The Story of Julia Page Part 9

But he recovered very sensibly from his boyish chagrin, and very sensibly went at his practicing again. On this particular Sat.u.r.day afternoon he attacked a certain phrase in the ba.s.s, and for almost an hour the big fingers of his left hand rippled over it steadily. Mark, twisted about halfway on the bench, watched the performance steadily, his right hand hanging loose.

"d.a.m.n!" he said presently, with a weary sigh, as a sharp and familiar little pain sprang into his left wrist.

"Mark!" breathed a reproachful voice behind him. He whirled about, to see Julia Page.

She had come noiselessly in at the gla.s.s doorway behind him, and was standing there, laughing, a picture of fresh and demure beauty, despite the varied colours in hat and waist and gown and gloves.

"I had to see you!" said Julia, in a rush. "And n.o.body answered your telephone--there's a rehearsal of that play at the theatre to-day, so I can't meet you--and the janitor let me in----"

Mark found her incoherence delicious; her being here, in his own familiar stamping-ground, one of the thrilling and exciting episodes of his life. He could have shouted--have danced for pure joy as he jumped up to welcome her. Julia declared that she had to "fly," but Mark insisted--and she found his insistence curiously pleasant--upon showing her about, leading her from office to office, beaming at her whenever their eyes met. And he _must_ play her the little Schumann, he said, but no--for that Julia positively would _not_ wait; she jerked him by one hand toward the door. Mark had his second kiss before they emerged laughing and radiant into the gaiety of Kearney Street on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

And Julia was not late for her rehearsal, or, if late, she was at least earlier by a full quarter hour than the rest of the caste. She took an orchestra seat in the empty auditorium at the doorkeeper's suggestion, and yawned, and stared at the coatless back of a man who was tuning the orchestra piano.

Presently two distinguished looking girls, beautifully dressed, came in, and sat down near her in a rather uncertain way, and began to laugh and talk in low tones. Neither cast a glance at Julia, who promptly decided that they were hateful sn.o.bs, and began to regard them with burning resentment. They had been there only a few moments when two young men sauntered down the aisle, unmistakably gentlemen, and genuine enough to express their enjoyment of this glimpse of a theatre between performances. Two of them carried little paper copies of "The Amazons,"

so Julia knew them for fellow-performers.

Then a third young woman came in and walked down the aisle as the others had done. This was an extremely pretty girl of perhaps eighteen, with dark hair and dark bright eyes, and a very fresh bright colour. Her gown was plain but beautifully fitting, and her wide hat was crowned with a single long ostrich plume. She peered at the young men.

"h.e.l.lo, Bobby--h.e.l.lo, Gray!" she said gayly, and then, catching sight of the two other girls across the aisle, she added: "Oh, h.e.l.lo, Helen--how do you do, Miss Carson? Come over here and meet Mr. Sumner and Mr.

Babc.o.c.k!"

Babel ensued. Three or four waiting young people said, "Oh, Barbara!" in tones of great delight, and the fourth no less eagerly subst.i.tuted, "Oh, Miss Toland!"

"How long have you poor, long-suffering catfish been waiting here?"

demanded Miss Barbara Toland, with a sort of easy sweetness that Julia found instantly enviable. "Why, we're all out in the foyer--Mother's here, chaperoning away like mad, and nearly all the others! And"--she whisked a little gold watch into sight--"my dears, it's twenty minutes to four!"

Every one exclaimed, as they rushed out. Julia, unaccountably nervous, wished she were well out of this affair, and wondered what she ought to do.

Presently some twenty-five or thirty well-dressed folk came streaming back down the main aisle in a wild confusion of laughter and talk.

Somehow the princ.i.p.als were filtered out of this crowd, and somehow they got on the stage, and got a few lights turned on, and a.s.sembled for the advice of an agitated manager. Dowagers and sympathetic friends settled in orchestra seats to watch; the rehearsal began.

Julia had strolled up to the stage after the others; now she sat on a shabby wooden chair that had lost its back, leaned her back against a piece of scenery, and surveyed the scene with as haughty and indifferent an air as she could a.s.sume.

"And the Sergeant--who takes that?" demanded the manager, a young fellow of their own cla.s.s, familiarly addressed as "Matty."

The caste, which had been churning senselessly about him, chorussed an explanation.

"A professional takes that, Mat, don't you remember?"

"Well, where is she?" Matty asked irritably.

Julia here sauntered superbly forward, serenely conscious of youth, beauty, and charm. Every one stared frankly at her, as she said languidly:

"Perhaps it's I you're looking for? Mr. Artheris--"

"Yes, that's right!" said Matty, relieved. He wiped his forehead.

"Miss--Page, isn't it?" He paused, a little at a loss, eying the other ladies of the caste dubiously. The girl called Barbara Toland now came forward with her ready graciousness, and the two girls looked fairly into each other's eyes.

"Miss Page," said Barbara, and then impatiently to the manager, "Do go ahead and get started, Matty; we've got to get home some time to-night!"

Julia's introduction was thus waived, and business began at once. The wavering voices of the princ.i.p.als drifted uncertainly into the theatre.

