CHAPTER II

A PARISIAN DÉBUT

The duke, imposing and superb, was present; and Caracal, with his monocle in his eye, was beside him. It was the first night of Helia. If it had been a common first night at the Théâtre Français, the duke would have thought himself dishonored by appearing before the second act. But he wished to offer a rose to Helia, and so he, a gentleman, had committed and made Caracal commit an unheard-of thing—they had dined between seven and eight so as to arrive on time.

“You are interested in behind the scenes? Your presence greatly honors us, monseigneur,” said the director of the Cirque as he passed by them.

Was he interested? He was more than that—he was enthralled.

First of all, Caracal suggested it was very chic to have the air of paying court to Helia, who to-morrow would be celebrated as a star. This would give an irresistible Don Juan mark to his ducal title.

“That will help me with Miss Rowrer,” thought the duke, who was pupil and plaything of the clever Caracal. There was a single shadow in his picture—Phil was not there!

Phil was to accompany Miss Rowrer to the American Club Exhibition; but this touched the duke—oh, so very slightly. Miss Rowrer had a great esteem for Phil, but pshaw! a poor devil of an artist was no rival for him, a duke with his duchy, descended from fairies and queens and saints! Against all this what could avail her innocent flirtation with Phil?

The public had not yet come and the hall was empty. Here and there the electric globes were lighting up; but the duke and Caracal beheld a sight which helped them to pass the time. The sensational equestrienne, the Marquesa de Guerrera, was coming down the steps, enameled and rouged and resplendent with diamonds. Monseigneur gallantly held her stirrup as she painfully climbed upon her horse. She dashed out on the track in front of the empty benches for a short rehearsal. She asked for the orchestra and the lights, to accustom her horse to the noise and glitter. She was afraid he would take fright. She trembled at his slightest shying.

“Take away that white paper—that program on the bench; take it away! And do you applaud!” the Marquesa called to the stable-boys who approached the ring.

“Applaud! to accustom him to the bravos!”

The horse began turning like a great mechanical plaything with a doll on its back.

“The horse does all the work!” said Suzanne behind the duke. She had just arrived with Helia and Sœurette, Helia’s little sister.

“No, I assure you,” said Helia, “_haute école_ riding is difficult!”

The duke turned.

“How do you do, mesdemoiselles?” he said, lifting his hat.

“Monseigneur—” Helia began.

“Oh, monsieur,” Sœurette broke in, “it’s for me, isn’t it?—the pretty rose?”

“Why—why—yes!” the duke answered, giving the flower to the child.

He remarked Helia’s surprise. She seemed troubled by his visit. It had been the affair of a moment, but it was sufficient to hinder the duke, who was no apt pupil of Caracal, from giving the rose to Helia.

“You lack nerve!” Caracal whispered in his ear.

“It will come!” answered monseigneur.

“I see the duke and Caracal,” Helia said to herself; “but Phil is not here! It’s not very nice of him.”

The public was coming in. The equestrienne left off rehearsing, with her hat over one ear.

“Come, we have to get ready,” said Helia. “Au revoir, messieurs!”

The benches were filling up. Against the dark shadows of the boxes fans waved to and fro. The duke straightened up in the respectful space which his title of monseigneur left around him. Near him was Cemetery, the clown, waiting for Helia, whom he was to accompany in the ring. He shook the yellow tresses of his wig and groaned constantly, complaining of his aches and speaking of a return to his box to rub himself with camphorated alcohol.

“Do you want me to go with you—I’ll rub you!” the duke said, Parisian to the finger-tips, and hoping, if he rubbed the old clown’s spine, that he would redeem in Caracal’s eyes the rose given to Sœurette.

“No, thank you, monseigneur. There is nothing to be done,” said the old clown; “I, too, was famous, and now I’m only an old dog—ah!”

But no one listened to him.

The show began. In the ring the blond hair and doll face of Louise Bingel whirled to the music of the orchestra, as she leaned over to apply the whip to her horse’s neck with many a “Go!” and “Up!”

The public talked as it looked through the program. The real show was to come later. It was not the “Gallinaro Family, somersaults, bravourturnerin, tapis-tumblers,” nor “Miss Soho, the world’s greatest I-don’t-know-what,” nor “Princess Colibri and her Prince-Consort”—no! that which attracted the public was, first and foremost, Helia. Discreet notes in the papers had given hopes that there would be something “never seen before.” Some said she was a young girl of good family, whom an irresistible vocation had drawn to the circus. Details, too, were given of her career—in contradiction with one another, of course.

What was not known, though, was how Helia had been working for months. She was going to try a daring feat. Even the costume was to be new. To her the nudity of the maillot seemed brutal.

