real play, and then Maudie could leave the room before she came on—so that was settled. I was the stage-manager by this time, and perhaps you think I wasn't busy and "sorely tried," like those in affliction. I was.
Of course after the three acts were written the next thing to do was to make them all into one play. I will say here, with the deep humility the truly gifted always feel, that I don't believe any one but us could have done it. Even we lay awake nights over it! Finally we did it this way:
The first scene was Chicago in the year 1904, and Juliet said:
"Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day.
It is the nightingale, and not the lark,
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear."
Then Romeo had to reply, of course, and that gave us a chance to show that the play was modern. So we made him say:
"It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
And this will be indeed a busy day.
For thrice since eve has price of wheat gone down—
And I must be within the stock exchange ere tolls the bell."
You see how well that brought out the idea of the Chicago rush, and got the audience ready for Mabel's Pit, too. Then, at the end, when Juliet is dying, she says:
"My dismal scene I needs must act alone—
But poor Cleopatra, alas! alack!
Must do the same thing later."
Thus the girls—the audience, I mean—knew what was coming and didn't feel surprised when the curtain rose on Cleopatra and her asp. You see, it was not really hard to do after you had thought of the right way. It was like the egg that Columbus stood on end, by crushing it, when the others couldn't.
We didn't bother much about clothes while we were writing the play. But when we began to rehearse we saw how silly Romeo looked in Maudie Joyce's golf-skirt, so she wore her heavy travelling ulster during that act, and a little steamer-cap Kittie James lent her. All I had to have were clinging, flowing things that would show the soft immature lines of my youthful figure, —for those are the kind of lines everybody says Juliet had. So I wore my silk kimono, and Maudie Joyce tore the sleeve, alas! in her ardor.
All Mabel Blossom did was to wear her best clothes, for Laura in The Pit had lots of money. That was what her husband was doing all the time—getting it. As for Mabel Muriel, her father sent her a box of Cleopatra clothes that made our eyes bulge out. He sent clothes for five acts. As there was only one Cleopatra act in our play, Mabel Muriel had to leave the stage every five minutes to change her dress. It spoiled the death scene, too, for she began it in a Nile-green gown and came back and died in a white one, because the asp showed up better on that—and, besides, she wanted to wear all the dresses, so her dear father would not be disappointed. But it was not Art, for of course Cleopatra would not be thinking of clothes in those last sad minutes, even though she was indeed a vain and sadly frivolous woman with too many emotions.
When we were all ready we invited ten girls to Maudie's room to see the play. Kittie James and Adeline Thurston sat in the front row, which was a trunk, and the other girls sat where they could. My, but they were enthusiastic! We had stuffed the door and the keyhole and put black curtains over the transom and windows so we wouldn't disturb any one, and we told the audience they could only applaud by clapping their thumb-nails together. But they did that till they most wore them out, and when Kittie James saw Cleopatra's asp she fell right off the trunk in her surprise and interest. She thought it was a real one.
Would that I could drop the curtain now, as we dropped it before our happy little band that night, flushed with joy and triumph. But—alas, alas! Life is indeed full of bitterness, and who are we that we should hope to escape its dregs? We had finished our play and were all talking at once, and getting ready to eat the spread Maudie had thoughtfully provided for our fortunate guests, and I guess perhaps we forgot to be quiet, for suddenly there was a heavy rap upon our portal. Then a Voice—not Adeline Thurston's, but Sister Edna's—said, "Open the door!"
