“I never can understand why you yourself don’t play Hamlet,” said Evereld. “You would do it splendidly.”
“Ralph understands,” said Macneillie a shade crossing his face. “He will tell you why it is.”
There was silence for some minutes. Then, as though shaking himself free from thoughts he did not wish to dwell upon, Macneillie began to pace the room and to consider how best to rid the company of the undesirable presence of the Honorable Bertie.
“I have it!” he exclaimed,—suddenly bursting into a fit of laughter. “Great Scott! That will be the very thing!” he rubbed his hands with keen satisfaction, chuckling to himself in high glee over the thought of the fun he anticipated. “Come to the theatre to-night, my dear, and I will treat you to a new transformation scene which, if I’m not mistaken, will bring down the house. But mind, not a word of it to any one beforehand.”
It was not only his fellow actors who objected to the Honorable Bertie, he was detested by the stage carpenters and scene shifters, not so much because of his conceit as because he had an objectionable habit of being always in the way. For the past week they had been giving a play in which he took the part of a dragoon guard and though the insignificance of the character chafed him sorely, he found some consolation in the knowledge that in uniform he presented a really splendid appearance.
Now it chanced that there was a property chair used in this play of remarkably comfortable proportions, and the Honorable Bertie being long and lazy invariably lounged at his ease in this chair between the acts, for he had no change of dress and no opportunity of amusing himself with Ivy just in the intervals because she happened to have rather elaborate changes.
Macneillie, who was his own Stage Manager, had for some time observed the cool disregard shown by the amateur of the peremptory call of “Clear!” on the part of his Assistant stage manager. Deaf to the order Mr. Vane-Ffoulkes invariably took his ease in the big chair, lazily watching the busy workers with an air of irritating superiority.
“I think I shall cure him of this little habit,” reflected Macneillie with a smile, and seizing a moment when his victim was the only person visible on the stage he suddenly rang up the curtain.
A roar of laughter rose from the audience, for there in full view sat the Honorable Bertie with his legs dangling in unconventional comfort over the arm of the chair.
He sprang to his feet in horror, dashed to the practicable door at the back of the stage deeming it his nearest escape, forgot that he still wore his guard’s helmet, crashed it violently against the lintel, and by the time he had staggered back, and with lowered crest disappeared behind the scenes, left the house in convulsions of merriment.