Ainslee's Magazine/The Scratch Company

by Anna Alice Chapin

THE SCRATCH COMPANY

ANNA ALICE CHAPIN

“RED ink?” asked Carla, raising the bottle and her eyebrows, as she looked inquiringly at the others.

“Let us have real Chianti!” begged Dufresne. “Madame, two bottles of your best.”

Fancini was looking at Carla with adoring eyes.

“What does it matter what we drink?” he said impatiently.

“Ah!” said little Madame Berta Kraumer whimsically. “But she has left no 'Kiss within the cup!' You must go thirsty for both, nicht?”

The four friends and fellow artists were celebrating the close of the opera season, and their departure for the summer. The winter had been a delightful, they agreed. Full of hard work—yes, that always, of course! But good work, interesting work.

Carla had created three new rôles, and had had plenty of opportunity to sing her old favorites as well. Berta Kraumer had been promoted to the singing of Delilah, a part for which, like most dramatic contraltos, she had yearned for many years. Dufresne and Fancini, incomparable basso and most glorious of tenors, had had some brilliant offers from royal-opera managements on the other side. All of them had added to their bank accounts, and, “best of all,” as Carla said, not one of them had disappointed an audience all the season.

Now they were about to separate for six months. Dufresne was sailing a week later to take his royally conferred position in Europe. Madame Kraumer was hastening home to Austria, where a good, housekeeping husband was mounting guard over her family of six children. Carla, for the first spring in years, was not going to leave her own country, but intended to spend several months visiting friends in the mountains and by the sea. Fancini, who worshiped her, had contrived to be asked to several of the same houses.

This little farewell breakfast was her idea, of course. She was nearly always the guiding spirit in their merrymakings as in their beautiful work, and had been the same leading impetus in many sweet, friendly charities of which no one knew but these four great singers themselves.

They had chosen a small Italian restaurant for the occasion. They did not want to dress, to be stared at, to behave like public characters. They ardently loved to renew the days of their early artistic struggles; to eat spaghetti and fritto misto, and drink cheap red wine. They even took joy in the smell of frying oil, and the pictures of Garibaldi and the Milan Cathedral on the dusty walls, and in the raucous Italian street songs that Pietro, the cook, droned out over his mysterious cook pots in the kitchen next door.

The signora loved them, and served them herself, commenting with easy Italian effrontery on the good looks of the men and the unacknowledged romance that surrounded the comradeship of Carla and Fancini like a fragrance.

“Va bene!” she said, bringing two straw-covered flasks, and setting them on the table between a dish of olives and a saucer of Parmesan cheese. “Give him not too much of the good wine, signorina. He will tell you before us all how adorable he finds you!” And she smiled her impudent, disarming smile into Fancini's blue eyes. “Eh! He is good to see, il bambino!” For so she always called the big, golden man—golden of hair and beard, as well as of voice so irresistibly boyish of speech and gesture.

“Bambino!” repeated Carla. “Yes, that is all you are, Guido. The signora sees your baby ways through all that affectation of being grown up.”

The spring was dancing in the air, in the veins of the four friends, in their eyes. They laughed irresponsibly, as emotional persons will without much cause. They were in holiday spirits. The dingy little back yard, with dusty vines trying to make an arbor, was as delightful as a garden to them. The spaghetti, and Gruyère, and thin red wine were all delicious; the Neapolitan air that Pietro hummed over his brazier was intoxicating. Oh, was it not glorious to be so strong, so happy, so successful, and so preposterously fond of each other?

It was Dufresne who reached across to a recently vacated table and purloined a discarded newspaper; Dufresne who idly looked through it, reading out gems of news with absurd comments till they commanded him to be silent.

“'Wife of capitalist elopes with carpenter!' What a country!' Voyons! 'Trousseau of society bride.' And they call France immodest! 'Negro lynched for murder.' I wonder it was not for stealing potatoes! What a country! What a country! I am glad that I leave it to-morrow. This paper has nothing in it of beauty or solace but the shipping list. Bon Dieu! What is this?”

His good-humored grumbling gave way to a tone of sheer horror and distress. His eyes were fixed incredulously upon the heading of a column on the page he had just turned.

“What's the matter?” asked Carla quickly, for she saw that something was really wrong.

“Matter!” exclaimed the Frenchman, with a sort of groan. “Listen, my friends! It is to break the heart! Incredible! Shocking!”

He read in his sonorous, deep voice:

“'Max Grimm, the distinguished opera impresario, has again proved the failure of music as a financial investment. He has sold out his interests to Monsieur Nièrac, of Paris, who purposes to introduce many innovations during the coming season.' And so on, and so on,” growled Dufresne, flinging the newspaper from him. “Who cares for Monsieur Nièrac and his innovations? Though I know him, the imbecile! What matters is that Grimm, our Grimm, has failed!”

