The Pit | Page 5

Page
shook her head. She was five years younger than Laura, just turned
seventeen. Her hair, dressed high for the first time this night, was
brown. But Page's beauty was no less marked than her sister's. The
seriousness of her expression, however, was more noticeable. At times
it amounted to undeniable gravity. She was straight, and her figure, all
immature as yet, exhibited hardly any softer outlines than that of a boy.
"No, no," she said, in answer to Laura's question. "They would come in
here; they wouldn't wait outside--not on such a cold night as this. Don't
you think so, Aunt Wess'?"
But Mrs. Wessels, a lean, middle-aged little lady, with a flat, pointed
nose, had no suggestions to offer. She disengaged herself from any
responsibility in the situation and, while waiting, found a vague
amusement in counting the number of people who filtered in single file
through the wicket where the tickets were presented. A great, stout
gentleman in evening dress, perspiring, his cravatte limp, stood here,
tearing the checks from the tickets, and without ceasing, maintaining a
continuous outcry that dominated the murmur of the throng:
"Have your tickets ready, please! Have your tickets ready."
"Such a crowd," murmured Page. "Did you ever see--and every one you
ever knew or heard of. And such toilettes!"
With every instant the number of people increased; progress became
impossible, except an inch at a time. The women were, almost without
exception, in light-coloured gowns, white, pale blue, Nile green, and
pink, while over these costumes were thrown opera cloaks and capes of
astonishing complexity and elaborateness. Nearly all were bare-headed,
and nearly all wore aigrettes; a score of these, a hundred of them,
nodded and vibrated with an incessant agitation over the heads of the
crowd and flashed like mica flakes as the wearers moved. Everywhere
the eye was arrested by the luxury of stuffs, the brilliance and delicacy
of fabrics, laces as white and soft as froth, crisp, shining silks, suave
satins, heavy gleaming velvets, and brocades and plushes, nearly all of
them white--violently so--dazzling and splendid under the blaze of the

electrics. The gentlemen, in long, black overcoats, and satin mufflers,
and opera hats; their hands under the elbows of their women-folk,
urged or guided them forward, distressed, pre-occupied, adjuring their
parties to keep together; in their white-gloved fingers they held their
tickets ready. For all the icy blasts that burst occasionally through the
storm doors, the vestibule was uncomfortably warm, and into this
steam-heated atmosphere a multitude of heavy odours exhaled--the
scent of crushed flowers, of perfume, of sachet, and
even--occasionally--the strong smell of damp seal-skin.
Outside it was bitterly cold. All day a freezing wind had blown from
off the Lake, and since five in the afternoon a fine powder of snow had
been falling. The coachmen on the boxes of the carriages that
succeeded one another in an interminable line before the entrance of the
theatre, were swathed to the eyes in furs. The spume and froth froze on
the bits of the horses, and the carriage wheels crunching through the
dry, frozen snow gave off a shrill staccato whine. Yet for all this, a
crowd had collected about the awning on the sidewalk, and even upon
the opposite side of the street, peeping and peering from behind the
broad shoulders of policemen--a crowd of miserables, shivering in rags
and tattered comforters, who found, nevertheless, an unexplainable
satisfaction in watching this prolonged defile of millionaires.
So great was the concourse of teams, that two blocks distant from the
theatre they were obliged to fall into line, advancing only at intervals,
and from door to door of the carriages thus immobilised ran a score of
young men, their arms encumbered with pamphlets, shouting: "Score
books, score books and librettos; score books with photographs of all
the artists."
However, in the vestibule the press was thinning out. It was understood
that the overture had begun. Other people who were waiting like Laura
and her sister had been joined by their friends and had gone inside.
Laura, for whom this opera night had been an event, a thing desired and
anticipated with all the eagerness of a girl who had lived for
twenty-two years in a second-class town of central Massachusetts, was
in great distress. She had never seen Grand Opera, she would not have
missed a note, and now she was in a fair way to lose the whole
overture.
"Oh, dear," she cried. "Isn't it too bad. I can't imagine why they don't

come."
Page, more metropolitan, her keenness of appreciation a little lost by
two years of city life and fashionable schooling, tried to reassure her.
"You won't lose much," she said. "The air of the overture is repeated in
the first act--I've heard it once before."