Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/179

 That night John Hampstead went to the theater as usual, but entered the dressing room like a man going into the presence of his dead. Throughout the performance he made his entrances and exits solemnly.

The play for this, his final week, was Hamlet, and John's part was the King. Every night as the Prince of Denmark killed him with a rapier thrust, John enacted that spectacular and traditional fall by which, since time forgotten, all Kings in Hamlet go toppling to the floor, where they die with one foot upraised upon the bottom-most step of the throne, as if reluctant even in death to give up the perquisites and preeminence of royalty. So hour by hour John felt that he was killing the King in his soul, but the King died reluctantly, always with one foot on the throne.

The last night came, and the last hour. Methodically the man assembled his make-up materials, his grease paints, his hare's feet, and the beard he had himself fashioned for the King to wear, and put them away, with their sweetish, unmistakable odor, in the old cigar box, to be treasured henceforth like sacred things, symbols of a great ambition which had stirred a young man's breast, and remembrances of the greatest sacrifice it seemed possible aspiring youth could be called upon to make.

But no one was to know that it was a sacrifice; not Rose, not Dick nor Tayna even. They were to think he did it happily and because "The stage—the stage life, you know! Well, probably there are better ways for a man to spend his energies."

But, really, in his heart of hearts, Hampstead knew he would love the drama always. He owed it a debt that he could never repay, and some day when he had achieved a brilliant success in another walk of life—when Dick and Tayna were grown and far away perhaps—he would take out the old cigar box and gather his children around