“I don’t really know. Whenever he tried to speak, the manager said, ‘One moment, please’; it was like a boxing-match. However, as the important thing seemed to be that I should speak English with a French accent, I was engaged.”
Sylvia could not help being amused at herself when she found that her first essay with legitimate drama was to be the exact converse of her first essay with the variety stage, dependent, as before, upon a kind of infirmity. Really, the only time she had been able to express herself naturally in public had been when she sang “The Raggle-taggle Gipsies” with the Pink Pierrots, and that had been a failure. However, a tour in the States would give her a new glimpse of life, which at twenty-seven was the important consideration; and perhaps New York, more generous than other capitals, would give her life itself, or one of the only two things in life that mattered, success and love.
CHAPTER XIII
THE play in which Sylvia was to appear in New York was called “A Honeymoon in Europe,” and if it might be judged from the first few rehearsals, at which the performers had read their parts like half-witted board-school children, it was thin stuff. Still, it was not fair to pass a final opinion without the two American stars who were awaiting the English company in their native land.
The author, Mr. Marchmont Hearne, was a timid little man who between the business manager and producer looked and behaved very much like the Dormouse at the Mad Tea-party. The manager did not resemble the Hatter except in the broad brim of his top-hat, which in mid-Atlantic he reluctantly exchanged for a cloth cap. The company declared he was famous for his tact; certainly he managed to suppress the Dormouse at every point by shouting, “One minute, Mr. Stern, please,” or, “Please, Mr. Burns, one minute,” and apologizing at once so effusively for not calling him by his right name that the poor little Dormouse had no courage to contest the real point at issue, which had nothing to do with his name. When the manager had to exercise a finer tactfulness, as with obdurate actresses, he was wont to soften his remarks by adding that nothing “derogatory” had been intended; this seemed to mollify everybody, probably, Sylvia thought, because it was such a long word. The Hatter’s name was Charles Fitzherbert. The producer, Mr. Wade Fortescue, by the length of his ears, by the way in which his electrical hair propelled itself into a peak on either side of his head, and by his wild, artistic eye, was really rather like the March Hare outwardly; his behavior was not less like. Mr. Fortescue’s attitude toward “A Honeymoon in Europe” was one that Beethoven might have taken up on being invited to orchestrate “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.” The author did not go so far as to resent this attitude, but on many occasions he was evidently pained by it, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzherbert’s assurances that Mr. Fortescue had intended nothing “derogatory.”
Sylvia’s part was that of a French chambermaid. The author had drawn it faithfully to his experience of Paris in the course of several week-ends. As his conception coincided with that of the general public in supposing a French chambermaid to be a cross between a street-walker and a tight-rope walker, it seemed probable that the part would be a success; although Mr. Fortescue wanted to mix the strain still further by introducing the blood of a comic ventriloquist.
“You must roll your ‘r’s’ more, Miss Scarlett,” he assured her. “That line will go for nothing as you said it.”
“I said it as a French chambermaid would say it,” Sylvia insisted.
“If I might venture—” the Dormouse began.
“One minute, please, Mr. Treherne,” interrupted the Mad Hatter. “What Mr. Fortescue wants, Miss Scarlett, is exaggeration—a leetle exaggeration. I believe that is what you want, Mr. Fortescue?”