"Louder!" said the chaperons and friends. The men were facetious, interpolating their lines with jokes, good-humoured under criticism; the girls fluttered nervously over cues, could not repeat the simplest line without a half-giggling "Let's see--yes, I come in here," and were only fairly started before they must interrupt themselves with an earnest, "Mat, am I standing still when I say that, or do I walk toward her?"

Julia was the exception. She had been instructed a fortnight before that she must know her lines and business to-day, and she did know them.

Almost scornfully she took her cues and walked through her part. "Matty"

clapped his hands and overpraised her, and Julia felt with a great rush of triumph that she had "shown those girls!" She had an exhilarating afternoon, for the men buzzed about her on every possible occasion, and she knew that the other girls, for all their lofty indifference, were keenly conscious of it.

She went out through the theatre with the others, at an early six. The young people straggled along the aisle in great confusion, laughing and chattering. Mrs. Toland, a plump, merry, handsomely dressed woman, was anxious to carry off her tall daughter in time for some early boat.

"_Do_ hurry, Barbara! Sally and Ted may be on that five-fifty, and if Dad went home earlier they'll have to make the trip alone!"

At the doorway they found that the street was almost dark, and foggy.

Much discussion of cars and carriages marked the breaking-up. Enid Hazzard, a rather noisy girl, who played Noel Belturbet, elected to go home with the Babc.o.c.ks. This freed from all responsibility her brother Carter, who had suddenly appeared to act as escort. Julia, slipping up the darkening street, after a few moments spent in watching this crowd of curious young people, found him at her side.

"No coat, Miss Page?" said the easy tones.

"I didn't know it would be so foggy!" said Julia, her heart beginning to thump.

"And where are you going?"

"Home to get a coat."

"I see. Where is it? I'll take you."

"Oh, it's just a few blocks," Julia said. She knew nothing of the reputation of San Francisco's neighbourhoods, but Carter gave her a surprised look. When Julia, quite unembarra.s.sed, stopped at the door beside the saloon, he was the more confused of the two, although the accident of seeing him again had set the blood to racing in Julia's veins and made speech difficult. She had been longing for just this; she was trembling with eagerness and nervousness.

"Father and Mother live here?" asked Carter.

"Just Mama--she rents rooms."

"Oh, I see!" He had stepped into the deep doorway, and catching her by the shoulders he said now, inconsequently: "Do you know you're the prettiest girl that ever _was_?"

"Am I?" said Julia, in a whisper.

"You know you are--you--you little flirt!" Hazzard said, his eyes three inches from hers. For a tense second neither stirred, then the man straightened up suddenly: "Well!" he said loudly. "That'll be about all of _that_. Good-night, my dear!"

He turned abruptly away, and Julia, smiling her little inscrutable smile, went slowly upstairs. The bedroom was dark, unaired, and in disorder. Julia looked about it dreamily, picked her library book from the floor and read a few pages of "Aunt Johnnie," sitting meanwhile on the edge of the unmade bed, and chewing a piece of gum that had been pressed, a neat bead, upon the back of a chair. After a while she got up, powdered her nose, and rubbed her finger-nails with a buffer--a buffer lifeless and hard, and deeply stained with dirt and red grease.

Emeline had left a note, "Gone up to Min's--come up there for supper,"

but Julia felt that there was no hurry; meals at Mrs. Tarbury's were usually late.

During the ensuing fortnight there were two or three more rehearsals of "The Amazons" at the Grand Opera House, which only confirmed Julia's first impression of her fellow-players. The men she liked, and flirted with; for the girls she had a supreme contempt. She found herself younger, prettier, and a better actress than the youngest, prettiest, and cleverest among them. While these pampered daughters of wealth went awkwardly through their parts, and chatted in subdued tones among themselves, Julia rattled her speeches off easily, laughed and talked with all the young men in turn, posed and pirouetted as one born to the footlights. If Julia fancied that any girl was betraying a preference for any particular man, against that man she directed the full battery of her charms. Carter Hazzard came to every rehearsal, and was quite openly her slave. He did not offer to walk home with her again, but Julia knew that he was conscious of her presence whenever she was near him, and spun a mad little dream about a future in which she queened it over all these girls as his wife.

It was all delightful and exciting. Life had never been dark to Julia; now she found the days all too short for her various occupations and pleasures. Mark was a.s.suming more and more the att.i.tude of a lover, and Julia was too much of a coquette to discourage him utterly. She really liked him, and loved the stolen hours in Pomeroy and Parke's big piano house, when Mark, flinging his hair out of his eyes, played like an angel, and Julia nibbled caramels and sat curled up on the davenport, watching him. And through the casual attentions of other men, the occasional flattering half-hours with Carter Hazzard, the evenings of gossip at Mrs. Tarbury's, and round the long table at Montiverte's, Julia liked to sometimes think of Mark; his admiration was a little warm, rea.s.suring background for all the other thoughts of the day.

At the end of the fourth or fifth rehearsal Julia noticed that pretty Barbara Toland was trying to manage a moment's speech with her alone.

She amused herself with an attempt to avoid Miss Toland just from pure mischief, but eventually the two came face to face, in a garishly lighted bit of pa.s.sage, Barbara, for all her advantage in years and in position, seeming the younger of the two.

"Oh, Miss Page," said Barbara nervously, "I wanted to--but were you going somewhere?"