Elizabeth sat down in Mr. Price's swivel chair. “Aunt Harriet hated having me come here this summer. She'd do anything in the world to get me back. She thinks, as I believe I have told you before, that the theatre is an invention of Satan.”
“What gets me,” Jane said, sitting on a corner of the desk and resting her delicate feet on the edge of the big tin wastepaper
basket, “is if she hates the theatre so, why did she let you come here in the first place? She gives you the twenty a week room and board, doesn't she?”
“I wouldn't be here otherwise.” Elizabeth picked up a glass paperweight that had a snowman in it, and shook it to set up a cloud of snowflakes falling inside. She watched it intently. “Father didn't have a penny when he died. Teachers don't make much money, as you know, and Father didn't even teach in a universityâhe taught at a boys' schoolâand he didn't have any sense about money anyhow. Aunt Harriet took me because it was her Christian duty, and not because she wanted me. Please, Jane, if you ever see me doing anything because it's my Christian duty, stop me.”
“You aren't apt to,” Jane said. “You're too good a Christian.”
Elizabeth smiled at her, then looked at the snow that was still falling, very gently now, inside the glass globe. “It was kind of a bet. Aunt Harriet doesn't make bets, of course, but that's what it was.”
“What was the bet?” Jane asked, upsetting the wastepaper basket and spilling papers all over the floor. “Darn,” she said, and got down on her hands and knees to clean up the mess. It always amazed Elizabeth that in positions that would make anybody else look awkward, Jane still managed to be graceful.
“She said that if I'd major in chemistry at Smith instead of dramatic arts, and if I graduated with honors, she'd let me go to a summer theatre.” Elizabeth, too, was now down on her hands and knees, helping Jane cram papers back into the basket. “I guess she thought if I majored in chemistry I might forget about the theatre. Well, I didn't forget about the theatre
and it was kind of a challenge, so I just managed to squeak through with honors, no magna or summa cum laude, just plain cum laude, but anyhow it was honors and she hadn't specified. She made a fuss and tried to get out of it but I'd already got my scholarship here so I threw a scene about her word being no good and how hard I'd worked and how little twenty dollars is to her and all that. I was really stinking, Jane. I feel terribly ashamed whenever I think about it. But I had to do it, and no matter how guilty I feel I know I'd do it again.”
“Yes, I know,” Jane said, sitting down on the floor and leaning back against the wall. “I've never seen anyone look more determined than you did last spring in Price's office.”
Â
That day in Mr. Price's office in New York, Elizabeth thought now, had been the turning point of her whole life. If it had not been for that day last spring, none of the summerâworking in the theatre, getting to know Kurt, beginning a completely new lifeâwould have been possible.
Even then she had been aware of it. Sitting in the anteroom of Mr. Price's office, she had thought, How strange to know that the whole course of my life can be changed today in this dingy office.
But it was true. It was so frighteningly true that her hands had felt cold with fear and her heart had beat so fast that for a moment she was afraid that she might faint in the hot stuffiness of the little room. Although it was an unseasonably hot April day, steam hissed in the radiator, and there was no window in the anteroom. Even the office door to the main hallway was closed.
Because she had not been able to sit still another moment, she went over to the receptionist. “My appointment with Mr. Price was at one o'clock and it's after two now,” she said.
“Yeah?” The receptionist looked at her with a hot, annoyed face.
“I meanâhe's still going to see me, isn't he?”
“You've got an appointment card, haven't you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then, relax. Sit down. Though why you want to see him I don't know. I'm sure he doesn't want to see you.”
Elizabeth sat down again. She felt miserable and young and more than snubbed. She looked at her feet because she was afraid that if she looked at the others waiting in the room she would find scorn in their faces.
“Don't let it get to you,” the girl next to her said. “I've just been in an office where the receptionist was nice enough to say âThank you for coming in' after she told me the cast was all set. They're not all like the sourpuss here. Though with the second-rate theatre Price is running, I don't know why we're all hanging around here like a lot of trained seals waiting for him to throw us a fish.”
The door to the hall opened and a young man entered. The moment he came in, a slight, pleasant smile on his face, Elizabeth saw that there was something different about him, that he was not like anybody else in the room. And then she realized what the difference was: he was the only one who was not nervous.
He walked over to the receptionist's desk and said, “Hi, Sadie, how's my duck today?” He had a slight accent.
The sour face was surprisingly pretty when it smiled. “Oh, dying of the heat, Mr. Canitz. Otherwise I guess I'll survive. You want to see Mr. Price?”
“If he's not too busy.”
“Oh, he always has time to see you, Mr. Canitz. Go right in.”
The young man smiled his pleasant smile at the room full of hot, nervous people, and opened the door to Mr. Price's office. Elizabeth looked in quickly and saw that it was very like the anteroom, except that it had a large open window and a brief, welcome gust of cool air blew in at her. Mr. Price was sitting at his desk talking to a young woman with blond hair, and he waved his hand genially at Mr. Canitz. “Oh, come in, Kurt. I want you to meet this young lady.”
Then the door shut and heat settled back over the room.
“If I had any sense,” the girl next to Elizabeth said, “I'd leave this hellhole and go home. And so would you.”
“Home,” Elizabeth found herself answering, “is the last place I'd go.”
“Well, then, I guess you have a point in hanging around. Why don't they at least open the door into the hall?” She appealed to Sadie. “Couldn't you turn off the heat or something?”
“No, I can't,” the receptionist snapped. “The radiator's broken. And I'm just as hot as you are. Hotter. If you don't like it here, why don't you leave? I tell you, he isn't going to hire anybody else. He's got the whole season set. You're wasting your time.”
The girl turned back to Elizabeth. “That's the way people get ulcers. People with vile natures always get ulcers. If I stay here much longer, I'll get ulcers, too.”
