“Sometimes,” answers one of them; and they all laugh, entering into the spirit of the obvious fun of a victim who is not suffering half as much as he expected to do, and who indeed, is, on the whole, very well satisfied with himself.
“Don’t you think we might go on deck now and see the harbor?” he asks.
“Oh, yes,” they all say; and in a few minutes the “Yosemite’s” pretty saloon is vacated.
Mr. Irving and his friends go forward; Miss Terry is aft, in charge of Mr. Barrett. She is looking intently down the river at the far-off “Britannic,” which is now beginning to move forward in our wake, the “Yosemite” leaving behind her a long, white track of foam.
The interviewers are again busily engaged with Mr. Irving. He is once more the centre of an interested group of men. Not one of them takes a note. They seem to be putting all he says down in their minds. They are accustomed to tax their memories. One catches, in the expression of their faces, evidence of something like an inter-vision. They seem to be ticking off, in their minds, the points as the speaker makes them; for Irving now appears to be talking as much for his own amusement as for the public instruction. He finds that he has a quick, intelligent, and attentive audience, and the absence of note-books and anything like a show of machinery for recording his words puts him thoroughly at his ease. Then he likes to talk “shop”; as who does not? And what is more delightful to hear than experts on their own work?
“Do your American audiences applaud much?” he asks.
“Yes,” they said; “oh, yes.”
“Because, you know, your Edwin Forrest once stopped in the middle of a scene and addressed his audience on the subject of their silence. ‘You must applaud,’ he said, ‘or I cannot act.’ I quite sympathize with that feeling. An actor needs applause. It is his life and soul when he is on the stage. The enthusiasm of the audience reacts upon him. He gives them back heat for heat. If they are cordial he is encouraged; if they are excited so is he; as they respond to his efforts he tightens his grip upon their imagination and emotions. You have no pit in your American theatres, as we have; that is, your stalls, or parquet, cover the entire floor. It is to the quick feelings and heartiness of the pit and gallery that an actor looks for encouragement during his great scenes in England. Our stalls are appreciative, but not demonstrative. Our pit and gallery are both.”
Irving, when particularly moved, likes to tramp about. Whenever the situation allows it he does so upon the stage. Probably recalling the way in which pit and gallery rose at him—and stalls and dress-circle, too, for that matter—on his farewell night at the Lyceum, he paces about the deck, all the interviewers making rapid mental note of his gait, and watching for some startling peculiarity that does not manifest itself.