WITH THE RELUCTANT CONSENT OF AGNES, BOBBY BECOMES A PATRON OF MUSIC
The manager of the Orpheum was a strange evolution. He was a man who
had spent a lifetime in the show business, running first a concert
hall that "broke into the papers" every Sunday morning with an account
of from two to seven fights the night before, then an equally
disreputable "burlesque" house, the broad attractions of which
appealed to men and boys only. To this, as he made money, he added the
cheapest and most blood-curdling melodrama theater in town, then a
"regular" house of the second grade. In his career he had endured two
divorce cases of the most unattractive sort, and, among quiet and
conventional citizens, was supposed to have horns and a barbed tail
that snapped sparks where it struck on the pavement. When he first
purchased the Orpheum Theater, the most exclusive playhouse of the
city, he began to appear in its lobby every night in a dinner-coat or
a dress-suit, silk topper and all, with an almost modest diamond stud
in his white shirt-front; and ladies, as they came in, asked in awed
whispers of their husbands: "Is _that_ Dan Spratt?" Some few who had
occasion to meet him went away gasping: "Why, the man seems really
nice!" Others of "the profession," about whom the public never knew,
spoke his name with tears of gratitude.
Mr. Spratt, immersed in troubles of his own, scarcely looked up as
Bobby entered, and only grunted in greeting.
"Spratt," began Bobby, who knew the man quite well through "sporting"
events engineered by Biff Bates, "the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company
is stranded here, and--"
"Where are they?" interrupted Spratt eagerly, all his abstraction
gone.
"At the Hotel Larken," began Bobby again. "I--"
"Have they got their props and scenery?"
"Everything, I understand," said Bobby. "I came around to see you--"
"Who's running the show?" demanded Spratt.
"Their manager decamped with the money--with what little there was,"
explained Bobby, "and they came to me by accident. I understand you
have an open date next week."
"It's not open now," declared Spratt. "The date is filled with the
Neapolitan Grand Opera Company."
"There doesn't seem to be much use of my talking, then," said Bobby,
smiling.
"Not much," said Spratt. "They're a good company, but I've noticed
from the reports that they've been badly managed. The Dago that
brought them over didn't know the show business in this country and
tried to run the circus himself; and, of course, they've gone on the
rocks. It's great luck that they landed here. I just heard a bit ago
that they were in town. I suppose they're flat broke."
"Why, yes," said Bobby. "I just went up to the Hotel Larken and said
I'd be responsible for their hotel bill."
"Oh," said Spratt. "Then you're backing them for their week here."
"Well, I'm not quite sure about that," hesitated Bobby.
"If you don't, I will," offered Spratt. "There's a long line of
full-dress Willies here that'll draw their week's wages in advance to
attend grand opera in cabs. At two and a half for the first sixteen
rows they'll pack the house for the week, and every diamond in the
hock-shops will get an airing for the occasion. But you saw it first,
Burnit, and I won't interfere."
"Well, I don't know," Bobby again hesitated. "I haven't fully--"
"Go ahead," urged Spratt heartily. "It's your pick-up and I'll get
mine. Hey, Spencer!"
A thin young man, with hair so light that he seemed to have no hair at
all and no eyebrows, came in.
"We've booked the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company for next week. Have
they got Caravaggio and Ricardo with them?" he asked, turning abruptly
to Bobby.
Bobby, with a smile, nodded his head.
"All right, Spence; get busy on some press stuff for the afternoon
papers. You can fake notices about them from what you know. Use
two-inch streamers clear across the pages, then you can get some fresh
stuff and the repertoire to-night for the morning papers. Play it up
strong, Spence. Use plenty of space; and, say, tell Billy to get ready
for a three o'clock rehearsal. Now, Burnit, let's go up to the Larken
and make arrangements."
"We might just as well wait an hour," counseled Bobby. "The only one I
found in the crowd who could speak English was Signorina Caravaggio."
"I know her," said Spratt. "Her other name's Nora McGinnis. Smart
woman, too, and straight as a string; and sing! Why, that big ox can
sing a bird off a tree."
"She's just gone over to lunch with Biff Bates at the Spender,"
observed Bobby, "and we'd better wait for her. She seems to be the
leading spirit."
"Of course she is. Let's go right over to the Spender."
Biff Bates did not seem overly pleased when his tete-a-tete luncheon
was interrupted by Bobby and Mr. Spratt, but the Signorina Nora very
quickly made it apparent that business was business. Arrangements were
promptly made to attach the carload of effects for back salaries due
the company, and to lease these to Bobby for the week for a nominal
sum. Bobby was to pay the regular schedule of salaries for that week
and make what profit he could. A rehearsal of _Carmen_ was to be
called that afternoon at three, and a repertoire was arranged.
