The Old Adam: A Story of Adventure

by Arnold Bennett

  II.

  Having duly "linoleumed them," or rather having very annoyingly quitefailed to "linoleum them," Edward Henry continued his way up theright-hand gallery staircase and reached the auditorium, where to hisastonishment a good deal of electricity, at one penny three farthings aunit, was blazing. Every seat in the narrow and high-pitched gallery,where at the sides the knees of one spectator would be on a level withthe picture-hat of the spectator in the row beneath, had a perfect andentire view of the proscenium opening. And Edward Henry now proved thisunprecedented fact by climbing to the topmost corner seat and therefromsurveying the scene of which he was monarch. The boxes were swathed intheir new white dust sheets; and likewise the higgledy-piggledy stalls,not as yet screwed down to the floor, save three or four stalls in themiddle of the front row, from which the sheet had been removed. On oneof these seats, far off though it was, he could descry a paperbag,--probably containing sandwiches,--and on another a pair of glovesand a walking-stick. Several alert ladies with sketchbooks walkeduneasily about in the aisles. The orchestra was hidden in the wellprovided for it, and apparently murmuring in its sleep. The magnificentdrop-curtain, designed by Saracen Givington, A.R.A., concealed thestage.

  Suddenly Mr. Marrier and Carlo Trent appeared through the iron door thatgave communication--to initiates--between the wings and the auditorium;they sat down in the stalls. And the curtain rose with a violent swish,and disclosed the first "set" of "The Orient Pearl."

  "What about that amber, Cosmo?" Mr. Marrier cried thickly, after apause, his mouth occupied with sandwich.

  "There you are!" came the reply.

  "Right!" said Mr. Marrier. "Strike!"

  "Don't strike!" contradicted Carlo Trent.

  "Strike, I tell you! We must get on with the second act." The voicesresounded queerly in the empty theatre.

  The stage was invaded by scene shifters before the curtain could descendagain.

  Edward Henry heard a tripping step behind him. It was the faithfultypewriting girl.

  "I say," he said. "Do you mind telling me what's going on here? It'strue that in the rush of more important business I'd almost forgottenthat a theatre is a place where they perform plays."

  "It's the dress-rehearsal, Mr. Machin," said the woman, startled andapologetic.

  "But the dress-rehearsal was fixed for three o'clock," said he. "Itmust have been finished three hours ago."

  "I think they've only just done the first act," the woman breathed. "Iknow they didn't begin till seven. Oh! Mr. Machin, of course it's noaffair of mine, but I've worked in a good many theatres, and I do thinkit's such a mistake to have the dress-rehearsal quite private. If youget a hundred or so people in the stalls, then it's an audience, andthere's much less delay and everything goes much better. But when it'sprivate a dress-rehearsal is just like any other rehearsal."

  "Only more so, perhaps," said Edward Henry, smiling.

  He saw that he had made her happy; but he saw also that he had given herempire over him.

  "I've got your tea here," she said, rather like a hospital nurse now."Won't you drink it?"

  "I'll drink it if it's not stewed," he muttered.

  "Oh!" she protested. "Of course it isn't! I poured it off the leavesinto another teapot before I brought it up."

  She went behind the barrier, and reappeared balancing a cup of tea witha slice of sultana cake edged on the saucer. And as she handed it tohim--the sustenance of rehearsals--she gazed at him and he could almosthear her eyes saying: "You poor thing!"

  There was nothing that he hated so much as to be pitied.

  "You go home!" he commanded.

  "Oh, but--"

  "You go home! See?" He paused, threatening. "If you don't clear out onthe tick, I'll chuck this cup and saucer down into the stalls."

  Horrified, she vanished.

  He sighed his relief.

  After some time, the leader of the orchestra climbed into his chair, andthe orchestra began to play, and the curtain went up again, on thesecond act of the masterpiece in hexameters. The new scenery, whichEdward Henry had with extraordinary courage insisted on SaracenGivington substituting for the original incomprehensibilities displayedat the Azure Society's performance, rather pleased him. Its colouringwas agreeable, and it did resemble something definite. You could,though perhaps not easily, tell what it was meant to represent. The playproceeded, and the general effect was surprisingly pleasant to EdwardHenry. And then Rose Euclid as Haidee came on for the great scene ofthe act. From the distance of the gallery she looked quite passablyyouthful, and beyond question she had a dominating presence in herresplendent costume. She was incomparably and amazingly better than shehad been at the few previous rehearsals which Edward Henry had beenunfortunate enough to witness. She even reminded him of his earliestentrancing vision of her.

  "Some people may _like_ this!" he admitted, with a gleam of optimism.Hitherto, for weeks past, he had gone forward with his preparations inthe most frigid and convinced pessimism. It seemed to him that he hadbecome involved in a vast piece of machinery, and that nothing short ofblowing the theatre up with dynamite would bring the cranks and pistonsto a stop. And yet it seemed to him also that everything was unreal,that the contracts he signed were unreal, and the proofs he passed, andthe posters he saw on the walls of London, and the advertisements in thenewspapers. Only the checks he drew had the air of being real. Andnow, in a magic flash, after a few moments gazing at the stage, he sawall differently. He scented triumph from afar off, as one sniffs thetang of the sea. On the morrow he had to meet Nellie at Euston, and hehad shrunk from meeting her, with her terrible remorseless, provincial,untheatrical common sense; but now, in another magic flash, he envisagedthe meeting with a cock-a-doodle-doo of hope. Strange! He admitted itwas strange.

  And then he failed to hear several words spoken by Rose Euclid. Andthen a few more. As the emotion of the scene grew, the proportion ofher words audible in the gallery diminished. Until she became, for him,totally inarticulate, raving away there and struggling in a cocoon ofhexameters.

  Despair seized him. His nervous system, every separate nerve of it, wason the rack once more.

  He stood up in a sort of paroxysm and called loudly across the vastintervening space:

  "Speak more distinctly, please."

  A fearful silence fell upon the whole theatre. The rehearsal stopped.The building itself seemed to be staggered. Somebody had actuallydemanded that words should be uttered articulately!

  Mr. Marrier turned toward the intruder, as one determined to put an endto such singularities.

  "Who's up theyah?"

  "I am," said Edward Henry. "And I want it to be clearly understood inmy theatre that the first thing an actor has to do is to make himselfheard. I daresay I'm devilish odd, but that's how I look at it."

  "Whom do you mean, Mr. Machin?" asked Marrier in a different tone.

  "I mean Miss Euclid of course. Here I've spent Heaven knows how much onthe acoustics of this theatre, and I can't make out a word she says. Ican hear all the others. And this is the dress-rehearsal!"

  "You must remember you're in the gallery," said Mr. Marrier firmly.

  "And what if I am! I'm not giving gallery seats away to-morrow night.It's true I'm giving half the stalls away, but the gallery will be paidfor."

  Another silence.

  Said Rose Euclid sharply, and Edward Henry caught every word with themost perfect distinctness:

  "I'm sick and tired of people saying they can't make out what I say!They actually write me letters about it! Why _should_ people make outwhat I say?"

  She quitted the stage.

  Another silence....

  "Ring down the curtain," said Mr. Marrier in a thrilled voice.