Tales from Bohemia Part 20

"And he ran off without taking a second glance at her. He arrived at the station in due time.

"Three years after that he married the most charming woman in the world, after an acquaintance of only six months.

"This woman is as beautiful as she is amiable. Nature has not been guilty of a single defect in her construction. A tiny scar upon her knee is all the more noticeable because of its solitude.

"It is a peculiarity of scars that each has a history. The history of this one has thus far, for no adequate reason, remained a family secret.

"Another noteworthy fact about scars is that they may be, and in many cases they are, useful for purposes of identification.

"Of course you antic.i.p.ate the dramatic climax of my story, gentlemen.

Nevertheless, let me give it, for the sake of completeness, in the form of a dialogue between the husband and the wife.

"'How came the wound there?'

"'Oh, I fell against the corner of a paving-stone one icy morning three years ago.'

"'And to think that I was not there to help you up!'

"'True; but another young man served the purpose, and I'm afraid he missed a train on my account.'

"'What! It wasn't on the corner of ---- and ---- Streets?'

"'It was just there. How did you know?'

"So you see, as they completely proved by comparing recollections, the little speech uttered in merriment had been prophetic, a fact that they probably would never have learned had it not been for the identifying service of the scar."

"But if this has been kept a family secret, how do you happen to know it, and by what right do you divulge it?" one of us asked.

The ballad composer blushed and clouded his face with tobacco smoke; and then it recurred to us all that "the most charming woman in the world"

is his wife.

XVII. -- "LA GITANA"

This is not an attempt to palliate the foolishness of Billy Folsom. It is not an essay in the emotional or the pathetic. You may pity him or reproach him, if you like, but my purpose is not to evoke any feeling toward or opinion of him. I do not seek to play upon your sympathies or to put you into a mood, or to delineate a character. I simply tell the story of how certain critical points in a man's life were accompanied by music; how a destiny was affected by a tune. Anything aside from mere narrative in this account will be incidental and accidental. The manifestations of love, of wounded vanity, of recklessness; of even the death itself, are here subsidiary in interest to the train of circ.u.mstance. He who underwent them is not the hero of the recital; she who caused them is not the heroine. The heroine is a melody, the waltz tune of "La Gitana."

Everybody remembers when the tune was regnant. Its notes leaped gaily from the strings of every theatre orchestra; soubrettes in fluffy raiment and silk stockings yelled it singly and in chorus; hand-organs blared it forth; dancers kicked up their toes to it; it monopolized the atmosphere for its dwelling-place; it was everywhere.

Until one night, however, it did not touch the ear of Billy Folsom. He had stayed late in the country, under the delusion that he was hunting.

It seems there are a few shootable things yet in certain parts of Pennsylvania, and Folsom had the time and money to linger in search of them. He came back to town in fine, exhilarating November weather, and on one of these evenings when the joy of living is keenest, he and I strolled with the crowd. Why I strolled with Folsom I do not know, for he was not a man of ideas. He was even so bad as to be vain of his personal appearance, especially upon having resumed the dress of the city after months of outing.

We pa.s.sed one of these theatres whose stages are near the street. A musical farce was current there. From an open window came the tune, waylaying us as we walked. The orchestra was playing it fortissimo. You could hear it above the footfalls, the laughter, and the conversation of the promenaders.

Folsom stopped. "Listen to that."

"Yes, 'La Gitana.' It's all around. It's a catchy thing, and suits this intoxicating weather."

"It goes to the spot. Let's go inside. What's the play?"

He turned at once toward the main entrance of the theatre.

"A farce called 'Three Cheers and a Tiger,'--a Hoyt sort of a piece. The little Tyrrell is doing her tambourine dance to the music."

"Never heard of the lady," he said to me. And then to the youth on the other side of the box-office window, "Have you any seats left in the front row?"

Folsom always asked for seats in the front row. This time it was fatal.

As we walked up the aisle, Folsom ahead, the little Tyrrell shot one casual glance of her gray eyes at him, as almost any dancer would have done at a front row newcomer entering while she was on the stage. In the next instant her eyes were following her toe in its swift flight upward to the centre of the tambourine that her hand brought downward to meet it. But the one glance across the footlights had been productive. Folsom sat staring over the heads of the musicians, his gaze fastened upon the little Tyrrell, who was leaping about on the stage to the tune of "La Gitana." His lips opened slightly and remained so. His eyes feasted upon the flying dancer in the rippling blond wig, his ears drank in the buoyant notes.

