But soon after the commencement of the play there developed changes of temperament, subtle and slight at first, but broadening progressively as the performance continued. And thus, before the curtain had descended on the first act, Mr. Peter Lock’s brightness was quite gone, and he was sitting in a round-shouldered way, with his arms drooping limply down beside him, while the eyes with which he regarded the stage had in them nothing but dull resignation.
And Mr. Joseph Tridge was fast asleep, and even snoring a little, though this was a venial transgression which appeared to arouse only the emotion of envy among his neighbours. And Mr. Horace Dobb had ceased to look patronizing, but had retained an added intensity to his expression of boredom, and had now come to vehement sighings at frequent intervals. But Mr. Clark showed no such unfavouring listlessness towards the performance as his companions were exhibiting. Manifestly to the contrary, Mr. Clark was craning forward in his seat with so eager an interest in the drama that he was quite unconscious of the repressive glances continually directed at him over her shoulder by the lady whose chair-back he was gripping in his excitement. His face betokened the raptest concentration of attention, and several times he had offered audible and emphatic comment on the goodness of the play, and once he had even stared round him challengingly to see why no one endorsed his high opinions.
And when at length the curtain swept down to terminate the first act, there would have been a complete silence in the auditorium had not Mr. Clark at once begun to beat his vast palms together in emphatic approval. A few hirelings of the management, posted remotely about the building, rather timidly followed Mr. Clark’s lead, and the curtain, after billowing uncertainly for a while, rose again to reveal Miss Marguerite Delafayne standing solitary on the stage. In a way that was not entirely devoid of defiance, Miss Delafayne began to bow her acknowledgments of the tributes to her art.
“Brayvo!” cried Mr. Clark, leaping to his feet and achieving an almost cyclonic quality in his applause. “Brayvo!” Miss Delafayne, moved by such warm partisanship in an otherwise unresponsive world, looked straight at Mr. Clark and curtseyed in the most queenly manner in his direction. Mr. Clark, placing his fingers to his lips, was about to pay the lady still greater homage, when she went on to bow to a pseudo-enthusiastic programme-seller at the back of the gallery, and Mr. Clark sat down with a dazed but happy expression on his face.
The curtain descended again, and immediately a heavy, discouraged hush enwrapped the theatre.
“Well, thank goodness we ain’t bought a programme, anyway!” said Mr. Dobb, at last breaking silence.
“I’m going to buy one now,” announced Mr. Clark.
“Don’t you be an old fool, Sam,” urged Mr. Tridge. “I shouldn’t ’ave thought anyone would want to know more about this blessed show than they could ’elp.”
“I want to know the—the scenes and—and the names,” explained Mr. Clark, hesitantly.
“Then borrer a programme, if you must know the worst,” counselled Mr. Tridge.