Part 1 

       GAZING indeed!!! I was gazing hopelessly at anything at all. The portrait on the wall would do better than just looking at the wall itself (a momentous decision to make, that!... while  trying to remember what it was I had to say next)  And then Joan Bennett (Mrs. Stoddard) appeared on the upper landing.

"Oh no!", I shuddered. "Oh yes, indeed... to the rescue!!!"

As she descended the staircase, she soon realized she had a new mission to carry out, not as a gracious host greeting a strange guest to the world of Collinwood, but as an actor to rescue Frid from his custom already established in the rehearsal period of groping for lines.

With her usual charm and elegance, Miss Bennett (God rest her soul) gently turned my forgotten lines into two or three questions for me to comment on pertinent to the subject at hand which, of course, had to do with the portrait of Barnabas on the wall, until I finally got myself sufficiently back on track to finish the scene. 

It was one of those half dozen or so moments in my lifetime when I believed I was incarcerated in Hell itself.  Here I was, the chance of a lifetime and I blew it…or so I thought.