The Wings of Victory by Fred M. White

Sylvia smiled back again. It was impossible to feel depressed in the presence of Maxwell Frick. Here was a man who had been connected with the theatrical profession all his life, a sound and experienced comedian without a vice save his own incomparable optimism, and yet a man who never contrived to remain in a show, as he called it, for more than a month at the outside. He was known in the profession from one end of England to the other; he was popular, and yet most of his time he spent in a desperate struggle to live. A little more businesslike aptitude and he might long ago have had a theatre of his own.

And yet here he was, shabby and smiling, stranded on the platform of a local station miles away from everywhere, and treating the whole matter as if it were the finest joke in the world.