“Then you went on the stage up there? You’ve only been on a few years?”
“Nearly four,” said the actor. He looked down at his shoe for a moment as if considering, and repeated without looking up, “It will be four next September. Trouble drove me to those far distant lands and hard luck drove me on the stage. I’d never had anything to do with it till then; I hadn’t a stage game about me. There’d even been a time when I had a strong prejudice against the theater and never went to one. But a man must live and——”
He stopped, his attention arrested by a hand laid softly on his sleeve. A youth of Hebraic countenance had issued from a door behind him, and, touching his arm with a hesitating, unclean finger, began to speak in a low tone. Buford turned to the boy. Dominick backed away from them toward the box-office window. As they conferred he took a card out of his wallet, and hastily traced the address of the flat below his name. He had it ready to offer Buford, when the actor, his conference over, came toward him.
“Duty calls,” said Buford. “I am sorry, but they want me inside. But this is not going to be our only meeting. I’m booked for two weeks longer here, and I’m hoping to see something more of you.”
Dominick gave him the card, with assurances that he would be glad to see him, and that his own home was a better meeting-place than the bank. At this mark of friendship, the actor was openly gratified. He looked at the card with a smile and said,
“Most certainly I’ll avail myself of this privilege. I hope later to be able to place a box at your disposal. Madame, you say, is very desirous of seeing me. Well, I’ll see to it that she does so under the most favorable conditions. Though I have never met her, I think I may ask you to convey my respects to her.”
He bowed impressively as though saluting Berny in person, and then, with a last dignified farewell to Dominick, turned toward the door which opened at his approach, disclosing the waiting Jew boy. As the actor drew near, Dominick heard the boy break into low-toned remonstrances, and then the door closed upon Buford’s sonorous and patronizing notes of reproval.
CHAPTER XIX
ROSE’S POINT OF VIEW
The following Sunday, at ten o’clock in the morning, Dominick noiselessly descended the stairs of the flat and let himself out into the street. He had had a sleepless night, and as he stood in the dazzling sunshine, debating which way he should go, his face showed the hollows and lines left by hours of worried wakefulness.
His day—the holiday of his week of steady work—was without engagement. The friend with whom he usually walked over the suburban hills had moved to the country. His rest from labor would take the form of a day spent away from his home in the open air. As he had eaten his breakfast he had planned his itinerary, carefully considering the best distribution of these twelve treasured hours of liberty. He would spend the morning walking, anywhere—the direction did not matter much—anywhere where there was quiet and a view. He would take his lunch at any little joint—country hotel, city chop-house—he happened to pass, and in the afternoon he would walk again, on for hours, probably over the Presidio Hills where the poppies were beginning to gild the slopes, or along the beach where there were unfrequented nooks in which a man could lie and look at the water, and think. A whole day away from Berny and the flat, in the healing balm of the sunshine and the clean, untroubled air, was the best way to renew the fund of philosophy and patience that of late he had felt was almost exhausted.