The voice sang on, seeming to grow more and more impassioned. The tender import of the love words brought a quick veil of tears to Marjorie’s eyes. It was all so real. The two lovers, surrounded in the very beginning with unsurmountable difficulties, their brave attempt to defy life and fate. Ardent Desmond pleading for the constancy of his “small white treasure.” Then that voice, ringing, a thread of defiant laughter running through its music.
Marjorie came back to reality in time to hear an excited voice in her ear growling softly: “Old Hal. Now can you beat that. It is Hal that’s doing the singing. I know it. That’s some of Leila Harper’s work. Oh-h-h. Wait until I grab both of them. I’m going behind the scenes the minute the show’s over. I’d go at the end of the first act, but I might make a nuisance of myself. If Hal Macy knows what is good for him he will march himself out front like a kind and loving brother.”
Marjorie heard Jerry’s words in a kind of pleased daze. She was conscious of one emotion above everything else. She would be very glad to see Hal. She wished he would soon come to them. But Hal did not appear. Wily Leila had enlisted his services in helping with a mob scene at the end of the second act. She needed him again to direct another third-act ensemble where the revolutionists gather about their chief, Desmond O’Dowd, in the haunted house at the foot of the Cragsmore cliff. Leila knew precisely what she was about in keeping Hal from Marjorie. She was certain both Jerry and Marjorie must have recognized his singing voice.
When the final curtain had descended after Leila and the cast had been surfeited with flowers and curtain calls, and after Leila had made a speech of few and embarrassed words, Hal had still not appeared.
“Let him go.” Jerry had grown out of patience. “I disown him. I never had a brother. I’ll will old Hal to Leila Harper for a stage hand. She has kept him back on the stage and made him work. She—” Jerry suddenly subsided with an articulate murmur.
Marjorie looked blank. She had never before thought of Leila Harper in conjunction with Hal. How had Hal happened to know the words to the old Irish song? Leila must have sent them to him by letter. No, she must have sent the music for the minuet. She thought that he had not been in Hamilton more than a few hours. Still he might have been on the campus all day and she had never—
There she stopped. Leila was her most devoted friend. She was glad that Hal had at last shown a preference for some one beside herself. Marjorie stopped the thought process again. She found she did not wish to think about Hal and Leila as being interested in each other. She wondered next if they had been corresponding long. Leila had never mentioned in her presence that she had received a letter from Hal. Leila had—
“Marjorie.” The sound of the voice whose tender cadences had lately thrilled her was now speaking her name, and in the same ardent tone.
“Oh, Hal.” Involuntarily both hands went out to meet the strong warm ones which clasped her slender fingers close.
“You gave us a positive electric shock,” complained Jerry. “How long have you been here? Give an account of yourself.”