There is an insidious something about the atmosphere of a rehearsal of a musical play which saps the finer feelings of those connected with it. Softened by the gentle beauty of the Spring weather, Mr. Goble had come to the Gotham Theatre that morning in an excellent temper, firmly intending to remain in an excellent temper all day. Five minutes of "The Rose of America" had sent him back to the normal; and at ten minutes past eleven he was chewing his cigar and glowering at the stage with all the sweetness gone from his soul. When Wally Mason arrived at a quarter past eleven and dropped into the seat beside him, the manager received him with a grunt and even omitted to offer him a cigar. And when a New York theatrical manager does that, it is a certain sign that his mood is of the worst.
One may find excuses for Mr. Goble. "The Rose of America" would have tested the equanimity of a far more amiable man: and on Mr. Goble what Otis Pilkington had called its delicate whimsicality jarred profoundly. He had been brought up in the lower-browed school of musical comedy, where you shelved the plot after the opening number and filled in the rest of the evening by bringing on the girls in a variety of exotic costumes, with some good vaudeville specialists to get the laughs. Mr. Goble's idea of a musical piece was something embracing trained seals, acrobats, and two or three teams of skilled buck-and-wing dancers, with nothing on the stage, from a tree to a lamp-shade, which could not suddenly turn into a chorus-girl. The austere legitimateness of "The Rose of America" gave him a pain in the neck. He loathed plot, and "The Rose of America" was all plot.
Why, then, had the earthy Mr. Goble consented to associate himself with the production of this intellectual play? Because he was subject, like all other New York managers, to intermittent spasms of the idea that the time is ripe for a revival of comic opera. Sometimes, lunching in his favourite corner in the Cosmopolis grill-room, he would lean across the table and beg some other manager to take it from him that the time was ripe for a revival of comic opera--or, more cautiously, that pretty soon the time was going to be ripe for a revival of comic opera. And the other manager would nod his head and thoughtfully stroke his three chins and admit that, sure as God made little apples, the time was darned soon going to be ripe for a revival of comic opera. And then they would stuff themselves with rich food and light big cigars and brood meditatively.
With most managers these spasms, which may be compared to twinges of conscience, pass as quickly as they come, and they go back to coining money with rowdy musical comedies, quite contented. But Otis Pilkington, happening along with the script of "The Rose of America" and the cash to back it, had caught Mr. Goble in the full grip of an attack, and all the arrangements had been made before the latter emerged from the influence. He now regretted his rash act.
"Say, listen," he said to Wally, his gaze on the stage, his words proceeding from the corner of his mouth, "you've got to stick around with this show after it opens on the road. We'll talk terms later. But we've got to get it right, don't care what it costs. See?"
"You think it will need fixing?"
Mr. Goble scowled at the unconscious artists, who were now going through a particularly arid stretch of dialogue.
"Fixing! It's all wrong! It don't add up right! You'll have to rewrite it from end to end."
"Well, I've got some idea about it. I saw it played by amateurs last summer, you know. I could make a quick job of it, if you want me to. But will the author stand for it?"
Mr. Goble allowed a belligerent eye to stray from the stage, and twisted it round in Wally's direction.
"Say, listen! He'll stand for anything I say. I'm the little guy that gives orders round here. I'm the big noise!"
As if in support of this statement he suddenly emitted a terrific bellow. The effect was magical. The refined and painstaking artists on the stage stopped as if they had been shot. The assistant stage-director bent sedulously over the footlights, which had now been turned up, shading his eyes with the prompt script.
"Take that over again!" shouted Mr. Goble. "Yes, that speech about life being like a water-melon. It don't sound to me as though it meant anything." He cocked his cigar at an angle, and listened fiercely. He clapped his hands. The action stopped again. "Cut it!" said Mr. Goble tersely.
"Cut the speech, Mr. Goble?" queried the obsequious assistant stage-director.
"Yes. Cut it. It don't mean nothing!"
Down the aisle, springing from a seat at the back, shimmered Mr. Pilkington, wounded to the quick.
"Mr. Goble! Mr. Goble!"
"Well?"
"That is the best epigram in the play."
"The best what?"
"Epigram. The best epigram in the play."
Mr. Goble knocked the ash off his cigar. "The public don't want epigrams. The public don't like epigrams. I've been in the show business fifteen years, and I'm telling you! Epigrams give them a pain under the vest. All right, get on."
