Mummers in Mufti/Chapter 20

ITH a common impulse both men turned and walked into the darkened house, while, at the same moment, a ripple of laughter swept over the audience at some gesture that had been made on the stage. It seemed to Bellsmith like a good omen. His pulse began to beat rapidly, as if he himself had been responsible for the laugh, but, making an attempt to adapt his attitude to the nonchalance affected by Israels, he leaned his elbow on the high rail behind the last row of seats and fixed his attention on the stage. He tried, almost physically, to make himself realize that that show now in performance was actually his, but the effort was too great. It had all come about so suddenly that he could establish no mental connection with that scene on the other side of the footlights.

It was curious, though, how differently the show looked from the previous evening—like an old friend seen in a new aspect—like a distant, familiar view moved suddenly nearer. His attention wandered for a moment from the stage to the boxes, searching for friends, but the boxes were empty. With a sudden hurt feeling he also realized that the auditorium itself was only about three quarters filled. There was an ominous gap between the crowd at the front of the house and the last few rows, where he was standing. For a moment a spark of resentment rose up in his mind against stodgy old Leicester. Already, unconsciously, he was beginning to see the town from the point of view of an outsider. In a manner of speaking, he was now "outside money" himself. He turned to Israels and spoke in the low tones that both of them had instinctively adopted.

"There is not much of a house here to-night."

Israels looked slowly down at the empty seats, and it was a minute before he spoke—with forced casualness.

"Monday night," he remarked. "Always a bad night on the road."

His tone was perfectly nonchalant, but it still left a reluctant fragment of doubt in Bellsmith's mind. He suddenly began to wonder what a performance would pay if every seat were taken—what the "house would hold." He suddenly realized that every one of those empty seats meant two dollars and a half. Two of them meant five dollars. That was rather an alarming thought.

He tried to estimate the number of seats in the orchestra, taking one row as a basis. Odd that in all the hundreds of times he had sat in a theater he had never thought of doing that before. He had counted to twenty-seven in one row when another ripple of laughter swept over the house and he looked up at the stage. Charlie Barnes, in a big red wig and with a helpless, pathetic air, was holding the center of the scene in an eccentric dance, a form of amusement which Bellsmith had always peculiarly detested, but Israels leaned over to him.

"You want to watch that fellow, Charlie Barnes. He's the best drawing card you 've got."

"You 've got!" the words had come perfectly naturally from the manager beside him. More than anything else that had been said, more than anything else that could have been said, did they make Bellsmith at last realize that the company was his. It was a thrilling but at the same time a frightening thought. Suppose they should suddenly stop that performance up there on the stage, walk to the footlights, and calmly ask him what to do next.

As the act went on, however, there seemed to be less and less danger that he would be called on to take part. As Israels had said, the organization apparently "functioned like silk."

The scene was the same one, in front of a rustic tavern, which had appeared in the photographs in the lobby. In front of the tavern eight girls were dancing in the weaving, swaying step which they had rehearsed that afternoon. They parted and turned toward the tavern door, and in it appeared a smiling girl in a big garden hat. The audience greeted her appearance with the tentative, cautious wave of applause with which a provincial audience always greets every principal until it is sure which one is at last the expected "star." Even Bellsmith, from different motives, felt a sudden check at his heart, but it was not Tilly Marshall. It was Elsie Winner. With her blond hair and garden hat she was undeniably charming.

The comedian, who, in his stage character, apparently had some acute reason for avoiding Miss Winner, suddenly turned at sight of her and tried vainly to hide himself behind a potted rose-bush about a foot tall, to the mild amusement of the audience, but Bellsmith laughed outright. It suddenly seemed to him acutely funny. He leaned over to whisper to Israels, but the later had disappeared and Bellsmith found himself standing alone.

As the act went on, ushers, the check-room girl, occasionally Oliver, and at all times various ones of those unattached men who apparently have no occupation in life except that of standing in the darkened rear of a theater came and went, leaning a few moments against the high rail beside him and then passing on. Toward the end of the act Bellsmith heard one of the volunteers turn to Oliver.

"Same old stuff," he said, "is n't it?"

Oliver looked cautiously at Bellsmith and then mumbled something which he did not hear.

Between the acts, at Israel's suggestion, Bellsmith and he sauntered back of the scenes, not, this time, through the stage-door but most professionally through the little entrance behind the boxes. It was a most abrupt transition from red plush to bare brick and whitewash.

The very first person they saw was Tilly Marshall, hurrying, in costume, to the dressing-room corridor. At the sight of Bellsmith in company with the manager, who had not been one of the party on the previous evening, she stopped uncertainly.

