“Why the devil is he new?” cried Mr Miller, awaking suddenly to the truth and filled with a sense of outrage. “Why didn’t he join with the rest of the company? How can I put on chorus numbers if I am saddled every day with new people to teach? Who engaged him?”
“Who engaged you?” enquired Mr Saltzburg of the culprit.
Mr Miller waved his hands in a gesture of divine despair, spun round, darted up the aisle, turned, and bounded back. “What can I do?” he wailed. “My hands are tied! I am hampered! I am handicapped! We open in two weeks, and every day I find somebody new in the company to upset everything I have done. I shall go to Mr Goble and ask to be released from my contract. I shall … Come along, come along, come along now!” he broke off suddenly. “Why are we wasting time? The whole number once more. The whole number once more from the beginning!”
The young man tottered back to his gentlemanly colleagues, running a finger in an agitated manner round the inside of his collar. He was not used to this sort of thing. In a large experience of amateur theatricals he had never encountered anything like it. In the breathing-space afforded by the singing of the first verse and refrain by the lady who played the heroine of “The Rose of America,” he found time to make an enquiry of the artist on his right.
“The sportsman with the hair that turned white in a single night. The barker on the skyline. Does he often get the wind up like this?”
“Why, that’s nothing!” he replied. “Wait till you see him really cut loose! That was just a gentle whisper!”
“My God!” said the newcomer, staring into a bleak future. The leading lady came to the end of her refrain, and the gentlemen of the ensemble, who had been hanging about up-stage, began to curvet nimbly down towards her in a double line; the new arrival, with an eye on his nearest neighbor, endeavouring to curvet as nimbly as the others. A clapping of hands from the dark auditorium indicated—inappropriately—that he had failed to do so. Mr Miller could be perceived—dimly—with all his fingers entwined in his hair.
“Clear the stage!” yelled Mr Miller. “Not you!” he shouted, as the latest addition to the company began to drift off with the others. “You stay!”