On the stage of the Gotham gloom reigned—literally, because the stage was wide and deep and was illumined only by a single electric light: and figuratively, because things were going even worse than usual with the “My Heart and I” number, and Johnson Miller, always of an emotional and easily stirred temperament, had been goaded by the incompetence of his male chorus to a state of frenzy. At about the moment when Otis Pilkington shed his flowered dressing-gown and reached for his trousers (the heather-mixture with the red twill), Johnson Miller was pacing the gangway between the orchestra pit and the first row of the orchestra chairs, waving one hand and clutching his white locks with the other, his voice raised the while in agonized protest.
“Gentlemen, you silly idiots,” complained Mr Miller loudly, “you’ve had three weeks to get these movements into your thick heads, and you haven’t done a damn thing right! You’re all over the place! You don’t seem able to turn without tumbling over each other like a lot of Keystone Kops! What’s the matter with you? You’re not doing the movements I showed you; you’re doing some you have invented yourselves, and they are rotten! I’ve no doubt you think you can arrange a number better than I can, but Mr Goble engaged me to be the director, so kindly do exactly as I tell you. Don’t try to use your own intelligence, because you haven’t any. I’m not blaming you for it. It wasn’t your fault that your nurses dropped you on your heads when you were babies. But it handicaps you when you try to think.”
Of the seven gentlemanly members of the male ensemble present, six looked wounded by this tirade. They had the air of good men wrongfully accused. They appeared to be silently calling on Heaven to see justice done between Mr. Miller and themselves. The seventh, a long-legged young man in faultlessly-fitting tweeds of English cut, seemed, on the other hand, not so much hurt as embarrassed. It was this youth who now stepped down to the darkened footlights and spoke in a remorseful and conscience-stricken manner.
“I say!”
Mr Miller, that martyr to deafness, did not hear the pathetic bleat. He had swung off at right angles and was marching in an overwrought way up the central aisle leading to the back of the house, his india rubber form moving in convulsive jerks. Only when he had turned and retraced his steps did he perceive the speaker and prepare to take his share in the conversation.
“What?” he shouted. “Can’t hear you!”
“I say, you know, it’s my fault, really.”
“What?”
“I mean to say, you know …”
“What? Speak up, can’t you?”