Part 50 (1/2)
”Body--artistic soul--and breeches,” Whitaker affirmed confidently.
”Impossible!”
”You forget how well fixed I am. What's the use of my owning half the gold in New Guinea if it won't buy me what I already own by every moral and legal right?”
”He won't listen to you; you don't know Max.”
”I'm willing to lay you a small bet that there will be no first performance at the Theatre Max to-morrow night.”
”You'll never persuade him--”
”I'll buy the show outright and my wife's freedom to boot--or else Max will begin to acc.u.mulate the local colour of a hospital ward.”
Ember smiled grimly. ”You're beginning to convince even me. When, may I ask, do you propose to pull off this sporting proposition?”
”Do you know where Max can be found to-night?”
”At the theatre--”
”Then the matter will be arranged at the theatre between this hour and midnight.”
”I doubt if you succeed in getting the ear of the great man before midnight; however, I'm not disposed to quibble about a few hours.”
”But why shouldn't I?”
”Because Max is going to be the busiest young person in town to-night.
And that is why I've been looking for you.... Conforming to his custom, he's giving an advance glimpse of the production to the critics and a few friends in the form of a final grand dress-rehearsal to-night.
Again, in conformance with his custom, he has honoured me with a bid.
I've been chasing you all day to find out if you'd care to go--”
”Eight o'clock and a bit after,” Whitaker interrupted briskly, consulting his watch. ”Here, boy,” he hailed a pa.s.sing page; ”call a taxicab for me.” And then, rising alertly: ”Come along; I've got to hustle home and make myself look respectable enough for the occasion; but at that, with luck, I fancy we'll be there before the first curtain.”
This mood of faith, of self-reliance and a.s.sured optimism held unruffled throughout the dash homewards, his hurried change of clothing and the ride to the theatre. Nothing that Ember, purposely pessimistic, could say or do availed to diminish the high buoyancy of his humour. He maintained a serene faith in his star, a spirited temper that refused to recognize obstacles in the way of his desire.
In the taxicab, en route to the Theatre Max, he contrived even to distil a good omen from the driving autumnal downpour itself.... The rain-swept pavements, their polished blackness shot with a thousand strands of golden brilliance; the painted bosom of the lowering, heavy sky; the tear-drenched window-panes; even the incessant crepitation on the roof of the scurrying, skidding cab seemed to lend a colour of a.s.surance to his thoughts.
”On such a day as this,” he told his doubting friend, ”I won her first; on such a day I shall win her anew, finally and for all time!...”
From Broadway to Sixth Avenue, Forty-sixth Street was bright with the yellow glare of the huge sign in front of the Theatre Max. But this night, unlike that other night when he had approached the stage of his wife's triumphs, there was no crawling rank of cabs, no eager and curious press of people in the street; but few vehicles disputed their way; otherwise the rain and the hurrying, rain-coated wayfarers had the thoroughfare to themselves.... And even this he chose to consider a favourable omen: there was not now a public to come between him and his love--only Max and her frightened fancies.
The man at the door recognized Ember with a cheerful nod; Whitaker he did not know.
”Just in time, Mr. Ember; curtain's been up about ten minutes....”
The auditorium was in almost total darkness. A single voice was audible from the stage that confronted it like some tremendous, moonlight canvas in a huge frame of tarnished gold. They stole silently round the orchestra seats to the stage-box--the same box that Whitaker had on the former occasion occupied in company with Max.
They succeeded in taking possession without attracting attention, either from the owners of that scanty scattering of s.h.i.+rt-bosoms in the orchestra--the critical fraternity and those intimates bidden by the manager to the first glimpse of his new revelation in stage-craft--or from those occupying the stage.
The latter were but two. Evidently, though the curtain had been up for some minutes, the action of the piece had not yet been permitted to begin to unfold. Whitaker inferred that Max had been dissatisfied with something about the lighting of the scene. The manager was standing in mid-stage, staring up at the borders: a stout and pompous figure, tenacious to every detail of that public self which he had striven so successfully to make unforgettably individual; a figure quaintly incongruous in his impeccable morning-coat and striped trousers and flat-brimmed silk hat, perched well back on his head, with his malacca stick and lemon-coloured gloves and small and excessively glossy patent-leather shoes, posed against the counterfeit of a moonlit formal garden.