“Beauty is well, talent is better!” Cemetery, her professor in other days, used to say; and she wished to be applauded for her art and not for her beauty. Her wonderful gymnastic knowledge gave her the right to attempt the feat.

She thought in gestures. She had in her the inborn love of grace and physical force. With graceful movement she summed up a thousand things which she could not have said; and she had the idea of reviving the acrobatics of the ancients, just as others have reconstructed the songs of old times, and the dance through the ages. One day at the Louvre she had seen on a Greek vase an artistic dance which struck her. She had spoken of it to Phil while posing for Morgana—for Helia saw Phil often.

In spite of all, she loved to be near him, and though Phil might forget, on her side she felt her love for him only increase. She was one of those proud hearts which love but once. In spite of all, she believed in the sacredness of a sworn promise. Phil would come back to her! Besides, Phil was a precious help in the work she was undertaking. Together they consulted the “Recherches Historiques et Critiques sur les Mimes et Pantomimes du Seigneur de Rivery.” Her head was full of neurobatie, scheunobatie, and acrobatie. She dreamed of gymnastics and the dance. She studied her movements in Phil’s studio, in the evening, after his work.

He had a jointed lay-figure which she put in the proper poses, seeking for effects in its curving and bending back. She cut out little costumes and tried them on it. She went to the Library, and looked through the boxes of the booksellers along the Quais. The instinct of the beautiful guided her. She composed her number as she might compose a poem.

The reverse of a Roman medal and an old engraving representing the Genoese who descended the towers of Notre Dame, torch in hand, to offer a crown to Queen Isabeau suggested ideas to her. A biography of Madame Saqui, who was called the first acrobat of the empire, and whom Napoleon entitled _mon enragée_, was very useful to her.

“Plato,” Phil said to her one day when they were studying together, “Plato contends that gymnastics give grace to the movements of the body, of which we ought to think even before adorning the mind.”

“Plato is wrong,” was Helia’s answer.

But she proved that he was right by the moral energy which physical training had developed in her. For months she studied without let-up, mastering rebellious muscles, beginning again, twenty times over, the same thing, setting to work with all her heart and all her courage, with clenched teeth and eyes shining with the pride of will. There was despair in her mad energy.

“But you will kill yourself, Helia,” Phil said to her.

“Nonsense!” said Helia. “I will die or do it!”

“In other days,” she thought in her simplicity, “Phil did not like to hear me speaking of my trade; but who knows?—he may change if I become a _grande artiste_.”

That evening she was to present to the public the outcome of her efforts.

Suzanne, in the dress of a pretty little Pierrette, was already in the ring. With her usual go she was showing off trained rabbits. They jumped through hoops, climbed up on her, and ate seeds from her hand. It made a little interlude before Helia’s number.

At the entrance of the stables clowns and firemen, reporters and men of sport made up a guard of honor. There was even an impresario from New York, who spoke to Suzanne when she came out.

“Brava, mademoiselle! Ah! if you only knew how to sing!”

“If I only knew how to sing!—_Je t’écoute!_”

“Brava! brava! You’ll have a success in New York! You’ll come on the stage, they’ll ask you if you know how to sing—and you’ll answer—how was it you said it?”

“_Je t’écoute_ [I hear you].”

“That’s it! You must also bring in a little can-can—do you know how to dance?”

“There’s a question for you!” And with the point of her elegant foot Suzanne, scarcely seeming to touch it, sent the shining silk hat of the impresario rolling on the ground.

“Brava! Perfect!” the impresario cried in an ecstasy of joy. “I’ve found what I’m looking for—a typical French girl!”

There was silence. In the luminous void of the circus, high up in the air there were shining things in nickel—trapezes—and a rope was stretched down to the ring.

The orchestra burst forth. Helia kissed Sœurette and passed out with a run before the duke and Caracal. Her mantle, left hanging as if by chance, gave a glimpse of a rosy shoulder. On the threshold of the ring she stopped and threw off the mantle. It was like the unveiling of a statue.

She wore the short tunic of the dancers of Pergamus. The clinging stuff was fastened at the shoulder and hung to a point on each side, leaving arms and neck and the upper part of the breast uncovered; a light skirt fell straight to the ankles.

Helia looked at the public long enough to smile and bow. Then, with a quick spring, she leaped to the tightly stretched rope, and with agile bare feet climbed up its incline to the platform in front of her trapeze. The light brought out the whiteness of her skin and her red cheeks, and glittered back from a little star-shaped jewel in the black hair above her forehead.

There was a murmur of sympathy. The public applauded and cried: “Brava!” Helia had done nothing yet, but the audience was already won. The orchestra, after a moment’s silence, suddenly broke forth and Helia began.

