by Jack London
CHAPTER XVIII
The "Doll's House" was a success. Mrs. Schoville ecstasized over it interms so immeasurable, so unqualifiable, that Jacob Welse, standingnear, bent a glittering gaze upon her plump white throat andunconsciously clutched and closed his hand on an invisible windpipe.Dave Harney proclaimed its excellence effusively, though he questionedthe soundness of Nora's philosophy and swore by his Puritan gods thatTorvald was the longest-eared Jack in two hemispheres. Even MissMortimer, antagonistic as she was to the whole school, conceded thatthe players had redeemed it; while Matt McCarthy announced that hedidn't blame Nora darlin' the least bit, though he told the GoldCommissioner privately that a song or so and a skirt dance wouldn'thave hurt the performance.
"Iv course the Nora girl was right," he insisted to Harney, both ofwhom were walking on the heels of Frona and St. Vincent. "I'd beseein'--"
"Rubber--"
"Rubber yer gran'mother!" Matt wrathfully exclaimed.
"Ez I was sayin'," Harney continued, imperturbably, "rubber boots isgoin' to go sky-high 'bout the time of wash-up. Three ounces the pair,an' you kin put your chips on that for a high card. You kin gather 'emin now for an ounce a pair and clear two on the deal. A cinch, Matt, adead open an' shut."
"The devil take you an' yer cinches! It's Nora darlin' I have in memind the while."
They bade good-by to Frona and St. Vincent and went off disputing underthe stars in the direction of the Opera House.
Gregory St. Vincent heaved an audible sigh. "At last."
"At last what?" Frona asked, incuriously.
"At last the first opportunity for me to tell you how well you did.You carried off the final scene wonderfully; so well that it seemed youwere really passing out of my life forever."
"What a misfortune!"
"It was terrible."
"No."
"But, yes. I took the whole condition upon myself. You were not Nora,you were Frona; nor I Torvald, but Gregory. When you made your exit,capped and jacketed and travelling-bag in hand, it seemed I could notpossibly stay and finish my lines. And when the door slammed and youwere gone, the only thing that saved me was the curtain. It brought meto myself, or else I would have rushed after you in the face of theaudience."
"It is strange how a simulated part may react upon one," Fronaspeculated.
"Or rather?" St. Vincent suggested.
Frona made no answer, and they walked on without speech. She was stillunder the spell of the evening, and the exaltation which had come toher as Nora had not yet departed. Besides, she read between the linesof St. Vincent's conversation, and was oppressed by the timidity whichcomes over woman when she faces man on the verge of the greaterintimacy.
It was a clear, cold night, not over-cold,--not more than fortybelow,--and the land was bathed in a soft, diffused flood of lightwhich found its source not in the stars, nor yet in the moon, which wassomewhere over on the other side of the world. From the south-east tothe northwest a pale-greenish glow fringed the rim of the heavens, andit was from this the dim radiance was exhaled.
Suddenly, like the ray of a search-light, a band of white lightploughed overhead. Night turned to ghostly day on the instant, thenblacker night descended. But to the southeast a noiseless commotionwas apparent. The glowing greenish gauze was in a ferment, bubbling,uprearing, downfalling, and tentatively thrusting huge bodiless handsinto the upper ether. Once more a cyclopean rocket twisted its fieryway across the sky, from horizon to zenith, and on, and on, intremendous flight, to horizon again. But the span could not hold, andin its wake the black night brooded. And yet again, broader, stronger,deeper, lavishly spilling streamers to right and left, it flaunted themidmost zenith with its gorgeous flare, and passed on and down to thefurther edge of the world. Heaven was bridged at last, and the bridgeendured!
At this flaming triumph the silence of earth was broken, and tenthousand wolf-dogs, in long-drawn unisoned howls, sobbed their dismayand grief. Frona shivered, and St. Vincent passed his arm about herwaist. The woman in her was aware of the touch of man, and of a slighttingling thrill of vague delight; but she made no resistance. And asthe wolf-dogs mourned at her feet and the aurora wantoned overhead, shefelt herself drawn against him closely.
"Need I tell my story?" he whispered.
She drooped her head in tired content on his shoulder, and togetherthey watched the burning vault wherein the stars dimmed and vanished.Ebbing, flowing, pulsing to some tremendous rhythm, the prism colorshurled themselves in luminous deluge across the firmament. Then thecanopy of heaven became a mighty loom, wherein imperial purple and deepsea-green blended, wove, and interwove, with blazing woof and flashingwarp, till the most delicate of tulles, fluorescent and bewildering,was daintily and airily shaken in the face of the astonished night.
Without warning the span was sundered by an arrogant arm of black. Thearch dissolved in blushing confusion. Chasms of blackness yawned,grew, and rushed together. Broken masses of strayed color and fadingfire stole timidly towards the sky-line. Then the dome of nighttowered imponderable, immense, and the stars came back one by one, andthe wolf-dogs mourned anew.
"I can offer you so little, dear," the man said with a slightlyperceptible bitterness. "The precarious fortunes of a gypsy wanderer."
And the woman, placing his hand and pressing it against her heart,said, as a great woman had said before her, "A tent and a crust ofbread with you, Richard."