The enviable Lundstrom was to go in a back way and listen to ‘Tristan and Isolde.’ Leonard followed him shyly and irresolutely to the stage entrance of the opera house. In his eyes lay a prayer not to be left alone in the midst of the dreadful spring evening. Lundstrom did not fail to see the young man’s helplessness.
“The gentleman may surely come with me,” he said. “I’m a good friend of the porter from forty years back. He gets a bream or so now and then. Just come along!”
Leonard passed a gray head which nodded at a rectangular peep-hole. He then went into a long dark corridor, where a squire with brown kilt and broadsword stood joking at a telephone. Next there were some steps, where Leonard continually had to stand and wait for the puffing Lundstrom. All was silent and empty here. They met only a fireman and a scene-shifter in a blue coat, who called Lundstrom “uncle.”
Now a warm, dusky odor was perceptible and a muffled buzzing and mumbling, which seemed to come from the very walls. That must be the orchestra, which was tuning up somewhere in the depths. But Lundstrom cautiously pushed up an iron door and they came out on the first gallery of the stage. Down in the great cluttered space below ran workmen arranging the ship’s deck for the first act, and some of the chorus men stood in a laughing group waiting to take their places.
Lundstrom cast a searching glance below.
“Look at that!” he muttered with some disapproval; “they have made the tent smaller. In my time it ran out to the fifth plank, mark H.”
It was still too noisy and disturbed where they were, so they went up by a narrow ladder to the second gallery. Lundstrom sat down on a mighty stage dragon of lath and plaster which was hoisted up in the back-scene, and Leonard leaned against a great machine with handles, hexagonal cylinders and heavy felt hammers.
“The old stage thunder,” whispered Lundstrom. “They have new, better thunder now that goes by electricity.”
There was a fantastic play of light and shadow up through the enormously high vault of the stage, which extended over their heads with five more galleries. The electric footlights below threw splintered rays up through the grilled flooring of the galleries, until the gleams were lost in an incredible labyrinth of ropes, weights and pulleys. The whole was like a giant skeleton, a fantastic loom.
This is where they weave dusty lies, thought Leonard, who found the rear view of the drama grotesque and oppressive, so that he almost began to long for the streets again. People must love illusion astoundingly, if it can be made big business to such an extent.