Berny, frowning and abstracted, was standing with the note in her hand when Dominick opened the hall door and came up the stairs. His eye casually fell on the square of paper, but he asked no question about it, hardly seemed to see it. Yet her state of suspicion was so sensitively active that his lack of interest seemed fraught with meaning, and pushing the letter back into its envelope she remarked that it was a note from her dressmaker. Even the fact that his answer was an indifferent, barely-articulated sound seemed significant to her, and she took the letter into her bedroom and hid it in her handkerchief box, as though her husband, instead of being the least, was the most curious and jealous of men.
CHAPTER XVIII
BUFORD’S GOOD LUCK
In his “Klondike Monologue” at the Orpheum, Buford, the actor, made a sudden and unexpected hit. The morning after his first appearance, both Dominick and Berny read in the paper eulogistic notices of the new star. Dominick was particularly interested. He remembered Buford’s state of worry while at Antelope and was glad to see that the unlucky player was, in the parlance of his own world, “making good.”
The evening papers contained more laudatory paragraphs. Buford’s act was spoken of with an enthusiasm which taxed the vocabulary of the writers who found that the phrases they had been using to describe the regular vaudeville performances were not adequate for so sparkling an occasion.
It was a rambling monologue of mining-camp anecdotes, recollections, and experiences, delivered with confidential, simple seriousness. Buford’s appearance in an immense, fur-lined overcoat with buttons made of gold nuggets and a voluminous fur cap on his head, was given the last touch of grotesqueness by a tiny tinsel spangle fastened on the end of his nose. This adornment, on his entrance hardly noticeable, was soon the focusing point of every eye. It looked as if it grew on its prominent perch, and as he spoke, a slight, vibrating movement, which he imparted to that portion of his visage, made the tinsel send out continuous, uneasy gleams. The more serious his discourse was and the more portentously solemn his face, the more glimmeringly active was the spangle, and the more hysterically unrestrained became the laughter of the audience. Altogether, Buford had made a success. Three days after his first appearance, people were talking about “The Klondike Monologue” as a few weeks before they had been talking about the last play of Pinero’s as presented by a New York company.
From what Buford had told him, Dominick knew that the actor’s luck had been bad, and that the period of imprisonment at Antelope was a last, crowning misfortune. Through it he feared that he had forfeited his Sacramento engagement, and the young man had a painful memory of the long jeremiad that Buford, in his anxiety and affliction, had poured out to himself and Rose Cannon. That the actor was evidently emerging from his ill fortune was gratifying to Dominick, who, in the close propinquity forced upon them by the restricted quarters of Perley’s Hotel, had grown to like and pity the kindly, foolish and impractical man.
Now, from what he heard, Buford’s hard times should be at an end. Such a hit as he had made should give him the required upward impetus. Men Dominick knew, who had theatrical affiliations, told him that Buford was “made.” The actor could now command a good salary on any of the vaudeville circuits in the country, and if “he had it in him” he might ascend the ladder toward the heights of legitimate comedy. His humorous talent was unique and brilliant. It was odd, considering his age, that it had not been discovered sooner.
Berny was very anxious to see him. Hazel and Josh had seen him on one of the first evenings and pronounced him “simply great.” She extorted a promise from Dominick that, at the earliest opportunity, he would buy tickets for her, and, if he could not accompany her himself, she could go with one of her sisters. Dominick did not want to go. He had no desire to see Buford and be reminded of the three weeks’ dream which had interrupted the waking miseries of his life, and more than that he hated, secretly and intensely, sitting beside Berny, talking to her and listening to her talk, during the three hours of the performance. The horrible falseness of it, the appearance of intimacy with a woman toward whom he only felt a cold aversion, the close proximity of her body which he disliked, even accidentally, to brush against, made him shrink from the thought as from the perpetration of some mean and repulsive deception.
He stopped to buy the tickets one midday on his way to lunch. He made up his mind to buy three, then Berny could either take her two sisters, or Hazel and Josh, whose craving for the theater was an unassuageable passion. The good seats were sold out for days ahead and he had to be content with three orchestra chairs for an evening at the end of the following week. He was turning from the ticket office window when a sonorous voice at his elbow arrested him:
“Mr. Ryan,” it boomed out, “do I see you at last? Ever since my arrival in the city I have hoped for the opportunity of renewing our acquaintance.”