"The cherries is all right, but green isn't lucky," said Irene.
"Oh, well," said Jenny, "I'll chance it, any old way."
Chapter XIII: The Ballet of Cupid
THE thunderstorm which ruined Jenny's hat destroyed summer. Blowy August twilights began to harass the leaves: darkness came earlier, and people, going home, hurried through the streets where lately they had lingered. Jenny's new green hat with bobbing cherries seemed to have strayed from the heart of a fresher season, and passers-by often turned to regard her as she strolled along Coventry Street toward the Orient. September brought louder winds and skies swollen with rain; but Jenny, rehearsing hard for a new ballet on the verge of production, had no leisure to grumble at chilly dusks and moonless journeys home to Hagworth Street.
The Orient was in a condition of excitement, for the new ballet, like a hundred before it, was expected to eclipse entirely the reputation of its predecessors. Two Ballerinas had arrived from Rome, winter migrants who in their lightness and warmth, would bring to London a thought of Italy. A Premier Danseur, more agile than a Picador, had traveled over from Madrid, and a fiery Maître de Ballet had been persuaded to forsake Milan. Yet the first night of Cupid was hard upon the heels of a theater apparently utterly unprepared for any such date. The master carpenter was wrangling with the electrician. The electrician was insulting the wardrobe-mistress. The wig-maker was talking very rapidly in French to the costumier's draftsman, who was replying equally rapidly in Italian. From time to time the managing director shouted from the back of the Promenade to know the reason for some delay. The new Maître de Ballet, having reduced most of the girls to hysteria by his alarming rages, abused his interpreter for misrepresenting his meaning. The Ballerinas from Rome were quarreling over precedence, and the Spanish Danseur was weeping because the letters of his name were smaller by four inches than those which announced on the playbills the advent of his feminine rivals. The call-boy was losing his youth. Everybody was talking at once, and the musical director was always severely punctual.
When the dress rehearsal lasted eleven hours, everybody connected with the Orient prophesied the doom of Cupid; and yet, on the twenty-first of September, the ballet was produced with truly conspicuous success. The theme was Love triumphant through the ages, from the saffron veils and hymeneal torches and flickering airs of Psyche's chamber, through Arthur's rose-wreathed court and the mimic passions of Versailles, down to modern London transformed by the boy god to a hanging garden of Babylon.
The third scene was a Fête Champêtre after Watteau at sunset. Parterres of lavender and carnations bloomed at the base of statues that gradually disappeared in shadow as the sunset yielded to crimson lanterns. The scene was a harmony of gray and rose and tarnished silver. Love himself wore a vizard, and the dances were very slow and stately. The leisured progress of the scene gave Jenny her first opportunity to scan the audience. She saw a clear-cut face, dead white in the blue haze that hung over the stalls. She was conscious of an interest suddenly aroused, of an interest more profound than anything within her experience. For the first time the width of the orchestra seemed no barrier to intercourse. She felt she had only to lean gently forward from her place in the line to touch that unknown personality. She checked the impulse of greeting, but danced the rest of the movement as she had not danced for many months, with a joyful grace. When the tempo di minuetto had quickened to the pas seul of a Ballerina and the stage was still, Jenny stood far down in the corner nearest to the audience. Here, very close to the blaze of the footlights, the auditorium loomed almost impenetrable to eyes on the stage, but the man in the stalls, as if aware that she had lost him, struck a match. She saw his face flickering and, guided by the orange point of a cigar, whispered to Elsie Crauford, who was standing next to her:
"See that fellow in evening dress in the stalls?"
"Which one?"
"The one with the cigar—now—next to the fat man fanning himself. See? I bet you I get off with him to-night."