I
SHE to the meeting of the play-reading committee. Her had faded, but she a religious fervor, a of half-formed about the of by suggestion.
A Dunsany play would be too difficult for the Gopher Prairie association. She would let them on Shaw—on “Androcles and the Lion,” which had just been published.
The was of Carol, Vida Sherwin, Guy Pollock, Raymie Wutherspoon, and Juanita Haydock. They were by the picture of themselves as being business-like and artistic. They were by Vida in the of Mrs. Elisha Gurrey's boarding-house, with its of Grant at Appomattox, its of views, and its on the carpet.
Vida was an of culture-buying and efficiency-systems. She that they ought to have (as at the committee-meetings of the Thanatopsis) a “regular order of business,” and “the reading of the minutes,” but as there were no minutes to read, and as no one what was the regular order of the of being literary, they had to give up efficiency.
Carol, as chairman, said politely, “Have you any ideas about what play we'd give first?” She waited for them to look and vacant, so that she might “Androcles.”
Guy Pollock answered with readiness, “I'll tell you: since we're going to try to do something artistic, and not around, I we ought to give something classic. How about 'The School for Scandal'?”
“Why——Don't you think that has been done a good deal?”
“Yes, it has.”
Carol was to say, “How about Bernard Shaw?” when he on, “How would it be then to give a Greek drama—say 'Oedipus Tyrannus'?”
“Why, I don't believe——”
Vida Sherwin intruded, “I'm sure that would be too hard for us. Now I've something that I think would be jolly.”
She out, and Carol took, a thin “McGinerty's Mother-in-law.” It was the of which is in “school entertainment” as:
Riproaring knock-out, 5 m. 3 f., time 2 hrs., set, popular with churches and all high-class occasions.
Carol from the object to Vida, and that she was not joking.
“But this is—this is—why, it's just a——Why, Vida, I you appreciated—well—appreciated art.”
Vida snorted, “Oh. Art. Oh yes. I do like art. It's very nice. But after all, what it what of play we give as long as we the started? The thing that is something that none of you have spoken of, that is: what are we going to do with the money, if we make any? I think it would be if we presented the high with a full set of Stoddard's travel-lectures!”
Carol moaned, “Oh, but Vida dear, do me but this farce——Now what I'd like us to give is something distinguished. Say Shaw's 'Androcles.' Have any of you read it?”
“Yes. Good play,” said Guy Pollock.
Then Raymie Wutherspoon spoke up:
“So have I. I read through all the plays in the public library, so's to be for this meeting. And——But I don't you the ideas in this 'Androcles,' Mrs. Kennicott. I the mind is too to all these writers. I'm sure I don't want to Bernard Shaw; I he is very popular with the in Minneapolis; but just the same——As as I can make out, he's improper! The he SAYS——Well, it would be a very thing for our to see. It to me that a play that doesn't a taste in the mouth and that hasn't any message is nothing but—nothing but——Well, it may be, it isn't art. So——Now I've a play that is clean, and there's some in it, too. I laughed out loud, reading it. It's called 'His Mother's Heart,' and it's about a man in college who in with a of free-thinkers and and everything, but in the end his mother's influence——”
Juanita Haydock in with a derisive, “Oh rats, Raymie! Can the mother's influence! I say let's give something with some class to it. I we the to 'The Girl from Kankakee,' and that's a show. It ran for eleven months in New York!”
“That would be of fun, if it wouldn't cost too much,” Vida.
Carol's was the only vote against “The Girl from Kankakee.”
II
She “The Girl from Kankakee” more than she had expected. It the success of a farm-lassie in her of a of forgery. She to a New York and social to his wife; and after a well-conceived speech on the of having money, she married his son.
There was also a office-boy.
Carol that Juanita Haydock and Ella Stowbody wanted the lead. She let Juanita have it. Juanita her and in the manner of a new star presented to the executive her theory, “What we want in a play is and pep. There's where American put it all over these old European glooms.”
