I was right. The hall remained absolutely empty that evening, though a large crowd of young men were gathered outside, listening eagerly to that villainous old bellman, who, from the point of vantage of an upturned box, related to them more imaginary details of the private lives of the members of the Merry Marauders Dramatic Company. According to him we were so hot a lot that we set alight a railway train in which we were travelling, and then had the audacity to swindle the New Zealand Government out of compensation for some destroyed scenery that never had any existence except in our imagination. How he got hold of this garbled account of our disaster between Mokura and Ngati I cannot conceive, but it didn’t matter much, as his previous lies had already accomplished the effect he had in view of keeping the respectable people of the town away from the performance. As it was perfectly useless to think of giving a show in the circumstances, Barney and I turned out the lights and walked home to the accompaniment of a variety of insulting remarks from the assembled rabble. These vulgar wretches followed us back to the hotel, led by that pest of a bellman, who called upon us repeatedly to take a solemn warning of what might happen to us elsewhere if we tried to rob another pore man of his hard-earned doos.
Yours (rather worried),
VAL.
VI
WHANGATEA,
CENTRAL LOOP LINE,
NORTH ISLAND, N.Z.
20th February, 1913.
MY DEAR DICK,
You, in your comfortable routine as leading man of one of London’s leading theatres, can form no conception of the worries incidental to the life of a provincial manager in the Colonies, in charge of a company doing ‘the smalls.’ In addition to the arduous task of husbanding an exchequer which, at the present time, is all ebb and no flow, I have had to grapple with what practically amounted to a strike among the Merry Marauders.
It came about this way. After we play at Rotorua we make for the comparatively remote shores of the Bay of Plenty—if funds permit, which at the time of writing seems problematical—in order to play the small towns of that delightfully picturesque district. By the time we reach there the district will be plunged into a convulsion of political strife by an important by-election, caused by the painfully sudden death of the late member, who succumbed to heart failure consequent on over-exertion in trying to convince a meeting of his constituents that his Parliamentary performances exceeded his election promises. As all New Zealand elections are fought out on the temperance question, each electorate having the right to decide at every election whether the hotels in that particular district shall be closed or not, Barney suggested to me that we should take advantage of the election by staging a good strong temperance drama in the Bay of Plenty district, which would secure the support of the prohibition (i.e., no liquor) party in every town we visited.
“Though, personally, I would sooner stage a play in support of the other side,” he added. “I have no love for the teetotal party, I can tell you. They’ve caused too much misery in New Zealand already. Do you know, I have seen many men on general election day here break down and cry like children in their agony when the figures announced that all the hotels in their district had to be closed—‘gone dry,’ as they call it. It’s the women’s vote that does it, but it’s a terrible sight to see strong men robbed of their beer.”
“Then why not take the other side?” I asked.
“No use. The teetotal candidate is going to win the Bay of Plenty seat, and it’ll pay us better to be on the winning side. If we go through the district with an up-to-date temperance drama we’ll get plenty of support from the prohibition party, who will use our drama as a political advertisement for their candidate. We ought to be able to play to crowded houses right through and finish up with a snug bank balance. There are only three towns in the whole district which are strongholds of the liquor candidate, and his supporters there will probably pay us to go on to the next town without playing, so we’ll score both ways.”
Although I thought the latter idea was akin to bringing the Merry Marauders down to the level of the itinerant piano-organ grinder who is given a coin to move on to the next street, I saw that the scheme as a whole was an excellent one. As the outcome of a further talk between us, Barney undertook to write a play, and did so. Or, rather, it would be more correct to say that three of us collaborated in its production: the celebrated English dramatist whose comedy supplied Barney with the plot and other groundwork for Demon Drink, the Destroyer, Barney, and myself; though my share of the work was modestly confined to bracing up the drama’s occasional grammatical weaknesses so far as my knowledge of my mother tongue enabled me to do. When the play was completed Barney banged out the parts on an old typewriter of Hivson’s that we carried around with us, and then I handed the script to the various members of the company, with the mandate that the first rehearsal of the new production would be held in three or four days.
