CHAPTER XV
J. ARTHUR BALCOMB RETREATS
The Providence that protects children and drunkards also extends a saving hand to amateur theatricals. Deceivers Ever was presented, with no more delays and slips than usually befall amateur performances, before an audience that tested the capacity of the Athenæum. It was a great occasion for Mrs. Carr, as she had undoubtedly taken the Dramatic Club when its life was ebbing fast and made a living thing of it. She sat in the wings holding the prompt-book and prepared for any fate; and it must be confessed that in her heart she held anything but Christian feelings toward Zelda Dameron.
The change in the cast had excited much comment both in the audience and on the stage. Zelda appeared behind the scenes with divers bottles and a convincing air of invalidism, but she coached Olive cheerfully in their dressing-room.
“I can’t do it; I can’t do it. I’ll kill the show,” declared Olive.
“Don’t be foolish. You are going to make the hit of your life,” said Zelda, assuringly, coughing a little. “Please don’t make me talk. There’s the overture now. One minute—there—now don’t fall over your train. You really look the duchess,”—and Zelda gently impelled her cousin toward the stage. The chorus was on its last note, and Professor Schmidt, very red in the face, caught Olive with his eye, and reached across the fiery arc of the footlights with his bow, to draw her forward.
The programs had been printed with the part of Gretchen assigned to Miss Dameron, and when Olive appeared and was identified with the leading rôle, the applause, that began generously, died away, and there was a flutter of paper as the audience sought to identify the singer.
Olive’s voice was in no sense great, but it was good, and she rose to the occasion in a way that made Zelda happy. Zelda’s green riding-habit became Olive charmingly. She was a very pretty girl and she sang her song to the foresters with the dignity of the great lady she impersonated.
Mrs. Carr sighed with relief over the prompt-book as she saw that the girl was really meeting the requirements. When Olive turned and met Balcomb, after dismissing the chorus to their work in the forest, there was a hearty hand-clapping that drowned their spoken colloquy.
Zelda, as Christine the maid, now entered, after singing off stage, and sought to induce Gretchen to return home. The greeting that had been waiting for Zelda lost nothing by delay. The audience was mystified by the change of parts, but it continued to be pleased as the girls sang their duet. Zelda sang well enough, though Mrs. Carr wondered, as she proceeded, that any one with a throat as sore as Zelda’s had been could sing at all. It was clear to the director that Zelda was holding back. She could easily have drowned Olive, as he knew well enough, but the voice of the little duchess dominated. The professor glared fiercely at Zelda and swung his bow with prodigious force as though to compel her to lift her voice, but she was utterly oblivious, and it was Olive who carried off the honors of the duet.
Balcomb made a decided hit as the hero. When Leighton, in his own capacity as high private, saluted him, he really felt a thrill of admiration for Jack. Pollock, who appeared as another of the deceivers, was unknown to many of the audience, but his singing was adequate for all purposes, and his flirtation with my lady’s maid behind Olive and Balcomb, who were planning an elopement, was amusing and not overacted.
The quartet that ended the act went smoothly, and the curtain came down in the erratic and halting manner of amateur theatrical curtains, upon an unqualified success. There were calls and recalls; and when Herr Schmidt was obliged to rise in his seat of authority and make a speech, he took the opportunity to explain that, owing to a slight indisposition, Miss Dameron had not felt equal to singing the part of Gretchen, but had exchanged with Miss Merriam; and he was sure that this had been fortunate, for the audience was made to realize that the cast contained two stars not differing one from another in glory.
The second part was not less successful. Copeland, the lawyer who never practised, but who sometimes sang, shared the laurels as the haughty and outraged father, and the choral pieces went capitally.
There was, however, one slight occurrence that nobody understood—an obscure incident of the performance that mystified the cast and not a few of the audience. It came in the singing of a little song written for the part of Christine, the least pretentious musically of all the lyrics in the opera. It was Zelda’s last solo—a little song of the wanderer, the peasant girl, lost from her mistress, and straying alone in the forest. The words were poor, as the art of words goes, but in singing them Zelda forgot herself,—forgot that in a mood of quixotism she had deliberately chosen second place.
