Chapter 28

From a camp in South Carolina, Eino Roskinen wrote to Jinny, “I’m a corporal, I shall be a sergeant, I’ll never be a comm. officer, I ask too many flip questions. Now you are married and a woman of leisure, why don’t you finally go out for the Lit Theater, you have looks and spirit, tho I doubt whether you have enough inner discipline to take direction, why not try? Furioso the Finn.”

She read it aloud to Cass, and said with marked doubt, “What do you think?”

“Not bad. I believe you’d be good at dramatics, and you’d have a lot of fun. The Masquers have had a good reputation, more than ten years now. I couldn’t ever imagine myself getting up there before a lot of people and pretending I was a king or a butler—”

“You do every day. On the bench.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I’d be delighted.”

“I wonder when the next try-out is. I wonder what the play will be.”

“The play is Skylark, by Samson Raphaelson; it’s the last play of the season; the reading will be at Della Lent’s next Thursday evening, at eight-fifteen.”

“How come you always know everything?”

“Why, I read the papers!”

Rice and Patty Helix were small and active and rather untidy. They were the paid semi-professional managers of the Masquers: directors, scene-designers, ticket-peddlers, borrowers of stage furniture. They were devoutly married, and they were either older than they looked, or more wrinkled than their age. They talked, rapidly and enthusiastically, about “Gene” O’Neill, moonlight-blue lights, and tormentors, and they could make a wind-machine out of an old bicycle, a marble Venus out of a Quaker Oats box.

They had acted professionally, but no one seemed to know just when or where; they said that they had given it up because it was so hard to get engagements together; and before they had found a career in the little theaters, they had tried chicken-farming and clairvoyance and being lecture agents in Texas. Late at night, they were seen running hand in hand. The Boone Havocks received them as somewhere between schoolteachers and bartenders.

But at best they were the upper servants of Della Wargate Lent, who supported the Masquers.

The plays were rehearsed at the various houses of the cast and finally presented in the high-school auditorium, but the try-outs were held at Della’s abode, which was by no means the largest house in Grand Republic but had the largest drawing-room, all filled with gilt pianos and majolica.

For casting during war-time the Helixes had enough women among whom to choose, but they had to drag in young men from shops and factories and offices. There were present for the reading of Skylark only eleven men from whom to pick the six male characters of the play, and one of these was cross-eyed though spirited, but for the four women characters there were twenty-seven candidates, ranging from fourteen and sulky to sixty-three and still artistic.

All twenty-seven wanted to play Mrs. Kenyon, the lead.

Cass told himself that Jinny stood out among the others as the loveliest yet the most efficient. It was not the fantastic or the playful or the flirtatious Jinny who was here tonight, but a business-like young woman in a snuff-colored suit, a crisp scarf, a small brown hat.

They all tried it, but only two were chosen for a second reading of the part of Mrs. Kenyon: Jinny and Letty Vogel, wife of the county agricultural agent. Mrs. Vogel was three or four years older than Jinny, a thin figure in almost-shabby black, a thin, pale, anxious face with eyes too large.

—That poor Vogel girl. Seems to have a fancy for the theater, but not a chance against Jinny—all fire and ivory.

They tried again, and Jinny’s reading was like crystal, her voice warm, every syllable clear—and all syllables exactly alike. Lefty Vogel seemed tired and her voice was slightly shaky, but as she read she was not Mrs. Vogel at all but the character in the play: wilful, gay, a little cheap and utterly tragic, a wisecracking angel.

—Now, now, now! This is awful! Mrs. Vogel is superb and poor Jinny, she can’t act at all! She reads like a schoolgirl.

And so Cass loved her, passionately and protectively, because she could not act.

Della Lent and the Helixes whispered together, and Rice Helix announced:

“Folks, both these final readings were simply swell, and we all know what a fine, hard-working actress Letty has always shown herself to be in a number of plays, but for this particular society part, we feel that Mrs. Timberlane is not only the best, but golly, what a high-class best, and we honest to God believe that with the careful direction we intend to give her, she will put it all over the original performance that Gertrude Lawrence gave on Broadway. Welcome to our midst, Jinny; you sure are a great addition to the local arts. And now, folks, before we bust up, let’s put back the chairs in order that Mrs. Lent has been so generous and, to not intentionally make a pun, has lent us for our little try-out, and I sure am real proud of the showing that ALL you folks have made this evening, not a bad egg in the basket, as the fellow says, and don’t be discouraged, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, and don’t forget, put back your own chair where it was, we thank you.”

The just Judge was staring, wanting to protest, wanting Jinny to protest, and loving her passionately because she did not know how bad an actress she was.

The first rehearsal of Skylark was held in the Cyclopean basement of Cass’s Bergheim, with cordwood and ash-cans and shotgun-shell boxes for furniture. The first half of it, Cass did not see, and he was regretful, as he had already forgotten that the flowering of Jinny’s dramatic genius might not be so showy an exhibit. But he had to go off to address a dinner of the local Junior Chamber of Commerce: “Eat at six, inspiration at seven-fifteen, home at eight-thirty, all come, special treat this time, Hizzoner Cass Timberlane on ‘The Cultural and Architectural Future of Our City.’”