Would you believe it? Every member of the company, with the exception of Miss Laurie (whose complaisance, I have reason to suspect, arose from a gentle consideration for my feelings) absolutely declined, with a unity of purpose that I could wish to see always in their acting, to play the parts alloted to them in Demon Drink, the Destroyer. They did not come in a body to acquaint me with their purpose, but they dropped in one after another, with brief intervals between—even down to the utility men—to express their abhorrence of the unfortunate drama that Barney and I had constructed with such mental effort.
I suppose I have not been sufficiently long in the profession to understand the extreme sensitiveness of the actor’s mind, but it certainly seemed to my merely lay intelligence that some of the objections they raised were very small points indeed. Mr. Reginald Bunne, our villain, for instance, indignantly returned his script because he had to play an accordion in the second act.
“Ask me anything else and I’ll do it for you, Mr. Valentine,” he said, with strong feeling, “but I cannot, and will not, violate the hallowed stage traditions of generations of villains by walking on and playing an accordion. I consented to smoke a pipe in our last play because of the extortionate demand of two shillings made by a country tobacconist for a sixpenny packet of cigarettes, but I draw the line at a coarse, low, vulgar, clod-hopping instrument like the accordion. I’ll resign from the company before I play it, or the part.”
Miss Audrey Bendalind refused to appear as a woman addicted to drink in a district where she (Miss Bendalind) had many friends, who might be led to believe, by her powerful acting, that she was really addicted to that terrible vice in private life. Mr. Irving Morrissey, for the same reason, refused to enact the part of the upright frugal temperance worker who amasses a fortune by abstention from strong drink, because it might injure his reputation in private life. He had always been a staunch opponent of the temperance craze, he said, and always would be while he had wind in his body to keep water out.
In short, every member of the company displayed so much antipathy to Demon Drink, the Destroyer, that I was forced to reconsider the position. One or two dissatisfied objectors might be dealt with, but it was difficult and unwise to stage a play that was disliked by every member of the company.
“It’s no use thinking of going on with it,” said Barney, when he heard what had happened. “We’ll have to fall back on that stock temperance drama, Ten Nights in a Bar Room. It’s been played all over the world for the last fifty years, but they’ve probably never heard of it in the Bay of Plenty district. I’ll localise it and bring it up to date, and pepper it well with topical allusions about the election and prohibition. Then it ought to go very well.”
So Demon Drink, the Destroyer, was withdrawn, and Ten Nights in a Bar Room put into rehearsal instead. All the members of the company welcomed the substitution, except Miss Bendalind, who didn’t want to play the part of Mrs. Morgan because I had entrusted the part of little Mary Morgan to one of the utility men, and remarked, with a sniff, that it was difficult to take an affectionate farewell of one’s dying child when t
he said child smelt strongly of rank tobacco. I was very firm in the matter, however, and at length she grumblingly gave way.
We lost three show nights between Ruatopiro and Whangatea, which is a prosperous dairy-farming centre 30 miles further on the road to Rotorua, owing to the ungrateful conduct of the old bellman, unearthed by Barney at the former place, in publicly denouncing us through the town. Our bookings were for three nights at Ruatopiro, but I realised that it would be folly to attempt to get a house after the outrageous remarks made about us by the bellman, so I deemed it well to get out of the place as quickly as possible, and we came on here to wait for our advertised date. I anxiously hoped for a good season here to recoup us for the Ruatopiro fiasco, but alas, further disaster was in store.
The town was very full for show week, and I was getting things fixed up at the hall for the first night’s performance in fond anticipation of a crowded house, when Barney King came dashing in with the appalling news that Mr. Irving Morrissey and Mr. Reginald Bunne had just been arrested for creating a disturbance in one of the local hotels, and had been taken, vigorously resisting, to the lock-up, followed by nearly all the town, who had turned out in force to witness the spectacle. Barney was too excited and incoherent to furnish me with any particulars, so I hurried down to the hotel from where our actors had been taken.
