MIKE'S TURN TO MOVE
While Henry had been busily engaged in winning Angelica and writing and
printing his little book, Mike's fortunes had not been idle. Meanwhile,
the Sothern Dramatic Club had given two more performances, in which his
parts had been considerable, and been played by him with such success as
to make the former pieman's apprentice one of the chief members of the
club. Mike and his friends therefore became more and more eager for him
to try his talents on the great stage. But this was an experiment not so
easy to make.
However unknown a writer may be, he can still at least write his book in
his obscurity, and, when done, bring it to market, with a reasonable
hope of its finding a publisher; moreover, though he may remain for
years unappreciated, his writings still go on fighting for him till his
due recognition is won. He has not to find his publisher before he
begins to write. Yet it is actually such a disability under which the
unproved and often the proved actor must labour. Unless some one engages
him to act, and provides an audience for him, he has no opportunity of
showing his powers. And such opportunities are difficult to find, unless
you are a dissolute young lord, or belong to one of the traditional
theatrical families,--whose members are brought up to the stage, as the
sons of a lawyer are brought up to law. For the avenues to the stage are
blocked by perhaps more frivolous incompetents than any other
profession. Any idle girl with good looks, and any idle gentleman with
something of a good carriage, deem themselves qualified for one of the
most arduous of the arts.
Mike's plan had been to try every considerable actor that came to Tyre,
who might possibly have a vacant place in his company; but he had tried
many in vain. While one or two were unable to see him at all, most of
them treated him with a kindness remarkable in men daily besieged by the
innumerable hopeless. They gave him good advice; they wished him well;
but already they had long lists of experienced applicants waiting their
turn for the coveted vacancy. At last, however, there came to Tyre a
famous romantic actor who was said to be more sympathetic towards the
youthful aspirant than the other heads of his profession, and as, too,
he was rumoured to be vulnerable on the side of literature, Mike and
Henry agreed to make a joint attack upon him. Mike should write a brief
note asking for an interview, and Henry should follow it up with another
letter to the same effect, and at the same time send him a copy of "The
Book of Angelica."
The plan was carried out. Both letters and the book were sent, and the
young men awaited with impatience the result. Henry had adopted a very
lofty tone. "In granting my friend an interview," he had said, "you may
be giving his first chance to an actor of genius. Of course you may not;
but at least you will have had the satisfaction of giving to possible
genius that benefit of the doubt which we have a right to expect from
the creator of ----," and he named one of the actor's most famous rôles.
A cordial answer came by return, enclosing two stalls for the following
evening, when, said the great actor, he would be glad to see Mr. Laflin
during or after the performance. The two young men were in their places
as the curtain rose, and it goes without saying that their enthusiasm
was unequalled in the audience. Between the third and fourth acts there
was a considerable interval, and early in the performance it had been
notified to Mike that the great actor would see him then. So when the
time came, with a whispered "good luck" from Henry, he left his place
and was led through a little mysterious iron door at the back of the
boxes, on to the stage and into the great man's dressing-room. Opening
suddenly out of the darkness at one side of the stage, it was more like
a brilliantly lighted cave hung with mirrors than a room. Mirrors and
lights and laurel wreaths with cards attached, and many photographs with
huge signatures scrawled across them, and a magnificent being reading a
book, while his dresser laced up some high boots he was to wear in the
following act,--made Mike's first impression. Then the magnificent being
looked up with a charming smile.
"Good-evening, Mr. Laflin. I am delighted to see you. I hope you will
excuse my rising."
He said "Mr. Laflin" with a captivating familiarity of intonation, as
though Mike was something between an old friend and a distinguished
stranger.
"So you are thinking of joining our profession. I hope you liked the
performance. I saw you in front, or at least I thought it was you. And
your friend? I hope he will come and see me some other time. I have been
delighted with his poems."