It is well known that power lies in a saltatorial ensemble of white lace skirts, pale blue hose, l.u.s.trous naked arms, undulating bodice, magnetic eyes, flying hair, and an unchanging smile, to focus the perceptions of a man, to absorb his consciousness, aided by a tune which seems to close out from him all the rest of the world.

And there, while this plump little girl danced and the frivolous, stupid crowd looked eagerly on, from all parts of the overheated theatre, began the tragedy of Billy Folsom.

He gazed in rapture, and when she had finished and stood panting and kissing her hands in response to applause, he heaved an eloquent sigh.

"I'd like to meet that girl," he whispered to me, a.s.suming a tone of carelessness.

Thereafter he kept his eye fixed upon the wings until she reappeared.

And the rest of the performance interested him only when she was in view.

I knew the symptoms, but I did not think the malady would become chronic.

He managed to have himself introduced to her a week later in New York by Ted Clarke, the artist, who made newspaper sketches of her in some of her dances. Folsom saw her going up the steps to an elevated railway station. He ran after her, in order to be near her. He followed her into a car, where Ted Clarke, recognizing her, rose to give her his seat.

She rewarded the artist by opening a conversation with him, and Folsom availed himself of his acquaintance with Clarke to salute the latter with surprising cordiality. She looked a few years older and less girlish without her blond wig but she was still quite pretty in brown hair. She treated Folsom with her wonted offhand amiability. He left the train when she left it, and he walked a block with her. With pardonable shrewdness she inspected his visage, attire, and manner, for indications of his pecuniary and social standing, while he was indulging in silly commonplaces. When they parted at the quiet hotel where she lived she said lightly:

"Come and see me sometime."

To her surprise, perhaps, he came the next day, preceded by several dozen roses and a few pounds of bonbons.

Every night thereafter he was at the theatre where she was appearing, watching her dance from the front row or from the lobby, agitated with mingled pleasure and jealousy when she received loud applause, angry at the audience when the plaudits were not enthusiastic. When their acquaintance was two weeks old, she allowed him to wait for her at the stage door, and at last he was permitted to take her to supper.

There was a second supper, at which four composed the party. We had a room to ourselves, with a piano in the corner. The event lasted long, and near the end, while the other soubrette played the tune on the piano, and Folsom kept time by clinking the champagne gla.s.s against the bottle, the little Tyrrell, continually laughing, did her skirt dance, "La Gitana."

Thus with that waltz tune ever sounding in his ears, he fell in love with her; strangely enough, really in love. She, having her own affairs to mind, gave him no thought when he was not with her, and when they were together she deemed him quite a good-natured, bearable fellow, as long as he did not bore her.

He made several declarations of love to her. She smiled at them, and said, "You're like the rest; you'll get over it. Meanwhile, don't look like that; be cheerful." At certain times, when circ.u.mstances were auspicious, when there was night and electric light and a starry sky with a moon in it, she was half-sentimental, but such moods were only superficial and short-lived, and she invariably brought an end to them with flippant laughter or some matter-of-fact speech that came with a shock to Billy, although it did not cool his adoration.

Billy became quite gloomy. He was the veritable sighing lover. Although for a month he was admittedly the chief of her admirers and saw her every day, he seemed to make no progress toward securing a hospitable reception for and a response to his love.

One day, as they were walking together on Broadway, she said:

"You're always in the dumps nowadays. Really you must not be that way.

Doleful people make me tired."

And thereafter Billy, possessed by a horrible fear that his mournful demeanour might cause his banishment from her, kept making desperate efforts to be lively, which were a dismal failure. It was ludicrous. The gayer he affected to be, the more emphatic was his manifest depression.

So she wearied of his company. One day he called at her hotel, and, as was his custom, went immediately to her sitting-room without sending in his card. Before he knocked at the door, he heard the notes of her piano; some one was playing the air of "La Gitana" with one finger.

After two or three bars, the instrument was silent. Then a man's voice was heard. Billy knocked angrily. Miss Tyrrell opened the door, looked annoyed when she saw him, and introduced him to the tenor of a comic opera company of which she recently had been engaged as leading soubrette. Billy's call was a short one.