The Baritone and the Office Boy

THE BARITONE AND THE OFFICE BOY

BY KATHARINE METCALF ROOK

THE sidewalk before the brilliantly lighted entrance of the opera house was empty, save for the groups of speculators and libretto venders standing ready to break into a chorus of appeal at the appearance of the possible ticket buyer. It lacked fully an hour of the time for the evening crowd to arrive, — the homogeneous, philistine crowd that, pays to be let in. But at the “back of the house,” the stage door was briskly opening and shutting upon the crowd that is paid to come, — a heterogeneous crowd of widely different aspect.

From the little window in the blank wall that conceals the official machinery from the opener of that door, the office boy stood watching the passing show with an accustomed but not indifferent eye. It is a motley throng that proffers grievance or request at that window, or passes it on the way to the inner mysteries. In that small anteroom, where the office boy is the mouthpiece of fate, the three operatic nations that reign upon alternate nights meet and mingle in a veritable tower of Babel. There German despair, French frenzy, Italian hysteria, American impatience, and Irish invective meet on a common ground of suffering and hope deferred. There the office boy listens to complaints in English of unfamiliar sound, and administers fragmentary and unsentimental consolation in German with an Irish accent. Although young and untraveled, the opera house office boy has formulated generalizations upon types and nationalities.

There are several of him, but he is generic, — a well - defined deviation from the type office boy. He has the facial immobility of the diplomat. Swift to gauge his visitor and decide upon the exact amount of attention necessary, he is yet not discourteous if courteously treated. His manner is not ornamental; he deals with facts. You would call him democratic if he were not slightly addicted to the vice of patronage. Also his Americanism is perceptibly tainted by foreign contact. To the Teutonic inquirer for an absent official he can answer “ nick da,” which, if not soul-satisfying, is at least conclusive. If social interchange is what the occasion demands, he can say, “We gates,” or “Bon swore,” as if it were his habitual form of address. He has a sympathetic interest in the foreign mail, and likes to ask the not too inaccessible minor prima donna if she got her letter, although he may brush carelessly aside an unobtrusive masculine star of the first magnitude. All this is in the daytime. At night the social side of his duties becomes lost in the official.

Upon the evening in question, it was one Willie Jenkins, a youth giving a general impression of blondness and pinkness emphasized by blue uniform, who held the post at the window of communication. The elements shortly to compose the evening performance were beginning to arrive in inverted order of importance.

An innocent, freshly imported German chorus girl was for an idle moment occupying the office boy’s attention. He was amusing himself to her confusion with “fake” German which sounded sufficiently plausible to commend itself to her attention. An occasional chorus of laughter from within broke into the duo of question and answer. It was interrupted by the arrival of a basket of roses of assorted hues.

“ Ausqezeignet ! ” murmured Willie Jenkins, as lie opened the door to receive it. The office boy takes a warm interest in the destination of flowers, and has also a Sherlock Holmes-like intuition about them. With a quick glance at the naïve parti - colored arrangement, he commented, “For Madame Bergmann,” without glancing at the card.

“Good guesser,”was the tribute of the messenger.

“That ’s easy, responded the office boy, unmoved by flattery. “Ganz Deutsch,” he added, with a head gesture toward the garish floral offering.

As the outer door opened to let out the florist’s boy, it admitted a short, thickset gentleman in a fur-collared overcoat, the removal of whose hat revealed a virile black pompadour. The office boy stared a perceptible instant before greeting him carelessly.

“Good-evening, Mr. Repeti. I did n’t know you without your moustache.”

“Ah, terribla, terribla,” Mr. Repeti responded tragically. More linguistically ambitious than most of his operatic countrymen, he had been at some pains to acquire the colloquial in English. “What time he grow out they tell me cutta him off. In your country you like what you call lightening changea artist.” He raised gloved hands to an unaccountably silent heaven. He reflected, sighed, then with a change of tempo and expression continued, “To-night I singa the count. You giva me the dressing-room of Madame Brunzola.”

Willie Jenkins’s eye glanced in silent consultation to an invisible associate. “ I don’t think, Mr. Repeti. That’s Madame Bergmann’s dressing-room to-night.”

The Italian’s eye flashed stiletto-like. His chest heaved. “I singa the count,” he reiterated in a tone in which the crescendo was immediate.

