San Francisco dramatic review (1899)

August i, 1908. THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC REVIEW Frank had put out his hand for the towel, and suddenly he lifted it and brought it down in a strong bend on the head of Mr. Robbins, as that gentleman leaned over the basin. The head of Mr. Robbins ducked sharply, and his face disappeared into a pool of soap and water. Frank walked back in triumph, the towel in his hand ; he was tremendously flushed, but there was a steady, good-tempered sparkle in his eyes. The fickle populace deserted to his side, head over heels, joyous and derisive, and Robbins was left to splutter with his face in a packing-sheet. "Soak it to him plenty, Frankie," said little Ryan, witli his kind sidelong smile. "And you stick to Lydia Harland every day in the week ! " "That's all right," said Frank inaudibly, and bungled the bow of his tie. "I'll bet the poor girl's got her hands full tonight," said young Mr. Erskine. in a fatherly tone. "With Thomas Arthur. I mean. If it goes right, it'll be to his credit, and if it goes wrong, it'll be her fault. I've noticed that streak in him before," concluded the wise one. "Well, she hasn't got any chance to steal his thunder tonight, so she can't queer herself that way." Young Mr. Erskine's face assumed an expression of confidential caution. "When do you s'pose they're going to be married ? " he demanded. Nobody answered. "You don't mean that you think they aren't going to get married at all ! " "Oh, run somewhere else and talk! " said Ryan. "And talk low." The juvenile accepted this with the patience of youth for its unreasoning elders. "I don't believe he'd treat her so bad as that," he decided — "not when he's going to New York to be a celebrity. He knows how people look at these things in this business. I le wouldn't want to look such an awfid old mutt before everybody." And, casting a last tender glance at the mirror, he cheerfully departed for the stage. Robbins was out of earshot. Brownrigg cast a glance over his shoulder into Ryan's face. "Well, what would you like to bet? He could have married her over a year ago. What do you bet, if he gets to Broadway without marrying her, by another year he'll have thrown her over altogether? " "We're not on Broadway yet," was all Ryan could find to say. He called more cheerfully to Robbins : "They say that this man Chesney " "First act ! " It was like a blow on the heart. They had long been expecting it, and yet you could see their spirits stagger and their nerves contract. The next moment they had made, clattering and speechless, for the stairs. Only Frank Carzon still stood in the otherwise deserted room, trying to quiet, to control, the passionate young heroics of his anger. He had cherished his Miss Lydia's divinity a hundred-fold more exquisitely because she had stooped to Fosburg, but it had never occurred to him that she was in the least dependent upon Fosburg. If even that morning he had heard her name bandied about like this, her chances of marriage speculated upon, the desecration would have turned him sick, as it did now, yet still he would have felt a brightly burning scorn and triumph. Only now, this evening, since she had forsaken him at Fosburg's bidding, the real, the worldly, state of the case was black and solid to his vision. She was afraid of Fosburg; she had to do his will, not only because thus all women should before their lords and masters, but perhaps for this other, this hideous reason, that she hung in dread upon his generosity ! He saw clearer than ever she could do the menace under which she moved. The boy's knowledge of evil and of fear was extreme and varied. When Lydia had laid her hand upon him two years before, his whole soul had been bruised with panic, with disgust, and at the recollection of that healing touch, of his release from bondage, there rose in him such a strength of tenderness that it was as if he gathered up his life for service. He was at that absurd, enchanted age when nothing is so wholly desirable as to die for one's cause, and now it was not Lydia alone, but the whole sex of women and her weakness, before which his spirit bowed, at whose need he lifted up his heart. Lydia's treachery to him was like a sacramental sign, a signal for help and pity, since Frank knew how to pity without presumption. For this was, in the end, what he had brought with him out of his lurid boyhood ; the world had taught him, after all, only its claim on sanctuary. To do something for her ! And then there came back to him with the sense of the dressing-room walls, the littered shelves, and the whirling hour, the knowledge of his impotence, that no one could step between her and Fosburg, no one could clear that jungle where she walked, nor arm her hand against the monster. He awakened with a start. He — why, he was no longer allowed even her society! He walked quickly toward the stairs ; even when he reached the stage he could not rid himself of a certain sense of readiness in her behalf, at which, patiently enough, he smiled. They were still calling up to the women's rooms, "First act! First act!" The stage was full of people who moved incessantly about, looking after their props or trying the upholstery, the distances. None of the usual trivialities were in force; no young people making well-intentioned passes at dance steps to the music of the overture; no knots of jokers; nobody lolling in the settees, nobody