Eldon climbed the three flights of iron stairway to his cubby-hole more
drunkenly than Crumb. The opportunity he had counted on was his and he
was afraid of it. This was the sort of chance that had given great
geniuses their start, according to countless legends. And he had been
waiting for it, making ready for it.
Weeks before during the rehearsals and during the first performances he
had hung about in the offing, memorizing every part, till he had found
himself able to reel off whole scenes with a perfection and a vigor that
thrilled him—when he was alone. Crumb’s rôle had been one of the first
that he had memorized. But now, when he propped the little blue book
against his make-up box and tried to read the dancing lines, they seemed
to have no connection whatsoever with the play. He would have sworn he
had never heard them. He had been told that the best method for quickly
memorizing a part was to photograph each page or “side.” But the lines
danced before him at an intoxicated speed that would have defied a
moving-picture camera.
He mumbled good counsels to himself, however, as if he were undertaking
the rescue of a drowning heroine, and at length the letters came to a
focus, the words resumed their familiarity.
He had received the part nearly an hour before the time for the
overture, that faint rumor which is to the actor what the bugle-call is
to the soldier. By half past seven he found that he could whisper the
lines to himself without a slip.
The character he was to impersonate did not appear until the third act,
but Eldon was in the wings made up and on tiptoe with readiness when the
first curtain rose. His heart went up with it and lodged in his pharynx,
where it throbbed chokingly.
The property-man had been recruited to replace Eldon as the
taxicab-driver, but Eldon was on such tenterhooks that when his old cue
came for entrance he started to walk on as usual. Only a hasty backward
shove from the arm of the property-man saved him from a public blunder.
The rest of the play seemed to unfold itself with an unendurable
slowness. The severer critics had remarked on this.
As Eldon watched, the lines he heard kept jostling the lines he was
trying to remember and he fell into a panic of uncertainty. At times he
forgot where he was and interfered with the entrances and exits of the
other actors, yet hardly heard the rebukes they flung at him.
Sheila, following one of her cues to “exit laughing L 2 E,” ran plump
into Eldon’s arms. He was as startled as a sleep-walker suddenly
awakened, and clung to her to keep from falling. His stupor was
pleasingly troubled by a vivid sense of how soft and round her shoulders
were when he caught them in his hands.
As he fell back out of her way he trod upon Mrs. Vining’s favorite toe
and she swore at him with an old-comedy vigor. She would have none of
his apology, and the stage-manager with another oath ordered him to his
room.
Once there, he fell to studying his lines anew. The more he whispered
them to himself the more they eluded him. The vital problem of positions
began to harass him. He began to wonder just where Crumb had stood.
He had learned from watching the rehearsals that few things upset or
confuse actors like a shift of position. They learned their lines with
reference to the geography of the stage and seemed curiously bewildered
if the actor whom they had addressed on the right side appeared on the
left.
Eldon foresaw himself throwing Sheila and Mrs. Vining out of their
stride by standing up-stage when he should stand down, or right when he
should stand left. He knew there was an etiquette about “giving the
stage” to the superior characters. He remembered one rather heated
argument in which Batterson had insinuated that old Mrs. Vining had been
craftily “stealing the stage” from one young woman who was selfish
enough in all conscience, but who had foolishly imagined that the closer
she was to the audience the more she commanded it.
Eldon was disgusted with his ability to forget what he had watched
incessantly. He was to make his entrance from the left, yet, as he
recollected it, Crumb had stood to the right of Sheila as he held the
lantern over the map. Now he wondered how he was to get round her. This
bit of stage mechanism had always impressed him. He had seen endless
time spent by the stage-manager in trying to devise a natural and
inconspicuous method for attaining the simple end of moving an actor
from one side of a table to the other side. At first he would have said,
bluntly, “The way to go round a table is to go round it.” But he had
finally realized that the audience must always be taken into account
while seeming always to be ignored.
The more he pondered his brief rôle the more intricate it grew. It began
to take on the importance of Hamlet. He repeated it over and over until
he fell into a panic of aphasia.
Suddenly he heard the third act called and ran down the steps to secure
his lantern. It was not to be found. The property-man was not to be
found. When both were discovered, the lighting of the lantern proved too
intricate for Eldon’s bethumbed fingers. The disgusted property-man
performed it for him. He took his place in the wings.
Agues and fevers made a hippodrome of his frame. He saw his time
approaching. He saw Sheila unfolding the road-map, scanning it closely.
She was going to see the farmer approaching with a lantern. She was
going to call to him to lend her the light of it. Now she saw him. She
called to him. But he must not start yet, for he was supposed to be at a
distance. She called again. She spoke to her aunt.
Now is the time! No, not yet! Now! Not yet!
“Why, here you are!” said Sheila.
But he was not there. He was a cigar Indian riveted to the floor. She
beckoned to him, and summoned him in a stage whisper, but he did not
move. Batterson dashed from his position near the curtain and shoved him
forward, with a husky comment, “Go on, you—”
Eldon never knew what Batterson called him, but he was sure that he
deserved it. He started like a man who has fallen out of bed. He
tripped, dropped to one knee, recovered himself with the lurch of a
stumbling horse, and plunged into the scene.
The quick and easy way to extinguish a lantern is to lower it quickly
and lift it with a snap. That is what Eldon did. He found himself in the
presence of two actresses on a little strip of dark beach with the
audience massed threateningly before it like a tremendous phosphorescent
billow curved inward for the crash. The billow shook a little as Eldon
stumbled; a few titters ran through it in a whispering froth.