Harlequin and Columbine Part 12

"What do I get?" he demanded, pa.s.sionately. "Do you think it means anything to me that some fat old woman sees me making love to a sawdust actress at a matinee and then goes home and hates her fat old husband across the dinner-table?"

He returned to the fireplace, seeming appeased, at least infinitesimally, by this thought. "There wouldn't even be that, except for the mystery. It's only because I'm mysterious to them--the way a man always thinks the girl he doesn't know is prettier than the one he's with. What's that got to do with acting? What is acting, anyhow?" His voice rose pa.s.sionately again. "I'll tell you one thing it is: It's the most sordid profession in this devilish world!"

He strode to the centre of the room. "It's at the bottom--in the muck!

That's where it is. And it ought to be! What am I, out there on that silly platform they call a stage? A fool, that's all, making faces, and pretending to be somebody with another name, for two dollars! A monkey-on-a-stick for the children! Of course the world despises us! Why shouldn't it? It calls us mummers and mountebanks, and that's what we are! Buffoons! We aren't men and women at all--we're strolling players!

We're gypsies! One of us marries a broker's daughter and her relatives say she's married 'a d.a.m.ned actor!' That's what they say--'a d.a.m.ned actor!' Great heavens, Tinker, can't a man get tired of being called a 'd.a.m.ned actor' without your making all this uproar over it--squalling 'nerves' in my face till I wish I was dead and done with it!"

He went back to the fireplace again, but omitted another dolorous stroke upon the mantel. "And look at the women in the profession," he continued, as he turned to face his visitors. "My soul! Look at them!

Nothing but sawdust--sawdust--sawdust! Do you expect to go on acting with sawdust? Making sawdust love with sawdust? Sawdust, I tell you!

Sawdust--sawdust--saw--"

"Oh, no," said Tinker easily. "Not all. Not by any means. No."

"Show me one that isn't sawdust!" the tragedian cried fiercely. "Show me just one!"

"We-ll," said Tinker with extraordinary deliberation, "to start near home: Wanda Malone."

Potter burst into terrible laughter. "All sawdust! That's why I discharged her this afternoon."

"You what?" Canby shouted incredulously.

"I dismissed her from my company," said Potter with a startling change to icy calmness. "I dismissed her from my company this afternoon."

Old Tinker leaned forward. "You didn't!"

Potter's iciness increased. "Shall I repeat it? I was obliged to dismiss Miss Wanda Malone from my company, this afternoon, after rehearsal."

"Why?" Canby gasped.

"Because," said Potter, with the same calmness, "she has an utterly commonplace mind."

Canby rose in agitation, quite unable, for that moment, to speak; but Tinker, still leaning forward, gazing intently at the face of the actor, made a low, long-drawn sound of wonder and affirmation, the slow exclamation of a man comprehending what amazes him. "So that's it!"

"Besides being intensely ordinary," said Potter, with superiority, "I discovered that she is deceitful. That had nothing whatever to do with my decision to leave the stage." He whirled upon Tinker suddenly, and shouted: "No matter what you think!"

"No," said Tinker. "No matter."

Potter laughed. "Talbot Potter leaves the stage because a little 'ingenue' understudy tries to break the rules of his company! Likely, isn't it?"

"Looks so," said old Tinker.

"Does it?" retorted Potter with rising fury. "Then I'll tell you, since you seem not to know it, that I'm not going to leave the stage! Can't a man give vent to his feelings once in his life without being caught up and held to it by every old school-teacher that's stumbled into the 'show-business' by mistake! We're going right on with this play, I tell you; we rehea.r.s.e it to-morrow morning just the same as if this hadn't happened. Only there will be a new 'ingenue' in Miss Malone's place.

People can't break iron rules in my company. Maybe they could in Mounet-Sully's, but they can't in mine!"

"What rule did she break?" Canby's voice was unsteady. "What rule?"

"Yes," Tinker urged. "Tell us what it was."

"After rehearsal," the star began with dignity, "I was--I--" He paused.

"I was disappointed in her."

"Ye-es?" drawled Tinker encouragingly.

Potter sent him a vicious glance, but continued: "I had hopes of her intelligence--as an actress. She seemed to have, also, a fairly attractive personality. I felt some little--ah, interest in her, personally. There is something about her that--" Again he paused. "I talked to her--about her part--at length; and finally I--ah--said I should be glad to walk home with her, as it was after dark. She said no, she wouldn't let me take so much trouble, because she lived almost at the other end of Brooklyn. It seemed to me that--ah, she is very young--you both probably noticed that--so I said I would--that is, I offered to drive her home in a taxicab. She thanked me, but said she couldn't. She kept saying that she was sorry, but she couldn't. It seemed very peculiar, and, in fact, I insisted. I asked her if she objected to me as an escort, and she said, 'Oh, no!' and got more and more embarra.s.sed. I wanted to know what was the matter and why she couldn't seem to like--that is, I talked very kindly to her, very kindly indeed. n.o.body could have been kinder!" He cleared his throat loudly and firmly, with an angry look at Tinker. "I say n.o.body could have been kinder to an obscure member of the company that I was to Miss Malone.

But I was decided. That's all. That's all there was to it. I was merely kind. That's all." He waved his hand as in dismissal of the subject.

"All?" repeated Canby. "All? You haven't--"

"Oh, yes." Potter seemed surprised at his own omission. "Oh, yes. Right in the midst of--of what I was saying--she blurted out that she couldn't let me take her home, because 'Lancelot' was waiting for her at a corner drug-store."

"Lancelot!" There was a catch of dismay in Canby's outcry.

"That's what I said, 'Lancelot'!" cried Potter, more desolately than he intended. "It seems they've been meeting after rehearsal, in their d.a.m.n corner drug-store. Lancelot!" His voice rose in fury. "If I'd known I had a man named Lancelot in my company I'd have discharged him long ago! If I'd known it was his name I'd have shot him. 'Lancelot!' He came sneaking in there just after she'd blundered it all out to me. Got uneasy because she didn't come, and came to see what was the matter.

Naturally, I discharged them both, on the spot! I've never had a rule of my company broken yet--and I never will! He didn't say a word. He didn't dare."

"Who?" shouted Canby and old Tinker together.

"Lancelot!" said Potter savagely.

"Who?"

"Packer! His first name's Lancelot, the hypocrite! L. Smith Packer!

She's Mrs. Packer! They were married two days before rehearsals began.

She's Mrs. L. Smith Packer!"

XII

As the sound of the furious voice stopped short, there fell a stricken silence upon these three men.

Old Carson Tinker's gaze drifted downward from his employer's face. He sat, then, gazing into the rosy little fire until something upon the lapel of his coat caught his attention--a wilted and disreputable carnation. He threw it into the fire; and, with a sombre satisfaction, watched it sizzle. This brief pleasure ended, he became expressionless and relapsed into complete mummification.

Potter cleared his throat several times, and as many times seemed about to speak, and did not; but finally, hearing a murmur from the old man gazing at the fire, he requested to be informed of its nature.

"What?" Tinker asked, feebly.

"I said: 'What are you mumbling about?'"

"Nothing."

"What was it you said?"

"I said it was the bride-look," said the old man gently. "That's what it was about her--the bride-look."