第68章

However, catching sight of Miss Anstruther in the mirror that had been hung up under one of the side lamps, she was so fascinated that she gazed furtively at her by that indirect way.

Violet happened to see, laughed."Look at the baby's shocked face, Mabel," she cried.

But she was mistaken.It was sheer horror that held Susan's gaze upon Violet's incredible hips and thighs, violently obtruded by the close-reefed corset.Mabel had a slender figure, the waist too short and the legs too nearly of the same girth from hip to ankle, but for all that, attractive.Susan had never before seen a woman in tights without any sort of skirt.

"You would show up well in those things," Violet said to her, "that is, for a thin woman.The men don't care much for thinness.""Not the clodhoppers and roustabouts that come to see us,"retorted Mabel."The more a woman looks like a cow or a sow, the better they like it.They don't believe it's female unless it looks like what they're used to in the barnyard and the cattle pen."Miss Anstruther was not in the least offended.She paraded, jauntily switching her great hips and laughing."Jealous!" she teased."You poor little broomstick."Burlingham was in a white flannel suit that looked well enough in those dim lights.The make-up gave him an air of rakish youth.Eshwell had got himself into an ordinary sack suit.

Tempest was in the tattered and dirty finery of a seventeenth-century courtier.The paint and black made Eshwell's face fat and comic; it gave Tempest distinction, made his hollow blazing eyes brilliant and large.All traces of habitation were effaced from the "auditorium"; the lamps were lighted, a ticket box was set up on the rear deck and an iron bar was thrown half across the rear entrance to the cabin, that only one person at a time might be able to pass.The curtain was let down--a gaudy smear of a garden scene in a French palace in the eighteenth century.Pat, the orchestra, put on a dress coat and vest and a "dickey"; the coat had white celluloid cuffs pinned in the sleeves at the wrists.

As it was still fully an hour and a half from dark, Susan hid on the stage; when it should be time for the curtain to go up she would retreat to the dressing-room.Through a peephole in the curtain she admired the auditorium; and it did look surprisingly well by lamplight, with the smutches and faded spots on its bright paint softened or concealed."How many will it hold?" she asked Mabel, who was walking up and down, carrying her long train.

"A hundred and twenty comfortably," replied Miss Connemora."Ahundred and fifty crowded.It has held as high as thirty dollars, but we'll be lucky if we get fifteen tonight."Susan glanced round at her.She was smoking a cigarette, handling it like a man.Susan's expression was so curious that Mabel laughed.Susan, distressed, cried: "I'm sorry if--if I was impolite.""Oh, you couldn't be impolite," said Mabel."You've got that to learn, too--and mighty important it is.We all smoke.Why not?

We got out of cigarettes, but Bob bought a stock this afternoon."Susan turned to the peephole.Pat, ready to take tickets, was "barking" vigorously in the direction of shore, addressing a crowd which Susan of course could not see.Whenever he paused for breath, Burlingham leaned from the box and took it up, pouring out a stream of eulogies of his show in that easy, lightly cynical voice of his.And the audience straggled in--young fellows and their girls, roughs from along the river front, farmers in town for a day's sport.Susan did not see a single familiar face, and she had supposed she knew, by sight at least, everyone in Sutherland.From fear lest she should see someone she knew, her mind changed to longing.At last she was rewarded.Down the aisle swaggered Redney King, son of the washerwoman, a big hulking bully who used to tease her by pulling her hair during recess and by kicking at her shins when they happened to be next each other in the class standing in long line against the wall of the schoolroom for recitation.

From her security she smiled at Redney as representative of all she loved in the old town.

And now the four members of the company on the stage and in the dressing-room lost their ease and contemptuous indifference.

They had been talking sneeringly about "yokels" and "jays" and "slum bums." They dropped all that, as there spread over them the mysterious spell of the crowd.As individuals the provincials in those seats were ridiculous; as a mass they were an audience, an object of fear and awe.Mabel was almost in tears; Violet talked rapidly, with excited gestures and nervous adjustments of various parts of her toilet.The two men paced about, Eshwell trembling, Tempest with sheer fright in his rolling eyes.

They wet their dry lips with dry tongues.Each again and again asked the other anxiously how he was looking and paced away without waiting for the answer.The suspense and nervous terror took hold of Susan; she stood in the corner of the dressing-room, pressing herself close against the wall, her fingers tightly interlocked and hot and cold tremors chasing up and down her body.

Burlingham left the box and combined Pat's duties with his own--a small matter, as the audience was seated and a guard at the door was necessary only to keep the loafers on shore from rushing in free.Pat advanced to the little space reserved before the stage, sat down and fell to tuning his violin with all the noise he could make, to create the illusion of a full orchestra.Miss Anstruther appeared in one of the forward side doors of the auditorium, very dignified in her black satin (paper muslin) dress, with many and sparkling hair and neck ornaments and rings that seemed alight.She bowed to the audience, pulled a little old cottage organ from under the stage and seated herself at it.