XVII
A DREAM COMES TRUE
The two men were in evening dress, standing a good way apart. Both seemed ill at ease, and each showed it in a different fashion. Bryan was pulling at his fair moustache, and Mr. Dollfus, his watch in his hand, full of suppressed excitement, had evidently just checked himself in a nervous pacing of the carpet. Before she could give her indignation words, Bryan came quickly across the room, and kept her silent with a gesture.
"Miss Barbour, just a word before you say anything, and before Dollfus tells you our errand. I've brought him here to-night because I don't want either you or him to reproach me afterward that I came between you and even a hundred-to-one chance; but I want you to know before he begins that the whole thing's against my judgment, and against my inclination, too. Now then, Joe, fire away, and remember time's valuable."
The Jew only seemed to have been waiting to burst forth.
"Mith Barbour," he exclaimed, with a nervous movement of his hands, and lisping worse than ever, "I wantcher to thave me."
"To save you?"
"Yeth. Oh, don't look at me that way. I'm thpeakin' sense. Dontcher know what's happenin' to-night?"
She shook her head.
"What!" he almost screamed; "you meanter thay you've forgotten. It's the first night of theDime Duchess. They're playin' the second act now, and, by Gott, the piece is damned already!"
He wiped his dripping forehead with a big scented handkerchief, and began to pace the floor again, flinging out his arms exuberantly.
"It's a conthpiracy from beginning to end," he cried, shrilly—"a conthpiracy! I tell yer, Lumpsden, I bin in front, and I know a lot of the faces. Fifty or sixty of Costello's people if there's vun. I'll haf the law on him. But cher can't turn out sixty people, eh! They've stopped Ormiston's encore twice; Mith Carthew's so frightened she can't sing a note. Three months' work and thousants of pounds gone to h—ll in a night, by Gott!"
"Stop swearing and raving, Joe, and tell the girl what you want."
Dollfus sobered himself with a great effort and wiped his mouth.
"Scuthe my langwitch, please, Miss Barbour," he said in a lower tone. "I'm excited; I ain't meself. I wantcher ter come and dance."
Fenella stared at him. "Todance! to-night?"
Bryan, who had kept his back to them, turned his head now.
"That's right, Flash," he said over his shoulder, "my advice to you is 'don't you do it.' Joe's crazy, but he ain't exaggerating much. They're pretty wild over something in front."
Dollfus shook his head despairingly from side to side.
"There you go Lumpsden, there you go agen. You're all wrong. I've bin tellin' him that all the vay in the cab. He don't know the public like I do. They're jutht in the mood now when somethin' new and somethin' good'll carry 'em off their feet. Mith Barbour, I haf ter go back anyhow. It'th for you ter decide. Will you come or wontcher?"
"Bryan," she said. "Doesn't he know?" pointing to the ceiling with her head.
"Bout cher mother!" said Dollfus, who was watching her narrowly. "Courthe I know the poor lady'th ill. But I'll take yer down and I'll bring yer back. Think? Three quarters of an hour! You'll never be mithed."
"Mr. Dollfus, mamma died this morning."
The Dominion manager took up his hat without a word and walked on tiptoe to the door. Bryan followed and, if looks could have killed, Mr. Dollfus's troubles would have been over then and there. In the hall the little man turned.
"Mith Barbour, pleathe,pleathebelief me. Not for a thousant pounds, not for ten thousant, I vouldn't er had this happen. I couldn't know, could I—ah? I gotter heart—eh? You von't t'ink the vorse of me?"
"Oh, come on!" said the baronet, taking hold of his sleeve. "Haven't you done enough mischief already?"
"Stop!" cried Fenella, so loudly that both men obeyed. She stood rigid for a moment, pressing her hands over her eyes. Across her brain in letters like fire the last message from the beloved dead was throbbing and glowing. "Dance! Dance!"
"I'll come, Joe!" she cried. "Just two minutes to put on my cloak, that's all. Don't stop me, Bryan! I know what I'm doing. Let me pass! Oh, I've had enough of its being made smooth and easy for me. I'm one of the crowd to-night, and I'm going to help 'em pull the fat out of the fire. I can do it, too. I never was afraid, and I've got a bit up my sleeve you haven't seen."
