Harlequin and Columbine | Page 7

head, haven't you, Missmiss? Then what do you think of that?"
Miss Malone smiled, and it was a smile that would have gone a long way at a college dance. Here, it made the pitying company shudder for her. "I think it's a silly, makeshift sort of a speech," she said cheerfully, in which opinion the unhappy playwright out in the audience hotly agreed. "It's a bit of threadbare archness, and if I were to play Miss Lyston's part, I'd be glad to have it changed!"
Potter looked dazed. "Is it your idea," he said in a ghostly voice, "that I was asking for your impression of the dramatic and literary value of that line?"
She seemed surprised. "Weren't you?"
It was too much for Potter. He had brilliant and unusual powers of expression, but this was beyond them. He went to the chair beside the little table, flung himself upon it, his legs outstretched, his arms dangling inert, and stared haggardly upward at nothing.
Packer staggered into the breach. "You interrupted the smile, Miss--Mi--"
"Miss Malone," she prompted.
"You interrupted the smile, Miss Malone. Mr. Potter gives them the smile there. You must count ten for it, after your cue. Ten-- slow. Count slow. Mark it on your sides, Miss--ah--Miss. 'Count ten for smile. Write it down please, Miss--Miss--"
Potter spoke wearily. "Be kind enough to let me know, Packer, when you and Missmiss can bring yourselves to permit this rehearsal to continue."
"All ready, sir," said Packer briskly. "All ready now, Mr. Potter." And upon the star's limply rising, Miss Ellsling, most tactful of leading women, went back to his cue with a change of emphasis in her reading that helped to restore him somewhat to his poise. "It is noble," she repeated, "and I feel that I am unworthy of you!"
Counting ten slowly proved to be the proper deference to the smile, and Miss Malone was allowed to come down the stage and complete, undisturbed, her ingenue request to know what the two good people were conspiring about. Thereafter the rehearsal went on in a strange, unreal peace like that of a prairie noon in the cyclone season.
"Notice that girl?" old Tinker muttered, as Wanda Malone finished another ingenue question with a light laugh, as commanded by her manuscript. "She's frightened but she's steady."
"What girl?" Canby was shampooing himself feverishly and had little interest in girls. "I made it a disagreeable character because--"
"I mean the one he's letting out on--Malone," said Tinker. "Didn't you notice her voice? Her laugh reminds me of Fanny Caton's--and Dora Preston's--"
"Who?" Canby asked vaguely.
"Oh, nobody you'd remember; some old-time actresses that had their day--and died--long ago. This girl's voice made me think of them."
"She may, she may," said Canby hurriedly. "Mr. Tinker, the play is ruined. He's tangled the whole act up so that I can't tell what it's about myself. Instead of Roderick Hanscom's being a man that people dislike for his conceit and selfishness he's got him absolutely turned round. I oughtn't to allow it--but everything's so different from what I thought it would be! He doesn't seem to know I'm here. I came prepared to read the play to the company; I thought he'd want me to."
"Oh, no," said Tinker. "He never does that."
"Why not?"
"Wastes time, for one thing. The actors don't listen except when their own parts are being read."
"Good gracious!"
"Their own parts are all they have to look out for," the old man informed him dryly. "I've known actors to play a long time in parts that didn't appear in the last act, and they never know how the play ended."
"Good gracious!"
"Never cared, either," Tinker added.
"Good gr--"
"Sh! He's breaking out again!"
A shriek of agony came from the stage. "Pack-e-r-r-! Where did you find this Missmiss understudy? Can't you get me people of experience? I really cannot bear this kind of thing--I can not!" And Potter flung himself upon the chair, leaving the slight figure in black standing alone in the centre of the stage. He sprang up again, however, surprisingly, upon the very instant of despairing collapse. "What do you mean by this perpetual torture of me?" he wailed at her. "Don't you know what you did?"
"No, Mr. Potter." She looked at him bravely, but she began to grow red.
"You don't?" he cried incredulously. "You don't know what you did? You moved! How are they going to get my face if you move? Don't you know enough to hold a picture and not ruin it by moving?"
"There was a movement written for that cue," she said, a little tremulously. "The business in the script is, 'Showing that she is touched by Roderick's nobleness, lifts handkerchief impulsive gesture to eyes.'"
"Not," he shouted, "not during the SMILE!"
"Oh!" she cried remorsefully. "Have I done that again?"
"'Again!' I don't know how many times you've done it!" He flung his arms