Part 40 (1/2)

The Red Widow, with a poinsettia sprawling like a frantic clutch at her heart, and her burnished gold head rising with the grace of a gold flower out of a vase!

Cyrus a.s.sumes a swoon of delight, throws out a cue--”The date-trees are blooming”--the conductor raps his baton twice for their feature duet ent.i.tled, ”Oh, Let Me Die on Broadway,” and the spot-light focuses.

The house clamors for a fourth encore, but the lights flash on. The pursuing son, in the face of prolonged applause, white trousers, and a straw katy, bursts upon the scene with his features in first position for the denouement.

But the audience clamors on. The son postpones his expression and leans against a jungle to a fourth encore of the tuneful Thanatopsis.

On the final curtain of the hundredth night the company bowed two curtain-calls to the capacity house busily struggling into wraps and up aisles.

The Red Widow, linked between the pickle-magnate and the triumphant son, flanked by s.e.xtets, octets, and regimentals, bowed four times over three sheaths of American beauties and a high-handled basket of carnations.

Then, almost on the drop of the curtain, the immediate roar of sliding wings, which mingled with the exit strains of the orchestra, like a Debussy right-hand theme defying the left, and the rumble of forests, retreating.

Scene-s.h.i.+fters, to whom every encore is a knell, demolished whole kingdoms at a lunge, half a hundred satin slippers flashed up a spiral staircase to chorus dressing-rooms, the Red Widow flung the trail of the gown she had on--so carelessly dragged across the tarpaulin terra firma of Bungel--across one bare arm and darted through the door with a red star painted on the panel.

Her dressing-room, hung in vivid chintz, with a canopied table replacing the make-up shelf, and a pa.s.sing show of signed photographs tacked along the wall, was as fantastic as Gnomes' Cave.

A wildness of chiffon and sleazy silk hung from the wall-hooks, a pair of gauze aeroplane wings hovered across a chair, and, atop a trunk, impertinent as a Pierette, the black pony was removing the gold star from her hair.

”Warm house to-night, Del. I sent Sibbie across to the hotel with your flowers.”

”Yeh--best house yet.”

”But gee! it's a wonder he wouldn't give away kerosene.”

”Rotten stuff.”

”It made me so dizzy I nearly flopped like a seal in the pony prance. He must 'a' bought it by the keg.”

”I told him it was strong enough to run his new motor-boat. Gawd, ain't I tired! How'd the aeroplane song go, Ysobel?”

”Swell! But leave it to Billy to hog your act every time. I seen him grab a laugh when the propellers was workin'.”

”Undo me, Ysobel? Why'd you let Sibbie go? Can't you let me get used to having a maid, hon'?”

”Poor kid, you're dead, ain't you? But you gotta go with him to-night or he'll howl.”

Della lowered her beaded lashes over eyes that smarted, and raised her arms like Niobe entreating fate.

”Sure, I gotta go. He's been bragging about this hundredth-night blow-out for a month.”

”Quit squirming, Del! Hold still, can't you?”

”Five recalls on 'Let me die,' Ysobel.”

”You never went better.”

Della slid out of her gown and into a gold-colored kimono embroidered in black flying swans, and creamed off her make-up in long, even strokes.

”Look, he wants me to wear that silver-fox coat and the cloth-of-silver gown. Honest, it's so heavy I nearly fainted in it the other night. Lots he cares!”