The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces

Mrs. Bradley.  Ellen, I have come to tell you something.  To save you from a vile conspiracy.

Mrs. Perkins.  I am quite well able, Lady Amaranth, to manage my own affairs—

Mrs. Bradley.  But you do not know.  You love Lord Muddleton—

Mrs. Perkins (toying with her fan).  Oh!  Indeed!  And who, pray, has taken you into my confidence?  I was not aware—

Mrs. Bradley.  Hear me, Ellen—

Mrs. Perkins.  Excuse me, Lady Amaranth! but you have forgotten that it is only to my friends that I am known as—

Mrs. Bradley.  Then Lady Ellen, if it must be so.  I know what you do not—that Henry Cobb is an escaped convent—

Yardsley.  Convict, not convent.

Mrs. Bradley.  Is an escaped convict, and—

Mrs. Perkins.  I am not interested in Henry Cobb.

Mrs. Bradley.  But he is in you, Ellen Abercrombie.  He is in you, and with the aid of Fenderson Featherhead—

[Bell.  Perkins lets curtain drop half-way, but remembers in time, and pulls it up again.

Perkins.  Beg pardon.  String slipped.

Mrs. Bradley.  Too late.  Oh, if he had only waited!

Enter Miss Andrews.

Miss Andrews.  Mr. Featherhead, Leddy Eilen.

Yardsley.  Ellen, Ellen; and lydy, not leddy.

Mrs. Bradley.  Hear me first, I beg.

Mrs. Perkins.  Show him in, Mary.  Lady Amaranth, as you see, I am engaged.  I really must be excused.  Good-night.

Mrs. Bradley (aside).  Foiled!  Muddleton will be exposed.  Ah, if I could only have broken the force of the blow!  (Aloud.)  Lady Ellen, I will speak.  Fenderson Featherhead—

Enter Bradley and Barlow together.  Both.  Is here, Lady Amaranth.

[Each tries to motion the other off the stage.

Yardsley.  What the deuce does this mean?  What do you think this play is—an Uncle Tom combination with two Topsys?

Barlow.  I told him to keep out, but he said that Fenderson Featherhead was his cue.

Bradley (indignantly).  Well, so it is; there’s the book.

Yardsley.  Oh, nonsense, Brad!  Don’t be idiotic.  The book doesn’t say anything of the sort.

Bradley.  But I say it does.  If you—

Barlow.  It’s all rot for you to behave like this, Bradley.

Perkins.  Isn’t it time something happened to the curtain?  The audience will get panicky if they witness any such lack of harmony as this.  I will draw a veil over the painful scene.  B-r-r-r-r.  (Drops curtain.)  B-r-r-r-r.

[Raises it again.

Yardsley.  We won’t dispute the matter, Bradley.  You are wrong, and that’s all there is about it.  Now do get off the stage and let us go ahead.  Perkins, for Heaven’s sake, give that curtain a rest, will you?

Perkins.  I was only having a dress-rehearsal on my own account, Bob.  Bike bell, curtain.  Push bell, front door.  Trolley gong, nothing—

Bradley.  Well, if you fellows won’t—

Yardsley (taking him by the arm and walking him to side of stage).  Never mind, Brad; you’ve made a mistake, that’s all.  We all make mistakes at times.  Get off, like a good fellow.  You don’t come on for ten minutes yet.  (Exit Bradley, scratching his head in puzzled meditation.)  Go ahead now, Barlow.

Mrs. Bradley.  But, Mr. Yardsley, Edward has—

Yardsley.  We’ll begin with your cue.

Mrs. Bradley.  Fenderson Featherhead—

Barlow.  Is here, Lady Amaranth.

Mrs. Bradley.  But—

Yardsley.  No, no!  Your word isn’t “but,” Mrs. Bradley.  It’s (consulting book)—it’s: “Insolent!  You will cross my path once too often, and then—

Enter Bradley.

