"Purely as my trustee," he explained, "Agnes must inspect my new business venture."

Aunt Constance smiled.

"The trusteeship of Agnes hasn't done you very much good so far," she observed. "As a matter of fact, if she wanted to build up a reputation as an expert trustee, I don't think she could accomplish much by printing in her circulars the details of her past stewardship."

"I don't want her to work up a reputation as a trustee," retorted Bobby. "She suits me just as she is, and I'm inclined to thank the governor for having loaded her down with the job."

"I'm becoming reconciled to it myself," admitted Agnes, smiling up at him. "Really, I have great faith that one day you will learn how to take care of money--if the money holds out that long. What is the new venture, Bobby?"

He grinned quite cheerfully.

"I am about to become an angel," he said quite solemnly.

Aunt Constance shook her head.

"No, Bobby," she said kindly; "there _are_ spots, you know, where angels fear to tread."

But Agnes took the declaration with no levity whatever.

"You don't mean in a theatrical sense?" she inquired.

"_In_ a theatrical sense," he insisted. "I am about to back the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company."

"Why, Bobby!" objected Agnes, aghast. "You surely don't mean it! I never thought you would contemplate anything so preposterous as that.

I thought it was to be only a benefit!"

"It's only a temporary arrangement," he rea.s.sured her, laughing that he had been taken so seriously. "I'm arranging so that they can earn their way out of town; that's all. I am taking you down now to see their first rehearsal."

"I don't care to go," she declared, in a tone so piqued that Bobby turned to her in mute astonishment.

Aunt Constance laughed at his look of utter perplexity.

"How little you understand, Bobby," she said. "Don't you see that Agnes is merely jealous?"

"Indeed not!" Agnes indignantly denied. "That is an idea more absurd than the fact that Bobby should go into such an enterprise at all.

However, since I lay myself open to such a suspicion I shall offer no further objection to going."

Bobby looked at her curiously and then he carefully refrained from chuckling, for Aunt Constance, though joking, had told the truth.

Instant visions of dazzling sopranos, of mezzos and contraltos, of angelic voices and of vast beauty and exquisite gowning, had flashed in appalling procession before her mental vision. The idea, in the face of the appalling actuality, was so rich that Bobby pursued it no further lest he spoil it, and talked about the weather and equally inane topics the rest of the way.

It was not until they had turned into the narrow alley at the side of the Orpheum, and from that to the still more narrow alley at its rear, that the zest of adventure began to make amends to Agnes for certain disagreeable moments of the ride. At the stage door a particularly bewildered-looking man with a rolling eye and a weak jaw, rendered limp and helpless by the polyglot aliens who had flocked upon him, strickenly let them in, to grope their way, amid what seemed an inextricable confusion, but was in reality the perfection of orderliness, upon the dim stage, beyond which stretched, in vast emptiness, the big, black auditorium. Upon the stage, chattering in shrill voices, were the forty members of the company, still in their queer clothing, while down in front, where shaded lights--seeming dull and discouraged amid all the surrounding darkness--streamed upon the music, were the members of the orchestra, chattering just as volubly.

The general note was quite different in pitch from the one Bobby had heard that morning, for since he had seen them the members of the organization had been fed, and life looked cheerful.

Wandering at a loss among these people, and trying in the dim twilight to find some face that he knew, the ears of Bobby and his party were suddenly a.s.sailed by an extremely harsh and penetrating voice which shouted:

"Clear!"

This was accompanied by a sharp clap from a pair of very broad hands.

The chattering suddenly took on a rapid crescendo, ascending a full third in the scale and then dying abruptly in a little high falsetto shriek; and Bobby, with a lady upon either arm, found his little trio immediately alone in the center of the stage, a row of dim footlights cutting off effectually any view into the vast emptiness of the auditorium.

"Hey, you; _clear_!" came the harsh voice again, accompanied by another sharp clap of the hands, and a bundle of intense fighting energy bounced out from the right tormentor wing, in the shape of a gaunt, fiercely-mustached and entirely bald man of about forty-five, who appeared perpetually to be in the last stages of distraction.

"Who do you weesh to see?" demanded the gaunt man, in a very decided foreign accent. He had made a very evident attempt to be quite polite indeed, and forgiving of people who did not know enough to spring for the wings at the sound of that magic word, "Clear!"

Any explanations that Bobby might have tried to make were happily prevented by a voice from the yawning blackness--a quiet voice, a voice of authority, the voice of Mr. Spratt.

"Come right down in front here, Burnit. Jimmy, show the gentleman how to get down."

"Thees way," snapped the gaunt man, with evident relief but no abatement whatever of his briskness, and he very hastily walked over to the right wings, where Jimmy, the house electrician, piloted the trio with equal relief through the cl.u.s.tered ma.s.s of singers to the door behind the boxes. As they emerged into the auditorium the raucous voice of the gaunt man was heard to shout: "All ready now. _Carmen_ all ze way through." An apparent repet.i.tion of which statement he immediately made with equal raucousness in two or three languages.

There was a call to Caravaggio in English, to Ricardo and the Signers Fivizzano and Rivaroli in Italian, to Messrs. Philippi and Schaerbeeken in Spanish and Dutch, to Madam Villenauve in French, to Madam Kadanoff in Russian, and to Mademoiselle Torok in Hungarian, to know if they were ready; then, in rough but effective German, he informed the Herr Professor down in the orchestra that all was prepared, clapped his hands, cried "Overture," and immediately plunged to the right upper entrance, marked by two chairs, where, with shrill objurgations, he began instructing and drilling the Soldiers' Chorus out of certain remembered awkwardnesses, as Herr Fruhlingsvogel's baton fell for the overture.

