Our seats were in one of the lower proscenium boxes and quite clearly exposed to the gaze of the thousands who filled the theatre in winding rows, ascending and receding to the roof high above us. The garish decorations, the gay throng bedizened with jewels sparkling in the light and the hundreds of fair faces and bright eyes that were turned toward us presented a spectacle entirely new to Rayel. Shortly the curtain rose and the play began. Its first scene was a counterfeit of real stage life in an English theatre. An important performance is impending and at the last moment both the leading lady and her understudy are suddenly taken ill. The management is in a quandary. In the midst of its confusion the stage carpenter suggests that he has a daughter who can play the part. When this functionary came upon the scene my interest in the play began to wax stronger. Hester Chaffin's father had been a stage carpenter, and this turn in the scene startled me not a little after having found our picture in the foyer.
The carpenter's suggestion is at first treated with ridicule. He insists that she has learned the part from witnessing the rehearsals, and urges the managers to give her a trial. The performance must begin in four hours or be postponed. It is found that the costumes prepared for the part will fit the young lady. They consent to try her, the company is hastily summoned together for rehearsal, and the curtain falls on the first act. The audience waited impatiently for it to rise again and show what fortune might have in store for the carpenter's daughter, but of all that audience I was probably the most impatient.
“There is the Count,” whispered Rayel, directing my attention to the opposite box. The diabolical little Frenchman was there, sure enough, sitting next to the rail, and sweeping the audience with his opera-glasses.
Soon the curtain was rung up and the rehearsal began which was to test the powers of the venturesome young lady. Suddenly she appears at the rear of the stage dressed for her part in Elizabethan costume. She is greeted with loud applause, and she stands a moment, waiting for silence. The lights have been turned down and I cannot see her face distinctly. Before the last ripple of applause is quieted, she advances down the centre of the stage and begins to speak her lines. That voice! What is there in it that thrills me so strangely? When she ceases speaking she is standing almost within reach of my hand. Suddenly her eyes meet mine and I see Hester Chaffin standing there on the stage and looking into my face. She recognizes me, for she seems confused and proceeds with evident embarrassment.
I turned to Rayel—he, too, was deeply moved by this great surprise.
“Our woman has come to life,” said he, in tremulous whispers. “I knew we would see her sometime.”
How she had changed! She was little more than a child when I saw her last: now she was almost a woman, but not more beautiful than when I bade her good-by in the moonlight at her father's gate—long, long ago, it seemed to me now. Was the scene I had witnessed a passage in her own life since I had left Liverpool? At the close of the act an usher carried my card to her. Presently I was summoned to one of the corridors where a lady was waiting for me.
“Is this Kendric Lane?” she asked, extending her hand.
“It is,” I responded.
“I have heard of you often. Miss Bronson is an old acquaintance of yours, whom you knew as Hester Chaffin. Would you like to see her?”