Actors -- Fiction; Adultery -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Staffordshire (England) -- Fiction
'Not a bad idea,' said Dick. 'Let's get it down.'
'And then,' screamed Montgomery, as he perched both his legs over the arm
of his chair, 'she can say, "I mean a great head, Mr. Baillie."'
For a moment Dick's eyes flashed with the light of admiration, and he
seemed to be considering if it were not his duty to advise the conductor
that his talents lay in dialogue rather than in music. But his sentiments,
whatever they may have been, disappeared in the burst of inspiration he had
been waiting for so long.
'We can go through the whole list of heads,' he exclaimed triumphantly.
'Fat head, fine head, broad head, thick head, massive head--yes, massive
head. The Baillie will appear pleased at that, and will repeat the phrase,
and then she will say "Dunderhead!" He'll get angry, and she'll run away.
That'll make a splendid exit--she'll exit to a roar.'
Dick noted down the phrases on a piece of paper, to be pasted afterwards
into the script. When this was done, he said:
'My dear, if you don't get a roar with these lines, you can call me a ----.
And when we play the piece at Hull, I shouldn't be surprised if you got
noticed in the papers. But you must pluck up courage and check the Baillie.
We must put up a rehearsal to-morrow for these lines. Now listen,
Montgomery, and tell me how it reads.'
XV
'Rehearsal to-morrow at twelve for all those in the front scene of the
_Cloches_,' cried the stage-door keeper to half-a-dozen girls as they
pushed past him.
'Well I never! and I was going out to see the castle and the ramparts of
the town,' said one girl.
'I wonder what it's for,' said another; 'it went all right, I
thought--didn't you? Did you hear any reason, Mr. Brown?'
'I 'ear there are to be new lines put in,' replied the stage-door keeper,
surlily, 'but I don't know. Don't bother me.'
At the mention of the new lines the faces of the girls brightened, but
instantly they strove to hide the hope and anxiety the announcement had
caused them, and in the silence that followed each tried to think how she
could get a word with Mr. Lennox. At length one more enterprising than the
rest said:
'I must run back. I've forgotten my handkerchief.'
'You needn't mind your handkerchief, you won't see Mr. Lennox to-night,'
exclaimed Dolly, who always trampled on other people's illusions as readily
as she did on her own. 'The lines aren't for you nor me, nor any of us,'
she continued. 'You little silly, can't you guess who they're for? For his
girl, of course!'
Murmurs of assent followed this statement, and, her hands on her hips,
Dolly triumphantly faced her auditors.
'It's damned hard, but you can't expect the man to take her out of her
linen-drapery for nothing.'
The old stage-door keeper, whose attention had been concentrated on what he
was eating out of a jam-pot, now suddenly woke up to the fact that the
passage was blocked, and that a group of musicians with boxes in their
hands were waiting to get through.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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