Page 103 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

the band playing THE LILY OF KILLARNEY and knew
that in a few moments the curtain would go up. He felt no
stage fright but the thought of the part he had to play hu-
miliated him. A remembrance of some of his lines made a
sudden flush rise to his painted cheeks. He saw her serious
alluring eyes watching him from among the audience and
their image at once swept away his scruples, leaving his will
compact. Another nature seemed to have been lent him: the
infection of the excitement and youth about him entered
into and transformed his moody mistrustfulness. For one
rare moment he seemed to be clothed in the real apparel
of boyhood: and, as he stood in the wings among the other
players, he shared the common mirth amid which the drop
scene was hauled upwards by two able-bodied priests with
violent jerks and all awry.
A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid
the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innu-
merable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the
play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed life-
less thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed
now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with
their parts. When the curtain fell on the last scene he heard
the void filled with applause and, through a rift in a side
scene, saw the simple body before which he had acted magi-
cally deformed, the void of faces breaking at all points and
falling asunder into busy groups.
He left the stage quickly and rid himself of his mummery
and passed out through the chapel into the college garden.
Now that the play was over his nerves cried for some fur-

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