A psychical ripple disturbs the ether. Necks crane toward the door. The star arrives. She comes slowly, with the air of one assured of an effective entrance. She punctuates her animated conversation with the manager with smiles and nods. That meek-looking person bringing up the rear is the author. He gropes his way through the dark passage to the front of the house and is lost in oblivion.
"First act!" calls the prompter. "First act!"
* * * *
The play opened out of town. The working force was sent ahead with the scenery and the baggage. There was a special train for the company. Besides the regular staff there were costumers, flash-light photographers, relatives of the players and guests of the management. The guests included several critics from certain New York journals. One of these had an ambitious wife who was a member of the company. The other, rumour had it, was on the salary list of the management. This may or may not have been true. Subsequent effusive reviews and the manner in which these critics took up the cudgels against the enemies of the manager did not, however, indicate unbiased opinion. "Subsidized or hypnotized"—that was the question. The persuasive art of "fixing" is not confined to politics.
When the train arrived in ——, there was barely time for a hasty bite before rushing off to the theatre. One felt the thrill of excitement at the very stage door. Even the back doorkeeper was infected. When Will stopped to look through the pigeon-holes for mail, the keeper of the sacred portal was exhibiting a brand new litter of kittens. "Everyone of 'em black; just like their mother. Your show'll be a big success—talk about your mascots!" Stage-folk are as superstitious as a nigger mammy. A whole chapter might be devoted to their lore. One of the greatest hoodoos is to speak the tag of a play before the opening night. The tag of a play is the last several words immediately preceding the final fall of the curtain. When it comes to the tag, the actor to whose lot the final lines fall either stops with a gesture or perhaps he purloins Hamlet's last words—"The rest is silence."
Back on the stage there was the sound of hammers, the shouts of the stage-hands to the men in the flies, "drops" being adjusted, calls of warning to some reckless person about to come in contact with a sandbag at that moment lowered from the flies. Abrupt blasts of the orchestra reach one's ears. The music cues are being rehearsed, the director shouting against the din on the stage. On the "apron," with a bottle of milk in his hand and surrounded by a half dozen coatless and perspiring men, is the producer. A shaft of light darts from the spot-light machine in the gallery, and hovers over the stage like a searchlight at sea. Green, yellow, red and blue slides are tried and a weird waving moving picture effect brings a shout of laughter from the privileged watchers in front. In the dressing-rooms the players are making up. The wardrobe mistress hurries from one to another, needle and thread in hand. There are impatient calls for the head costumer; "Props" taps at the doors and delivers the properties to be carried by the various actors in the play. The actors talk across the partitions or run through lines of a "shaky" scene. "Fifteen minutes—fifteen minutes!" warns the assistant stage manager making the rounds. Below stage, the supers or "extra people" sit about in noisy groups awaiting the call. Some of them are as "nervous as a cat," to use their own expression. These are not the rank and file of supernumeraries. The promise of a long run in New York ofttimes tempts women who have "spoken lines" to go on as extra ladies. As a sop they are given a leading part to understudy. The excitement is infectious. With the lowering of the curtain and the first strains of the orchestra one instinctively shifts forward to the edge of one's seat.
It is either the lights or a missing prop or a hiatus between speech and action which the first acquaintance with the scenery develops or a "jumbled" ensemble or something unexpected which brings the rehearsal to an abrupt halt. The dialogue stops like a megaphone suddenly shut off. The director hurries down the centre aisle, the prompter's head appears at the proscenium arch. "Loved I not honour more!" repeats the actor, looking expectantly off stage. "Loved I not honour more!" bellows the stage-manager, getting into the game. "That's your cue, Mr. Prime Minister. Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones! Where is Mr. Jones?"
"Jones! Jones!" reverberates about the stage and in the flies.
"Here I am! I hear you!" answers a muffled voice up-stage. "I can't get through. The entrance's blocked with a sacred elephant!" There is a rush of stage hands in the direction indicated. Simultaneously Mr. Jones appears L. I. E. "I'm sorry," he says, "but I couldn't butt in through the stone walls of the castle, now could I?" indicating the boxed set which formed the outer walls of the scene.
The obstruction is removed amidst a heated confab and the stage cleared for action. "Go back—go back to Miss Melon's entrance." Miss Melon enters. The scene starts flatly enough. It is difficult to pick up a scene and get back into the atmosphere at once. One must "warm up to it."