Again the invisible orchestra bore up the uttered words; at first a single cornet bringing down the air from the tented hilltop; then deeper notes joining it, like men’s voices of varying tone and strength, but all singing “Annie Laurie.”
“Something upon the women’s cheeks
Washed off the stains of powder.”
said dissonant, derisive tones at Arthur Cornell’s back, as the curtain fell. “Battered veterans of a dozen seasons are snivelling like ingenues of no season at all. What fools New Yorkers are to be humbugged with their eyes open!”
“The fair manager hath a way of whistling the tin out of our pockets,” replied a thin falsetto. “A wonderful creature, that same manager.”
A disagreeable, wheezing laugh finished the speech.
Arthur made an ineffectual effort to extricate himself from the packing crowd, a movement unnoticed or uncared-for by the speakers.
“I admire—and despise—that woman!” continued the harsh voice. “As an exhibition of colossal cheek she is unrivaled. For four years she has preyed upon the majority that is up to her little ‘dodge,’ and the minority that is not, pocketing her half of the profits of every ‘charitable’ show; borrowing from innocents that don’t know that she pays not again, and actually—so I am told—receiving a commission for introducing wild Westerners and provincial Easterners into what she calls ‘our best circles.’ And we go on buying her tickets and accepting her specimens, like the arrant asses we are.”
“Madame du Bois, upon a limited scale.”
“Exactly! Madame is her model. Her aping is more like monkeying, but the resemblance is not lost. New Yorkers rather enjoy the sublime audacity of Madame’s fleecing, and she does have the entrée of uppertendom, sham though she is, with her drawing-room readings, where geniuses are trotted out at big prices to ticket buyers, and no price at all to Madame, and ranchmen’s daughters are provided with blue-blooded Knickerbocker husbands. Her schemes are on a large scale. She engineers benevolent pow-wows, clears her one thousand dollars a night, and nobody dare charge her with pocketing a penny. You can see where Kit learned her trade. To my certain knowledge she dresses herself and pays for all her hospitable entertainments by these tricks.”