Mummers in Mufti/Chapter 15

NSIDE the Lyceum Theater a single reflector bulb on a metal upright furnished the only light for the stage, on which fifteen or twenty men and women in street clothes were gathered in informal groups. Three or four long, hooded lamps like glow-worms gave a subdued, yellow fringe over the music racks of the orchestra, but between these and the entrance the whole auditorium was in darkness. From a fire exit in the balcony a long, thin shaft of daylight filtered in, dancing incessantly with millions of tiny dust motes, the pale, gray streamer of afternoon light appearing curiously out of place and intrusive. As Miss Marshall and Bellsmith tiptoed in from the lobby a single voice was speaking from somewhere in the darkness near the stage, giving directions with that empty, resounding effect of informal talk in a vacant auditorium.

The new-comers slipped into seats in the darkness of the back row, and a moment later the directing voice broke off in a brisk—

"All ready, now!"

The orchestra leader rose, silhouetted in the faint glow at the edge of the stage, and the groups beyond him began shuffling together into lines, but before they were formed another voice called cheerfully from the darkness:

"Say! Can't we have some more light here? What is this, anyway, a dark scene?"

A dutiful and perfunctory little wave of laughter ran over the groups on the stage: there was a bustle by some one toward one of the wings; then slowly the rows of footlights came melting on, bringing all the performers into sudden clearness and seeming to warm the whole house even back to where Miss Marshall and Bellsmith were sitting. The men and women in street clothes behind the foot-lights and in front of the mellow, trellised garden scene which was now disclosed gave curious effects when contrasted with the costumes in which Bellsmith had seen the same people the previous week. In civilian dress the chorus people, for the most part, appeared very much younger, mere boys and girls. On the other hand, those of the principals who were present appeared very much older than they had in costume.

"Now, then!" ordered the directing voice, which still came from the darkness.

The orchestra leader brought down his baton, and the skeleton orchestra in attendance broke into a foxtrot tune which Bellsmith remembered from his previous view of the performance. The chorus people moved forward in shuffling lines, but the voice in the darkness broke in again:

"No, no, no, no, no, no!"

The orchestra stopped in a ragged, uncertain way, and the owner of the directing voice climbed upon the stage by way of the boxes. From this point of vantage he looked down to the leader of the orchestra.

"Give me that opening again—just roughly." The orchestra leader, still standing, played three or four measures with his right hand on the piano. The director shook his head.

"No, we can't work it," he decided. "That brings it on the wrong foot. We 'll have to do it the way we planned the first time—come in with the left foot on the third beat." He illustrated with his own feet, swinging his body in preparation. "'One, two, start-left, right.' We can get it now but leave out all up to 'Dum de DUM.' That is, for the chorus dance; but leave it in, of course, for the solo dance and the song."

While this discussion had been going on the groups of performers and musicians alike had listened in a peculiar apathy, but now the director of each group began making the corrections for his own department, the man on the stage dressing, drawing forward, and arranging his ranks like a drill-sergeant, the orchestra leader, in a more fraternal manner, going with his pencil from one music-rack to another, reannotating the score. The players of the different instruments began at once little furtive, individual rehearsals, no one of them apparently paying any attention to the others, yet, curiously, making no discords.

Again the director on the stage clapped his hands, the conductor lifted his baton over his desk, the men in the pit straightened in their seats, the baton fell, and the music burst forth in a wholesome, full-hearted sweep.

"One, two, left, RIGHT!" shouted the director on the stage, dancing himself at the end of the line and interpolating shouted instructions above the music.

"Steady! Steady! … Maurice! … Swing in. Swing ''in!" ''

At the conclusion the man on the stage called to the still unseen man in the darkness, "How's that now?"

"That's more like it," said a voice.

The rehearsal was not so much one of dances as of marchings and tableaux. Only occasionally did any of the principals come on, and then only to "walk through" bits of their parts. On one occasion a new scene was tried, and the voice in the darkness called out:

"Who's entrance is this?"