As by Carol and by the committee, the of the play were:
John Grimm, a . . . . Guy Pollock
His wife. . . . . . . . . Miss Vida Sherwin
His son . . . . . . . . . Dr. Harvey Dillon
His rival. . . . . . . Raymond T. Wutherspoon
Friend of Mrs. Grimm . . . . . . Miss Ella Stowbody
The girl from Kankakee . . . . . Mrs. Harold C. Haydock
Her brother. . . . . . . . Dr. Terence Gould
Her mother . . . . . . . . Mrs. David Dyer
Stenographer . . . . . . . . Miss Rita Simons
Office-boy . . . . . . . . Miss Myrtle Cass
Maid in the Grimms' home . . . . Mrs. W. P. Kennicott
Direction of Mrs. Kennicott
Among the minor was Maud Dyer's “Well of I I look old to be Juanita's mother, if Juanita is eight months older than I am, but I don't know as I to have noticing it and——”
Carol pleaded, “Oh, my DEAR! You two look the same age. I you you have such a complexion, and you know with and a white wig, looks twice her age, and I want the mother to be sweet, no who else is.”
Ella Stowbody, the professional, that it was of a of that she had been a small part, and Christian patience.
Carol that the play would be by cutting, but as every actor Vida and Guy and herself at the of a single line, she was defeated. She told herself that, after all, a great be done with direction and settings.
Sam Clark had about the to his schoolmate, Percy Bresnahan, president of the Velvet Motor Company of Boston. Bresnahan sent a check for a hundred dollars; Sam added twenty-five and the fund to Carol, crying, “There! That'll give you a start for the thing across swell!”
She rented the second of the city for two months. All through the the to its own in that room. They out the bunting, ballot-boxes, handbills, chairs. They the stage. It was a simple-minded stage. It was above the floor, and it did have a curtain, painted with the of a these ten years, but otherwise it might not have been as a stage. There were two dressing-rooms, one for men, one for women, on either side. The dressing-room doors were also the stage-entrances, opening from the house, and many a citizen of Gopher Prairie had for his of the of the leading woman.
There were three sets of scenery: a woodland, a Poor Interior, and a Rich Interior, the last also useful for railway stations, offices, and as a for the Swedish Quartette from Chicago. There were three of lighting: full on, on, and off.
This was the only in Gopher Prairie. It was as the “op'ra house.” Once, had used it for of “The Two Orphans,” and “Nellie the Beautiful Cloak Model,” and “Othello” with acts, but now the motion-pictures had the drama.
Carol to be modern in the office-set, the drawing-room for Mr. Grimm, and the Humble Home near Kankakee. It was the time that any one in Gopher Prairie had been so as to use with side-walls. The rooms in the op'ra house sets had wing-pieces for sides, which dramaturgy, as the always out of the hero's way by walking out through the wall.
The of the Humble Home were to be and intelligent. Carol planned for them a set with warm color. She see the of the play: all dark save the high settles and the solid table them, which were to be by a from offstage. The high light was a copper pot with primroses. Less she sketched the Grimm drawing-room as a series of high white arches.
As to how she was to produce these she had no notion.
She that, despite the writers, the was not so native and close to the as and telephones. She that training. She that to produce one perfect stage-picture would be as difficult as to turn all of Gopher Prairie into a Georgian garden.
She read all she staging, she paint and light wood; she and unscrupulously; she Kennicott turn carpenter. She with the problem of lighting. Against the of Kennicott and Vida she the by sending to Minneapolis for a spotlight, a light, a device, and and bulbs; and with the of a painter among colors, she in grouping, dimming-painting with lights.
Only Kennicott, Guy, and Vida helped her. They as to how be together to a wall; they crocus-yellow at the windows; they the sheet-iron stove; they put on and swept. The of the into the every evening, and were and superior. They had Carol's of play-production and had in vocabulary.
