VI
The Theater in the Forest
Jake’s narrative did not give me cheerful expectations of the Lake Jozgid Theater. It was just as well, for my first glimpse of the place convinced me that it was the exact setting for a play of morbid unreality.
The road beyond Pursuivant’s cabin was narrow but not too bad. Jake, driving nimbly over its sanded surface, told me that we might thank the public works program for its good condition. In one or two places, as I think I have said already, the way was cut deeply between knolls or bluffs, and here it was gloomy and almost sunless. Too, the woods thickened to right and left, with taller and taller ranks of trees at the roadside. Springtime’s leafage made the trees seem vigorous, but not exactly cheerful; I fancied that they were endowed with intelligence and the power of motion, and that they awaited only our passing before they moved out to block the open way behind us.
From this sand-surfaced road there branched eventually a second, and even narrower and darker, that dipped down a thickly timbered slope. We took a rather difficult curve at the bottom and came out almost upon the shore of the lake, with the old lodge and its outbuildings in plain view.
These structures were in the best of repair, but appeared intensely dark and weathered, as though the afternoon sky shed a brownish light upon them. The lodge that was now the theater stood clear in the center of the sizable cleared space, although lush-looking clumps and belts of evergreen scrub grew almost against the sheds and the boathouse. I was enough of an observer to be aware that the deep roofs were of stout ax-cut shingles, and that the heavy timbers of the walls were undoubtedly seasoned for an age. The windows were large but deep-set in their sturdy frames. Those who call windows the eyes of a house would have thought that these eyes were large enough, but well able to conceal the secrets and feelings within.
As we emerged from the car, I felt rather than saw an onlooker. Varduk stood in the wide front door of the lodge building. Neither Jake nor I could agree later whether he had opened the door himself and appeared, whether he had stepped into view with the door already open, or whether he had been standing there all the time. His slender, elegant figure was dressed in dark jacket and trousers, with a black silk scarf draped Ascot fashion at his throat, just as he had worn at his hotel in New York. When he saw that we were aware of him, he lifted a white hand in greeting and descended two steps to meet us coming toward him. I offered him my hand, and he gave it a quick, sharp pressure, as though he were investigating the texture of my flesh and bone.
“I am glad to see you here so soon, Mr. Connatt,” he said cordially. “Now we need wait only for Miss Vining, who should arrive before dark. Miss Holgar came yesterday, and Davidson this morning.”
“There will be only the six of us, then?” I asked.
He nodded his chestnut curls. “A caretaker will come here each day, to prepare lunch and dinner and to clean. He lives several miles up the road, and will spend his nights at home. But we of the play itself will be in residence, and we alone—a condition fully in character, I feel, with the attitude of mystery and reserve we have assumed toward our interesting production. For breakfasts, Davidson will be able to look after us.”
“Huh!” grunted Jake. “That Davidson can act, manage, stagehand, cook—he does everything.”
“Almost everything,” said Varduk dryly, and his eyes turned long and expressionlessly upon my friend, who immediately subsided. In the daylight I saw that Varduk’s eyes were hazel; on the night I had met him at his hotel they had seemed thunder-dark.
“You, too, are considered useful at many things around the theater, Switz,” Varduk continued. “I took that into consideration when Miss Holgar, though she left her maid behind, insisted on including you in the company. I daresay, we can depend on you to help Davidson with the staging and so on.”
“Oh, yes, sure,” Jake made reply. “Certainly. Miss Holgar, she wants me to do that.”
“Very good.” Varduk turned on the heel of his well-polished boot. “Suppose,” he added over his shoulder, “that you take Mr. Connatt up to the loft of the boathouse. Mr. Connatt, do you mind putting up with Switz?”
“Not in the least,” I assured him readily, and took up two of my bags. Jake had already lifted the third and heaviest.
We nodded to Varduk and skirted the side of the lodge, walked down to the water, then entered the boathouse. It was a simple affair of well-chinked logs. Two leaky-looking canoes still occupied the lower part of it, but we picked our way past them and ascended a sturdy staircase to a loft under the peaked roof. This had been finished with wallboard and boasted a window at each end. Two cots, a rug, a washstand, a table and several chairs made it an acceptable sleeping-apartment.
