A man of action does not loiter all evening returning his own howdy-doo
to himself--not in his first evening outfit. At Forty-second Street Pape
cast a last look at the sign in which he felt by now devout belief,
doubtless one of the most costly and colorful ever flaunted before New
York. Certainly it was self-advertisement raised to the _N_th power and
worthy any one's consideration. Yet the obligation to escort his new
suit somewhere was on him.
Where? To one of the cinematograph houses inviting from every compass
point? Unthinkable. To the dance hall up the street, decorated in
artificial cherry blossoms, where partners to suit the individual taste
might be rented by the hour? Not in these clothes of class. To one of
the "girl" shows? He had seen sufficient of them to realize more
interest in sisters in the prevailing demi-habille of the street. To
some romantic play? The heroes of such, sure to be admirable in looks
and conduct, always got him in a discouraged state of mind about
himself.
In his quandary Pape had approached a dignified, sizable building of
yellow brick and now stopped before a plain-framed poster which named
the pile as the Metropolitan Opera House, within which Geraldine Farrar
was singing _Zaza_ that night--that moment probably. Grand opera! He was
impressed by the conviction that he and his new suit had been led
blindly by Fate, who never before in his experience had shown more
horse, or common, sense.
He made for the box office. The hour was late, or so he was informed by
the man at the window. The curtains had been drawn aside many minutes
before; were about to close again. The fashionable subscribers were
seated. Wasn't he able to see that even the S. R. O. sign was up
outside?
Standing room was not what Pape wanted--not with those patent pincers on
his feet. Matter of fact, he wouldn't have considered a stand-up view of
anything. Before paying for the best orchestra seat they had--didn't
matter about the price--he'd like to know who was Zaza, just as folks
outside were asking what was Why-Not.
The look of the man at the window accused him of being mildly insane.
"_Zaza's Zaza_" he observed, as he turned to his accounts.
"Naturally," Pape replied. "But why not's not always why. What I want to
ask you is----"
"Leslie Carter play of same name set to music--not jazz--by French
composer. House is packed to the roof to-night, as I've been trying to
tell you from the start."
Before Pape could offer other insistence he felt himself displaced
before the window by a personage disguised in ornate livery.
"Mrs. Blackstone can't attend. Sudden death," said the personage. "She'd
be obliged if you could sell these tickets and credit her account."
"It is not Mrs. Blackstone herself who died?" was the official's cold
query.
"Indeed, no. She knows it's late, sir, but she'd be obliged if you----"
"I'll oblige her if the money changer won't," Pape interrupted. "I'll
take a ticket."
The autocrat of the box office, however, shook his head. "Mrs. B's box
is grand tier. Can't be split. Six chairs."
From what so far had seemed a mere human huddle within one of the
entrance doors, an eager figure hurried, just behind an eager voice.
"We are five person. How much dollar for five seats of thees box?"
At the little, oldish foreigner in large, newish ready-mades, Fate's
unhandyman looked; then on past the emotionful face to following
emotionful faces. The human huddle had disintegrated from a mass of
despair into animated units which now moved toward the box office as
toward a magnet. Sounds of as many magpies filled the dignified
silence--two French women and three men venting recitatives of hope that
yet they might hear the Leoncavallo masterpiece. But them, too, the
ticket man discouraged, doubtless the more emphatically because of their
attire, which was poor, if proud.
"Too much for your party, I'm sure. One-hundred-fifty."
"But not for _my_ party," Pape interposed. "I'll take the whole half
dozen."
The sole so-far thing to impress the assistant treasurer was the roll
from which the emergency cash customer began to strip off bank notes.
The recitative of hope soughed into a chorus of disappointment as the
moneyed young man clutched his half dozen tickets and started for the
inner door. Scarcely could he restrain himself from out-loud laughter as
he halted and turned to command:
"Get a hurry on, party! At one-and-fifty there'd ought to be better
_parlez vous_ places inside."
Perhaps his inclusive gesture was more comprehensive to them than his
words; at any rate, his grin was eloquent.
To his sublet box by way of the grand staircase Peter Stanbury Pape,
grand opera patron, strode at the usher's heels; into it, himself
ushered his agitated, magpie covey of true music-lovers. Well to one
side he slumped into the chair assigned to him by common consent and
found an inconspicuous rest for the more tortured of his feet.
Leaning forward, he undertook to get his bearings; concentrated on the
dim and distant stage set, where a lady chiefly dressed in an anklet and
feathered hat--presumedly Zaza of the title role from the way she was
conducting herself--seemed to be under great stress of emotion set to
song. Before he could focus his glasses--one of the pairs for all hands
round which he had been persuaded to rent at the foot of the
stair-case--the orchestra took control and the red velvet curtains came
together between the intimate affairs of the great French actress and
those of the many--of the great American audience.
After curtain calls had been duly accorded and recognized and there no
longer existed any reason for the half-light cloak of a doubtful
song-story, the vast auditorium was set ablaze. And with the
illumination uprose a buzz of sound like nothing that Pape ever had
heard--more like the swarming of all the bees in Montana within an acre
of area than anything he could imagine.
Full attention he gave to the _entre-acte_ of this, his first adventure
in Orphean halls. Regretting the trusty binoculars idling on his hotel
bureau, he screwed into focus the rented glasses; swept the waving
head-tops of the orchestra field below; lifted to the horse-shoe of the
subscribers and then to the grand tier boxes with their content of women
whom he assumed to be of society, amazingly made up, daringly gowned,
lavishly bedecked with jewels, ostrich feathers and aigrettes. A
sprinkling of men, black-togged on the order of himself, made them the
more wondrous dazzling. A moving, background pageant of visitors paid
them court.
