The Bacillus of Beauty Part 44

We stumbled through dim pa.s.sages to the stage, half-lighted by a window or two high overhead. Mr. Blumenthal sat alone in the orchestra, and I summoned all my resolution, and then, frightened and ashamed and desperate, I sang the "Sehnsucht," following it with what Cadge calls a "good yelling song" to show the power of my voice.

Then the rotund little manager rolled silently back to the office, and I knew as I followed him that I had been judged by a different standard from that of an applauding drawing-room.

"Well!" said he, when we had regained his room. "You are a marvel! Sing by all means; but, if you must have immediate results, not in opera. Music halls get pretty much the most profitable part of the business since they became so fas.h.i.+onable in London. Tell you what I'll do.--I'll give you a short trial at--say a hundred a week. You've a wonderful voice and no training; but any teacher can soon put you in shape to sing a few showy songs. Give me an option on your services for a longer term at a higher figure, if you take to the business and it takes to you, and you can start in next month at the roof garden."

"The roof garden!" I cried out; but then I saw how foolish it would be to feel affronted at this common man with money who would rank me as an attraction among acrobats and trick dogs.

"I shouldn't like that," I said more calmly; "people are very foolish, of course, but I've been told that--that if I were to sing in public, my appearance would mark a new era in music; now, I wouldn't care to sing in such a place; I had hoped, too, that I could get more--more salary."

"Would seem so, wouldn't it?" said Mr. Blumenthal. "But it's a fair offer.

Tell you why.

"You'll take with an audience, for a short run, anyhow, if you've got--er-- temperament; but I run the risk that you haven't. I spend considerable money getting you ready to appear, and then you're on the stage only a few minutes. Another thing: Most people nowadays are short sighted; you have to capture 'em in the ma.s.s--two Topsies, four Uncle Toms, eight Markses the lawyers, twenty chorus girls kicking at once-big stage picture, you know, not the individual. And the individual must have the large manner.

Yes, yes; I use you for bait to draw people, but I need other performers to amuse 'em after they're here. They want to feel that there's 'something doing' all the while, something different. Curiosity wouldn't last long; either you'd turn out an artist and--er--do what a music hall audience wants done, or you'd fail. In the former case you could command more money; never so much as people say, though. There's so many liars."

"I--I'll think over your offer," I said. "I wouldn't have to wear--"

"Costumes of approved brevity? No; at least not to start with."

Mr. Blumenthal also had risen. He looked at me, as if aroused to my ignorance of things theatrical, with a more personal and kindly interest.

"Sorry my offer doesn't strike you favourably," he said. "I'd like mighty well to bring you out; but if you hold off for opera--that isn't my line, though--mind you, I don't say it could be done; but if some one were found to put up the money, would you wait and study? Know what you'd be undertaking, I suppose--hard work, regular hours, open air, steady habits?

That's the life of a singer. Your health good? No nerves? We might make a deal, if you mean business. Trouble is, so many beautiful women think beauty as an a.s.set is worth more than it is; it makes 'em careless about studying while they're young, and it can't last--"

I never heard the end of that sentence. I flew home and went straight to my mirror. Sure enough, I fancied I saw a haggard look about the eyes--

My G.o.d! This gift of beauty doesn't confer immunity from fatigue, accident, old age. This loveliness must fade and crack and wrinkle, these full organ tones must shrivel to a shrill pipe; and I--I! shall one day be a tottering old woman, bent, gray, hideous!

And all the little disfiguring hurts of life--they frighten me! I never enter a train that I do not think, with a shudder, of derailment and bleeding gashes and white scars; or cross a street without looking about for the waving hoofs of runaway horses that shall beat me down, or for some bicycle rider who might roll me over in a limp heap on the paving stones.

Yesterday I saw a horrid creature; her face blotched with red by acid stain or by a birth mark. Why does she not kill herself? Why didn't she die before I saw her? I shall dream of her for months--of her and Darmstetter, old and wrinkled as I shall be some day, and dead--with that same awful look in my fixed eyes!

Ah, what a Nelly I have come to be! Is it possible that I once rode frisky colts bareback and had no nerves! I mustn't have nerves! They make one old. Mr. Blumenthal said so. But how to avoid them? Oh, I must be careful; so careful! How do women dare to ride bicycles?

And this theatrical Napoleon, part of whose business is the apprais.e.m.e.nt of beauty--did he suspect that mine was less than perfect? It was perfect a month ago.

He couldn't have meant that, or he was trying to make a better bargain by cheapening the wares I brought--

But I can't go upon the stage. How could I have thought of it? I mustn't subject myself to the late hours, the grease paint, the bad air! Of what use would be a mint of money, if I lost my beauty?

I steadied my nerves with a tiny gla.s.s of Curacoa, and looked again. The face in the mirror was beautiful, beautiful! There is no other like it!

And gazing upon radiant Her, I might have recovered myself but for the third untoward event of the day.

