"Be sensible! How are you to know now what you care about and what you don"t?" was Burlingham"s laughing rebuke. "And in the line you"ve taken--the stage--with your emotions always being stirred up, with your thoughts always hovering round the relations of men and women--for that"s the only subject of plays and music, and with opportunity thrusting at you as it never thrusts at conventional people you"ll probably soon find you care a great deal about men. But don"t ever let your emotions hinder or hurt or destroy you. Use them to help you. I guess I"m shooting pretty far over that young head of yours, ain"t I?"
"Not so very far," said the girl. "Anyhow, I"ll remember."
"If you live big enough and long enough, you"ll go through three stages. The first is the one you"re in now. They"ve always taught you without realizing it, and so you think that only the strong can afford to do right. You think doing right makes the ordinary person, like yourself, easy prey for those who do wrong. You think that good people--if they"re really good--have to wait until they get to Heaven before they get a chance."
"Isn"t that so?"
"No. But you"ll not realize it until you pa.s.s into the second stage. There, you"ll think you see that only the strong can afford to do wrong. You"ll think that everyone, except the strong, gets it in the neck if he or she does anything out of the way. You"ll think you"re being punished for your sins, and that, if you had behaved yourself, you"d have got on much better. That"s the stage that"s coming; and what you go through with there--how you come out of the fight--will decide your fate--show whether or not you"ve got the real stuff in you. Do you understand?"
Susan shook her head.
"I thought not. You haven"t lived long enough yet. Well, I"ll finish, anyhow."
"I"ll remember," said Susan. "I"ll think about it until I do understand."
"I hope so. The weather and the scenery make me feel like philosophizing. Finally, if you come through the second stage all right, you"ll enter the third stage. There, you"ll see that you were right at first when you thought only the strong could afford to do right. And you"ll see that you were right in the second stage when you thought only the strong could afford to do wrong. For you"ll have learned that only the strong can afford to act at all, and that they can do right or wrong as they please _because they are strong_."
"Then you don"t believe in right, at all!" exclaimed the girl, much depressed, but whether for the right or for her friend she could not have told.
"Now, who said that?" Demanded he, amused. "What _did_ I say?
Why--if you want to do right, be strong or you"ll be crushed; and if you want to do wrong, take care again to be strong--or you"ll be crushed. My moral is, be strong! In this world the good weaklings and the bad weaklings had better lie low, hide in the tall gra.s.s. The strong inherit the earth."
They were silent a long time, she thinking, he observing her with sad tenderness. At last he said:
"You are a nice sweet girl--well brought up. But that means badly brought up for the life you"ve got to lead--the life you"ve got to learn to lead."
"I"m beginning to see that," said the girl. Her gravity made him feel like laughing, and brought the tears to his eyes. The laughter he suppressed.
"You"re going to fight your way up to what"s called the triumphant cla.s.s--the people on top--they have all the success, all the money, all the good times. Well, the things you"ve been taught--at church--in the Sunday School--in the nice storybooks you"ve read--those things are all for the triumphant cla.s.s, or for people working meekly along in "the station to which G.o.d has appointed them" and handing over their earnings to their betters. But those nice moral things you believe in--they don"t apply to people like you--fighting their way up from the meek working cla.s.s to the triumphant cla.s.s. You won"t believe me now--won"t understand thoroughly. But soon you"ll see. Once you"ve climbed up among the successful people you can afford to indulge--in moderation--in practicing the good old moralities.
Any dirty work you may need done you can hire done and pretend not to know about it. But while you"re climbing, no Golden Rule and no turning of the cheek. Tooth and claw then--not sheathed but naked--not by proxy but in your own person."
"But you"re not like that," said the girl.
"The more fool I," repeated he.
She was surprised that she understood so much of what he had said--childlike wonder at her wise old heart, made wise almost in a night--a wedding night. When Burlingham lapsed into silence, laughing at himself for having talked so far over the "kiddie"s" head, she sat puzzling out what he had said. The world seemed horribly vast and forbidding, and the sky, so blue and bright, seemed far, far away. She sighed profoundly. "I am so weak," she murmured. "I am so ignorant."
Burlingham nodded and winked. "Yes, but you"ll grow," said be.
"I back you to win."
The color poured into her cheeks, and she burst into tears.
Burlingham thought he understood; for once his shrewdness went far astray. Excusably, since he could not know that he had used the same phrase that had closed Spenser"s letter to her.
