“But did he know the part?”
“He didn’t have to. Even in the profession there are a lot of us who don’t know our parts half the time. You may have noticed. The constable said he could ‘pop a whip’ and we told him that would do, if he would remember to say ‘You black rascal!’ every little while. That would be to Uncle Tom, you know. Our Uncle Tom did both parts. That happens lots of times. With any play, I mean. He’d say: ‘Yo’ say Ah b’longs to you, Massa Legree? Oh, no, Massa Legree, Ah don’ b’long to you. Yo’ may own mah body, but yo’ don’ own mah soul.’ Saying both parts, you know.”
When Baron laughed at this she joined in the merriment and even promoted it. “The constable enjoyed it,” she said. “He said he’d like to leave town with us and play the part all the time.”
“He’d got over thinking it was sinful for him to act?”
“Yes, but the rest of us thought his first hunch was right. Besides, there were other difficulties. You see, our Topsy was the manager’s wife, and she wouldn’t play any more until she found her husband. She wasn’t much of an artist. Anyway, we had to quit.”
Baron sent a wandering glance over the theatre; but he was thinking of neither audience nor play. He wondered whose child this could be, and by what chance a little creature so alert and so friendly in her outlook upon life should be deeply submerged in the make-believe of men, when she should have been reading only the primer of real things.
Then by chance his eyes fell upon Thornburg, the manager, who stood just inside the foyer, engaged in what was seemingly an intense conversation with a tall, decidedly striking-looking woman. And even as his eyes rested upon these two they looked up at him as if he were the subject of their conversation. Or were they not, more probably, discussing the child who sat near him?
He had no time to pursue his reflections. The orchestra brought to its climax the long overture which it had been playing with almost grotesque inadequacy, and the curtain went up on the next act.
There was the sudden diminuendo of voices throughout the house, and the stealthy disturbance of an individual here and there feeling his way to his seat. Then again Baron was lost in the progress of the play.
The child shrank into herself again and became once more an absorbed, unobtruding little creature.