Conversation -- Fiction; Entertaining -- Fiction; Hospitality -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction
Then, because everybody laughed out at nothing, it gave me a very
good chance suddenly to laugh out at "nothing" myself. And most
certainly I had been needing that chance very badly for at least
the last fifteen minutes. Because really when you once stopped to
consider the whole thrilling scheme of this "Rainy Week" Play, and
how you and your Husband for years and years had constituted
yourself a very eager, earnest-minded Audience-of-Two to watch how
the Lord Almighty,--the one unhampered Dramatist of the world,
would work out the scenes and colors--the exits and entrances--the
plots and counter plots of the material at hand--it was just a bit
astonishing to have your Husband jump up from his place in the
audience and leap to the stage to be one of the players instead!
It wasn't at all that the dereliction worried your head or troubled
your heart. But it left your elbow so lonely! Who was there left
for your elbow to nudge? When the morning curtain rose on a flight
of sea gulls slashing like white knives through a sheet of silver
rain, or the Night Scene set itself in a plushy black fog that
fairly crinkled your senses; when the Leading Lady's eyes narrowed
for the first time to the Leading Man's startled stare, and the
song you had introduced so casually at the last moment in the last
act proved to be the reforming point in the Villain's nefarious
career, and the one character you had picked for "Comic Relief"
turned out to be the Tragedienne, who in the world was left for
your elbow to nudge?
Swinging back to the breakfast-room I heard the clock strike
ten--only ten?
It was going to be a nice little Play all right! Starting off
already with several quite unexpected situations! And it wouldn't
be the first time by any means that in an emergency I had been
obliged to "double" as prompter and stage hand or water carrier and
critic. But how to double as elbow-nudger I couldn't quite figure.
"Let's go for a tramp on the beach!" suggested the Bridegroom.
Always on the first rainy morning immediately after breakfast some
restive business man suggests "a tramp on the beach!" Frankly we
have reached a point where we quite depend on it for a cue.
Everybody hailed the proposition with delight except Allan John and
Rollins. A zephyr would have blown Allan John from his footing. And
Rollins had to stay in his room to catalogue shells. . . . Rollins
was paid to stay in his room and catalogue shells!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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