“Yes, this is the young lady, Barry,” said Mrs. Knight, very gravely, as she led her protégé off to her own corner of the common dresser.
“I think she might have sent her down with the ballet girls, as she is really one of them,” grumbled a large, important looking female, arranging a huge turban and curls upon her head, at the farther end of the room. Two new ideas besides that of the common dressing-room and the dressing shelf in general, Zuleime had got—namely, first, that there really was some very lofty notions of rank and exclusiveness even among the members of the stock company of a second rate theatre—secondly, that they really, after all, did not differ much in that or any other respect from people she had met in very high society, except, indeed, that they had the odious habit of calling each other “Knight” or “Barry,” as men do, without a prefix of any sort.
Mrs. Knight dressed herself for her part, as she was to appear in the early scene in the play, and then gave the use of her toilet nook to Zuleime. But the cold walk through the evening air, and the standing in the chilly dressing-room, had so increased her cough, that Mrs. Knight went out and sent a call-boy for opium, and administered a dose. It was under the influence of that stupefier that Zuleime, leaning on the arm of Mrs. Knight, entered that terra-incognita, the green-room. It was a long room, papered, curtained, carpeted, furnished with sofas and easy-chairs, and warmed by a fine coal fire—upon the whole it differed in no other respect than its motley crowd, from a large family parlor. Mrs. Knight conducted her to a corner of the sofa nearest the fire, and leaving her sitting there, obeyed the call-boy’s summons, and went upon the stage. Composed into a dreamy state by the opium, Zuleime sat there while the strange scene, with its fantastical crowd, passed before her like the phantasmagoria of a midnight dream. And all this time Frank sat in the centre box of the front row, not seeing the play enacting before him—not thinking of it, only seeing the turnpike road to L——. Only thinking of the dearest girl in the world, whom he should meet at the end of his journey. Paper walls again!
Zuleime remained in the corner of the sofa near the fire in the green-room, not thinking at all, not even dreaming, only conscious in a vague dreamy way, that a strange vision, changing and changing like figures in the kaleidoscope, was passing before her. She was scarcely aroused by Mrs. Knight’s gentle voice, saying in her ear—
“Come, my dear, it is time for you to go on now. Come, don’t be afraid. Bless you, you are nobody, you know. No one will look at you. You will be only one of a group that forms a sort of back-ground to the scene. Come, I will go with you to the side entrance, where the others stand.”
Zuleime obeyed mechanically, and was led, between various walls of canvas, to a side entrance, at which were grouped a number of persons in villagers’ costume.
“There, just go on with the crowd, and stand there, that is all you have to do,” whispered Mrs. Knight, as she left her.
And at the same moment the group moved on, carrying the somnolent Zuleime with them, and she found herself in a dazzling glare of light, and heard the deafening rant of a stentorian lunged actor near her, and grew painfully conscious of the many hundred eyes upon the scene, upon herself, perhaps—and dared not raise her eyes an instant from the floor, upon which, with a deeply burning cheek, they were fixed. But suddenly an attraction—a fatality—I know not what—but something stronger than her fear, stronger than her will, drew her glance up to the centre box of the front row, and her eyes met Frank’s eyes. Yes, there he sat, gazing at her, astonished, fixed, spell-bound as by a nightmare, without the power of moving or waking. She! she too, gazed for a moment. She was not astonished at seeing him there, any more than she would have been astonished at dreaming of seeing him anywhere. It was all like a wild dream, everything! It seemed not unnatural that he should form a part of it. Only to her weakened and half-stupefied brain, the last, nearest event was the most distinct—and so, strangely, she did not think of his death or life, but only of the reproach she had brought upon him, her proud Frank, in appearing there! and covering her face with both hands, she sank to her knees upon the floor.
It was lucky the drop-curtain fell just then. It was lucky the audience took that by-scene for a part of the play. But to Zuleime it was still like a fever-dream, from which she tried to wake. Like a dream the drop-curtain had rolled down. But not like a dream was the rough seizure of her arm by a girl who set her upon her feet, and said, in a not unfriendly tone—
“What did you do that for? That warn’t a part of your part.”