One of the pleasantest incidents of March's sojourn in Carlsbad was his
introduction to the manager of the municipal theatre by a common friend
who explained the editor in such terms to the manager that he conceived
of him as a brother artist. This led to much bowing and smiling from the
manager when the Marches met him in the street, or in their frequent
visits to the theatre, with which March felt that it might well have
ended, and still been far beyond his desert. He had not thought of going
to the opera on the Emperor's birthnight, but after dinner a box came
from the manager, and Mrs. March agreed with him that they could not in
decency accept so great a favor. At the same time she argued that they
could not in decency refuse it, and that to show their sense of the
pleasure done them, they must adorn their box with all the beauty and
distinction possible; in other words, she said they must ask Miss Triscoe
and her father.
"And why not Major Eltwin and his wife? Or Mrs. Adding and Rose?"
She begged him, simply in his own interest, not to be foolish; and they
went early, so as to be in their box when their guests came. The foyer of
the theatre was banked with flowers, and against a curtain of evergreens
stood a high-pedestalled bust of the paternal Caesar, with whose
side-whiskers a laurel crown comported itself as well as it could. At the
foot of the grand staircase leading to the boxes the manager stood in
evening dress, receiving his friends and their felicitations upon the
honor which the theatre was sure to do itself on an occasion so august.
The Marches were so cordial in their prophecies that the manager yielded
to an artist's impulse and begged his fellow-artist to do him the
pleasure of coming behind the scenes between the acts of the opera; he
bowed a heart-felt regret to Mrs. March that he could not make the
invitation include her, and hoped that she would not be too lonely while
her husband was gone.
She explained that they had asked friends, and she should not be alone,
and then he entreated March to bring any gentleman who was his guest with
him. On the way up to their box, she pressed his arm as she used in their
young married days, and asked him if it was not perfect. "I wish we were
going to have it all to ourselves; no one else can appreciate the whole
situation. Do you think we have made a mistake in having the Triscoes?"
"We!" he retorted. "Oh, that's good! I'm going to shirk him, when it
comes to going behind the scenes."
"No, no, dearest," she entreated. "Snubbing will only make it worse. We
must stand it to the bitter end, now."
The curtain rose upon another laurelled bust of the Emperor, with a
chorus of men formed on either side, who broke into the grave and noble
strains of the Austrian Hymn, while every one stood. Then the curtain
fell again, and in the interval before the opera could begin, General
Triscoe and his daughter came in.
Mrs. March took the splendor in which the girl appeared as a tribute to
her hospitality. She had hitherto been a little disappointed of the open
homage to American girlhood which her readings of international romance
had taught her to expect in Europe, but now her patriotic vanity feasted
full. Fat highhotes of her own sex levelled their lorgnettes at Miss
Triscoe all around the horseshoe, with critical glances which fell
blunted from her complexion and costume; the house was brilliant with the
military uniforms, which we have not yet to mingle with our unrivalled
millinery, and the ardent gaze of the young officers dwelt on the perfect
mould of her girlish arms and neck, and the winning lines of her face.
The girl's eyes shone with a joyful excitement, and her little head,
defined by its dark hair, trembled as she slowly turned it from side to
side, after she removed the airy scarf which had covered it. Her father,
in evening dress, looked the Third Emperor complaisant to a civil
occasion, and took a chair in the front of the box without resistance;
and the ladies disputed which should yield the best place to the other,
till Miss Triscoe forced Mrs. March fondly into it for the first act at
least.
The piece had to be cut a good deal to give people time for the
illuminations afterwards; but as it was it gave scope to the actress who,
'als Gast' from a Viennese theatre, was the chief figure in it. She
merited the distinction by the art which still lingered, deeply embedded
in her massive balk, but never wholly obscured.
"That is grand, isn't it?" said March, following one of the tremendous
strokes by which she overcame her physical disadvantages. "It's fine to
see how her art can undo, for one splendid instant, the work of all those
steins of beer, those illimitable licks of sausage, those boundless
fields of cabbage. But it's rather pathetic."
"It's disgusting," said his wife; and at this General Triscoe, who had
been watching the actress through his lorgnette, said, as if his
contrary-mindedness were irresistibly invoked:
"Well, I don't know. It's amusing. Do you suppose we shall see her when
we go behind, March?"
He still professed a desire to do so when the curtain fell, and they
hurried to the rear door of the theatre. It was slightly ajar, and they
pulled it wide open, with the eagerness of their age and nation, and
began to mount the stairs leading up from it between rows of painted
dancing-girls, who had come out for a breath of air, and who pressed
themselves against the walls to make room for the intruders. With their
rouged faces, and the stare of their glassy eyes intensified by the
coloring of their brows and lashes, they were like painted statues, as
they stood there with their crimsoned lips parted in astonished smiles.
"This is rather weird," said March, faltering at the sight. "I wonder if
we might ask these young ladies where to go?" General Triscoe made no
answer, and was apparently no more prepared than himself to accost the
files of danseuses, when they were themselves accosted by an angry voice
from the head of the stairs with a demand for their business. The voice
belonged to a gendarme, who descended toward them and seemed as deeply
scandalized at their appearance as they could have been at that of the
young ladies.
March explained, in his ineffective German, with every effect of
improbability, that they were there by appointment of the manager, and
wished to find his room.
The gendarme would not or could not make anything out of it. He pressed
down upon them, and laying a rude hand on a shoulder of either, began to
force them back to the door. The mild nature of the editor might have
yielded to his violence, but the martial spirit of General Triscoe was
roused. He shrugged the gendarme's hand from his shoulder, and with a
voice as furious as his own required him, in English, to say what the
devil he meant. The gendarme rejoined with equal heat in German; the
general's tone rose in anger; the dancing-girls emitted some little
shrieks of alarm, and fled noisily up the stairs. From time to time March
interposed with a word of the German which had mostly deserted him in his
hour of need; but if it had been a flow of intelligible expostulation, it
would have had no effect upon the disputants. They grew more outrageous,
till the manager himself, appeared at the head of the stairs, and
extended an arresting hand over the hubbub. As soon as the situation
clarified itself he hurried down to his visitors with a polite roar of
apology and rescued them from the gendarme, and led them up to his room
and forced them into arm-chairs with a rapidity of reparation which did
not exhaust itself till he had entreated them with every circumstance of
civility to excuse an incident so mortifying to him. But with all his
haste he lost so much time in this that he had little left to show them
through the theatre, and their presentation to the prima donna was
reduced to the obeisances with which they met and parted as she went upon
the stage at the lifting of the curtain. In the lack of a common language
this was perhaps as well as a longer interview; and nothing could have
been more honorable than their dismissal at the hands of the gendarme who
had received them so stormily. He opened the door for them, and stood
with his fingers to his cap saluting, in the effect of being a whole file
of grenadiers.