Juanita Haydock, Rita Simons, and Raymie Wutherspoon sat on a sawhorse, Carol try to the right position for a picture on the in the scene.
“I don't want to hand myself anything but I I'll give a performance in this act,” Juanita. “I wish Carol wasn't so though. She doesn't clothes. I want to wear, oh, a dress I have—all scarlet—and I said to her, 'When I enter wouldn't it their out if I just there at the door in this thing?' But she wouldn't let me.”
Young Rita agreed, “She's so much taken up with her old and and that she can't see the picture as a whole. Now I it would be if we had an office-scene like the one in 'Little, But Oh My!' Because I SAW that, in Duluth. But she wouldn't at all.”
Juanita sighed, “I wanted to give one speech like Ethel Barrymore would, if she was in a play like this. (Harry and I her one time in Minneapolis—we had seats, in the orchestra—I just know I her.) Carol didn't pay any attention to my suggestion. I don't want to but I Ethel more about acting than Carol does!”
“Say, do you think Carol has the right about using a light the in the second act? I told her I we ought to use a bunch,” offered Raymie. “And I it would be if we used a the window in the act, and what do you think she said? 'Yes, and it would be to have Eleanora Duse play the lead,' she said, 'and from the that it's in the act, you're a great technician,' she said. I must say I think she was sarcastic. I've been reading up, and I know I a cyclorama, if she didn't want to everything.”
“Yes, and another thing, I think the entrance in the act ought to be L. U. E., not L. 3 E.,” from Juanita.
“And why she just use plain white tormenters?”
“What's a tormenter?” Rita Simons.
The at her ignorance.
III
Carol did not their criticisms, she didn't very much their knowledge, so long as they let her make pictures. It was at that the broke. No one that were as as bridge-games or at the Episcopal Church. They came in an hour late, or they came in ten minutes early, and they were so that they about when Carol protested. They telephoned, “I don't think I'd come out; the might start my toothache,” or “Guess can't make it tonight; Dave wants me to in on a game.”
When, after a month of labor, as many as nine-elevenths of the were often present at a rehearsal; when most of them had learned their parts and some of them spoke like beings, Carol had a new in the that Guy Pollock and herself were very actors, and that Raymie Wutherspoon was a good one. For all her she not her voice, and she was by the of her lines as maid. Guy his soft mustache, looked self-conscious, and Mr. Grimm into a dummy. But Raymie, as the villain, had no repressions. The of his was full of character; his was vicious.
There was an when Carol she was going to make a play; a which Guy stopped looking abashed.
From that the play declined.
They were weary. “We know our parts well now; what's the use of of them?” they complained. They to skylark; to play with the lights; to when Carol was trying to make the Myrtle Cass into a office-boy; to act but “The Girl from Kankakee.” After through his proper part Dr. Terry Gould had great for his of “Hamlet.” Even Raymie his faith, and to that he do a shuffle.
Carol on the company. “See here, I want this nonsense to stop. We've got to to work.”
Juanita Haydock the mutiny: “Look here, Carol, don't be so bossy. After all, we're doing this play for the fun of it, and if we have fun out of a of monkey-shines, why then——”
“Ye-es,” feebly.
“You said one time that in G. P. didn't fun out of life. And now we are having a circus, you want us to stop!”
Carol answered slowly: “I wonder if I can what I mean? It's the looking at the page and looking at Manet. I want fun out of this, of course. Only——I don't think it would be less fun, but more, to produce as perfect a play as we can.” She was exalted; her voice was strained; she not at the company but at the on the of wing-pieces by stage-hands. “I wonder if you can the 'fun' of making a thing, the and of it, and the holiness!”
The company at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good to be at a church, ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday.
“But if we want to do it, we've got to work; we must have self-discipline.”
They were at once and embarrassed. They did not want to this woman. They off and to rehearse. Carol did not Juanita, in front, to Maud Dyer, “If she calls it fun and to over her old play—well, I don't!”
