letters begging me for all kinds of charities every day. They don’t know what my company costs me in money like this — absolutely thrown away so far as any benefit to me is concerned. And often I find I’ve been taken advantage of, too. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to find that Miss Lyston has comfortable investments right now, and that she’s only scheming to — Packer, don’t you know whether she’s been saving her salary or not? If you don’t you ought to.”

  “I came to tell you, sir. I thought you might be relieved to know. We don’t have to bother about her, Mr. Potter. I’ve been to see her at her flat, this evening, and she’s as anxious to get away from us, Mr. Potter, as we are to—”

  The star rose to his feet, his face suffusing. “You sit there,” he exclaimed, “and tell me that a member of my company finds the association so distasteful that she wants to get away!”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Potter!” the stage-manager protested. “Not that at all! She’s very sorry to go. She asked me to tell you that she felt she was giving up a great honour, and to thank you for all your kindn
ess to her.”

  “Go on!” Potter sternly bade him. “Why does she wish to leave my company?”

  “Why, it seems she’s very much in love with her husband, sir, Vorley Surbilt—”

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” said Potter, shaking his head. “I know him, and it sounds like something you’re making up as you go along, Packer.”

  “Indeed, I’m not, Mr. Potter!” the stage-manager cried, in simple distress. “I wouldn’t know how.”

  “Go on!”

  “Well, sir, it seems Vorly Surbilt was to go out with Mrs. Romaley, and it seems that when Miss Lyston left rehearsal she drove around till she found him—”

  “Ah! I knew she was fooling me! I knew she wasn’t sick! Went to drive with her husband, and I pay the cab bill!”

  “No, no, sir! I forgot to tell you; she wouldn’t let me pay it. She took him home and put him to bed — and from what I heard on Broadway it was time somebody did! It seems they’d had an offer to go into a vaudeville piece together, and after she got him to bed she telephoned the vaudeville man, and had him bring up a contract, and they signed it, though she had to guide Vorley’s hand for him. Anyway, he’s signed up all right, and so is she. That’s why she was so anxious about fixing it up with us. I told her it would be all right.”

  Potter relapsed into his chair in an attitude of gloom. “So they’ve begun to leave Talbot Potter’s company!” he said, nodding his head with bitter melancholy. “For vaudeville! I’d better go to farming at once; I often think of it. What sort of an act is it that Miss Lyston prefers to remaining with me? Acrobatic?”

  “It’s a little play,” said Packer. “It’s from the Grand Guignol.”

  “French!” Potter this simply as an added insult on the part of Miss Lyston. “French!”

  “They say it’s a wonderful little thing,” said Packer innocently, but it was as if he had run a needle into his sensitive employer. Potter instantly sprang up again with a cry of pain.