A few minutes later, as he made his entrance to an anticipatory round of applause, he had an insane desire to step down to the footlights and shout his thoughts to the upturned faces that came vague and white out of the dark. Those gay seekers who were using him for an hour’s diversion, why should they not know what that hour meant of anguish to him? Why should the curtain that lifted to them lift only on illusion? Why should their pleasure be permitted to surmount his pain?
[239]
] But those in front saw only a man going through his part with leaden apathy. Frank Moore, the spontaneous, the man who with the lift of an eyebrow or the flick of a little finger against a cigarette ash could carry an audience into his mood, what had happened to him? A stir, that faint but agonizing presage of dissatisfaction, sent its warning up and over the footlights. Moore felt it with the rest but it quickened neither fear nor blood in his veins. Only grim resentment and dull indifference. He could not shake them off. He didn’t care.
Backstage the sensitive fingers of Oswald Kane on the pulse of his public trembled for the sum, always enormous, that would sink with the swaying ship of the production. As the act drew to its close his restless feet paced the boards, his black brows drew together. Yet when the curtain fell and Moore came off, the manager showed no anxiety. He approached the actor, gently taking his arm. Moore looked up a trifle dazedly as if not quite sure where he was.
“Wish I could do something for you, old man!” was all the other man said.
“Rotten, wasn’t I?” Moore answered with a tight smile.
Kane said nothing.
“Do my best this act,” Moore supplemented.
“Shall I telephone and find out how things are? You might like to know.”
“No—don’t—don’t! I couldn’t—stand it!” His strained eyes closed. He went quickly into his dressing-room and banged the door.
Kane stood for a second, hesitant, then hurried out [240] ]to the elevator that mounted to his studio at the top of the building.