'I loved my role. I had such a good costume change. Here in the first act I was the wife of the local doctor and I wore a cocktail gown from Bergdorf Goodman's--it cost two hundred bucks! The director kicked like a steer--he said it wasn't suitable to an Oklahoma small town, but the producer was kind of sweet on me--he was a Communist and awfully rich, his father's a New York banker, he was a sweet boy, only kind of a screwball--and he let me have it. And even the director came to admit I was right, because it made such a swell contrast when my husband gets bumped off and I'm a poor widow and living in a share cropper's shack and I'm all in rags and barefoot--and thank God I've got feet that will stand showing--look; see how regular the toes are and what a high arch--and I was kind of the queen of the share croppers, you might say--you know, with my hair loose and a spotlight on me--and I led the revolt--wow, it was colossal! Oh dear!'
Bethel was a skilful listener; always had been; and until Nile Sanderac was gone and Andy again delivered to the arms--or at least, the conversation--of Mahala, she was Mahala's heart's-ease and swimming companion.
Mahala Vale was neither a fool nor entirely vicious. She was a handsome young woman whose mind was flexible enough to give her a high stand in the stage army--she would certainly some day be one of the best of the second-rate actresses. There was one small trouble with her: she could not conceive that any person or any play or any historical event or any dollar in legal minted coin could have any importance except in its relationship to her.
Bethel had to admit that Mahala taught her several bits of stage craftsmanship--all of the lowest and trickiest. You must always assume, even if unfairly, insisted Mahala, that almost any old trouper was at any moment likely to do anything short of creeping up behind you and clapping on a red nose, to turn the audience's attention from you to him.
He would stand facing the audience, with his back to you, during your long, tear-dripping confession, and you could see that he wasn't moving, not doing anything to throw you--no, he was merely looking comically lugubrious, and twisting a coat button, or running his fingers along the edges of his lapels. And the dear old lady, the mother of the company, seated way down right-stage--it wasn't her fault that you always got a wrong laugh when you were gazing into the hero's eyes; all the old darling had done was to light a cigarette as though she had never, never smoked one of the horrid things before, and give a dear little pussy sneeze.
Mahala said righteously: 'People that do lousy tricks like that, they ought to be kicked off the stage. They have no appreciation of the fact that you all got to work together to make a perfect performance; and there isn't any one actor, no matter how perfect he is, that's got a right to grab any spotlight off anybody else. So when you run into scene stealers like that, you just do something to throw 'em, and maybe that'll teach 'em something!
'I remember once--it wasn't so long ago, either!--I was playing There's Always Juliet in stock with a born kleptomaniac. His ducky little trick was to pause before the last three-four words of a speech, so you didn't know whether he was going to give you your cue or not, and then if you jumped it, he'd give you the cue after all. I fixed him! Middle of a speech, I'd start to powder my nose, and just held it and stared at him. I got him so embarrassed he used to blow every night!
''N' of course--and here's something you'll never learn from Roscoe or any of these dramatic schools or those amateurs: the way to cure upstaging is, if a guy starts going upstage, on account of he thinks you'll turn your back to the audience and follow him, why, you just deliberately go right down to the foots, giving your lines to him over your shoulder--and if you think the producer ain't around to catch you, you can even kind of half wink at the audience so's they'll know what's up. That'll show 'm!'
'I see,' said Bethel.
Mahala had often spoken of the wealth and other charms of a young Mrs. Tzirka who in summer lived at East Haddam, ten miles from Grampion. Her husband was a stockbroker--but artistic; she was the daughter of a wholesale jute dealer--but a very wholesale dealer in the best of jute; one of the men who had given jute its social significance.
On Saturday, Mahala permitted Bethel to borrow Pete's car and drive her to the Tzirka villa.
'They won't want to see me,' Bethel had hesitated.
'Betty Tzirka'll most especially want you. Her brother, Jock, a grand kid, 'll be there, and he'll think you're manna from heaven.'
This, felt Bethel, was going to be her first real 'society party' (she called it that) and a foretaste of the refined exuberance, the beautiful people, she was going to know. She pressed out her best silk print dress in the dormitory kitchen and dared try some flowers in her hair.
When she saw the Tzirka house, she suddenly knew what sort of a retreat she would have when she had become a reigning actress. It was simple enough, a white salt-box cottage at peace with a landscape of river and small hills and apple orchards, but it had been made frivolous with a green-and-white awning and a crazy-paving terrace, with green wicker chairs and glass-topped small tables, concealed by an old stone wall above the roadway. Here the Famous Merriday would read, rest and talk with friends . . . talk about the stage, of course.
Mrs. Tzirka, thirty and slim and quivering and chemically blonde, met them at the flight of stone steps up from the roadway. Bethel was conscious of being regarded without favour.
Mahala bellowed, 'Betty! Darling! Priceless! I've brought you a lovely date for your imbecile Jock. Beth Merriday.'
Mrs. Tzirka crooned at Mahala in answer, and doves at twilight were as nothing beside her: 'Oh, Maggie! Duckie! Darling! I'm too-too sorry. Jock, the monster, has gone up to Hartford to see the polo. But I'm enchanted to see you, Miss Merriday.' She glanced at Mahala over Bethel's shoulder, with a distinct lack of enchantment.
And now did Bethel find herself on-stage in a play with a charming set of sun-speckled awning and wicker couches and glasses of gin rickey and maple trunks, expected to snap up her cues and give her lines at fever tempo. But the cues were in some foreign language and she didn't know any of her lines. She didn't even know what the play was about.
There had been provided, for Mahala and Mrs. Tzirka, two slightly rancid young-old men, aged some indistinguishable where between twenty-five and forty-five, both with double-breasted grey flannel suits, black moustaches, meaningless yelps at the names of meaningless people, and a way of looking at her as though she were a milkmaid. ('Two villains in the damn play,' sighed Bethel.)
The four Sophisticated People were amused rather than annoyed when she carried her rusticity so far as to refuse a gin rickey, and they plunged into a coloured pool of gossip, of which Bethel understood not a word:
'Simmy's going to divorce Natalie--he ran into her with Tom at El Morocco and--you know how quick on the trigger he is--he said, "Sweetie-pie, if you want a round-trip Reno ticket, I think Tom and I ought to split the cost".'
'I don't believe a word of what she says about Joe always nipping outside the house. I know for a fact he's completely domesticated. It's the parlourmaid at home he's interested in.'
'Xavier isn't broke. He's still got his annuity. Why, he's got a Scotch grouse moor. No--fact--he's laid it out in his own back yard.'
At what time in this feast Mahala rose with the younger of the two beaux--or maybe it was the older--muttered 'Be back in a moment', and drifted off with him to the birch grove beyond the house; at what time Mrs. Tzirka followed with the other prize, Bethel was not quite sure; but presently she was entirely alone on the terrace, and she was alone for half an hour.
It was a half-hour of growing and healthy anger. She suddenly knew that these slick people, with their references to polo and yachting and Meadowbrook, were fakes; that they hadn't much even of the one thing they worshipped--money. It was good that they had not buttered her; their rudeness had made her less likely ever again to mistake insolence for good manners.