The landlord was in the bar, and gave me full details of the deplorable occurrence. He told me that Mr. Morrissey and Mr. Bunne had been in the hotel most of the afternoon conducting a scientific test (as they had termed it) to ascertain how many whiskies-and-milk a man could drink without accelerating the pulse, and when they had solved that problem they fell to discussing whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays. It was clear to me from the hotelkeeper’s description of what followed that Mr. Morrissey, who has an overbearing manner in professional argument, must have said something derogatory about Mr. Bunne’s theatrical reputation, for Mr. Bunne retorted that the best way to settle the vexed question for posterity would be for Mr. Morrissey to recite Hamlet’s third act soliloquy over the tombs of Bacon and Shakespeare, and as the real author of those immortal lines would assuredly turn in his grave when he heard Mr. Morrissey’s rendering of them, the authorship of the plays could be permanently settled by opening the coffin. Mr. Morrissey replied to this proposal by knocking Mr. Bunne under the table, where the pair fought so furiously that the landlord sent for a policeman, who temporarily settled the controversy by taking both disputants into custody.
Barney and I proceeded to the police station, where we found the controversialists still angrily arguing the point with their heads thrust out of their respective cells. We interviewed the policeman in charge of the station, a big, good-natured Irishman, who made light of the whole affair. He said that as he had entered only a charge of offensive behaviour against our actors, the worst that could happen to them was a night in the cells and a magisterial reprimand the next morning. “I haven’t charged thim wid resistin’ arrest,” said the kindly soul, “because I have a wakeness for the theatrical profession myself. I inherited it from my father, who was call-boy at the Theayter Royal, Dublin, before he come out to this counthry. Me own darter’s inherited the family talent, and would have taken to the boards like a duck takes to water if a pig-farrmer from down beyant Raurimo hadn’t got the soft side of her and persuaded her to marry him.”
“Are you the only policeman in Whangatea?” asked Barney eagerly.
“Sorra another there is,” replied the officer.
“Then couldn’t you lend us these fellows for a couple of hours?” pleaded Barney. “Our show to-night will be an absolute frost without them, and we haven’t been doing too well lately. Your father was connected with the profession, so I appeal to you as a brother professional to do us this favour. Lend them to us and we’ll promise faithfully to return them directly the show is over!”
“I’d like to help ye,” said the policeman; “but do ye think your men are sober enough to let out?”
“Give them into my charge, and I’ll guarantee that in half an hour they’ll be as sober as the magistrate who’ll try them in the morning,” asserted Barney, confidently.
“All right, thin, I’ll take your word and give you the run of thim for a few hours,” said the fine fellow, unlocking the cell doors. “There they are, but be sure and return them according to agreement, or I shall be down on ye like a ton of bricks.”
We faithfully promised to repawn our pledges, and then hurried them away to the hotel to get them straightened up for the evening’s performance. Thanks to Barney’s efforts, they were both able to go on in a state of comparative sobriety, but the news of the arrest had its effect on the house, which was worth less than £5. We acted to this sparse audience in order to create a good impression and promote a healthier flow into the treasury the next night. Unfortunately this plan was spoilt by the officiousness of an Auckland police inspector, who chose this particular night to pay one of his rare visits of inspection to the Whangatea police station; an unhappy circumstance that brought our policeman in hot haste to the hall for his prisoners. So apprehensive was he that the inspector would discover the names in the charge book while the prisoners were absent from the cells, that he actually insisted in interrupting Mr. Morrissey at the moment when, having just won the heroine’s love, he was defying the world from the centre of the stage, and before we could get the curtain down he marched him off in full view of the audience to the accompaniment of the finest round of applause that our leading man has received within my knowledge.
Next morning the Merry Marauders were the laughing-stock of the place, so there was nothing for it but to abandon the remainder of the season and get on to Rotorua while we had the money for the fares. We had enough for this purpose and no more; our surplus of one short week before, the nest-egg which we hoped to add to till we had enough to carry out our ambitious dream of playing a season in one of the city theatres, had gone to fill the yawning gap of a week’s expenditure without income—sad instance of the vanity of human wishes and the transitory nature of hope—and if we bought tickets for Rotorua we would not have the wherewithal to pay our present landlord.