Mrs. Bradley.  I know that, but I don’t say that to him!

Bradley.  Of course not.  She says it to me.

Barlow.  Well, of all the stupidity—

Perkins.  Another unseemly fracas.  Another veil.  B-r-r-r-r.  (Drops curtain.)  There may be a hitch in the play, but there won’t be in this curtain.  I tell you that right now.  B-r-r-r-r.

[Raises curtain.

Mrs. Perkins.  Well, I don’t pretend to understand the difficulty.  She certainly does say that to Featherhead.

Barlow.  Of course!—it’s right there in the book.

Bradley.  That’s exactly what I say.  It’s in the book; but you would come on.

Barlow.  Well, why shouldn’t I?

Enter Miss Andrews.

Miss Andrews.  What seems to be the trouble?

Perkins.  I give it up.  Collision somewhere up the road.

Yardsley (turning over the leaves of the play-book).  Oh, I see the trouble—it’s all right.  Bradley is mixed up a little, that’s all.  “Fenderson Featherhead” is his cue—but it comes later, Brad.

Bradley.  Later?  Well (glances in book)—no—it comes now,

Barlow.  Are you blind?  Can you read?  See there!  [Points into book.

Yardsley.  No—you keep still, Jack.  I’ll fix it.  See here, Bradley.  This is the place you are thinking of.  When Cobb says to Lady Ellen “Fenderson Featherhead,” you enter the room, and in a nervous aside you mutter: “What, he!  Does he again dare to cross my path?”  That’s the way of it.

Barlow.  Certainly—that’s it, Brad.  Now get off, and let me go on, will you?

Mrs. Perkins.  I’m sure it’s a perfectly natural error, Mr. Bradley.

Mrs. Bradley.  But he’s right, my dear Bess.  The others are wrong.  Edward doesn’t—

Bradley.  I don’t care anything about it, but I’m sure I don’t know what else to do.  If I am to play Fenderson—

Barlow (in amazement).  You?

Yardsley (aghast).  Fenderson?  By all that is lovely, what part have you learned?

Bradley.  The one you told me to learn in your message—Featherhead, of course.

Barlow.  But that’s my part!

Mrs. Perkins.  Of course it is, Mr. Bradley.  Mr. Barlow is to be—

Mrs. Bradley.  But that’s what Edward was told.  I saw the message myself.

Yardsley (sinking into a chair dejectedly).  Why, Ed Bradley!  I never mentioned Featherhead.  You were to be Muddleton!

Bradley.  Me?

Mrs. Bradley.  What?

Yardsley.  Certainly.  There’s nothing the matter with Barlow, and he’s cast for Featherhead.  You’ve learned the wrong part!

Bradley (searching his pockets).  Here’s the telegram.  There (takes message from pocket), read that.  There are my instructions.

Yardsley (grasps telegram and reads it.  Drops it to floor).  Well, I’ll be jiggered!

[Buries his face in his hands.

Mrs. Perkins (picking up message and reading aloud).  “Can you take Fenderson’s part in to-night’s show?  Answer at once.  Yardsley.”

Barlow.  Well, that’s a nice mess.  You must have paresis, Bob.

Perkins.  I was afraid he’d get it sooner or later.  You need exercise, Yardsley.  Go pull that curtain up and down a half-dozen times and it’ll do you good.

Bradley.  That telegram lets me out.

Mrs. Bradley.  I should say so.

Perkins.  Lets us all out, seems to me.

Yardsley.  But—I wrote Henderson, not Fenderson.  That jackass of a telegraph operator is responsible for it all.  “Will you take Henderson’s part?” is what I wrote, and he’s gone and got it Fenderson.  Confound his—

Mrs. Perkins.  But what are we going to do?  It’s quarter-past six now, and the curtain is to rise at 8.30.

Perkins.  I’ll give ’em my unequalled imitation of Sandow lifting the curtain with one hand.  Thus.  [Raises curtain wish right hand.