"What in the world are you doing here?" she demanded. Her tone was unconsciously one of proprietorship, not merely that of a sister but that of a sister who was much older than he.

Israels could not resist the temptation to break the great news.

"Mr. Bellsmith," he announced, "can come in here any time he wants. He is the big boss now. He cracks the whip over us all. He has bought the show."

In the way of all bad news, something told Tilly Marshall that it was actually true. She stood transfixed, staring at them both, her face at once both grotesque and beautiful in its heavy make-up, her eyes abnormally large and starry behind their stiff spikes of heavily blackened lashes.

Israels repeated. "Bought it out of his pocket half an hour ago."

Tilly Marshall looked back at Bellsmith.

"You have n't?" she exclaimed.

Bellsmith nodded. "That's true."

It was several seconds before Miss Marshall would consent to admit the worst; then she turned slowly to Israels.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she remarked.

Israels put on a slight shade of an attitude toward women which would probably be called "kidding."

"Why?" he demanded. "What's the matter?"

"You know well enough," retorted the girl, and without another word she marched off to her dressing-room.

Israels looked after her, grinning. "She does n't seem to be pleased," he remarked, but Bellsmith made no reply. For the first time a genuine fear, a presentiment of disaster had settled over him, a far different feeling from the mere timidity which he had felt while negotiating with Israels.

At the close of the last act he again came behind the scenes—for, after all, that was really the whole thing for which he had paid forty-five thousand dollars—and walked to the Massapauk with Miss Marshall. There was no invitation about it, or suggestion. She fell in beside him as naturally as if it were now indeed an old story, but as they walked together out into the silent streets her air of resentment had distinctly not left her. Until they were well away from the theater she would say nothing at all except "Yes" and No," but Bellsmith knew that the great calamity was revolving over and over in her mind.

As usually happens he made the mistake of trying to break the silence jocularly.

"Even the ushers," he said, "have begun to call me by name."

"Oh, you don't know how I hate that!" the girl burst out at last. "The whole thing makes me feel more blue than I did before I knew you. Why, in heaven's name, did you ever let them do it? They only wanted you for your money."

"It was n't a case of that," argued Bellsmith, "The suggestion came entirely from me. At least the doctor and I cooked it up together."

"Then damn that doctor," exclaimed Miss Marshall. "I'd like to throttle him when I see him. Has n't even he any sense?"

"But why?" persisted Bellsmith. "What harm is it going to do? What is the worst that can happen?"

A sudden perfunctory idea came to him. "You did n't suppose for a minute that I would use this as a chance to annoy you?"

"Oh, no, no!" The girl dismissed that idea impatiently. "But this show is already a horrible failure."

That idea said in words did bring Bellsmith up with a little chill. It had been growing on him with tiny presentiments all the evening, but to have it expressed thus coldly and finally was something that he would have avoided if he could, something that Israels, not at all from any motive of treachery but merely from the masculine instinct to avoid the unpleasant, would also have avoided. It was in fact the word that the entire organization of Harcourt & Gay had scrupulously avoided for two months. Miss Marshall, however, had no scruples.

"It's just a plain frost," she repeated.

Bellsmith tried to argue weakly. "But it played in New York."

"Of course it did. If it had n't been a failure it would be playing there still."

"Well, in any case, it is n't anything so terrible," said Bellsmith with a forced lightness. "Then let it fail." He fell back on Dr. MacVickar for any argument. "At worst it won't cost any more than lots of things I might have done."

"Oh, it is n't that!" exclaimed the girl. "Don't you see that that has n't really anything to do with it?"

Both of them, had known that they had only been skirting around the real truth of her resentment, but she was reaching it now.

"It is n't the money," she burst out, in itself. "It is just that I hate to see you made a fool of—especially by those creatures. It makes me shrivel."

"That's very—that's very dear of you," answered Bellsmith, "but if I was made a fool of, I made a fool of myself. You nust n't blame them."

With another impatient gesture the girl dismissed all these cavilings. "But it looks like the same thing—to other people. I don't want them laughing at you."

Still she had not reached the actual root of the matter, but suddenly she made the plunge.

"You know it makes me just sick, really physically sick, to think of you having anything to do with the show business at all!"

"Why?" asked Bellsmith, now genuinely amazed.

"You know very well," answered the girl quietly. "Because I happen to be very fond of you."

She was silent for a moment and then continued.

"Outside of the show business you appeared to me like a rock of ages—clear and calm. Inside the show business you will be—oh! I don't know what—but not that any more."

"I'm sorry," said Bellsmith quietly.

He left her at the door of the hotel.