CHAPTER XXI

WHEREIN THE FINE ARTS PRESENT BOBBY WITH A MOST EMBARRa.s.sING DILEMMA

It had become by no means strange to Bobby, even before the company "took the road," that some one of the princ.i.p.als should attach themselves to him in all his possible goings and comings, for each and every one of them had some complaint to make about all the others.

They wanted readjustments of cast, better parts to sing, better dressing-rooms, better hotel quarters, better everything than the others had, and with the unhappy and excited Monsieur Noire he shared this unending strife. At first he saw it all in a humorous light, but, by and by, he came to a period of ennui and tried to rebel. This period gave him more trouble than the other, so within a short time he lapsed into an apathetic complaint-receptacle and dreamed no more of walking or riding to and from the hotel without one of these impulsive children of art, who seethed perpetually in self-prodded artificial emotions, attached to him. If it seemed strange at times that Madam Villenauve was more frequently with him than any of the others he only reflected that the vivacious little Frenchwoman was much more persistent; nor did he note that, presently, the others came rather to give way before her and to let her monopolize him more and more.

It was during the third week that Professor Fruhlingsvogel was to endure another birthday, and Bobby, full of generous impulses as always, announced at rehearsal that in honor of the Professor's unwelcome milestone he intended to give a little supper that night at the hotel. Madam Villenauve, standing beside him, suddenly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him smack upon the lips, with a quite enthusiastic declaration, in very charmingly warped English, that he was "a dear old sing." Bobby, reverting quickly in mind to the fact of the extreme unconventionally of these people, took the occurrence quite as a matter of course, though it embarra.s.sed him somewhat. He rather counted himself a prig that he could not sooner get over this habit of embarra.s.sment, and every time Madam Villenauve insisted on calling him into her dressing-room when she was in much more of dishabille than he would have thought permissible in ordinary people, he felt that same painful lack of sophistication.

At the supper that night, Madam Villenauve, with a great show of playful indignation, routed Madam Kadanoff from her accidental seat next to Bobby, and, in giving up the seat, which she did quite gracefully enough, Madam Kadanoff dropped some remark in choice Russian, which, of course, Bobby did not understand, but which Madam Villenauve did, for she laughed a little shrilly and, with an engaging upward smile at Bobby, observed:

"I theenk I shall say it zat zees so chairming Monsieur Burnit is soon to marry wiz me; ees eet not, monsieur?"

Whereupon Bobby, with his customary courtesy, replied:

"No gentleman would care to deny such a charming and attractive possibility, Madam Villenauve."

But the gracious speech was of the lips alone, and spoken with a warning glare against "kidding" at the grinning Biff Bates, who had found business of urgent importance for that night in the city where the company was booked. Bobby, in fact, had begun to tire very much of the whole business. To begin with, he found the organization a much more expensive one to keep up than he had imagined. The route, badly laid out, was one of tremendous long jumps; of his singers, like other rare and expensive creatures, extravagant care must be taken, and not every place that they stopped was so eager for grand opera as it might have been. At the end of three weeks he was able to compute that he had lost about a thousand dollars a week, and in the fourth week they struck an engagement so fruitless that even the cheerful Caravaggio became dismal.

"It's a sure enough frost," she confided to Bobby; "but cheer up, for the worst is yet to come. Your route sheet for the next two months looks like a morgue to me, and unless you interpolate a few c.o.o.n songs in _Tannhauser_ and some song and dance specialties between the acts of _Les Huguenots_ you're gone. You know I used to sing this route in musical comedy, and, on the level, I've got a fine part waiting for me right now in _The Giddy Queen_. I like this highbrow music all right, but the people that come to hear it make me so sad. You're a good sport, though, and as long as you need me I'll stick."

"Thanks," said Bobby sincerely. "It's a pleasure to speak to a real human being once in a while, even if you don't offer any encouragement. However, we'll not be buried till we're dead, notwithstanding that we now enter upon the graveyard route."

