When the detached scenes had been run over several times Batterson dismissed Eldon first that he might go and study. As he went he heard Batterson saying:
“Help him out to-night, ladies and gentlemen. Do the best you can. To-morrow we’ll have a regular man here. And now about poor Tuell. Some of the comic-opera people in town will sing at his funeral. His wife is coming out to get him. Mr. Reben telegraphed to pay the expenses of taking him back. I guess he didn’t leave the wife anything much—except some children. We’d better get up a little benefit, I guess—a matinée, probably. The other troupes in town will help, of course. If any of you know any good little one-act plays, let’s have ’em. I’ve got a screaming little farce we might throw on. I think I can get some of the vaudeville people to do a few comic turns.”
That night Eldon slipped into the dead man’s shoes—at least he wore the riding-boots and the hunting-coat and carried the crop that Tuell had worn. Tuell had had them made too large—for the comic effect that did not come. They fitted Eldon fairly well. But it was like acting in another man’s shroud.
He was without ambition, without hope of personal profit. He was merely a stop-gap. He was too completely gloomy even to feel afraid of the audience. He was only a journeyman finishing another man’s job.
His memory worked like a machine, so independently of his mind that he seemed to have a phonograph in his throat. He kept wondering at the little explosions of laughter at his words.
He saw the surprise in Sheila’s eyes as he brought down the house—with so different a laughter now. He murmured to her in sudden dread, “Are they guying me again?”
“No, no,” she answered. “Go on; you’re splendid!”
The news of Tuell’s death had taken little space in the evening papers. The audience, as a whole, was oblivious of it, or of what he had played. There was none of the regret on the other side of the footlights that solemnized the stage. The play had been established as a successful comedy. People came to laugh, and laughed with confidence.
But the pity of Tuell’s fate ruined any joy Eldon might have taken in the success he was winning. He played the part through in the same dull, indifferent tone. When he made his final exit he laughed as he had heard Tuell laugh, with uncanny mimicry as if a ghost inhabited him. He was hardly conscious of the salvo of applause that followed him. He supposed that some one still on the stage had earned it. He sighed with relief as he reached the shelter of the dark wings. Batterson, who had hovered near him, ready with the unnecessary prompt-book, glared at him in amazement and growled: