Where? To one of the cinematograph houses inviting from every compass point? Unthinkable. To the dance hall up the street, decorated in artificial cherry blossoms, where partners to suit the individual taste might be rented by the hour? Not in these clothes of class. To one of the “girl” shows? He had seen sufficient of them to realize more interest in sisters in the prevailing demi-habille of the street. To some romantic play? The heroes of such, sure to be admirable in looks and conduct, always got him in a discouraged state of mind about himself.
In his quandary Pape had approached a dignified, sizable building of yellow brick and now stopped before a plain-framed poster which named the pile as the Metropolitan Opera House, within which Geraldine Farrar was singing Zaza that night—that moment probably. Grand opera! He was impressed by the conviction that he and his new suit had been led blindly by Fate, who never before in his experience had shown more horse, or common, sense.
He made for the box office. The hour was late, or so he was informed by the man at the window. The curtains had been drawn aside many minutes before; were about to close again. The fashionable subscribers were seated. Wasn’t he able to see that even the S. R. O. sign was up outside?
Standing room was not what Pape wanted—not with those patent pincers on his feet. Matter of fact, he wouldn’t have considered a stand-up view of anything. Before paying for the best orchestra seat they had—didn’t matter about the price—he’d like to know who was Zaza, just as folks outside were asking what was Why-Not.
The look of the man at the window accused him of being mildly insane. “Zaza’s Zaza” he observed, as he turned to his accounts.
“Naturally,” Pape replied. “But why not’s not always why. What I want to ask you is——”
“Leslie Carter play of same name set to music—not jazz—by French composer. House is packed to the roof to-night, as I’ve been trying to tell you from the start.”
Before Pape could offer other insistence he felt himself displaced before the window by a personage disguised in ornate livery.
“Mrs. Blackstone can’t attend. Sudden death,” said the personage. “She’d be obliged if you could sell these tickets and credit her account.”
“It is not Mrs. Blackstone herself who died?” was the official’s cold query.
“Indeed, no. She knows it’s late, sir, but she’d be obliged if you——”
“I’ll oblige her if the money changer won’t,” Pape interrupted. “I’ll take a ticket.”
The autocrat of the box office, however, shook his head. “Mrs. B’s box is grand tier. Can’t be split. Six chairs.”
From what so far had seemed a mere human huddle within one of the entrance doors, an eager figure hurried, just behind an eager voice.
“We are five person. How much dollar for five seats of thees box?”
At the little, oldish foreigner in large, newish ready-mades, Fate’s unhandyman looked; then on past the emotionful face to following emotionful faces. The human huddle had disintegrated from a mass of despair into animated units which now moved toward the box office as toward a magnet. Sounds of as many magpies filled the dignified silence—two French women and three men venting recitatives of hope that yet they might hear the Leoncavallo masterpiece. But them, too, the ticket man discouraged, doubtless the more emphatically because of their attire, which was poor, if proud.
“Too much for your party, I’m sure. One-hundred-fifty.”
“But not for my party,” Pape interposed. “I’ll take the whole half dozen.”
The sole so-far thing to impress the assistant treasurer was the roll from which the emergency cash customer began to strip off bank notes. The recitative of hope soughed into a chorus of disappointment as the moneyed young man clutched his half dozen tickets and started for the inner door. Scarcely could he restrain himself from out-loud laughter as he halted and turned to command:
“Get a hurry on, party! At one-and-fifty there’d ought to be better parlez vous places inside.”
Perhaps his inclusive gesture was more comprehensive to them than his words; at any rate, his grin was eloquent.
To his sublet box by way of the grand staircase Peter Stanbury Pape, grand opera patron, strode at the usher’s heels; into it, himself ushered his agitated, magpie covey of true music-lovers. Well to one side he slumped into the chair assigned to him by common consent and found an inconspicuous rest for the more tortured of his feet.
Leaning forward, he undertook to get his bearings; concentrated on the dim and distant stage set, where a lady chiefly dressed in an anklet and feathered hat—presumedly Zaza of the title role from the way she was conducting herself—seemed to be under great stress of emotion set to song. Before he could focus his glasses—one of the pairs for all hands round which he had been persuaded to rent at the foot of the stair-case—the orchestra took control and the red velvet curtains came together between the intimate affairs of the great French actress and those of the many—of the great American audience.
After curtain calls had been duly accorded and recognized and there no longer existed any reason for the half-light cloak of a doubtful song-story, the vast auditorium was set ablaze. And with the illumination uprose a buzz of sound like nothing that Pape ever had heard—more like the swarming of all the bees in Montana within an acre of area than anything he could imagine.
Full attention he gave to the entre-acte of this, his first adventure in Orphean halls. Regretting the trusty binoculars idling on his hotel bureau, he screwed into focus the rented glasses; swept the waving head-tops of the orchestra field below; lifted to the horse-shoe of the subscribers and then to the grand tier boxes with their content of women whom he assumed to be of society, amazingly made up, daringly gowned, lavishly bedecked with jewels, ostrich feathers and aigrettes. A sprinkling of men, black-togged on the order of himself, made them the more wondrous dazzling. A moving, background pageant of visitors paid them court.
After a polite, if rather futile, attempt to mix his English, as spoken for utility in Montana, with the highly punctuated, mostly superfluous French of his overly grateful “party,” Pape left them to their own devices. These seemed largely to take the form of dislocating their necks in an effort to recognize possible acquaintances in the sea of faces which the gallery was spilling down from the roof. Remembering his advice to Polkadot over the value of concentration on the near-by, he centered his attention upon those labeled in his mind as the “hundred-and-fifty simoleon” class. His thoughts moved along briskly with his inspection.
Women, women, women. Who would have imagined in that he-man life he had lived on ranches West that the fair were so large a complement of humanity or that so many of them indeed were fair? Had he lost or gained by not realizing their importance? Suppose his ambition had been to furbelow one such as these, could he have given himself to the lure of making good on his own—faithfully have followed Fate’s finger to rainbow’s end?
However that might be, now that he was freed from slavery to the jealous jade by the finding of that automatically refilling pot of liquid gold, might he not think of the gentler companionship which he had lacked? The chief thing wrong with to-night, for instance, was the selection by chance of the women in his box. They did not speak his language—never could. Had there been a vacant chair for him to offer some self-selected lady, which one from the dazzling display before him would she be?
Perhaps the most ridiculous rule of civilized society—so he mused—was that limiting self-selectiveness. In the acquirement of everything else in life—stock, land, clothes, food—a person went thoroughly through the supply before choosing. Only in the matter of friends must he depend upon accident or the caprice of other friends. How much more satisfactory and straightforward it would be to search among the faces of strangers