Quietly the hand dropped away from the door. He stood looking up into the sympathetic face of the great manager. Then with slow, shuffling steps, he went back to the dismantled boards that faced the dark auditorium. With shoulders sagging and head bent he stood for a moment. And then a stagehand, moving the last piece of scenery, saw him lift his arms and stretch them out to an empty chair in the stage box.
[247]
]UPSTAGE
COMEDY
Like beauty, color is in the eye of the beholder. To one who looks through shadows, white is—well, gray. To the uninitiated, a chorus is like a game of roulette—rouge et noir. Yet even to play that game, some of the chips must be white.
[249]
]UPSTAGE
CHAPTER I
“And I said to him: ‘My deah boy, don’t talk to me as if I were your wife! And don’t imagine you’re the only twin six in town.’ And we settled it right then and there.” The full pouting lips broadened into a reminiscent smile. The pink and white cheeks dimpled. Miss Mariette Mallard, accent on the last syllable, laid her trump card on the table for the benefit of her listener whose black eyes sparkled with gratifying interest. “And then he went out and bought me a big—”
Just what the “big” was remained a question, for Miss Mariette halted as a girl slid into the chair next to hers and stretched out a hand to dust a film of powder from the face of her mirror. They formed a queer assortment, those mirrors, all shapes and sizes, propped against both sides of the rack that ran down the center of the long make-up table.
Above them, on a wire stretching from one dusty white washed wall to the other, was suspended a row of electric lights in a tin reflector. Before them, dumped hodge-podge, were boxes of rouge and mascaro, rabbits’ feet, puffs and eyebrow brushes. Into them gazed as many types as there are flowers of the field, with just two traits in common,—all were slender as birch trees, all young as Eve before the serpent appeared. Except that to most the apple was no longer forbidden fruit.
At the moment there were some sixteen in various [250] ]stages of preparing for the costume, largely imagination, which the prettiest chorus on Broadway wore in Scene I of “Good Night Cap.” It was one of those musical mélanges commonly known as girlie shows, and advertised in red splashes of poster as “A Bevy of Beauties All under Twenty.” Its prescription is filled each season with merely a change of lights and trappings to distinguish it from its predecessor.