humming, nothing inconsequent or light-hearted in that whole glittering assembly, whose only diversion now was looking through the peephole to find Chesney. Between ball-dresses and uniforms, stage-hands in their working-clothes ran in and out ; gentlemen in irreproachable black and white tugged at the furniture, attempting to arrange it to suit themselves, and were sharply reprimanded by Mr. Fosburg, who, very handsome and commanding, stood with his back to the curtain, calling directions into the flies. The scene represented a conservatory and a corner of a ball-room, past the windows of which a torch-light procession advocating war in Cuba was audibly to pass as the curtain rose. Groups of extra people were to be discovered, giving the scene that tone of elegant luxury which they invariably convey so well, and the stage-manager was now worrying" around, poking these innocents into photographer's attitudes and turning them into wood. Here and there Lydia followed after him and turned them back again to human beings. The young author hesitated uneasily about, biting his lips and smiling like a person at death's door; every now and then he refreshed himself by peering through the peephole at his anxious family, stiff with self-consciousness, in the stage-box. In the opposite box, which was bedraped with flags, sat the Mayor of Colville and his bulking retinue ; the young author would renew his consciousness of this fact, swallow horribly, apologize to the person waiting a turn at the peep-hole, and sidle away. Finding himself face to face with Lydia, his eye brightened. "What a pretty dress ! " said he spontaneously. "I'm so glad," said Lydia. "I hoped it would be pretty." An infinite kindness in her voice unnerved him; he thought favorably for a moment of flinging himself, weeping on her near and lovely breast and imploring her to tell him truly what she thought of the play's chances. But he restrained this impulse, and she passed on, answered some questions of the electrician, and stood passive, her docile eyes closely attending upon Fosburg. As they stood together, Frank Carzon passed them with a small, grave bow and took his turn at the peep-hole. There was all the ridiculous stiffness and self-consciousness of youth in this salute, and yet it did not minister to Fosburg's sense of humor. Frank, though a little slouchy and absorbed in the day-time, had the gift of coming out extraordinarily well in evening dress, bore about him, indeed, under those scrupulous conditions, even a kind of radiance at once worldly and romantic, and Fosburg glanced at the bent black head pressed against the curtain with a kind of pang. What weapon, what decoration, was there in the world like the quarter of a century which lay between them ! He turned to Lydia and found her eyes dwelling on the boy, and at that he lost his head, lost all necessity for provocation, and, indicating Frank, he said loudly, "Seems to be pretty sober tonight." Frank gave no sign. Lydia stared for a moment, and then detestably dropped her eyes and moved away. As she went she was vaguely aware that something was happening to her, that all the turmoil of the night held for her some individual issue. But she did not at all discern it. Meantime Frank looked through the curtain upon an impressive sight. "From pit to dome," through the boxes, the great floors, the wide galleries, through circle after circle of flushed expectancy, the huge old theatre was crowded close. All Colville, from the servants at the summer hotels to the aforesaid Mayor and the corporation, were out to do honor to the farewell night of the ( )pera 1 louse, to Fosburg1, to San Juan. There in the scent of flowers and the glare of chandeliers all Colville's best clothes, best wits, best temper, were merged into a shining integer that rustled and fanned itself, leaned and chattered and peered, crackling its candy-boxes, adjusting its operaglasses, nodding, preening, settling, anticipating. So good-humored, so complacent, so polite and curious, it sat there, waiting to be pleased, ready to devour all one's sweets, superbly ignorant and indifferent concerning any effort, any intention, in the presentation before which it crouched, so greedy that, if unappeased, who knew but it might spring! And somewhere back among those wide spaces thickly packed sat one young fellow with the fates of a score of people in his hand. rank felt a little sting through his warm blood; then Wiley clapped his hands and cried out, "Clear!" and he ran with the others. The stage was left to its splendid setting and its groups of extras, to Brownrigg and .Minnie l uselle at the fountain in the centre. There was the hush before the storm; and then, through the stillness, the band of the torch-light procession mingling with the orchestra, first creeping and then bounding, shrieking, sounded the curtain music, the heart-splitting notes of "Dixie" — Away down South in the land of cotton. The sick creatures on the stage drew in their breath and felt their muscles stiffening'. Old times there are not forgotten. Oil, heaven and earth! Was that the kind of music to turn on people's trembling nerves? But all was not yet lost, the deed not signed, the shot not fired, for oh, the curtain was not yet up, there was still time for — what? Then the bell, the long br-r-r of the curtain rising, the dazzling line of footlights, the music shrilling out its heart — Away, away, away down South