Carnival Part 25

"Let her go," said Mrs. Raeburn. "Her hat covers it up a _bit_. I only hope if we have company, she'll have the goodness to keep her hat on all the time."

"Oh, yes, that would be a game of mine. I don't think!" protested Jenny.

The latter's belief in herself was restored by the att.i.tude of the dressing-room. The girls all vowed the change improved her. There was an epidemic of peroxide, and Irene actually tarnished her own rich copper with the dye, so that for a while her hair seemed streaked with verdigris. Moreover, the unnatural fairness wore off as the weeks went by, and at last even the family was compelled to admit that she had not made a mistake. Only Alfie remained unconvinced, declaring she deserved a hiding for messing herself about. As for the suitors, they ran faster than before, but never swiftly enough to catch Jenny.

"I'm bound to get off with a nice young chap, now," she told the girls.

"I wish I could fall in love."

"How would you like my Willie?" asked Elsie Crauford proudly.

"Your Willie? I don't think he's anything to tear oilcloth over."

"Didn't you think he looked nice in his evening dress?"

"Your Willie's never bought himself an evening dress! _What!_ Girls, listen. The Great Millionaire's bought himself an evening dress."

"You are rude, Jenny Pearl."

"Well, I call it silly. Sw.a.n.king round in evening dress with a bent halfpenny and his latchkey. And you needn't give me those perishing looks, young Elsie."

"You are a hateful thing."

"Your _Willie_ in evening dress. Oh, no, it can't be done."

"Shut up, Jenny Pearl," cried Elsie, stamping her foot.

"Now get in a paddy. I suppose it was you edged him on to go without his dinner for a week to buy it."

"I hope you'll fall in love, and I hope he'll go away to New Zealand the same as Nelly Marlowe's Jack did."

"Oh! There's an unnatural girl! _Don't_ you worry yourself. Not this little girl. Not Jenny Pearl. I wouldn't let any _man_ make a fool of me."

That night a thunderstorm ruined Jenny's hat.

Next day she bought another, pale green with rosy cherries bobbing at each side. "I think this hat's going to bring me luck," she announced.

"The cherries is all right, but green isn't lucky," said Irene.

"Oh, well," said Jenny, "I'll chance it, any old way."

Chapter XIII: _The Ballet of Cupid_

The thunderstorm which ruined Jenny's hat destroyed summer. Blowy August twilights began to hara.s.s the leaves: darkness came earlier, and people, going home, hurried through the streets where lately they had lingered.

Jenny's new green hat with bobbing cherries seemed to have strayed from the heart of a fresher season, and pa.s.sers-by often turned to regard her as she strolled along Coventry Street toward the Orient. September brought louder winds and skies swollen with rain; but Jenny, rehearsing hard for a new ballet on the verge of production, had no leisure to grumble at chilly dusks and moonless journeys home to Hagworth Street.

The Orient was in a condition of excitement, for the new ballet, like a hundred before it, was expected to eclipse entirely the reputation of its predecessors. Two Ballerinas had arrived from Rome, winter migrants who in their lightness and warmth, would bring to London a thought of Italy. A Premier Danseur, more agile than a Picador, had traveled over from Madrid, and a fiery Maitre de Ballet had been persuaded to forsake Milan. Yet the first night of Cupid was hard upon the heels of a theater apparently utterly unprepared for any such date. The master carpenter was wrangling with the electrician. The electrician was insulting the wardrobe-mistress. The wig-maker was talking very rapidly in French to the costumier's draftsman, who was replying equally rapidly in Italian.

From time to time the managing director shouted from the back of the Promenade to know the reason for some delay. The new Maitre de Ballet, having reduced most of the girls to hysteria by his alarming rages, abused his interpreter for misrepresenting his meaning. The Ballerinas from Rome were quarreling over precedence, and the Spanish Danseur was weeping because the letters of his name were smaller by four inches than those which announced on the playbills the advent of his feminine rivals. The call-boy was losing his youth. Everybody was talking at once, and the musical director was always severely punctual.

When the dress rehearsal lasted eleven hours, everybody connected with the Orient prophesied the doom of Cupid; and yet, on the twenty-first of September, the ballet was produced with truly conspicuous success. The theme was Love triumphant through the ages, from the saffron veils and hymeneal torches and flickering airs of Psyche's chamber, through Arthur's rose-wreathed court and the mimic pa.s.sions of Versailles, down to modern London transformed by the boy G.o.d to a hanging garden of Babylon.