Doleful experience, however, confirmed the Caravaggio's gloomy prophecy. They embarked now upon a season of one and two and three night stands that gave Bobby more of the real discomforts of life than he had ever before dreamed possible. To close a performance at eleven, to pack and hurry for a twelve-thirty train, to ride until five o'clock in the morning--a distance too short for sleep and too long to stay awake--to tumble into a hotel at six and sleep until noon, this was one program; to close a performance at eleven, to wait up for a four-o'clock train, to ride until eight and get into a hotel at nine, with a vitally necessary rehearsal between that and the evening performance, was another program, either one of which wore on health and temper and purse alike. The losses now exceeded two thousand dollars a week. Moreover, the frequent visits of Biff Bates and his constant baiting of Signor Ricardo had driven that great tenor to such a point of distraction that one night, being near New York, he drew his pay and departed without notice. There was no use, in spite of Monsieur Noire's frantic insistence, in trying to make the public believe that the lank Dulceo was the fat Ricardo; moreover, immediately upon his arrival in New York, Signor Ricardo let it be known that he had left the Neapolitan Company, so the prestige of the company fell off at once, for the "country" press pays sharp attention to these things.

A letter from Johnson at just this time also had its influence upon Bobby, who now was in an humble, not an antagonistic mood, and quite ripe for advice. Mr. Johnson had just conferred with Mr. Bates upon his return from a visit to the Neapolitan Company, and Mr. Bates had detailed to Mr. Johnson much that he had seen with his own eyes, and much that the Caravaggio had told him. Mr. Johnson, thereupon, begging pardon for the presumption, deemed this a fitting time, from what he had heard, to forward Bobby the inclosed letter, which, in its gray envelope, had been left behind by Bobby's father:

_To My Son in the Midst of a Losing Fight_

"Determination is a magnificent quality, but bullheadedness is not. The most foolish kind of pride on earth is that which makes a man refuse to acknowledge himself beaten when he is beaten. It takes a pretty brave man, and one with good stuff in him, to let all his friends know that he's been licked.

Figure this out."

Bobby wrestled with that letter all night. In the morning he received one from Agnes which served to increase and intensify the feeling of homesickness that had been overwhelming him. She, too, had seen Biff Bates. She had asked him out to the house expressly to talk with him, but she had written a pleasant, cheerful letter wherein she hoped that the end of the season would repay the losses she understood that he was enduring; but she admitted that she was very lonesome without him.

She gave him quite a budget of gay gossip concerning all the young people of his set, and after he had read that letter he was quite prepared to swallow his grit and make the announcement that for a week had been almost upon his tongue.

Through Monsieur Noire, at rehearsal that afternoon, he declared his intention of closing the season, and offered them each two weeks'

advance pay and their fare to New York. It was Signorina Caravaggio who broke the hush that followed this announcement.

"You're a good sort, Bobby Burnit," she said, with kindly intent to lead the others, "and I'll take your offer and thank you."

It appeared that the majority of them had dreaded some such denouement as this; some had been prepared for even less advantageous terms, and several, upon direct inquiry, announced their willingness to accept this proposal. A few declared their intention to hold him for the full contract. These were the ones who had made sure of his entire solvency, and these afterward swayed the balance of the company to a stand which won a better compromise. When Monsieur Noire, with a curious smile, asked Madam Villenauve, however, she laughed very pleasantly.

"Oh, non," said she; "it does not apply, zis offair, to me. I do not need it, for Monsieur Burnit ees to marry wiz me zis Christmastam."

"I am afraid, Madam Villenauve, that we will have to quit joking about that," said Bobby coldly.

"Joking!" screamed the shrill voice of madam. "Eet ees not any joke.

You can not fool wiz me, Monsieur Burnit. You mean to tell all zese people zat you are not to marry wiz me?"

"I certainly have no intention of the kind," said Bobby impatiently, "nor have I ever expressed such an intention."

"We s'all see about zat," declared the madam with righteous indignation. "We s'all see how you can amuse yourself. You refuse to keep your word zat you marry me? All right zen, you do! I bring suit to-day for brich promise, and I have here one, two, three, a dozen weetness. I make what you call subpoena on zem all. We s'all see."

"Monsieur Noire," said Bobby, more sick and sore than panic-stricken, "you will please settle matters with all these people and come to me at the hotel for whatever checks you need," and, hurt beyond measure at this one more instance that there were, really, rapacious schemers in the world, who sought loathsome advantage at the expense of decent folk, Bobby crept away, to hide himself and try to understand.

They were here for the latter half of the week, and, since business seemed to be fairly good, Bobby had decided to fill this engagement, canceling all others. In the morning it seemed that Madam Villenauve had been in earnest in her absurd intentions, for, in his room, at eleven o'clock, he was served with papers in the breach-of-promise suit of Villenauve _versus_ Burnit, and the amount of damages claimed was the tremendous sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, an amount, of course, only commensurate with Madam Villenauve's standing in the profession and her earning capacity as an artist, her pride and shattered feelings and the dashing to earth of her love's young dream being of corresponding value. Moreover, he learned that an injunction had been issued completely tying up his bank account. That was the parting blow. Settling up with the performers upon a blood-letting basis, he most ignominiously fled. Before he went away, however, Signorina Nora McGinnis Caravaggio called him to one side and confided a most delicate message to him.

