Miss Sharples introduced her briskly. “This is Miss Marshall,” she said to the room in general, “the dancer I was telling you of.” Joanna inclined her head slightly, but the men all rose and bowed gravely, and the two other women in the room—a Miss Rosen and a Miss Phelps as they turned out to be—bowed also noncommittally but without hostility.
Evidently the place had frequently been used for rehearsals, for there was a narrow platform running across the far end of the room. Here Miss Sharples stationed Joanna. “Just to give them an idea of what you can do, my dear. There isn’t much space, but I don’t think that will bother you.”
“No,” said Joanna confidently, “the thing is the music.” She glanced at the pale young man who had spoken about the Russian dancer’s thick ankles. “Can you play by ear?”
“I think I could manage it,” he told her seriously. They were all serious, as unconscious of self and as tremendously interested as though they were assisting at an affair of national moment. Joanna felt the atmosphere enveloping, quickening her. She stepped down from the platform.
“Well, now listen. I’m supposed to have a ring of children around me. I sing and they answer. At first I’ll have to sing both parts, but afterwards you can play their answers. See, this is the way it goes.” She sat down at the piano, and ran through the melody of “Barn! Barn!” singing it in her beautiful, full voice.
“That’s it, that’s got the lilt,” a tall, dark man said to Miss Rosen.
Joanna yielded the piano to the pale young man—Francis—everyone called him. He ran over her sketch, filling in with deep, rich chords, while she flew back to the little platform.
“Now then, you’ve got it. Ready!
“Sissy in the barn! Join in the weddin’!”
Her voice rang out, her slender flaming body turned and twinkled, her lovely graceful limbs flashed and darted and pirouetted. She was everywhere at once, acting the part of leader, of individual children, of the whole, singing, stamping circle.
The Board applauded. “Oh, but that’s great, that’s genius,” cried Miss Phelps.
“If I could only have some real children,” Joanna suggested, “colored children. Are there any around here?”
“About five thousand down there in Minetta Lane,” Francis told her gravely. “Want me to get you some?”
“Oh, if you only would.” He and Miss Rosen disappeared and were back in fifteen minutes with ten colored children, of every type and shade, black and brown and yellow, some with stiff pigtails and others with bobbed curling locks. Most of them knew the game already, all of them took to Joanna and threw themselves with radiant, eager good nature into the spirit of what she was trying to display.
The tall dark man, Mr. Hale, came over to her. “You’re all right, Miss Marshall, if you’re willing, we’ll try you. America’s got some foolish prejudices, but we’ll try her with a sensation, and you’ll be all of that. I’ll leave you with Miss Sharples and Miss Rosen, our secretary, to make final arrangements, while Francis and I go out to see what we can do about taking on these kids. I suppose you’ll need them.”
XXVIII
The District Line Theater was jammed every night now. People came from all over New York and all its suburbs to see the new dancer—Joanna Marshall. Her success and fame were instant. The newspapers featured her, the “colyumists” wrote her up, her face appeared with other members of the cast, but never alone, on the billboards outside the little ramshackle theater. Special writers came to see her, took snapshots of herself and of Sylvia which they never published, and speculated on the amount of white blood which she had in her veins.
Mr. Hale had taken her on in May. The piece ran all summer with Joanna as the great attraction, although not the acknowledged star. Miss Ashby, the girl who danced as an Indian and as an American, was that. From the first she had resented the colored girl’s success and had held jealously to all her rights and privileges. But the public, surprisingly loyal to this new and original plaything, never varied in the expression of its enjoyment of Joanna. Now that her changed contract was again about to expire, Miss Ashby announced her inability to remain with the play.
“I’ve really been violating my principles in staying this long,” she told Mr. Hale with meaning.
Even Miss Sharples was overcome at this news. Joanna could be cast without any difficulty as an Indian, a wig and grease paint would accomplish that. But Joanna could hardly pose as a white American. She was too dark.
Sylvia had a suggestion here. “America” was supposed to come on last as a regal, symbolic figure, but Miss Ashby had paid more attention to the dancing than to the symbolism.
“Why not,” asked Sylvia, “have a mask made for Joanna? She could then be made as typically American as anyone could wish and no one need know the difference.”
That was the basis on which Mr. Hale worked. On the first night on which the new “America” was introduced, an inveterate theatergoer in the first row of the orchestra insisted on encoring her. Joanna returned, bowed and bowed, was encored.
Somehow the habitué guessed the truth. “Pull off your mask, America,” he shouted. The house took it up. “Let’s see your face, America!”
Mr. Hale, Miss Sharples, Francis, Miss Rosen and Miss Phelps held a hurried consultation behind the scenes. “There’s nothing to be done,” Hale said, “quick, off with your mask, Miss Marshall.” And breathless, somewhat with the air of a man bracing himself, he led Joanna again on the stage.
There was a moment’s silence, a moment’s tenseness. Then Joanna smiled and spoke. “I hardly need to tell you that there is no one in the audience more American than I am. My great-grandfather fought in the
