Chapter 29. Mike's Turn To Move

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_ CHAPTER XXIX. MIKE'S TURN TO MOVE

While Henry had been busily engaged in winning Angelica and writing and printing his little book, Mike's fortunes had not been idle. Meanwhile, the Sothern Dramatic Club had given two more performances, in which his parts had been considerable, and been played by him with such success as to make the former pieman's apprentice one of the chief members of the club. Mike and his friends therefore became more and more eager for him to try his talents on the great stage. But this was an experiment not so easy to make.

However unknown a writer may be, he can still at least write his book in his obscurity, and, when done, bring it to market, with a reasonable hope of its finding a publisher; moreover, though he may remain for years unappreciated, his writings still go on fighting for him till his due recognition is won. He has not to find his publisher before he begins to write. Yet it is actually such a disability under which the unproved and often the proved actor must labour. Unless some one engages him to act, and provides an audience for him, he has no opportunity of showing his powers. And such opportunities are difficult to find, unless you are a dissolute young lord, or belong to one of the traditional theatrical families,--whose members are brought up to the stage, as the sons of a lawyer are brought up to law. For the avenues to the stage are blocked by perhaps more frivolous incompetents than any other profession. Any idle girl with good looks, and any idle gentleman with something of a good carriage, deem themselves qualified for one of the most arduous of the arts.

Mike's plan had been to try every considerable actor that came to Tyre, who might possibly have a vacant place in his company; but he had tried many in vain. While one or two were unable to see him at all, most of them treated him with a kindness remarkable in men daily besieged by the innumerable hopeless. They gave him good advice; they wished him well; but already they had long lists of experienced applicants waiting their turn for the coveted vacancy. At last, however, there came to Tyre a famous romantic actor who was said to be more sympathetic towards the youthful aspirant than the other heads of his profession, and as, too, he was rumoured to be vulnerable on the side of literature, Mike and Henry agreed to make a joint attack upon him. Mike should write a brief note asking for an interview, and Henry should follow it up with another letter to the same effect, and at the same time send him a copy of "The Book of Angelica."

The plan was carried out. Both letters and the book were sent, and the young men awaited with impatience the result. Henry had adopted a very lofty tone. "In granting my friend an interview," he had said, "you may be giving his first chance to an actor of genius. Of course you may not; but at least you will have had the satisfaction of giving to possible genius that benefit of the doubt which we have a right to expect from the creator of ----," and he named one of the actor's most famous roles.

A cordial answer came by return, enclosing two stalls for the following evening, when, said the great actor, he would be glad to see Mr. Laflin during or after the performance. The two young men were in their places as the curtain rose, and it goes without saying that their enthusiasm was unequalled in the audience. Between the third and fourth acts there was a considerable interval, and early in the performance it had been notified to Mike that the great actor would see him then. So when the time came, with a whispered "good luck" from Henry, he left his place and was led through a little mysterious iron door at the back of the boxes, on to the stage and into the great man's dressing-room. Opening suddenly out of the darkness at one side of the stage, it was more like a brilliantly lighted cave hung with mirrors than a room. Mirrors and lights and laurel wreaths with cards attached, and many photographs with huge signatures scrawled across them, and a magnificent being reading a book, while his dresser laced up some high boots he was to wear in the following act,--made Mike's first impression. Then the magnificent being looked up with a charming smile.

"Good-evening, Mr. Laflin. I am delighted to see you. I hope you will excuse my rising."

He said "Mr. Laflin" with a captivating familiarity of intonation, as though Mike was something between an old friend and a distinguished stranger.

"So you are thinking of joining our profession. I hope you liked the performance. I saw you in front, or at least I thought it was you. And your friend? I hope he will come and see me some other time. I have been delighted with his poems."

