Читать книгу Bethel Merriday - Sinclair Lewis - Страница 9

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Grampion centre was a picture-book village. Red-fronted chain stores and crimson gasoline pumps had enterprisingly tried to improve its quiet quality out of existence, but Grampion was all gambrel roofs and elm trees and white steeples and white cottages with small-paned windows, and the quickening smell of salt marshes.

It was Bethel's new-found-land, and she was another pioneer of the American tradition.

The only conveyance at the station was a sedan, at least ten years old. The driver, a young man with a yellow sweater and a blue denim shirt, thrilled her by clucking (and not laughing at her, either), 'You one of the actresses, miss? Jump in. You'll have a good time this summer.'

They drove through marshes, grey-green and still, crossed a tidal creek, and came to a mile-long bay, with sun-clipped waves. Twoscore sailboats were at anchor. On one of them, three handsome burnt youngsters, in white ducks, white jerseys and white boating hats, were getting up sail, and they waved at her hopefully. Then the sedan skirted a private estate with bayberry hedges and came abruptly into the Nutmeg Theatre grounds, which occupied a quarter of the square-shaped Point Grampion and had Long Island Sound to south and westward.

Born in the hill-circled city, going to a college on the Housatonic River, Bethel little knew the sea. She looked across the Sound some ten or twelve miles to the blurred shore of Long Island, near Greenport. Fishing schooners were slanting northward, the lofty sail of a yacht leaned perilously, and through the middle distance slipped a freighter from foreign lands. The flickering stretch of the Sound was to her bluer and more fluid and ever-changing than the blue sky above her own hills. She felt superstitiously glad. The Sound was a tributary of open ocean, and she was a tributary of the great theatre. Actresses, she assured herself, if God is good to them, come down at last to the sea and to a ship which will bear them to the lights and cheering in far-off lands.

The grounds had a sand beach on one side, which promised bathing, and rocks on the other, for loafing in the sun. The flat top of the low bluff was a whole village in itself: the actual theatre building, which had been a church; a one-room building as office; the house of the old-time pastor-farmer, where splendidly lived the director, Mr. Valentine, and most of the seven permanent members of the stock company--all professional actors--and such lordly 'guest stars' as might adorn the casts from week to week; a shop for painting and carpentry; the School of the Theatre--the old pastor's barn, with a small stage and rows of doubtful chairs inserted; and at last, on the sea edge, with tennis courts beside it, Bethel's new home, the dormitory and dining quarters for the apprentices. She was too excited to be critical; otherwise she might have noticed that the dormitory was shakily knocked together of second-hand boards and painted with pigment guaranteed to peel immediately. The windows were narrow and low, their mosquito netting of cotton. But to Bethel it was the Temple of the Muses, all cool marble and bright gold.

'Good luck, miss! Hope you drag the crowds in!' said the driver.

'Oh, thank you. It's wonderful to be here,' she crowed, and her friend drove off, leaving her alone in the Temple.

Uncomfortably alone.

She ventured into the hallway, which was also the living-room, of the apprentices' dormitory. With a scratched upright piano, a long, bare table, a cushionless window seat and a litter of third-hand chairs, rockers and wicker and canvas deck-chairs, the room was a charity home. But Bethel was pleased. She was a worker in the theatre and an insider, not one of the luxurious 'carriage trade' who came in limousines and demanded upholstered seats but were never (she innocently believed) welcomed in the holy places backstage.

The room was still, there was no one on the uncarpeted stairs; the only stir was from an outboard motor on the Sound.

'Oo-hoo!' she cried, timidly.

Through a door at the back resentfully emerged a lean man, in overalls, with a stained white moustache.

'What d'you want? You one of the students?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'You think so? Don't y' know? My name is Johnny Meddock. I run this place.'

'You do!'

'Yes, I do! I'm the caretaker. And janitor. I'm responsible for keeping the floors clean and the windows washed and chasing the small boys off. Folks also think I'm a Quaint Local Character. I let 'em think so. It's worth money to me. I even let 'em think I used to be a fisherman here, when this place was a decent churchyard and a fish wharf and not no theayter, with a lot of you young women chasing around and flirting and not enough clothes to dress a pussycat in. I never was. I hate fish. I used to be a janitor in the State Capitol, in Hartford. Well, what d' you want?'

