The Real Adventure
color of plausibility to the paradoxical theory that our emotions spring
from our facial expressions rather than the other way about. Certainly
to an experienced actor, his paint--the mere act of putting it on and
looking at himself in the glass as it is applied--effects for him a
solution of continuity between his real self, if you can call it that,
and his part; so that fatigues, discouragements, quarrels, ailments--I
don't mean to say are forgotten; they are remembered well enough, but
are given the quality of belonging to some one else. But beyond all that
was the feeling, on the edge of this first performance, that they were
now on their own. Harold Mills and the composer, Goldsmith and Block,
John Galbraith, had done their best, or their worst, as the case might
be. But their labors to-night would mean nothing to that rustling
audience out in front. From now on it was up to the company!
The appearance, back on the stage, of John Galbraith in evening dress,
just as the call of the first act brought them trooping from their
dressing-rooms, intensified this sensation. He was going to be,
to-night, simply one of the audience.
As a sample of the new spirit, Rose noted with hardly a sensation of
surprise, that Patricia Devereux nodded amiably enough to Stewart Lester
and observed that she believed the thing was going to go; and that
Lester in reply said, yes, he believed it was.
Rose herself was completely dominated by it. Her nerves--slack, frayed,
numb, an hour ago--had sprung miraculously into tune. She not only
didn't feel tired. It seemed she never could feel tired again. Not even,
going back to her university days, on the eve of a class basket-ball
game, or a tennis match, had she felt that fine thrill of buoyant
confidence and adequacy quite so strongly!
It wasn't until along in the third act that the audience became, for
her, anything but a colloid mass--something that you squeezed and
thumped and worked as you did clay, to get into a properly plastic
condition of receptivity, so that the jokes, the songs, the dances,
even the spindling little shafts of romance that you shot out into it,
could be felt to dig in and take hold. It never occurred to her to think
of it with a plural pronoun; it was "it" simply, an inchoate monster,
which was, as the show progressed, delightfully loosening up, becoming
good-humored, undiscriminating, stupidly infatuate; laughing at things
no human being would consider funny, approving with a percussive roar
things not in the least good; a monster, all the same, whose approbation
gave you an intense, if quite unreasoning, pleasure.
But, along in the third act, as I said, as she came down to the
footlights with the rest of the sextette in their _All Alone_ number,
one face detached itself suddenly from the pasty gray surface of them
that spread over the auditorium; became human--individual--and intensely
familiar. Became the face, unmistakably, of Jimmy Wallace!
It is probable that of all the audience, only two men saw that anything
had happened, so brief was the frozen instant while she stood
transfixed. One of them was John Galbraith, in the back row, and he let
his breath go out again in relief almost in the act of catching it. He
guessed what had happened well enough--that she'd recognized one of
those friends whose potential horror had made her willing to give up her
promotion and her little part--the one she'd spoken of, perhaps, as the
"only one that really mattered." But it was all right. She was going on
as if nothing had happened.
The other man was Jimmy Wallace himself. He released, too, a little sigh
of relief when he saw her off in her stride again after that momentary
falter. But he hardly looked at the stage after that; stared absently at
his program instead, and, presently, availed himself of the dramatic
critic's license and left the theater.
But it wasn't to go to his desk and write his story (he was on an
evening paper and so had no deadline staring him in the face) but to a
quiet corner in his club, where he could, undistractedly, think.
From the moment of Rose's first appearance on the stage he had been
tormented by a curiosity as to whether she was indeed Rose, or merely
some one unbelievably like her. Because the fantastic impossibility that
Rose Aldrich should be a member of the Globe chorus was reinforced by
the fact that her gaze had traveled unconcernedly across his face a
dozen times--his seat was in the fourth row, too--without the slightest
flicker of recognition. Of course the way she stood there frozen for a
second, when at last she did see him, settled that question. She was
Rose Aldrich and she was in the Globe chorus!
But this certainty merely left him with a more insoluble perplexity on
his hands; two, in fact--oh, half a dozen! What was she doing there? Did
Rodney know? Well, those questions, and others in their train, could
wait. But--what was he going to do about it?
As for Rose herself, it was a mere automaton that moved off in the dance
and said the two or three lines that remained to her in the act as if
nothing had happened, because all her mind and all her capacity for
feeling were occupied and tested by something else.
Incredible as it seems, she had utterly overlooked Jimmy--overlooked the
fact that, as a dramatic critic, he'd be certain to be present at the
opening performance of _The Girl Up-stairs_--certain to be sitting close
to the front, and certain, of course, to recognize her the moment she
came on the stage. She hadn't even had him in mind when the fear lest
some one of Rodney's friends might, for a lark, drop in at the Globe and
recognize her, had led her to tell John Galbraith that she couldn't be
in the sextette. Since that question had been settled, she'd hardly
considered the possibility at all. And, during the three weeks before
the opening, since she'd embarked on her career as a costumer, she
literally hadn't given it a thought.
