Agnes, though defending him against his father, was still reluctant about the trip, but suddenly, with a curious smile, she withdrew all objections and even urged him to go ahead.
“Bobby,” said she, still with that curious smile and strangely shining eyes, and putting both her hands upon his shoulders, “I see that you must go ahead with this. I—I guess it will be good for you. Somehow, I think that this is to be your last folly, that you are really learning that the world is not all polo and honor-bets. So go ahead—and I’ll wait here.”
He could not know how much that hurt her. He only knew, after she had talked more lightly of his trip, that he had her full and free consent, and, highly elated with his first successful business venture, he took up the contracts of the Neapolitan Grand Opera Company where Signor Matteo, the decamped manager and producer, had dropped them. The members of the company having attached the scenery and effects for back salaries, sold them to Bobby for ten thousand dollars, and he immediately found himself confronted by demands for settlements, with the alternative of damage suits, from the two cities in which the company had been booked for the two past weeks.
Had Bobby not bound himself irrevocably to contracts which made him liable for the salaries of every member of this company for the next twenty weeks, he would have withdrawn instantly at the first hint of these suits; but, now that he was in for it, he promptly compromised them at a rate which made Spratt furious.
“If I’d thought,” said Spratt angrily in the privacy of the Orpheum office, “that you were sucker enough to get roped in for the full season, I’d have tossed you out of the running for this week. This game is a bigger gamble than the Stock Exchange. The smartest producers in the business never know when they have a winner or a loser. More than that, while all actors are hard to handle, of all the combinations on earth, a grand opera company is the worst. I’ll bet a couple of cold bottles that before you’re a week on the road you’ll have leaks in your dirigible over some crazy dramatic stunts that are not in the book of any opera of the Neapolitan repertoire.”
The prediction was so true that it was proved that very night, which was Friday, during the repetition of Carmen. It seemed that Biff Bates, by means of the supreme dominance of the Caravaggio, had been made free of the stage, a rare privilege, and one that enabled Biff to spend his time, under unusual and romantic circumstances, very much in the company of the Celtic Signorina; all of which was very much to the annoyance, distress and fury of Signor Ricardo, especially on Carmen night. At all other times the great Ricardo thought very well indeed of the Signorina Nora, only being in any degree near to unfaithfulness when, on Aïda nights, he sang to vivacious little Madam Villenauve; but on Carmen nights he was devotedly, passionately, madly in love with the divine Car-r-r-r-avaggio! Else how could he sing the magnificent second act aria? Life without her on those nights would be a hollow mockery, the glance of any possible rival in her direction a desecration. Why, he even had to restrain himself to keep from doing actual damage to Philippi, who, though on the shady side of forty-five, still sang a most dashing Escamillo; nor was his jealousy less poignant because Philippi and Caravaggio were sworn enemies.
Thus it may be understood—by any one, at least, who has ever loved ecstatically and fervidly and even hectically, like the great Ricardo—how on Monday and Wednesday nights and the Thursday matinée, all of which were Caravaggio performances, he resented Biff’s presence. From dark corners he more darkly watched them chatting in frank enjoyment of each other’s company; he made unexpected darts in front of their very eyes to greet them with the most alarming scowls; and because he insolently brushed the shoulder of the peaceably inclined and self-sure Biff upon divers occasions, and Biff made no sign of resentment, he imagined that Biff trembled in his boots whenever he noted the approach of the redoubtable Ricardo with his infinitesimal but ferocious mustachios. Great, then, was his wonder, to say nothing of his rage, when Biff, after all the scowls and shoulderings that he had received on Thursday, actually came around for Friday night’s Carmen performance!
Even before the fierce Ricardo had gone into his dressing-room he was already taking upon himself the deadly character of Don José, and his face surged red with fury when he saw Biff Bates, gaily laughing as if no doom impended, come in at the stage door with the equally gay and care-free Caravaggio. But after Signor Ricardo had donned the costume and the desperateness of the brigadier Don José—it was then that the fury sank into his soul! And that fury boiled and seethed as, during the first and second acts, he found in the wings Signorina Car-r-r-r-r-r-avaggio absorbed in pleasant but very significant chat with his deadly enemy, the crude, unmusical, inartistic, soulless Biffo de Bates-s-s-s! But, ah! There was another act to come, the third act, at the beginning of which the property man handed him the long, sharp, wicked-looking, bloodthirsty knife with which he was to fight Escamillo, and with which in the fourth act he was to kill Carmen. The mere possession of that knife wrought the great tenor’s soul to gory tragedy; so much so that immediately after the third act curtain calls he rushed directly to the spot where he knew the contemptible Signor Biffo de Bates-s-s-s to be standing, and with shrill Latin imprecations flourished that keen, glistening blade before the eyes of the very much astounded Biff.
For a moment, thoroughly incredulous, Biff refused to believe it, until a second demonstration compelled him to acknowledge that the great Ricardo actually meant threatening things toward himself. When this conviction forced its way upon him, Biff calmly reached out, and, with a grip very much like a bear-trap, seized Signor Ricardo by the forearm of the hand which held the knife. With his unengaged hand Biff then smacked the Signor Ricardo right severely on the wrist.
“You don’t mean it, you know, Sig-nor Garlic,” he calmly observed. “If I thought you did I’d smack you on both wrists. Why, you little red balloon, I ain’t afraid of any mutt on earth that carries a knife like that, as long as I got my back to the wall.”