[198]
]CHAPTER III
We who sit in the orchestra of life are inclined to smile, to lend willing ear to whispers of scandal from behind the footlights. Perhaps the standards are a bit less rigid on the surface. But so are emotions. They cannot be hidden as the rest of the world has learned to hide them but must be brought forth on the stage nightly that we at play may know the joy of laughter and tears for which our own lives do not exact payment.
Those twin giants, Opportunity and Propinquity, stand guard at the stage door, ushering in with a flourish each newcomer. Human frailty
is their stock in trade, the theater their most satisfactory market. For a year they had stalked the steps of Gloria Cromwell and John Brooks. For a year they had appeared at unexpected moments, working in absolute harmony, waiting with tongue in cheek for the unguarded second when the set line of the man’s mouth would relax; when his lips would tell her what his arms had not yet made known; when the woman’s voice with its strange thrilling note would meet his and confess.
And they had been cheated. The unguarded second had come on the dingy stage of a small town theater during the tour of “Lady Fair”—with Gloria crumpling at his feet and his arms going round her in a sudden desperate clasp. Alone in her dressing-room, her opening eyes had met the look in his like a shaft of light struck [199] ]through blindness. His whispered “Gloria,” the straining of her close as if to hold her always; the swift loosening of that hold; the step backward; the breaking of their locked gaze.
If love could be classified—and of course it cannot—I wonder how we would label love that goes quietly on its way without hysteria, without big scenes, with no effort to grasp that to which it has no right; knowing that it must endure, even while it can never find fulfillment.
’Dolph Cleeburg, with round eyes constantly in search of new angles on old conflicts, did not dream that daily in his own home, in his own theater, those eyes were looking upon drama more vibrant than any he could see in a mimic world—the quiet tragedy of passion which in daily contact with its object, yet soldierwise faces its own death knell.
He took note of nothing but the crowds that jammed the theater. He planned gaily for next season’s tour, to be topped by triumphal entry into London.
“You and John will be a knock-out over there,” he told Gloria, eyes popping. “Even if I am sore at him, I’ve got to admit he knows his job.”
Gloria looked out at the hills, shorn of all but bare-limbed trees and covered with a fine frost, the gray beard of coming winter. It was their final week-end in the country, later than they usually remained. But she had wanted it so.