The Newark star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1909, 1909-08-11
ole 20 CHANCE
ESTHER AND LUCIA CHAMBERLAIN

all talking ceased-Ella's husky whis-
per, Clara's smoother syllables, and the
fiat, slow. variable voice of Kerr-the
whole house seemed to sink into stiller
repose; the high chords f1oated above
the heads of the black pit like colored
bubbles, and Flora forgot the sapphire
in the triple spell of the singing, the
darkness and the face she was yet to
see. She felt relaxed and released from
her guard by this darkness around her,
that blotted out the sea of faces be.
meath, that dissolved the walls and
high galleries. that obscured the very
outline of the box where she sat, until
she seemed to be poised, halfway up a
void of darkness, looking into a pit In
the h~ollowness of which a voice was
singing.
The stage was a narrow shelf of wood
swung in that void, from which the
voice sang, and a bare finger of light
followed it about from place to place.
The sweet, searching tenor notes, the
semblance of passion and reality the
g~esticulating Frenchman threw over all
the stage, and the crescendo of the
tragedy carried her into a mood that
barred out Ella, barred out Clara,
barred out Harry more than any; but,
unaccountably, Kerr was still with her.
He was there by no will of hers, but
by some essence of his own, some
quality that linked him, as it linked
her, to the passionate subtleties OF life.
He seemed to her the eager spirit that
was prompting and putting forward
this comedy and tragedy playing on
before her. She heard him rearrested,
vigorous, lawless, wandering, in the
voice of the mimic strolling prayer adj
dressing his mimic audience. The APP
peal of the tenor to the voiceless gal
l%eries. Underneath this little play we
show, there is another play" seemed
indeed the very voice of Kerr repeat
Ing itself. And with the climax of the
sharp tragedy in the middle of the
comic stage she placed him again, but
placed him this time in the mimic au-
dience looking on. neither applauding
nor dissenting, but rather as if he
watched the play and played it, too.
The lights went up with a spring. A
wave of motion fickered over the
house, the talking voices burst forth
all at once, and she saw him, really
saw him for the first time that evening,
as in her fancy, part of the audience;
as in her fancy, neither a%pplaudlng nor
dissenting, yet with what a difference,
He leaned back in his chair. and leaned
his head a little back, as if, for weari-
ness, he wished there were a rest be-
hind it; and how indifferently, how
critically, how leVelly he surveyed the
f,uttered house. and the figures in the
box beside him, How foreign he ap-
peared to the ardent spirits who had
dominated the dark; how emptied of
the neal of Imagination, how worn,
how dry: and even in his salience, how
singularly pathetic! He was neither
the satanic person of the first night,
nor her comrade of the Preside hills.
And if the expression of his face was
not quite so Cheap as cynicism, it was
just the absence Of belief in anything.
She fet a lump in her throat. an
ache of the crUelest disappointment.
as though some masker. masking as the
fire Of life, had suddenly removed the