Part 47 (1/2)
”Don't strike!” contradicted Carlo Trent
”Strike, I tell you! We et on with the second act” The voices resounded queerly in the ee was invaded by scene-shi+fters before the curtain could descend again
Edward Henry heard a tripping step behind hiirl
”I say,” he said ”Do youon here? It's true that in the rush of otten that a theatre is a place where they perform plays”
”It's the dress-rehearsal, Mr Machin,” said the woetic
”But the dress-rehearsal was fixed for three o'clock,” said he ”It o”
”I think they've only just done the first act,” the woin till seven Oh! Mr Machin, of course it's no affair of ood many theatres, and I do think it's such a mistake to have the dress-rehearsal quite private
If you get a hundred or so people in the stalls then it's an audience, and there's oes much better But when it's private a dress-rehearsal is just like any other rehearsal”
”Only
He saw that he had iven her eot your tea here,” she said, rather like a hospital-nurse now
”Won't you drink it?”
”I'll drink it if it's not stewed,” he muttered
”Oh!” she protested, ”of course it isn't! I poured it off the leaves into another teapot before I brought it up”
She went behind the barrier, and reappeared balancing a cup of tea with a slice of sultana cake edged on to the saucer And as she handed it to hiazed at hi!”
There was nothing that he hated so o hoo ho ”If you don't clear out on the tick I'll chuck this cup and saucer down into the stalls”
Horrified, she vanished
He sighed his relief
After some time the leader of the orchestra clian to play, and the curtain went up again, on the second act of the masterpiece in hexameters The new scenery, which Edward Henry had with extraordinary courage insisted on Saracen Givington substituting for the original incomprehensibilities displayed at the Azure Society's perforreeable, and it did reseh perhaps not easily, tell what it was eneral effect was surprisingly pleasant to Edward Henry And then Rose Euclid as Haidee careat scene of the act Froallery she looked quite passably youthful, and beyond question she had a do presence in her resplendent costuly better than she had been at the few previous rehearsals which Edward Henry had been unfortunate enough to witness She even re vision of her
”Soleaone forith his preparations in the id and convinced pessimism It seemed to him that he had beco short of blowing the theatre up with dyna the cranks and pistons to a stop And yet it see was unreal, that the contracts he signed were unreal, and the proofs he passed, and the posters he saw on the walls of London, and the advertisements in the newspapers Only the cheques he drew had the air of being real And now, in a e, he saw all differently He scented triu of the sea On the morrow he had toher, with her terrible remorseless, provincial, untheatrical coed the e! He ade
And then he failed to hear several words spoken by Rose Euclid And then a few rew, the proportion of her words audible in the gallery diminished Until she becagling in a cocoon of hexameters
Despair seized him His nervous system--every separate nerve of it--was on the rack once more