Standing alone, burning with blushes, blinded with tears of mortification, she was put through her paces, but she really did know the drill, and it was no small reward for her misery when her persecutor took the rifle from her and exclaimed:
"Well, saucer-eyes, you do know it! I'm sorry, little girl, I spoke so roughly to you!" Holding out his hand to her, he added, "You ought to stay in this business—you've got your head with you!"
Stay in it! The question was would the manager want her when the fatal night of her first stage appearance had come and gone!
In those days of rehearsals, costumes were one of her most vital interests; for a ballet girl's dress is most important, as there is so little of it, that it must be perfect of its kind. The ballet of which the young person was now a member were supposed to be fairies in one dance. For the second act they wore dancing-skirts, and for the Zouave drill, they wore the regular Fire Zouave uniform.
At last, the first performance of the play came. It was a very hot night, and so crowded was the tiny dressing-room occupied by the ballet corps, that some of the girls had to stand on the one chair while they put their skirts on. The confusion was great, and the new-comer dressed as quickly as possible, escaped down-stairs, and showed herself to Blanche and her mother, to see if her make-up was all right.
To her surprise, after a moment of tense silence they both burst into loud laughter, their eyes staring into her face. In telling of that night later, she said; "I knew you had to put on powder, because the gas made you yellow, and red because the powder made you ghastly, but it had not occurred to me that skill was required in applying the same, and I was a sight to make any kindly disposed angel weep! I had not even sense enough to free my eyelashes from the powder clinging to them. My face was chalk white, and low down on my cheeks were nice round, bright red spots.
"Mrs. Bradshaw said: 'With your round blue eyes and your round white and red face, you look like a cheap china doll. Come here, my dear!'
"She dusted off a few thicknesses of the powder, removed the hard red spots, and while she worked she remarked; 'To-morrow, after you have walked to get a color, go to your glass and see where the color shows itself.... Of course, when you are making up for a character part you go by a different rule, but when you are just trying to look pretty, be guided by Nature.' As she talked, I felt the soft touch of a hare's foot on my burning cheeks and she continued her work until my face was as it should be to make the proper effect.
"That lesson was the beginning and the ending of my theatrical instruction. What I learned later was learned by observation, study, and direct inquiry—but never by instruction, either free or paid for."
And now the moment of stage entry had arrived. "One act of the play represented the back of a stage during a performance. The scenes were turned around with their unpainted sides to the audience. The scene-shifters and gas-men were standing about; everything was supposed to be going up. The manager was giving orders wildly, and then a dancer was late. She was called frantically, and finally, when she appeared on the run, the manager caught her by the shoulders, rushed her across the stage, and fairly pitched her onto the imaginary stage, to the great amusement of the audience. The tallest and prettiest girl in the ballet had been picked out to do this bit of work, and she had been rehearsed day after day with the greatest care for the small part.