Late in the afternoon, when the heat had abated somewhat and they were floating pleasantly along with the washing gently a-flutter from lines on the roof of the auditorium, Burlingham put Eshwell at the rudder and with Pat and the violin rehea.r.s.ed her. "The main thing, the only thing to worry about," explained he, "is beginning right." She was standing in the center of the stage, he on the floor of the auditorium beside the seated orchestra. "That means," he went on, "you"ve simply got to learn to come in right. We"ll practice that for a while."
She went to the wings--where there was barely s.p.a.ce for her to conceal herself by squeezing tightly against the wall. At the signal from him she walked out. As she had the utmost confidence in his kindness, and as she was always too deeply interested in what she and others were doing to be uncomfortably self-conscious, she was not embarra.s.sed, and thought she made the crossing and took her stand very well. He nodded approvingly.
"But," said he, "there"s a difference between a stage walk and walking anywhere else--or standing. Nothing is natural on the stage.
If it were it would look unnatural, because the stage itself is artificial and whatever is there must be in harmony with it. So everything must be done unnaturally in such a way that it _seems_ natural. Just as a picture boat looks natural though it"s painted on a flat surface. Now I"ll ill.u.s.trate."
He gave her his hand to help her jump down; then he climbed to the stage. He went to the wings and walked out. As he came he called her attention to how he poised his body, how he advanced so that there would be from the auditorium no unsightly view of crossing legs, how he arranged hands, arms, shoulders, legs, head, feet for an att.i.tude of complete rest. He repeated his ill.u.s.tration again and again, Susan watching and listening with open-eyed wonder and admiration. She had never dreamed that so simple a matter could be so complex. When he got her up beside him and went through it with her, she soon became as used to the new motions as a beginner at the piano to stretching an octave.
But it was only after more than an hour"s practice that she moved him to say:
"That"ll do for a beginning. Now, we"ll sing."
She tried "Suwanee River" first and went through it fairly well, singing to him as he stood back at the rear door. He was enthusiastic--cunning Burlingham, who knew so well how to get the best out of everyone! "Mighty good--eh, Pat? Yes, mighty good. You"ve got something better than a great voice, my dear.
You"ve got magnetism. The same thing that made me engage you the minute you asked me is going to make you--well, go a long ways--a _long_ ways. Now, we"ll try "The Last Rose of Summer.""
She sang even better. And this improvement continued through the other four songs of her repertoire. His confidence in her was contagious; it was so evident that he really did believe in her.
And Pat, too, wagged his head in a way that made her feel good about herself. Then Burlingham called in the others whom he had sent to the forward deck. Before them the girl went all to pieces. She made her entrance badly, she sang worse. And the worse she sang, the worse she felt and the worse her next attempt was. At last, with nerves unstrung, she broke down and sobbed. Burlingham climbed up to pat her on the shoulder.
"That"s the best sign yet," said he. "It shows you"ve got temperament. Yes--you"ve got the stuff in you."
He quieted her, interested her in the purely mechanical part of what she was doing. "Don"t think of who you"re doing it before, or of how you"re doing it, but only of getting through each step and each note. If your head"s full of that, you"ll have no room for fright." And she was ready to try again. When she finished the last notes of "Suwanee River," there was an outburst of hearty applause. And the sound that pleased her most was Tempest"s rich rhetorical "Bravo!" As a man she abhorred him; but she respected the artist. And in unconsciously drawing this distinction she gave proof of yet another quality that was to count heavily in the coming days. Artist he was not. But she thought him an artist. A girl or boy without the intelligence that can develop into flower and fruit would have seen and felt only Tempest, the odious personality.
Burlingham did not let her off until she was ready to drop with exhaustion. And after supper, when they were floating slowly on, well out of the channel where they might be run down by some pa.s.sing steamer with a flint-hearted captain or pilot, she had to go at it again. She went to bed early, and she slept without a motion or a break until the odor of the cooking breakfast awakened her. When she came out, her face was bright for the first time. She was smiling, laughing, chatting, was delighted with everything and everybody. Even the thought of Roderick Spenser laid up with a broken leg recurred less often and less vividly. It seemed to her that the leg must be about well. The imagination of healthy youth is reluctant to admit ideas of gloom in any circ.u.mstances. In circ.u.mstances of excitement and adventure, such as Susan"s at that time, it flatly refuses to admit them.
They were at anchor before a little town sprawled upon the fields between hills and river edge. A few loafers were chewing tobacco and inspecting the show boat from the shady side of a pile of lumber. Pat had already gone forth with the bundle of handbills; he was not only waking up the town, but touring the country in horse and buggy, was agitating the farmers--for the show boat was to stay at least two nights at Bethlehem. "And we ought to do pretty well," said Burlingham. "The wheat"s about all threshed, and there"s a kind of lull. The hayseeds aren"t so dead tired at night. A couple of weeks ago we couldn"t have got half a house by paying for it."
