Meanwhile through the open door there was wafted to him only too distinctly the familiar song of the street tenor:
“Love once again: Meet me once again:
Old love is waking, shall it wake in vain?”
Such a life as Macneillie’s may have two very different effects on the man called upon to endure it. Either it will harden and embitter him, and he will gradually become a mere cynical observer of others; or it will deepen and widen his whole character, and he will become more and more tender towards the lives of other people. Lynx-eyed to detect and prompt to check as far as possible all that he deemed undesirable or in the least risky among the members of his company, he was nevertheless always kind-hearted with regard to any genuine attachment. He knew Ralph now very intimately and was quite well aware that his feeling for Evereld was no mere passing fancy. In his own grievous anxiety and suspense there was comfort in throwing himself into the affairs of his protégé, and a growing desire to see this love story happily worked out took possession of him. He had, moreover, taken a great fancy to Evereld, and began now to consider things from her point of view, trying to picture to himself just how she would probably feel with regard to Ralph’s profession. She had never seen him on the stage, had never in fact seen him act at all since the time she had been of an age to understand what love meant. He wondered how the play that night would strike her. Would Florizel’s lovemaking possibly jar a little upon her as she sat there watching it from her place in the stalls? Or would that gracious womanly wisdom which he had noticed in her save her from all petty jealousies, all thoughts unworthy of a great art? He thought it would. Still a girl of nineteen in love with a man like Ralph Denmead might perchance be excused if she were not entirely able to forget herself and her own story in the contemplation of Shakspere’s play.
“I know what I will do,” he thought to himself. “No one who understands the training, the learning, the drilling, the matter of fact element of sheer hard work that makes up the life of an actor is likely to think stage lovemaking a dangerous pastime. I will persuade Mrs. Hereford to bring her this morning to rehearsal.”
CHAPTER XXII
“If art be devoted to the increase of men’s happiness, to the redemption of the oppressed, or enlargement of our sympathies with each other, or to such presentment of new and old truth about ourselves and our relation to the world as may ennoble and fortify us in our sojourn here, or immediately, as with Dante, to the glory of God, it will be also great art.”—“Appreciations.” Walter Pater.
Mrs. Hereford who had readily divined Macneillie’s kindly intention in suggesting that they should see at any rate part of the rehearsal, wondered to herself whether his plan had been wise when about noon she found herself with Evereld and Bride in the dim dreariness of the theatre, which was quite empty save for a couple of charwomen who were scrubbing the floor of the pit. A civil attendant took them to the second row of the stalls where they had of course an excellent view of that inexpressibly dingy and forlorn looking place—a stage without scenery.