Shorn of all the glamor that scenic environment, light effects and costume could give them, it was a distinct shock to Agnes to gaze in wondering horror from each one of those amazing faces to the other, and when the cigarette girls trooped out, amazement gave way to downright consternation. Nevertheless, she cheered up considerably, and the apex of her cheerfulness was reached when the oversized Signorina Caravaggio sang, very musically, however, the rôle of the petite and piquant Carmen. It was then that, sitting by Bobby in the darkness, Agnes observed with a sigh of content:
“Your trustee quite approves, Bobby. I don’t mind being absolutely truthful for once in my life. I was a little jealous. But how could I be? Really, their voices are fine.”
Mr. Spratt, too, was of that opinion, and he came back to Bobby to say so most emphatically.
“They’ll do,” said he. “After the first night they’ll have this town crazy. If the seat sale don’t go right for Monday we’ll pack the house with paper, and the rest of the week will go big. Just hear that Ricardo! The little bit of a sawed-off toad sings like a canary. If you don’t look at ’em, they’re great.”
They were superb. From the throats of that ill-favored chorus there came divine harmony, smooth, evenly-balanced, exhilarating, almost flawless, and as the great musical poem of passion unfolded and the magnificent aria of Don José was finished in the second act, the little group of listeners down in front burst into involuntary applause, to which there was but one dissenting voice. This voice, suddenly evolving out of the darkness at Bobby’s side, ejaculated with supreme disgust:
“Well, what do you think of that! Why, that fat little fishworm of a Dago is actually gone bug-house over Miss McGinnis,” a fact which had been obvious to all of them the minute small Ricardo began to sing his wonderful love song to large Caravaggio.
The rest of them had found only amusement in the fact, but to Biff Bates there was nothing funny about this. He sat in speechless disapproval throughout the balance of that much-interrupted performance, wherein Professor Frühlingsvogel, now and then, stopped his music with a crash to shriek an excited direction that it was all wrong, that it was execrable, that it was a misdemeanor, a crime, a murder to sing it in that way! The passage must be all sung over; or, at other times, the gaunt stage director, whose name was Monsieur Noire, would rush with a hoarse howl down to Herr Professor, order him to stop the music, and, turning, berate some unfortunate performer who had defied the conventions of grand opera by acting quite naturally. On the whole, however, it was a very creditable performance, and Bobby’s advisers gave the project their unqualified approval.
“It is really a commendable thing,” Aunt Constance complacently announced, “to encourage music of this order, and to furnish such a degree of cultivation for the masses.”
It was a worthy project indeed. As for the company itself there could be no question that it was a good one. No one expected acting in grand opera, no one expected that the performers would be physically adaptable to their parts. The voice! The voice was all. Even Agnes admitted that it was a splendid thing to be a patron of the fine arts; but Bobby, in his profound new wisdom and his thorough conversion to strictly commercial standards, said with vast iconoclasm:
“You are overlooking the main point. I am not so anxious to become a patron of the fine arts as I am to make money,” with which terrible heresy he left them at home, with a thorough understanding that he was quite justified in his new venture; though next morning, when he confided the fact to Johnson, that worthy, with a sigh, presented him with an appropriate missive from among those in the gray envelopes left in his care by the late John Burnit. It was inscribed: