The auction of the autographed program began. There was excited bidding from all parts of the house. But Bret kept silent. The program brought five hundred dollars. Bret sneered at the price of the trash.
A musical number came next. The orchestra struck up a tune that would have set gravestones to jigging. A platoon of young men and women in fantastic bravery was flung across the stage, singing and caracoling. A famous buffoon waddled to the footlights and beamed like a new red moon with its chin on the horizon. He was a master of the noble art of tomfoolery and the high-school of horse-play. He probed into the childhood core of every heart, and no grief could resist him.
Sheila forgot to be dismal and tried to look solemn for Bret’s sake till she saw that he was overpowered, too. He began to grin, to sniff, to snort, to shake, to roll, to guffaw. He laughed till tears poured down his cheeks. Sheila laughed in a dual joy. Everything solemn, ugly, hateful, dignified, had become foolish and childish; and foolishness had become the one great wisdom of the world.
The jester always wins in a contest with the doldrums because philosophy and honor present riddles that cannot be solved. The mystery of fun is just as insoluble, but you laugh while you wait.
Sheila watched the thousands of people rocking and roaring in a surf of delight, and she watched her husband’s soul washed clean as a child’s heart. It was a noble profession, this clownery; comedy was a priesthood.
Suddenly she saw Bret’s eyes, roving the hilarious multitude, pause and harden. She followed the line of his gaze across the space and saw Eldon in a box. He was laughing like a huge boy, putting back his head and baying the moon with yelps of delight.
She watched Bret anxiously and saw a kind of forgiveness softening his glare. The contagion of laughter reinfected him and he laughed harder than ever. If Eldon and he had met now they would have leaned on each other to laugh. Music and buffoonery and grief are the universal languages that everybody understands.
The excerpt from the comic opera was succeeded by a little play, and now the audience, shaken from its trenches by the artillery of laughter, was helpless before the pathos. The handkerchiefs fluttered like little white flags everywhere. Sheila saw through her tears that Bret was swallowing hard; a tear rolled out on his cheek, and he was ashamed to brush it off. It splashed on his finger and startled him. He looked at Sheila, and she smiled at him with ineffable tenderness. He reached out and took her hand.
In that mood a swift understanding could have been reached with Eldon. Sheila might almost have forgiven Dulcie. But they did not meet. As they left the Opera House, pleasantly fatigued with the exercise of every emotion, she felt immensely contented.
But the inevitable reaction followed. In this wonderful work of the stage, why was she idle? Why was she skulking at a distance when her training, her gifts, her ambitions, called her to do her share—to make people glad and sad and wise in sympathy? Why? Why? Why?