The third scene was a Fete Champetre after Watteau at sunset. Parterres of lavender and carnations bloomed at the base of statues that gradually disappeared in shadow as the sunset yielded to crimson lanterns. The scene was a harmony of gray and rose and tarnished silver. Love himself wore a vizard, and the dances were very slow and stately. The leisured progress of the scene gave Jenny her first opportunity to scan the audience. She saw a clear-cut face, dead white in the blue haze that hung over the stalls. She was conscious of an interest suddenly aroused, of an interest more profound than anything within her experience. For the first time the width of the orchestra seemed no barrier to intercourse. She felt she had only to lean gently forward from her place in the line to touch that unknown personality. She checked the impulse of greeting, but danced the rest of the movement as she had not danced for many months, with a joyful grace. When the _tempo di minuetto_ had quickened to the _pas seul_ of a Ballerina and the stage was still, Jenny stood far down in the corner nearest to the audience. Here, very close to the blaze of the footlights, the auditorium loomed almost impenetrable to eyes on the stage, but the man in the stalls, as if aware that she had lost him, struck a match. She saw his face flickering and, guided by the orange point of a cigar, whispered to Elsie Crauford, who was standing next to her:

"See that fellow in evening dress in the stalls?"

"Which one?"

"The one with the cigar--now--next to the fat man fanning himself. See?

I bet you I get off with him to-night."

"You think everybody's gazing at you," murmured Elsie.

"No, I don't. But he is."

"Only because he can see you're making eyes at him."

"Oh, I'm not."

"Besides, how do you know? He isn't waving his programme nor nothing."

"No; but he'll be waiting by the stage-door."

"I thought you didn't care for fellows in evening dress," said Elsie.

"Well, can't you see any difference between that fellow and your Willie?"

"No, I can't."

"Fancy," said Jenny mockingly.

The Ballerina's final pose was being sustained amid loud applause. The ballet-master began to count the steps for the final movement. The stage manager's warning had sounded. The curtain fell, and eighty girls hurried helter-skelter to their rooms in order to change for the last scene.

"All down, ladies," cried the call-boy, and downstairs they trooped.

The curtain rose on Piccadilly Circus, gray and dripping. Somber figures danced in a saraband of shadows to a yearning melody of Tschaikovsky.

The oboe gave its plaintive summons; like sea-birds calling, the rest of the wood-wind took up the appeal until it died away in a solitary flute, which sounded a joyful signal very sweet and low. A cymbal crashed: a golden ray of light came slanting on to the stone figure of Cupid, infusing him with life until, warm and radiant, he sprang from his pedestal to bewitch the sad scene. Roses tumbled from the clouds; lilies sprang up, quivering in the wind of dancing motion. A fountain gushed from the abandoned pedestal; the scene was a furnace of color. The Ballerinas led the _Corps de Ballet_ in a Bacchic procession round and round the twirling form of Cupid. With noise of bell and cymbal, they ran leaping through an enchanted Piccadilly seen in amber or cornelian.

They might have stepped from a canvas of t.i.tian dyed by the sun of a spent Venetian afternoon. Individual members of the audience began to applaud, and the isolated hand-claps sounded like castanets, until, as the dance became wilder, cheers floated on to the stage like the noise of waves heard suddenly over the brow of a hill.

Jenny, in a tunic of ivory silk sprayed with tawny roses, her hair bound with a fillet of gold, turned from the intoxication of the dance to search the stalls. Across the _arpeggios_ of the misted violins, his eyes burned a path. Yet, although she knew that he asked for a signal to show her consciousness of him, she could not give one. Had his glances seemed less important, she would have smiled; but since for the first time in her life a man stirred her, bashfulness caught her icily and, while her heart flamed, her eyes were cold. The curtain fell, rising again at once to let the bouquets fall softly round the silver shoes of the Ballerinas. The odor of stephanotis, mingled with the sharper perfume of carnations, seemed almost visible. The emotion of the audience struck the emotion of the dancers and kindled a triumph. The man in the stalls leaned forward, and the intensity of his gaze was to Jenny as real an offering as a bouquet. The curtain fell for the last time and as it touched the stage, instead of hurrying to her dressing-room, she stood a moment staring at what, for the first time, seemed an agent of deprivation not relief. Suddenly, too, she realized that she was very lightly clothed, and, as she walked slowly up the stone stairs to the dressing-room, was not sure whether she was sorry or glad.

In the crowd of chatting girls, Jenny began to call herself a fool, to rail at her weakness, and to ascribe the whole experience to the extra Guinness of a first night. Yet all the time she wondered if he would be waiting at the end of the court; there had been no wave of hand or flutter of a programme to confirm the hopes of imagination. Moreover, what was he really like? Outside he would be "awful," like the rest of them. Outside he would smirk and betray his sense of ownership. Outside he would destroy the magic that had waked her at last from the dull sleep of ordinary life. She began to hurry feverishly her undressing, and the more she hurried, the more she dreamed. At last, having, as it seemed, exhausted herself with speed, she sat down on the bench, and, looking round, perceived that the other girls were well in front of her.

She lost confidence and wished for support in the adventure.

"Coming out to-night?" she asked Irene.

"If you like," said the latter.