“ Ladies first in this country,” responded Willie briefly. He disliked “Dagoes,” and always enjoyed, as he frequently confided to his associate Tommy Ryan, to “get a rise” out of them.

“The Tadesea, she is littla girl,” the baritone responded loftily. “To-night I ’ave the dressing-room.”

“ She’s prima donna to-night all right,” returned Willie. Although his face was blank, he was enjoying himself hugely. “Moran sings Suzanna.” His manner of mentioning this singer, although not disrespectful, subtly defined her artistic caste.

“ I tell you I singa the count, I ” — the baritone insisted passionately, striking his chest.

“It ain’t often a baritone gets a show. Don’t blame him for working it for all it’s worth,” said a voice from within, apostrophizing, rather than addressing, the injured count.

“And Madame Bergmann she sings the countess,” returned Willie Jenkins. “Count against countess,” he added frivolously, permitting himself the brief relaxation of a grin.

“Signor Quinby he tella me I am star to-night. I have a bad throat, but I sing.”

At this dark allusion the office boy’s hilarity subsided, and he was seen to consult more gravely with his adviser within. Another head appeared at the window, as if to gauge the seriousness of the count’s symptoms, but “Ask Quinby” was his only suggestion.

“He ain’t here yet, I tell you.” A faint irritation growing out of the consciousness of responsibility was discernible in Willie’s tones.

There was a short silence, during which alarming visions of an “indisposition” notice, possibly an eleventh hour change of opera, passed before the mental vision of the two youthful diagnosticians. Then the consultant said in a low voice: —

“Let him have it. He’ll throw a fit in another minute. Little Bergmann won’t care.”

“Go ahead,” Willie consented briefly.

The door of the inner mysteries had scarcely closed upon the appeased but still vibrating form of the baritone, when a dilapidated, indifferent person with a wall eye sauntered in, bearing in his hand a large, fluttering paper.

“I got to get this O. K.’d,” he remarked to the window.

“Quinby ain’t here yet,”a voice answered him. “What you got there?” The office boy tried to decipher the ominous black words upside down. “Who’s out now?”

“Moran.”

“Gosh! Another shuffle! Who’ll they get in her place, I’d like to know? They’ll have to change the opera. And Repeti ’s here dressing already.”

“Brunzola sings,” returned the casual one. He had not the office boy’s esprit de corps.

“Gee!” The office boys exchanged glances and laughed. “Brunzola singing substitute! That’s a good stunt,” exclaimed Willie Jenkins.

“I’d like to know how that come about,” the other boy wondered. “She was mad ’cause they called Moran out the last Figaro. That’s why she would n’t sing to-night.”

“Doin’ the gracious act,” observed the intermittently visible youth within. “Bet it says so.” He appeared again to scan the notice. “Yes, ‘Madame Brunzola has graciously consented to sing.’ Bet she wrote that herself.”

“Brunzola’s all right,” said a third voice, from the telephone desk, “She ain’t stingy.”

“Neither is Bergmann,” contributed Willie Jenkins irrelevantly. “And she don’t get half Brunzola’s salary.”

“Oh, Bergmann’s all right, who said she was n’t ?” returned the telephone boy.

Willie Jenkins carried the subject no further, a terrible thought had turned his pink cheek pale. “That dressing-room!” he gasped. “Brunzola’s all right if you don’t strike her on her chippy side. But she’ll never stand for that.”

“Signor Push Cart ’ll have to get out,” returned the other boy, grasping the situation instantly.

“An’ Quinby ain’t here yet.”

“Ask Schultz.”

Willie turned nervously as the outer door opened and shut again. “Who’s that ?”

“Bergmann’s maid.”

“If this ain’t the worst ever. I’ll be darned if I know ”—

“Ask Schultz.”

Willie Jenkins turned irritably upon his associate. “You know well enough it’s Quinby’s business, an’ it ain’t good for our health to ask Schultz about Quinby’s business.”

The inner door opened again, and a female form, wide and capable, stood in the opening. It spoke deliberately.

“In the dressing-room of Madame Bergmann is ein man. He haf his black coat off, und he puts his red coat on. He vill not go, und he lets me not in, und Madame Bergmann she is here in five minutes.”