As the afternoon wore away and the sun disappeared behind the hills to the southwest, Susan"s spirits oozed. Burlingham and the others--deliberately--paid no attention to her, acted as if no great, universe-stirring event were impending. Immediately after supper Burlingham said:
"Now, Vi, get busy and put her into her harness. Make her a work of art."
Never was there a finer display of unselfishness than in their eagerness to help her succeed, in their intense nervous anxiety lest she should not make a hit. The bad in human nature, as Mabel Connemora had said, is indeed almost entirely if not entirely the result of the compulsion of circ.u.mstances; the good is the natural outcropping of normal instincts, and resumes control whenever circ.u.mstances permit. These wandering players had suffered too much not to have the keenest and gentlest sympathy. Susan looked on Tempest as a wicked man; yet she could not but be touched by his almost hysterical excitement over her debut, when the near approach of the hour made it impossible for his emotional temperament longer to hide its agitation. Every one of them gave or loaned her a talisman--Tempest, a bit of rabbit"s foot; Anstruther, a ring that had twice saved her from drowning (at least, it had been on her finger each time); Connemora, a hunchback"s tooth on a faded velvet string; Pat, a penny which happened to be of the date of her birth year (the presence of the penny was regarded by all as a most encouraging sign); Eshwell loaned her a miniature silver bug he wore on his watch chain; Burlingham"s contribution was a large buckeye----"Ever since I"ve had that, I"ve never been without at least the price of a meal in my pocket."
They had got together for her a kind of evening dress, a pale blue chiffon-like drapery that left her lovely arms and shoulders bare and clung softly to the lines of her figure. They did her hair up in a graceful sweep from the brow and a simple coil behind. She looked like a woman, yet like a child dressed as a woman, too, for there was as always that exuberant vitality which made each of the hairs of her head seem individual, electric. The rouge gave her color, enhanced into splendor the brilliance of her violet-gray eyes--eyes so intensely colored and so admirably framed that they were noted by the least observant. When Anstruther had put the last touches to her toilet and paraded her to the others, there was a chorus of enthusiasm. The men no less than the women viewed her with the professional eye.
"Didn"t I tell you all?" cried Burlingham, as they looked her up and down like a group of connoisseurs inspecting a statue.
"Wasn"t I right?"
""It is the dawn, and Juliet is the east,"" orated Tempest in rich, romantic tones.
"A d.a.m.n shame to waste her on these yaps," said Eshwell.
Connemora embraced her with tearful eyes. "And as sweet as you are lovely, you dear!" she cried. "You simply can"t help winning."
The two women thought her greatest charms were her form and her feet and ankles. The men insisted that her charm of charms was her eyes. And certainly, much could be said for that view.
Susan"s violet-gray eyes, growing grayer when she was thoughtful, growing deeper and clearer and softer shining violet when her emotions were touched--Susan"s eyes were undoubtedly unusual even in a race in which homely eyes are the exception.
When it was her turn and she emerged into the glare of the footlights, she came to a full stop and an awful wave of weakness leaped up through legs and body to blind her eyes and crash upon her brain. She shook her head, lifted it high like a swimmer shaking off a wave. Her gaze leaped in terror across the blackness of the auditorium with its thick-strewn round white disks of human faces, sought the eyes of Burlingham standing in full view in the center of the rear doorway--where he had told her to look for him. She heard Pat playing the last of the opening chords; Burlingham lifted his hand like a leader"s baton. And naturally and sweetly the notes, the words of the old darkey song of longing for home began to float out through the stillness.
She did not take her gaze from Burlingham. She sang her best, sang to please him, to show him how she appreciated what he had done for her. And when she finished and bowed, the outburst of applause unnerved her, sent her dizzy and almost staggering into the wings. "Splendid! Splendid!" cried Mabel, and Anstruther embraced her, and Tempest and Eshwell kissed her hands. They all joined in pushing her out again for the encore--"Blue Alsatian Mountains." She did not sing quite so steadily, but got through in good form, the tremolo of nervousness in her voice adding to the wailing pathos of the song"s refrain:
Ade, ade, ade, such dreams must pa.s.s away, But the Blue Alsatian Mountains seem to watch and wait alway.
The crowd clapped, stamped, whistled, shouted; but Burlingham defied it. "The lady will sing again later," he cried. "The next number on the regular program is," etc., etc. The crowd yelled; Burlingham stood firm, and up went the curtain on Eshwell and Connemora"s sketch. It got no applause. Nor did any other numbers on the program. The contrast between the others and the beauty of the girl, her delicate sweetness, her vital youth, her freshness of the early morning flower, was inevitable.