When Jane Goring had finished the last morsel of her chicken salad and leisurely emptied her cup of Chinese tea, they adjourned once more to the drawing-room and the discussion was resumed.
A lantern of golden fire was hanging in the Western sky by the time the play had been revamped to the star’s satisfaction. More than once its author took hat in hand and made for the door. But Cleeburg’s persuasive clutch and the whisper that an additional advance would be paid for his trouble detained him. And finally an agreement was reached.
Her objection to the drama as it stood, however, [88] ]necessitated a postponement of rehearsals and it was late July before the company assembled on the stage of a playhouse just off Broadway. It annoyed Goring to forego her usual few weeks of rest but since she wished to have a New York opening in October, there was nothing else to be done.
The day the company was called was dank and humid, a breathless day thick with summer dust, ominous with thunderclouds.
At ten Goring emerged from a cold bath, was dressed by her maid’s moist fingers, and at eleven crossed the soggy pavement from her car to the stage entrance. The drive downtown had been stifling. It dizzied her. To enter the dark passageway and look out into the space of auditorium, linen-covered, was a relief.
What is there about an empty theater that fascinates? The bare boards of the stage, the heaps of scenery piled against bare brick walls, the bare table and chairs ranged to form a semicircle within which the actors move back and forth, the single electric light, bare of shade, jutting up in the center like a giant eye in the cool darkness—surely there is no illusion about them, no suggestion of the world of make-believe into which they evolve. Yet the very odor of the place redolent of grease-paint—those who love it sniff it as a thoroughbred sniffs tanbark.
Manager, actors, author—they are about to conjure from those bare boards all the elements of life. Conflict, laughter, tears, love, hate, happiness—death! Theirs to build, theirs to take the written page and make of it a tingling human thing. Theirs to people empty [89] ]chairs. Theirs to clothe with flesh and blood a skeleton. A wave of the wand and into emptiness springs a home with soft rugs and rich-colored hangings, deep divans, the ring of voices, the flooding of moonlight or warm glow of the sun. And best of all, out in that empty auditorium when the lights go up will throng a crowd whose hearts will be theirs to thrill, to wring, to charm. Theirs the blessed privilege, the joy of creation. That’s why they love it in spite of the ache of disappointment, the discouragement of failure. That’s why they cling to it.
Those assembled on the stage that throttling day of July had risen tired from their beds, dragged wearily in from the street, noticed that the management had electric fans going and laughed at the idea of getting any relief from them. Yet the instant Goring appeared, followed a few minutes later by Cleeburg, a light sprang into their eyes, the spontaneous light of anticipation, and they promptly forgot the weather. The play had been read to them the day before and their parts assigned, so that they were ready to plunge into work.
Goring shook hands with her leading man and nodded to the rest, all of whom were known to her—she had practically the same support from year to year—except a slight girl whose face was so thin that her eyes looked abnormally big and hungry. It made their expression almost frightened.
The company ran quickly through the first act, parts in hand, while Cleeburg sat under an electric fan and listened. Then, after a few words with the author who was hunched in a seat somewhere in the ghostlike [90] ]auditorium, he ripped off pongee coat, his collar and necktie, and real work began.