“That’s all right, Frowline, you just slow up a bit. It ain’t my fault. Can’t Madame Bergmann go in the next dressing-room, —in Madame Oestreicher’s ?”

“But her dress it is in the room of the Italienischer already, so early it is sent; und he let me not in.”

A despairing “Gosh ” was her only answer. The sound of the outer door opening again jarred upon the harassed nerves of the office boys. Both visibly changed color as they saw before them the ample form of the Brunzola herself, gracious, imposing, in her wake a small, nervous French maid.

“Oh, Madame Brunzola,” Willie faltered, for Once deprived of words, “Madame Brunzola” —

“Yes, Tommy,” the Brunzola paused condescendingly. “You have some message for me ?”

“Oh, Madame Brunzola, I don’t know what to do — Mr. Quinby he ain’t here yet, an’ it ain’t Mr. Schultz’s business”— In his agitation Willie completely lost his fine diplomatic grasp of essentials and was reduced to the level of the anecdotal.

“I don’t understand, Tommy. What is the trouble?” There was more than a touch of royal impatience in the Brunzola’s amiable patronage.

Willie blurted it out like a novice. “Mr. Repeti he come early, an’ he took your dressing-room. We did n’t know you was to sing.”

There was a brief and dreadful silence. The eyes of both boys sought the ground. When the diva spoke it was slowly, and Willie Jenkins’s blood was chilled in his veins.

“Signor Repeti is in my dressing room, do I understand?”

“Yez’m.”

“And why — ” the why was large and terrible — “why, if you please, is Signor Repeti in my dressing-room ? If I had not sung the room belonged to Madame Bergmann.”

“It is true,” fervently assented the maid, clasping her hands, “Und the dress of Madame Bergmann it is in that room already! Ach, lieber Gott!”

The Brunzola turned to the German woman. “Where is Madame Bergmann ?”

“She is not yet here. Alas, she is late! The Kindlein it is sick. Ach Gott! und the clothes of Madame they are in the dressing-room of” —

The Brunzola cut short lament and explanation. “Is any one in Madame Oestreicher’s dressing-room ? No? Very well, then I will go there for the present. You may send Mr. Schultz to me there at once. Also telephone Mr. Quinby. I will wait, you understand, in Madame Oestreicher’s room. And no more mistakes, please.” With ponderous and regal movement the Brunzola swept through the inner door.

It had scarcely closed upon her when the outer door opened to admit a slight, fur-wrapped figure that entered quickly. The distracted Willie caught a glimpse of golden hair.

“Oh, Madame Bergmann,”he gasped.

“Yes,”— Hilda Bergmann paused with a little smile that might have brought balm even to so troubled a spirit as that of the office boy.

“Oh, Madame Bergmann, I’m so sorry, Mr. Repeti he’s in your dressingroom, and your costume ’s in there, an’ he won’t let your maid in to get it, an’ Madame Brunzola she’s come to sing in place of Mademoiselle Moran, and she wants the dressing-room, and Mr. Quinby he ain’t here, an’ Madame Brunzola she’s mad, an’ Signor Repeti he’s mad, an’ Mr. Quinby he’ll be mad, an’ Madame Brunzola’s sent for Air. Schultz, an’ I don’t know what to do, I swear I don’t.”

The office boy could not have explained why he delivered himself of his perplexities in this unreserved fashion to Hilda Bergmann. He never spoke of her with the easy familiarity with which he referred to many of the other singers.

Hilda could not at once grasp all the factors of the situation, English being as yet a foreign tongue to her. She assimilated them in fragments in the order of their importance.

“Madame Brunzola sings to-night, you say. She vish the dressing-room that was mine ? But she may haf it. Oh, the Signor Repeti he is in there. So ! Then I go to another room. Is the dressing-room of Madame Oestreicher occupied ?”

“Madame Brunzola she’s in there already.” In his anguish Willie’s language took on a Teutonic coloring. “ An’ she’s awful mad,” he added fearfully.

Hilda looked troubled. “Mad with me ? But I do not know she is to sing.”

“No, no, — mad at Mr. Repeti, mad at me. Nobody don’t get mad at you, Madame Bergmann.”

Hilda smiled perplexedly. “But vere then do I go, Villie ? ”

But Willie being temporarily deprived of all resource, she found herself obliged to solve the difficulty for him.

