It was her idea, supported by Ronald Knight, that the women’s costumes should come from Redfern’s—it was she who had seen the magic three-ply scenery at Wyndham’s, that does not vibrate when Mr. du Maurier goes forth and closes the door crisply behind him.
To do the young people justice, they never for an instant thought they were doing otherwise than serving Eliphalet an excellent turn by their exuberant suggestions.
“He’s a darling, Ronnie,” Mornice would say, most days; “but he is old-fashioned, and if we are to make the play go, we must modernise him.”
But window-boxes on the pyramids will not make them resemble art villas at Letchworth, and this fact they learnt too late to be of use.
Naturally, these many preoccupations kept Mornice so busy that the study of her part was almost entirely side-tracked, but it never occurred to her to entertain misgivings on that account.
About this time a slight staleness was discernible in the progress of the play. Eliphalet could not tell whence it arose or how to combat it, but vaguely he wished for the services of some virile brain other than his own to preside at rehearsals. Mr. Raymond Wakefield, for instance, who had tied him up in such painful knots on the occasion of his appearance in London. He would have known in an instant what was required.
There were legions of tiny but vital subtleties that cried out for definition, and in all Eliphalet’s bag of tricks there was no machinery for bringing them into focus. In every scene they bubbled up through the lines, like vortices in quicksand. A thousand fine points of psychology that needed assembling, refining and giving prominence. Eliphalet was bewildered by their numbers; he did not know where or how to start work upon them, and he sat by the footlights, brows contracted, finger-tips together, in silent dissatisfaction with himself and the play. On the seventh day of rehearsals he rose distractedly, and exclaimed:
“We are not getting on, ladies and gentlemen. I am sure we are all doing our best, but we are not getting any forrader.”
Then old Kitterson spoke.
“I know it, Guv’nor; but it’s devilish hard. How are we going to get big effects out of these lines? I’m not saying anything against ’em, mind.”