"It's a curious mess, that's all," says Oakley, spreadin' out his manicured fingers and shruggin' his shoulders under his Donegal Norfolk. "I'm not sure if the new piece will ever go on."
"Another procrastinating producer?" asks Mr. Robert careless.
"No, a finicky author this time," says Oakley. "You see, there is one part, a character part, which I'm insisting must be cast right. It seemed easy at first. But these women of our American stage! No training, no facility, no understanding! Not one of them can fill it, and we've tried nearly a dozen. If I could only find the original!"
"Eh?" says Mr. Robert, who's been payin' more attention to manipulatin' the soda siphon than to Oakley's beefin'. "What original?"
"The dumbest, woodenest, most conscientious young female person it has ever been my lot to meet," goes on Mr. Mills. "Talk about your rare types! You should have known Faithful Fannie (my name for her, you know). It was out in the Middle West last summer. I had two or three weeks' work to do on the new piece, revising it to fit Amy Dean. All stars of that magnitude demand it, you understand.
"Well, I should have stayed right here until it was done, but some Chicago friends wanted me to go with them up into the lake region, promised me an ideal place to work in—all that. So I went. I might have had better sense. You know these bungalow colonies in the woods—where they live in fourteen-room log cabins, fitted with electric lights and English butlers? Bah! It was bridge and tennis and dancing day and night, with a new mob every week-end. Work? As well try it in the middle of the Newport Casino.
"So I hunted up a little third-rate summer hotel a mile or so off, where the guests were few and the food wretched, and camped down with my mangled script and my typewriter. There I met Fannie the Unforgetful. She was the waitress I happened to draw out of a job lot. I suppose it was her début at that sort of thing. For the sake of hungry humanity I hope it was. What she did not know about serving was simply amazing; but her capacity for absorbing suggestions and obeying orders was profound. 'Could I have a warm plate?' I asked at the first meal. 'Oh, certainly, Sir,' says Fannie, and from then on every dish she brought me was piping hot, even to the cold-meat platter and the ice cream saucer. It was that way with every wish I was rash enough to express. Fannie never forgot, and she kept to the letter of the law.
"Also she would stand patiently and watch me eat. That is, she would fix her eyes on me intently, never moving, and keep them there for a quarter of an hour at a time. A little embarrassing, you know, to be so constantly observed. She had such big, stary eyes too, absolutely without any expression in them. To break the spell I would order things I didn't want, just to get her out of the way for a moment or so while I snatched a few unwatched bites. You know how it is? There's green corn. Now I like to tackle that with both hands; but I don't care to be closely inspected while I'm at it. I used to fancy that her gaze was somewhat critical. 'Good heavens, Girl!' I said one day. 'Can't you look somewhere else—at the ceiling, or out of the window?' She chose the ceiling. It was a bit weird to have her stationed opposite me, her eyes rolled heavenward. Uncanny! It attracted the attention of the other guests. But it was something of a relief. I could watch her then.
"There was something fascinating about Faithful Fannie, though, as there is about all unusually plain persons. Not that she was positively homely. Her features were regular enough, I suppose. But she was such a tall, slim, colorless, neutral creature! And awkward! You've seen a young turkey, all legs and neck, with its silly head bobbing above the tall grass? Well, something like that. And as I never read at my meals I had nothing else to do but study that sallow, unmoving face of hers with its steady, emotionless, upward gaze. Was she thinking? And what about! Who was she? Where had she come from?
"A haunting face, Fannie's was; at least, for me. It became almost an obsession. I could see it as I sat down to my work. And the first thing I knew I was writing Fannie into my play. There was a maid's part in it,—the conventional, table-dusting, note-carrying, tea-serving maid, with not half a dozen words to speak. But before I knew it this insignificant part had become so elaborated, I had sketched in Fannie's personality so vividly, that the whole action and theme of the piece were revolving about her—hinged on her. I couldn't seem to stop, either. I wrote on and on and—well, by Jove! it ended in my turning out something entirely different from that which I had begun. The original skeleton is still there, the characters are the same; but the values have exchanged places. This is a Fannie play through and through. And it's good, the biggest thing I've done; but——" Once more Oakley shrugs his shoulders and ends with a deep sigh.