She had dreaded various things as the hour of the opening performance
drew near--reasonable things like the failure of the piece to please,
the reception of their offerings in a chilly silence intensified by
contemptuous little riffles of applause. (She had been in audiences
which had treated plays like that--taken her own part in the expression
of chill disfavor, and she knew now she could never do it again.) She
had dreaded unreasonable things, like the total failure of any audience
to appear and the necessity of playing to empty rows as they had done in
rehearsal; nightmare things, like a total loss of memory, which should
leave her stranded in the middle of a silent stage before a jeering
audience. But it hadn't occurred to her to dread that the rise of the
curtain would reveal to her any of the faces that belonged to a world
which the last six weeks had already made to seem unreal.
So the sight of Jimmy Wallace had something the effect that a sudden
awakening has on a somnambulist--bewilderment at first, and after that a
sort of panic. Her first thought was that she must get word to him,
somehow, before he left the theater. Unless she could do that, what was
to prevent his going straight to Rodney, to-night, and telling him all
about it? He was under no obligation not to do it. He was Rodney's
friend quite as much as he was hers.
It didn't take her long to make up her mind though that he wouldn't do
that. Jimmy was never precipitate. He'd give her a chance. To-morrow
morning would do. She could call him up at his office.
But as she began formulating her request and phrasing the preface of
explanations she'd have to make before she'd be--well, entitled to ask a
favor of him, she found herself in a difficulty. She didn't want to
enter into a secret with him--with any man, this meant, of
course--against Rodney. She couldn't think of any way of stating her
reason for wanting her husband kept in the dark that didn't seem to
slight him, belittle him, make him faintly ridiculous--like the
pussy-cat John Galbraith had snapped his fingers at.
So she came, rather swiftly indeed, to the decision (she had arrived at
it before Jimmy left the theater) that she wouldn't make any appeal to
him at all. She'd do nothing that could lead him to think, either that
she was ashamed of herself, or that she was afraid Rodney would be
ashamed of her. In the absence of any appeal from her, mightn't he
perhaps decide that Rodney was in her confidence and so say nothing
about it? But even if he should tell Rodney ...
In her conscious thoughts she went no further than that; didn't
recognize the hope already beating tumultuously in her veins, that he
would tell Rodney--that perhaps even before she got back to her dismal
little room, Rodney, pacing his, would know.
It was so irrational a hope--so unexpected and so well disguised--that
she mistook it for a fear. But fear never made one's heart glow like
that.
That's where all her thoughts were when John Galbraith halted her on the
way to the dressing-room after the performance was over.
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN AND THE DIRECTOR
He said, "I want a talk with you," and she, thinking he meant then and
there, glanced about for a corner where they'd be tolerably secure
against the charging rushes of grips, property men and electricians, all
racing against time to get the third act struck and the first one set
and make their escape from the theater.
"Oh, I don't mean here in this bedlam," he explained with a tinge of
impatience. And then his manner changed. "I'd like, for once, a chance
to sit down with you where it's--quiet and we don't have to feel in a
hurry." He added, a second later, answering a shade of what he took to
be doubt or hesitation in her face, "You're frightfully tired I know. If
you'd rather wait till to-morrow ..."
"Oh, it wasn't that," said Rose. "I was just trying to think where a
place was where one could be quiet and needn't hurry and where two
people could talk."
He smiled. "You can leave that to me," he said. "That is, if you don't
mind a restaurant and a little supper."
"Of course I don't mind," she said. "I'd like it very much."
He nodded. "Don't rush your dressing," he suggested, as he moved away.
"I've got plenty to do."
The sextette dressed together in a sort of pen--big enough, because they
had all sorts of room down under the old Globe stage, but so far as
appointments went, decidedly primitive. The walls were of matched
boards; there was a shelf two feet wide or so around three sides of it,
to make a sort of continuous dressing-table; there were six mirrors, six
deal chairs and a few hooks. These were for your street clothes. The
stage costumes hung in neat ranks outside under the eye of the wardrobe
mistress. When you wanted to put one on you went out and got it, and if
the time allowed for the change were sufficient you took it back into
your dressing-room. Otherwise you plunged into it just where you were.
When you wanted to wash before putting on or after taking off your
make-up you went to a row of stationary wash-bowls down the corridor.
All told it wasn't a place to linger in over the indulgence of
day-dreams. But the first glimpse Rose caught, as she opened the door,
in the mirror next her own, was the entranced face of Olga Larson. The
other girls were in an advanced state of undress, intent on getting out
as quickly as they could. They were all talking straight along, of
course, but that didn't delay their operations a bit. They talked
through the towels they were wiping off the make-up with, talked bent
double over shoe-buckles, talked in little gasps as they tugged at tight
sweaty things that didn't want to come off. And they made a striking
contrast to Olga, who sat there just as she'd left the stage, without a