In the lobby critics exchanged a few cryptic remarks, conservatively trying to withhold snap judgment. But frankly puzzled, they asked each other what was the matter with Kane. He was permitting an actor like Franklyn Moore to walk through his part like an automaton.
The auditorium darkened. The curtain lifted on Act II. Moore made his entrance. He played a statesman, ruthlessly trampling under iron hoof friends, family, wife, to reach the pinnacle of his ambition. But up to that moment he had not been iron. He had been wooden. Not ruthless force but numbed suffering marked his gestures, the intonation of his deep voice. More than once his hand strayed with desperate weariness to his thick brown hair. He managed to catch the gesture in time. But even halted midway, it marked itself as strangely out of character.
As he came off at his first exit Kane was in his path, pacing up and down. Once more he took the actor’s arm, but this time his voice shook.
“Do you want to go home, old man? Shall I step out now and explain? We can ring down the curtain.”
“You mean I’ve flivved the whole thing, anyway. You mean there’s no use going on.”
“No!” Kane pulled down the hands that tremblingly covered the staring, empty eyes. “No—don’t say that. But it was too much to ask of you. I had no right.”
“You—you weren’t the only one who asked it of me. I’m going through with it, I tell you! I—I’ll get them yet.”
[241]
] A shout of laughter came from the auditorium. Kane could not control a sigh. It was relief after the murmuring quiet that had marked the play’s reception from the first. Moore looked up with a quick, comprehending glance. He had flivved the production. Failure was upon his shoulders—his alone! He squared them determinedly. He waited attentively for his cue.
When he walked on the stage again, he looked out upon the vague faces in that crowded cavern at his feet and then his gaze traveled to an empty chair in the stage box. It rested there an instant and gradually something was woven into the mauve velvet. Filmy and gauze-like as a cloud across the sun, it took at first no form. Only white and gentle and indefinite. But even before it floated into the folds of a woman’s gown, he knew that above it two dark eyes were sending the flame of inspiration into his, a silky blond head was bent forward with the light of love gleaming from it. The lips were slightly parted as if to call to him. Against the rail of the box rested transparent hands, ready to lift in applause. She was so eager, so intent, so full of faith and urge and hope that he did not realize his imagination had put her there. Those other men and women must see her, too. They must know now that the one he needed to help him onward had come because of that need.
His head went up. A light lifted the curtain of his eyes. A live look loosened the tension of his mouth. He turned toward the leading woman and again his glance swept the audience. Something electric passed over them. Franklyn Moore had come to life. He was acting now. No, not acting! For as his deep voice [242] ]responded to the unvoiced call which had come to him, it swept that waiting throng across the footlights. Not illusion but reality made them move forward with the drama. To them he was no longer an actor playing a part. He was a man living in anguish because in tearing the laurel wreath from another’s brow, he had torn down his own happiness. The wife he loved had turned to the man from whom he had snatched it.