It was not wonderful that this pot-au-feu of feeling, amounting to positive agitation, did not tend towards the comfort of her company at the rehearsal, nor indeed, on the part of the manageress, toward the calm attitude of the thoughtful critic. In consequence, before the rehearsal was an hour old—it was the first 'without books' rehearsal —the second leading lady was next door to tears, the leading gentleman in sulks, the author in despair, and Mrs. Emsworth in a mood of dangerous suavity that made the aspiring actors heart-sick.
'Miss Dayrell,' she was saying, 'would you mind not turning your back completely on the audience when you speak those lines. Mr. Yates'—this was the leading gentleman—' I am so sorry to interrupt your conversation, but my throat is rather sore this morning, and I cannot hear myself speak if you talk so loud to your friends. Yes; I think, as you are not on the stage just now, it would be better if you left it. Yes, Miss Dayrell, you see these are perhaps the most important lines in the play which you have to speak, and the audience will have a better chance of understanding it if you let them hear what Mr. Farquar has given you to say. Mr. Farquar, I am afraid the second act is about twice as long as it ought to be. I have cut some of it—at least, with your approval, I propose to cut some of it.'
Mr. Farquar sighed heavily in the stalls. He had spent the greater part of the last three nights in writing more of the second act, because it was not long enough.
'Thank you,' continued Mrs. Emsworth, interpreting the sigh as silence. 'You will see my alterations when we get to them. Would you kindly begin, Miss Dayrell, at "If I had a pitch-fork."'
Suddenly her voice changed to a wheedling tenderness.
'And if my own Teddy Roosevelt hasn't come down of his own delicious accord to see his aunt in her pretty theatre! Teddy, the world is very evil, and my mother bids me bind my hair. I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen, but I had to say a word to Popsie Tootsicums. Now, dear Miss Dayrell, let's begin again. You enter. Excellent. You turn. Yes, that's exactly what I want. Now.'
A murmur of relief went round, and the faded actors and actresses raised their drooped heads as when a shower has passed over a drought-dried garden. And Teddy R., the angel in disguise, sat sparsely down in the middle of the stage, and smiled on the spectacle of his beneficent work.
But because the happy appearance of Teddy Roosevelt had made le beau temps for the members of Mrs. Emsworth's company, it did not at all follow that Bilton, when he came to lunch, would find the same sunshine awaiting him, even as there is no guarantee that, because at twelve o'clock on an April day pellucid tranquillity flooded the earth, there will not be a smart hail-storm an hour afterwards. On the contrary, it was safe to bet that, whatever mood Mrs. Emsworth was in, she would be in a different one before long. The spring-day temperament of hers was, in fact, the only thing to be reckoned on. Consequently, since Bilton had not witnessed the varied phases exhibited at the theatre, he hoped, somehow sanguinely, that she would not be in a temper that so roundly labelled him 'beast' at Port Washington Station.
She seemed to have forgotten he was coming to lunch—as a matter of fact, she had, and welcomed him charmingly.
'Dear man,' she said, 'how nice of you to look in. I'm nearly dead with fatigue; let's have lunch at once. Harold, I've acted every part in 'Telegrams' through from beginning to end this morning. Those people are so hard-working, but they are so stupid. In fact, I know every part but my own. That I have promised them to be word perfect in by five o'clock this afternoon.'