Mr. Pilkington fluttered agitatedly. This was his first experience of Mr. Goble in the capacity of stage-director. It was the latter's custom to leave the early rehearsals of the pieces with which he was connected to a subordinate producer, who did what Mr. Goble called the breaking-in. This accomplished, he would appear in person, undo most of the other's work, make cuts, tell the actors how to read their lines, and generally enjoy himself. Producing plays was Mr. Goble's hobby. He imagined himself to have a genius in that direction, and it was useless to try to induce him to alter any decision to which he might have come. He regarded those who did not agree with him with the lofty contempt of an Eastern despot.
Of this Mr. Pilkington was not yet aware.
"But, Mr. Goble ...!"
The potentate swung irritably round on him.
"What is it? What is it? Can't you see I'm busy?"
"That epigram...."
"It's out!"
"But ...!"
"It's out!"
"Surely," protested Mr. Pilkington almost tearfully, "I have a voice...."
"Sure you have a voice," retorted Mr. Goble, "and you can use it any old place you want, except in my theatre. Have all the voice you like! Go round the corner and talk to yourself! Sing in your bath! But don't come using it here, because I'm the little guy that does all the talking in this theatre! That fellow makes me tired," he added complainingly to Wally, as Mr. Pilkington withdrew like a foiled python. "He don't know nothing about the show business, and he keeps butting in and making fool suggestions. He ought to be darned glad he's getting his first play produced and not trying to teach me how to direct it." He clapped his hands imperiously. The assistant stage-manager bent over the footlights. "What was that that guy said? Lord Finchley's last speech. Take it again."
The gentleman who was playing the part of Lord Finchley, an English character actor who specialized in London "nuts," raised his eyebrows, annoyed. Like Mr. Pilkington, he had never before come into contact with Mr. Goble as stage-director, and, accustomed to the suaver methods of his native land, he was finding the experience trying. He had not yet recovered from the agony of having that water-melon line cut out of his part. It was the only good line, he considered, that he had. Any line that is cut out of an actor's part is always the only good line he has.
"The speech about Omar Khayyám?" he enquired with suppressed irritation.
"I thought that was the way you said it. All wrong! It's Omar of Khayyám."
"I think you will find that Omar Khayyám is the--ah--generally accepted version of the poet's name," said the portrayer of Lord Finchley adding beneath his breath. "You silly ass!"
"You say Omar of Khayyám," bellowed Mr. Goble. "Who's running this show, anyway?"
"Just as you please."
Mr. Goble turned to Wally.
"These actors...." he began, when Mr. Pilkington appeared again at his elbow.
"Mr. Goble! Mr. Goble!"
"What is it now?"
"Omar Khayyám was a Persian poet. His name was Khayyám."
"That wasn't the way I heard it," said Mr. Goble doggedly. "Did you?" he enquired of Wally. "I thought he was born at Khayyám."
"You're probably quite right," said Wally, "but, if so, everybody else has been wrong for a good many years. It's usually supposed that the gentleman's name was Omar Khayyám. Khayyám, Omar J. Born A.D. 1050, educated privately and at Bagdad University. Represented Persia in the Olympic Games of 1072, winning the sitting high-jump and the egg-and-spoon race. The Khayyáms were quite a well-known family in Bagdad, and there was a lot of talk when Omar, who was Mrs. Khayyam's pet son, took to drink and writing poetry. They had had it all fixed for him to go into his father's date business."
Mr. Goble was impressed. He had a respect for Wally's opinion, for Wally had written "Follow the Girl" and look what a knock-out that had been. He stopped the rehearsal again.
"Go back to that Khayyám speech!" he said interrupting Lord Finchley in mid-sentence.
The actor whispered a hearty English oath beneath his breath. He had been up late last night, and, in spite of the fair weather, he was feeling a trifle on edge.
"' In the words of Omar of Khayyám'...."
Mr. Goble clapped his hands.
"Cut that 'of,'" he said. "The show's too long, anyway."
And, having handled a delicate matter in masterly fashion, he leaned back in his chair and chewed the end off another cigar.
For some minutes after this the rehearsal proceeded smoothly. If Mr. Goble did not enjoy the play, at least he made no criticisms except to Wally. To him he enlarged from time to time on the pain which "The Rose of America" caused him.
