Old Mrs. Vining sauntered his way. He tried to escape, but the heavy standard of a bunch-light cut him off. She approached him and began in that acid tone of hers:
“Young man, there are two things that are important to a comedian. One is to get a laugh, and the other is to nail it. You got your laughs last night and you’ve lost ’em to-night. Do you know why?”
“If I only did! I’m playing twice as hard to-night.”
“You bet you are, and you’re hard as zinc. You keep telling the audience how funny you’re going to be, and that finishes you. Now you’ve lived long enough to know that there are few jokes in the world so funny that they can stand being boosted before they’re told. Play your part straight, man. You can fake pathos and rub it in, but of all things always play comedy straight.
“And another thing, don’t fidget! One of the best comedians that ever walked the stage told me once, ‘I know only one secret for getting laughs, and that is, Nobody must move when the laugh comes.’ But to-night you never waited for anybody else to kill your laughs. You butchered ’em yourself by lolling your head and making fool gestures. Quit it! Now you go on in the next act and play the part as you did last night. Be gloomy and quiet and depressed. That’s what makes ’em laugh out there—the sight of your misery. There’s nothing funny to them in your being so damned cheerful as you were to-night.”
Eldon said, “Thank you very much, Mrs. Vining.” But he was not convinced of anything except his fatal and eternal unfitness to be an actor. He walked into the second act carrying his old burden of dejection; he rather moaned than delivered his lines. And the people laughed.
The cruelty of the public heart angered Eldon and he made further experiment in dolor. Laughs came now that he had not secured the night before. The others were bigger than then. He threw into some of his lines such subcellar misery that he broke up Sheila. When he made the laughing exit he did not even chuckle, he moaned. And the result was a tornado. People mopped their eyes.
Batterson met him with a quizzical smile: “You got ’em going to-night nearly as good as the time your lantern went out.”
That was higher praise than it sounded at first hearing.
When Mrs. Vining made her exit she said, “Aha! What did I tell you, young man?”