He saw the simply-clad Sue Wilde; short hair all massed shadows and shining high lights; olive skin with rose in it; the figure of a boy; all lightness, ease, grace; those stirring green eyes....
He would read to her again. His sonnet! From the heart—glowing with the fire that even in his triumph he could not forget.
She would listen!
The third was the “big act”; (there were four in all). All was ready for the artificial triumph that was to follow it—trained ushers, ticket sellers, door man, behind the last row of orchestra seats, clapping like mad. Experienced friends of the management in groups where they could do the most good. Trick curtains, each suggesting, by grouping or movement on the stage, the next. Neuerman wanted eight curtains after the big act. He got them—and five more. For the claques were overwhelmed. A sophisticated audience that had forgotten for once how to be cold-blooded, tears drying unheeded on grizzled cheeks, was on its feet, clapping, stamping, shouting. After the third curtain came the first shouts for “Author.” The shouts grew into an insistent roar. Again and again the curtain rose on the shifting, carefully devised group effects; the audience had been stirred, and it wanted the man whose genius had stirred it.
Behind, in the prompt corner, there was some confusion. You couldn't tell that excited mob that Peter Mann hadn't written fifty lines of that cumulatively moving story. It was his play, by contract. The credit was his; and the money. But no one had seen him for months.
After the tenth call Neuerman ordered the footlights down and the house-lights up. He wore part of a wrinkled business suit; his collar was a rag; his waistcoat partly unbuttoned. He didn't know where he had thrown his coat. The sweat rolled in rivulets down his fat face.
Out front the roar grew louder. Neuerman ordered the house-lights down again and the footlights up.
“Here, Grace,” he said, to Miss Herring who stood, in the shirt-waist and short skirt of the part, looking very girlish and utterly dazed—“for God's sake take the author's call.”
She shook her head. “You take it,” she replied. “I couldn't say a word—not if it was for my life!”
“Me take it!” He was mimicking her, from sheer nervousness. “Me take it? In these clothes?”