Behind the big curtain he found all the actors in Cary’s play assembled—except one. The star—everybody had taken to calling Fanny Fitch the star throughout the rehearsals—was still missing, quite after the manner of stars. It was yet early, and the audience in front was but half assembled, but Cary had laid great stress upon everybody’s being ready and in the wings before the curtain should rise. He had small faith in amateur call boys and prompters, and the action of the play was to take place so rapidly that nobody could be permitted to linger in a dressing-room once the piece was on.
Cary greeted Tom as a laggard. Cary himself was a French officer—and looked the part to the life; but he was also a stage manager of martinet qualities.
“About time, you boy! Where’s Miss Fitch? Go back and get her. Hustle!” The whisper hissed above the tuning of the orchestra.
Tom sped back downstairs. Red Pepper Burns, in the dress of an operating surgeon soiled and gory, his face made up to show lines of fatigue, commented in Nan Lockhart’s ear: “Trust Fanny to play the part off stage as well as on. Presume she’s reckoning on holding everything up till she gets here?”
Nan frowned. “You never do her justice, Doctor Burns. Fanny’s a born actress, why shouldn’t she have the little sins of one? But she’s going to surprise you to-night. She really can act, you know. She’s been only walking through rehearsals.”
“All right—but she’ll have to get a lot more punch into her work than I can believe her capable of. Speaking of punch—I haven’t much left myself to-night,” growled Red. The fatigue suggested by the lines upon his face had been easy to lay on, by the make-up man downstairs, who had had only to intensify those already there. As might easily have been prophesied by those who knew his life intimately, Red had just had a week of infernally hard work in the operating room, and was much fitter for a good night’s sleep than for playing the part of a first line surgeon on the French front.
Robert Black, in the wings, was keeping in order a little group of children who were representing Belgian orphans—protégés of an Englishwoman who had come to France to help look after the refugees. Nan Lockhart had this part; it fitted her beautifully. Jane Ray was the Red Cross nurse in charge at the clearing station; her white uniform and glowing red veil brought out her dusky beauty of colouring strikingly. Three young American ambulance drivers—of whom Harry Perkins, the young usher at the Stone Church, was one—stood together in the wings, commenting favourably upon Miss Ray. Altogether, no body was really doing anything but waiting when Tom Lockhart, grinning joyously through his queerly contrasting pallid make-up, at last followed Fanny Fitch upon the stage.
She had refused to dress for the dress rehearsal of the preceding evening, explaining that her costume was as yet in the making. She had, quite as Nan had said, “walked through” her part and rather languidly, at that, in the street attire in which she had come to the little theatre which was the suburban town’s pride. So now, quite suddenly and startlingly, appeared to the view of her fellow actors the French actress of music-hall fame whom Fanny was to represent in the part which Cary, the moment he had set eyes upon her—and, he might have added, found her eyes upon him—had declared would fit her like a glove. As Red and Ellen and Cary Ray and Robert Black now beheld the dazzling figure before them, there could be no question in their minds that if Miss Fitch could act the part as she now looked it, there would be nothing left to be desired. As for young Tommy Lockhart, he was clearly quite out of his head with a crazy admiration which he did not even attempt to disguise. What was the use? And must not all men be one with him in adoring this radiant creature?
Fanny was a vision—there’s no use denying it. All that fairness of feature and provocation of eye enhanced by the cleverest art of the make-up box, and set off by daring line and colour of gown, could do to make her wondrous to look upon, had been achieved. All that a deep excitement, a complete confidence in what her mirror had told her, a surety of at least a measure of real histrionic power, could give in aid of the finished effect, was there. But as she came very quietly upon the stage there was nothing at all in her bearing to indicate that she thought herself a form of delight, rather did she suggest that she was dreading her difficult rôle, and not at all confident that she could hope even to please the eye. Tom, indeed, could have sworn that this was so. Had he not held a brief but satisfying dialogue with her on the way upstairs?
“Oh, Tom!” she had called, “is it really time to go on? I’m so frightened! Do you suppose I can ever do it as Mr. Ray wants it done?”