WORLD'S END полностью

The director of the Newcastle Country Club production of A Midsummer-Night's Dream came from New York; a tall young man of aesthetic appearance, wearing spectacles, and hair a bit longer than was usual in the town. He had an absentminded manner and a habit of making oddly humorous remarks. He took a liking to Lanny, and told him about a part of New York called Greenwich Village, where young people interested in the arts forgathered, writing plays on a little oatmeal and producing them on a shoestring. Walter Hayden was a discreet person, who valued his job, and never exercised his sense of humor upon anything in Newcastle; but he made general remarks to Lanny about the odd position of a stage director whose actors were all rich people accustomed to doing what they pleased, so that only by the exercise of patience and tact could things be got a little less than terrible.

After the first two or three rehearsals, there began to spread in the polite assemblage an uneasy sense that something was lacking in the Newcastle Country Club version of A Midsummer-Night's Dream. One of the "swank" young matrons found an opportunity to draw Lanny aside and ask whether he did not think it barely possible that Adelaide Hitchcock was less than completely adapted to the role of Puck? Adelaide was a lovely young girl with a wealth of wavy brown hair and large soulful brown eyes which turned quite often in the direction of Lanny Budd. She had a shapely figure, and everything that was needed to make a fairy, so long as she stood silent and motionless; but when she spoke her lines there was no life in them, and when she came onto the stage it was as a young lady entering a drawing room, and not in the least as a dancing sprite, the incarnation of mischief.

Now if Lanny had been more at home in Connecticut, he would have stopped to reflect that the Hitchcock family was prominent in his father's city, and that Adelaide's mother was first cousin to Lanny's stepmother. But he was thinking about art, and he said that in his opinion Adelaide with wings on her shoulders would make a great addition to the train of Queen Titania; but for the part of Puck they needed a boy or girl who could act; and if it was a girl, it ought to be one with a boyish figure, without hips.

They talked about various members of the younger set and couldn't think of anybody. Lanny asked if there wasn't some teacher of dancing in the town who could make a suggestion; then suddenly Mrs. Jessup recalled that she had seen a play given by the students at the high school, and in it was a girl who had "stolen the show" by the extraordinary verve of her acting. Lanny said: "Why don't you bring her here and let the members meet her?" Again he showed that he was not at home in Connecticut; for in this old-fashioned city the daughters of the aristocracy did not attend the free high schools, and girls who attended these schools were rarely invited to country clubs.

Mrs. Jessup went off to find this girl, whose name was Gracyn Phillipson and whose mother was an interior decorator, having a little shop and her living rooms above it. Before Mrs. Jessup went, she told her friends that Lanny had made the suggestion, thus giving him full credit for what happened. Later on it would be said that she was an "intriguer," and had manipulated matters to this end; but how could Lanny know about that?

IV

Gracyn Phillipson came to the club late the next afternoon, and Lanny was there as he had promised. One glance, and you could see that she was made for the role of Puck; a tiny, slender figure, with no hips that you would notice; a quick, eager manner, a voice full of laughter, and feet that danced of themselves. To be sure she was a brunette, and Lanny had somehow thought of fairies as blond; but when you came to consult the authorities, you couldn't find anything definite on the point.

Several of Mrs. Jessup's smart friends, having been told that Lanny Budd was interested in this young lady, had assembled to meet her. As the quickest way to bring out her "points," someone asked her to dance. A record was put on the phonograph, and of course it was up to a gallant youth to escort her onto the floor. If he had been discreet, he would have found some other partner for her and would have sat and studied her with a cold professional eye. But Lanny had a weakness for dancing, and it may be that the intriguers were taking advantage of that.