“I go also to the dressing-room of Madame Oestreicher und vait until you send me message. Hedwig she vill vait here, und you tell her ven she can bring to me my costume.” At the door she turned to say, “It’s all right, Villie. It is not your fault. I say so to Madame Brunzola.”

Brought nearly to the verge of tears by the introduction of this emotional element into the drama, it was in the last stage of mental disintegration that Willie came face to face with the disastrously late Mr. Quinby.

“What’s all this row about the dressingrooms ? Don’t you know any better than to put that crazy Spaghetti into Brunzola’s dressing-room? It may cost us her contract.”

“Mr. Repeti ” — Willie began.

“Repeti! Repeti!” Quinby snatched the name from Willie’s mouth. “Are n’t the woods full of Repetis ? There’s only one Brunzola for this town.”

Under the spur of attack, the office boy began to recover himself. “I did n’t know what to do. He said you said he was to go there. I did n’t know Brunzola was coming. Moran was down to sing. It was seven o’clock. It ain’t reasonable.”

“ Reasonable! ” thundered Quinby, in a tone eloquent of a condensed lifetime of sophistication. “Good God, what has that got to do with it! Little Moran got suddenly hoarse and could n’t sing a note. Brunzola heard of it and kindly ” — the familiar phraseology came out oddly — “consented to sing in her place.”

“Good business,” grumbled the office boy, his technical appreciation rising for the moment above merely personal considerations.

“Exceedingly good business,” agreed his superior official, “ if you have n’t spoiled it all by letting that damned Dago into her dressing-room.”

After a dismal silence Willie repeated, in a voice closely approximating a whine: “I could n’t help it, Mr. Quinby, honest, I could n’t. Madame Bergmann she said I was n’t to blame.”

“Oh, Bergmann!” exclaimed Quinby, in a tone in which relief and patronage were equally mingled. “What does she know about it!” His tone changed and became authoritative. “Go at once to Repeti and tell him he must get out at once. Tell him I said so. But mind you tell him civilly, or there won’t be any opera. It’s too late to get any one else.”

The office boy went. What passed between them was never divulged except as it came out in resentful reflective fragments. Questioned by his associate, Willie was reserved. “Monkey talk,” he mumbled. “But he went, all right, an’ he says I’m goin’, too, and I am.”

“Aw, get out,” responded his friend.

“That’s exactly what I’m goin’ to do,” replied Willie intensely. “I’ve been in this here office five years, an’ I ain’t had no trouble with no one, an’ I don’t wait fer no dirty Dago to lose me my job.”

“Aw, they won’t fire you ! He’s only a baritone. He ain’t so sum. Did n’t you hear Quinby say the woods was full of ’em ?”

“A baritone may n’t be much, but this here is an opera company, an’ I guess he’s more count than an office boy,” returned Willie with legal impersonality. “An’ if he wants me fired, I guess he gets it all right. But,” he added fiercely, “he don’t get the chance. I send in my resignation to-night. See?”

With these ominous words Willie Jenkins relapsed into a silent gloom, from which he refused to be roused for the rest of the evening.

In “the dressing-room of Madame Oestreicher” another scene had been enacted. Hilda, smiling anti propitiatory, went in to Brunzola the outraged, who sat tapping a high-heeled French slipper upon the floor of the contralto’s inferior dressing-room. She looked up to give the young German singer a brief smile of welcome.

“You were late, love.”

“It vas the little Max,” explained Hilda. “He is much sick. He has vat you call group, is it?”

“Oh, yes, that’s nothing. All children have it.” Generalizations were the Brunzola’s panacea for the troubles of others. “Don’t worry, child.”

Hilda’s face lightened, then clouded again. “I am vorried, Madame, he cannot draw veil his breaths. But Max say he vill stay, that I must not disappoint.”

“Don’t think any more about it, carissima. He will be all right to-morrow.” Then, having permitted her mind to dwell for an extraordinarily long period upon the affairs of another, the Brunzola reverted to the indignity she was suffering as the reward of her unprecedented graciousness. “Such impudence, my dear! Did you ever hear anything like it? A man — a baritone, and a second-rate baritone at that—in my dressing-room! It was the chance of his life, I suppose.”

“Yes,” agreed Hilda, looking troubled. She felt an unfounded sympathy for the scorned baritone.

