The figure turned and vanished, and the curtain swung to again. They heard whisperings and exclamations of surprise, and in a moment Mr. Copas returned with a short ladder which he thrust down into their darkness. They ascended it and found themselves on the stage. Matilda was warmly embraced, while her companion stood shyly by and gazed round him at the shabby scenery and the footlights and the hanging lamps over his head. He found it oddly exciting to be standing in such a place, and he said to himself: “This is the stage,” as in Rome one might stand and say: “This is the Forum.” This excitement and romantic fervor carried with it a certain helplessness, as though he had been plunged into a foreign land that before he had only dimly realized.
“This is the stage! This is the theater!”
It was a strange sensation of being detached and remote, of having passed out of ordinary existence into a region not directly concerned with it and subject to other laws. He felt entirely foreign to it, but then, also, under its influence, he felt foreign to his own existence which had cast him high and dry and ebbed away from him. It was like one of those dreams in which one startlingly leaves the earth and, as startlingly, finds security in the thin air through which, bodiless, one soars. There was something buoyant in the atmosphere, a zestfulness, and at the same time an oppressiveness, against which rather feebly he struggled, while at the same time he wondered whether it came from the place or from the people. Mr. Copas, the large golden-haired lady, the thin, hungry-looking young man, the drabbish young woman, the wrinkled, ruddy, beaming old woman, the loutish giant, the elderly, seedy individual, the little girl with her hair hanging in rat’s tails, who clustered round Matilda and smiled at her and glowered at her and kissed her and fondled her.
To all these personages he was presented as “Mr. Mole.” When at length Mr. Copas and his niece had come to an end of their exchange of family reminiscence, the men shook hands with him and the women bowed and curtsied with varying degrees of ceremony, after which he was bidden to supper and found himself squatting in a circle with them round a disordered collection of plates and dishes, bottles, and enameled iron cups, all set down among papers and costumes and half-finished properties.
“Sit down, Mr. Mole,” said Mr. Copas. “Any friend of any member of my family is my friend. I’m not particular noble in my sentiments, but plain and straightforward. I’m an Englishman, and I say: ‘My country right or wrong.’ I’m a family man and I say: ‘My niece is my niece, right or wrong.’ Them’s my sentiments, and I drink toward you.”
When Mr. Copas spoke there was silence. When he had finished then all the rest spoke at once, as though such moments were too rare to be wasted. Matilda and Mr. Copas engaged in an earnest conversation and the clatter of tongues went on, giving Mr. Mole the opportunity to still his now raging hunger and slake the tormenting thirst that had taken possession of him. Silence came again and he found himself being addressed by Mr. Copas.
“Trouble is trouble, I say, and comes to all of us. For your kindness to my niece, much thanks. She will come along of us and welcome. And if you, being a friend of hers, feel so disposed, you can come along, too. It’s a come-day-go-day kind of life, here to-day and gone to-morrow, but there’s glory in it. It means work and plenty of it, but no one’s ever the worse for that.”
It was a moment or two before Beenham realized that he was being offered a position in the troupe. He took a long draught of beer and looked round at the circle of faces. They were all friendly and smiling, and Matilda’s eyes were dancing with excitement. He met her gaze and she nodded, and he lost all sense of incongruity and said that he would come, adding, in the most courteous and elegant phrasing, that he was deeply sensible of the privilege extended to him, but that he must return to his house that night and set his affairs in order, whereafter he would with the greatest pleasure renounce his old life and enter upon the new. He was doubtful (he said) of his usefulness, but he would do his best and endeavor not to be an encumbrance.
“If you gave me the Lord Mayor of Thrigsby,” said Mr. Copas, “I would turn him, if not into a real actor, at least into something so like one that only myself and one other man in England could tell the difference.”