"How I ever came to put on junk like this beats me," confessed Mr. Goble frankly.
"You probably saw that there was a good idea at the back of it," suggested Wally. "There is, you know. Properly handled, it's an idea that could be made into a success."
"What would you do with it?"
"Oh, a lot of things," said Wally warily. In his younger and callower days he had sometimes been rash enough to scatter views on the reconstruction of plays broadcast, to find them gratefully absorbed and acted upon and treated as a friendly gift. His affection for Mr. Goble was not so overpowering as to cause him to give him ideas for nothing now.
"Any time you want me to fix it for you, I'll come along. About one and a half per cent of the gross would meet the case, I think."
Mr. Goble faced him, registering the utmost astonishment and horror.
"One and a half per cent for fixing a show like this? Why, darn it, there's hardly anything to do to it! It's--it's in!"
"You called it junk just now."
"Well, all I meant was that it wasn't the sort of thing I cared for myself. The public will eat it. Take it from me, the time is just about ripe for a revival of comic opera."
"This one will want all the reviving you can give it. Better use a pulmotor."
"But that long boob, that Pilkington ... he would never stand for my handing you one and a half per cent."
"I thought you were the little guy who arranged things round here."
"But he's got money in the show."
"Well, if he wants to get any out, he'd better call in somebody to rewrite it. You don't have to engage me if you don't want to. But I know I could make a good job of it. There's just one little twist the thing needs and you would have quite a different piece."
"What's that?" enquired Mr. Goble casually.
"Oh, just a little ... what shall I say? ... a little touch of what-d'you-call-it and a bit of thingummy. You know the sort of thing! That's all it wants."
Mr. Goble gnawed his cigar, baffled.
"You think so, eh?" he said at length.
"And perhaps a suspicion of je-ne-sais-quoi," added Wally.
Mr. Goble worried his cigar, and essayed a new form of attack.
"You've done a lot of work for me," he said. "Good work!"
"Glad you liked it," said Wally.
"You're a good kid. I like having you around. I was half thinking of giving you a show to do this Fall. Corking book. French farce. Ran two years in Paris. But what's the good, if you want the earth?"
"Always useful, the earth. Good thing to have."
"See here, if you'll fix up this show for half of one per cent, I'll give you the other to do."
"You shouldn't slur your words so. For a moment I thought you said 'half of one per cent. One and a half of course you really said.
"If you won't take half, you don't get the other."
"All right," said Wally. "There are lots of other managers in New York. Haven't you seen them popping about? Rich, enterprising men, and all of them love me like a son."
"Make it one per cent," said Mr. Goble, "and I'll see if I can fix it with Pilkington."
"One and a half."
"Oh, damn it, one and a half, then," said Mr. Goble morosely. "What's the good of splitting straws?"
"Forgotten Sports of the Past--Splitting the Straw. All right. If you drop me a line to that effect, legibly signed with your name, I'll wear it next my heart. I shall have to go now. I have a date. Good-bye. Glad everything's settled and everybody's happy."
For some moments after Wally had left, Mr. Goble sat hunched up in his orchestra-chair, smoking sullenly, his mood less sunny than ever. Living in a little world of sycophants, he was galled by the off-hand way in which Wally always treated him. There was something in the latter's manner which seemed to him sometimes almost contemptuous. He regretted the necessity of having to employ him. There was, of course, no real necessity why he should have employed Wally. New York was full of librettists who would have done the work equally well for half the money, but, like most managers, Mr. Goble had the mental processes of a sheep. "Follow the Girl" was the last outstanding musical success in New York theatrical history: Wally had written it, therefore nobody but Wally was capable of re-writing "The Rose of America." The thing had for Mr. Goble the inevitability of Fate. Except for deciding mentally that Wally had swelled head, there was nothing to be done.
Having decided that Wally had swelled head, and not feeling much better, Mr. Goble concentrated his attention on the stage. A good deal of action had taken place there during the recently concluded business talk, and the unfortunate Lord Finchley was back again, playing another of his scenes. Mr. Goble glared at Lord Finchley. He did not like him, and he did not like the way he was speaking his lines.
