Mummers in Mufti/Chapter 30

''AP! Tap! Tap!''

The first night in Boston, the ultimate goal of the "Eleanor" show.

Ziegler, the orchestra leader, raised his arms, and his men straightened into attention. Half the lights in the house went slowly dim and the footlights flared up, forming a warm, golden border on the lower edge of the curtain. An expectant silence passed over the orchestra circle while the attaches and idle loungers at the back of the house sauntered, from force of habit, up to the rail behind the last row of seats. Among them was Arnold Bellsmith, his hands instinctively clenched, his fingers chilly with nervousness. His eyes were fixed on the orchestra leader's back, his shoulders instinctively "humping" the tempo of the rests which composed the first two bars of the overture.

The conductor, beating the cadence of the unplayed notes, glanced to right and to left, then made a vigorous snap toward the contrabasses. At his gesture a curious wave of surprise swept over the house, for, instead of the blare of brass which such a gesture at such a moment usually brings forth, there followed nothing but the grotesque, swaggering pizzicato on the double-bass viols:

Barnes himself had described it accurately. It was irresistibly "a man with a wooden leg."

To the bass viols were next added the cellos and then the violas, the second and first violins, in increasing importance and increasing volume, all playing that one absurd little rhythm, alternate instruments bowing and alternate instruments pizzicato. And all the time, unceasing, monotonous as a clock-tower, came that principal theme from the contrabasses:

It was a progression as unmistakable as a flight of stairs and as massive as a pyramid. As the rhythm advanced to and included the first violins the least musical soul in the house was looking expectantly toward the silent side of the orchestra, wondering what would happen when the spark of melody should leap across the gap and set a blaze on the other side.

It happened just as curiosity reached the bursting-point, for as the first violins reached the end of their little rondo Zeigler, turning to the other side of his orchestra, made that same expectant snap and, from clear at the other end, the lowest kettledrum took up the rhythm, echoing it back:

But only for a minute did this reply rest with the kettledrums, for suddenly, with another step, in absolute contrast, burst out the clarinets in a whirling and screeching cackle.

Yet, in grim determination, apparently mirthlessly, one side of the orchestra still went on in its endless, wooden-legged

while the other side—the wood winds and the brass, muted to a tinny squeak—fussed and fumed and fretted all over three octaves, the higher kettledrum now coming in at all sorts of odd intervals with fussy, little, tottering, old-maidish steps that made petulant little rushes, then stopped inanely just short of the expected climax.

And endlessly, monotonously, kept up the contrabasses:

A leonine man with gray hair in the second row of the orchestra circle turned to a pinched little man with nose-glasses who was sitting behind him.

"That's one of the weirdest things I ever heard," said the leonine man, "and yet it's pure music. Ever hear of this thing before?"

The little man shook his head impatiently. His eyes were on the conductor. He did n't want to be interrupted, but the leonine man was very much pleased with himself.

"Sounds to me like a tone poem built on the theme of 'The Jabberwock,'" he added, and jotted it down on the margin of his program,—"Jabberwock theme." He intended to use that in his review in "The Boston Times" the following morning.

A French horn blared, the theme and the tempo were changed, and slowly the orchestra wove into the saner melody of the "Eve Song." In its various movements the overture rose and fell, then, subtly, at the very end, slipped back by gradual steps again into the bull-fiddle motif. The remaining lights of the house went dark, double curtains slowly parted, and upon an empty stage, into a garden scene bathed in mellow sunlight, came stumping grotesque little Charlie Barnes, in his rôle of the wooden-legged gardener. As he himself had said, his motif had been "planted." With almost a roar of delight, the spirit of the audience rose up to greet him.

At the rear of the house Bellsmith, standing taut, smiled to himself and relaxed, as if a perilous moment had been passed safely. As he turned, Israels sauntered up to him in the semi-darkness, the imaginary toothpick still twirling in his lips. As he had always been stoic in misfortune, so now was he stereotyped in success.

