As his voice thus rang out into the silence with all its pathos and its passion, he turned his eyes on the eyes he had so learned to love, and met those orbs, full of delight and of surprise and a patent admiration, fixed upon his face. The rest of the song he sang straight at Gertrude Fordyce, and she looked at the singer, her gaze never swerving. For once his plunging heart in triumph felt he had caught and held her attention; for once, he said to himself, she did not look at him as impersonally as if he were the side of the wall.
It was over at last, and he was bowing his acknowledgments to the wildly applauding audience. The jugglery was at a discount. He had drawn off the white cloth from the flower-pot, where a strongly rooted young oak shoot two feet high appeared to have grown while he sang. But the walls of the room resounded with the turbulent clamors of an insistent encore. Only the eyes of the rustic-looking stranger were starting out of his head as he gazed at the oak shoot, and there came floating softly through his lips the involuntary comment, “By gum!”
It was necessary in common courtesy to sing at least the last stanza again, and as the juggler did so he was almost happy in singing it anew to her starry eyes, and noting the flush on her cheeks, and the surprise and pleasure in her beautiful face. The miracle of the oak shoot went unexplained, for all New Helvetia was still clapping a recall when the juggler, bowing and bowing, with the guitar in his hand, and ever retreating as he bowed, stepped off at one of the wings for instructions, and was met there by renewed acclamations from his fellow entertainers.
“You’d better bring on the play if you don’t want to hold forth here till the small hours,” he said, flushed, and panting, and joyous once more.
But the author-manager was of a different mind. The child of his fancy was dear to him, although it was a very grotesque infant, as indeed it was necessary that it should be. He deprecated submitting it to the criticism of an unwilling audience, still clamoring for the reappearance of another attraction. However, there would not be time enough to respond to this encore, and yet bring the farce on with the deliberation essential to its success, and the effect of all its little points.
“You seem to be the star of the evening,” he said graciously. “And I should like to hear you sing again myself. But we really haven’t time. As they are so delighted with you, suppose, by way of letting them down gently, we give them another sight of you by moving up the basket trick on the programme, instead of letting it come between the second and third acts of the play,—we have had to advance the feat that was to have come between the first and second acts, anyhow,—and have no jugglery between the acts.”
Royce readily agreed, but the manager still hesitated while the house thumped and clapped its recall in great impatience, and a young hobbledehoy slipped slyly upon the stage and facetiously bowed his acknowledgments, with his hand upon his heart, causing spasms of delight among the juvenile contingent and some laughter from the elders.
Said the hesitating manager, unconscious of this interlude, “I don’t half like that basket trick.”
“Why?” demanded the juggler, surprised. “It’s the best thing I can do. And when we rehearsed it, I thought we had it down to a fine point.”
“Yes,” still hesitating, “but I’m afraid it’s dangerous.”