With the utmost reluctance he forced himself to go back to the scene of his shame. The stage-door keeper greeted him with a comforting indifference. He had evidently known nothing of what had happened. Stage-door keepers never do. None of the actors was about, and the theater was as lonely and musty as the tomb of the Capulets before Romeo broke in upon Juliet’s sleep.
Eldon mounted to his dressing-room and stared with a rueful eye at the make-up box which he had bought with all the pride a boy feels in his first chest of tools. He tried to tell himself that he was glad to be quit of the business of staining his face with these unmanly colors and of rubbing off the stains with effeminate cold-creams. He threw aside the soiled and multicolored towel with a gesture of disdain. But he was too honest to deceive himself. The more he denounced the actor’s calling the more he denounced himself for having been incompetent in it. He writhed at the memory of the hardships he had undergone in gaining a foothold on the stage and at the poltroonery of leaping overboard to avoid being thrown overboard.
As he left the theater to find an expressman to call for his trunk he looked into the letter-box where there was almost never a letter for him. To his surprise he found his name on a graceful envelope gracefully indited. He opened it and read the signature first. It was a note from Sheila.
Eldon’s eyes fairly bulged out of his head with amazed enchantment. His heart ached with joy. He went back to his dressing-room to read the letter over and over.
Dear Mr. Eldon,—Auntie John and I tried to see you last night, but you had gone. She was afraid that you would grieve too deeply over the mishap. It was only what might have happened to anybody. Auntie John says that she has known some of the most famous actors to do far worse. Sir Charles Wyndham went up in his lines and was fired at his first appearance. She wants to tell you some of the things that happened to her. They had to ring down on her once. She wants you to come over to our hotel and have tea with us this afternoon. Please do!
Heartily,
Sheila Kemble.
There was nothing much in the letter except an evident desire to make light of a tragedy and cheer a despondent soul across a swamp. Eldon did not even note that it was mainly about Aunt John. To him the letter was luminous with a glow of its own. He kissed the paper a dozen times. He resolved to conquer the stage or die. The stage should be the humble stepping-stone to the conquest of Sheila Kemble. Thereafter it should be the scene of their partnership in art. He would play Romeo to her Juliet, and they should play other rôles together till “Mr. and Mrs. Eldon” should be as famous for their art as for their domestic bliss.
Had she not already made a new soul of him, scattering his fright with a few words and recalling him to his duty and his opportunity? He would redeem himself to-night. To-night there should be no stumbling, no gloom in the lantern, no gaiety in the audience during his scene. To-night he would show Batterson how little old Crumb had really made of the part, drunk or sober.