After a polite, if rather futile, attempt to mix his English, as spoken
for utility in Montana, with the highly punctuated, mostly superfluous
French of his overly grateful "party," Pape left them to their own
devices. These seemed largely to take the form of dislocating their
necks in an effort to recognize possible acquaintances in the sea of
faces which the gallery was spilling down from the roof. Remembering his
advice to Polkadot over the value of concentration on the near-by, he
centered his attention upon those labeled in his mind as the
"hundred-and-fifty simoleon" class. His thoughts moved along briskly
with his inspection.
Women, women, women. Who would have imagined in that he-man life he had
lived on ranches West that the fair were so large a complement of
humanity or that so many of them indeed were fair? Had he lost or gained
by not realizing their importance? Suppose his ambition had been to
furbelow one such as these, could he have given himself to the lure of
making good on his own--faithfully have followed Fate's finger to
rainbow's end?
However that might be, now that he was freed from slavery to the jealous
jade by the finding of that automatically refilling pot of liquid gold,
might he not think of the gentler companionship which he had lacked? The
chief thing wrong with to-night, for instance, was the selection by
chance of the women in his box. They did not speak his language--never
could. Had there been a vacant chair for him to offer some self-selected
lady, which one from the dazzling display before him would she be?
Perhaps the most ridiculous rule of civilized society--so he mused--was
that limiting self-selectiveness. In the acquirement of everything else
in life--stock, land, clothes, food--a person went thoroughly through
the supply before choosing. Only in the matter of friends must he depend
upon accident or the caprice of other friends. How much more
satisfactory and straightforward it would be to search among the faces
of strangers for one with personal appeal, then to go to its owner and
say: "You look like my idea of a friend. How do I look to you?"
And, if advisable in casual cases, such procedure should help especially
in a man's search for his mate. Take himself, now, and the emptiness of
his life. His bankers had told him he could afford whatever he wanted.
Suppose he wanted a woman, what sort of woman should he want?
Beauty? Must she be beautiful? From the quickening of his pulse as he
bent to peer into fair face after fair face with the added interest of
this idea, he realized that he enjoyed and feared beauty at least as
greatly as the most of men.
Class? In a flashed thought of his mother, a Stansbury of _the_
Stansburys of Virginia, he decided on that. Class she must have.
And kind she must be--tested kind to the core. Tall, healthy, strong, of
course. Graceful if possible. Gracious, but not too much so. Frank and
at the same time reserved. Educated up to full appreciation of, but not
superiority to himself. Half boy and at least one-and-a-half girl.
That would be plenty to start on, even for the most deliberate and
calculating of choosers, which he felt himself dispositionally as well
as financially fitted to be. From what he knew of the difficult sex in
the rough, he should need time and study to decide accurately just how
real were appearances in a finished feminine, trained from infancy, so
he had heard, to cover all inner and outer deficiencies. Plenty of time
and a steady nerve--that was all he should need to learn her nature, as
he had learned the tempers of the most refractory of horses. By the time
he was satisfied as to these mentally outlined points, others doubtless
would have suggested themselves.
Pape was pleased with his theories, the first dressed-up ones he had
evolved on the subject. If all men would go into this vital matter of
self-selectiveness, there would be fewer prosperous lawyers, he
congratulated himself. Better have a care before marriage than a flock
of them--of another sort--after. Firstly, a choice made from personal
preference, then the most direct course toward acquaintanceship, a
deliberate inspection, a steady eye, a cool nerve----
Suddenly Pape stiffened, body and mind. His gaze fixed on a face within
a box on his own level, some ten or so away, just where they began to
curve toward the stage. The face was young--childlike in animation and
outline. Its cheeks were oval and flushed, its lips red-limned and
laughing, its eyes a flashing black. And black was the mass of curls
that haloed it--cut short--_bobbed_.
A brilliant enough, impish enough, barbaric enough little head it was to
catch and hold the attention of any strange young man. But that which
particularly interested Pape was the filet that bound it--a filet of
pearls with an emerald drop.
She wasn't noticing him--she who had thought of him but once and then
only as some new sort of anti-fat foodstuff. But another of her party,
through lorgnetted opera lenses, was. Pape, focusing his rented pair for
close range, returned this other person's regard. The moment seemed long
and different from other moments during which, round glass eye into
round glass eye, they two looked.
At its end Pape rose and left his hundred-and-fifty-simoleon box. His
exit was retarded, but not once actually halted, by the conversational
overtures--somewhat less comprehensible than before--of his unknown
guests. He moved as if under outside control, hypnotic, magnetic,
dynamic.
True, he did have a doubtful thought or two on his progress through the
foyer. She might not get his advanced idea of to-night instantaneously
and might be too conventional to act on it, when explained. She might
not give him the benefit of every doubt, which he was more than ready to
give her, at first glance. There might be an embarrassing
moment--particularly so for him. She might be married and taking her
husband seriously. Speaking literally, he just _might_ be thrown out.
But all such thought he counter-argued. What was the use of conviction
without courage? Husbands were likely to be met in a one-woman world;
were inconvenient, but not necessarily to be feared. And if she doubted
him---- But she had the best eyes into which he ever had looked, with
field glasses or without. Why shouldn't she see all that he was at first
glance? As for possible embarrassment, wasn't he dressed according to
chart and as good as the next man? This was, beyond doubt, his one best
opportunity for the test of his theory of self-selection. Why not seize
it?