Yardsley.  For goodness’ sake, man, be serious.  There are seventy-five people coming here to see this performance, and they’ve paid for their tickets.

Mrs. Perkins.  It’s perfectly awful.  We can’t do it at all unless Mr. Bradley will go right up stairs now and learn—

Mrs. Bradley.  Oh, that’s impossible.  He’s learned nearly three hundred lines to-day already.  Mr. Barlow might—

Barlow.  I couldn’t think of it, Mrs. Bradley.  I’ve got as much as I can do remembering what lines I have learned.

Perkins.  It would take you a week to forget your old part completely enough to do the other well.  You’d be playing both parts, the way Irving does when he’s irritated, before you knew it.

Yardsley.  I’m sure I don’t know what to do.

Perkins.  Give it up, eh?  What are you stage-manager for?  If I didn’t own the house, I’d suggest setting it on fire; but I do, and it isn’t fully insured.

Mrs. Perkins.  Perhaps Miss Andrews and Mr. Yardsley could do their little scene from Romeo and Juliet.

Mrs. Bradley.  Just the thing.

Yardsley.  But I haven’t a suitable costume.

Perkins.  I’ll lend you my golf trousers, and Bess has an old shirt-waist you could wear with ’em.  Piece it out a little so that you could get into it, and hang the baby’s toy sword at your side, and carry his fireman’s hat under your arm, and you’d make a dandy-looking Romeo.  Some people might think you were a new woman, but if somebody were to announce to the audience that you were not that, but the Hon. R. Montague, Esq., it would be all right and exceedingly amusing.  I’ll do the announcing with the greatest of pleasure.  Really think I’d enjoy it.

Miss Andrews.  I think it would be much better to get up Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks.

Perkins.  Oh dear, Miss Andrews, never.  Mrs. Jarley awakens too many bitter memories in me.  I was Mrs. Jarley once, and—

Yardsley.  It must have been awful.  If there is anything in life that could be more horrible than you, with your peculiar style of humor, trying to do Jarley, I—

Perkins.  Oh, well, what’s the odds what we do?  We’re only amateurs, anyhow.  Yardsley can put on a pair of tight boots, and give us an impression of Irving, or perhaps an imitation of the Roman army at the battle of Philippi, and the audience wouldn’t care, as long as they had a good supper afterwards.  It all rests with Martenelli whether it’s a go to-night.  If he doesn’t spoil the supper, it’ll be all right.  I have observed that the principal factors of success at amateur dramatics are an expert manipulation of the curtain, and a first-class feed to put the audience in a good-humor afterwards.  Even if Martenelli does go back on us, you’ll have me with the curtain—

Mrs. Perkins.  Thaddeus!

Yardsley.  By Jove! that’s a good idea—we have got you.  You can read Henderson’s part!

Perkins.  What—I?

Barlow.  Certainly.

Bradley.  Just the very thing.

Miss Andrews.  Splendid idea.

Perkins.  Oh—but I say—I can’t, you know.  Nonsense!  I can’t read.

Yardsley.  I’ve often suspected that you couldn’t, my dear Thaddeus; but this time you must.

Perkins.  But the curtain—the babies—the audience—the ushing—the fire department—it is too much.  I’m not an octopus.

Barlow (taking him by the arm and pushing him into chair).  You can’t get out of it, Ted.  Here—read up.  There—take my book.

[Thrusts play-book into his hand.

Bradley.  Here’s mine, too, Thaddeus.  Read ’em both at once, and then you’ll have gone over it twice.

[Throws his book into Perkins’s lap.

Perkins.  I tell you—

Mrs. Perkins.  Just this once, Teddy—please—for me.

Yardsley.  You owe it to your position, Perkins.  You are the only man here that knows anything about anything.  You’ve frequently said so.  You were doing it all, anyhow, you know—and you’re host—the audience are your guests—and you’re so clever and—

Perkins.  But—

Enter Jennie.

