The principals had drifted to their entrances and taken position in the order in which they would appear; but they too were restless; nobody stood quite still; at every movement, at every loud word, everybody turned or looked or started. The hoarse voice of Halson and his assistant, Page, repeatedly resounded.
As Hampstead descended the stairs upon this strange, moving picture, it appeared to him to organize into a ferocious, misshapen monster that meant him harm; or a python coiling and uncoiling its gigantic, menacing folds. The thing was argus-eyed, too, and every eye stabbed him like a lance.
Emerging upon the floor, John paused uncertainly before this hostile wall of prying scrutiny. Somebody snickered. A woman's voice groaned "My Gawd!" and followed it with a hysterical giggle.
Could it be that they were laughing at him? John felt that this was possible; but he stoutly assured himself that it was not probable.
However, just as his features passed under the rays of a bunch light standing where it was to illumine with the rays of the afternoon sun the watery perspective of a jungle scene, he came face to face with the stage manager. Halson darted one quick glance, and then a look of horror congealed upon his face.
"In the name of God!" he hissed huskily. "Hampstead, what have you been doing to yourself?"
"Doing to myself?" exclaimed John, trying for one final minute to fend off fate. "Why? What do you mean?"
Halson's voice floated up in a half humorous wail of despair, as he rolled his eyes sickly toward the flies.
"What do I mean?" he whined. "The man comes down here with his face daubed up like an Esquimaux totem pole, and he asks me what do I mean?"
But Halson was interrupted by a sudden silence from the front. The orchestra had stopped. The curtain was about to rise.
"Page! Page!" groaned Halson in a frantic whisper, "Hold that curtain! Signal a repeat to the orchestra! Here, you!" to the call boy. "Run for my make-up box. Quick!"
John's knees were trembling, and he felt his cheeks scalding in a sweat of humiliation beneath their blanket of lurid grease, as Halson turned again upon him with:
"You poor, miserable, God-forsaken amateur!"
Amateur! There, the word was out at last, and it was terrible. No language can express the volume of opprobrium which Halson was able to convey in it. To Hampstead it could never henceforth be anything but the most profane of epithets. As a matter of fact, he was never after able to hate any man sufficiently to justify calling him an amateur.