Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/89

 stage director, as I passed him, was saying: "I tell you he's a four-flush. You watch him to-night. Never mind her. Let her play to her limit. Watch him."

I watched him myself. And when he came on the stage—for an entrance that had been carefully built to—the chill that quivered over the house was almost an audible expression of perplexity. He was made up very pale, with his eyes darkened—both eyes—and one of them bloodshot. He wore a wig that came low on his forehead, to cover the lump of a bruise. He looked sinister, unwholesome, anything but the matinée idol that we had come there to see. And I offer it without apology: Jane Shore had done it. She had persuaded him that as a desperate man who had lost a wife and child—a tragic widower defying death among a band of criminals—he ought to be made up in this "interesting" manner. It would conceal his bruises.

His failure was unqualified—as unqualified—as her success. Everything heroic that he said was contradicted by his appearance; and any one who has worked in the theater will understand how the eye will overcome the ear in such circumstances. He was immediately aware that the house was cold to him; and, not being able to see himself with the eyes of the audience, he did not know what was the matter; he thought that the part was "unsympathetic." He could not get any heart into it.