The part of Lord Finchley was a non-singing rôle. It was a type part. Otis Pilkington had gone to the straight stage to find an artist, and had secured the not uncelebrated Wentworth Hill, who had come over from London to play in an English comedy which had just closed. The newspapers had called the play thin, but had thought that Wentworth Hill was an excellent comedian. Mr. Hill thought so, too, and it was consequently a shock to his already disordered nerves when a bellow from the auditorium stopped him in the middle of one of his speeches and a rasping voice informed him that he was doing it all wrong.
"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Hill, quietly but dangerously, stepping to the footlights.
"All wrong!" repeated Mr. Goble.
"Really?" Wentworth Hill, who a few years earlier had spent several terms at Oxford University before being sent down for aggravated disorderliness, had brought little away with him from that seat of learning except the Oxford manner. This he now employed upon Mr. Goble with an icy severity which put the last touch to the manager's fermenting state of mind. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me just how you think that part should be played?"
Mr. Goble marched down the aisle.
"Speak out to the audience," he said, stationing himself by the orchestra pit. "You're turning your head away all the darned time."
"I may be wrong," said Mr. Hill, "but I have played a certain amount, don't you know, in pretty good companies, and I was always under the impression that one should address one's remarks to the person one was speaking to, not deliver a recitation to the gallery. I was taught that that was the legitimate method."
The word touched off all the dynamite in Mr. Goble. Of all things in the theatre he detested most the "legitimate method." His idea of producing was to instruct the cast to come down to the footlights and hand it to 'em. These people who looked up-stage and talked to the audience through the backs of their necks revolted him.
"Legitimate! That's a hell of a thing to be! Where do you get that legitimate stuff? You aren't playing Ibsen!"
"Nor am I playing a knockabout vaudeville sketch."
"Don't talk back at me!"
"Kindly don't shout at me! Your voice is unpleasant enough without your raising it."
Open defiance was a thing which Mr. Goble had never encountered before, and for a moment it deprived him of breath. He recovered it, however, almost immediately.
"You're fired!"
"On the contrary," said Mr. Hill, "I'm resigning." He drew a green-covered script from his pocket and handed it with an air to the pallid assistant stage-director. Then, more gracefully than ever Freddie Rooke had managed to move down-stage under the tuition of Johnson Miller, he moved up-stage to the exit. "I trust that you will be able to find someone who will play the part according to your ideas!"
"I'll find," bellowed Mr. Goble at his vanishing back, "a chorus-man who'll play it a damned sight better than you!" He waved to the assistant stage-director. "Send the chorus-men on the stage!"
"All the gentlemen of the chorus on the stage, please!" shrilled the assistant stage-director, bounding into the wings like a retriever. "Mr. Goble wants all the chorus-gentlemen on the stage!"
There was a moment, when the seven male members of "The Rose of America" ensemble lined up self-consciously before his gleaming eyes, when Mr. Goble repented of his brave words. An uncomfortable feeling passed across his mind that Fate had called his bluff and that he would not be able to make good. All chorus-men are exactly alike, and they are like nothing else on earth. Even Mr. Goble, anxious as he was to overlook their deficiencies, could not persuade himself that in their ranks stood even an adequate Lord Finchley.
And then, just as a cold reaction from his fervid mood was about to set in, he perceived that Providence had been good to him. There, at the extreme end of the line, stood a young man who, as far as appearance went, was the ideal Lord Finchley--as far as appearance went, a far better Lord Finchley than the late Mr. Hill. He beckoned imperiously.
"You at the end!"
"Me?" said the young man.
"Yes, you. What's your name?"
"Rooke. Frederick Rooke, don't you know."
"You're English, aren't you?"
"Eh? Oh, yes, absolutely!"
"Ever played a part before?"
"Part? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, in amateur theatricals, you know, and all that sort of rot."
His words were music to Mr. Goble's ears. He felt that his Napoleonic action had justified itself by success. His fury left him. If he had been capable of beaming, one would have said that he beamed at Freddie.
"Well, you play the part of Lord Finchley from now on. Come to my office this afternoon for your contract. Clear the stage. We've wasted enough time."
Five minutes later, in the wings, Freddie, receiving congratulations from Nelly Bryant, asserted himself.
"Not the Automat to-day, I think, what? Now that I'm a jolly old star and all that sort of thing, it can't be done. Directly this is over we'll roll round to the Cosmopolis. A slight celebration is indicated, what? Right ho! Rally round, dear heart, rally round!"
