Eldon was unaware that his light was out. He was unaware of almost
everything important. He forgot his opening lines and marched across the
stage with the granite tread of the statue that visited Don Juan.
Sheila improvised at once a line to supply what Eldon forgot. But she
could not improvise a flame on a wick. Indeed, she had not noticed that
the flame was missing. Even when Eldon, with the grace of a scarecrow,
held out the cold black lantern, she went on studying the map and
cheerily recited:
“Oh, that’s better! Now we can see just where we are.”
The earthquake of joy that smote the audience caught her unaware. The
instant enormity of the bolt of laughter almost shook her from her feet.
They do well to call it “bringing down the house.” There was a sound as
of splitting timbers and din upon din as the gallery emptied its howls
into the orchestra and the orchestra sent up shrieks of its own. The
sound was like the sound that Samson must have heard when he pulled the
temple in upon him.
Sheila and Mrs. Vining were struck with the panic that such unexpected
laughter brings to the actor. They clutched at their garments to make
sure that none of them had slipped their moorings. They looked at each
other for news. Then they saw the dreadfully solemn Eldon holding aloft
the fireless lantern.
The sense of incongruity that makes people laugh got them, too. They
turned their backs to the audience and fought with their uncontrollable
features. Few things delight an audience like the view of an actress
broken up. It is so successful that in comic operas they counterfeit it.
The audience was now a whirlpool. Eldon might have been one of the
cast-iron effigies that hold up lanterns on gate-posts; he could not
have been more rigid or more unreal. His own brain was in a whirlpool,
too, but not of mirth. Out of the eddies emerged a line. He seized it as
a hope of safety and some desperate impulse led him to shout it above
the clamor:
“It ain’t a very big lantern, ma’am, but it gives a heap o’ light.”
Sheila’s answer was lost in the renewed hubbub, but it received no
further response from Eldon. His memory was quite paralyzed; he couldn’t
have told his own name. He heard Sheila murmuring to comfort him:
“Can’t you light the lantern again? Don’t be afraid. Just light it.
Haven’t you a match? Don’t be afraid!”
If Eldon had carried the stolen fire of Prometheus in his hand he could
not have kindled tinder with it. He heard Mrs. Vining growling:
“Get off, you damned fool, get off!”
But the line between his brain and his legs had also blown out a fuse.
The audience was almost seasick with laughter. Ribs were aching and
cheeks were dripping with tears. People were suffering with their mirth
and the reinfection of laughter that a large audience sets up in itself.
Eldon’s glazed eyes and stunned ears somehow realized the activity of
Batterson, who was epileptic in the wings and howling in a strangled
voice:
“Come off, you—! Come off, or—I’ll come and kick you off!”
And now Eldon was more afraid of leaving than of staying.
In desperation Sheila took him by the elbow and started him on his way.
Just as the hydrophobic Batterson was about to shout, “Ring!” Eldon
slipped slowly from the stage.
Little Batterson met the blinded Cyclops and was only restrained from
knocking him down by a fear that he might knock him back into the scene.
As he brandished his arms about the giant he resembled an infuriated
spider attacking a helpless caterpillar.
Batterson’s oration was plentifully interlarded with simple old
Anglo-Saxon terms that can only be answered with a blow. But Eldon was
incapable of resentment. He understood little of what was said except
the reiterated line, “If you ever ask me again to let you play a part
I’ll—”
Whatever he threatened left Eldon languid; the furthest thing from his
thoughts was a continuance upon the abominable career he had insanely
attempted.
He stalked with iron feet up the iron stairs to his dressing-room, put
on his street clothes, and went to his hotel. He had forgotten to remove
his greast-paint, the black on his eyebrows and under his eyes, or the
rouge upon his mouth. A number of passers-by gave him the entire
sidewalk and stared after him, wondering whether he were on his way to
the madhouse or the hospital.
* * * * *
The immensity of the disaster to the play was its salvation. The
audience had laughed itself to a state of exhaustion. The yelps of
hilarity ended in sobs of fatigue. The well-bred were ashamed of their
misbehavior and the intelligent were disgusted to realize that they had
abused the glorious privilege of laughter and debauched themselves with
mirth over an unimportant mishap to an unfortunate actor who had done
nothing intrinsically humorous.
Sheila and Mrs. Vining went on with the scene, making up what was
necessary and receiving the abjectly submissive audience’s complete
sympathy for their plight and extra approval for their ingenuity in
extricating themselves from it. When the curtain fell upon the act there
was unusual applause.
To an actor the agony of “going up” in the lines, or “fading,” is not
much funnier after the first surprise than the death or wounding of a
soldier is to his comrade. The warrior in the excitement of battle may
laugh hysterically when a friend or enemy is ludicrously maimed, when he
crumples up and grimaces sardonically, or is sent heels over head by the
impact of a shell. But there is little comfort in the laughter since the
same fate may come to himself.
The actor has this grinning form of death always at his elbow. He may
forget his lines because they are unfamiliar or because they are old,
because another actor gives a slightly different cue, some one person
laughs too loudly in the audience, or coughs, or a baby cries, or for
any one of a hundred reasons. That fear is never absent from the stage.
