For the first time since he had started on the tour the rough companionship of the dressing-room was a comfort and delight. Here were kindly words, welcoming faces, the pleasant familiarity of common avocation. He forgot the heat, and the crush, and the tomfool aspect the dressing had always presented. The place was home-like, familiar, sheltering. His costume, as he took it down from the peg, seemed like an old friend. The jolly voices of his companions rang gratefully in his ears. The disgust of the day faded into the memory of a nightmare. This was a reality—this hearty good-fellowship with uncontaminated men.
When he went out with them on to the stage, before the curtain rose, and met the ladies of the chorus, he greeted those that he liked with a newer sense of friendliness. Until then he had never been aware how pleasant it was to have Annie Stevens’s head resting on his knee. He thanked God he was a criminal no longer—not as that other man was. Certainly Phariseeism is justifiable at times.
He was very kind to Miss Stevens all the evening during the waits, when they happened to be together. His apologies for having to put off their engagement met with her full acceptance. She was solicitous as to his health—asked him in her downright fashion whether he ate enough.
“You are a gentleman, you know, and not accustomed to poor people’s ways and their privations.”
“My dear,” he replied, dropping for the first time into the old professional’s mode of address. “I ’ve gone through privations in my life that you have never dreamed of. This is clover—knee-deep.”
And he believed it; thought, too, what a fool he had been to grumble at this honest, pleasant theatrical life. The reaction had rather excited him.
“I look upon myself as jolly well off here,” he said. “And I eat like an ox, I assure you. Do you know, it’s very good of you to take an interest in me?”
“Do you think so?” said the girl, with a little laugh, and turning away her head.
At the end of the first act a fresh pleasure awaited him. It was a night of surprising sensations. The stage-manager called him into his room.
“Walker has been telegraphed for—wife very ill—and he won’t be able to play on Monday. Do you think you could play his part till he comes back?”