Ruggles, from his stall, for the fourth time saw the curtain go up on
_Mandalay_ and heard the temple bells ring. One of the stage boxes was
not occupied until after the first act and then the son of his friend
came in alone and sat far back out of sight of any eyes but the keenest,
and those eyes were Ruggles'. Letty Lane, delicious, fantastic,
languishing, sang to Dan; that was evident to Ruggles. He was a large
man and filled his stall comfortably. He sat through the performance
peacefully, his hands in his pockets, his big face thoughtful, his shirt
front ruffled. To look at him, one must have wondered why he had come to
_Mandalay_. He scarcely lost any of the threads of his own reflections,
though when Miss Lane, in response to a call from the house, sang her
cradle song three times, he seemed moved. The tones of her pure voice,
the cradling in her arms of an imaginary child, her apparent dovelike
purity, her grace and sweetness, and her cooing, gentle tone, to judge
by the softening of the Westerner's face, touched very much the big
fellow who listened like a child. At the end he drew his handkerchief
slowly across his eyes, but the tears, or rather moisture, that rose
there was not all due to Miss Lane's song, for Ruggles was extremely
warm.
He could see that in his box the boy sat transfixed and absorbed. Dan
went out in the second entr'acte and was absent when the curtain went
down. Ruggles, as well, left before the performance was over, to make
his way outside the theater to the stage exit, where there was already
gathered a little group, looked after by a couple of policemen. Close to
the curb a gleaming motor waited, the footman at its door. Ruggles
buttoned his coat up to his chin and took his place close to the door,
over which the electric light showed the words "Stage Entrance." A poor
woman elbowed him, her shabby hat adorned by a scraggly plume, a gray
shawl wrapped round her shoulders. A girl or two, who might have been
flower sellers in Piccadilly in the daytime, a couple of toughs, a
handful of other vagrants smelling of gin, a decent man in working
clothes, a child in his arms, formed the human hedge Letty Lane was to
pass between--a singular group of people to spend an hour hanging about
the streets at the exit of a theater well toward midnight. So the naïve
Ruggles thought, and better understood the appearance of the young
fellows in evening clothes who hovered on the extreme edge of the little
crowd. Dan, however, was not of these.
"Look sharp, Cissy," the workingman spoke to his child, holding her well
up. "When she comes hout she'll pass close to yer, and you sing hout,
'God bless yer.'"
"Yes, Dad, I will," shrilled the child.
The woman in the gray shawl drew it close about her. "Aw she's a true
lidy, all right, ain't she? I expect you've had some kindness off her as
well?"
The man nodded over the child's shoulder. "Used to be a scene shifter,
and Miss Lane found out about my little girl last year--not this lass,
not Cissy, Cissy's sister--and she sent 'er to a place where it costs the
eyes out of yer head. She's gettin' well fast, and we, none of us, has
seen her or spoken to Miss Lane. She doesn't know our names."
And the woman answered: "She does a lot like that. She's got a heart
bigger'n her little body."
And a big boy in the front row said back to the others: "Well, she makes
a mint of money."
And the woman who had spoken before said: "She gives it nearly all to
the poor."
Ruggles was evidently on the poor side of the waiting crowd; the handful
of riffraff around him with its stench of dirt and gin. A better looking
set collected opposite and there was the gleam of white shirt fronts.
"Now, there she comes," the father saw her first. "Sing out, Cissy."
The door opened and a figure quickly floated from it, like a white rose
blown out into the foggy darkness. It floated down the few steps to the
street between the double row of spectators. A white cloak entirely
covered the actress. Her head was hidden by a white scarf, and she
almost ran the short gantlet to her motor, between the cries of "God
bless you!"--"Three cheers for Letty Lane"--"God bless you, lady!" She
didn't speak or heed, however, or turn her head, but held her scarf
against her face, and the man who slowly lounged behind her to the car,
and put her in and got in after her, was not the man Joshua Ruggles had
waited there to see. He hung about until the footman had sprung up and
the car moved softly away, the stage entrance door shut, then he
followed along with the crowd, with the few faithful ones who had waited
an hour in the cold mist to cry out their applause, not to a singer in
_Mandalay_ but to a woman's heart.