Barney, Mr. Baker (who had rejoined us from the hospital that morning) and I held a council of war, at which we reluctantly decided to ask our landlord to go temporarily short to enable us to make Rotorua. It was imperative that we should reach New Zealand’s tourist-crowded show place of hot springs and thermal activity, for the place had a real theatre owned by a friend of Barney’s, whom Barney guaranteed not to ask for rent in advance, and a week’s season there would restore our finances to a flourishing condition before we invaded the Bay of Plenty district. We decided to break the sad news to our landlord jointly, and we proceeded to the bar fervently hoping that he was a twin brother of the Pukerunui hotel-keeper, who freely postponed our payment of indebtedness, and lent us a hearse to get out of the town.
Mr. Daniells, Mr. Kelly’s successor in misfortune, seemed a very decent fellow, and it is possible he might have lent a compassionate ear to our sorrowful tale of misfortune, but for a most tactless act on the part of Barney King. Barney is an expert carver among other things, and as he anxiously waited in the background for Mr. Baker’s plausible tongue to make a softening impression on the glum set face of Mr. Daniells, he nervously filled in the time fiddling with his penknife and a large cork he had picked up from the bar counter. When Mr. Baker paused for want of breath, Barney stepped forward murmuring incoherent unavailing regrets, and pressed the cork into the landlord’s hand with the hope that he would accept the trifle as a memento of the visit of the Merry Marauders.
And on that cork he had carved:
I would rather not write of what followed. I find it very hard to forgive Barney, whose subsequent excuse that he carved the cork because he believed the landlord couldn’t write, seems to me trivial in the extreme.
Yours, sadly,
VAL.
VII
WHAKA
REWAREWA,
ROTORUA,
NORTH ISLAND, N.Z.
1st March, 1913.
MY DEAR DICK,
I closed my last letter with the Merry Marauders making in a penniless condition for Rotorua after a disastrous time at Whangatea, where all was lost save honour, and even that had to be left behind with the landlord of the hotel as security for our unpaid bill. Our position, with not a penny piece among us, was not a pleasant one, and I was unable to derive much consolation from Mr. Baker’s philosophic remark that things might be worse if the system of wireless telegraphy had come into general use in New Zealand country hotels. “When Marconi’s marvellous invention is brought within reach of the poorest purse,” said Mr. Baker, “many a theatrical combination, whose members are now unselfishly giving up their lives to lightening the dull lot of the rural New Zealander by means of refined theatrical entertainments—braving the perils of the New Zealand bush to lift him out of his bucolic stodginess—will cease to exist. But that unhappy day is not yet, and till it comes along let us realise that we have always a sporting chance of ‘balancing’ a landlord, providing that our predecessors on the road have not milked his involuntary hospitality dry.”
I did not like this style of conversation, for the Merry Marauders have scrupulously discharged their financial obligations to the last penny since I have been manager, with the unfortunate exception of the debt owing to the Whangatea hotel-keeper, and that shall be paid if I am reduced to remitting it at the rate of five shillings a week. I sharply informed Mr. Baker of my intentions, and told him it was time enough to talk of ‘balancing’ when it had to be done.
Mr. Baker appeared hurt. His devotion to the rugged virtue of honesty, he said, had been unswerving during the whole of his forty years on the theatrical roads, in spite of the dishonest extortion of many rapacious landlords, who had got so much out of him that when he struck a bad patch he had no compunction in allowing the balance to fall a little in his direction by letting the hotel-keeper wait for his money, though (as he hastened to assure me) he ultimately discharged the bill to the uttermost farthing, even if years elapsed before he had the necessary money. In support of this latter assertion he related to me how, once, when he was travelling on the West Coast, he was compelled, after a particularly bad season, to put the hall owner as well as the hotel-keeper into his balance. The hotel-keeper had been weighed in this manner before, and knowing Mr. Baker’s sterling rectitude, did not object to the process, but the hall-owner—a Greek who had built the hall out of the savings of his fish and oyster business—was found sadly wanting.
The Merry Marauders Page 6