The Whirligig of Time

by Wayland Wells Williams

Madge received it while she was at breakfast. She went out and told the boy to wait for an answer, and went back and finished her breakfast before writing a reply. Her face was noticeably grave as she ate, and it became even graver when at last she sat down at her desk and started to put pen to paper. She wrote three pages of note-paper, read them, and tore them up. She then wrote a page and a half, taking more time over them than over the three. This she also tore up. Then she sat inactive at her desk for several minutes, and at last, seeing that she was due at her school in a few minutes, she took up another sheet of paper and wrote: "All right—my fault entirely. M. E.," and sent it off by the boy.

When Harry saw her at the rehearsal that evening she greeted him exactly as if nothing had happened. She had rather less to say to him than was customary during rehearsals, but Harry was so busy and preoccupied he did not notice that. He did notice that she sang the original words to the disputed song, which, as he told himself, was just what he expected.

For the next two days he was fairly buried in responsibility and detail and hardly conscious of any feeling whatever beyond an intense desire to have the performance over. It was not until this desire was partially fulfilled, the curtain actually risen on the Friday night and the performance well under way, that he was able to sit back and draw a free breath. The moment came when, having seen that all was well behind the scenes, he dropped into the back of the box occupied by Aunt Selina and one or two chosen friends to watch the progress of the play from the front.

Then, for the first time, he was able to look at it more from the point of view of a spectator than that of a creator. Now that his work was completed and must stand or fall on its own merit, he could watch from a wholly detached position. On the whole, he rather enjoyed the sensation. It occurred to him, for instance, as quite a new thought, that the excellent make-up of the stolid Mr. Dawson in the part of Peachum very largely counteracted his vocal "dulness"; and that Mrs. Smith as Mrs. Peachum, in spite of the innumerable sillinesses and bad tricks that had been his despair for weeks, was making an extremely good impression upon the audience.

Then Madge made her entrance, and he saw at a glance, as he had never seen it before, just how good Madge was. She had a certain way of carrying her head, a certain sureness in adjusting her movements to her speech, a certain judgment in projecting her voice that went straight to the spot. Madge was a born actress, that was all there was to it; she ought to have made the stage her profession. He smiled inwardly as he thought how many people would make that remark after this performance. Then his amusement gave place to a sudden and strange resentment against the very idea of Madge's going on the stage; a resentment he made no effort either to understand or account for....

The strings in the orchestra quavered a few languorous notes and Madge started her song "Can love be controlled by advice." Her voice was a singularly sweet one, of no great volume and yet possessed of a certain carrying quality. The excellence of her instruction, combined with her own good taste, had brought it to a state of what, for that voice, might be called perfection. She also had the good sense never to sing anything too big for her. But though her voice might not be suited to Wagner or Strauss it was far better suited to certain simpler things than a larger voice might have been, and the song she was singing now was one of these. Probably no more happy combination could be effected between singer and song than that of Madge and the slow, plaintive, seventeenth-century melody of "Grim king of the ghosts," which Gay had the good sense to incorporate into his masterpiece.

To say that the audience was spellbound by her rendering of the song would be to stretch a point. It sat, for the most part, silently attentive, enjoying it very much and thinking that it would give her a good round of applause and an encore at the end. Harry, standing in the obscurity of the back part of Aunt Selina's box, was of very much the same mind. For about half of the song, that is. For near the end of the first verse he suddenly realized that Madge was singing not Gay's words, but his own.

It was absurd, of course, but at that realization the whole world seemed suddenly to change. The floor beneath his feet became clouds, the theater a corner of paradise, the people in it choirs of marvelous ethereal beings, Mrs. Peachum (alias Smith) a ministrant seraph, Madge's voice the music of the spheres, and Madge herself, from being an unusually nice girl of his acquaintance, became....

What nonsense! he told himself; the idea of getting so worked up at hearing his own words sung on a stage!—You fool, replied another voice within him, you know perfectly well that that's not it at all.—Don't tell me, replied the other Harry, the sensible one; such things don't happen, except in books; they don't happen to real people—ME, for instance.—Why not? obstinately inquired the other; why not you, as well as any one else?—Well, I can't stop to argue about it now, the practical Harry answered; I've got to go out and see that people are ready for their cues.

He went out, and found everything running perfectly smoothly. People were standing waiting for their entrances minutes ahead of time, the electricians were at their posts, the make-up people had finished their work, the scene-shifters and property men had put everything in readiness for setting the next scene; no one even asked him a question. He flitted about for a few moments on imaginary errands, asking various people if all was going well; but the real question that he kept asking himself all the time was Is this IT? Is this IT?