CHAPTER IV.
IN AN OPERA BOX.
A long and motley line of carriages was slowly arriving at the Auditorium entrance. A surging, gaping crowd was jostling the few policemen on duty and trying to catch a glimpse of the brilliant dresses of the women hurrying into the lobby. Long, furry wraps and covered heads, perhaps a gleam of hidden diamonds, were all they saw; but it was a passing glance into a forbidden, dazzling world. Footmen scurried, doors were slammed, horses stamped, and husky-voiced policemen called out orders to the coachmen. A long awning covered the carpeted walk, and electric lamps shed a brilliant light upon the muffled comers and the eager faces of the waiting crowd. It was not a wan, hungry crowd of starving beggars, such as often surrounds a foreign theater; it was not a silent, wondering crowd; but American-like, it was cheerful and humorous, envious, perhaps, but merry in its envy. It laughed and gibed at every novelty, and its jokes were shared alike by the smart English coachmen and the driver of the antiquated family "carry-all." It was impudent, too, but it was the impudence of the great Republic,—the bold assertion of freedom and prosperity.
In the crowded lobby long lines of people were depositing wraps at the cloak-room windows, some were standing in little groups, and hundreds of others were passing up the grand marble staircase into the hall above; Libretto sellers' cries and the scurrying tread of many feet upon the hard mosaic mingled with the distant strains of music, and scores of glittering lights shone upon the marble walls, and the countless, brilliant dresses of the moving throng. On into the great hall the people went. Five thousand seats were being filled, and, tier above tier, they rose like a section of a Roman theatre. Two rows of boxes lined the sides. Delicate wall tints and carefully toned lights blended softly with pretty faces and many colored gowns. The colors were an artist's work and masterly was it done. Up from the stage rose a mass of faces. An unbroken multitude it was, grand and impressive. Down at the front a little man was frantically leading an army of skilled musicians, whose rhythmical efforts filled the noble audience-room with the overture of Verdi's masterpiece, and as the last note rolled far away, up into the balcony loft, and was lost amid the subdued whisperings and rustling programmes, the lights were dimmed, the stately curtain slowly rose, and ten thousand hands applauded a welcome to the great singer from distant Italy. Thousands of music lovers wonderingly listened to the amazing power and range of Tamagno's voice, hundreds stood at the back of the amphitheatre, and even the little swinging gallery away up in the eaves was crowded with humble enthusiasts. But there were a conspicuous few whose whisperings and laughter mingled with the artist's notes; a few whose bids were highest at the auction sale of boxes, and whose tardy, noisy coming accentuated their social prominence and exasperated every lover of good music and good manners.
Among these was Mrs. Roswell Sanderson, who, with her husband, Florence Moreland, and Mr. Walter Sedger, had just entered a box, in the upper, left-hand tier.
"What a superb audience-room," said Florence Moreland as she put aside her fur-lined cloak and took her opera glass out of its case. "How beautifully it lights up. I don't think I ever saw a finer sight."
"Do you think so, Florence?" replied Marion Sanderson. "To me it is just like everything else Chicago produces, stupendous and gaudy. They have tried to make an opera house, a concert hall and a convention room, and, consequently, have produced a building which is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl."
"What do you mean?" asked Florence.
"I mean that as an opera house it is a woful failure. They have shoved two tiers of boxes off at the sides and have given the entire house up to seats; they have put in a hideous organ where the proscenium boxes ought to be, and have invented all manner of machines for lowering the roof and shutting off the galleries; and as for those miserable little columns holding up that balcony, they are simply ridiculous."
"Marion very seldom admires home productions," Roswell Sanderson interposed.