Eldon climbed the three flights of iron stairway to his cubby-hole more drunkenly than Crumb. The opportunity he had counted on was his and he was afraid of it. This was the sort of chance that had given great geniuses their start, according to countless legends. And he had been waiting for it, making ready for it.
Weeks before during the rehearsals and during the first performances he had hung about in the offing, memorizing every part, till he had found himself able to reel off whole scenes with a perfection and a vigor that thrilled him—when he was alone. Crumb’s r?le had been one of the first that he had memorized. But now, when he propped the little blue book against his make-up box and tried to read the dancing lines, they seemed to have no connection whatsoever with the play. He would have sworn he had never heard them. He had been told that the best method for quickly memorizing a part was to photograph each page or “side.” But the lines danced before him at an intoxicated speed that would have defied a moving-picture camera.
He mumbled good counsels to himself, however, as if he were undertaking the rescue of a drowning heroine, and at length the letters came to a focus, the words resumed their familiarity.
He had received the part nearly an hour before the time for the overture, that faint rumor which is to the actor what the bugle-call is to the soldier. By half past seven he found that he could whisper the lines to himself without a slip.
The character he was to impersonate did not appear until the third act, but Eldon was in the wings made up and on tiptoe with readiness when the first curtain rose. His heart went up with it and lodged in his pharynx, where it throbbed chokingly.
The property-man had been recruited to replace Eldon as the taxicab-driver, but Eldon was on such tenterhooks that when his old cue came for entrance he started to walk on as usual. Only a hasty backward shove from the arm of the property-man saved him from a public blunder.
The rest of the play seemed to unfold itself with an unendurable slowness. The severer critics had remarked on this.
As Eldon watched, the lines he heard kept jostling the lines he was trying to remember and he fell into a panic of uncertainty. At times he forgot where he was and interfered with the entrances and exits of the other actors, yet hardly heard the rebukes they flung at him.
Sheila, following one of her cues to “exit laughing L 2 E,” ran plump into Eldon’s arms. He was as startled as a sleep-walker suddenly awakened, and clung to her to keep from falling. His stupor was pleasingly troubled by a vivid sense of how soft and round her shoulders were when he caught them in his hands.
As he fell back out of her way he trod upon Mrs. Vining’s favorite toe and she swore at him with an old-comedy vigor. She would have none of his apology, and the stage-manager with another oath ordered him to his room.
Once there, he fell to studying his lines anew. The more he whispered them to himself the more they eluded him. The vital problem of positions began to harass him. He began to wonder just where Crumb had stood.
He had learned from watching the rehearsals that few things upset or confuse actors like a shift of position. They learned their lines with reference to the geography of the ............