The others were staring at each other, appalled. Carla had grown quite pale.

Berta Kraumer, thrifty German that she was, first found her voice, to say: “We shall find our contracts transferred to the new management, no doubt?”

“Of course!” exclaimed Carla, almost angrily. “Grimm would see to that. The honestest little man!”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“A great impresario!” said Guido Fancini gravely, as one would speak of the dead. “But without much sentiment, without much heart.”

“How can you say that?” cried Carla. “He loved his artists! And he loved, oh, how he loved his productions! I have seen him at rehearsal absolutely carried out of himself with the joy and pride of having made such a beautiful thing possible. He loved it all—all the music, and the scenery, and the dresses, and the personalities that go to make up opera!”

“Emile,” said the practical Madame Kraumer quietly, “can you reach that schrecklich newspaper? Danke! I want to see if it says any more about Herr Grimm later on.”

It did. There was a poor little paragraph toward the very end of the column, patiently unearthed by Madame Kraumer after careful searching.

“'Mr, Grimm is at present in a sanitarium suffering from a nervous breakdown, but his representatives are busy with one of his recent projects. It is said that, undaunted by the failure of his more ambitious operatic undertakings, he now proposes to organize a third-rate summer company to sing grand opera at popular prices.'”

Her voice broke, and she sat staring at the paper.

“But what a brave thing!” she said.

Carla was wiping her eyes shamelessly.

“Third rate!” repeated Fancini softly. “Grimm to give third-rate opera!”

“It is disgusting!” boomed Dufresne, in a tone of indignant pain. “And there is nothing one can do!”

Carla suddenly crumpled up her handkerchief and fired it across the room. It hit a dozing cat, which was the only remaining occupant of the back yard, for it was late, and the patrons had departed, and the signora was taking a nap. But Carla for once did not notice the pussy's comical expression of outraged dignity. She was illumined by one of her swift, unreasoning inspirations.

“There is something we can do!” she cried, and leaned across the little table with her hands clasped, her beautiful eyes glowing. “Guido! Berta! Emile! Do you suppose Grimm has engaged all his singers yet?”

For a moment they stared at her, then her thought swept to them dynamically, and they gave a sort of shout of excitement. The signora heard them, and, smiling, shook her head over “the madness of those great artists that were so many babies!”

They all began to talk at once.

“I'll cable that I can't take that position!” exclaimed Emile Dufresne.

“Don't be foolish, Emile! They'll hold it open for you for an extra month. Berta, it's hardest on you. You won't see your kiddies till late in the summer.”

“I could not face them,” said the little German stoutly, “if I deserted a friend in need to go to them!”

And Carla kissed her then and there.

“You and I, Guido,” she said, “have nothing to give up.”

The Italian laughed, radiant. He knew that, on the contrary, he had everything to gain; Carla's approval, Carla's companionship, Carla's artistic collaboration. Besides, he, too, had a warm sentiment for their old manager.

They each had a suggestion to offer.

It was Berta Kraumer who suggested seeing the ex-press agent of the opera house, and finding out when and how Grimm proposed to get the artists for his “third-rate summer opera company.”

It was Dufresne who said that they must call themselves by fictitious names so that the question of salary need not arise.

The final inspiration struck Carla and Fancini at the same second.

“We won't tell him at all!” she cried, with a thrill in her exquisite voice. “We won't let him know a thing about it! He wouldn't let us do it if he knew. But——”

“But when he hears us,” cut in Guido Fancini, with the simplicity of greatness, “he will forgive us!”

It required some diplomacy to find out what they wished without betraying their project. But it was finally accomplished, and five days later saw a very meek and down-at-heels quartet of singers seeking employment at the office of Quankey & Kauffenstein, theatrical and operatic agents.

Mr. Quankey was little and laconic, with a cynical green eye and an evil-smelling cigar that was forever going out. Mr. Kauffenstein was a large, dark Israelite of German extraction, in whom a passionate if ignorant love of music warred continually with an equally violent thirst for gold. They treated the four humble seekers for employment with rather less courtesy than is shown by a factory superintendent toward his prospective “hands.” Mr. Quankey listened to their names with one eyebrow up, and an open grin of derision on his pale lips.

“Try their pipes, Gus,” he remarked to his partner, and Kauffenstein opened a shrill piano and commanded them to “do deir tamndest.”

One after the other the wonderful voices, deliberately veiled and restrained, floated through the squalid little office, with its glaring lithographs and framed stage beauties.

“H'm!” said Quankey at the end of the voice trial. “I guess they can sing—eh, Gus?”

“Yes,” said the other, with a puzzled look, “dey can sing.”