Jennie.  Dinner is served, ma’am.  [Exit.

Yardsley.  Good!  Perk, I’ll be your under-study at dinner, while you are studying up.  Ladies and gentlemen, kindly imagine that I am host, that Perkins does not exist.  Come along, Mrs. Bradley.  Miss Andrews, will you take my other arm?  I’ll escort Lady Amaranth and the maid out.  We’ll leave the two Featherheads to fight it out for the Lady Ellen.  By-by, Thaddeus; don’t shirk.  I’ll come in after the salade course and hear you, and if you don’t know your lesson I’ll send you to bed without your supper.

[All go out, leaving Perkins alone.

Perkins (forcing a laugh).  Ha! ha! ha!  Good joke, confound your eyes!  Humph! very well.  I’ll do it.  Whole thing, eh?  Curtain, babies, audience, host.  All right, my noble Thespians, wait!  (Shakes fist at the door.)  I will do the whole thing.  Wait till they ring you up, O curtain!  Up you will go, but then—then will I come forth and read that book from start to finish, and if any one of ’em ventures to interfere I’ll drop thee on their most treasured lines.  They little dream how much they are in the power of you and me!

Enter Jennie.

Jennie.  Mrs. Perkins says aren’t you coming to dinner, sir; and Mr. Yardsley says the soup is getting cold, sir.

Perkins.  In a minute, Jennie.  Tell Mrs. Perkins that I am just learning the last ten lines of the third act; and as for Mr. Yardsley, kindly insinuate to him that he’ll find the soup quite hot enough at 8.30.

[Exit Jennie.  Perkins sits down, and, taking up two books of the play, one in each hand, begins to read.

[CURTAIN]

A PROPOSAL UNDER DIFFICULTIES

CHARACTERS:

ROBERT YARDSLEY, } suitors for the hand of Miss Andrews.

JACK BARLOW, }

DOROTHY ANDREWS, a much-loved young woman.

JENNIE, a housemaid.

HICKS, a coachman, who does not appear.

The scene is laid in a fashionable New York drawing-room.  The time is late in October, and Wednesday afternoon.  The curtain rising shows an empty room.  A bell rings.  After a pause the front door is heard opening and closing.  Enter Yardsleythrough portière at rear of room.

Yardsley.  Ah!  So far so good; but I wish it were over.  I’ve had the nerve to get as far as the house and into it, but how much further my courage will carry me I can’t say.  Confound it!  Why is it, I wonder, that men get so rattled when they’re head over heels in love, and want to ask the fair object of their affections to wed?  I can’t see.  Now I’m brave enough among men.  I’m not afraid of anything that walks, except Dorothy Andrews, and generally I’m not afraid of her.  Stopping runaway teams and talking back to impudent policemen have been my delight.  I’ve even been courageous enough to submit a poem in person to the editor of a comic weekly, and yet here this afternoon I’m all of a tremble.  And for what reason?  Just because I’ve co-come to ask Dorothy Andrews to change her name to Mrs. Bob Yardsley; as if that were such an unlikely thing for her to do.  Gad!  I’m almost inclined to despise myself.  (Surveys himself in the mirror at one end of the room.  Then walking up to it and peering intently at his reflection, he continues.)  Bah! you coward!  Afraid of a woman—a sweet little woman like Dorothy.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Bob Yardsley.  She won’t hurt you.  Brace up and propose like a man—like a real lover who’d go through fire for her sake, and all that.  Ha!  That’s easy enough to talk about, but how shall I put it?  That’s the question.  Let me see.  How do men do it?  I ought to buy a few good novels and select the sort of proposal I like; but not having a novel at hand, I must invent my own.  How will it be?  Something like this, I fancy.  (The portières are parted, and Jennie, the maid, enters.  Yardsley does not observe her entrance.)  I’ll get down on my knees.  A man on his knees is a pitiable object, and pity, they say, is akin to love.  Maybe she’ll pity me, and after that—well, perhaps pity’s cousin will arrive.  (The maid advances, but Yardsley is so intent upon his proposal that he still fails to observe her.  She stands back of the sofa, while he, gazing downward, kneels before it.)  I’ll say: “Divine creature!  At last we are alone, and I—ah—I can speak freely the words that have been in my heart to say to you for so long—oh, so long a time.”  (Jennie appears surprised.)  “I have never even hinted at how I feel towards you.  I have concealed my love, fearing lest by too sudden a betrayal of my feelings I should lose all.”  (Aside.)  Now for a little allusion to the poets.  Poetry, they say, is a great thing for proposals.  “You know, dearest, you must know, how the poet has phrased it—‘Fain would I fall but that I fear to climb.’  But now—now I must speak.  An opportunity like this may not occur again.  Will you—will you be my wife?”

