“I don’t see how you could have ’em look just alike unless they’d get an actress who had a real twin brother, and maybe you’d go the whole country over and not find that.”
“He ain’t like her no way,” growled old Gabriel from the wheel, “I seen ’em both when they wasn’t acting and he’s an ugly pup, that one.”
Then the boat grating on the Hayworth wharf, Gabriel urged them off. He hadn’t got through yet, got to go back for part of the company who were calculating to get the main line at Spencer, and after that back again for the Tracy boy. He muttered on as they climbed out, grumbling to himself, which nobody noticed as it had been his mode of expression for the last thirty years.
The swaying throng of boats emptied their cargoes and the thick-pressed crowd, moving to the end of the wharf, separated into streams and groups. Farewells, last commending comments, rose on the limpid sea-scented air. Everybody was a little tired. The villagers, dragging their feet, passed along the board walks to their vine-draped piazzas. They would find their kitchens hot and dull that night after two hours in the enchanted land of Illyria. The waiting line of motors absorbed the summer visitors, wheeled off and purred away past the white cottages under the New England elms. The matrons sank gratefully upon the yielding cushions, rolling by the dusty buggies, the battered Fords, the lines of bicycle riders, into the quiet serene country where the shadows were lying long and clear. Yes, it had been a great success; from first to last there hadn’t been a hitch.
II
That was how the audience saw it, but they were outsiders. There was one outsider left on the island, Wally Shine, the photographer sent by the Universal Syndicate to take pictures of what was a “notable society event” in a place of which the public had heard much and seen nothing. He had arrived that morning with two cameras and a delighted appreciation of the beauty he was to record. But, unlike the other outsiders, his impressions extending over a longer period had not been so agreeable. He had seen the actors at close range, in their habits as they lived, lunched with them, watched the last rehearsal, taken a lot of pictures of Miss Saunders in the house and garden. And he had sensed an electric disturbance in the atmosphere, and come upon evidences of internal discord.
That was at the last rehearsal, when the poetic Viola had lost her temper like an ordinary woman and jumped on the Tracy boy—something about the place he stood in—nothing, as far as Shine could see, to get mad about. And the boy had answered in kind like the spitting of an angry cat. An ugly scene that the director had to stop.
Then the man Stokes who played the Duke, a handsome, romantic-looking chap—something was the matter with him. “Eating him” was the phrase Shine used to himself and it wasn’t a bad one. He had a haunted sort of look, as if his mind was disturbed, especially when he’d turn his eyes on Miss Saunders. Shine had noticed him particularly when they gathered for the group pictures; his hands were unsteady and the perspiration was out on his forehead though the air was cool from the sea. His wife—the woman they called Flora—was on to him. Shine saw her watching him, sidelong from under her eyelids, the way you watch a person when you don’t want them to see it.
The photographer was a fat easy-going man, inured to the vagaries of those who follow the arts. But he was sensitive to emotional stress and he felt it here—below the surface—and was moved to curiosity.
The photographs were finished and the group broke up. Part of the company were going and they ran toward the house—a medieval route—the big Sir Toby with a rolling amble, Sir Andrew, long and lank, cavorting like a mettlesome steed. Their antic shadows fled before them over the dried sea grass, and their voices, shouting absurdities, rang rich and deep-throated on the crystal atmosphere.