At first, to accustom the public to the notion of the movements, she leaped upright on the trapeze, which swung over to the platform. This had been foreseen. The three trapezes in their swing almost touched each other. They were hung from light steel tubes and oscillated like a single mechanism, without break or twist.

Helia, with infinite grace, went through a few exercises. It was the Waking of the Goddess—the first astonished gestures of a statue called to life by the inspiration of a Pygmalion. Then she let herself fall as if overcome by dizziness, grasped the bar as she slipped down without apparent shock, and—almost before the folds of her gown could fall back gracefully—she was again on the trapeze, magnificent and at her ease. She balanced herself gently and gave a backward leap to the platform.

The public broke forth in applause. It felt itself in the presence of a healthy and robust art. This was no acrobat limited to one single task, with legs heavy by dint of walking on the ball, or shoulders by walking on the hands. But here was the accomplished gymnast—the all-round artiste, with her muscles obedient and supple. In her they acclaimed the poetry of the body and the melody of movement.

To give Helia a moment’s rest, Cemetery entered, stumbled at the entrance of the ring, fell on his nose, rolled over, and pulled himself up by the rope. His pantomime expressed delight and fear at the spectacle, high above him, of this creature of light and beauty. His pursed-up mouth and rounded eyes had the look of weeping. He walked out scratching his wig.

The public laughed.

Helia made a sign and looked to the trapezes oscillating. Suddenly, to a joyous strain, she leaped forward. The orchestra seemed to uphold her in her flight. Nothing could be more graceful than the pose of her skirt, which fluttered from her ankles like a pair of wings. Then Helia leaped to the second trapeze just as the two bars almost touched. Her hand grasped the steel tube with a sudden effort, which her art concealed. Then, letting go, she continued her dizzy balancing and leaped to the third trapeze, as calm as Fortune on her Wheel. She had crossed the entire space of the circus at a single flight and fallen upright on the other platform just as a wingless Victory finds rest on the pediment of a temple.

“Hurrah! Brava! brava!”

Helia cast a look of triumph on the crowd.

“What an artiste!” the duke murmured. Could this really be she who but a moment ago was talking like any comrade—this prodigy who was holding the hall enthralled, and bringing in a crush to the door all the stable crowd and artistes, gentlemen in evening dress, and the whole tumult of clowns?

Sœurette looked at her “big sister” in wonder and delight, while her lips seemed to murmur a prayer. Cemetery entered the ring again to proclaim the distress of man and his unrealizable desires. He jumped up to the rope, climbed a yard or two, and fell back flat on the ground. _Poum!_ Come on! the goddess seemed to say to him. He tried again, but from the height of his Olympus the leader of the orchestra thundered him down with a stroke of the bass-drum, and he fell again—_poum!_—remaining on his back with his four limbs wriggling in the air. Then he dragged himself away, broken and bruised, with halting leg and rubbing his shoulder, while above him Helia appeared as an apparition, a shining form rid of the heaviness of the flesh.

Her art astonished the public. There was no perceptible effort,—_Jarret lâchés_, high leaps, whirls,—there was nothing of all that. She gave the sensation of the “something never seen before.” Merely by the way in which she touched her trapeze with the point of her bare feet, one felt that she was free from rules—inventive, a genius. It was youth and beauty, scorn of danger, and courage holding spellbound the crowd below her.

Her artistic intelligence profited even by obstacles. Thus Helia disdained the net; but the law imposed it. She found a means of making it serve her own purposes.

Just as she was ending, a globe was passed up to her, and she placed it on the bar. Then she stood upright on it, in the vast oscillations of the trapeze. She was like a goddess soaring in space with the earth under her feet.

Then Helia stopped motionless.

The orchestra ceased; the lights were extinguished; and suddenly, like a star falling in the night, Helia fell down to the net.

There was a moment’s anguish, and then the lights and orchestra—lightning and thunder—began again, as in a storm. Helia was on the ground, offering, with a gesture, her heart to the crowd.

She was called back again and again. Bouquets were thrown to her—the public would have her out once more! At last she retired, worn out, and, putting off her stage-smile, she shook hands all round.

“There’ll be no bouquets left for the marquesa,” Suzanne said. “But her horse may be accustomed, by this time, to the bravos!”

“You must be tired, Mademoiselle Helia?” the duke asked.

“It’s my trade,” said Helia. “We smile to the public all the same; it would not be nice to show that it is work!”

And, with a gracious salutation to the duke, she went back to her dressing-room.

“You haven’t invited her to supper!” Caracal remarked to the duke, when she had gone.

“I didn’t think of it!”

“Are you going to wait till she comes down?”

“No,” said the duke, intimidated. “I shall see her later, I hope. Your valet must attend to it. Let’s go now. There’s nothing to see after Helia!”