It makes every performance a fresh ordeal. And the actor who has
faltered meets more sympathy than blame.
If Eldon had not sneaked out of the theater and had remained until the
end of the play he would have found that he had more friends than before
in the company. Even Batterson, after his tirade was over, regretted its
violence, and blamed himself. He had sent a green actor out on the stage
without rehearsal. Batterson was almost tempted to apologize—almost.
But Eldon was not to be found. He was immured in the shabby room of his
cheap hotel sick with nausea and feverish with shame.
Somehow he lived the long night out. He read the morning papers fiercely
through. There were no head-lines on the front page describing his
ruinous incapacity. There was not even a word of allusion to him or his
tragedy in the theatrical notices. He was profoundly glad of his
obscurity and profoundly convinced that obscurity was where he belonged.
He wrote out a note of humble apology and resignation. He resolved to
send it by messenger and never to go near that theater again, or any
other after he had removed his trunk.
With the utmost reluctance he forced himself to go back to the scene of
his shame. The stage-door keeper greeted him with a comforting
indifference. He had evidently known nothing of what had happened.
Stage-door keepers never do. None of the actors was about, and the
theater was as lonely and musty as the tomb of the Capulets before Romeo
broke in upon Juliet’s sleep.
Eldon mounted to his dressing-room and stared with a rueful eye at the
make-up box which he had bought with all the pride a boy feels in his
first chest of tools. He tried to tell himself that he was glad to be
quit of the business of staining his face with these unmanly colors and
of rubbing off the stains with effeminate cold-creams. He threw aside
the soiled and multicolored towel with a gesture of disdain. But he was
too honest to deceive himself. The more he denounced the actor’s calling
the more he denounced himself for having been incompetent in it. He
writhed at the memory of the hardships he had undergone in gaining a
foothold on the stage and at the poltroonery of leaping overboard to
avoid being thrown overboard.
As he left the theater to find an expressman to call for his trunk he
looked into the letter-box where there was almost never a letter for
him. To his surprise he found his name on a graceful envelope gracefully
indited. He opened it and read the signature first. It was a note from
Sheila.
* * * * *
Eldon’s eyes fairly bulged out of his head with amazed enchantment. His
heart ached with joy. He went back to his dressing-room to read the
letter over and over.
DEAR MR. ELDON,—Auntie John and I tried to see you last night,
but you had gone. She was afraid that you would grieve too
deeply over the mishap. It was only what might have happened to
anybody. Auntie John says that she has known some of the most
famous actors to do far worse. Sir Charles Wyndham went up in
his lines and was fired at _his_ first appearance. She wants to
tell you some of the things that happened to her. They had to
ring down on her once. She wants you to come over to our hotel
and have tea with us this afternoon. Please do!
Heartily,
SHEILA KEMBLE.
There was nothing much in the letter except an evident desire to make
light of a tragedy and cheer a despondent soul across a swamp. Eldon did
not even note that it was mainly about Aunt John. To him the letter was
luminous with a glow of its own. He kissed the paper a dozen times. He
resolved to conquer the stage or die. The stage should be the humble
stepping-stone to the conquest of Sheila Kemble. Thereafter it should be
the scene of their partnership in art. He would play Romeo to her
Juliet, and they should play other rôles together till “Mr. and Mrs.
Eldon” should be as famous for their art as for their domestic bliss.
Had she not already made a new soul of him, scattering his fright with a
few words and recalling him to his duty and his opportunity? He would
redeem himself to-night. To-night there should be no stumbling, no gloom
in the lantern, no gaiety in the audience during his scene. To-night he
would show Batterson how little old Crumb had really made of the part,
drunk or sober.
He placed the letter as close to his heart as he could get it, and it
warmed him like a poultice. He would go shave himself again and brush up
a bit for Sheila’s tea-fête.
As he groped slowly down the dark stairway he heard voices on the stage.
He recognized Crumb’s husky tones:
“If you’ll give me one more chance, Val, I swear I’ll never disappoint
you again. I’m on the water-mobile for good this time.”
Eldon felt sorry for the poor old man. He paused to hear Batterson’s
epitaph on him:
“Well, Jim, I’ll give you another try. But it’s against my will.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Val!”
“Don’t thank me. Thank that dub, Eldon. If he hadn’t thrown the scene
last night you’d never get another look-in. No more would you if I could
pick up anybody here. So you can go on to-night, but if your foot slips
again, Jim, so help me, you’ll never put your head in another of our
theaters.”
As Crumb’s heart went up, Eldon’s followed the see-saw law. All his
hopes and plans were collapsed. He would not go to Sheila’s tea with
this disgrace upon him and sit like a death’s-head in her presence.
And how could he present himself at her hotel in the shabby clothes he
wore? She and her aunt were living expensively in Chicago. It was good
advertisement to live well there; at least it was a bad advertisement
not to. It was a bad advertisement for Eldon to appear anywhere. He was
under the buffets of fortune. But he tore up his resignation.
Now of all times he needed the comfort of her cheer. Now of all times he
could not ask it or accept it. He wrote her a note of devout gratitude,
and said that a previous engagement with an old college friend prevented
his accepting her gracious hospitality. His old college friend was
himself, and they sat in his boarding-house cell and called each other
names.