There is something dazzling and disconcerting to an average layman about an actor's dressing-room, even though the dressing-room be that of an intimate friend. He feels like a being on the confines of two worlds and belonging to neither, awkwardly suspended 'twixt fact and fancy. The actor for a while has laid aside his part and forgotten his wig and his make-up. As he talks to you, he is thinking of himself merely as a private individual; whereas his visitor cannot forget that in appearance he is a king, or an eighteenth-century dandy, or--though you know him well enough as a clean-shaven young man of thirty--a bowed and wrinkled greybeard. The visitor's voice rings thin and hestitating. It cannot strike the right pitch, and generally he does himself no sort of justice.

Perhaps, however, it was because Mike had been born for this world in which now for the first time he found himself, that he suffered from none of this embarrassment; perhaps, too, it was some half-conscious instinct of his own gifts that made him quite self-contained in the presence of acknowledged distinction, so self-contained that you might have thought he had no reverence. As he had passed across the stage, he had eyed that mysterious behind-the-scenes rather with the eye of a future stage-manager, than of a youth all whose dreams converged at this point, and at this moment.

One touch of the poetry of contrast caught his eye, of which custom would probably have made him unobservant. In an alcove of the stage, a "scene-dock," as Mike knew already to call it, a beautiful spirit in gauze and tights was silently rehearsing to herself a dance which she had to perform in the next act. Softly and silently she danced, absorbed in the evolutions of her lithe young body, paying as little heed to the rough stage-hands who hurried scenery about her on every side, as those hardened stage-hands paid to her dancing. Henry or Ned would probably have fallen madly in love with her on the spot. To Mike, she was but a part of the economy of the stage; and had she been Cleopatra herself, eyes filled to overflowing with the beauty of Esther would have taken no more intimate note of her. So, it is said, painters and sculptors regard their models with cold, artistic eyes.

This self-possession enabled Mike to show to the best advantage; and while they talked, the great actor, with an eye accustomed to read faces, soon made up his mind about him.

"I believe you and your friend are right, Mr. Laflin," he said. "I am much mistaken if you are not a born actor. But if you are that, you will not need to be told that the way is long and difficult, nor will you mind that it is so. Every true artist rather loves than fears the drudgery of his art. It is one of the tests of his being an artist. Art is undoubtedly the pleasantest of all work; but it is work for all that, and none of the easiest. Perhaps it is the pleasantest because it is the hardest. So if you really want to be an artist, you won't object to beginning your journey to the top right away at the bottom."

"Anywhere at all, sir," said Mike, his heart beating at this hint of what was coming.

"Well, in that case," continued the other, "I can perhaps do something, though a very little, for you."

Mike eagerly murmured his gratitude.

"I'm sorry to say I have no vacancy in my own company at present; but would you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may say that I myself began life as harlequin."

"I will gladly take anything you can offer me," said Mike.

"Shall we call it settled then? But I sha'n't need you for another four months. Meanwhile I will have a contract made out and sent to you--"

"Curtain rising for fourth act, sir," cried the call-boy, putting his head in at the door at that moment.

"You see I shall have to say good-bye," said the good-natured manager, rising and moving towards the door; "but I shall look forward to seeing you in October. My good wishes to your friend;" and so the happiest person in that theatre slipped back to his seat by the side of a friend who was surely as happy at his good news as though it had been his own.

Meanwhile Esther had been counting the hours till ten, when she made a pretence of going to bed with the rest. But there was no sleep for her till she had heard Mike's news. Her bedroom looked out from the top of the house into the front garden, and she had arranged to have a lamp burning at the window, so that Mike, on his way home, should understand that all was safe for a snatched five minutes' talk in the porch. She sat trying to read till about midnight, when through her half-opened windows came the soft whistle she had been waiting for. Turning down the lamp to show that she had heard, she stole down through the quiet house and cautiously opened the front door, fastened, it seemed, with a hundred bolts and chains.

"Is that you, Mike?"

For answer two arms, which she didn't mistake for a burglar's, were thrown round her.

"Esther, I've found my million pounds."

"Oh, Mike! He's really going to help you?"

And here there is no further necessity for eaves-dropping. All persons except Mike and Esther will please leave the porch. _

Read next: Chapter 30. Unchartered Freedom

Read previous: Chapter 28. What Comes Of Publishing A Book

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