It was a pretty sight they presented in their box, a veritable flower-bed of young American womanhood. The bright, girlish faces, the laughter, the animation, the sparkling eyes, the ripples of merriment, the air of innocent bravado--all were in such contrast to the usual patrons of the Thalia that the house could not take its eyes off them. It was essentially a shop-girl-and-best-young-man theater, with a hoodlum gallery, and a general appearance of extreme youth. Those who did not chew gum were almost conspicuous, and a formidable young man with a voice of brass, perambulated the aisles with a large tray, and terrorized nickels and dimes from the pockets of swains. He had a humorous directness that made the price of immunity seem cheap at the money. It was worth a dime any time to escape him.
And the play?
It was a rousing love-story, crude, stilted, old-fashioned, but developed with a force and earnestness that Ouida has always possessed. The brutal Prince, the ill-used Princess, Corrèze, the idol of the public, the tenor whose voice has taken the world by storm, heart-broken and noble in his hopeless love--here were full-blooded situations to make the heart beat. And how nine of them did beat in that crowded box. And what scalding tears rolled down those youthful cheeks! And what little fists clenched as the Prince, passing all bounds, and incensed to frenzy, struck--positively struck--the adorable being who was clinging so desperately to honor and duty! Who could blame Corrèze for what was to follow? Assuredly not our nine rosebuds, who, if anything, found the splendid creature almost too backward, too self-sacrificing. But--!
And Cyril Adair, who played Corrèze with a fervid pathos that tore the heart out of your breast! Of course, you knew he had taken the world by storm. Of course you knew the public idolized him. Wasn't he the handsomest, manliest, most chivalrous fellow alive? Hadn't he a voice to melt a stone, or drive, as cutting as a rapier, through even a Prince? His firm chin, his faultless teeth, his strange, smoldering, compelling eyes, his vigorous yet graceful frame--small wonder that the Princess threw everything to the winds for such a man. Under the circumstances none of the nine would have waited half so long. The Princess' devotion to honor and duty seemed hardly less than morbid. Her patience under insults was positively exasperating. She clung to respectability with both hands--screamed, raged, but stuck to it as tight as a limpet--until a blow in the face, and the vilest of epithets from her brutal husband, toppled her finally to perdition--that is, if it were perdition to link the remainder of her life with that glorious being, and abandon everything for love.
The box applauded wildly, and led off the whole house. The curtain was made to rise again and again. Corrèze, advancing to the footlights, was left in no doubt as to where he had scored his heaviest hit, and rewarded those eager, girlish faces with a glance of his fine eyes, and a bow intended for them alone. Phyllis was the least enthusiastic of the party, and her silence during the first intermission was noisily commented on. She ate caramels slowly, and added nothing but monosyllables and an enigmatic smile to the rapturous demonstrations of her companions. But had they noticed her during the further course of the performance, they might have had something else to wonder at. With parted lips, and breath so faint that she seemed not to breathe at all--with a face paling to marble, and poignant with a curious and unreasoning distress, her eyes never quitted those of Cyril Adair, and fixed themselves on his in a stare so troubled, so fascinated, that her soul seemed to leave her body and to pass the footlights.
CHAPTER VII
The tea that followed was but a blurred memory, a confused recollection of noise and chatter, with a stab at the heart every time the actor's name was mentioned. She was thankful to get home, and lock herself in her room. She was in a tumult of shame, agitation, and an exquisite guilty joy. She partly undressed, and threw herself on her bed, shutting her eyes to win back the face and voice that had moved her to the depths. What had he done to her? A few hours before she had never known of his existence. The merest accident had revealed it to her, and now he was causing the blood to surge through her veins, and mantle her cheeks with dishonor. For it was dishonor. Everything in her revolted at such a position. His preposterous name struck fiercely on her pride and her sense of the ridiculous--Cyril Adair! How could any one, masquerading under such an egregious alias, dare to give her a moment's concern. She burst out laughing at herself, a contemptuous and bitter laugh. Cyril Adair! No dazzled little housemaid could have been sillier than she.
Yet his face haunted her, the tones of his voice, that strange, smoldering look in his eyes. How greedily that dreadful woman had kissed him! Those were no stage kisses. Before a thousand people she had abandoned herself to his arms, and fastened that painted mouth to his in an ecstasy. The audience thought it was acting. Phyllis, with a keener perception, saw the truth, and it made her savage with jealousy. That dreadful woman was shameless, crazy, beside herself. She had wooed him with every fiber of her body, pressing his head to her bosom, using every artifice to inflame him, and what had brought down the thunders of the house had not been a delineation of passion, but the naked thing itself.
It was horrible. Actors and actresses were horrible. No wonder they were despised even while they were run after. No wonder their lives were notorious. How could it be otherwise when--? But she envied that woman. Yes, she envied that woman, terrible as it was to admit it. Hated her, and envied her.--No, she pitied her as one of her own silly, headlong sex, cursed with this need to love. She was no longer young; she was thirty years old if a day; she was probably poor, disreputable, with nothing in the world but a trunk full of trashy finery, and no home but a cheap hotel. Love was the only thing she had, poor wretch, the only thing.
And Cyril Adair? It was hard to imagine him in private life except as Corrèze. But, of course, he wasn't Corrèze--that was absurd. Perhaps he would be so changed that one would scarcely know him on the street. She had heard of such disillusions--of tottering old men playing boys--and wasn't Bernhardt sixty? But a woman can tell, a woman who--who--cares. That vigorous manhood was no made-up pretense; such freshness, such warmth, such grace, could not be affected; he was certainly not much more than thirty, on the border line of youth and early-maturity when men, to her, possessed their greatest charm.