Followed a period of wrangling, necessary but arduous to our four friends. They had agreed that they must bicker a little as to terms, though what did they, with their priceless voices, care for a few dollars more or less? They would have preferred to sing for nothing, only that would have been to give themselves away.

They first had, very carefully and casually, to feel about till mention was made of Grimm's Opera Company—the only concern, Mr. Quankey said, that was going to tackle grand opera that summer. It would, he explained kindly, be a good opening for them if they weren't well known.

“And I reckon you can't be,” he added, with superb finality, “or we vould have heard of you!”

They nearly suffocated at that. Carla recovered herself sufficiently to murmur that she was sure it would be a splendid thing for them all. But—er—what—what sort of a company was it? She made her tone as dubious as possible, and the other three looked at her with admiration.

“Well——” The agent hesitated. “It ain't going to be a very big company. Say—maybe I could sign up with one of you—the lady with the high voice, for instance, and see about the rest later?”

“No, no!” exclaimed Carla, in alarm. “We all go together!”

“Well——” said Quankey.

“You can't do no better,” said his partner gruffly. “But dey must understandt dey haf to come cheap.”

“What do you call cheap?” asked Dufresne, with absolutely sincere curiosity. He got five hundred dollars a night himself, and did not consider it a cent too much.

“This is a scratch company, you understand,” said the agent indifferently. “They can't pay you anything to speak of.”

“Money? What do I—I—care for money?” began Fancini, with unthinking haste. But Carla caught his eye, and he added, in a little, grandiloquent burst: “All the same, Benedetto della Lucca must consider his r-r-reputation! Gold is nothing to me, but it shall not be said that I, Della Lucca, sang for a—what do you say?—a pittance!”

“You're all alike,” said the agent calmly. “You're on the make, every last one of you. I don't blame you. So am I. Oh, Lord! Della Lucca! Benedetto della Lucca! Can you beat it!”

“It is a good name!” proclaimed Fancini, with fine fire.

“Oh, Lord, yes; too good to be—— See here, Mr. Looker, or whatever you call yourself, how much, in round figures, do you put your r-r-reputation at? I never heard of you myself; but his nibs here, Herr Kauffenstein, says you can sing.”

Fancini looked helplessly at Carla. She came blithely to his rescue.

“The truth is, Mr. Quankey,” she explained, irresistibly confidential, “we know that beggars can't be choosers. And the proposition is—an off season, and a scratch company, as you say. Now, what were you planning to pay your tenor and soprano?”

“Forty a week each,” growled Quankey.

Carla and Fancini exchanged swift, mirthful glances, then instantly became grave again.

“What!” she exclaimed. “Forty! Never, Mr. Quankey! Why, my gowns alone come to almost as much as that.”

“Oh, magnifique! Inspired!” murmured Dufresne, with a mental picture of Carla as Violetta, in an eight-hundred-dollar ball dress, and of the seed-pearl corslet which had girdled her Elsa.

“And I,” proclaimed Fancini, in an attitude; “never could I sing three times in the week for less than seventy-five!”

Fifty apiece was the compromise of the tenor and soprano, Dufresne being a “plain barnyard bass,” to quote Quankey, posed in gloomy resignation with forty-five. Madame Kraumer talked of poverty, and many children, and succeeded in boosting her price to the same high figure. They were engaged, and left the agent's office just in time to save the situation.

In the street they dissolved into laughter—laughter that was close to generous tears, for their warm, emotional natures were deeply stirred by the need of their old friend and manager. Even as they laughed Carla stopped short, with a little break in her voice, to cry:

“Ah, how pitiful that his artists should be singing for such sums as that!”

“You are too soft-hearted, you!” grumbled Dufresne, scowling; but he blew his Grecian nose.

“Thou good and heartful one!” murmured the little German, stroking the hand of the tall young soprano.

As for Guido Fancini, he looked away from the girl's bright and tender face, lest his eyes betray him.

Max Grimm, wasted, shattered, but indomitable in defeat, left his retreat in a nerve sanitarium just in time to be present at his first night of his third-rate opera company.

He had not been able to come to rehearsals. From time to time his managers and chorus masters had brought him reports and dilemmas, and he had groaned over them in spirit. He who had been the foremost opera manager of the day to be concerned with these cheap and sordid banalities! The list of singers engaged made him physically ill. “Della Lucca,” “Madame Renée,” “Duval,” “Krauss.” Bah! It was nauseating! After reading that list of principals he was sick for a week.

Nevertheless, when the time came, he girded up his loins and went forth to battle.

“I have decided to get well at once,” he said to his doctor. “My disgusting opera season begins to-morrow night.”

The doctor knew that it was in another city.

“You are not able to travel,” he protested.

“Bah!” said little Grimm, and rumpled his mane of snow-white hair till it stood wildly on end. “I must face the music!” And he grinned painfully at his own feeble jest.