“I call no hearth my own,”
she began. There were three verses; and Herr Schmidt, leading her with the violin, felt that at last he was coming into his own. Leighton, standing among the chorus, knew again the exquisite pain that the girl’s voice wrought in him. He knew by the tensity of the hush that fell upon the audience that the song’s appeal was not to himself alone. The professor beamed with joy as the full, deep notes rose in the hall; and he threw down his violin at the end and joined in the applause. And as the hand-clapping continued after Zelda had turned to take up her dialogue, she came smiling down to the footlights, made a sweeping courtesy, and pointed to her throat as she shook her head at the professor, to explain that there could be no encore.
When Mrs. Carr exchanged congratulations with Professor Schmidt at the end—an end marked by tumultuous applause following the grand finale by the whole company—almost her first words were:
“Was that girl’s throat really sore or not?”
And Herr Schmidt lifted his eyes heavenward and shrugged his shoulders, but refused to commit himself.
Mrs. Forrest and Rodney Merriam were in the audience; Zelda’s father had declined to attend.
“Let us speak to Zee and then escape,” said Merriam to his sister, as the chairs were being pushed back for the dance that was to follow the play. A few older people were there and they formed a little colony by themselves. Zelda came out presently from the dressing-room, with her arms full of flowers that had been passed across the footlights, and she bore Olive Merriam with her.
“Don’t be afraid; not in the least afraid,” Zelda said to her cousin as she hastened across the hall to her aunt and uncle.
“Please don’t,” urged Olive. “It isn’t kind to me.”
“No danger at all; they’re all perfectly amiable when you know how to manage them.”
“Aunt Julia, this is a real compliment! Thanks very much. This is Olive Merriam. And, Uncle Rodney, here’s the star, to whom I expect you to say something particularly nice. Mr. Merriam, Miss Merriam,”—and Zelda smiled as the old gentleman bowed low over the hand of his brother’s daughter.
“Olive Merriam,” said Zelda, “is my cousin and my very dearest friend.”
Olive was not afraid. She smiled at Rodney Merriam; and there was something very winning in Olive Merriam’s smile. Zelda looked demurely at her aunt, who seemed alarmed lest something unpleasant might happen; but Rodney Merriam laughed, half at finding himself caught, and half at the sight of Olive Merriam’s blue eyes, her glowing cheeks with their furtive dimples and the fair hair that Zelda was now compelling her to wear in the prevailing mode.
“I am delighted; I am proud of you,” he declared quite honestly.
“I think—I may say that I reciprocate,” replied Olive. “I haven’t seen you for a long time—Uncle Rodney—except at a distance.”
“Altogether my fault and my loss! I trust that the distance may be considerably lessened hereafter.”
A number of people were watching this by-play with keen interest. Something had surely happened among the Merriams. It had been many years since so many members of the family had been seen together at any social gathering.
“There’s a draft somewhere,” said Mrs. Forrest, suddenly. “We must be going, Rodney. And now, Zelda, don’t stay out all night. Mrs. Carr is going to take you home. You’ll be sure to be sick if you’re not careful. And”—Zelda was looking at her aunt intently—“Miss Merriam, I do hope you will come to see me. I never go anywhere, you know. And please remember me to your mother.”
“And pray remember me, also,” said Rodney Merriam, feeling Zelda’s eyes upon him.
“Oh, Zee,” said her uncle, in a low tone; “it was all fine; but how did Pollock come to be in the show?—I don’t care to have you know him.”
“Of course I shall know him.”
“But I prefer.”
“Please don’t prefer! I’m having a little fun to-night, and I can’t be serious at all. Some other time, mon oncle—good night!”
“What do you think of that girl?” asked Mrs. Forrest, when she was alone with her brother in their carriage.
“I think she’s very pretty, if you refer to Olive Merriam, and has nice manners,” was his reply.
