第74章

You've got magnetism.The same thing that made me engage you the minute you asked me is going to make you--well, go a long ways--a _long_ ways.Now, we'll try `The Last Rose of Summer.'"She sang even better.And this improvement continued through the other four songs of her repertoire.His confidence in her was contagious; it was so evident that he really did believe in her.

And Pat, too, wagged his head in a way that made her feel good about herself.Then Burlingham called in the others whom he had sent to the forward deck.Before them the girl went all to pieces.She made her entrance badly, she sang worse.And the worse she sang, the worse she felt and the worse her next attempt was.At last, with nerves unstrung, she broke down and sobbed.Burlingham climbed up to pat her on the shoulder.

"That's the best sign yet," said he."It shows you've got temperament.Yes--you've got the stuff in you."He quieted her, interested her in the purely mechanical part of what she was doing."Don't think of who you're doing it before, or of how you're doing it, but only of getting through each step and each note.If your head's full of that, you'll have no room for fright." And she was ready to try again.When she finished the last notes of "Suwanee River," there was an outburst of hearty applause.And the sound that pleased her most was Tempest's rich rhetorical "Bravo!" As a man she abhorred him;but she respected the artist.And in unconsciously drawing this distinction she gave proof of yet another quality that was to count heavily in the coming days.Artist he was not.But she thought him an artist.A girl or boy without the intelligence that can develop into flower and fruit would have seen and felt only Tempest, the odious personality.

Burlingham did not let her off until she was ready to drop with exhaustion.And after supper, when they were floating slowly on, well out of the channel where they might be run down by some passing steamer with a flint-hearted captain or pilot, she had to go at it again.She went to bed early, and she slept without a motion or a break until the odor of the cooking breakfast awakened her.When she came out, her face was bright for the first time.She was smiling, laughing, chatting, was delighted with everything and everybody.Even the thought of Roderick Spenser laid up with a broken leg recurred less often and less vividly.It seemed to her that the leg must be about well.The imagination of healthy youth is reluctant to admit ideas of gloom in any circumstances.In circumstances of excitement and adventure, such as Susan's at that time, it flatly refuses to admit them.

They were at anchor before a little town sprawled upon the fields between hills and river edge.A few loafers were chewing tobacco and inspecting the show boat from the shady side of a pile of lumber.Pat had already gone forth with the bundle of handbills; he was not only waking up the town, but touring the country in horse and buggy, was agitating the farmers--for the show boat was to stay at least two nights at Bethlehem."And we ought to do pretty well," said Burlingham."The wheat's about all threshed, and there's a kind of lull.The hayseeds aren't so dead tired at night.A couple of weeks ago we couldn't have got half a house by paying for it."As the afternoon wore away and the sun disappeared behind the hills to the southwest, Susan's spirits oozed.Burlingham and the others--deliberately--paid no attention to her, acted as if no great, universe-stirring event were impending.Immediately after supper Burlingham said:

"Now, Vi, get busy and put her into her harness.Make her a work of art."Never was there a finer display of unselfishness than in their eagerness to help her succeed, in their intense nervous anxiety lest she should not make a hit.The bad in human nature, as Mabel Connemora had said, is indeed almost entirely if not entirely the result of the compulsion of circumstances; the good is the natural outcropping of normal instincts, and resumes control whenever circumstances permit.These wandering players had suffered too much not to have the keenest and gentlest sympathy.Susan looked on Tempest as a wicked man; yet she could not but be touched by his almost hysterical excitement over her debut, when the near approach of the hour made it impossible for his emotional temperament longer to hide its agitation.Every one of them gave or loaned her a talisman--Tempest, a bit of rabbit's foot; Anstruther, a ring that had twice saved her from drowning (at least, it had been on her finger each time);Connemora, a hunchback's tooth on a faded velvet string; Pat, a penny which happened to be of the date of her birth year (the presence of the penny was regarded by all as a most encouraging sign); Eshwell loaned her a miniature silver bug he wore on his watch chain; Burlingham's contribution was a large buckeye----"Ever since I've had that, I've never been without at least the price of a meal in my pocket."They had got together for her a kind of evening dress, a pale blue chiffon-like drapery that left her lovely arms and shoulders bare and clung softly to the lines of her figure.They did her hair up in a graceful sweep from the brow and a simple coil behind.She looked like a woman, yet like a child dressed as a woman, too, for there was as always that exuberant vitality which made each of the hairs of her head seem individual, electric.The rouge gave her color, enhanced into splendor the brilliance of her violet-gray eyes--eyes so intensely colored and so admirably framed that they were noted by the least observant.When Anstruther had put the last touches to her toilet and paraded her to the others, there was a chorus of enthusiasm.The men no less than the women viewed her with the professional eye.

"Didn't I tell you all?" cried Burlingham, as they looked her up and down like a group of connoisseurs inspecting a statue.

"Wasn't I right?"

"`It is the dawn, and Juliet is the east,'" orated Tempest in rich, romantic tones.