IV
Carol the only professional play which came to Gopher Prairie that spring. It was a “tent show, new under canvas.” The hard-working actors in brass, and took tickets; and sang about the moon in June, and Dr. Wintergreen's Surefire Tonic for Ills of the Heart, Lungs, Kidneys, and Bowels. They presented “Sunbonnet Nell: A Dramatic Comedy of the Ozarks,” with J. Witherbee Boothby the by his “Yuh ain't done right by little gal, Mr. City Man, but a-goin' to that in these-yere there's and good shots!”
The audience, on the tent, Mr. Boothby's and long rifle; their in the at the of his heroism; when the the City Lady's use of a by looking through a on a fork; visibly over Mr. Boothby's Little Gal Nell, who was also Mr. Boothby's legal wife Pearl, and when the down, to Mr. Boothby's lecture on Dr. Wintergreen's Tonic as a for tape-worms, which he by objects in bottles of alcohol.
Carol her head. “Juanita is right. I'm a fool. Holiness of the drama! Bernard Shaw! The only trouble with 'The Girl from Kankakee' is that it's too for Gopher Prairie!”
She in phrases, taken from books: “the of souls,” “need only the opportunity, to things,” and “sturdy of democracy.” But these did not so loud as the of the audience at the funny-man's line, “Yes, by heckelum, I'm a fella.” She wanted to give up the play, the association, the town. As she came out of the and walked with Kennicott the street, she at this village and that she not possibly here through all of tomorrow.
It was Miles Bjornstam who gave her strength—he and the that every seat for “The Girl from Kankakee” had been sold.
Bjornstam was “keeping company” with Bea. Every night he was on the steps. Once when Carol appeared he grumbled, “Hope you're going to give this one good show. If you don't, nobody will.”
V
It was the great night; it was the night of the play. The two dressing-rooms were with actors, panting, pale. Del Snafflin the barber, who was as much a professional as Ella, having once gone on in a at a stock-company performance in Minneapolis, was making them up, and his for with, “Stand still! For the love o' Mike, how do you me to your dark if you keep a-wigglin'?” The actors were beseeching, “Hey, Del, put some red in my nostrils—you put some in Rita's—gee, you didn't do anything to my face.”
They were theatric. They Del's box, they the of grease-paint, every minute they ran out to through the in the curtain, they came to their and costumes, they read on the of the dressing-rooms the pencil inscriptions: “The Flora Flanders Comedy Company,” and “This is a theater,” and that they were of these troupers.
Carol, in maid's uniform, the temporary stage-hands to setting the act, at Kennicott, the electrician, “Now for heaven's the in for the in Act Two,” out to ask Dave Dyer, the ticket-taker, if he some more chairs, the Myrtle Cass to be sure to the waste-basket when John Grimm called, “Here you, Reddy.”
Del Snafflin's of piano, violin, and to up and every one the magic line of the was into paralysis. Carol to the in the curtain. There were so many people out there, so hard——
In the second she saw Miles Bjornstam, not with Bea but alone. He wanted to see the play! It was a good omen. Who tell? Perhaps this would Gopher Prairie to beauty.
She into the women's dressing-room, Maud Dyer from her panic, pushed her to the wings, and ordered the up.
It rose doubtfully, it and trembled, but it did up without catching—this time. Then she that Kennicott had to turn off the houselights. Some one out was giggling.
She to the left wing, herself the switch, looked so at Kennicott that he quaked, and back.
Mrs. Dyer was out on the half-darkened stage. The play was begun.
And with that Carol that it was a play acted.
Encouraging them with smiles, she her work go to pieces. The flimsy, the commonplace. She Guy Pollock and his when he should have been a magnate; Vida Sherwin, as Grimm's wife, at the audience as though they were her class in high-school English; Juanita, in the leading role, Mr. Grimm as though she were a list of she had to at the this morning; Ella Stowbody “I'd like a cup of tea” as though she were “Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight”; and Dr. Gould, making love to Rita Simons, squeak, “My—my—you—are—a—won'erful—girl.”