'I suppose I ought to see Mr. Roscoe Valentine, first. Do you know if he's anywheres around?'

'He's in the office--that one-hen coop by the front of the theatre. Yes, I guess you might's well see Roscoe, as Andy Deacon ain't come yet.'

'Andy Deacon?' It was the first time that Bethel had ever heard the name.

'Yuh, he's the real boss here. Andrew Deacon. He makes out he's just one of the actors, but it's him puts up most of the money for Roscoe to blow in. He went to college and everything. Long about twenty-eight, Andy is. Acts on the stage regular--God knows why, rich fellow like him--his dad was J. Goddard Deacon; run the big gun factory up in Worcester. Nice-spoken fellow, Andy is, too--like a Hartford man. But you better see Roscoe. So long.'

Johnny Meddock vanished. He who often remarked that he 'hated theayters and hated their guts' was the most theatrical object in the place. He was Punch and Judy and Policeman and Devil all in one.

Bethel, having decided that he was either very hateful or lovable, went searching for the high priest, Roscoe Valentine.

Mr. Valentine, in sandals, lilac trousers, a dark blue shirt, a voluminous white tie and English eyeglasses, was at his desk in his small cabinlike office, simultaneously writing an advertisement for The Petrified Forest which, on June 27th, would open the season, dictating a letter to an agent in New York complaining because he had not received another script, scratching his left calf with his right foot and planning a lecture on 'Relaxation, the Secret of Acting'. He looked up at Bethel blankly.

'Yes? What do you want?'

'I just came to say I'm here, Mr. Valentine.'

'I'm so bright that I might have deduced you were here, but I still don't know why you are here or who you are.' He looked for applause from his secretary, a sensible, agreeable-looking young woman, and didn't get it. He was irritated, and demanded, 'Are you one of the apprentices?'

'Why yes, don't you remember? I'm Bethel Merriday. Point Royal College?'

'Oh yes. Nora in Doll's House. You overacted it atrociously.'

'That's what Mr. O'Toole said.'

'Oh, he did, eh? But even Mr. Jerry O'Toole can sometimes be right. Well, you go and report to Cynthia Aleshire, my scene designer. She'll put you to work. And begin to learn right now, my pigeon, that if you're serious about your stage career, you've got to do everything you can around here--learn everything about the theatre--everything.'

'Oh, yes sir.'

'Very well then. Marian, skip out and show this baby the shop, and hustle back here.'

The girl secretary, outside, patted the dismayed Bethel amiably. 'Don't worry about him. His bite is worse than his bark. But he does know something about acting and producing . . . I hope he does! . . . My name is Marian Croy.'

Miss Croy was twenty-six or -seven, and placid.

'You're his secretary?'

'No, I'm an apprentice, like yourself. I've been teaching school for six years, out in Nebraska--I organized a town dramatic club. I've saved up enough money to take one year off, for a shot at this place and then Broadway. God knows why I want to act! I always say it's because I like to read Maeterlinck aloud (I hope you don't think he's too sentimental, too!), but maybe it's to try and escape from the prairie winters. If I don't make a go of it, I'll go back and marry Oscar Heyden--he's a nice man, but he looks just the way his name sounds . . . Am I babbling, Bethel?'

She loved this kind woman, as Marian went on:

'I am, but you know, I'm just as lonely and scared here as you are. But busy! Roscoe found out I knew shorthand, so he put me to work. That's how you learn to act here--doing everything that Roscoe would have to pay to have done--scrubbing floors or addressing envelopes to theatre subscribers or driving up town to buy cigarettes. I do hope you don't know pedicuring, or Roscoe'll probably have you doing his sweet, pink, plump toes. Good luck, dear. Miss Cynthia Aleshire, scenery boss--Miss Bethel Merriday, freshman.'

