MIKE AFAR
This collision with her father braced up Esther's nerves, and made
Mike's absence easier to bear. Her father made no more allusion to it.
He was entering that period when fathers, however despotic, content
themselves with protest, where once they have governed by royal
proclamation. He was losing heart to contend with his children. They
must go their own ways--though it must not be without occasional severe
and solemn warnings on his part.
Mike and Esther wrote to each other twice a week. They had talked of
every day, but a wise instinct prompted them to the less romantic, but
likely the more enduring arrangement. It would be none the less open to
them to write fourteen letters a week if they wished, but to have had to
admit that one letter a day was a serious tax, not only on one's other
occupations, including idleness, but also on the amount of
subject-matter available, would have been a dangerous correction of an
impulsive miscalculation.
Second-rate London lodgings are not great cheerers of the human spirit,
and Mike was very lonely in his first letter or two; but, as the
rehearsals proceeded, it was evident that he was taking hold of his new
world, and the letter which told of his first night, and of his own
encouraging success in it, was buoyant with the rising tide of the
future. His chief had affectionately laid his hand on his shoulder, as
he came off from his scene, and, in the hearing of the whole company,
prophesied a great future for him.
Mike had been born under a lucky star; and he had hardly been in London
two months when accident very perceptibly brightened it. The chief
comedian in the company fell ill; and though Mike had had so little
experience, his chief had so much confidence in his native gift, that he
cast him for the vacant part. Mike more than justified the confidence,
and not only pleased him, but succeeded in individualising himself with
the audience. He had only played it for a week, when one Saturday
evening the audience, after calling the manager himself three times, set
up a cry for "Laflin." The obsequious attendant pretended to consider it
as a fourth call for the manager, and made as if to move the curtain
aside for him once more; but, with a magnanimity rare indeed in a "star"
of his magnitude, "No, no!" he said; "it is Mr. Laflin they want. Quick,
lad, and take your first call."
So little Mike stepped before the curtain, and made his first bow to an
affectionate burst of applause. What happy tears would have glittered in
Esther's eyes had she been there to see it, and in Henry's too, and
particularly, perhaps, in excitable Angel's!
Even so soon was the blossom giving promise of the fruit.