To begin with, it was an experience quite unforgettable to the chairman of the Prayer Meeting Committee of the Christian Endeavor Society of the grand old First Church when for the first time he found himself upon the stage of the Burbank at rehearsal time, with twenty-five or thirty real actors and actresses about him. He looked them over curiously, with a puritanic instinct for moral appraisal, as they stood, lounged, sat, gossiped, smoked, laughed or did several of these things at once; yet all keeping a wary eye and ear for the two men who sat at the little table in the center of the bare, empty stage with their heads together over a manuscript.
"Just about like other people," confessed Hampstead to himself, with something of disappointment.
There were some tailor suited women, there were some smartly dressed young men, there were some very nice girls, not more than a whit different in look and manner from the typists in the general office. There were two or three gray-haired men who, so far as appearance and demeanor went, might have served as deacons of the First Church. There were a couple of dignified, matronly-looking elderly ladies with fancy-work or mending in their laps, as they swayed to and fro in the wicker rockers that were a part of the furnishings for Act II of the play then running. These two ladies, so far as John could see, might have been respectively President of the Ladies' Aid and of the Woman's Missionary Society, instead of what they were, "character old women," as he later learned.
Totaling his impressions, Mowrey's Stock Company seemed like a large exclusive family in which he was suffered but not seen. Nobody introduced him to anybody. Mowrey merely threw him a glance, and that was not of recognition but of observation that he was present.
"First act!" snapped the manager, with a voice as sharp as the clatter of the ruler with which he rapped upon the table. Stepping forward, prompt book in one hand, ruler in the other for a pointer, he began to outline the scene upon the bare stage:
"This chair is a tree—that stage brace is a bench—this box is a rock," and so forth.
The rehearsal had begun. It moved swiftly, for Mowrey was a man with snap to him. His words were quick, nervous, few—until angry. His glance was imperative. It was all business, hot, relentless pressure of human beings into moulds, like hammering damp sand in a foundry.
"Go there! Stand here! Laugh! Weep! Look pleased! Feign intoxication!" Each short word was a blow of Mowrey's upon the wet human sand.
John's name was never mentioned. Mowrey called him by the name of his part, Ursus. Ursus was "on" in the first act, but with nothing to do, and his eyes were wide with watching. One woman in particular attracted him. She was tall and shapely, clad in a close-fitting tailored suit, with hat and veil that seemed to match both her garments and herself. She moved through her part with a kind of distinguished nonchalance, her veil half raised, and a vagrant fold of it flicking daringly at a rosy spot on her cheek when she turned suddenly; while in her gloved hands she held a short pencil with which, from time to time, additional stage directions were noted upon the pages of her part. This accomplished and really beautiful young actress was Miss Marien Dounay, one of the two leading women of the company.
Hampstead was inexperienced of women. He confessed it now to himself. But this was to be the day of his opportunity, and he felt the blood of adventure leaping in his veins. In his consciousness, too, floated little arrows like indicators, and as if by common agreement, they pointed their heads toward Miss Dounay.