Mr. Smolendo produced a new ballet early in April, a ballet which was as ridiculous and generally imbecile in plot and purpose as most of its kind, but which for scenery, dresses, and effects was supposed to surpass anything that had ever been accomplished at his theatre. Everything in this ballet tended to the glorification of La Chicot. She was the central figure, the cynosure: every crest was lowered to give prominence to hers, principal dancers were her handmaidens, a hundred ballet girls prostrated themselves before her throne, a hundred and fifty auxiliaries, specially engaged for this great spectacle, licked the dust beneath her feet. The final tableau, which was to cost Mr. Smolendo more money than he could calculate, was an apotheosis of La Chicot, a beautiful, bold, half-tipsy peasant, going to heaven on a telescopic arrangement of iron. It was a wonderful sight. The athletics called it “no end of jolly.” The aesthetics described it as “unspeakably touching.”
This final tableau was supposed to represent the coral caves of the Indian Ocean. Chicot was a mermaid who lured mariners to their doom beneath the wave. She lived in a jewelled cavern, a hall sparkling and shining with sapphires and emeralds and lapis-lazuli, all flooded with rainbow light, where she and her sister mermaidens, golden, glittering, and scaly, danced perpetually. Then came the end, and she floated upward through an ocean of blue gauze, in a moving frame of rosiest coral.
The ironwork upon which she mounted was a somewhat complicated piece of machinery, a telescope in three parts, requiring nice adjustment on the part of the stage carpenter. It was perfectly safe if properly worked; but a hitch, the slightest carelessness in the working, would be perilous, and might be fatal.
“I don’t like that business by any means,” said Jack Chicot, when he saw his wife ascending to the sky borders, in the dust and gloom of rehearsal, clad in her practising petticoats, and with a lace-bordered handkerchief tied under her chin, like a coquettish nightcap. “It looks dangerous. Can’t you dispense with it, Smolendo?”
“Impossible; it’s the great feature of the scene. Perfectly safe, I assure you. Roberts is the best carpenter in London.”
Mr. Smolendo’s people were always the best. He had a knack of getting first-rate talent in every line, from his prima donna to his gasman.
“He seems clever, but rather a queer-tempered man, I hear.”
“Talent is always queer-tempered,” answered Smolendo, lightly. “Amiability is the redeeming virtue of fools.”
Mr. Chicot was not convinced. He took his wife aside presently in a grove of dingy wings and side-pieces, and entreated her to refuse that ascent in the coral bower.
“Pas si bête,” she answered, curtly. “I know what suits me. I shall look lovely in that coral frame with my hair down. You needn’t be frightened, my friend. Pas de danger. Or, if I should be killed—come, I don’t think that would break your heart. It’s a long time since you’ve left off caring for me as much as that.”
She snapped her fingers under his nose, with one of those little audacious movements of hers which were infinitely fascinating—to strangers. Jack Chicot shuddered visibly. Yes, it was horribly true. Her death would be his release from bondage. Her death? Would he know himself, believe in his own identity, if she were gone, and he was free to walk the world again, his own master, with hopes and ambitions of his own, bearing his own name, not ashamed to look mankind in the face, no longer known as the husband of La Chicot?
He persuaded her, earnestly, to have nothing to do with the ironwork that had been made to bear her to the theatrical skies. Why should she run such a risk? Any ballet girl would do as well, he argued.
“Yes, and the ballet girl would show off her good looks, and get all the applause. I am not such a fool as to give her the chance. Don’t waste your breath in talking about it, Jack. I mean to do it.”
“Of course,” he said, bitterly, “when did you ever renounce a caprice to please me?”
“Perhaps never. I am a creature of caprices. It was a caprice that made me marry you—a caprice that made you marry me, and now we are both honestly tired. That’s a pity, isn’t it?”
“I try to do my duty to you, my dear,” he answered gravely, with a sigh.
La Chicot had her own way, naturally, being one of those women who once having taken their bent are no more to be diverted than a mountain torrent which the rains have swollen. The new ballet was a success, the final tableau was a triumph for La Chicot. She looked lovely, in an attitude more perfect than anything that was ever done in marble—her round white arms lifted above her head, flinging back the loose branches of coral, her black hair covering her like a mantle. That long rich hair was one of her chief beauties—something to be remembered where all was beautiful.
The machinery worked splendidly. Jack was at the wings the first night, anxious and watchful. A fragment of conversation which he heard just behind him while the coral bower was rising, did not tend to reassure him.
“It’s all very well tonight,” said one of the scene shifters to his mate, “they’re both sober; but when she’s drunk, and he’s drunk, God help her.”
Jack went to Mr. Smolendo directly the curtain was down.
“Well,” cried the manager, radiant, “a screaming success. There’s money in it. I shall run this three hundred nights.”
“I don’t
