After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, and got Cherry's address.At five the next afternoon he called at the musty old house in the West Forties and sent up his professional card.
By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain _voile_ skirt, with her hair curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry might have been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's daughter, in the great (unwritten) New England drama not yet entitled anything.
"I know your act, Mr.Hart," she said after she had looked over his card carefully."What did you wish to see me about?""I saw you work last night," said Hart."I've written a sketch that I've been saving up.It's for two; and I think you can do the other part.I thought I'd see you about it.""Come in the parlor," said Miss Cherry."I've been wishing for something of the sort.I think I'd like to act instead of doing turns."Bob Hart drew his cherished "Mice Will Play" from his pocket, and read it to her.
"Read it again, please," said Miss Cherry.
And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved by introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting the dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with the pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of Helen Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her.Hart yielded to all her strictures without argument.She had at once put her finger on the sketch's weaker points.That was her woman's intuition that he had lacked.At the end of their talk Hart was willing to stake the judgment, experience, and savings of his four years of vaudeville that "Mice Will Play" would blossom into a perennial flower in the garden of the circuits.Miss Cherry was slower to decide.After many puckerings of her smooth young brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end of a lead pencil she gave out her dictum.
"Mr.Hart," said she, "I believe your sketch is going to win out.
That Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip to a handless hand laundry.I can make it stand out like the colonel of the Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar.
And I've seen you work.I know what you can do with the other part.But business is business.How much do you get a week for the stunt you do now?""Two hundred," answered Hart.
"I get one hundred for mine," said Cherry."That's about the natural discount for a woman.But I live on it and put a few simoleons every week under the loose brick in the old kitchen hearth.The stage is all right.I love it; but there's something else Ilove better--that's a little country home, some day, with Plymouth Rock chickens and six ducks wandering around the yard.
"Now, let me tell you, Mr.Hart, I am STRICTLY BUSINESS.If you want me to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it.
And I believe we can make it go.And there's something else Iwant to say: There's no nonsense in my make-up; I'm _on the level_, and I'm on the stage for what it pays me, just as other girls work in stores and offices.I'm going to save my money to keep me when I'm past doing my stunts.No Old Ladies' Home or Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me.
"If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr.Hart, with all nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it.I know something about vaudeville teams in general; but this would have to be one in particular.I want you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can cart away from it every pay-day in a little manila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where the cashier has licked the flap.It's kind of a hobby of mine to want to cravenette myself for plenty of rainy days in the future.I want you to know just how I am.I don't know what an all-night restaurant looks like; I drink only weak tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance in my life, and I've got money in five savings banks.""Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, "you're in on your own terms.I've got 'strictly business' pasted in my hat and stenciled on my make-up box.When I dream of nights Ialways see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long Island, with a Jap cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, and me with the title deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stanleys 'Explorations into Africa.' And nobody else around.You never was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?""Not any," said Cherry."What I'm going to do with my money is to bank it.You can get four per cent.on deposits.Even at the salary I've been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone.
Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business--say, trimming hats or a beauty parlor, and make more.""Well," said Hart, "You've got the proper idea all right, all right, anyhow.There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at all who couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come if they'd save their money instead of blowing it.I'm glad you've got the correct business idea of it, Miss Cherry.I think the same way; and I believe this sketch will more than double what both of us earn now when we get it shaped up."The subsequent history of "Mice Will Play" is the history of all successful writings for the stage.Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out, renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol--put the sketch through all the known processes of condensation and improvement.
They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the rarely used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour would occur every time exactly half a second before the click of the unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the thrilling climax of the sketch.