Gradually the company worked a zigzag passage to Chicago, where it was
booked for an indefinite stay. If the “business” were good, it would be
announced that, “owing to the unprecedented success, it has been found
necessary to extend the run originally contemplated.” If the business
were not so good, it would be announced that, “owing to previous
bookings, it would unfortunately be impossible to extend the run beyond
the next two weeks.”
Jaffer was saying as they rolled in: “There’s no telling in advance what
Chicago’s going to do to us. New York stood for this rotten show for a
whole season; Chicago may be too wise for us. I hope so. It’s a ghastly
town. The Lake winds are death to a delicate throat. I always lose my
voice control in Chicago.”
With Jaffer the success he was in was always a proof of the stupidity of
the public. In his unending reminiscences, which he ran serially in the
smoking-room like another _Arabian Nights_, the various failures he had
met were variously described. Those in which he had had a good part were
“over the heads of the swine”; those in which he had shone dimly were
“absolutely the worst plays ever concocted, my boy—hopeless from the
start. How even a manager could fail to see it in the script I can’t for
the life of me imagine.”
Old Jim Crumb said: “Chicago is a far better judge of a play than New
York is. Chicago’s got a mind of her own. She’s the real metropolis. The
critics have got a heart; they appreciate honest effort. If they don’t
like you they say so fairly, without any of the brutality of New York.”
Crumb’s last appearance in Chicago had been in a highly successful play.
Tuell stopped groaning long enough to growl: “Don’t you believe it!
Chicago’s jealous of New York, and the critics have got their axes out
for anything that bears the New York stamp. If they don’t like you, they
lynch you—that’s all, they just lynch you.” Tuell’s last appearance
there had been with a failure.
Eldon felt little interest in the matter one way or another. He had been
snubbed in his romance. The other rôle he played would never be
dignified even by a tap of the critical bludgeon. He was tired of the
stage.
And then the opportunity he had prayed for fell at his feet, after he
had ceased to pray for it.
* * * * *
The play opened on a Sunday night. It was Eldon’s first performance of a
play on the Sabbath. He rather expected something to come through the
roof. But the play went without a mishap. The applause was liberal, and
the next morning’s notices were enthusiastic.
Sheila was picked out for especial praise. The leading woman, Miss Zelma
Griffen, was slighted. She was very snappy to Sheila, which added the
final touch to Sheila’s rapture.
Old Jaffer was complimented and remembered, and now he was loud in the
praises of the town, the inspiring, bracing ozone from the Lake, and his
splendid hotel. Jim Crumb’s bit as a farmer was mentioned, and his
previous appearance recalled with “regret that he had not more
opportunity to reveal his remarkable gifts of characterization.”
This was too much for poor Crumb. He went about town renewing former
acquaintances with the fervor of a far voyager who has come home to
stay. When he appeared at the second performance his speech was glucose
and his gait rippling. In his one scene it was his duty to bring in a
lantern and hold it over an automobile map on which Sheila and Mrs.
Vining were trying to trace a lost road. It was a passage of some
dramatic moment, but Crumb in his cups made unexpected farce of it by
swinging the lantern like a switchman.
No comic genius from Aristophanes _via_ Molière to Hoyt has ever yet
devised a scene that will convulse an audience like the mistake or
mishap of an actor. Poor, befuddled Crumb’s wabbly lantern was the
laughing hit of the piece. He was too thick to be rebuked that night.
Friends took him to his hotel and left him to sleep it off.
When the next morning he realized what he had done, what sacrilege he
had committed, he sought relief from insanity in a hair of the dog that
bit him. He was soon mellow enough to fall a victim to an hallucination
that Tuesday was a matinée day. He appeared at the theater at half-past
one, and made up to go on. He fell asleep waiting for his cue, and was
discovered when his dressing-room mate arrived at seven o’clock. Then he
insisted on descending to report for duty. He was still so befogged that
Batterson did not dare let him ruin another performance. He addressed to
Crumb that simple phrase which is the theatrical death-warrant:
“Hand me back your part.”
With the automatic heroism of a soldier sentenced to execution, Crumb
staggered to his room and, fetching the brochure from his trunk,
surrendered it to the higher power, revealing a somewhat shaky majesty
of despair.
Eldon was standing in the wings, and Batterson thrust the document at
him and growled: “You say you’re a great actor. I’m from Missouri. Get
up in that and show me, to-night.”
If he had placed a spluttering bomb in Eldon’s hands, and told him to
blow up a Czar with it, Eldon could hardly have felt more terrified.