“There seems to be no way of checking Zelda’s enthusiasms.”
“There is not,”—and Rodney Merriam found a cigar in his pocket and began chewing the end of it; and there was a smile on his face which his sister could not see in the dark; but it was not at all unkind.
“I hope that girl won’t take advantage of Zee’s kindness,” said Mrs. Forrest, as her brother left her at her door.
“I shouldn’t worry about her if I were you.”
“I certainly shan’t; but you were always down on her father.”
“I was always a good deal of a fool, too,” said Rodney Merriam; and he refused to be taken home in his sister’s carriage, but walked homeward from her door through High Street, beating the walk reflectively with his stick.
At the Athenæum Zelda was enjoying herself unreservedly. Her cousin Olive had been presented to a representative Mariona audience in a way that had commanded attention, and Zelda was thoroughly happy over it. She did not care in the least what people might say about the healing of old wounds among the Merriams, or about the general disappointment over her own singing,—she had cared for nothing but to get through her part decently. Her chief pleasure in Deceivers Ever was in throwing the principal rôle to Olive; and it gave her the only unalloyed joy of her home-coming to see Olive established socially on a footing that was, she told herself, as firm as her own.
She stood talking to Captain Pollock between dances. Pollock was the least bit sensitive about his height—and a shadow fell on his usually serene spirit at finding that he must tilt his head the merest trifle to talk to Zelda Dameron.
“How does it feel to be a real angel?” he asked.
“I’m not bright at puzzles; you’ll have to tell me.”
“I’ve heard of heroism on the battle-field and I’ve seen men do some fine things; but you have broken all the records.”
He spoke with feeling. She knew well enough what he meant, but she said with cheerful irrelevancy:
“Have you ever been in Timbuctoo,
Your fortunes to pursue there?
Sir, if you have, you doubtless know
The singular things they do there.”
“That reminds me of Lewis Carroll and my lost youth.”
“It ought to remind you of my little cousin over there. It’s hers. She’s always writing jingles like that.”
“She’s certainly a wonder. As I tried to say a bit ago, you did a gallant thing in changing parts as you did. You might have broken up the show; but we all got through in some way. Your throat’s a lot better now, isn’t it?” he added ironically. “But in seeking your own most unselfish ends you certainly played a most extraordinary trick on the audience and the poor struggling cast. Now there’s a young man standing right back of me, talking to some one whose voice I don’t identify, who must have been considerably injured by the change of stars.”
He referred to Balcomb, who was much swollen with pride by his success in the opera, and who was talking in his usual breathless fashion to a young friend from the country whom he had asked to witness his triumph. Beyond Pollock’s head Zelda could see Balcomb’s profile, though she could not hear him.
“She’s a regular piece, that girl. I was scared to death for fear she’d throw me in that duet—we’d never sung it together—but I carried it through all right. She’s that stunning Miss Dameron’s cousin. She’s rather stuck on me, I’m afraid,—I’ve done little things for her,—theater and so on, but I’ll have to cut it all out. She’s amusing, but I can’t afford to have her misunderstand my attentions. When a fellow finds that he’s got a girl down fine she ceases to be interesting. It’s the pursuit that’s amusing; but when they begin to expect something—Cunning? well, I should say!”
Pollock heard him distinctly, and he shut his eyes two or three times in a quick way that he had when angry, though he kept on talking to Zelda about the evening’s performance.
“I’m afraid you’re jealous of Mr. Balcomb. He got more applause than anybody.”
“He deserved all he got for making such a monkey of himself.”
“He’s a man of courage; he probably thought he could afford to do it.”
“All of that?” said Pollock.
“A rising young man,” continued Zelda.
“A person, I should say, of most egregious and monumental gall,”—and Zelda laughed at his earnestness. She had not heard Balcomb’s remark about her cousin, but she knew he had said something that irritated Pollock. The young officer left her quickly when Leighton came up for the dance that had now begun.
