The siege had already begun when Mrs. Baker came to my room the morning after the Opera, but I knew nothing about it. I couldn't understand why she scolded with such vehemence upon finding me writing in this little book instead of lying in bed; why she exclaimed so nervously over my escape and the horrors of jumping from windows, or sliding down ropes, or of being hurried along in fire panics until I was crushed to death.
"Why, you talk as if there had been a fire," I cried, kissing her.
Millions of fires have flamed and roared and sunk and died again; but never before has there been a Me!
The dear fussy little woman said that John had been telephoning inquiries. I could see that she wished to keep me in my room, and finally, at some laboured excuse for withholding the morning papers, I understood that she and John were hiding something; she is so transparent!
"You must be calm, Nelly, dear; you mustn't excite yourself," she chirped anxiously.
"Unless I see the papers, I shall have a fever, a high fever," I threatened; "I must—oh, I must see every word about last evening!"
At last the Record and the Messenger came upstairs already opened to the critiques of the new opera. Mrs. Baker wished to read aloud, but I almost snatched the papers from her; my eyes couldn't go fast enough down the columns. But in neither sheet did I find more than a reference to a "senseless alarm" that marred the rendition of "Christofero."
My cheeks flamed with annoyance. It was the reporters who were senseless; they had seen men adoring the wonder of this century, and had not flashed news of it—of me—to all the world!
Aunt couldn't understand. She thought to comfort me by saying that my share in the disturbance would never be suspected; she unblushingly averred that no one had seen me; she begged me to rest, to forget my fright, not to be distressed by the newspapers.
Distressed? Not I! Events had been too startling for me to heed the stupidity that whined over missing a few bars of a silly overture when I was in sight. Indeed I had been frightened; yet why should not the world demand to look upon me? I thought only of hurrying to Prof. Darmstetter that he might share my triumph. But Aunt wouldn't hear of my leaving the house; scarcely of my coming down stairs. Fluttering into my room she would bring me some fruit, a novel; then she would trot away again with an air of preoccupation.