Wayfaring Men. Lyall Edna

face lighted up. “I should be very grateful,” he said, eagerly, “for this waiting about for work is tedious enough, and I shall be starved out before long.”

      He went home much cheered and with great expectations. The Professor interested him; there was something half mysterious about the white-haired old man which puzzled him and piqued his curiosity. He was particularly benevolent and kindly and yet he seemed as unpractical as a mere visionary, and was surely to blame in letting a child like Ivy go to and from the theatre each night alone.

      Clearly the granddaughter was manager-in-chief as well as breadwinner, and as he thought of her winsome little face with its shrewd, light-blue eyes, slightly retroussé nose, and small, firm mouth he felt a keen desire to see more of her. She was so quaint in her brisk, housewifely arrangements, so deft and clever in all her ways; a little conscious at times, and quite capable of posing for effect, but lovable in spite of that.

      “I could soon laugh her out of those little affectations,” he thought to himself. “And there is such a look of Evereld about her that she must at heart be good. She is very clever, possibly she is even cunning, and she has extraordinary tact—almost too much for such a child.”

      He went to sleep and was haunted all night by that funny, pathetic, little face of the child actress. Together they fled from a thousand perils, and when next morning he saw her again face to face, it seemed to him that they were quite old companions.

      “Good day,” said the Professor in his bland, pleasant voice as Ralph was ushered into the dreary little room. “Sit down for a minute, I have not yet finished with my other pupil. Now sir! don’t mumble like a bee in a bottle. You know well enough how to get the clear shock of the glottis and that’s the secret of voice production. You have the voice and the lungs and the knowledge of the method, but you are lazy, incorrigibly lazy!”

      The young man crimsoned and with an effort burst out with one of Prospero’s speeches:

      “I pray thee, mark me.

      I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated

      To closeness and the bettering of my mind

      With that which, but by being so retired,

      O’er prized all popular rate, in my false brother

      Awaked an evil nature.”

      There he was arrested; for the Professor thundered on the floor with his walking stick, looking as if he would much have enjoyed laying it about the victim’s shoulders.

      His scathing sarcasms, his merciless interruptions, his sharp criticism, would have tried the patience of Job himself, but his unfortunate pupil struggled on and really improved marvellously, while Ralph sat an observant spectator, learning not a little from all that went on. At the close of the instruction the old man’s serenity of manner returned—he even praised the youth he had so violently abused but a minute before. The reason of this soon transpired; he needed his help with the next pupil. “You are not pressed for time?” he asked, with a smile. “Then I shall be much obliged if you will kindly help my new pupil, Mr. Denmead, with the first exercise.”

      The victim glanced somewhat anxiously at the clock, but the Professor was evidently an autocrat, and it would have been easier to refuse a request made by the Czar himself.

      “You will lie at full length on the floor,” said the Professor, with a lordly wave of the hand towards Ralph. “My pupil, Mr. Bourne, will then kneel on your chest, and you will in this position practise the art of breathing.”

      Ralph obeyed, not without a strong sense of the absurdity of the whole scene. Could Sir Matthew Mactavish have seen him at that moment, lying on the bare boards of a dingy lodging-house in Vauxhall, with a young reciter of no mean weight kneeling on his chest, with a paralytic and mysterious old sage roaring and shouting instructions and beating impatient tattoos with his stick at intervals, while a pretty young girl sat by the window covering stage shoes with cheap pink satin, how amazed he would have been.

      This was certainly beginning at the beginning of all things. By eleven o’clock that morning he was for the first time in his life entering the stage door of a theatre,—it was one of the outlying suburban houses at which there was a stock company and a frequent change of plays,—while Ivy, with her funny little air of importance, showed him all that she thought would interest him.

      The manager, a somewhat harassed looking man, took the Professor’s note, read it hurriedly, and glanced keenly at Ralph.

      “Does Mr. Merrithorne act to-night?” asked Ivy, anxiously.

      “No, my dear; he won’t be fit to go on again for a month at least. I understand, Mr. Denmead, that you are a pupil of Professor Grant.”

      “Yes,” said Ralph, “but I am quite a novice.”

      “H’m,” said the manager, taking a long look at him. “You’re positively the first man that ever made that confession to me. I’ve a mind to try you. Come with me, and I will give you the part. You can read it at rehearsal if you haven’t time to learn it.”

      Ivy beamed with delight when he returned to her.

      “The manager was just in his very best temper,” she said, happily. “Come to this quiet corner, and I’ll see that no one interrupts you.”

      The part was short and simple, and Ralph, who had an excellent memory, learnt it easily enough. But when it came to rehearsing his scenes in the dreary vastness of the empty theatre amid distant sounds of hammering and scrubbing, and the perfectly audible comments of his fellow actors, he felt in despair; there was no getting inside the character, he could only feel himself Ralph Denmead, in uncomfortable circumstances, and breathing a curious atmosphere of hostility. He went home feeling nervous and miserable, but Ivy’s talk helped to amuse him, and distract his attention.

      “They will like you when they get used to you,” she said, philosophically. “But some of them think you are just a wealthy amateur, and that you have paid for the chance of appearing in public. We all hate that kind of man. Some others say you are an Oxonian wanting a little amusement during the long vacation, and that you will be going back to the University next month. And Miss West thinks you are a disguised nobleman.”

      “Well, then, they’re all of them wrong,” said Ralph, obliged to laugh in spite of himself. “I’m not a disguised duke, nor even a marquis, but just plain Ralph Denmead, with very few coins in his pocket, and not a single relation or rich friend to help him.”

      When the evening came, Ralph found that the flatness and coldness of the morning had entirely passed; every one seemed in better spirits, and the two men who shared his dressing-room were friendly enough directly they found he was a genuine worker, not a mere dilettante.

      A youngster who was neither conceited nor grasping, but was content to begin with a very small part, and a still smaller salary, was quite a phenomenon, and, as usual, Ralph’s good humour and common-sense, together with his readiness to see fun in everything, stood him in good stead.

      When the last awful moment arrived, and he stood at the wings in his gorgeous livery of drab and scarlet, with powdered hair and knee-breeches, he found that the atmosphere of hostility which he had felt so oppressive at rehearsal was entirely gone.

      “Good luck to you!” said the heavy man, laying a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Never fear; you’ll do well enough.”

      And with these words to hearten him, he took that first desperate plunge into the icy-cold waters of publicity.

      Ivy’s face beamed upon him as he returned.

      “That applause was for you,” she said, rapturously, “and they don’t generally laugh nearly as much after that blunder with the luncheon table.”

      “But I see where I might improve it,” said Ralph, thoughtfully. And truly enough he did improve each night he played the servant and other small parts.

      Then,