THE FIRST NIGHT
At a quarter-past eight in the dressing-rooms of the Gaiety, pandemonium
reigned. Red birds, fairies, gnomes, will-o'-the-wisps flitted about,
begging, borrowing, stealing articles from each other in good-humored
confusion. In and out among them darted the little bear, slapping at each
passerby with her furry paws, practising steps on her cushioned toes, and
rushing back every now and then to Birdie, who stood before a mirror in
red tights, with a towel around her neck, putting the final touches on
her make-up.
It was hot and stuffy, and the air reeked with grease paint. There was a
perpetual chatter with occasional outbursts of laughter, followed by
peremptory commands of "Less noise down there!" In the midst of the
hub-bub a call-boy gave the signal for the opening number of the chorus;
the chatter and giggling ceased, and the bright costumes settled into a
definite line as the girls filed up the stairs.
Nance, left alone, sat on a trunk and waited for her turn in a fever of
impatience. She caught the opening strains of the orchestra as it swung
into the favorite melody of the day; she could hear the thud of dancing
feet overhead. She was like a stoker shut up in the hold of the vessel
while a lively skirmish is in progress on deck.
As she sat there the wardrobe woman, a matronly-looking, Irish
person, came up and ordered her peremptorily to get off the trunk.
Nance not only complied, but she offered her assistance in getting it
out of the passage.
"May ye have some one as civil as ye are to wait on ye when ye are as old
as I am!" said the woman. "It's your first night, eh?"
"Yep. Maybe my last for all I know. They 're trying me out."
"Good luck to ye," said the woman. "Well I mind the night I made me
first bow."
"You!"
"No less. I'd a waist on me ye could span wid yer two hands. And legs!
well, it ain't fer me to be braggin', but there ain't a girl in the
chorus kin stack up alongside what I oncet was! Me an' a lad named Tim
Moriarty did a turn called 'The Wearing of the Green,'--'Ryan and
Moriarty' was the team. I kin see the names on the bill-board now! We had
'em laughin' an' cryin' at the same time, 'til their tears run into their
open mouths!"
"Wisht I could've seen you," said Nance. "I bet it was great."
The wardrobe woman, unused to such a sympathetic listener, would have
lingered indefinitely had not a boy handed Nance a box which absorbed all
her attention.
"Miss Birdie La Rue," was inscribed on one side of the card that dangled
from it on a silver cord, and on the other was scribbled, "Monte and I
will wait for you after the show. Bring another girl. M.D.C."
"And I'm the other girl!" Nance told herself rapturously.
There was a flurry in the wings above and the chorus overflowed down
the stairs.
"It's a capacity house," gasped Birdie, "but a regular cold-storage
plant. We never got but one round. Spagetti is having spasms."
"What's a round?" demanded Nance, but nobody had time to enlighten her.
It was not until the end of the second act that her name was called, and
she went scampering up the stairs as fast as her clumsy suit would
permit. The stage was set for a forest scene, with gnarled trees and
hanging vines and a transparent drop that threw a midnight blue haze over
the landscape.
"Crawl up on the stump there!" ordered Reeser, attending to half a dozen
things at once. "Put you four paws together. Head up! Hold the pose until
the gnomes go off. When I blow the whistle, get down and dance. I'll get
the will-o'-the-wisps on as quick as I can. Clear the stage everybody!
Ready for the curtain? Let her go!"
Nance, peering excitedly through the little round holes of her mask, saw
the big curtain slowly ascend, revealing only a dazzling row of
footlights beyond. Then gradually out of the dusk loomed the vast
auditorium with its row after row of dim white faces, reaching back and
up, up further than she dared lift her head to see. From down below
somewhere sounded the weird tinkle of elfin music, and tiptoeing out from
every tree and bush came a green-clad gnome, dancing in stealthy silence
in the sleeping forest. Quite unconsciously Nance began to keep time. It
was such glorious fun playing at being animals and fairies in the woods
at night. Without realizing what she was doing, she dropped into what she
used to call in the old sweat-shop days, "dancin' settin' down."
A ripple of amusement passed through the audience, and she looked around
to see what the gnomes were up to, but they were going off the stage, and
the suppressed titter continued. A soft whistle sounded in the wings, and
with a furiously beating heart, she slid down from her high stump and
ambled down to the footlights.
All might have gone well, had not a sudden shaft of white light shot
toward her from the balcony opposite, making a white spot around the
place she was standing. She got out of it only to find that it followed
her, and in the bewilderment of the discovery, she lost her head
completely. All her carefully practised steps and poses were utterly
forgotten; she could think of nothing but that pursuing light, and her
mad desire to get out of it.
Then something the director had said at the rehearsal flashed across the
confusion. "She makes her own part," he had said of Flossy Pierson, and
Nance, with grim determination, decided to do the same. A fat man in the
left hand box had laughed out when she discovered the spotlight. She
determined to make him laugh again. Simulating the dismay that at first
was genuine, she began to play tag with the shaft of light, dodging it,
jumping over it, hiding from it behind the stump, leading it a merry
chase from corner to corner. The fat man grew hysterical. The audience
laughed at him, and then it began to laugh at Nance. She threw herself
into the frolic with the same mad abandonment with which she used to
dance to the hand-organ in front of Slap Jack's saloon. She cut as many
fantastic capers as a frisky kitten playing in the twilight; she leapt
and rolled and romped, and the spectators, quick to feel the contagion of
something new and young and joyful, woke up for the first time during the
evening, and followed her pranks with round after round of applause.
When at last the music ceased, she scampered into the wings and sank
gasping and laughing into a chair.
