A TOP-STAGE SEAT
But what of Petite Jeanne? Had she, arriving at the door, missed her
companion and gone back into the building? Or, over-anxious for
Florence’s safety, had she, too, gone into the street and been trapped?
She had done neither. Yet adventure of quite another sort had come
leaping at her.
Fascinated, as always, by the thought of that great opera stage at the
end of the hall, and feeling that she had a few moments to spare, she
had gone tiptoeing down the hall. She had found the door open and was
preparing to look in upon the stage when a sidewise and backward glance
gave her a severe shock. Standing not three paces behind her was a man.
With arms stretched, he was approaching silently as one does who hopes
to catch some creature off guard.
Striving in vain to still the beating of her heart, for she had
recognized in this man the enemy she had made during the “battle of
Maxwell Street,” Jeanne took one step out upon the opera stage. Then,
realizing at a glance what was going on there, she played a bold hand.
Turning half about, she hissed: “Dare to come one step nearer and I
shall scream. Do you hear? The opera is in progress. The company is on
the stage. I shall scream. And then—”
She did not finish. There was no need.
A performance of Grand Opera was truly in progress at that very instant.
Through a thin wall of trees and shrubs painted on canvas, came a
peculiar light, a transparent blue that suggested birds, flowers and
springtime.
Even as the girl’s lips closed there came a burst of song from the front
of the stage where, hidden by the partition, there were many singers.
Licking his lips like a tiger prepared to spring the man crouched, then
moved a step forward.
“I’ll scream!” Petite Jeanne spoke aloud.
The sound of her voice was drowned by the chorus on the stage.
A scream would not be drowned. The man knew that well enough. But did
she dare scream? This was the question at the back of the man’s shrewd
but narrow mind.
She had said she would scream. To do this would be to invite a panic. A
girl’s scream coming from back-stage during a dramatic moment of a Grand
Opera performance could mean something little short of murder.
And yet the man, standing there irresolute, read in her eyes the answer:
she _would_ scream.
She looked down for an instant. When she lifted her eyes, he was gone.
And the Grand Opera performance went on.
But now what? She dared not retrace her steps. The man would be lurking
there.
Dashing across the back of the stage, she seized the handle of a door.
It came open noiselessly. She passed through and closed it after her.
But where was she? In a mere cubby-hole of a place. A closet? No. An
elevator, a French lift, the sort you operate yourself. You punch a
button here and you go up; you press another button there and you stop.
She pressed a button. Up she glided. There were floors above, many, many
floors. She would come to a halt at some floor, leave the elevator, and
go speeding away.
She had glided up how many floors? She could not tell. Then she became
frightened.
“I’ll bump!”
She touched a second button and stopped the steel cage with a suddenness
that caused her teeth to snap.
She tried to open the door. It would not budge. She pressed the button
and went gliding upward once more. A light gleamed before her. Once more
she stopped.
This time she could open the door. She stepped from the lift, not into a
room, not a hallway, but out upon an iron grating. And this grating,
fifteen stories up, lay directly above the opera stage.
At first frightened, then fascinated, she threw herself flat upon the
grating to watch with eager eyes the doings of the dwarf-like figures
far below.
To this girl, born to the stage as a canary is born to the cedar and the
humming bird to his flowering bush, the scene spelled irresistible
enchantment.
To make the affair more compelling she recognized the star of the
evening almost at once.
The scene beneath her was one of entrancing beauty: a flower garden and
a village green in her native land. And dancing upon that green, arrayed
in the most colorful of costumes, were the peasants of that village.
From time to time certain members of the group left their companions and
danced away toward a back-stage corner, where they stood laughing and
seeming to beckon to some one hidden from the view of Jeanne as well as
the audience.
At last the long awaited one appeared. And then, oh, joy of joys!
“Marjory Bryce! My Marjory!” The little French girl was choked with
emotion as these words escaped her. Fortunately they were too faint to
be heard below.
That settled the matter. All other desires, all duties, all hopes and
dreams were lost in one great desire. She must see the star of all time,
her Marjory, perform, not in some dimly distant time, but right here in
the golden now.
So, little dreaming what this resolve might mean, she pressed her cheeks
against two iron bars and awaited the next move in this singing drama
which she but dimly understood.
“Anyway,” she whispered softly, “I’ve got a top-stage seat. Who could
ask for more?”