“Is she—is she a little annoyed?” he stammered.
“Yes, just a little,” laughed the other sarcastically. “Just a wee bit put out. It’s hardly worth mentioning, but if I were you I’d stick around on this side of the footlights until after the show. We’ve got eighteen hundred inside tonight and I wouldn’t like to have to give the money back. Something might happen if you went back stage. I’ll see you later.”
He slipped into an inner office and Jimmy was left alone with his misery. He wandered out into the brilliantly lighted lobby and sauntered into the auditorium for his first view of the great actress. She was on the stage as he entered and he peered at her from behind the plush curtains which hung back of the last row of seats. She was playing a scene of brisk and brittle comedy and she moved about the stage with all the lithe and lissome grace of a beautiful tiger. She was making mordant mockery of another woman in the play, assailing her with wicked rapier thrusts of biting wit and smiling a smile that struck terror into Jimmy’s heart. There was a malicious gleam in her black eyes that fascinated him. They seemed to his over-wrought imagination like the nasty eyes of a serpent he had once seen in a glass case in the zoo. He shuddered with apprehension.
As the curtain fell and the lights went up he caught sight of the figure of E. Cartwright Jenkins coming up the aisle. He effaced himself with surprising suddenness by making for the nearest exit door. It led to a fire-escape and he stood there in the semi-darkness letting the cool night air soothe his fevered brow and trying to collect his befuddled train of thought. This last was impossible. All that he seemed able to comprehend was that he was in for the most disagreeable experience of his fair young life, and that there was no possible escape from it except in flight. He was too good a soldier to run away. That much was certain.
When the lights went out again and the second act began Jimmy resumed his place behind the curtains once more and continued his observations of Madame Stephano. It was in this act that the “big scene” of the play occurred, the scene in which the outraged wife reverted to the primitive passions of her Andalusian peasant ancestors and made things decidedly uncomfortable for her husband and several other characters in the piece. It was full of lines in which, as the old actor said, “one could get one’s teeth into” and it may be stated that the famous Russian-American actress played it for all it was worth and then some. She erupted, exploded, and otherwise comported herself in an extremely violent and disturbing manner. As a final touch she committed aggravated assault and battery on the person of her husband and wound up the festivities by making a general wreck of the drawing room in which the scene was laid. Jimmy watched the early proceedings with growing distrust. When the final nerve-shattering moment arrived and the curtain fell amid a wild uproar from the audience he found himself sagging and he clutched a pillar for support. A clammy perspiration bespangled his brow. He felt decidedly sick and he longed for the comforts of home and the quiet ministrations of some gentle female who would soothe and mother him.
In a daze, he sauntered out into the lobby again. Jordan, who had just come back from back stage, touched him on the arm.
“The madame wishes to see you right after the last act,” he remarked with a sinister smile.
Only that and nothing more. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the office. Jimmy leaned against the wall and eyed with envy the noisy and laughing throng of men who had come out for a smoke between the acts.
At precisely the same time an usher slipped down one of the theatre aisles, touched E. Cartwright Jenkins on the shoulder and handed him a note. The critic adjusted his glasses and tore it open. This is what he read:
Mon Cher Jenkins:—