[Jennie gives a little scream of delight.

Jennie.  Oh, Mr. Yardsley, this is so suddent like and unexpected, and me so far beneath you!

[Yardsley looks up and is covered with confusion.

Yardsley.  Great Scott!  What have I done?

Jennie.  But of course it ain’t for the likes of me to say no to—

Yardsley (rising).  For Heaven’s sake, Jennie—do be sensi—Don’t—say—Jennie, why—ah—(Aside.)  Oh, confound it!  What the deuce shall I say?  What’s the matter with my tongue?  Where’s my vocabulary?  A word! a word! my kingdom for a word!  (Aloud.)  Now, Jen—

Jennie (coyly).  I has been engaged to Mr. Hicks, the coach gentleman, sir, but—

Yardsley.  Good! good!  I congratulate you, Jennie.  Hicks is a very fine fellow.  Drives like a—like a driver, Jennie, a born driver.  I’ve seen him many a time sitting like a king on his box—yes, indeed.  Noticed him often.  Admired him.  Gad, Jennie, I’ll see him myself and tell him; and what is more, Jennie, I’ll—I’ll give Hicks a fine present.

Jennie.  Yes, sir; I has no doubt as how you’ll be doin’ the square thing by Hicks, for, as I was a-sayin’, I has been engaged like to him, an’ he has some rights; but I think as how, if I puts it to him right like, and tells him what a nice gentleman you are (a ring is heard at the front door), it’ll be all right, sir.  But there goes the bell, and I must run, Mr. Yardsley.  (Ecstatically kissing her hand.)  Bob!

Yardsley (with a convulsive gasp).  Bob?  Jennie!  You—er—you misun—(Jennie, with a smile of joy and an ecstatic glance at Yardsley, dances from the room to attend the door.  Yardsley throws himself into a chair.)  Well, I’ll be teetotally—Awh!  It’s too dead easy proposing to somebody you don’t know you are proposing to.  What a kettle of fish this is, to be sure!  Oh, pshaw! that woman can’t be serious.  She must know I didn’t mean it for her.  But if she doesn’t, good Lord! what becomes of me?  (Rises, and paces up and down the room nervously.  After a moment he pauses before the glass.)  I ought to be considerably dishevelled by this.  I feel as if I’d been drawn through a knot-hole—or—or dropped into a stone-crusher—that’s it, a stone-crusher—a ten million horse power stone-crusher.  Let’s see how you look, you poor idiot.

[As he is stroking his hair and rearranging his tie he talks in pantomime at himself in the glass.  In a moment Jennie ushers Mr. Jack Barlow into the room.

Jennie.  Miss Andrews will be down in a minute, sir.

[Barlow takes arm-chair and sits gazing ahead of him.  Neither he nor Yardsley perceives the other.  Jennie tiptoes to one side, and, tossing a kiss at Yardsley, retires.

