He was sitting very near me, leaning his arm on the velvet rail which
divided the boxes. He was looking at the stage. Two young girls and a
very beautiful woman, beautifully dressed, were with him. Save for his
formal dress, he looked exactly as he looked when I had said good-by to
him in Twiney's pasture.
I was terrified for fear he should turn and look at me. I longed, as I
had never longed for anything, to have him turn and look. I shrank back
lest I should find that I must speak to him. I was wild with the wish to
lean and speak his name. What if he had forgotten? Not until I caught
the lift of his brow as he turned, the line of his chin, the touch of
his hand, already familiar, to his forehead, did I know how well I had
remembered. And then, abruptly, I was shot through with a sweetness and
a pride: The time had come! I could meet him as I had dreamed of
meeting him, speak to him as I had hoped sometime to speak to him, as
some one a little within his world....
"The bally trouble with opera--" Gerald was beginning.
"Please, please!" I said. "You talked right through that act, Gerald.
Let me sit still now!"
Mr. Ember, his face turned somewhat toward the house, was talking to the
woman beside him.
" ... the new day," he said. "Such a place as this gives one hope. For
all the folly of it, some do care. Here is music--a good deal
segregated, in a place apart, for folk to come and participate. And they
come--by jove, you know, they come!"
The woman said something which I did not hear.
"Not as pure an example as a symphony concert," he said, "no. There they
demand nothing--no accessories, no deception, no laughter--even no
story! That is music, pure and undefiled, and, it seems to me, really
socialized. There participation is complete, with no interventions. I
tell you we're coming on! Any day now, the drama may do the same thing!"
He listened to the woman again, and nodded, without looking at her. That
made me think of a new wonder--of what it would be to have him
understand one like that.
"Ah, yes," he said, "there's the heartbreak. God knows how long it will
be before these things will be for more than the few. This whole
thing,"--his arm went out toward the house--"and us with it, are sitting
on the chests of the rest of them. And that isn't so bad, bad as it is.
The worst is that we don't even know it."
"But what is one to do?" she cried--her voice was so eager that I caught
some of what she said. "What can one do?"
"Find your corner and dig like a devil," he said. "I suppose I should
say go at it like a god. Only we don't seem to know how to do
that--yet."
He sat silent for a minute, looking over the house.
"We don't even half know that the other fellow is here," he said. "The
isolation in audiences is frightful. Look at us now--we don't even guess
we're all on the same job." He laughed. "We need to unionize!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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