Suddenly, as the line in front swayed, then broke and shifted, he caught sight of a tall blonde who had been fastened to it like the tail on a kite. She wasn’t quite as wide as the rest of the bunch, but there was something about her that attracted his immediate attention.
And here you see again the delicate tracery of the Italian hand of fate—that invisible, indefinite thing which stands always at our backs ready to move us here and there, like chessmen on a board, whether we like it or not. The male human pats himself on his shoulder and congratulates himself that he has a will and a mind of his own, but ever near him is that wraith which directs his movements, making him do this or that and go here and there. There is no force, no threat and no cajoling; it is simpler than a twist of the wrist, and the end of that winding, twisting, intersected road, with its hundreds of sharp turns here and there and its joys and sorrows, is the grave.
So look at the boy with good red blood in his veins, with a gentle, high-bred mother, a beautiful sister, and a home in which there was nothing but refining influences, sitting bolt upright now in that cheap theatre seat and gazing like one bewitched at this girl with the yellow hair, bleached to almost a frazzle, and the pale, watery blue eyes, with no figure at all and absolutely no talent, produced and spit forth from a tenement to grow up in the city’s streets like a weed to finally reach the most ordinary position in a most ordinary theatrical company, where, standing on the lowest possible level, she was satisfied. Paint, powder and rouge made her a ghastly sight, but in his eyes she was framed in an aureole and was as beautiful as a Madonna.
It was one of the things that no human being will ever be able to account for satisfactorily. Personal magnetism undoubtedly plays a part in it, as it does in many other things, but you wouldn’t think a young fellow like this would go so far out of his class unless he had a throwback strain of degeneracy imbedded somewhere in his system.
The tribe trooped off to make a change of costume and the comedians settled down to work. Then the ginger girls whooped things up a bit, and an acrobat went through the routine of stunts, while a few spasmodic outbursts of applause showed there were some people in the house who appreciated his work. But the pair of eyes owned by the young fellow in the aisle seat, third row, were looking for that blonde and nothing else.
Knowing everybody as he did, it wasn’t a difficult matter for him to get someone who knew her to wait after the show and bring them together in a rather formal way, although, in her case, that wouldn’t have been at all necessary. She had as little use for formalities as she had for conventionalities, which is not at all to be wondered at.
“Meet my friend Willie; now let’s all go out and get a drink,” was all there was to it, and ten minutes later four—two of each sex—were planted around a table in a cafe not more than a block or so from the theatre.
“Like the show?” asked the Genial Giantess, who was keen enough to smell a little love affair in the air.
“Great,” answered Willie; “it ought to get the money this season. What are you going to drink?”
“I never take anything but beer after the matinee—it hurts my voice.”