As a judge, Cass was expected to know everything, and as a knower of everything, he was expected to hold forth about it publicly, and as a public forth-holder, he was expected to be a medicinal but tasty digestive tablet after the chicken croquettes and brick ice cream. Oratory is the dearest treasure of the American male as alimony is of the American female.

Tonight, Cass was prophetic. He said that some time the City Planning Commission might really have power, and firmly discourage the citizens of Grand Republic in their constant ambition to erect a two-story red-brick bowling-alley, with offices for chiropractors, between a ten-story limestone bank and the City Hall. The Junior Chamber of Commerce, composed of men under thirty-six who expected some day to belong to the Senior C. of C. and have public esteem, were slightly shocked by Judge Timberlane’s communism. They whispered together that “He oughtn’t to pull such impractical and uncommercial ideas on a forward-looking group that are expected to mold the ideals for the new age of Business and the American Way of Life.”

But his adjectives, his grammar, and the authority in Cass’s voice made them forgive him, and at the end they did that mystic rite, that flapping together of portions of their anatomies, like locusts scraping their wing-cases, which is known as applause, and six of them invited him out for a drink.

The Judge thought that these young husbands were strangely desirous of staying away from their wives, on their rare evening out, and after listening to a talking-dog story, he got away from them and hastened home for the end of the rehearsal.

—Keen to see her work. Of COURSE Jinny is better than Letty Vogel. Mrs. Vogel is too pretentious and arty. I much prefer to have Jinny keep her voice clear and melodious, and not crack it with all sorts of attempts to be emotional. She’ll be wonderful.

—Well, anyway, she’ll be all right—as good as any of ’em.

—She could be a great actress or a great anything, if she put her mind to it. Her mind is so flexible.

—Love to think of her hair—the way when you see it from behind, it’s scarcely hair at all but some finer fabric. It’s dark and sleek at the top, but it runs down into waves that you want to follow with your hand.

—So much!

The author of Skylark, who presumably thought that he had written high comedy, would have been astonished to learn that, as enacted by Fred Nimbus, it was a Hollywood demonstration of sultry tropic passions.

Cass came down the dark stairs to his basement and stood to watch Fred trying out “business” with Jinny. He thought that this business of manhandling Jinny was altogether too businesslike. He had no initiation into theatricals nor into midnight studio-parties; he resented her being mauled.

Fred was, under the directive eye of Mr. Helix but apparently not needing that expert encouragement, slowly kissing Jinny, her head back, sidewise and helpless; kissing her long and closely, and letting his tight-pressing hand slip from her shoulder to her breast.

Then Cass came into the lighted basement all in one piece, and Cass spoke.

“Nimbus! You may quit that now!”

Nimbus quit.

“Helix, it is not necessary for this fellow to act like a thug in a bawdy-house in order to rehearse a play.”

Poor Rice Helix trembled. “Are you trying to bully me?”

“Of course! But I think that’s all the outburst I’ll need. Go on with the rehearsal now, and you be a good boy, Nimbus. Good night, everybody. I’m going upstairs and read the Book of Mormon. Isn’t it curious now that I’ve never read the Book of Mormon? Good night.”

And he did read it. He was not much afraid of what Jinny would be coming up to say—not more afraid than of the black plague, or indictment for malfeasance.

When she did come, after the rehearsal, and started with the inevitable, “Well, of all the—” he plunged.

“Dry up, Jinny. I know the line. Ridiculously jealous husband— crass outsider interfering with the arts. Will you answer this: Fred had been pawing you pretty extensively before I came, hadn’t he? Huh? Hadn’t he?”

She half giggled. “He was kind of exploratory.”

“And I’m not going to have my wife declared a general area for exploration, with dog-teams and native bearers. If you’d slapped Fred, as you should have, I wouldn’t have had to make a spectacle of myself. Remember that, the next time you go and get modern and courageous on me, will you?”

She tried her best, with:

“You must admit you were rather middle-class and reactionary and— Shouting and bullying and carrying on that way, when if you’d been a man of the world, or believed in the ability of the modern woman to take care of herself, you’d just of tapped Fred lightly on the shoulder and said gaily, ‘Ease it up, ole boy.’ You know. Something like that. Something—uh—suave.”

He laughed at her, and she looked unconvinced of her own advice.

“Jinny! I know I was noisy, but both of you were asking for it. You didn’t think he was measuring you for a raincoat, did you? Raincoats don’t fit that tight. So! Kiss me.”

She grumbled only a little, and she kissed him with surprising devotion.

But he knew that it would not last. He had succeeded for a few minutes in being masterful, melodramatic, insulting, and all the other things that a sedentary professional man, married to so attractive and curiosity-ridden a girl as Jinny Marshland, ought to be, but he was not easy in the role.