Paul took the glass she held out to him, but his hand trembled so that he spilled one half its contents on the stage.
‘How clumsy!’ purred the leading lady. ‘Here, take a full glass; there’s more in the bottle. There; chink glasses. Luck for to-night.’
He drank mechanically, and the stinging wine threw him into a fit of coughing. Miss Belmont patted him laughingly on the back, and ran away to her own room. Paul took his part from the stage, and tumbled up a spiral iron staircase to the loft in which the leading comedian dressed.
‘You’d better wear Bannister’s togs, if they’ll fit you,’ said the comedian; ‘if not, you’ll want a dress-suit for the second act.’
The clothes fitted excellently, and Berry saw to the neophyte’s make-up, painting and powdering him dexterously, and dressing the virginal beard and moustache with a dark cosmetic.
‘You’re funking it,’ the comedian said cheerfully. ‘That’s all right, my boy; there never was a man worth his salt who didn’t. Give me a new part, and I’m as nervous as a cat. But you’re in luck in a way, for we’ve all been together so long in this that we could play it in our sleep. There isn’t one of us that doesn’t know the thing inside-out and upside-down and backwards.’
Paul crept down the spiral staircase, part in hand, and listened whilst the local manager, who rather prided himself on his ability as an orator, deplored the serious and sudden indisposition of that established favourite, Mr. Bannister, and announced that Mr. Armstrong had ‘gallantly stepped into the breach,’ and would essay the part, literally at a moment’s notice. Paul would most certainly have ungallantly bolted out of the breach had that been possible; but the people cheered the local manager cordially, and he, stepping back into the gloom of the stage, found Paul shivering there, and tried to hearten him.
The night went by in a sort of fog, but Paul read his lines somehow, and made his crosses at the right places; and actors are eager to answer to any little courtesy from a manager, and Darco’s half-dozen of champagne was richly paid for by the élan with which everybody played. As to the neophyte, they fed and nursed him, and were in at the close of every speech of his with a spring and a rattle which made the audience half forget the artificiality of the scenes he clouded. Mr. Berry took as much whisky-and-water as was good for him, and perhaps a little more, and Paul in his nervous anxiety lent a helpful hand towards the emptying of the bottle. There was no buzz in the cast-iron head and no cloud in the eyes, but he was strung to a strange tension, and he was looking forward to that last act and the embrace which crowned it.
‘I shan’t take the book for this last scene,’ he whispered to the prompter; ‘but watch me, will you?’
The prompter nodded, and Paul passed on to the spot from which he was to make his entrance. There was Miss Belmont waiting also. She was in evening dress, with shining white arms and shoulders.