Rehearsal was called for nine sharp yesterday. BROTHER and his brother were waiting. GIRL and MAN appeared at ten-ten. She said--

"Dearie, I hate to tell you, but I got bad news for you." Then, turning to him, she said, compa.s.sionately, "Say, hon', you tell her!

I haven't got the heart."

"Why," said the bandit, regretfully, "what she means is this: she's got a swell chance to go on tour with 'Kiss and Tell,' and she feels like she hadn't ought to turn it down. It's more her line than this kind of thing, you know."

I counted ten to myself, slowly, and then I said:

"Very well. I daresay you know of some girl who is a quick study and can get up in the part by Monday, with your help."

She stared and then began to giggle. "Say, girlie, I'm the limit.

Didn't I tell you? I _married_ the boy!" At my gasp she went on, confidentially, linking her arm in mine. "Yes, dearie. You see, it's like this. I gotter have somebody, anyhow, to look after luggage, and you know what this life is. A girl's gotter have protection."

When they were gone I turned to look at BROTHER. I almost thought he was going to cry, and he began to cough, just as he does in the sketch.

"Oh, please," I said, "don't keep doing that! We aren't rehearsing now."

And he stopped and said, "That's just it, Miss Vail. I'm not rehearsing. It's--that's how it is with me. That's why I knew I could get by with the part. I thought if we got good bookings, why, I'd be fixed to take a good long rest, afterwards,--out on the desert or up in the snow. It isn't bad, yet. They tell me I've got a great chance." Then his chin quivered. "That's why it kind of hits me right where I live, having this thing go on the rocks."

"It mustn't," I said. "It can't! We won't let it!" I knew it was only a miracle that could save us, in that breathlessly short time, but I have a vigorous belief in miracles. "There must be a man and a girl, somewhere----"

Then the lean, silent brother of BROTHER spoke. "I don't suppose you'd give me a whack at it, would you? I've learned every word of the whole 'script, watching every day the way I have. I can do it. I can do it if you'll let me. I don't think that fellow ever had your idea of it. Look,--the part where THE HAWK tells her what a rotten deal he's always had, isn't this how you meant it?"--and he dropped into a chair, took a knee between his brown, lean hands, looked off into the empty theater for a moment--and then, Sally, he read the lines as I'd written them. Instantly, I was happier than I'd been since I tore the final page out of the typewriter, visualizing the thing as I meant it to be.

"It's yours," I chortled in my joy. "You can have it on a silver salver!"

"If only we can get a girl," BROTHER was worrying. "We ought to get one, easy. She needn't be so much of a looker."

"And we'll cut the comedy and the dance," I said, thankfully.

"There must be a hundred girls crazy for the job, with all the idle acts there are now. All she's got to do is walk through,--it's actress proof, that part. If we could just get a girl, not too young, kind of pathetic looking----"

Then, suddenly and serenely, I knew what I was going to do. And I knew that, sink or swim, never again was I going to "put it under." I told them to wait. I taxied opulently home. My waif was curled up in my kimono, feeding my fan-tailed goldfish. "Hurry up," I said, briskly. "You're holding the rehearsal!"

While she was scrambling, bewilderedly, into her clothes, I explained to her and dug out the old 'scripts and carbons, and on the way back I told her the story and gave her the idea of how she was to play it.

She hadn't had time to put on her sea-sh.e.l.l tint, but the hollows in her cheeks filled up with pink excitement as I talked. When I marched in with her the men gave her one look, grinned, and heaved gusty sighs of relief. We rehea.r.s.ed all day and half the night. We haven't told the office a word about the defection of the two vaude-villains.

The printing is out, of course, and the old names will stand. She is stiff with fright and bodily unfit for the strain, but she's giving everything she's got, and she's delicious in quality for the part.

Yours in weary bliss,

J.

_Monday._ 3.15 A.M.

Sarah, I feel like Guido Reni (if it was Guido Reni) when he stabbed his servant to get the actual agony for the "Ecce h.o.m.o!" My girl fainted away in the middle of her big speech an hour ago. I have tucked her up in bed after a rub and a cup of hot milk and she is to sleep until noon. BROTHER'S brother tried pitifully, but he didn't get through a single speech without prompting. I'm terrified! Suppose they muddle it utterly, what will the Powers say to me--after not telling them of the change in cast? I wish I hadn't asked Michael Daragh to come to the matinee. I _must_ stop. I know I won't sleep a wink, but I'll put out the light and lie down and shut my eyes.

JANE.

_Monday Midnight._

Oh, Sally dearest, I don't know where to begin! I'll make myself start with the morning. I slipped out before my starveling was awake, leaving a cheering note for her. I took the bus up to Grant's Tomb and walked back along the river to Seventy-second Street. It was the most marvelous blue-and-gold morning; I speeded myself to a glow on shady paths or sat steeping for a moment in the sun. I held happy converse with democratic dogs and reserved and haughty babies and dawdled, but even so I found myself with a panicky margin of time on my hands. Then I bethought myself of my never-failing remedy for troublesome thoughts and I went joyously forth like a he-goat on the mountains and bought a ruinous pair of proud shoes and put them on. I knew the gloating over them would leave me small room for forebodings. You know how I've always been. You used to call me "Goody Two-Shoes." These are cunningly contrived to make my No. 4, triple A, look like a 2, and I walked upon air, narrowly missing being mown down by traffic, my eyes upon my feet. On the way to the Palace I made myself repeat that lovely thing of Gelett Burgess's--

"My feet, they haul me round the house; They hoist me up the stairs; I only have to steer them, and They ride me everywheres!"