“The excitement may kill you!” said the doctor, who was an alarmist.

“So much the better,” said Grimm, and went off to send his evening clothes to be pressed.

He arrived in the city where his company was to open late the following afternoon, and, too tired to think, went to his hotel, where he lay crushed upon his bed for an hour, sick with nervous fatigue.

His stage manager came in to see him about dinner time. He seemed bursting with some extraordinary excitement, but checked it when he saw the small, valiant, beaten figure upon the bed. Twice he started to speak, and twice he refrained. He seemed to be debating within himself.

“What sort of a sale?” asked Grimm, determinedly cheerful.

“Oh, it is——” began the stage manager in a burst. Then he stopped, and looked at the ceiling. “Quite a good sale,” remarked he temperately.

“Company doing pretty well?” said Grimm.

“Oh, fair,” said the stage manager, suppressing a chortle. “We—we're doing 'Roméo et Juliette,'” he added indifferently.

“Yes. You told me. Is it any way decent?”

“I think you'll—like it,” said the stage manager, in a queer voice, and escaped.

At eight o'clock Max Grimm drove up to the theater, arrayed immaculately, with hopeless courage in his heart. He noticed idly that it took a long time to get to the entrance; but when he alighted he rubbed his eyes at sight of the long line of carriages. The lobby was full of men and women in evening dress. A wonder filled him, and a sort of gratitude that his humble venture should have been so generously received. He went back into the box office, and was touched anew by the cordial respect of the theater treasurer. When he made his way to the box reserved for him, it was with the welcome words ringing in his ears: “Sold out!”

The opera was going on. The music, nobly gracious and melodious, was filling the darkened space. Grimm marveled vaguely. Had he really an orchestra as good as that? Almost he might have imagined that he was back in the Metropolitan Opera House listening to the golden opera of his good days, when Guido Fancini and La Carla——

Suddenly he stiffened in his chair, electrified; so startled that he became dizzy as he sat. His pulse hammered in his head. Oh, they were right, the doctors; he should never have left the sanitarium. He was mad—hopelessly mad! He had thought—yes, he had actually thought for one wild second that he had recognized the warm, soaring cadence of Carla's unequaled voice. She was singing bloom after bloom from that rich and satisfying garden of fragrant sound:

“Je veux vivre dans ce rêve!”

Oh, magical, lilting cadence! How he loved the light and lovely arietta! How it recalled the days sacred to Carla, and her comrades! He hid his face in his hands, a prey to despondent emotion. He would not look at the stage. He could not if he would, for he was blinded by the dizziness of fatigue.

Suddenly from a great distance his trained ear caught the echo of another voice—heart-stirring, warm, assured. A golden tenor was singing the delicious “holy palmer's appeal.” Surely—the gods knew that surely there was only one man living who could sing Roméo like that!

Slowly he rose to his feet. All his soul went into his eyes and his ears, and he looked and listened; and then he reached for the program. There was light enough to see it.

It was true! True! Carla, Fancini, Dufresne, Berta Kraumer—they were all there. His old singers—the four most perfect singers alive—were singing for him once more!

He staggered, and would have fallen, but a kind arm was about his shoulders. The stage manager silently led him through the curtains at the back of the box.

“I was afraid it would knock you out,” he said, in the corridor without; “but they wouldn't let me tell you. Lord! It's been exciting! Only advertised last week, and since then you couldn't get near the theater for the crush. I don't know how much we've made, but we had to send for the police to keep the waiting lines in order.”

Grimm walked unsteadily behind the scenes, and there was an excited cry as the four friends caught sight of him, Dufresne first from his dressing-room door, where he was waiting garbed in his Friar's habit. Carla, exquisite in her girlish white; Fancini trailing a wonderful wine-red, velvet cloak that made him as handsome as a demigod; Madame Kraumer in the quaint dress of the Nurse—they all three pressed about him, laughing, crying, touching him with affectionate hands, while from behind came the basso's magnificent voice booming: “Ah, te voilà, cher maître!”

“Are you satisfied? Was it all right? Are you glad to have us with you again?”

They might have been students, begging for praise from their teacher, these four great artists.

Grim stood on the bright, disordered stage with his worn face working strangely.

“But, my children,” he stammered brokenly, “I—I cannot afford you——”

“Oh, but you can!” cried Carla eagerly.

“I cannot let you——” he protested.

“We are getting beautiful salaries—for a scratch company!” she assured him.

Suddenly she bent, and laid her warm, tear-wet cheek upon his shaking hand.

“Oh, maestro!” she said. “Don't tell us that you are dissatisfied with—your scratch company!”

“Oh, my children!” said Max Grimm; but he could say no more. The tears were running down his cheeks.