“What! Damage your property?”
“It would work off my bitter memories.”
“But they’re not the real live actors.”
“No—there’s the pity!” said Tony. “But they look so real—they’re life-size, you know—that I sometimes yell at ’em and abuse ’em just for the satisfaction of their not answering back. And the leading lady looks as if she had a tongue to her—I promise you. A tongue—but thank the Lord it can only talk Shakespeare or noble sentiments—can’t even nag the management for a new dress. As for the juvenile lead, I can’t help tweaking his nose sometimes for the sake of auld lang syne. Polly can’t understand my spoiling his beauty—I can’t make her see I’m getting a bit of my own back—and when she catches me punching the low comedian’s head with a boxing-glove she saucers her eyes, as though I was going dotty. But she never had to manage ’em. And I had to travel ’em too—don’t forget that. Fancy carting around a menagerie, all in the same cage! But I have my revenge when I travel ’em now—into the box they go—leads below and the heavy man sitting on their heads, ha, ha, ha!—and utilities and supers on top of all! And it don’t raise a whisper. Talk of the lion lying down with the lamb. Believe me, old cock, that there millennium will never come till we’re all on wires.” He drew vigorously at the cigar his eloquence had all but extinguished.
“There’s a lot of the brutes,” he mused between the puffs, “that don’t know Tony Flip’s escaped out of hell, and they write and call for engagements—same as Polly thought you did—and if it isn’t Sunday I take ’em to see my company and rub their noses into ’em, so to speak. Look at ’em, I say, every man and woman knowing their place, and when to speak and when to hold their blooming tongue, every one knowing their parts too, which is more than you ever did, I’ll be bound. No wigs, no make-ups, no dresses, no young bloods or decrepit dandies coming behind, no prompter, nobody missing their cue, or unpunctual or hysterical. No Bardell versus Pickwick. Nobody drunk, married, divorced, deceased, laid up, locked up, or run over, between the dress rehearsal and the first night. No understudies, eating their heads off: in the way when they’re not wanted, and missing their cues when they are. No sore throats, no funerals to go to, no babies to get—if there’s a baby wanted, I order it from the makers. And above all, my boy, say I to ’em, no treasury.”
“What’s that?” inquired Will.
“What’s that? Well I’m blowed. That’s pay-day. And kindly note, I say to ’em, that lead don’t get more than utility, nor responsibles than walking gentlemen. It’s Owenism, you sons of Mammon, I tell ’em, sheer Owenism. Everybody getting the same nothing, and nobody coming carneying for advance half-crowns. As for curtain-calls, the singing chambermaid’s got the same chance as Lady Macbeth. And when it is a leading man that’s come for a berth, I take him to the front of the booth where there’s a retired village idiot I picked up, banging the drum. Look there, says I, he’s not got much brains but he isn’t wood, and that’s the only flesh-and-blood job I’ve got left in this blooming shop. If you like to take it, why, in recognition of your position, I’ll throw in an extra naphtha flare.”
“And what do they say?” laughed Will.
“It can’t be repeated on a Sunday! But you can picture ’em black in the face—all except the nose. That gets redder than ever! Hullo, Charley! Come in! Come in!”
Through the open door he had caught sight of the landlord in the corridor.