“S’long!”
Vickery went back to his text-book. He was to be a professor of Greek. He had almost forgotten that he had ever fallen in love with an actress. He had kept no track of stage history.
His acquaintance with Bret Winfield had been casual until his sister Dorothy came on to spend a few days near her brother. Dorothy had grown up to be the sort of woman her childhood prophesied—big, beautiful, placid, very noble at her best and stupid at her worst. Her big eyes were the Homeric “ox-eyes,” and Eugene in the first flush of his first Greek had called her thence Bo-opis, which he shortened later to “Bo.”
The bo-optic Dorothy made a profound impression on Bret Winfield, and he cultivated Eugene thereafter on her account. He had a rival in the scientific school, Jim Greeley, a fellow-townsman of Winfield’s. Greeley’s matter-of-fact soul was completely congenial to Dorothy, but the two young men hated each other with great dignity, and Dorothy reveled in their rivalry. She was quite forgotten, however, when matters of real college moment were under way—such as the Freshman assault on the drama.
The news of the riot-to-be percolated through the two thousand students without a word reaching the ears of the faculty or the officers of the theater. There was no reason to expect trouble on this occasion. There had been no football or baseball or other contest to excite the students. They made a boisterous audience before the curtain rose—but then they always did. They called to each other from crag to crag. They whistled and stamped in unison when the curtain was a moment late; but that was to be expected in college towns. Strangely, students have been always and everywhere rioters.
The first warning the audience had of unusual purposes came when a round of uproarious applause greeted a comedian’s delivery of a bit of very cheap wit which had been left in because the author declined to waste time polishing the seat-banging part of his first act. In this country an audience that is extremely displeased does not hiss or boo; it applauds sarcastically and persistently. The poor actor who had aimed to hurry past the line found himself held up by the ironic hand-clapping. When he tried to go on, it broke out anew.
An actor cannot disclaim or apologize for the lines he has to speak, however his own prosperities are involved in them. So poor Mr. Tuell had now to stand and perspire while the line he had begged the author to delete provoked the tempest.
Whenever the fuming comedian opened his mouth to speak the applause drowned him. It soon fell into a rhythm of one-two, one-two-three, one-two, one-two-three. Tuell could only wait till the claque had grown weary of its own reproof. Then he went on to his next feeble witticism, another play upon words so childish that it brought forth cries of, “Naughty, naughty!”
The other members of the company gathered in the wings, as uncomfortable as a band of early martyrs waiting their turns to appear before the lions. To most of them this was their first encounter with a mutinous audience.
Audiences are usually a chaos of warring tastes and motives which must somehow be given focus and unity by the actors. That was the hardest part of the day’s work—to get the house together. To-night they must face a ready-made audience with a mind of its own—and that hostile.