"The baby! See, Adam, it'll waken! Quick, man!"
And Adam, with a start, began hushing it after the fashion of a chimpanzee. The old bell rang out another hour: how genial and loving it was!
"Nine o'clock! Let me up, boys!"—and Lot Tyndal hustled them aside from the steps of the concert-hall. They made way for her: her thin, white arms could deal furious blows, they knew from experience. Besides, they had seen her, when provoked, fall in some cellar-door in a livid dead spasm. They were afraid of her. Her filthy, wet skirt flapped against her feet, as she went up; she pulled her flaunting bonnet closer over her head. There was a small room at the top of the stairs, a sort of greenroom for the performers. Lot shoved the door open and went in. Madame —— was there, the prima-donna, if you chose to call her so: the rankest bloom of fifty summers, in white satin and pearls: a faded dahlia. Women hinted that the fragrance of the dahlia had not been healthful in the world; but they crowded to hear her: such a wonderful contralto! The manager, a thin old man, with a hook-nose, and kindly, uncertain smile, stood by the stove, with a group of gentlemen about him. The wretch from the street went up to him, unsteadily.
"Lot's drunk," one door-keeper whispered to another.
"No; the Devil's in her, though, like a tiger, to-night."
Yet there was a certain grace and beauty in her face, as she looked at the manager, and spoke low and sudden.
"I'm not a beggar. I want money,—honest money. It's Christmas eve. They say you want a voice for the chorus, in the carols. Put me where I'll be hid, and I'll sing for you."
The manager's hand fell from his watch-chain. Storrs, a young lawyer of the place, touched his shoulder.
"Don't look so aghast, Pumphrey. Let her sing a ballad to show you. Her voice is a real curiosity."
Madame —— looked dubiously across the room: her black maid had whispered to her. Lot belonged to an order she had never met face to face before: one that lives in the suburbs of hell.