Feeling very much exhilarated after all this, Bobby drove out in his
automobile after lunch to see Agnes Elliston. He found that young lady
and Aunt Constance about to start for a drive, their carriage being
already at the door, but without any ceremony he bundled them into his
machine instead.
"Purely as my trustee," he explained, "Agnes must inspect my new
business venture."
Aunt Constance smiled.
"The trusteeship of Agnes hasn't done you very much good so far," she
observed. "As a matter of fact, if she wanted to build up a reputation
as an expert trustee, I don't think she could accomplish much by
printing in her circulars the details of her past stewardship."
"I don't want her to work up a reputation as a trustee," retorted
Bobby. "She suits me just as she is, and I'm inclined to thank the
governor for having loaded her down with the job."
"I'm becoming reconciled to it myself," admitted Agnes, smiling up at
him. "Really, I have great faith that one day you will learn how to
take care of money--if the money holds out that long. What is the new
venture, Bobby?"
He grinned quite cheerfully.
"I am about to become an angel," he said quite solemnly.
Aunt Constance shook her head.
"No, Bobby," she said kindly; "there _are_ spots, you know, where
angels fear to tread."
But Agnes took the declaration with no levity whatever.
"You don't mean in a theatrical sense?" she inquired.
"_In_ a theatrical sense," he insisted. "I am about to back the
Neapolitan Grand Opera Company."
"Why, Bobby!" objected Agnes, aghast. "You surely don't mean it! I
never thought you would contemplate anything so preposterous as that.
I thought it was to be only a benefit!"
"It's only a temporary arrangement," he reassured her, laughing that
he had been taken so seriously. "I'm arranging so that they can earn
their way out of town; that's all. I am taking you down now to see
their first rehearsal."
"I don't care to go," she declared, in a tone so piqued that Bobby
turned to her in mute astonishment.
Aunt Constance laughed at his look of utter perplexity.
"How little you understand, Bobby," she said. "Don't you see that
Agnes is merely jealous?"
"Indeed not!" Agnes indignantly denied. "That is an idea more absurd
than the fact that Bobby should go into such an enterprise at all.
However, since I lay myself open to such a suspicion I shall offer no
further objection to going."
Bobby looked at her curiously and then he carefully refrained from
chuckling, for Aunt Constance, though joking, had told the truth.
Instant visions of dazzling sopranos, of mezzos and contraltos, of
angelic voices and of vast beauty and exquisite gowning, had flashed
in appalling procession before her mental vision. The idea, in the
face of the appalling actuality, was so rich that Bobby pursued it no
further lest he spoil it, and talked about the weather and equally
inane topics the rest of the way.
It was not until they had turned into the narrow alley at the side of
the Orpheum, and from that to the still more narrow alley at its rear,
that the zest of adventure began to make amends to Agnes for certain
disagreeable moments of the ride. At the stage door a particularly
bewildered-looking man with a rolling eye and a weak jaw, rendered
limp and helpless by the polyglot aliens who had flocked upon him,
strickenly let them in, to grope their way, amid what seemed an
inextricable confusion, but was in reality the perfection of
orderliness, upon the dim stage, beyond which stretched, in vast
emptiness, the big, black auditorium. Upon the stage, chattering in
shrill voices, were the forty members of the company, still in their
queer clothing, while down in front, where shaded lights--seeming dull
and discouraged amid all the surrounding darkness--streamed upon the
music, were the members of the orchestra, chattering just as volubly.
The general note was quite different in pitch from the one Bobby had
heard that morning, for since he had seen them the members of the
organization had been fed, and life looked cheerful.
Wandering at a loss among these people, and trying in the dim twilight
to find some face that he knew, the ears of Bobby and his party were
suddenly assailed by an extremely harsh and penetrating voice which
shouted:
"Clear!"
This was accompanied by a sharp clap from a pair of very broad hands.
The chattering suddenly took on a rapid crescendo, ascending a full
third in the scale and then dying abruptly in a little high falsetto
shriek; and Bobby, with a lady upon either arm, found his little trio
immediately alone in the center of the stage, a row of dim footlights
cutting off effectually any view into the vast emptiness of the
auditorium.
"Hey, you; _clear_!" came the harsh voice again, accompanied by
another sharp clap of the hands, and a bundle of intense fighting
energy bounced out from the right tormentor wing, in the shape of a
gaunt, fiercely-mustached and entirely bald man of about forty-five,
who appeared perpetually to be in the last stages of distraction.
"Who do you weesh to see?" demanded the gaunt man, in a very decided
foreign accent. He had made a very evident attempt to be quite polite
indeed, and forgiving of people who did not know enough to spring for
the wings at the sound of that magic word, "Clear!"
Any explanations that Bobby might have tried to make were happily
prevented by a voice from the yawning blackness--a quiet voice, a
voice of authority, the voice of Mr. Spratt.
"Come right down in front here, Burnit. Jimmy, show the gentleman how
to get down."