She was gone and back in a moment, cloaked and with a little box under her arm.
"My make-up box," she said, tapping it. "I just thought of it in time. Have you got the car outside? How long'll it take? Mrs. Chirk!" she called down the kitchen stairs. "Tell nurse I've been called away on business and not to sit up."
"You're a herrowen, a herrowen," said Joe, dabbing at his eyes this time, as they took their seats in the cab.
"Oh, no, I'm not, Joe. No more than any of the other girls. Do you think I'm the only woman that's got to grin to-night when she'd rather cry? I never was stage-struck, like other girls. I always knew it was 'work! work!' once you were over the floats. Don't look so glum, Bryan. That's 'cos he only knows half our business, isn't it, Joe? He's only a dabbler. It's bread and butter and a bed to lie on, and perhaps medicine for somebody's mother, isn't it, Joe? Some of those girls told me they'd been eighteen months out and three months rehearsing! Think of it! Oh, why doesn't he get through the traffic?"
The front of the Dominion flashed past, festooned with boards announcing that stalls and dress circle and amphitheatre were full. The vestibule round the box office was crowded with men in dress clothes.
"They're just t'rough the second act," said Dollfus. "Now you know what you've gotter do." And he repeated his instructions. At the stage door he took her hand and pulled her after him, past the wicket and down the whitewashed corridor, full of girls in spangled finery, who gazed at her in amazement and drew aside to let them pass. Near the wings the manager was pounced on by various subalterns, but he waved them aside furiously.
"Go 'way! ask some vun else! Do somethin'! Getter hustle on! What is it, Mr. Lavigne? Oh! the band parts for the cymbal dance. Take 'em rount to Steiner. I ain't the orchestra! Run up to your old dressin'-room," he said, and let go of her hand; "I'll send up your own dresser. Mr. Lavigne—have the old cue put back. You know. What's it—'muffins'?"
Jack Ormiston was just finishing his third song as she came down dressed, made up in vivid white and carmine, and with the little silver cymbals on her hands. He tumbled off, breathless, perspiring through his grease paint, and stood for a moment, his knees trembling, trying to catch some encouragement amid the babel of cheers, counter—cheers, whistles, cat-calls, and cries of "Order!" that followed him through. And she had to facethatpresently—unknown, untested, her name not even on the programme.
"Do you think you can do it, Flash?" Bryan asks, nervously, chewing his moustache. In defiance of the "well-known Dominion rule" he has followed her behind.
"Wait and see!" she says, without looking at him, and next moment has taken her cue and is on the stage.
In front the vast concavity of the auditorium sweeps away from her feet, outward and upward. It is dark, confused and populous, full of faces, like pebbles, she fancies, dragged seaward by a retreating wave—flecked white with shirt fronts and fluttering programmes—a hungry monster, ready to engulf her at a tremor or hint of fear. Its hot breath mingles with the cold down-draught of the stage like the flush and chill of an ague. Beyond the blurred footlights her eyes, misty with emotion, watch the leader of the orchestra lifting the first languid bars of the score. His head is turned toward her. In a moment he will give her her signal. Yet, though not a single stroke of his baton but is counted by her, as she waits, poised and tense, for the note upon which, with a clash of cymbals and a tremor of her whole body, the dance must begin, her thoughts, strangely detached and visionary, stray far away from the present moment with its personal crisis of success or failure, to brood, with a perverse preference, over the two great sorrows of her life—the lover who forsook her at the cross-roads of his own ambition because she had not wealth or wit to hold him—the mother, deserted now in her turn, whose waxen fingers, stitch by stitch, had sewn the very dress she is wearing, and who lies at home unwatched or watched only by strangers on the first night of her pitiful state. Life! life! this is life. Something beautiful yet horrible, too. Something that in its demand for service—for distraction—takes as little heed of the woman's breaking heart as it took of the man's thwarted ambition.
