not to drag her boy off to a prison cell, and she has to do it with streaming eyes. It was darned interesting. The boy is standing with bowed head and the cop is looking sympathetic but firm, and mother is putting something into her eyes out of a medicine dropper. I whisper to Vida and she says it's glycerine for the tears. She holds her head back when she puts 'em in and they run down her cheeks very lifelike when she straightens up.
So mother comes forward with her streaming face and they're all ready to act when the grouch halts things and barks at the boy that he ain't standing right. He goes up and shows him how to stand more shamefully. But the tears on mother's face have dripped away and have to be renewed. She was a nice, kind-appearing mother all right, but I noticed she looked peeved when this delay happened. Vida explains that glycerine don't damage the eyes really, but it makes 'em smart a lot, and this actress, Miss St. Clair, has a right to feel mad over having to put in some more.
But she does it, though with low muttering when the grouch calls "All right, Miss St. Clair!" and is coming forward to act with this here second batch of tears when the grouch stops it with another barking fit. He barks at the policeman this time. He says the policeman must do more acting.
"You know you have a boy of your own," says he, "and how you'd hate to have him arrested for this crime, but you're also remembering that law is law and you're sworn to uphold it. Try to get that now. All ready, Miss St. Clair—we're waiting for you, Miss St. Clair!"
I'd watched this actress the second time her tears was spoiled and her expression didn't fit a loving mother's face one bit. Her breath come as in scenes of tense emotion, but she hotly muttered something that made me think I must of misunderstood her, because no lady actress would say it, let alone a kind old mother. However, she backs off and for the third time has this medicine dropper worked on her smarting eyes. Once more she comes forward with streaming eyes of motherly love, and I'm darned if this grouch don't hold things up again.
This time he's barking about a leather sofa against the far wall of the humble home. He says it's an office sofa and where in something is the red plush one that belongs to the set? He's barking dangerously at everyone round him when all at once he's choked off something grand by the weeping mother that has lost her third set of tears. She was wiping glycerine off her face and saying things to the grouch that must of give him a cold chill for a minute. I'm sometimes accused of doing things with language myself, but never in my life have I talked so interestingly—at least not before ladies. Not that I blamed her.
Everyone kept still with horror till she run down; it seems it's a fierce crime in that art to give a director what's coming to him. The policeman and the erring son was so scared they just stood there acting their parts and the grouch was frozen with his mouth half open. Probably he hadn't believed it at first. Then all at once he smiled the loveliest smile you ever seen on a human face and says in chilled tones: "That will be all, Miss St. Clair! We will trouble you no further in this production." His words sounded like cracking up a hunk of ice for the cocktail shaker. Miss St. Clair then throws up her arms and rushes off, shrieking to the limit of a bully voice.
It was an exciting introduction for me to what they call the silent drama.
Then I looked at Vida and she was crying her eyes out. I guessed it was from sympathy with the mother actress, but the grouch also stares at her with his gimlet eyes and says:
"Here, don't you waste any tears on her. That's all in the day's work."
"I—wasn't thinking of her," sobs Vida.
"Then what you crying for?" says he.
"For that poor dear boy that's being dragged from his mother to prison for some childish prank," she blubbers.
Me, I laughed right out at the little fool, but the director didn't laugh.
"Well, I'll be damned!" says he in low, reverent tones.
Then he begins to look into her face like he'd lost something there. Then he backed off and looked into it a minute more. Then he went crazy all over the place.
"Here," he barks at another actress, "get this woman into your dressing room and get the number five on her quick. Make her up for this part, understand? You there, Eddie, run get that calico skirt and black-satin waist off Miss St. Clair and hustle 'em over to Miss Harcourt's room, where this lady will be making up. Come on now! Move! Work quick! We can't be on this scene all day."
Then, when everybody run off, he set down on the red plush sofa that was now in place, relighted a cigar that smelled like it had gone out three days before, and grinned at me in an excited manner.
"Your little friend is a find," he says. "Mark my words, Mrs. Pettijohn, she's got a future or I don't know faces. She'll screen well, and she's one of the few that can turn on the tears when she wants to. I always did hate glycerine in this art. Now if only I can get her camera wise—and I'll bet I can! Lucky we'd just started on this piece when St. Clair blew up. Only one little retake, where she's happy over her boy's promotion in the factory. She's bound to get away with that; then if she can get the water again for this scene it will be all over but signing her contract."
I was some excited myself by this time, you'd better believe. Nervous as a cat I found myself when Vida was led out in the sad mother's costume by this other actress that had made her up. But Vida wasn't nervous the least bit. She was gayly babbling that she'd always wanted to act, and once she had played a real part in a piece they put on at Odd Fellows' Hall in Fredonia, and she had done so well that even the Methodist minister said she was as good as the actress he saw in Lawrence Barrett's company before he was saved; and he had hoped she wouldn't be led away by her success and go on the real stage, because he could not regard it as a safe pursuit for young persons of her sex, owing to there being so little home life—and now what did she do first?
This director had got very cold and businesslike once more.
"Stop talking first," says he. "Don't let me hear another word from you. And listen hard. You're sitting in your humble home sewing a button on your boy's coat. He's your only joy in life. There's the coat and the button half sewed on with the needle and thread sticking in it. Sit down and sew that button on as if you were doing it for your own son. No pretending, mind you. Sew it on as if—"
He hesitated a minute and got a first-class inspiration.
"Sew it on as if it was a button on your husband's coat that you told me about. Every two or three stitches look up to show us how happy you are. When you get it sewed, take the coat up this way and hug it. You look still happier at that. Then you walk over to the mantel, pick up the photograph of your boy that's there by that china dog and kiss it. I won't tell you how to do that. Remember who he is and do it your own way, only let us see your face. Then put back the picture slowly, go get the coat, and start to the left as if you were going to hang it up in his room; but you hear steps on the stair outside and you know your boy has come home from work. We see that because your face lights up. Stand happy there till he comes in.
"You expect him to rush over to you as usual, but he's cast down; something has happened. You get a shock of fright. Walk over to him—slow; you're scared. Get your arms round him. He stiffens at first, then leans on you. He's crying himself now, but you ain't—not yet. You're brave because you don't know about this fight he's had with the foreman that's after your boy's sweetheart for no good purpose.
"Now go through it that far and see if you remember everything I told you. When we get down to the crying scene after the officer comes on, I'll rehearse you in that too, only for God's sake don't cry in the rehearsal! You'll go dry. Now then! Coat—button—sewing. Goon!"
Well,