Cynthia was a trim, tall, Greek-coin lady of thirty-five. Bethel did not believe that she would ever know Cynthia, but she instantly felt herself one with the apprentices, sprawled inside the work shed and in front of it, repainting last year's scenery a flat grey. They were a joyful crew: two girls in shorts and jerseys; three young men in overalls, or sweaters and grey flannels.

There was the plump, jolly, hither-eyed Toni Titmus, who had just finished freshman year in the University of Wisconsin, but who at the moment thought that she preferred playing English duchesses to playing basketball.

An almost anonymous, fresh-faced girl named Anita Hill.

Pete Chew, a round, stupid, wistful rich young man who had taken to the drama only after having been dropped by Amherst, Rollins College, and the Schenectady Flying School.

Walter Rolf, slim, competent, decent, twenty-three or -four and a track runner. It was Walter Rolf's misfortune that, however much you tried to avoid the word 'clean' in describing him, you were sure, in the end, to pigeonhole him as a Clean Young American. He looked like a Princeton Man, and by a coincidence he was a Princeton Man, with a dash of Oxford.

Last of the crew, incredible as a student actor, was Harry Mihick.

Like Marian Croy, Harry had come to the theatre late; unlike her, he was that most portentous of bores, the yearner who knows that he is much more artistic than he is. Harry was forty; and at home, in Hannibal, Missouri, he was a bookkeeper. He was also an actor, in the Y.M.C.A. Drama Guild; a poet, in the Southwestern Christian Advocate; and a dramatist, in nothing perceptible. The gang had concluded that Harry had come to Grampion to find someone who would listen to his play plots. He would stop swimming to discuss his psyche, and he wrote poetry to all the girl students. It was pretty good poetry, too--by Richard Lovelace.

Of these apprentices, Bethel guessed that only Toni Titmus and Walter Rolf had talent. But that made two more young actors than she had ever worked with before, and she was content, though later she was to calculate that her estimate may have been too high, by two.

They all knew so very much about the theatre. As they painted and glued and hammered, and constructed the lunch counter for The Petrified Forest, they gave final verdicts:

'Claire Luce and Wally Ford were both of 'em too doggone sophisticated in Mice and Men. I wouldn't of played Claire's role that way at all. I'd of made her more awkward. You know. Small-town.'

'I didn't think Cedric Hardwicke was so hot. He made the canon so darn heartless. I felt he was showing off, all the while. Too much technique. Now if I'd had that role, I'd of shown how deeply he felt everything underneath. Of course Sir Cedric is nothing but an Englishman. How could he play an Irishman? Of course, I'm not Irish, either, but still . . .'

'I don't know how the Lunts could waste their time on foolishness like Amphitryon. I like a play that's got some social significance. Maybe if I'd been running their schedule, I'd of stood for The Sea Gull, but these French plays--Whatever you may think about the Russians, you certainly got to admit they got art!'

The practically senile Harry Mihick (aged forty) had greeted her. 'Well, Miss Merriday, I hope you're going to take advantage of this intimately associating with artists and having a chance to brush up on ideals this summer.' Nobody laughed much, either.

Listening to their wisdom, peeping in awe at Toni Titmus as she perkily revealed that she had once been introduced to Jo Mielziner, the scene designer, at Sardi's, Bethel felt that she was again a freshman.

How many more times would she find that she had graduated only into new freshmanhood? Freshman as a baby, freshman in her first year in grammar school, freshman in high school, freshman in college, freshman in a summer theatre, freshman on the professional stage--perhaps freshman in marriage and freshman as a star--would it end only with death and her awakening to freshmanhood in heaven?

But she was rescued from humility when she discovered that these airy habituées of the Nutmeg Playhouse, these blasé upper-classmen, had been here only twenty-four hours longer than herself. By the end of an hour's painting she was becoming one of them and was saying some pretty profound things about gag lines. She had discovered that if she endured their idiocies without laughing, they would stand for hers.

The sea wind ran across the rough wild grass, touching her hair; and she was really painting a stencil on real scenery; and she was in a world where she could talk about the theatre from eight a.m. to two a.m.

'I--I--I think I'm going to like it!' she burst out to the beautiful Walter Rolf.

'Sure,' he said convincingly.

It was more than good enough.