I went through in search of my man.
His dressing-room was the first place I drew. I knew that he was not due on the stage for another ten minutes. Mr. Richard Belsey, his valet, was tidying up the room as I entered.
“Mr. Briggs anywhere about, Richard?” I asked.
“Down on the side, sir, I think. There’s a new song in tonight for Mrs. Briggs, and he’s gone to listen how it goes.”
“Which side, do you know?”
“O.P., sir, I think.”
I went downstairs and through the folding-doors into the wings. The O.P. corner was packed—standing room only—and the overflow reached nearly to the doors. The Black Hole of Calcutta was roomy compared with the wings on the night of a new song. Everybody who had the least excuse for being out of his or her dressing-room at that moment was peering through odd chinks in the scenery. Chorus-girls, show-girls, chorus-men, principals, children, scene-shifters, and other theatrical fauna waited in a solid mass for the arrival of the music-cue.
The atmosphere behind the scenes has always had the effect of making me feel as if my boots were number fourteens and my hands, if anything, larger. Directly I have passed the swing-doors I shuffle like one oppressed with a guilty conscience. Outside I may have been composed, even jaunty. Inside I am hangdog. Beads of perspiration form on my brow. My collar tightens. My boots begin to squeak. I smile vacuously.
I shuffled, smiling vacuously and clutching the type-script of The Girl who Waited, to the O.P. corner. I caught the eye of a tall lady in salmon-pink, and said “Good evening” huskily—my voice is always husky behind the scenes: elsewhere it is like some beautiful bell. A piercing whisper of “Sh-h-h-!” came from somewhere close at hand. This sort of thing does not help bright and sparkling conversation. I sh-h-hed, and passed on.
At the back of the O.P. corner Timothy Prince, the comedian, was filling in the time before the next entrance by waltzing with one of the stage-carpenters. He suspended the operation to greet me.