"Your friend, Mr. Bates," she began with an embarra.s.sed hesitation quite unusual in the direct Irish girl; "he's a nice boy, from the ground up, and give him an easy word from me. But, Mr. Burnit, give him a hint not to do any more traveling on my account; for I've got a husband back in New York that ain't worth the rat poison to put him out of his misery, but I'm not getting any divorces. One mistake is enough. But don't be too hard on me when you tell Biff. Honest, up to just the last, I thought he'd come only to see you; but I enjoyed his visits." And in the eyes of the Caravaggio there stood real tears.

A newsboy met Bobby on the train with the morning papers from home, and in them he read delightfully flavored and spiced accounts of the great Villenauve breach-of-promise case, embellished with many details that were entirely new to him. He had not counted on this phase of the matter, and it struck him almost as with an ague. The notoriety, the askance looks he would receive from his more conservative acquaintances, the "ragging" he would get at his clubs, all these he could stand. But Agnes! How could he ever face her? How would she receive him? From the train he took a cab directly home and buried himself there to think it all over. He spent a morning of intense dejection and an afternoon of the utmost misery. In the evening, not caring to dine in solitary gloom at home nor to appear yet among his fellows, he went out to an obscure restaurant in the neighborhood and ate his dinner, then came back again to his lonely room, seeing nothing ahead of him but an evening of melancholy alone. His butler, however, met him in the hall on his return.

"Miss Elliston called up on the 'phone while you were out, sir."

"Did you tell her I was at home?" asked Bobby with quick apprehension.

"Yes, sir; you hadn't told me not to do so, sir; and she left word that you were to come straight out to the house as soon as you came in."

"Very well," said Bobby, and went into the library.

He sat down before the telephone and rested his hand upon the receiver for perhaps as much as five long minutes of hesitation, then abruptly he turned away from that unsatisfactory means of communication and had his car ordered; then hurriedly changed to the evening clothes he had not intended to don that night.

In most uncertain antic.i.p.ation, but quite sure of the most vigorous "blowing up" of his career, he whirled out to the home of the Ellistons and ascended the steps. The ring at the bell brought the ever imperturbable Wilkins, who nodded gravely upon seeing that it was Bobby and, relieving him of his coat and hat, told him:

"Right up to the Turkish room, sir."

There seemed a strange quietness about the house, and he felt more and more as if he might be approaching a sentence as he climbed the silent stairs. At the door of the Turkish room, however, Agnes met him with outstretched hands and a smile of welcome which bore traces of quite too much amus.e.m.e.nt for his entire comfort. When she had drawn him within the big alcove she laughed aloud, a light laugh in which there was no possible trace of resentment, and it lifted from his mind the load that had been oppressing it all day long.

"I'm afraid you haven't heard," he began awkwardly.

"Heard!" she repeated, and laughed again. "Why, Bobby, I read all the morning papers and all the evening papers, and I presume there will be excellent reading in every one of them for days and days to come."

"And you're not angry?" he said, astounded.

"Angry!" she laughed. "Why, you poor Bobby. I remember this Madam Villenauve perfectly, besides seeing her ten-years-ago pictures in the papers, and you don't suppose for a minute that I could be jealous of her, do you? Moreover, I can prove by Aunt Constance and Uncle Dan that I predicted just this very thing when you first insisted upon going on the road."

He looked around, dreading the keen satire of Uncle Dan and the incisive ridicule of Aunt Constance, but she relieved his mind of that fear.

"We were all invited out to dinner to-night, but I refused to go, for really I wanted to soften the blow for you. There is n.o.body in the house but myself and the servants. Now, do behave, Bobby! Wait a minute, sir! I've something else to crush you with. Have you seen the evening papers?"

No; the morning papers had been enough for him.

"Well, I'll tell you what they are doing. The Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company has secured an order from the city council compelling the Brightlight Electric Company to remove their poles from Market Street."

Bobby caught his breath sharply. Stone and Sharpe and Garland, the political manipulators of the city, and its owners, lock, stock and barrel were responsible for this. They had taken advantage of his absence.

"What a fool I have been," he bitterly confessed, "to have taken up with this entirely irregular and idiotic enterprise, a venture of which I knew nothing whatever, and let go the serious fight I had intended to make on Stone and his crowd."