Barlow.  Now for it.  I shall leave this house to-day the happiest or the most miserable man in creation, and I rather think the odds are in my favor.  Why shouldn’t they be?  Egad!  I can very well understand how a woman could admire me.  I admire myself, rather.  I confess candidly that I do not consider myself half bad, and Dorothy has always seemed to feel that way herself.  In fact, the other night in the Perkinses conservatory she seemed to be quite ready for a proposal.  I’d have done it then and there if it hadn’t been for that confounded Bob Yardsley—

Yardsley (turning sharply about).  Eh?  Somebody spoke my name.  A man, too.  Great heavens!  I hope Jennie’s friend Hicks isn’t here.  I don’t want to have a scene with Hicks.  (Discovering Barlow.)  Oh—ah—why—hullo, Barlow!  You here?

Barlow (impatiently, aside).  Hang it!  Yardsley’s here too!  The man’s always turning up when he’s not wanted.  (Aloud.)  Ah! why, Bob, how are you?  What’re you doing here?

Yardsley.  What do you suppose—tuning the piano?  I’m here because I want to be.  And you?

Barlow.  For the same reason that you are.

Yardsley (aside).  Gad!  I hope not.  (Aloud.)  Indeed?  The great mind act again?  Run in the same channel, and all that?  Glad to see you.  (Aside.)  May the saints forgive me that fib!  But this fellow must be got rid of.

Barlow (embarrassed).  So’m I.  Always glad to see myself—I mean you—anywhere.  Won’t you sit down?

Yardsley.  Thanks.  Very kind of you, I’m sure.  (Aside.)  He seems very much at home.  Won’t I sit down?—as if he’d inherited the chairs!  Humph!  I’ll show him.

Barlow.  What say?

Yardsley.  I—ah—oh, I was merely remarking that I thought it was rather pleasant out to-day.

Barlow.  Yes, almost too fine to be shut up in-doors.  Why aren’t you driving, or—or playing golf, or—ah—or being out-doors somewhere?  You need exercise, old man; you look a little pale.  (Aside.)  I must get him away from here somehow.  Deuced awkward having another fellow about when you mean to propose to a woman.

Yardsley.  Oh, I’m well enough!

Barlow (solicitously).  You don’t look it—by Jove you don’t.  (Suddenly inspired.)  No, you don’t, Bob.  You overestimate your strength.  It’s very wrong to overestimate one’s strength.  People—ah—people have died of it.  Why, I’ll bet you a hat you can’t start now and walk up to Central Park and back in an hour.  Come.  I’ll time you.  (Rises and takes out watch.)  It is now four ten.  I’ll wager you can’t get back here before five thirty.  Eh?  Let me get your hat.

[Starts for door.

Yardsley (with a laugh).  Oh no; I don’t bet—after four.  But I say, did you see Billie Wilkins?

Barlow (returning in despair).  Nope.

Yardsley (aside).  Now for a bit of strategy.  (Aloud.)  He was looking for you at the club.  (Aside.)  Splendid lie!  (Aloud.)  Had seats for the—ah—the Metropolitan to-night.  Said he was looking for you.  Wants you to go with him.  (Aside.)  That ought to start him along.

Barlow.  I’ll go with him.

Yardsley (eagerly).  Well, you’d better let him know at once, then.  Better run around there and catch him while there’s time.  He said if he didn’t see you before half-past four he’d get Tom Parker to go.  Fine show to-night.  Wouldn’t lose the opportunity if I were you.  (Looking at his watch.)  You’ll just about have time to do it now if you start at once.

[Grasps Barlow by arm, and tries to force him out.  Barlow holds back, and is about to remonstrate, when Dorothy enters.  Both men rush to greet her; Yardsley catches her left hand, Barlow her right.

Dorothy (slightly embarrassed).  Why, how do you do—this is an unexpected pleasure—both of you?  Excuse my left hand, Mr. Yardsley; I should have given you the other if—if you’d given me time.