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After bringing down the curtain with two ugly looks, four steps, and a sneer, I sat down on the fallen beech-tree, lighted a cigarette, and wondered why I had rejected the post of call-boy. Then I started on the love-scene again. "'Madam, it is said that I am a harsh man. I am not harsh to every one. Better for me, perhaps, if I were; yet so God made me." "When do you open?"
To his profound surprise the Manager found himself acknowledging it, with like dignity. At eight o'clock that evening she sat before the glass in her dressing-room and awaited the shouted summons of the impish call-boy, who respected no one on earth, and to whom she was never "Mamzelle" or "Señora," but only Arithelli.
The two artists, being compelled to appear in the after-piece at their theatre that evening, had come to the dinner made up and in full stage costume, ready to appear behind the footlights at the summons of the call-boy.
The Roman captain was a writer, the centurion a manufacturer, Androcles a teacher of some sort, the call-boy for the fights in the arena a cabin-boy from a British merchant ship, and the tender-hearted lion some genius from the "halls."
Their looks said to every one: 'We are the show and you are the public, so don't stand in the way, for if you do the performance cannot go on! They gave their orders about their mistress's things to the chief steward as if he were nothing better than a railway porter or a call-boy at the theatre; and, strange to say, that exalted capitalist obeyed with a docility he would certainly not have shown to any other passenger less than royal.
Of course, this is not what I call good music, but it's very bright in its way, and the words I always think these words are so clever. So witty. Listen to them do listen to them, dear Mrs Ottley. They listened to the beautiful words sung, of which the refrain ran as follows: The Box Office man told the Programme-girl, The Theatre all was in quite a whirl. The call-boy told the Chorus.
He did not lift his haughty head to look at the wayfarer who meekly wrote his name in the register; he did not answer him when he begged for a cool room; he turned to the board on which the keys hung, and, plucking one from it, slid it towards Basil on the marble counter, touched a bell for a call-boy, whistled a bar of Offenbach, and as he wrote the number of the room against Basil's name, said to a friend lounging near him, as if resuming a conversation, "Well, she's a mighty pooty gul, any way, Chawley!"
The curtain came down at length, the outdoor costumes were resumed, the call-boy cried "Carriages, please," the ladies answered "Right ye are, Tommy," her plump ladyship nodded to Glory, "You'll do middling, my dear, when ye get yer 'and in"; and then nothing was left but the dark stage, the blank house, and the "Good-night, miss," of the porter at the stage door.
In fact, the call-boy, who seemed to enjoy tormenting her, was the only member of the company who took her rages cheerfully.
She was not afraid, but she was not so very calm as she fancied she was, for afterwards, even on that very evening, she found it impossible to remember anything that happened from the moment when the sallow maid entered the dressing-room again, closely followed by the call-boy, who knocked on the open door and spoke her stage name, until she found herself well out on the stage, in Rigoletto's arms, uttering the girlish cry which begins Gilda's part.
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