Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/122

 stead was,—not an actor but a recitationist. Also his talks in church circles had given him skill in extemporaneous speaking. It happened that his speeches in this first act completed the introduction of the plot, but they were meaningless without a clear knowledge of what already had been said. Now Hampstead began, at first instinctively and then deliberately, as he played, to gather up these lost lines of half a dozen actors and weave them into his own. The fever of composition seized him. He used the people on the stage like puppets. He made them help him re-lay the plot while he struggled to grasp the attention of the mass child-mind out there in front and enthrall it with a story.

No better way could have been devised of making Hampstead overcome his terrible faults of action and delivery. With marvelous intensity came more repose. His eyes had been changed by the deft hand of Halson till they no longer looked like holes in a blanket; and he shot out his speeches, never once in that rhythmic, preaching tone, but rapidly, jerkily, plausible or menacing by turns, but all the while convincingly.

Within a few minutes the audience was captured. It lost its enthusiasm for riot and sat silent, following first the story as Hampstead had retold it and then the action which thereafter began to unfold. It was the sheer strength of the personality of the man which made this possible. In his strength, too, the other players took courage; and soon the action was tightly keyed and moving forward to a better conclusion of the act than any rehearsal had ever promised.

At the fall of the curtain, an avalanche leaped upon Hampstead, an avalanche which consisted solely of Halson. He seemed to have a thousand hands. He was slapping John on the back with all of them, in fierce, congratulatory blows.