“Ladies and gentlemen,” began Hambledon reverently, “Miss Dacres has asked me to try and express something of our—” he looked up to the gallery— “our gratitude, for the wonderful reception you have given the first play of our short”—he looked into the stalls—“our all too short season in your beautiful city.” He paused. Another tentative outbreak from the audience. “This is our first visit to New Zealand, and Middleton is the first town we have played. Our season in this lovely country of yours is, of necessity, a brief one. We go on to — to—” he paused and turned helplessly to his company. “Wellington,” said Carolyn. “To Wellington,” said Hambledon, smiling apologetically. The audience laughed uproariously. “To Wellington, on Friday. To-morrow, Wednesday, and Thursday we play The Jack Pot, a comedy which we had the honour of presenting at the Criterion Theatre in London. Most of the original cast is still with us, and, in addition, three well-known Australian artists have joined us for this piece. May I also say that we have among us a New Zealand actress who returns to her native country after a distinguished career on the London stage — Miss Susan Max.” He turned to old Susan, who gave him a startled look of gratitude. The audience applauded vociferously. Old Susan, with shining eyes, bowed to the house and then, charmingly, to Hambledon.
“Miss Dacres, the company, and I, are greatly moved by the marvellous welcome you have given us. I–I may be giving away a secret, but I am going to tell you that to-day is her birthday.” He held up his hand. “This is her first visit to Middleton; I feel we cannot do better than wish her many happy returns. Thank you all very much.”
Another storm of hail, a deep curtsy from Carolyn. Hambledon glanced up into the O.P. corner, and the curtain came down.
“And God forbid that I should ever come back,” muttered little Ackroyd disagreeably.
Susan Max, who was next to him, ruffled like an indignant hen.
“You’d rather have the provinces, I suppose, Mr. Ackroyd,” she said briskly.
Old Brandon Vernon chuckled deeply. Ackroyd raised his comic eyebrows and inclined his head several times. “Ho-ho. Ho-ho!” he sneered. “We’re all touchy and upstage about our native land, are we!”
Susan plodded off to her dressing-room. In the passage she ran into Hailey Hambledon.
“Thank you, dear,” said Susan. “I didn’t expect it, but it meant a lot.”
“That’s all right, Susie,” said Hambledon. “Go and make yourself lovely for the party.”
Carolyn’s birthday was to be celebrated. Out on the stage the hands put up a trestle-table and covered it with a white cloth. Flowers were massed down the centre. Glasses, plates, and quantities of food were arrayed on. lines that followed some impossible standard set by a Hollywood super-spectacle, tempered by the facilities offered by the Middleton Hotel, which had undertaken the catering. Mr. Meyer had spent a good deal of thought and more money on this party. It was, he said, to be a party suitable to his wife’s position as the foremost English comedienne, and it had been planned with one eye on the Press and half the other on the box-office. The pièce de résistance was to be in the nature of a surprise for Carolyn and the guests, though, one by one, he had taken the members of his company into his confidence. He had brought from England a Jeroboam of champagne — a fabulous, a monstrous bottle of a famous vintage. All the afternoon, Ted Gascoigne and the stage-hands had laboured under Mr. Meyer’s guidance and with excited suggestions from George Mason. The giant bottle was suspended in the flies with a counterweight across a pulley. A crimson cord from the counterweight came down to the stage and was anchored to the table. At the climax of her party, Carolyn was to cut this cord. The counterweight would then rise and the jeroboam slowly descend into a nest of maidenhair fern and exotic flowers, that was to be held, by Mr. Meyer himself, in the centre of the table. He had made them rehearse it twelve times that afternoon and was in a fever of excitement that the performance should go without a hitch. Now he kept darting on to the stage and gazing anxiously up into the flies, where the jeroboam hung, invisible, awaiting its big entrance. The shaded lamps used on the stage were switched on. With the heavy curtain for the fourth wall, the carpet and the hangings on the set, it was intimate and pleasant.
A little group of guests came in from the stage-door. A large vermilion-faced, pleasant-looking man, who was a station-holder twenty miles out in the country. His wife, broad, a little weather-beaten, well dressed, but not very smart. Their daughter, who was extremely smart, and their son, an early print of his father. They had called on Carolyn, who had instantly asked them to her party, forgotten she had done so, and neglected to warn anybody of their arrival. Gascoigne, who received them, looked nonplussed for a moment, and then, knowing his Carolyn, guessed what had happened. They were followed by Gordon Palmer, registering familiarity with back-stage, and his cousin, Geoffrey Weston.
“Hullo, George,” said Gordon. “Perfectly marvellous. Great fun. Carolyn was too thrilling, wasn’t she? I must see her. Where is she?”
“Miss Dacres is changing,” said Ted Gascoigne, who had dealt with generations of Gordon Palmers.
“But I simply can’t wait another second,” protested Gordon in a high-pitched voice.
“Afraid you’ll have to,” said Gascoigne. “May I introduce Mr. Gordon Palmer, Mr. Weston, Mrs. — mumble-mumble.”
“Forrest,” said the broad lady cheerfully. With the pathetic faith of most colonial ladies in the essential niceness of all young Englishmen, she instantly made friendly advances. Her husband and son looked guarded and her daughter alert.
More guests arrived, among them a big brown man with a very beautiful voice — Dr. Rangi Te Pokiha, a Maori physician, who was staying at the Middleton.
Alleyn came in with Mason and Alfred Meyer, who had given him a box, and greeted him, after a final glance at the supper-table. They made a curious contrast. The famous Mr. Meyer, short, pasty, plump, exuded box-office and front-of-the-house from every pearl button in his white waistcoat. The famous policeman, six inches taller, might have been a diplomat. “Magnificent appearance,” Meyer had said to Carolyn. “He’d have done damn’ well if he’d taken to ‘the business.’ ”
One by one the members of the company came out from their dressing-rooms. Most actors have an entirely separate manner for occasions when they mix with outsiders. This separate manner is not so much an affectation as a persona, a mask used for this particular appearance. They wish to show how like other people they are. It is an innocent form of snobbishness. You have only to see them when the last guest has gone to realise how complete a disguise the persona may be.
To-night they were all being very grown up. Alfred Meyer introduced everybody, carefully. He introduced the New Zealanders to each other, the proprietor and proprietress of the Middleton to the station-holder and his family, who of course knew them perfectly well de haut en bas.
Carolyn was the last to appear.
“Where’s my wife?” asked Meyer of everybody at large. “It’s ten to. Time she was making an entrance.”