“This theater is halfway to the never-never land,” I commented as I began to unpack.
“I should live so—I never saw the like of it,” Jake said earnestly. “How are people going to find their way here? Yesterday I began to talk about signs by the side of the road. Right off at once, Varduk said no. I begged like a poor relation left out of his uncle’s will. Finally he said yes—but the signs must be small and dignified, and put up only a day before the show begins.”
I wanted to ask a question about his adventure of the previous night, but Jake shook his head in refusal to discuss it. “Not here,” he said. “Gib, who knows who may be listening?” He dropped his voice. “Or even what might be listening?”
I lapsed into silence and got out old canvas sneakers, flannel slacks and a Norfolk jacket, and changed into them. Dressed in this easy manner, I left the boathouse and stood beside the lake. At once a voice hailed me. Sigrid was walking along the water’s edge, smiling in apparent delight.
We came face to face; I bent to kiss her hand. As once before, it fluttered under my lips, but when I straightened again I saw nothing of distaste or unsteadiness in her expression.
“Gib, how nice that you’re here!” she cried. “Do you like the place?”
“I haven’t seen very much of it yet,” I told her. “I want to see the inside of the theater.”
She took her hand away from me and thrust it into the pocket of the old white sweater she wore. “I think that I love it here,” she said, with an air of gay confession. “Not all of the hermit stories about me are lies. I could grow truly fat—God save the mark!—on quiet and serenity.”
“Varduk pleases you, too?” I suggested.
“He has more understanding than any other theatrical executive in my experience,” she responded emphatically. “He fills me with the wish to work. I’m like a starry-eyed beginner again. What would you say if I told you that I was sweeping my own room and making my own bed?”
“I would say that you were the most charming housemaid in the world.”
Her laughter was full of delight. “You sound as if you mean it, Gib. It is nice to know you as a friend again.”
It seemed to me that she emphasized the word “friend” a trifle, as though to warn me that our relationship would nevermore become closer than that. Changing the subject, I asked her if she had swum in the lake; she had, and found it cold. How about seeing the theater? Together we walked toward the lodge and entered at a side door.
The auditorium was as Jake had described it to me, and I saw that Varduk liked a dark tone. He had stained the paneling, the benches, and the beams a dark brown. Brown, too, was the heavy curtain that hid the stage.
“We’ll be there tonight,” said Sigrid, nodding stageward. “Varduk has called the first rehearsal for immediately after dinner. We eat together, of course, in a big room upstairs.”
“May I sit next to you when we eat?” I asked, and she laughed yet again. She was being as cheerful as I had ever known her to be.
“You sound like the student-hero in a light opera, Gib. I don’t know about the seating-arrangement. Last night I was at the head of the table, and Varduk at the foot. Jake and Mr. Davidson were at either side of me.”
“I shall certainly arrive before one or the other of them,” I vowed solemnly.
Varduk had drifted in as we talked, and he chuckled at my announcement.
“A gallant note, Mr. Connatt, and one that I hope you can capture as pleasantly for the romantic passages of our Ruthven. By the by, our first rehearsal will take place this evening.”
“So Miss Holgar has told me,” I nodded. “I have studied the play rather prayerfully since Davidson gave me a copy. I hope I’m not a disappointment in it.”
“I am sure that you will not be,” he said kindly. “I did not choose disappointing people for my cast.”
Davidson entered from the front, to say that Martha Vining had arrived. Varduk moved away, stiff in his walk as I had observed before. Sigrid and I went through the side door and back into the open.
That evening I kept my promise to find a place by Sigrid at the table. Davidson, entering just behind me, looked a trifle chagrined but sat at my other side, with Martha Vining opposite. The dinner was good, with roast mutton, salad and apple tart. I thought of Judge Pursuivant’s healthy appetite as I ate.
After the coffee, Varduk nodded to the old man who served as caretaker, cook and waiter, as in dismissal. Then the producer’s hazel eyes turned to Sigrid, who took her cue and rose. We did likewise.
“Shall we go down to the stage?” Varduk said to us. “It’s time for our first effort with Ruthven.”