Van Bibbers Life | Page 4

entrance, this supposition
was discarded as untenable. Nor did he show the least interest in the
prima donna, or in any of the other pretty women of the company; he
did not know them, nor did he make any effort to know them, and it
was not until they inquired concerning him outside of the theatre that
they learned what a figure in the social life of the city he really was. He
spent most of his time in Lester's dressing-room smoking, listening to
the reminiscences of Lester's dresser when Lester was on the stage; and
this seclusion and his clerical attire of evening dress led the second
comedian to call him Lester's father confessor, and to suggest that he
came to the theatre only to take the star to task for his sins. And in this
the second comedian was unknowingly not so very far wrong. Lester,
the comedian, and young Van Bibber had known each other at the
university, when Lester's voice and gift of mimicry had made him the
leader in the college theatricals; and later, when he had gone upon the
stage, and had been cut off by his family even after he had become
famous, or on account of it, Van Bibber had gone to visit him, and had
found him as simple and sincere and boyish as he had been in the days
of his Hasty- Pudding successes. And Lester, for his part, had found
Van Bibber as likable as did every one else, and welcomed his quiet
voice and youthful knowledge of the world as a grateful relief to the
boisterous camaraderie of his professional acquaintances. And he
allowed Van Bibber to scold him, and to remind him of what he owed
to himself, and to touch, even whether it hurt or not, upon his better
side. And in time he admitted to finding his friend's occasional
comments on stage matters of value as coming from the point of view

of those who look on at the game; and even Kripps, the veteran,
regarded him with respect after he had told him that he could turn a set
of purple costumes black by throwing a red light on them. To the
company, after he came to know them, he was gravely polite, and, to
those who knew him if they had overheard, amusingly commonplace in
his conversation. He understood them better than they did themselves,
and made no mistakes. The women smiled on him, but the men were
suspicious and shy of him until they saw that he was quite as shy of the
women; and then they made him a confidant, and told him all their
woes and troubles, and exhibited all their little jealousies and ambitions,
in the innocent hope that he would repeat what they said to Lester.
They were simple, unconventional, light- hearted folk, and Van Bibber
found them vastly more entertaining and preferable to the silence of the
deserted club, where the matting was down, and from whence the
regular habitues had departed to the other side or to Newport. He liked
the swing of the light, bright music as it came to him through the open
door of the dressing-room, and the glimpse he got of the chorus people
crowding and pushing for a quick charge up the iron stairway, and the
feverish smell of oxygen in the air, and the picturesque disorder of
Lester's wardrobe, and the wigs and swords, and the mysterious articles
of make- up, all mixed together on a tray with half-finished cigars and
autograph books and newspaper notices.
And he often wished he was clever enough to be an artist with the
talent to paint the unconsciously graceful groups in the sharply divided
light and shadow of the wings as he saw them. The brilliantly colored,
fantastically clothed girls leaning against the bare brick wall of the
theatre, or whispering together in circles, with their arms close about
one another, or reading apart and solitary, or working at some piece of
fancy-work as soberly as though they were in a rocking-chair in their
own flat, and not leaning against a scene brace, with the glare of the
stage and the applause of the house just behind them. He liked to watch
them coquetting with the big fireman detailed from the precinct
engine-house, and clinging desperately to the curtain wire, or with one
of the chorus men on the stairs, or teasing the phlegmatic scene-
shifters as they tried to catch a minute's sleep on a pile of canvas. He
even forgave the prima donna's smiling at him from the stage, as he

stood watching her from the wings, and smiled back at her with polite
cynicism, as though he did not know and she did not know that her
smiles were not for him,