There is something dazzling and disconcerting to an average layman about
an actor's dressing-room, even though the dressing-room be that of an
intimate friend. He feels like a being on the confines of two worlds and
belonging to neither, awkwardly suspended 'twixt fact and fancy. The
actor for a while has laid aside his part and forgotten his wig and his
make-up. As he talks to you, he is thinking of himself merely as a
private individual; whereas his visitor cannot forget that in appearance
he is a king, or an eighteenth-century dandy, or--though you know him
well enough as a clean-shaven young man of thirty--a bowed and wrinkled
greybeard. The visitor's voice rings thin and hestitating. It cannot
strike the right pitch, and generally he does himself no sort
of justice.
Perhaps, however, it was because Mike had been born for this world in
which now for the first time he found himself, that he suffered from
none of this embarrassment; perhaps, too, it was some half-conscious
instinct of his own gifts that made him quite self-contained in the
presence of acknowledged distinction, so self-contained that you might
have thought he had no reverence. As he had passed across the stage, he
had eyed that mysterious behind-the-scenes rather with the eye of a
future stage-manager, than of a youth all whose dreams converged at this
point, and at this moment.
One touch of the poetry of contrast caught his eye, of which custom
would probably have made him unobservant. In an alcove of the stage, a
"scene-dock," as Mike knew already to call it, a beautiful spirit in
gauze and tights was silently rehearsing to herself a dance which she
had to perform in the next act. Softly and silently she danced,
absorbed in the evolutions of her lithe young body, paying as little
heed to the rough stage-hands who hurried scenery about her on every
side, as those hardened stage-hands paid to her dancing. Henry or Ned
would probably have fallen madly in love with her on the spot. To Mike,
she was but a part of the economy of the stage; and had she been
Cleopatra herself, eyes filled to overflowing with the beauty of Esther
would have taken no more intimate note of her. So, it is said, painters
and sculptors regard their models with cold, artistic eyes.
This self-possession enabled Mike to show to the best advantage; and
while they talked, the great actor, with an eye accustomed to read
faces, soon made up his mind about him.
"I believe you and your friend are right, Mr. Laflin," he said. "I am
much mistaken if you are not a born actor. But if you are that, you will
not need to be told that the way is long and difficult, nor will you
mind that it is so. Every true artist rather loves than fears the
drudgery of his art. It is one of the tests of his being an artist. Art
is undoubtedly the pleasantest of all work; but it is work for all
that, and none of the easiest. Perhaps it is the pleasantest because it
is the hardest. So if you really want to be an artist, you won't object
to beginning your journey to the top right away at the bottom."
"Anywhere at all, sir," said Mike, his heart beating at this hint of
what was coming.
"Well, in that case," continued the other, "I can perhaps do something,
though a very little, for you."
Mike eagerly murmured his gratitude.
"I'm sorry to say I have no vacancy in my own company at present; but
would you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may say
that I myself began life as harlequin."
"I will gladly take anything you can offer me," said Mike.
"Shall we call it settled then? But I sha'n't need you for another four
months. Meanwhile I will have a contract made out and sent to you--"
"Curtain rising for fourth act, sir," cried the call-boy, putting his
head in at the door at that moment.
"You see I shall have to say good-bye," said the good-natured manager,
rising and moving towards the door; "but I shall look forward to seeing
you in October. My good wishes to your friend;" and so the happiest
person in that theatre slipped back to his seat by the side of a friend
who was surely as happy at his good news as though it had been his own.
Meanwhile Esther had been counting the hours till ten, when she made a
pretence of going to bed with the rest. But there was no sleep for her
till she had heard Mike's news. Her bedroom looked out from the top of
the house into the front garden, and she had arranged to have a lamp
burning at the window, so that Mike, on his way home, should understand
that all was safe for a snatched five minutes' talk in the porch. She
sat trying to read till about midnight, when through her half-opened
windows came the soft whistle she had been waiting for. Turning down the
lamp to show that she had heard, she stole down through the quiet house
and cautiously opened the front door, fastened, it seemed, with a
hundred bolts and chains.
"Is that you, Mike?"
For answer two arms, which she didn't mistake for a burglar's, were
thrown round her.
"Esther, I've found my million pounds."
"Oh, Mike! He's really going to help you?"
And here there is no further necessity for eaves-dropping. All persons
except Mike and Esther will please leave the porch.