Myrtle Cass, as the office-boy, was so much pleased by the of her relatives, then so much by the of Cy Bogart, in the row, in to her trousers, that she be got off the stage. Only Raymie was so as to himself to acting.
That she was right in her opinion of the play Carol was when Miles Bjornstam out after the act, and did not come back.
VI
Between the second and third she called the company together, and supplicated, “I want to know something, we have a to separate. Whether we're doing well or tonight, it is a beginning. But will we take it as a beginning? How many of you will yourselves to start in with me, right away, tomorrow, and plan for another play, to be in September?”
They at her; they at Juanita's protest: “I think one's for a while. It's going tonight, but another play——Seems to me it'll be time to talk about that next fall. Carol! I you don't to hint and we're not doing tonight? I'm sure the the audience think it's just dandy!”
Then Carol how she had failed.
As the audience out she B. J. Gougerling the banker say to Howland the grocer, “Well, I think the did splendid; just as good as professionals. But I don't much for these plays. What I like is a good movie, with and hold-ups, and some to it, and not all this talky-talk.”
Then Carol how she was to fail again.
She did not them, company audience. Herself she for trying to in good jack-pine.
“It's the of all. I'm beaten. By Main Street. 'I must go on.' But I can't!”
She was not by the Gopher Prairie Dauntless:
. . . would be to among the actors when all gave such account of themselves in difficult of this well-known New York stage play. Guy Pollock as the old not have been for his of the old millionaire; Mrs. Harry Haydock as the lady from the West who so easily the New York four-flushers where they got off was a of and with stage presence. Miss Vida Sherwin the popular teacher in our high pleased as Mrs. Grimm, Dr. Gould was well in the role of lover—girls you look out, the is a bachelor. The local Four Hundred also report that he is a great hand at the light in the dance. As the Rita Simons was as a picture, and Miss Ella Stowbody's long and study of the and in Eastern was in the of her part.
. . . to no one is to be than to Mrs. Will Kennicott on the of directing.
“So kindly,” Carol mused, “so well meant, so neighborly—and so untrue. Is it my failure, or theirs?”
She to be sensible; she to herself that it was to Gopher Prairie it did not over the drama. Its was in its service as a market-town for farmers. How and it did its work, the of the world, and the farmers!
Then, on the her husband's office, she a farmer forth:
“Sure. Course I was beaten. The and the here wouldn't pay us a price for our potatoes, though in the were for 'em. So we says, well, we'll a and ship 'em right to Minneapolis. But the merchants there were in with the local here; they said they wouldn't pay us a more than he would, not if they was nearer to the market. Well, we we higher prices in Chicago, but when we to to ship there, the wouldn't let us have 'em—even though they had empty right here in the yards. There you got it—good market, and these us from it. Gus, that's the way these work all the time. They pay what they want to for our wheat, but we pay what they want us to for their clothes. Stowbody and Dawson every they can, and put in farmers. The Dauntless to us about the Nonpartisan League, the lawyers us, the machinery-dealers to us over years, and then their put on and look at us as if we were a of hoboes. Man, I'd like to this town!”
Kennicott observed, “There's that old Wes Brannigan off his mouth again. Gosh, but he loves to himself talk! They ought to that out of town!”
VII
She old and through high-school week, which is the of in Gopher Prairie; through sermon, senior Parade, junior entertainment, address by an Iowa who that he in the of virtuousness, and the of Decoration Day, when the Civil War Champ Perry, in his forage-cap, along the spring-powdered road to the cemetery. She met Guy; she that she had nothing to say to him. Her in an way. When Kennicott rejoiced, “We'll have a great time this summer; move to the early and wear old and act natural,” she smiled, but her creaked.
In the she along ways, talked about nothing to people, and that she might from them.
She was to that she was using the word “escape.”
Then, for three years which passed like one paragraph, she to anything save the Bjornstams and her baby.