I purchased an orchestra seat and inquired carelessly at what hour my sketch (only I didn't say it was my sketch) went on. I found we were sandwiched in between the newest Tramp Juggler and the Trained Seals!

Then I went behind and saw my gallant little company, made up and dressed too soon, waiting in awful idleness with strained smiles and ghastly cheer. I petted and patted them all round and cast an agitated eye over the set. A grimy young stagehand made a minor change for me with a languid, not unkind contempt. "What's the big idea?" he wanted to know. "Goner slip 'em some high-brow stuff? Say, this is the wrong pew, sister. They won't stand for nothing like that here. Up in the Bronx, maybe--" I turned and basely fled. I went out in front and found my place. The orchestra rollicked through the overture and people poured in and ushers slid down the aisles and snapped down the seats. I studied the people's faces as a gladiator might have done in the arena. Thumbs up? Thumbs down? A row behind me, across the aisle, sat Michael Daragh, but he did not see me. Two petulantly pretty girls in regal furs sank into seats beyond me, and a white-spatted, rosy-wattled gentleman in a subduedly elegant waistcoat took the one on the end.

The annunciator flashed A and a pair of black-face comedians "opened the show," but they did not get it very far open for people were jamming in and elbows were silhouetted against the light. They doggedly plugged away, firing their tragic comedy, making brave capital even of the silences, but through my gla.s.ses I was sure I could see the strained anxiety of their eyes. It was a relief to have them go. Then the Trained Seals were with us, lovely things like gentle, tidy, sleek-headed little girls. My heart was going like a metronome set for a tarantella and my wrist-watch ticked breathlessly--"Coming--Coming--Coming!"

If only we were Z instead of C!

"Funny thing, you know," said the occupant of the end seat, conversationally, "they tell me they're easier than any other animal in the world to train, except a pig. Fact. Circus man told me."

He had a genial face, creased into jolly patterns, and my heart warmed to him, and to Michael Daragh and the pretty girls and the fat old lady in front of me. Nice people, kind people. It seemed certain that they must want real things, clean things.

I took out a pencil to make notes for corrections, but the annunciator said D, and a lady who would have done nicely as Venus came out attired as Cupid and the house rocked with welcome. I was cold with conjecture. _What_ had happened back there? Had my poor starveling fainted again? Had BROTHER'S brother died of fright? I sat shivering through the sprightly number until C, said the electric lights, and the orchestra began softly to play--

"In days of old, When knights were bold--"

The curtain rose on the bleak telegraph station, on my thin spinster in her rocking chair. It was a lean vision for eyes lately ravished by the Venus lady's charms; programs rattled; the Tramp Juggler was to follow. I could see her chest rising and falling jerkily with her frightened breath and her hands shook so that she could hardly hold her sewing. From far aloft came that loud guffaw that speaks the vacant mind and one of the pretty girls next me giggled in echo. Then something seemed to go through my waif; the Burne-Jones jaw was taut; she got hold of herself; then, slowly, steadily, surely, little by little, she got hold of the house. The man on the end who had slouched comfortably down in his seat, sat sharply upright and the girls stopped whispering. BROTHER came on, and his brother as the MAN. The tempo was perfect, the acceleration blood-quickening. Laughs came at unexpected places, friendly and cordial. The girl was like a melody in low tones; she built up her climax cunningly, warming, coloring, kindling.

"Good gad!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the spatted gentleman in the aisle seat, "you know, that girl can act!" The old lady in front lifted a frank handkerchief; the giggling girls were raptly watching. Now the GIRL'S big moment came. Her voice, faded and gentle before, was harsh and strident. "_I don't care! I don't care! You hush! You keep still!_"

When she gave him his broth she had seemed the gentlest of living creatures; now, pushing him ruthlessly to the floor, she was a fury, pitiless, obsessed. All the starved romance, all the pinched poverty of her life, all the lean and lonely years she had known cried out in hunger, not to be denied; she was a tigress doing battle for her mate.

And then, when the rattle and roar of the train died away, BROTHER'S hacking cough sounded from behind the closed door, and stark reality laid hold on her again. Her thin hands went together on her breast and then fell slackly to her sides. She seemed visibly to shrink and shrivel. Racked and spent with her one crowded hour, she stood looking into the bleak and empty vista of the years.

I was in the aisle before the curtain fell, speeding past the people, the applauding people, the beautiful, kind, understanding people, past the benediction of Michael Daragh's lifted look. The applause followed me out through the lobby--oh, Sally dear, no choir invisible could make half so celestial a sound!--and when I got behind the scenes it was still coming in--solid, genuine, hearty waves of it.

I heard hurrying feet behind me but I did not pause. I guessed who it was, but I wouldn't turn to look. In the orderly chaos of props and people--and it was an ugly land of disillusion no longer but the land of heart's desire, Sally--I found my gallant little band of fighting hope, beaming and breathless after the fifth honest curtain, coming to me on buoyant feet.

Stern St. Michael had caught up with me then, and he bent his austere head to say very humbly, "Woman, dear, I'm so high with pride for you, and so low with shame for me, that I could ever be doubting----"

But the grimy young stagehand, halting in front of me with an armful of the Tramp Juggler's playthings, cut his sentence in two.

"Say,"--he held out a dark and hearty paw--"put her there, sister!

Say, I guess maybe that's poor? Say, I guess maybe that's not puttin'

it over!"

Jubilantly,

JANE.

CHAPTER V