“I suppose one ought really to feel sorry for the baritones and bassos, poor things! They so seldom have a chance.”

“In Der Fliegende Holländer,” suggested Hilda, whose mind had the Teutonic accuracy. “Und Herr Schmidt — surely he is greadt, Madame. Ach, but I love to sing Senta to his Holländer! Even if basso, I think he is altogether vat you call star.”

“Oh,yes, Herr Schmidt is a fine artist,” Brunzola assented of the remote basso. “But this miserable liltle garlicky baritone who bleats like a lamb — I have always detested him!”

“You were so good to sing for Mademoiselle Moran,” suggested Hilda sweetly.

“Silly liltle thing! What they can see in her! And yet, my dear, if you will believe it, they actually called her out last time she sang Suzanna, when I had that nervous headache. Wretched, hard liltle voice, and she sings sharp!”

“Yes, it is not so beautiful a voice,” Hilda admitted reluctantly. “But she is pretty, do you not think, Madame ? It is that, perhaps, that they like. They do not compare her with a great artist like yourself.”

“I had supposed,” the Brunzola philosophized icily, “that in opera one required a voice, not a face. But very likely they like her little café chantant grimaces. As you say, they have no taste, this American audience. They are cabbage heads. True art is wasted on them. But I will show them to-night,” she went on, a trifle inconsistently, “how Mozart should besung. They have perhaps forgotten.” A moment later she added, “But you, child, sing it sweetly. It is truly a wonder, for one trained in Germany.”

“You are very good, Madame”

“But Moran,” with a return to her former tone, “with her miserable liltle French scream — she can no more sing it than a cat.”

At that very moment a delighted and astounded audience, passing through the lobby, were trying to grasp the astonishing contents of the printed notice which confronted them: —

“Owing to the sudden indisposition of Mademoiselle Moran, Madame Brunzola has graciously consented to sing in her place.”

It was not long before Willie Jenkins, reserved, as becomes the misunderstood, came to the contralto’s dressing-room bearing the olive branch. “Your room is empty now.” He spoke to Madame Brunzola, but his eye glanced uncertainly toward Hilda Bergmann.

The Brunzola rose, then had an unusual compunction. “But your clothes are in there, child” —

Hilda protested, “ Nein, nein, Madame. They are not yet unpacked; I stay here. It is your dressing-room when you sing. I have no vish to take it. I stay here.”

The Brunzola smiled. “Sweet child! You really don’t mind?”

“ Ach, nein — no — indeed, Madame. I stay here. I vould not think to take your room.”

The diva paused in the deliberate act of departure — for what to her was a waiting audience! “You Germans are so much more amiable and simpatica — I should say sympatisch, should I not, liebes Kind? I can’t bear Italians. They are so sudden. My first husband was an Italian, — a Neapolitan, — and I always said my life then was like living on the side of Vesuvius. Well — adieu, contessa. When we meet again I shall be your humble servant Suzanna.” And with a premonitory touch of the prima donna run, the Brunzola tripped away

The Brunzola might have considered that retributive justice overtook the unchivalrous baritone, for lie had no individual recall, while Suzanna’s Deh vieni and the letter duo received applause unlimited. The diva was all graciousness as she received her recalls, and every time but one dragged with her the reluctant Hilda, who, unconscious and spontaneous in the opera, was childishly shy before the curtain.

It was a complete triumph for the Brunzola. She went home wreathed in smiles, the disquieting prelude to her triumph forgotten save as further evidence against the Italian character. But by accident an echo of the afterclap reached her ears in the shape of the humble tragedy of the office boy.

“Where is the boy that usually calls me?" she happened to ask the next evening, not liking the manner of the Mercury who summoned her. The question was merely intended to convey an impression of his inadequacy to the youth addressed, but his answer caught her attention.

“He’s resigned, ’m.”

“Resigned! ”

“He gives up his job when his month’s up. He just answers the phone now. He won’t give no more messages since his fuss with Mr. Repeti. He wanted to go next day, but Mr. Quinby he ask him to stay till I got to know the work, so he squared it with him that way.” The new boy took pride in the recitation.

“His trouble with Mr. Repeti,”the diva repeated vaguely. Then a gleam came in her eye. “The night of Figaro, you mean ?”

“Yez’m, I guess so.”