It came in the shape of Bellmer.

Perhaps I ought not to have seen him alone, but it is hard for one who has lived in the free atmosphere of the prairie, and has been a bachelor girl in New York with Kitty Reid to think about caution. Besides, it was such a blessed relief to see his full-moon face rise above the darkness of my troubles! I greeted him with my sweetest smile, and did my very best to make myself agreeable.

"You've been out of town, haven't you?" I asked when the talk began to flag, as it soon does with Hughy.

"Aw, yes," he said; "pickin' up a record or two, with my 'mobe;' y' ought to see it; it's a beauty, gasolene, you know. Awful nuisance, punctures, though. Cost me thirteen dollars to repair one; vulcanize the tire, y'see.

Tires weigh thirty pounds each; awful lot, ain't it? Stripped one right off, though, trying to turn in the mud; fastened on with half-inch spikes, too. Can't I persuade you to--aw--take a spin some day? Where's Mrs.

Whitney?"

"Gone to the country; she--she's ill."

"Awful tabby, wa'n't she?"

"Oh, no; I like her very much, but she was in a hurry to leave town."

"So Aunt Terry said. Awf'ly down on you, Aunt Terry is," he drawled with even more than his usual tactlessness, "but I stand up for you, I a.s.suah you, Miss Wins.h.i.+p. I tell her you're awf'ly sensible an' jolly--lettin' a fellow come like this, now, and talk to you's jolly, ain't it? An' you will try my mobe? Awf'ly jolly 'twould be to take a spin."

"Very jolly indeed," I said. I turned my head that I might not see his s.h.i.+ning scalp. Thank heaven, I thought, Hughy doesn't know enough to be deterred by two rejections, nor even by the gossip about Strathay. I wished--it was wicked, of course--I wished I were his widow; but I was determined not to repeat such folly as I had shown about the Earl.

"Very jolly," I repeated, "but you don't know what a coward I am; I believe I'd be afraid."

"Aw, no, Miss Wins.h.i.+p," he remonstrated; "afraid of the mobe? Aw, no; not with me. I'll teach you how to run it, I do a.s.suah you; awf'ly jolly that would be."

"Why, yes; that would be nice, of course," I said; "but--"

Oh, how shall I tell the rest? I was afraid of the machine; I knew I could never mount it, with his hand on the lever; I was just trying to refuse without offending him.

"--I'm such a coward, really," I went on; I smiled painstakingly into his stupid pink face that seemed suddenly to have grown pinker; and then I felt my smile stiffen upon my lips, for he had whirled around on the piano stool on which he was sitting, and he smiled back at me, but not as he would have done in Mrs. Whitney's presence. He--he leered!

"You wouldn't be afraid, with me, y' know,--" was all he said, but he rose as if to come nearer me.

"Oh, yes, I should--I should--" I stammered; I couldn't move; I couldn't look away from him.

I seemed face to face with some foolish, grinning masque of horror. My heart beat as I think a bird's must when a snake has eyed it; and a cold moisture broke out upon me.

"Oh, yes, I should!" I cried as I broke loose from the spell of terror, and made some halting excuse to get rid of him. I didn't dare even wait to see him leave the room, but fled from it myself, conscious as I went of his open-mouthed stare, and of his detaining: "Aw, now, Miss Wins.h.i.+p--"

To get as far away as possible, I retreated to the kitchen, where I surprised Nora and Annie in conclave. They seized the opportunity to "give notice." Nora has a sweetheart and is to be married; Annie has invented the excuse of an ailing mother, because she dares not stay alone with me.

They are both afraid, now that Mrs. Whitney--selfish creature!--has gone, and left me helpless against the world.

At any other time the news would have been a fresh calamity--for how can I pay them, or how get rid of them without paying? But with the memory of that awful scene in my head, I could think of nothing else. I don't know what I said in reply.

Bellmer's insult has stayed with me and haunted me. I had bearded a theatrical manager in his den and had been received with kindness and courtesy. He had even a.s.sumed that some things in the profession about which I was inquiring might be trying to a tenderly reared girl, and that he ought to give me advice and warnings. But this Thing bearing a gentleman's repute; this bat-brained darling of a society that I'm not thought good enough to enter, had insulted me like a boor under my own roof; and he would probably boast of it like a boor to others as base as himself! The poverty of it, the grossness of it!

I'm not ignorant, now. I know there's a way open to me--G.o.d knows I never mean to walk on it--but if ever I do go, open-eyed, into what the world calls wrong to end my worries, it will be at the invitation of one who has at least the manner of a gentleman!

Sometimes I wonder if I did right about Ned. If he had known that I loved him, if I had made it plain, if I were even now to tell him all the truth.--But he said--

I hate him! The whole world's against me, but I won't be beaten! I won't go back to the farm with Father. I will not give up the fight!

What shall I do?

CHAPTER IX.