The "Doll's House" was a success. Mrs. Schoville ecstasized over it in
terms so immeasurable, so unqualifiable, that Jacob Welse, standing
near, bent a glittering gaze upon her plump white throat and
unconsciously clutched and closed his hand on an invisible windpipe.
Dave Harney proclaimed its excellence effusively, though he questioned
the soundness of Nora's philosophy and swore by his Puritan gods that
Torvald was the longest-eared Jack in two hemispheres. Even Miss
Mortimer, antagonistic as she was to the whole school, conceded that
the players had redeemed it; while Matt McCarthy announced that he
didn't blame Nora darlin' the least bit, though he told the Gold
Commissioner privately that a song or so and a skirt dance wouldn't
have hurt the performance.
"Iv course the Nora girl was right," he insisted to Harney, both of
whom were walking on the heels of Frona and St. Vincent. "I'd be
seein'--"
"Rubber--"
"Rubber yer gran'mother!" Matt wrathfully exclaimed.
"Ez I was sayin'," Harney continued, imperturbably, "rubber boots is
goin' to go sky-high 'bout the time of wash-up. Three ounces the pair,
an' you kin put your chips on that for a high card. You kin gather 'em
in now for an ounce a pair and clear two on the deal. A cinch, Matt, a
dead open an' shut."
"The devil take you an' yer cinches! It's Nora darlin' I have in me
mind the while."
They bade good-by to Frona and St. Vincent and went off disputing under
the stars in the direction of the Opera House.
Gregory St. Vincent heaved an audible sigh. "At last."
"At last what?" Frona asked, incuriously.
"At last the first opportunity for me to tell you how well you did.
You carried off the final scene wonderfully; so well that it seemed you
were really passing out of my life forever."
"What a misfortune!"
"It was terrible."
"No."
"But, yes. I took the whole condition upon myself. You were not Nora,
you were Frona; nor I Torvald, but Gregory. When you made your exit,
capped and jacketed and travelling-bag in hand, it seemed I could not
possibly stay and finish my lines. And when the door slammed and you
were gone, the only thing that saved me was the curtain. It brought me
to myself, or else I would have rushed after you in the face of the
audience."
"It is strange how a simulated part may react upon one," Frona
speculated.
"Or rather?" St. Vincent suggested.
Frona made no answer, and they walked on without speech. She was still
under the spell of the evening, and the exaltation which had come to
her as Nora had not yet departed. Besides, she read between the lines
of St. Vincent's conversation, and was oppressed by the timidity which
comes over woman when she faces man on the verge of the greater
intimacy.
It was a clear, cold night, not over-cold,--not more than forty
below,--and the land was bathed in a soft, diffused flood of light
which found its source not in the stars, nor yet in the moon, which was
somewhere over on the other side of the world. From the south-east to
the northwest a pale-greenish glow fringed the rim of the heavens, and
it was from this the dim radiance was exhaled.
Suddenly, like the ray of a search-light, a band of white light
ploughed overhead. Night turned to ghostly day on the instant, then
blacker night descended. But to the southeast a noiseless commotion
was apparent. The glowing greenish gauze was in a ferment, bubbling,
uprearing, downfalling, and tentatively thrusting huge bodiless hands
into the upper ether. Once more a cyclopean rocket twisted its fiery
way across the sky, from horizon to zenith, and on, and on, in
tremendous flight, to horizon again. But the span could not hold, and
in its wake the black night brooded. And yet again, broader, stronger,
deeper, lavishly spilling streamers to right and left, it flaunted the
midmost zenith with its gorgeous flare, and passed on and down to the
further edge of the world. Heaven was bridged at last, and the bridge
endured!
At this flaming triumph the silence of earth was broken, and ten
thousand wolf-dogs, in long-drawn unisoned howls, sobbed their dismay
and grief. Frona shivered, and St. Vincent passed his arm about her
waist. The woman in her was aware of the touch of man, and of a slight
tingling thrill of vague delight; but she made no resistance. And as
the wolf-dogs mourned at her feet and the aurora wantoned overhead, she
felt herself drawn against him closely.
"Need I tell my story?" he whispered.
She drooped her head in tired content on his shoulder, and together
they watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished.
Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colors
hurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament. Then the
canopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deep
sea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing woof and flashing
warp, till the most delicate of tulles, fluorescent and bewildering,
was daintily and airily shaken in the face of the astonished night.
Without warning the span was sundered by an arrogant arm of black. The
arch dissolved in blushing confusion. Chasms of blackness yawned,
grew, and rushed together. Broken masses of strayed color and fading
fire stole timidly towards the sky-line. Then the dome of night
towered imponderable, immense, and the stars came back one by one, and
the wolf-dogs mourned anew.
"I can offer you so little, dear," the man said with a slightly
perceptible bitterness. "The precarious fortunes of a gypsy wanderer."
And the woman, placing his hand and pressing it against her heart,
said, as a great woman had said before her, "A tent and a crust of
bread with you, Richard."