"Thees way," snapped the gaunt man, with evident relief but no
abatement whatever of his briskness, and he very hastily walked over
to the right wings, where Jimmy, the house electrician, piloted the
trio with equal relief through the clustered mass of singers to the
door behind the boxes. As they emerged into the auditorium the raucous
voice of the gaunt man was heard to shout: "All ready now. _Carmen_
all ze way through." An apparent repetition of which statement he
immediately made with equal raucousness in two or three languages.
There was a call to Caravaggio in English, to Ricardo and the Signers
Fivizzano and Rivaroli in Italian, to Messrs. Philippi and
Schaerbeeken in Spanish and Dutch, to Madam Villenauve in French, to
Madam Kadanoff in Russian, and to Mademoiselle Toeroek in Hungarian, to
know if they were ready; then, in rough but effective German, he
informed the Herr Professor down in the orchestra that all was
prepared, clapped his hands, cried "Overture," and immediately plunged
to the right upper entrance, marked by two chairs, where, with shrill
objurgations, he began instructing and drilling the Soldiers' Chorus
out of certain remembered awkwardnesses, as Herr Fruehlingsvogel's
baton fell for the overture.
Shorn of all the glamor that scenic environment, light effects and
costume could give them, it was a distinct shock to Agnes to gaze in
wondering horror from each one of those amazing faces to the other,
and when the cigarette girls trooped out, amazement gave way to
downright consternation. Nevertheless, she cheered up considerably,
and the apex of her cheerfulness was reached when the oversized
Signorina Caravaggio sang, very musically, however, the role of the
petite and piquant Carmen. It was then that, sitting by Bobby in the
darkness, Agnes observed with a sigh of content:
"Your trustee quite approves, Bobby. I don't mind being absolutely
truthful for once in my life. I _was_ a little jealous. But how could
I be? Really, their voices are fine."
Mr. Spratt, too, was of that opinion, and he came back to Bobby to say
so most emphatically.
"They'll do," said he. "After the first night they'll have this town
crazy. If the seat sale don't go right for Monday we'll pack the house
with paper, and the rest of the week will go big. Just hear that
Ricardo! The little bit of a sawed-off toad sings like a canary. If
you don't look at 'em, they're great."
They _were_ superb. From the throats of that ill-favored chorus there
came divine harmony, smooth, evenly-balanced, exhilarating, almost
flawless, and as the great musical poem of passion unfolded and the
magnificent aria of Don Jose was finished in the second act, the
little group of listeners down in front burst into involuntary
applause, to which there was but one dissenting voice. This voice,
suddenly evolving out of the darkness at Bobby's side, ejaculated with
supreme disgust:
"Well, what do you think of that! Why, that fat little fishworm of a
Dago is actually gone bug-house over Miss McGinnis," a fact which had
been obvious to all of them the minute small Ricardo began to sing his
wonderful love song to large Caravaggio.
The rest of them had found only amusement in the fact, but to Biff
Bates there was nothing funny about this. He sat in speechless
disapproval throughout the balance of that much-interrupted
performance, wherein Professor Fruehlingsvogel, now and then, stopped
his music with a crash to shriek an excited direction that it was all
wrong, that it was execrable, that it was a misdemeanor, a crime, a
murder to sing it in that way! The passage must be all sung over; or,
at other times, the gaunt stage director, whose name was Monsieur
Noire, would rush with a hoarse howl down to Herr Professor, order him
to stop the music, and, turning, berate some unfortunate performer who
had defied the conventions of grand opera by acting quite naturally.
On the whole, however, it was a very creditable performance, and
Bobby's advisers gave the project their unqualified approval.
"It is really a commendable thing," Aunt Constance complacently
announced, "to encourage music of this order, and to furnish such a
degree of cultivation for the masses."
It was a worthy project indeed. As for the company itself there could
be no question that it was a good one. No one expected acting in grand
opera, no one expected that the performers would be physically
adaptable to their parts. The voice! The voice was all. Even Agnes
admitted that it was a splendid thing to be a patron of the fine arts;
but Bobby, in his profound new wisdom and his thorough conversion to
strictly commercial standards, said with vast iconoclasm:
"You are overlooking the main point. I am not so anxious to become a
patron of the fine arts as I am to make money," with which terrible
heresy he left them at home, with a thorough understanding that he was
quite justified in his new venture; though next morning, when he
confided the fact to Johnson, that worthy, with a sigh, presented him
with an appropriate missive from among those in the gray envelopes
left in his care by the late John Burnit. It was inscribed:
_To My Son Robert, Upon His Deciding to Back a Theatrical
Venture_
"Sooner or later, every man thinks it would be a fine thing to
run a show, and the earlier in life it happens the sooner a
man will have it out of his system. I tried it once myself,
and I know. So good luck to you, my boy, and here's hoping
that you don't get stung too badly."