Pollock found Balcomb in a moment. The promoter was standing at the side of the hall, his eyes nervously searching for a girl with whom he had engaged the dance.
“Mr. Balcomb,” said Pollock at his elbow, “may I speak to you a moment?”
“Certainly,” said Balcomb, in his usual amiable fashion. “Only I’m engaged for this dance and have lost my partner.”
“That’s my own fix,” declared Pollock, “but my errand is brief. Let us step out here.”
He led the way to a door opening upon the main stairway of the building and they paused there, Pollock with his back to the door, facing Balcomb. He carried one glove in his hand and was very trim and erect in his evening clothes.
“Mr. Balcomb, I was so unfortunate as to overhear your conversation of a moment ago—with some one I didn’t know, but that doesn’t matter—in which you referred to a young lady—a young lady who came here to-night under your escort, in terms that a gentleman would not use.”
“As a confessed eavesdropper I don’t believe it is necessary for you to say anything further,” said Balcomb, with heat, and he took a step toward the door of the assembly-room.
Pollock touched him on the shoulder with the tips of his fingers, very lightly. Balcomb was half a head taller and much bulkier, but the tips of Pollock’s fingers seemed to carry a certain insistence, and Balcomb drew back.
“I shall hold you responsible for this, you—”
“I certainly hope you will. As I was saying, you referred to a young lady, who was here under your protection, in terms which no one but a contemptible cur would use of a woman—”
Balcomb’s arm went up and he struck at Pollock with his fist.
The officer stood as he had been, but the glove in his right hand slapped smartly upon Balcomb’s face, and Balcomb took an involuntary step backward down the stairway.
“In the part of the country that I came from, Mr. Balcomb,” Pollock continued in an easy conversational tone, “we do very unpleasant things to bright and captivating people of your stripe”—he took another step forward, and Balcomb, a little white in the face, retreated again—“but in this instance”—Pollock lifted his left hand to his shadowy mustache and gave it a twist; he took another step and Balcomb yielded before him—“I shall let you off with unwarranted leniency.”
Balcomb, forced another step downward, had grown red with fury, and again struck at Pollock, but with the result that Balcomb stumbled and retreated two steps instead of one, reaching a landing. With this more secure footing he gained courage.
“You little cur, you little—” he blustered, drawing his face down so that he could glare into Pollock’s eyes.
“Yes,” said Pollock, calmly; “I have been called little before; so that your statement lacks novelty. As I was saying,”—and he leaned against the stair-rail with the tips of the fingers of his gloved hand thrust into his trousers pocket, and holding the other glove in his right hand,—“I haven’t time now to go into the matter further, but I am always at your service. It will give me great pleasure to make your excuses to Miss Merriam, or to any other friends you may be leaving behind you—owing to an illness that made it necessary for you to leave—suddenly. Now you will oblige me by continuing on down to the coat room—unattended. There are probably some gentlemen below there that I should very much dislike having to explain matters to.”
Balcomb leaped lightly forward as though to make a rush for the door of the assembly-room.
“Try that again,” said Pollock, seizing him by the collar, and throwing him back, “and I’ll drop you over the banister.”
“You damned little—”
“You have said that before, Mr. Balcomb, without the damn; but the addition isn’t important. Run along now, like a good boy. I advise you to turn around and go down in a becoming manner,—that’s the idea!”
Some men had entered the lower hall from the smoking-room, and Balcomb greeted them cheerily as he turned and went below as though to join them. Pollock stood above waiting for Balcomb to reappear, and as he waited he resumed his glove and buttoned it with care. The waltz was nearly over, but he stood there leaning against the stair-rail and beating time to the music with his foot, until he saw Balcomb come out of the coat room clad for the street. When Balcomb looked up, Pollock waved his hand to him graciously, and turned and went back into the hall.
“Miss Merriam,” he said, bowing before Olive, “I very much regret to present Mr. Balcomb’s compliments and to say that he has been unexpectedly called away—pressing business—and he asked me to do myself the honor to see that you don’t get lost. This is our dance.”