And so on for well-nigh a column of adjective-starred panegyric, which waxed more impassioned as the dictionary's supply of unrepeated superlatives waned. This was before the day of the recognized press agent. Folk had a way of believing what they read. Hence the gratifyingly packed theater to witness the mysterious Spaniard's debut.
Royalty itself, surrounded by tired gentlemen in waiting who wanted to sit down and could not, occupied one stage box. In the front of another, lolled Lord Ranelagh, arbiter of London fashion and accepted authority on all matters of taste—whether in dress, dancers, or duels. Ranelagh, recently come back from a tour of the East, divided with royalty the reverent attention of the stalls.
The pit whistled and clapped in merry impatience for the appearance of the danseuse. The West End section of the house waited in equal, if more subdued eagerness, and prepared to follow every possible expression of Ranelagh's large-toothed, side-whiskered visage as a signal for its own approval or censure of the much-advertised Lola's performance.
The first scene of the opera passed almost unnoticed. Then the stage was cleared and a tense hush gripped the house. A fanfare of cornets; and from the wings a supple, dark girl bounded.
A whirlwind of welcome from pit and gallery greeted her. She struck a sensuous pose in the stage's exact center. The cornetists laid aside their instruments.
Guitars and mandolins set up a throbby string overture. Lola drew a deep breath, flashed a vivid Spanish smile on the audience at large, and took the first languid step of her dance.
Then it was that the dutiful signal seekers cast covert looks once more at Lord Ranelagh. That ordinarily stolid nobleman was leaning far forward in his stage box, mouth and eyes wide, staring with incredulous amaze at the posturing Andalusian. Before her first step was complete, Ranelagh's astonishment burst the shackles of silence.
"Gad!" he roared, his excited voice smashing through the soft music and penetrating to every cranny. "Gad! It's little Betty James!"
He broke into a Homeric guffaw. A toady who sat beside him hissed sharply. The hiss and the guffaw were cues quite strong enough for the rest of the house. A sizzling, swishing chorus of hisses went up from the stalls, was caught by the pit, and tossed aloft in swelling crescendo to the gallery, where it was intensified to treble volume.
Lola's artistically made-up face had gone white under its rouge and pearl powder at Ranelagh's shout. Now it flamed crimson. The girl danced on; she was gallant, a thoroughbred to the core—even though she chanced to be thoroughbred Irish instead of thoroughbred Spanish—and she would not be hissed from the stage.