“Of course,” went on Mrs Peagrim, “when the play was done at my house, it was acted by amateurs. And you know what amateurs are! The cast tonight is perfectly splendid. I do think that Scotchman is the most killing creature! Don’t you think he is wonderful, Mr. Rooke?”
We may say what we will against the upper strata of Society, but it cannot be denied that breeding tells. Only by falling back for support on the traditions of his class and the solid support of a gentle upbringing was the Last of the Rookes able to crush down the words that leaped to his lips and to substitute for them a politely conventional agreement. If Mr Pilkington was feeling like a too impulsive seller of gold-mines, Freddie’s emotions were akin to those of the Spartan boy with the fox under his vest. Nothing but Winchester and Magdalen could have produced the smile which, though twisted and confined entirely to his lips, flashed onto his face and off again at his hostess’ question.
“Oh, rather! Priceless!”
“Wasn’t that part an Englishman before?” asked Mrs Peagrim. “I thought so. Well, it was a stroke of genius changing it. This Scotchman is too funny for words. And such an artist!”
Freddie rose shakily. One can stand just so much.
“Think,” he mumbled, “I’ll be pushing along and smoking a cigarette.”
He groped his way to the door.
“I’ll come with you, Freddie my boy,” said Uncle Chris, who felt an imperative need of five minutes’ respite from Mrs Peagrim. “Let’s get out into the air for a moment. Uncommonly warm it is here.”
Freddie assented. Air was what he felt he wanted most.
Left alone in the box with her nephew, Mrs Peagrim continued for some moments in the same vein, innocently twisting the knife in the open wound. It struck her from time to time that darling Otie was perhaps a shade unresponsive, but she put this down to the nervous strain inseparable from a first night of a young author’s first play.
“Why,” she concluded, “you will make thousands and thousands of dollars out of this piece. I am sure it is going to be another ‘Merry Widow.’“
“You can’t tell from a first night audience,” said Mr Pilkington sombrely, giving out a piece of theatrical wisdom he had picked up at rehearsals.
“Oh, but you can. It’s so easy to distinguish polite applause from the real thing. No doubt many of the people down here have friends in the company or other reasons for seeming to enjoy the play, but look how the circle and the gallery were enjoying it! You can’t tell me that that was not genuine. They love it. How hard,” she proceeded commiseratingly, “you must have worked, poor boy, during the tour on the road to improve the piece so much! I never liked to say so before, but even you must agree with me now that that original version of yours, which was done down at Newport, was the most terrible nonsense! And how hard the company must have worked, too! Otie,” cried Mrs Peagrim, aglow with the magic of a brilliant idea, “I will tell you what you must really do. You must give a supper and dance to the whole company on the stage tomorrow night after the performance.”
“What!” cried Otis Pilkington, startled out of his lethargy by this appalling suggestion. Was he, the man who, after planking down thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight cents for “props” and “frames” and “rehl,” had sold out for a paltry ten thousand, to be still further victimized?
“They do deserve it, don’t they, after working so hard?”
“It’s impossible,” said Otis Pilkington vehemently. “Out of the question.”
“But, Otie darling, I was talking to Mr Mason, when he came down to Newport to see the piece last summer, and he told me that the management nearly always gives a supper to the company, especially if they have had a lot of extra rehearsing to do.”
“Well, let Goble give them a supper if he wants to.”
“But you know that Mr Goble, though he has his name on the programme as the manager, has really nothing to do with it. You own the piece, don’t you?”