"Knocking 'em cold," commented Israels. Bellsmith's eyes went back to the stage, but Israels sauntered off again on other quests of his own. The stage interested Israels less than any other part of a theater, and even Bellsmith found his attention wandering, as if that overture alone and not the whole comedy that was to follow had been the culmination of his winter's anxiety and his winter's efforts.

Even when Tilly came on and was greeted by a really spontaneous burst of applause, he roused himself only momentarily. Whether it really was weariness or whether it was that same dreamy detachment which had characterized his whole life, like that of his fathers, it still remained impossible for Bellsmith to connect the sight of Tilly on the stage with his thoughts of her in their life together. Night after night, for two weeks now, he had watched her over the footlights, trying to whip himself into a sort of conventional and expected excitement at her entrances, saying over and over to himself, "That is my wife! That is my wife!"

But it had been of no use. In her make-up and behind the footlights Tilly Marshall still remained for him curiously Tilly Marshall, entirely another person, very much as she had appeared to him the first night that he had seen her. Only when he joined her each evening after the show did she revert again into the other Tilly—into Tilly his wife. Possibly when she took up another rôle, one which began actually after their first life together, it might be different. This rôle of hers in "Eleanor" was still a curious linking of one phase of life to another. But without any question the show was "going big" before the Boston audience. Back and forth Charlie Barnes and Mrs. Trip chased each other throughout the whole first act, the one always just disappearing out right as the other appeared on left, the bull-fiddle motif anticipating the one, the clarinet motif announcing the other, the two just overlapping, never quite joining. Between Tilly and Tommy Knight the lovers' meeting developed into its quarrel, the quarrel into a parting and the act progressed to its climax.

Under the mellow, sunlit wall, uncannily as Barnes had visualized it that first afternoon, was ranged the quaint row of old-fashioned flowers, and among them stood Tilly Marshall, alone in the garden, her head bowed in obstinate, yet wistful regret.

Slowly the orchestra wove its way into the melody, and suddenly, deer-like, the girl raised her head, for over the wall were coming the notes of the lover she had just sent away in anger:

Through its two verses, with the lover's voice ever diminishing in the distance, the song gently faded away, then slowly and wanly died out, in the very middle of the bar, a faint broken cadence.

Then, crash! with a blare of music the chorus was on—a few moments of laughing, chattering song, then off again, and once more the girl stood alone in the garden.

Then slowly, as it seemed, from her very feet, the faint thread of the thin, muted melody began rising again, swelling and swelling, then slowly dimming and dimming into a point so tenuous that its last thread of sound was not distinguishable from the absolute silence which succeeded it.

The audience sat almost straining for the voice of the violin to go on. But nothing more came. As to the girl herself on the stage, so to the audience in its seats, it seemed to come as a shock—the realization that the voice was actually gone, that the memory was actually stilled.

During ten seconds hung the spirit of the echoing, rhythmical silence—not a voice from the stage, not a note from the orchestra, not a stir in the house. Then slowly, with a little sigh that could more be imagined than heard, the girl picked up the single flower, pondered it wistfully for a moment, then nervelessly let it fall. So tense was the audience that the rolling folds of the double curtain came as a complete surprise—a surprise which left hurt uncertainty for an instant and then a thunderous burst of applause.

Bellsmith let out his drawn breath with entire satisfaction and turned toward the head of the nearest aisle to overhear the comments of such members of the audience as might come out between the acts. From such as did, mostly unattached men, he knew that he should overhear little—merely remarks such as "Some show!" or "Gee! that last got my goat!" but even these he did not want to miss. He had hardly taken his place, when a firm hand was pressed on his shoulder and a pleasant voice said in his ear:

"Mr. Bellsmith?"

Bellsmith turned and found himself faced by an agreeable but rather gaunt and Yankee-looking young man in a commonplace felt hat and a careless suit of ready-made clothes who might, apparently, have been an instructor from some small college around Boston.

His air, however, was not that of a college instructor. His smile was one of a quiet and authoritative assurance, and it was not until Bellsmith's blank look had told him that he was unknown that he added the explanation:

"Oh! I thought you might know me. I am Al Harcourt."