Shorn of all the glamor that scenic environment, light effects and costume could give them, it was a distinct shock to Agnes to gaze in wondering horror from each one of those amazing faces to the other, and when the cigarette girls trooped out, amazement gave way to downright consternation. Nevertheless, she cheered up considerably, and the apex of her cheerfulness was reached when the oversized Signorina Caravaggio sang, very musically, however, the role of the pet.i.te and piquant Carmen. It was then that, sitting by Bobby in the darkness, Agnes observed with a sigh of content:

"Your trustee quite approves, Bobby. I don't mind being absolutely truthful for once in my life. I _was_ a little jealous. But how could I be? Really, their voices are fine."

Mr. Spratt, too, was of that opinion, and he came back to Bobby to say so most emphatically.

"They'll do," said he. "After the first night they'll have this town crazy. If the seat sale don't go right for Monday we'll pack the house with paper, and the rest of the week will go big. Just hear that Ricardo! The little bit of a sawed-off toad sings like a canary. If you don't look at 'em, they're great."

They _were_ superb. From the throats of that ill-favored chorus there came divine harmony, smooth, evenly-balanced, exhilarating, almost flawless, and as the great musical poem of pa.s.sion unfolded and the magnificent aria of Don Jose was finished in the second act, the little group of listeners down in front burst into involuntary applause, to which there was but one dissenting voice. This voice, suddenly evolving out of the darkness at Bobby's side, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with supreme disgust:

"Well, what do you think of that! Why, that fat little fishworm of a Dago is actually gone bug-house over Miss McGinnis," a fact which had been obvious to all of them the minute small Ricardo began to sing his wonderful love song to large Caravaggio.

The rest of them had found only amus.e.m.e.nt in the fact, but to Biff Bates there was nothing funny about this. He sat in speechless disapproval throughout the balance of that much-interrupted performance, wherein Professor Fruhlingsvogel, now and then, stopped his music with a crash to shriek an excited direction that it was all wrong, that it was execrable, that it was a misdemeanor, a crime, a murder to sing it in that way! The pa.s.sage must be all sung over; or, at other times, the gaunt stage director, whose name was Monsieur Noire, would rush with a hoa.r.s.e howl down to Herr Professor, order him to stop the music, and, turning, berate some unfortunate performer who had defied the conventions of grand opera by acting quite naturally.

On the whole, however, it was a very creditable performance, and Bobby's advisers gave the project their unqualified approval.

"It is really a commendable thing," Aunt Constance complacently announced, "to encourage music of this order, and to furnish such a degree of cultivation for the ma.s.ses."

It was a worthy project indeed. As for the company itself there could be no question that it was a good one. No one expected acting in grand opera, no one expected that the performers would be physically adaptable to their parts. The voice! The voice was all. Even Agnes admitted that it was a splendid thing to be a patron of the fine arts; but Bobby, in his profound new wisdom and his thorough conversion to strictly commercial standards, said with vast iconoclasm:

"You are overlooking the main point. I am not so anxious to become a patron of the fine arts as I am to make money," with which terrible heresy he left them at home, with a thorough understanding that he was quite justified in his new venture; though next morning, when he confided the fact to Johnson, that worthy, with a sigh, presented him with an appropriate missive from among those in the gray envelopes left in his care by the late John Burnit. It was inscribed:

_To My Son Robert, Upon His Deciding to Back a Theatrical Venture_

"Sooner or later, every man thinks it would be a fine thing to run a show, and the earlier in life it happens the sooner a man will have it out of his system. I tried it once myself, and I know. So good luck to you, my boy, and here's hoping that you don't get stung too badly."

CHAPTER XX

STILL WITH THE RELUCTANT CONSENT OF AGNES, BOBBY INVESTS IN THE FINE ARTS

That week's "season of grand opera" was an unqualified success, following closely the lines laid down by the experienced Mr. Spratt.

Caravaggio and Ricardo and Philippi and Villenauve became household words, after the Monday night performance of _Carmen_, and for the balance of the week shining carriages rolled up to the entrance of the Orpheum, disgorging load after load of high-hatted gentlemen and long-plumed ladies. Before the end of the engagement it was definitely known that Bobby's investment would yield a profit, even deducting for the days of idleness during which he had been compelled to support the rehearsing company. The powers of darkness thereupon set vigorously to work upon him to carry the company on through the rest of its season.

It was then that the storm broke. Against his going further with the company Agnes Elliston interposed an objection so decided and so unflattering that the _entente cordiale_ at the Elliston home was strained dangerously near to the breaking point, and in this she was aided and abetted by Aunt Constance, who ridiculed him, and by Uncle Dan Elliston, who took him confidentially for a grave and hardheaded remonstrance. Chalmers, Johnson, and even Applerod wrestled with him in spirit; his friends at the Idlers' Club "guyed" him unmercifully, and even Biff Bates, though his support was earnestly sought by the Signorina Caravaggio, also counseled him roughly against it, and through it all Bobby was made to feel that he was a small boy who had proposed to eat a peck of green apples and then go in swimming in dog-days. Another note from his father, handed to him by the faithful and worried Johnson, was the deciding straw: