Barclay rose from his chair, and limped across the room, calling back as he mounted the stair, "Wait a minute."
It was more than a minute that Neal Ward stood by the fire waiting.
And now, gentle people, observe the leader of the orchestra fumbling with his music. There is a faint stir among the musicians under the footlights. And you, too, are getting restless; you are feeling for your hat instinctively, and you for your hat-pins, and you for your rubbers, while Neal Ward stands there waiting, and the great clock ticks in the long silence. There is a rustle on the stairs, at the right, and do you see that foot peeping down, that skirt, that slender girlish figure coming down, that young face tear-stained, happy, laughing and sobbing, with the arms outstretched as she nears the last turn of the stairs? And the lover—he has started toward her. The orchestra leader is standing up. And the youth, with God's holiest glory in his face, has almost reached her. And there for an instant stand Neal and Jeanette mingling tears in their kisses, for the curtain, the miserable, unemotional, awkward curtain—it has stuck and so they must stand apart, hand in hand, devouring each other's faces a moment, and then as the curtain falls we see four feet close together again, and then—and then the world comes in upon us, and we smile and sigh and sigh and smile, for the journey of those four feet is ended, the story is done.
CHAPTER XXX
Being Somewhat in the Nature of an Epilogue
And now that the performance is finished and the curtain has been rung down, we desire to thank you, one and all, for your kind attention, and to express the hope that in this highly moral show you may have found some pleasure as well as profit. But though the play is ended, and you are already reaching for your hats and coats, the lights are still dim; and as you see a great white square of light appear against the curtain, you know that the entertainment is to conclude with a brief exhibition of the wonders of that great modern invention, the cinematograph of Time.
The first flickering shadows show you the interior of Watts McHurdie's shop, and as your eyes take in the dancing shapes, you discern the parliament in session. Colonel Martin F. Culpepper is sitting there with Watts McHurdie, reading and re-reading for the fourth and fifth time, in the peculiar pride that authorship has in listening to the reverberation of its own eloquence, the brand-new copy of the second edition of "The Complete Poetical and Philosophical Works of Watts McHurdie, with Notes and a Biographical Appreciation by Martin F. Culpepper, 'C' Company, Second Regiment K.V." The colonel, with his thumb in the book, pokes the fire in the stove, and sits down again to drink his joy unalloyed. Watts is working on a saddle, but his arms and his hands are not what they were in the old days when his saddlery won first prize year after year at the Kansas City Fair. So he puffs and fusses and sighs his way through his morning's work. Sometimes the colonel reads aloud a line from a verse, or a phrase from the Biography—more frequently from the Biography—and exclaims, "Genius, Watts, genius, genius!" But Watts McHurdie makes no reply. As his old eyes—quicker than his old fingers—see the sad work they are making, his heart sinks within him.
"Listen, Watts," cries the colonel. "How do you like this, you old skeezicks?" and the colonel reads a stanza full of "lips" and "slips," "eyes" and "tries," "desires" and "fires," and "darts" and "hearts."