'Maggie,' said McDermid, 'I wish you wouldn't wave your arms so, when you make your cross in your scene with Forbes, in two.'
'Elsie, listen darling, don't yell so when you say to me, "It was just the most romantic thing that ever happened in the world". Can't you underplay it a little? Dulcy is a comedy, you know!'
'Say, did you see that Ramona Snyder has been cast for the name part in Stop It, Rosika? They go into rehearsal in August,' said Irma Wheat.
'And is she lousy! I bet they don't pay her a hundred and fifty, and no run-of-the-play contract,' said Maggie Sample.
'Don't mention money. I don't know what we got a box office for,' said McDermid.
It was the catsup bottle that introduced Bethel to them, though this did not surprise her, since she loved the romantic catsup label with its legend: 'Made only of fresh ripe tomatoes, onion, salt, and rare and imported spices from the Orient.'
'Please pass us the catsup,' said McDermid to her.
'Oh--yes.' It was a convulsive effort, but Bethel got out, 'I--I loved the play to-night.'
'Oh, did you, honest? Was I terrible? I just can't seem to do these swell society girls,' wailed Elsie Krall.
For all her loyalty, Bethel had confusedly felt that Elsie really had been fairly 'terrible' on the stage; awkward and bouncing. But she lied like a gentleman. Then--oh, she had to know; it was her whole life--Bethel blurted:
'How can you get to be an actress?'
Elsie stared. She looked as though she were asking the same question herself. McDermid smiled. Irma Wheat said, 'God only knows! But what do you want to go on the stage for, anyway?'
Maggie Sample was like Lady Macbeth in one of her moments of exasperation with her husband, as she protested to Bethel, 'Do you want to starve? I've been on the stage thirty years, and here I am in this flop of a stock company in the sticks--'
McDermid smiled. 'Hey, hey!' was all he said.
'--and next fall I'll be lucky if I get a job as a kosher ham sandwich in a Number Two Company of Abie's Irish Rose. When you grow up, child,' and she smiled at Bethel, 'you try to squirm into prison, or get a nice job hustling hash, or even get married, or anything to avoid going on the stage.'
'You know you'd rather act than eat, Maggie,' said McDermid.
'That's only because I never get a chance to eat.'
'Now don't discourage this young lady. She has wide-awake eyes. Maybe she's felt the call to the stage.
'Oh, you and your Lambs Club poetry!' Miss Wheat scolded at McDermid, as she arose, with the sardonic Maggie Sample. 'You're going to be telling this poor, deluded kid that it's better to climb up on the steam pipes in a dressing room in order to keep your feet out of the water when the toilet has busted, and to sit up all night learning seventy-five sides, at sixty bucks a week, closing on Saturday, than it is to work in a grocery store. Me, that've got it on Gloria Swanson from ankles to consonants, playing in a dump behind a factory in Connecticut. You can keep it. Caryl, darling, if you weren't my boss, and if I didn't love you distractedly, I'd tip you off that you're as screwy as a Russian director.'
'No. He's not bright enough,' said Miss Sample.
Exeunt, Irma and Maggie.
'It isn't true, what she said. It is fun to be on the stage, isn't it?' Bethel begged of Elsie.
'Yes, I guess it is. I don't know yet. I been acting such a little time.' Elsie looked troubled. 'I was waiting on table in Teneriffe Junction, in Iowa, when Mr. McDermid came along and married me. He's been so sweet--yes, you have, too, Caryl--but I guess he gets kind of impatient--oh, I don't blame you, darling. It's so kind of hard for me to understand why a lot of the characters act like they do. Take like last week; why did Hester--Did you see me in Silver Cord then?'
'Oh yes!'
'Oh, I'm glad. But I don't guess I was very good. But why did Hester fall for a softie like Robin? Honest, it's so kind of hard, all this acting. But I love the travel. I collect things--from department stores. We only been married a year, and I got an Austrian peasant costume from Marshall Field's and a pair of python shoes from Halle's, in Cleveland, and a brazeer from Sicily, all hand-embroidered, in Columbus, and all kinds of things. But I do get scared--all those hellhounds in the audience coughing!'
McDermid said hastily, 'Elsie is about as new to it as you are, my dear, but you'll both make good. And--How do you get a chance to act? Well, first you get all the training you can. Training! Act wherever you can--even if it's in the barn. And then get God to pass you some good luck. That's all I know. And it's worth it. Even if you aren't much good--and me, I guess I'm probably just the run-of-the-mill ham--even so, when you've been creating a human being, and living in him, then the rest of the world outside the theatre, with all its fussing about houses and motor cars and taxes, seems pretty shabby. Acting--it's a heightening of life. I guess we're all stage-struck, us old troupers, no matter how we kick.'
'And do you think maybe I could do it?'
McDermid studied Bethel, rubbed his nose, droned, 'Maybe so--maybe so. Let's see. Get up and walk to the door and back.' When she returned, his appraisal was warmer. 'You're pretty graceful, and you have some spirit in you, and a rather warm voice, for such a thin kid, and you watch things--you see how things are done--I was watching you watch us. Yes, I think you probably can act!'
It was her accolade.
As they went out, Elsie whispered to her, 'Come see me in my dressing-room.'
'Oh, I'd be pleased!'
'And we can play with my doll. I got such a funny doll--so long-legged and so sweet. I've never told a soul but you that I still play with it--not even Mac--Mr. McDermid. I don't know anybody in Sladesbury--they all seem so grownup and busy here. Will you come see me?'
'Oh, I'd love to!'
'Come next week then.'
'Yes!'
Bethel was intoxicated with the friendship of this, her first real actress. But she never saw Elsie's dressing-room. The McDermid stock company closed, that Saturday night, and she did not meet Caryl McDermid again till years afterward, when he told her of Elsie Krall's dying of pneumonia in a hospital in Hollywood, looking bewildered and a little frightened, and clasping to the end a long-legged, armless doll.
IV
'You know Gale Amory--she's such a grand girl, you'd never expect to find her in a hen college. Well, she was to play the husband's part in Doll's House, you know, Ibsen, it was the senior-class play, and she came to rehearsal all made up like a man, I mean, double-breasted blue suit of her brother's, and she's so feminine, everybody laughed their head off. So, of course, they all began to cut up and laugh and kid their lines, and the girl who played Dr. Rank, she ran out and came back with a burnt-cork moustache, and of course, I mean that simply convulsed them, and she said in a deep voice, I mean, it was a serious line from the play, but she burlesqued it and she said, "At the next masquerade, I shall be invisible", and everybody simply howled! And then Gale goes out and puts on a moustache, too!