"Well," observed Violet generously, "I thought little me was pretty
well stage-broke; but I gotta hand it to Otis. He's _some_ actor. He
had me going from the first snore."
"Some actor is _right_," affirmed Mr. Bross with conviction, "and some
show, too, if you wanta know. I could sit through it twicet. Say, I
couldn't quit thinkin' what a grand young time I'd start in this old
burg if I could only con this _Kismet_ thing into slippin' me _my_ Day
of Days. Believe me or not, there would be _a_ party."
"What would you do?" asked Molly Lessing, smiling.
"Well, the first flop I'd nail down all the coin that was handy, and
then I'd buy me a flock of automobiles--and have a table reserved for
me at the Knickerbocker for dinner every night--and...." Imagination
flagged. "Well," he concluded defensively, "I can tell you one thing I
wouldn't do."
"What?" demanded Violet.
"I wouldn't let any ward politician like that there _Wazir_, or
whatever them A-rabs called him, kid me into trying to throw a bomb at
Charlie Murphy--or anythin' like that. No-oh! Not this infant. That's
where your friend _Hajj the Beggar's_ foot slipped on him. Up to then
he had everythin' his own way. If he'd only had sense enough to stall,
he'd've wound up in a blaze of glory."
"But, you bonehead," Violet argued candidly, "he had to. That was his
part: it was written in the play."
"G'wan. If he'd just stalled round and refused to jump through, the
author'd 've framed up some other way out. Why--blame it!--he'd've
_had_ to!"
"That will be about all for me," said Violet. "I don't feel strong
enough to-night to stand any more of your dramatic criticism. Lead me
home--and please talk baseball all the way."
With a resentful grunt, Mr. Bross clamped a warm, moist hand round the
plump arm of his charmer, and with masterful address propelled her
from the curb in front of the theatre, where the little party had
paused, to the northwest corner of Broadway: their progress consisting
in a series of frantic rushes broken by abrupt pauses to escape
annihilation in the roaring after-theatre crush of motor-cars. P.
Sybarite, moving instinctively to follow, leaped back to the sidewalk
barely in time to save his toes a crushing beneath the tires of a
hurtling taxicab.
He smiled a furtive apology at Molly Lessing, who had demonstrated
greater discretion, and she returned his smile in the friendliest
manner. His head was buzzing--and her eyes were kind. Neither spoke;
but for an instant he experienced a breathless sense of sympathetic
isolation with her, there on that crowded corner, elbowed and
shouldered in the eddy caused by the junction of the outpouring
audience with the midnight tides of wayfarers surging north and south.
The wonder and the romance of the play were still warm and vital, in
his imagination, infusing his thoughts with a roseate glamour of
unreality, wherein all things were strangely possible. The iridescent
imagery of the Arabian Nights of his boyhood (who has forgotten the
fascination of those three fat old volumes of crabbed type,
illuminated with their hundreds of cramped old wood-cuts?) had in a
scant three hours been recreated for him by Knoblauch's fantastic
drama with its splendid investment of scene and costume, its admirable
histrionic interpretation, and the robust yet exquisitely tempered
artistry of Otis Skinner. For three hours he had forgotten his lowly
world, had lived on the high peaks of romance, breathing only their
rare atmosphere that never was on land or sea.
Difficult he found it now, to divest his thoughts of that
enthrallment, to descend to cold and sober reality, to remember he was
a clerk, his companion a shop-girl, rather than a Prince disguised as
Calander esquiring a Princess dedicated to Fatal Enchantment--that
Kismet was a quaint fallacy, one with that whimsical conceit of Orient
fatalism which assigns to each and every man his Day of Days, wherein
he shall range the skies and plumb the abyss of his Destiny,
alternately its lord and its puppet.
But presently, with an effort, blinking, he pulled his wits together;
and a traffic policeman creating a favourable opening, the two
scurried across and plunged into the comparative obscurity of West
Thirty-eighth Street: sturdy George and his modest Violet already a
full block in advance.
Discovering this circumstance by the glimmer through the shadows of
Violet's conspicuously striped black-and-white taffeta, P. Sybarite
commented charitably upon their haste.
"If we hurry we might catch up," suggested Molly Lessing.
"I don't miss 'em much," he admitted, without offering to mend the
pace.
She laughed softly.
"Are they really in love?"
"George is," replied P. Sybarite, after taking thought.
"You mean she isn't?"
"To blush unseen is Violet's idea of nothing to do--not, at least,
when one is a perfect thirty-eight and possesses a good digestion and
an infinite capacity for amusement _à la carte_."
"That is to say--?" the girl prompted.
"Violet will marry well, if at all."
"Not Mr. Bross, then?"
"Nor any other poor man. I don't say she doesn't care for George, but
before anything serious comes of it he'll have to make good use of his
Day of Days--if _Kismet_ ever sends him one. I hope it will," P.
Sybarite added sincerely.
"You don't believe--really--?"
"Just now? With all my heart! I'm so full of romantic nonsense I can
hardly stick. Nothing is too incredible for me to believe to-night.
I'm ready to play _Hajj the Beggar_ to any combination of
impossibilities _Kismet_ cares to brew in Bagdad-on-the-Hudson!"
Again the girl laughed quietly to his humour.
"And since you're a true believer, Mr. Sybarite, tell me, what use
_you_ would make of your Day of Days?"
"I? Oh, I--" Smiling wistfully, he opened deprecatory palms. "Hard to
say.... I'm afraid I should prove a fatuous fool in George's esteem
equally with old _Hajj_. I'm sure that, like him, the sunset of my Day
would see me proscribed, a price upon my head."
"But--why?"
"I'm afraid I'd try to use my power to right old wrongs."