“H’m. I must see to that. Tommy’s a nice boy ; we must keep him.”

“It ain’t Tommy, it’s Willie.”

“Well, Willie, then. I will speak to Mr. Quinby about it.”

“Mr. Quinby am’t firing him; he asked him to stay. It’s Willie his self. He won’t stay.”

“Very well, then,” the prima donna adjusted herself gravely. “I will speak to Willie. I am accustomed to Willie, and I don’t wish him to go. Send him to me after the performance.”

This conversation, repeated, produced some grim chuckles of delight from Willie, but failed to move his determination. He was inwardly hilarious and outwardly decorous as he went to the Brunzola’s dressing-room after her final exit.

She glanced up pleasantly as the maid answered his knock, and threw him a careless, “Oh, come in, Tommy.” She spoke looking into the mirror, while her maid extricated a diamond tiara from a mighty structure of blonde wig. “I hear that you are going, Tommy. I should be very sorry to have you go. I don’t like that other boy. He has such a disagreeable husky voice. I hope you will change your mind.”

“No’m, thank you, very much, Miss Brunzola, but I can’t stay after that row with Mr. Repeti.”

The Brunzola’s eye flashed sympathetically. “Yes, I know. Italians are annoying, but you must n’t go away on his account. You stay, Tommy. I want you to stay.” Never doubting that she had settled the matter, the Brunzola took out a crumpled bill and handed it to the office boy without looking at it. Then, as the nervous maid had packed the tiara in the case, and was holding out a fur-lined wrap, she smiled a condescending dismissal to Willie Jenkins.

He went back to the office and exhibited the bill to his comrades.

“A fiver! You’ll stay now, won’t you?” exclaimed his intimate (the real Tommy, by the way).

But Willie Jenkins shook his head. “Not on your life!”

The next evening another summons came to him at the latter part of the performance, which was Tannhäuser. Elizabeth, who had just disappeared over the hill to die, and was obliged to wait some forty minutes before reappearing upon her bier, sat in her white nun-like robes resting in her dressing-room. It was Hilda Bergmann. As Willie entered she looked up with a smile.

“Good evening, Villie. You get my message? Vat is this I hear that you go avay? ”

“Yez’m,” returned Willie awkwardly, “I’m goin’.”

Hilda looked distressed. “Vat for you go avay ? Don’t go, Villie. I miss you if you go.”

Willie the self-possessed was dumb.

Hilda went on: “You are so guick. You keep so vell my flowers. You are so good to the little Max that day he is outside in the carriage. You gif him one little ball, und he hold it all the vay home.”

Willie blushed to the ears, grinned foolishly, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Oh, that’s nothin’,” he replied hastily.

“You vill stay, then?” she urged.

Willie hesitated, coughed, then mumbled almost inaudible, “ I did n’t suppose it made no difference. If I’d of known you cared ” —

“Und Madame Brunzola vishes also that you stay.” Giving him a moment to consider, she turned to a bunch of pink roses on her dressing-table, and, selecting one with care, drew it out. “Vould you like a rose, Villie ? I think you are fond of flowers.”

Willie received the rose in a red hand, with a gulp of thanks; then, as he still lingered uncertainly, she said again coaxingly, —

“You stay, then, Villie?”

And without another thought to the forsworn glory of his dramatic exit, Willie consented.

“Yez’m, of course, if it makes any difference.”

Back in the office again he made use of another idiom.

“I did n’t suppose it ud cut any ice with her — with either of ’em, but she ask me to stay, so I stay.”

“Good work,” agreed his friend heartily.

“She’s got eyes like a kid,” Willie volunteered a few minutes later, “ an’ you can’t refuse her nothin’, any more’n you can a nice kid. My sister has one like that, an’ nobody can’t refuse her nothin’.”

And this was the only apology or explanation that Willie Jenkins ever vouchsafed for his abrupt change of heart.

But Tommy, his associate, student of human nature, observed shrewdly, “I guess you got a crush on little Bergmann.”

To which Willie replied fiercely, “ Say, just cut that out, will you!”

An armed neutrality, occasionally giving place to guerilla warfare, which was carried on between Willie and Signor Repeti for the rest of the season, furnished much amusement to the habitués of the ante - room. But upon the subject of Willie’s adoration for Hilda Bergmann few even of his intimates ever dared to jest.