"B-r-r-r!" The note is reached. As she clashes her cymbals together all visions take flight. The music rises like a flood, pours over the footlights, enters into her and possesses her utterly. She has sold herself to it, and, true to the bargain, her bangled feet beat—beat out the rhythm upon the boards as they once, upon the sand, had beaten out a tune that one man and the eternal sea sang together. Not a movement of her body above the waist but is poised upon them, governed by their shifts and changes, and nothing is stranger than, having watched them awhile at their work, quick and calculated as the shuttle of a machine into which a brain of steel has been built, to look upward to where arms and breast and head thrown back are all partners in some dream of an unattained desire, that hovers just out of reach of the inviting arms, swoops wilfully for a moment to touch the pursed lips, and, just as it is clasped convulsively to the heaving breast, escapes, to leave her gazing after it with set, expressionless face and limbs, suddenly grown rigid again.
"B-r-r-r!" The cymbals bray their harsh discord anew. The music begins, more faintly at first; slowly, slowly it woos the coy vision back to her arms. Her face softens. Out of despair intenser desire is born. Nearer and nearer still. But a new note of warning has crept into the score. A muffled drum-tap, hardly heard at first, grows louder—falls faster. And her face changes with it. To bewilderment, horror succeeds rapidly. Either this is not the dream that fled her arms before, or else some new significance in what she sees terrifies her, now when it is too late. Straight and level as a blow it reaches her. She covers her eyes, tries to strike it down, holds it from her with outstretched hands, folds her arms across her breast to deny it entrance. The music tears through crescendo to climax, and all the time she is dancing as well as acting—dancing with all her strength and skill. She cannot feel the tension of the audience, does not know what a tribute is in its breathless attention. She only knows that her dance is nearing its end and that they are silent. Why does no one cheer or clap their hands? Is it possible that, amid those hundreds, not one knows how well the thing is being done? Furore or failure: this had been prophesied of her, and she had given no thought to the alternative. It is to be failure then. All her work is to go for nothing—her dishonor, the violence done her own feelings to-night—for nothing. With success she might even have forgiven herself. A great terror seizes her of the pitiless many-headed monster whom she has wooed in vain and whose churlish silence has power to change all she had thought inspiration into the dross of a crazy, heady folly. It is beginning to murmur—to move restlessly. As she holds her arms out to it in a sort of last abject appeal, the murmuring grows louder. It is the wave, the wave again, of her first fancy, that has hung suspended while she danced, and that now, gathering volume, rears its head to finally overwhelm her with shame and confusion. She was mad to have ventured! Nothing living can face it! She stifles a scream, dances out the last furious finale of the orchestra, and falls prostrate, her arms stretched out before her, the silver cymbals held upward.
Everything turns dark and thunderous. She feels the chorus sweep past her with a glitter of gold legs and a stiff rustle of skirts; fancies that the orchestra is playing again, but that something louder and stormier is drowning it; gets shakily to her feet, takes one frightened glance at the tumult before her, and, with a half curtsey, totters through the wings. Mr. Dollfus rushes to meet her; he is shaking her hands again and again, some one else is holding her round the waist and whispering in her ear.
"Pull yourself together, Flash! It's all right. You must go on—once, anyhow. Damn it, Joe, give the girl a few moments. Can't you see it's got over her?"
"Did I—do—all right?" says Fenella, between gasps.
"All right?" Dollfus repeats, excitedly. "Cantcher hear 'em? Listen to the noise! Wotcher think they mean? Come—surely to gootness, you're ready now?"
She is calmer, and draws herself out of the baronet's arms.
"Go on, kid," he says, as he lets her go. "Go on, and taste popularity. Take a good long drink of it, Flash."
As she came through the wings the dropping fire of applause exploded into a roar again. It was nearly three minutes—I mean three real minutes—before she was done kissing her hands to us all, and the play was allowed to proceed to its triumphant finale. I happen to know, because I was in front, and a good deal of what you have been reading is my own impression, on record in the columns of thePanoply, of the night Fenella Barbour came into her kingdom.