He was very tired; that seemed to stand out more clearly than anything else. He was utterly tired of his own work, and utterly tired of the whole dreary business of staging. He had seen the curtain go up chiefly with a kind of dull wonder that anyone should be there to watch the fantastically familiar and now boring thing. He had looked down with the rest, across the footlights, into that Eastern street where passers by came and went, and mules and asses, where a radiant sun shone blindingly, where tall white houses and the gaudy booths of merchants filled the scene; but he had a sudden odd sense of Chanctonbury and dark pines and the cool mellow wind, and a feeling that the beggar-man had no place there. Yet the beggar-man was duly at his corner crouching in the dust, whining, shrinking from the Pharisee's robe, the merchant's stick. Paul found himself staring with aroused interest—his blind beggar-man! And then there had been that confused murmur off the stage; the sudden emptying of the street; that cry of the Son of David, startlingly clear, that had fetched the beggar-man to his feet and drawn him groping off, leaving the deserted stalls, the glaring dust and a tethered beast or two for the audience to study the while the noise without died down, and leaped again into a sudden shout as the miracle was accomplished. That had been his idea, his only, and his the new striding in of that alert figure, thronged, jostled, questioned, who made his resolute revolutionary way back to his old seat for his bowl and his stool ere he marched off home—seeing.
With the fall of the curtain, an eager manager had pushed his way in. "Capital, capital, Mr. Kestern. It's going like a bell. Thoroughwood is here, and he's very impressed, very impressed indeed. I was not sure of him, you know, but if he says the right thing, the play's made. I congratulate you, Mr. Kestern, I do indeed."
Paul had stared at him. Then he bowed and murmured a conventional reply, and sat down heavily by Ursula. She had put her hand on his arm and smiled. "That's all right," she said. "Don't mind him. People will see the right thing, if he doesn't."
"Will they?" he had questioned.
"Boy," she said, "I've never had a doubt. There's no denying sight."
And so it had been. The thing was sight. Even a first-night London theatre audience, attracted by the advertisement of an unusual thing, had seen that. The play as a play was good, but the play as a parable was something more. The clay had touched more eyes than those of the blind beggar that night. When the last curtain fell, it had fallen on a silent house. The weaving of the spell had been complete. Art, poetry, drama and successful staging, all had been there, but the spirit of something more had stolen into the place. Several thousand men and women had looked on truth in its beauty, stripped of the shams and conventionalities of orthodox religion, and the utter loveliness of it had gone straight to their hearts.
Of course, the applause had come, had grown, had begun as a breath of relief and had risen to a crescendo of tumult. People had invaded the box. The manager had gestured towards a sea of upturned faces, looking their way. Paul had gone behind, shaken hands with a sudden grateful eagerness with the men and women who had played in his success, and appeared for a moment before the curtain. He had said something, and bowed, and felt suddenly utterly carried away, so that he had waved his hand boyishly and had, apparently, done just the right thing, whatever that was. At present he had no recollection. But even Ursula had been smiling when he rejoined them.
"Come on," cried Arnold, "the taxi's waiting and we'll get out of this."
"Right," said Paul. "Which way? ... What is it? Lend me a pencil, will you? There, will that do?"
Arnold thrust his arm into his. "Look here," he said, "for heaven's sake don't start signing programmes now. On you go, Ursula. We'll follow."