"That's Miss Marshall's," answered the man on the stage. "She's not here to-day. Poppy, just take that entrance for now, will you?"

From her place in the chorus Poppy Vaughn stepped out, but at Miss Marshall's name, tossed around so innocently, Bellsmith had felt a sudden, peculiar twinge, almost of jealousy. He heard Miss Marshall herself breathe sharply in the darkness beside him, and he leaned over to whisper:

"Does n't that make you feel rather uncanny, to hear them talk about you?"

"Yes, it does, in a way," answered Miss Marshall, "but it's not as uncanny as to see some one else play your part. That's like seeing yourself in moving pictures." "How do you like it?" she added a moment later.

"Fine!" said Bellsmith. "I'm having the time of my life."

"You said that the other night," commented the girl.

"Well, it was true both times."

Possibly it was only by accident, but the leader of the orchestra at the other end of the auditorium turned suddenly around at that moment and peered into the darkness, and they both fell into silence, like guilty children.

The rehearsal, however, was incessantly interrupted by long debates, as all rehearsals are, and in these they could talk more freely, for the men in the orchestra, as before, filled in the time with impromptu rehearsals of their own parts, simulated or pianissimo.

It was in one of these intervals that Bellsmith, lost in a day-dream, was suddenly conscious that Miss Marshall was speaking to him, highly amused.

"Do I always," she asked, "have to speak to you three times before you will answer? What were you thinking of?"

Bellsmith blushed self-consciously. "I was thinking out an amusing stunt."

"Stunt for what?"

"A bit of music I had in mind."

"What was it?"

"Well," answered Bellsmith, "I have n't decided whether to call it 'The Policeman's Sonata' or 'Concerto for Two Bass Viols in E.'"

The poise of Miss Marshall's head in the darkness expressed her mystification, and Bellsmith told the story of how he had pitched the policeman's voice in the lower hall during those long days of self-exile when his principal amusement had been listening to the passages of arms between the plain-clothes man and William, dialogues which he could hear but could never see.

He motioned toward the double-bass player in the orchestra at the foot of the auditorium.

"Listening to that chap down there," he explained, "it just occurred to me that it could really be done. But I don't know exactly what instrument would express William. The piccolo, I guess, or the kettledrum."

Miss Marshall was looking at him with that curious searching glance with which she had studied him on the first evening.

"Do you mean to say," she asked, "that you really could write a piece like that?"

"It would n't be much of a piece," replied Bellsmith. "It would be just an amusing stunt."

Miss Marshall shook her head. "No," she mused, "I am surer than ever that you will prove in the end to be really a dealer in hay, grain, and feed. Your many facets are too good to be true.

"Will you play to me some time?" she added quietly. "Very gladly," said Bellsmith.

Again suddenly the director on the stage clapped his hands for attention and again was interrupted.

"Wait a minute. What time is it getting to be?" asked the voice in the darkness, and the question also brought Bellsmith up standing. He looked at his watch held up against the faint glow from the distant footlights.

"Twenty-five minutes past four!" he whispered. "I 've got an appointment with the doctor at half-past. Can I drop you at the Massapauk or do you want to stay here?"

"I think I 'll stay here,' said Miss Marshall, and again, as he tiptoed out of the theater, it would have been difficult for Bellsmith to say just why he felt a peculiar little jealous twinge.

Nevertheless, as Keefe bore him smoothly away, twisting intricately through the crowded streets, he had to admit that he still felt an exultant mood like none he had felt since he could remember.

Only when he entered the door of the doctor's office did the shaming reality of his past week come back upon him, for the nurse in the passageway looked up from her telephone with a mischievous grin, and, as he entered the inner consulting-room, even the doctor himself could not hold back his impulse.

"Well, Nero!" he hailed with a grin, but Bellsmith viciously snapped off the end of a fresh cigar and sank back into a chair.

"Doctor," he retorted, "my famous message regarding my house applies to you also."