"They want you back!" cried Reeser, excitedly beckoning to her. "Go on
again. Take the call."
"The what?" said Nance, bewildered. But before she could find out, she
was thrust forward and, not being able to see where she was going, she
tripped and fell sprawling upon the very scene of her recent triumph.
In the confusion of the moment she instinctively snatched off her mask,
and as she did so the sea of faces merged suddenly into one. In the
orchestra below, gazing at her with dropped jaw over his arrested
fiddle-bow, was old Mr. Demry, with such a comical look of paralyzed
amazement on his face that Nance burst into laughter.
There was something in her glowing, childish face, innocent of
make-up, and in her seeming frank enjoyment of the mishap that took
the house by storm. The man in the box applauded until his face was
purple; gloved hands in the parquet tapped approval; the balcony
stormed; the gallery whistled.
She never knew how she got off the stage, or whether the director shouted
praise or blame as she darted through the wings. It was not until she
reached the dressing-room, and the girls crowded excitedly around her
that she knew she had scored a hit.
She came on once more at the end of the last act in the grand ballet,
where all the dancers performed intricate manoeuvers under changing
lights. Every time the wheeling figures brought her round to the
footlights, there was a greeting from the front, and, despite warnings,
she could not suppress a responsive wag of the head or a friendly wave
of the paw.
"She is so fresh, so fresh!" groaned Pulatki from the wings.
"She's alive," said Reeser. "She'll never make a show girl, and she's got
no voice to speak of. But she's got a personality that climbs right over
the footlights. I'm going to engage her for the rest of the season."
When the play was over, Nance, struggling into Birdie's complicated
finery in the dressing-room below, wondered how she could ever manage to
exist until the next performance. Her one consolation was the immediate
prospect of seeing Mac Clarke and the mysterious Monte to whom Birdie had
said she must be nice. As she pinned on a saucy fur toque in place of her
own cheap millinery, she viewed herself critically in the glass. Beside
the big show girls about her, she felt ridiculously young and slender and
insignificant.
"I believe I'll put on some paint!" she said.
Birdie laughed.
"What for, Silly? Your cheeks are blazing now. You'll have time enough
to paint 'em when you've been dancing a couple of years."
They were among the last to leave the dressing-room, and when they
reached the stage entrance, Birdie spied two figures.
"There they are!" she whispered to Nance, "the fat one is Monte,
the other--"
Nance had an irresistible impulse to run away. Now that the time had
come, she didn't want to meet those sophisticated young men in their long
coats and high hats. She wouldn't know how to act, what to say. But
Birdie had already joined them, and was turning to say airily:
"Shake hands with my friend Miss Millay, Mr. Clarke--and, I say, Monte,
what's your other name?"
The older of the young men laughed good-naturedly.
"Monte'll do," he said. "I'm that to half the girls in town."
Mac's bright bold eyes scanned Nance curiously. "Where have I seen you
before?" he asked instantly.
"Don't you recognize her?" said Monte. "She's the little bear! I'd know
that smile in ten thousand!"
Nance presented him with one on the spot, out of gratitude for the
diversion. She was already sharing Birdie's wish that no reference be
made to Calvary Alley or the factory. They had no place in this
rose-colored world.
Monte and the two girls had descended the steps to the street when the
former looked over his shoulder.
"Why doesn't Mac come on?" he asked. "Who is the old party he is
arguing with?"
"Oh, Lord! It's old man Demry," exclaimed Birdie in exasperation. "He
plays in the orchestra. Full of dope half of the time. Why don't Mac come
on and leave him?"
But the old musician was not to be left. He pushed past Mac and,
staggering down the steps, laid his hand on Nance's arm.
"You must come home with me, Nancy," he urged unsteadily. "I want to talk
to you. Want to tell you something."
"See here!" broke in Mac Clarke, peremptorily, "is this young lady your
daughter?"
Mr. Demry put his hand to his dazed head and looked from one to the other
in troubled uncertainty.
"No," he said incoherently. "I had a daughter once. But she is much older
than this child. She must be nearly forty by now, and to think I haven't
seen her face for twenty-two years. I shouldn't even know her if I should
see her. I couldn't make shipwreck of her life, you know--shipwreck of
one you love best in the world!"
"Oh, come ahead!" called Birdie from below. "He don't know what he's
babbling about."
But the old man's wrinkled hand still clung to Nance's arm. "Don't go
with them!" he implored. "I know. I've seen. Ten years playing for girls
to dance. Stage no place for you, Nancy. Come home with me, child. Come!"
He was trembling with earnestness and his voice quavered.
"Let go of her arm, you old fool!" cried Mac, angrily. "It's none of your
business where she goes!"
"Nor of yours, either!" Nance flashed back instantly. "You keep your
hands off him!"
Then she turned to Mr. Demry and patiently tried to explain that she was
spending the night with Birdie Smelts; he remembered Birdie--used to live
across the hall from him? She was coming home in the morning. She would
explain everything to Mrs. Snawdor. She promised she would.
Mr. Demry, partly reassured, relaxed his grasp.
"Who is this young man, Nancy?" he asked childishly. "Tell me his name."
"It's Mr. Mac Clarke," said Nance, despite Birdie's warning glance.
A swift look of intelligence swept the dazed old face; then terror
gathered in his eyes.
"Not--not--Macpherson Clarke?" he stammered; then he sat down in the
doorway. "O my God!" he sobbed, dropping his head in his hands.
"He won't go home 'til morning!" hummed Monte, catching Birdie by the
arm and skipping down the passage. Nance stood for a moment looking
down at the maudlin old figure muttering to himself on the door-step;
then she, too, turned and followed the others out into the gay
midnight throng.