“But is it true?” Elizabeth asked.
“What?”
“That he has the whole season set.”
“Of course it isn't true. She only said it because she's in a vile mood. What's your name? I'm Jane Gardiner.”
“I'm Elizabeth Jerrold.”
“Listen, I don't mean to butt in,” Jane said, “but don't be nervous. You're practically making the bench shake. After all, the world isn't going to end if Price doesn't give you a job. Nothing's that important.”
“But it is,” Elizabeth said. “For me it is.”
The door to the office opened again and Kurt Canitz and the blond woman came out. Mr. Canitz had his arm protectively about her, and he ushered her gallantly to the door and said goodbye. Then he sat down and smiled at Sadie and looked slowly around the anteroom. His eyes rested on Jane, on Elizabeth, on a little man in a bowler hat. Sadie picked up a stack of cards and called out, “Gardiner.”
Jane rose. “That's me. Well, this is only the fifteenth office I've been in today. What've I got to lose?”
Elizabeth watched her as she walked swiftly into the office, shutting the door firmly behind her. Yes, Jane was obviously a person who knew her way around theatrical offices. She had a certain nervous excitement, like every actor waiting to hear about a job, but it was controlled, made into an asset; it gave a shine to her brown eyes, a spring to her step. Elizabeth felt that Jane was dressed correctly, too. She wore a pleated navy blue skirt and a little red jacket. Her hair was very fair, a soft ash
blond, and on her head she wore a small red beret. Elizabeth felt forlorn in the other girl's absence, and suddenly foolish. She herself wore a simple blue denim skirt and white blouse, and she felt that she belonged much more on a college campus than she did in a theatrical office on Forty-second Street in New York. If someone as desirable as Jane had been in fifteen offices that day and still did not have a job, then what was Elizabeth thinking of when she was letting everything in the world depend on whether or not Mr. J. P. Price took her into his summer theatre company?
But Mr. Price was Elizabeth's only hope after her twenty letters of inquiry to summer-stock companies. Many of the managers had sent back form letters that offered her opportunities to apprenticeâbut at a two- or three-hundred-dollar tuition fee. Mr. Price had simply sent her a card telling her to be at his office at one o'clock, April 14, and he would see her then.
Elizabeth looked around at the dingy anteroom; the buff-colored walls were cracked and some of the cracks were partially covered with signed photographs of actors and actresses of whom she had never heard. There were no familiar names like Judith Anderson, Katharine Cornell, Eva Le Gallienne, Ethel Barrymore. The air smelled like stale cigar smoke from the little man in the bowler hat who sat stolidly on a folding chair and surrounded himself with a cloud of heavy fumes.
Elizabeth noticed Kurt Canitz was writing busily in a small notebook. He looked up and stared directly at her for several seconds, then scribbled something else in the notebook, tore off the page and gave it to Sadie with a radiant smile, and left.
Elizabeth wondered what his connection with the theatre was. Was he an actor, a director, perhaps a producer? Certainly he was connected with Mr. Price's summer company.
Again the door of the office opened and Jane came out. She grinned at Elizabeth.
“Did you get a job?” Elizabeth asked eagerly.
“Well, not exactly the job I went in for, but at this point it'll do. I'm going as an apprentice, which I swore after last summer I'd never do again, but this time at least it's a scholarship.”
“Oh, I'm so glad!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “That's wonderful!”
“Thanks,” Jane said. “Good luck to you, too.”
Sadie was looking at her cards. “Jerrold,” she called.
Elizabeth stood up.
Jane took her hand. “Good luck,” she said again. “Good luck,
really
. I hope I'll see you there.”
“Thanks,” Elizabeth answered, and went into the office.
“Well, what can I do for you?” Mr. Price asked, looking Elizabeth up and down until she flinched.
“You can give me a job,” Elizabeth said, and was surprised at how calm her voice sounded.
“And what kind of a job are you looking for, my dear?”
“A job in your summer theatre. As an actress.” Elizabeth felt that her voice sounded flat and colorless; anxiety had wiped out its usual resonance.
“And what experience have you had? What parts have you played?”
Elizabeth ignored the first part of his question. “I've played
Lady Macbeth and Ophelia and I've played Hilda Wangel in
The Master Builder
and Sudermann's Magda, and the Sphinx in Cocteau's
The Infernal Machine
.”
“A bit on the heavy side, wouldn't you say?” Mr. Price asked her. “And aren't you rather young for Lady Macbeth or Magda? How about something moreârecentâand perhaps a little gayer?”
“WellâI've played Blanche in
Streetcar
âoh, I know that's not very gay, but it's recentâandâandâI've done some Chekhov one-acts. They're not very recent but they're gayâ”
“And where did you get all this magnificent experience?” Mr. Price asked her. “Why, after all this, have I never heard of you?”
“At college,” Elizabeth said, looking down at her feet.
“My dear young lady.” Mr. Price sounded half bored, half amused. “Perhaps you do not realize, but I am running a professional theatre. I am sure you were very charming and very highly acclaimed at college, but I am really not contemplating producing
Macbeth
or
Magda
or even
The Infernal Machine
. So what do I have to offer you?”
“All I want,” Elizabeth said desperately, “isâ
anything
.”
“Anything what?”
“Maids, walk-ons, working in the box office. Anything.”
“I take a certain number of apprentices,” Mr. Price said. “They take classes from the company actors. We use the star system. We do a new play every week and the company professionals rehearse all week in bit parts. Then the star arrives on Sunday. The stars have one rehearsal with the company before the show. Although one or two of them will direct the plays
they are starring in, and those actors will be there longer. If I can, I use the apprentices in at least one walk-on part during the summer. The fee is three hundred dollars.”