Page:Weird Tales volume 02 number 03.djvu/62

Rh had at last succumbed to the after-effects of a severe wound, leaving his motherless daughter barely enough means to live on. Paul, who had known Major Spring in earlier days, had heard of his condition only a few days before his death, but he had been in time to relieve the dying man’s mind of anxiety regarding his daughter.

Carol at nineteen was the incarnate fragrance of a rose in June. Since her father died, two years before, she had lived in the care of the elderly lady who acted as Paul’s housekeeper in London. Believing that the best cure for the girl’s terrible loneliness was occupation, Paul sought to give her an interest in life.

She had always, he found, loved music, and her voice, though not powerful, was pleasing. At her request, Paul enabled her to enter school where would-be actresses learned the elements of their art, and there the directress, a shrewd woman, discovered where Carol’s real talent lay.

"Miss Spring," she wrote to Paul, "might make a passable actress. She has a certain charm, a nice voice and a good figure. But I feel bound, against my own interests, to tell you that she is wasting her time here. Take her to a good professor of dancing; don’t let him—if I may advise—try to turn her into a posture-maker; she is not a ballet-dancer, and never will be. But let him teach her just enough technique to frame the picture of her genius. She dances because to dance expresses the sunshine of her soul. You will think me a sentimental old fool to write like this ..."

But Paul did not think so; nor did the gray-haired Italian to whom he took Carol.

Under her master’s skillful guidance, Carol was spared the long hours of painful posturing which make the great ballerina, but she retained and developed her natural poetry of movement, and one day the Signor came to Paul and told him that his pupil was ready to be shown to the world.

Vivian Dale, the owner and manager of the Quality Theater, was a friend of Paul. Skeptically—for he had so frequently had young prodigies hurled at his head, and had so often found them, as he said, to possess feet, not of clay, but apparently of lead—he came to the great bare room where the Signor, the girl and Paul awaited him.

Without preamble, the old maestro took up his violin and played a simple, haunting air, and Carol began to dance—nervously at first, but as the rhythm gripped her she forgot everything but the music, and danced, as she always did, "from the soul of her," in the Signor’s phrase.

Vivian Dale watched her in silence until the last note had died away. Then he rose and took both the girl’s hands in his.

"Miss Spring," he said, "it is not my way to pay compliments. I believe you have a great future before you. If you like, I will put you on at my theater at once."

Amazed and half frightened at this sudden realization of her ambitions, Carol blushed and murmured some confused words.

"This is very kind, Dale," said Paul, coming to her aid, but the other interrupted him.

"By no means," he said. "For your sake, my dear Paul, I was willing to come and see Miss Spring dance, but even for your sake I could not imperil the reputation that I think I may say I have built up for the Quality Theater. But, if I am any judge, Miss Spring is going to justify my faith in her. If you will both come round to my office tomorrow, I will have a contract prepared, and we can discuss the details of an idea that I think should be effective."

HE Quality Theater had justly won its place in the public estimation as a theater that put quality before quantity, and Vivian Dale had a remarkable power of combining the highest artistry with popularity. His great spectacles were mounted magnificently, and his present play, "Love o’ the Ages," had been running for over a year. In it there appeared Mademoiselle Nadia Raskolnikovna, a beautiful Russian, whose "Storm" dance had set London talking. Dale, with characteristic audacity, decided to introduce a striking contrast; Carol, he resolved, should appear immediately after the passionate Russian in a "Sunshine" dance in which he believed that her fresh sweetness and artless gaiety would, in theatrical phrase, bring down the house.

The great posters bearing in huge letters the single word

were alternated with others on which were printed

and artistic half-hints to the Press piqued public curiosity.

The stage effects were cleverly planned. In a charming woodland scene Carol appeared, clad in a simple white robe, and danced in a flood of warmly-tinted light. At the end of her dance she took from an attendant concealed at the wings a great golden lily, in the center of which was fixed an electric globe of delicate rose-pink shade. Flitting to the front of the stage, she slowly raised the lily to her face, pressed a spring, and the warm glow suffused her cheeks and neck with the effect of a charming blush.

On the night of Carol’s first appearance Paul Pry sat in his box, concealing under his habitual sang froid a nervousness almost as great as that of his young ward in her dressing-room behind the scenes. Dale looked in for a minute and clapped him on the shoulder.

"She'll be great, Paul; you’ll see," was all he said, and Paul heaved a sigh of relief, for Dale was rarely enthusiastic.

Young Oakby, whom Paul had brought along with him, for he liked the boy’s hearty cheeriness, laughed.

"Buck up, Paul," he said. "I’m sure Miss Spring will be top-hole. I’m quite anxious to see her, you know, and I’m prepared to shout myself hoarse to help the applause."

Paul smiled, and turned to watch the Nadia as she began her dance. Tall, with rounded limbs and the magnificent bosom of a fully matured woman, she moved with the assurance of perfect training. She was wrapped in a red cloak, but as the music grew louder and louder, and great crashes of simulated thunder were heard, she cast the garment from her, and stood forth in a bronze sheathing which accentuated the beauties of her splendid body.

The dance ended in a gesture of passionate abandon, and she was recalled again and again to bow her acknowledgments of tremendous applause.

The curtain descended, to rise again in a few moments on the woodland glade into which wandered, after a pause, a slim figure in white. For a moment she stood, a hand at her breast, and looked vaguely into the great darkened auditorium in which she could distinguish nothing. Something in her wistful look set a woman sobbing, and in a moment an encouraging round of applause broke out. Dimly understanding that they were bidding her take courage, she smiled, and then the music recalled her to herself and she began to dance—slowly at first, but presently with the joyous spontaneity of youth.

Young Oakby, who had started when she first appeared, locked his hands together and followed her with his eyes as she flitted about the great stage with the graceful movements of a fawn. When, taking the golden lily, she lifted it to her lips and stood motionless before her judges, he sprang to his feet and cheered with an utter forgetfulness that would have been conspicuous had it not been shared by everybody in the theater.