There was a scattered round of applause at the end of the simple words I had to speak; for some of my friends in front had recognised me, as they might easily do, since I wore my own hair and beard. I did not think of this, but wondered dimly that I should have begun to make an impression so very early in the evening. I could see my breath rising like steam against the darkness of the auditorium, for it was cold weather and there was a touch of frost thus early even in the theatre. I sat and talked in dumb-show with Lady Duns-combe, was fittingly snubbed by Lord Dre-lincourt, and at length found myself alone with my confederate. The scene before me I knew to be one of the strongest of its class in the whole range of modern drama. I knew, impotent as I was, that I could play it—I could feel the sense of power tingling through my own impuissance. But the first essential was to know the words, and never a word knew I. Luckily Jim the Penman was an old stager, had played the part some two or three hundred times, and so knew most of the Baron's lines.
Whilst we were having our dumb talk with Percival I had told him that my head was as empty as a blown egg-shell, and had fairly frightened him into taking care of me. He gave me my first words in a guarded whisper at the close of every speech of his own, and shepherded me with the utmost care through the whole scene. I shall never forget the well-meaning feeble villain, stricken down by remorse and impending terror, and the dominative Baron bullying him the while, with words supplied piecemeal by the sufferer.
'And vot haf you to do vith shame?' inquired the Baron, and there stuck. 'Wife you cherish,' whispered the denounced one; and, thus primed, the inexorable Baron resumed, and, having reached 'Wife you cherish,' stuck again. 'Children you adore,' whispered Jim the Penman, gazing upward at his tyrant with filmy eyes of suffering.
'And the children you adore,' echoed the Baron in a tone which spoke his unrelenting nature. At last came one intolerable, awful moment, when the hopeless Jim could prompt no longer. The prompter was at his post, but took no earthly notice of the scene. He had witnessed the rehearsal and was taking things easily. There was nothing else for it. I walked across to him and asked him for the line, received it, and spoke it with a biting scorn which nipped my confederate to the quick. I was congratulated on that unwilling walk across the stage afterwards by an old hand who was present at this first appearance of mine. He told me that the pause, the walk, the turn, and the indignant scorn with which the words were spoken had impressed him greatly, and had assured him that I was a born actor. But by that time I had found the courage of desperation, and all my fears had melted into thin air. The words of the subsequent acts came readily, and before the last curtain fell I was as much at home as I had ever found myself on the lecture platform.
XI
Amongst actors one finds some of the queerest people in the world. The men of the modern school are very much like other people; but the old stagers can still find some of their number who are as richly comical as Mr. Vincent Crummies himself. They are like the dyer's hand, subdued to what they work in. I was thrown a great deal into the society of one elderly young gentleman whose speciality had for years been that sort of high-flying rattling comedy of which Charles Mathews was the chief exponent in my youth. He had the most suasive, genial, and gentlemanly comedy manner conceivable, and was never for a minute away from the footlights. At breakfast, at luncheon, at dinner, he played to the public of the hotel coffee-room. In the street he played to his fellow-promenaders. He played, and played hard, in the simplest private conversation. He had no more sense of moral responsibility than a butterfly. He was as admirable a stage liar, or nearly, as Mr. Hawtrey is; and off the stage he was as free from the trammels of veracity as he was when on it He could promise, explain, evade, as dexterously in his own person as in the character of Lord Oldacre or Greythorne or Hummingtop. The world to him was literally a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Old age will teach him no sadness. He will play at being old. Death will have none of its common terrors for him. He will play at dying. When last I heard of him I was told that he was very, very poor; but I am sure he suffers little. He is playing at making a fortune or playing at having lost one: pluming himself on some visionary splendour, or commiserating some picturesquely broken nobleman in his own person.
I enjoyed the most astonishing adventure of my lifetime with this gentleman's aid, and by his express invention. He had secured the right to perform a play of mine through the Australasian colonies and through India. Of course there were certain pecuniary obligations attached to the matter, and, these being disregarded, I ventured into the theatre with a request for a settlement My comedian was not in a position to effect a settlement, or perhaps he did not care to do it. He found a way out of the difficulty which I do not think would have occurred to one man in a million. He got rid of his creditor by giving him into custody for trespass; and I, being marched off by the police, had to find bail until the case was heard next morning. The magistrate advised me that I had a legal remedy; but my gentleman disbanded his company and betook him to a neighbouring colony. I was incensed at the time, though the business is laughable enough now, and I took out a writ against him, but never succeeded in serving it When I had found my bail (a local editor was kind enough to pledge his word to save me from durance), I had to put in an appearance at the police station. There was a big policeman on duty there, and he went through the essential technicalities with so grave a face that the farce for a moment seemed quite real.
'What's your name?' asked the big policeman.
I told him, and spelled it for him.