“Well, it’s fact, anyway,” persisted the society monitor. “And there beyond her is fat little Mrs. Stuffenheimer, with her two unlovely, red-faced daughters. Ah, the despairing mamma is still vainly angling for mates for her two chubby Venuses! If they’re not married off properly and into good social positions soon, it’s mamma for the scrap heap! By George! it’s positively tragic to see these anxious mothers at Newport and Atlantic City and other fashionable places, rushing madly hither and yon with their marriageable daughters, dragging them from one function to another in the wild hope that they may ultimately land a man. Worry and pain dig deep furrows into poor mamma’s face if she sees her daughters fading into the has-been class. It requires heroism, I say, to travel in society! But I guess you know, eh? Well,” taking up his notebook, “we must get busy now. By the way, how’s your shorthand progressing?”
“Oh, splendidly,” replied the girl, her eyes still upon the massive figure of Ames. Then, recovering from her abstraction, “I can write as fast in it now as in longhand.”
“Good!” said Haynerd. “You’ll need it later.”
For more than an hour the two sat in the seclusion of the splendid balcony, looking down upon the scene of magnificence below. Through the mind of the young girl ran a ceaseless paean of thanksgiving for her timely deliverance from the trammels which she so well knew enshackled these glittering birds of paradise. With it mingled a great, consuming desire, a soul-longing to pour into the vacuity of high society the leaven of her own pure thought. In particular did her boundless love now go out to that gigantic figure whose ideals of life this sumptuous display of material wealth and power expressed. Why was he doing this? What ulterior motive had he? Was it only a vainglorious exhibition of his own human prowess? Was it an announcement, magnificent beyond compare, that he, J. Wilton Ames, had attained the supreme 48 heights of gratified world ambition? That the world at last lay at his feet? And that over it brooded the giant’s lament that there remained nothing more to conquer? But, if so, the girl at least knew that the man’s herculean efforts to subdue the material world were as nothing. The real conquest lay still before him, the conquest of self. And when that were faced and achieved, well she knew that no such garish display as this would announce the victory to a breathless world.
The bustling little social secretary again appeared, and briefly announced the production of an opera in the auditorium, to which she had come to conduct them. Passing through the little waiting room and to the elevator, they quickly mounted to the unoccupied gallery of the theater above. The parquet, which would seat nearly a thousand spectators, was rapidly filling with an eager, curious throng. The Ames trio and some of the more distinguished guests were already occupying the gorgeously decorated boxes at the sides. An orchestra of fifty pieces was visible in the hollow below the stage. Caroni, the famous grand opera leader, stood ready to conduct. The opera itself was the much discussed music drama, Salome.
“Now,” commented Haynerd to his fair, wondering companion, who was lost in contemplation of the magnificent mural decorations of the little theater, “we will see something rare, for this opera has been called the most artistic piece of indecency known to the stage. Good heavens! Ames has got Marie Deschamps for the title rôle. She’ll cost him not less than five thousand dollars for this one night. And––see here,” drawing Carmen’s attention to the bill, “Marcou and Corvalle besides! The man must be made of money! These stars get three thousand dollars a night during the regular season.”
Every phase of sophistication was manifested in that glittering audience when the curtain rose and the sensational theme was introduced. But to none came thoughts like those which clamored for admittance at the portals of Carmen’s mentality. In the bold challenge of the insanely sensual portrayal of a carnal mind the girl saw the age-old defiance of the spirit by the flesh. In the rolls of the wondrous music, in its shrieks, its pleadings, and its dying echoes, she heard voiced again the soul-lament of a weary world searching vainly in the mazes of human thought for truth. As the wonderful Deschamps danced weirdly before her in the ghastly light and fell gloating over her gory trophy, Carmen saw but the frantic struggles of a diseased soul, portrayed as the skilled surgeon lays bare the malignant growth that is eating the quivering tissues of a human frame. The immodesty of dress, the sensual 49 suggestiveness of the dance, the brutal flouting of every element of refinement and delicacy, blazoned in frenzied tone and movement the bloody orgy and dance of death which goes on incessantly upon the stage of human life, and ends in the mad whirl and confusion and insane gibbering over the lifeless trophies for which mankind sell their very souls.
“About the limit of tolerance, eh?” commented Haynerd, when the final curtain dropped. “Yes, even to a vitiated taste. The passionate thirst for the sensational has led to this sickening display of salacity––”
“Splendid, wasn’t it?” came in tones of admiration from the social secretary, who had returned to conduct her charges back to the balcony before the guests emerged from the theater. “You will run the program in full, and comment at some length on the expense attached,” she went on. “You have just witnessed the private production of a full opera, unabridged, and with the regular operatic cast. Supper will follow in a half hour. Meantime, you will remain in the balcony where you were before.”
Returning to their former position, Carmen sank into a chair at the little table behind the screen, and strove to orient her thought. Haynerd sat down beside her to arrange his voluminous notes. Presently footsteps were heard, and the sound of voices. Haynerd glanced through the hinge of the screen. “Ha!” he whispered, “here comes Ames and––who’s with him? Ah, Representative Wales. Showing him about, I suppose.”