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howling and bloody success, no matter that the story line was shattered in a
thousand pieces -- for each piece of it was like a writhing blood snake that
gluts and gloats.
And then, after the drama itself was ended in a spate of final blood,
there came those intrusive voices that seemed to be out of some private drama.
"Aurie, if you are worrying about being killed, how about providing for
me before it happens?"
"I leave you half of my kingdom, ah, estate, Clarie, right off the top
of it. My word is good for this. And stop falling down."
"I'm weak. It took a lot out of me. Yes, your written word is good on
this, Aurie, if it is written and attested to in all the right places. Let's
take care of that little detail right now."
"Clarie, my spoken promise is enough, and it is all that I will give. I
hereby attest that half of my estate, off the top, belongs to you. Let the
eared walls of this room be witnesses to what I say, Clarie. If the walls of
this room will swear to it, then surely they will be believed. Now don't
bother me for a few days. I will be busy with something else. And stop falling
down. It's annoying."
The female person then said or thought something in a fuzzy
thought-voice: "Yes, I believe I can make the walls of this room attest for me
when the time comes. (I might have to put in another amplifying circuit to be
sure.) And I believe that the attesting walls will be believed."
The male person then said or thought something in a fuzzy thought-voice:
"I have Miss Adeline Ad dams now. Why should I care about this Calliope clown?
It's irritating the way she keeps turning chalk-white and falling down. I
never saw anyone make such a fuss over nine quarts of blood. But now Lam on a
new and more glorious dawn road. Is it not peculiar how a man will fall in
love with one woman and out of love with another one at the same time?"
11. The Ghost at the Opera is the eleventh of the Aurelian Bentley
television dramas in the year 1873. The Ghost is based on Verdi's Il
Trovatore, but Bentley's production is quite original for all that. The role
of Leonora is played by Miss Adeline Addams. But the same role is also played
by Clarinda Calliope, who was originally selected to play the role by herself.
This business of having two different persons playing the same role creates a
certain duality, one might almost say a certain duplicity, in the drama.
The "Ghost" is the doubling: it is the inept and stumbling Clarinda
trying again and again to sing parts of the Leonora role and falling in it
totally and being jerked off stage by the stage manager's crook; and it is the
beautiful and brimming genius Adeline Addams coming on and performing the same
role brilliantly. This provides the "cruel comedy" that is usually lacking in
Verdi; for, without cruelty, only a limited success is ever possible in opera.
But Clarinda took some very bad falls from the stageman's crook jerking her
off her feet, and besides she was still weak and falling down from all the
blood she had lost in her roles in The Vampires of Varuma. She was suffering.
"Why do you go through with it, Clarinda?" Hubert Saint Nicholas asked
her once in an outside-of-the-play-itself voice. "Why do you allow yourself to
be tortured and humiliated like that?"
"Only for the money," Clarinda was heard to say. "Only for the actor's
fee of four dollars a day. I am clear broke and I am hungry. But if I can
stick it out to the end of the opera, I will have four dollars tonight for my
wages."
"Four dollars, Clarinda? The rest of us get only two dollars a day. Are
you playing another role that I don't know about?"
"Yes, I am also playing the role of Wilhelmina, the outhouse cleaner."
"But I thought that you had millions from that old tyrant, Clarinda."
"It's gone, Hubie, all gone. I had expenses that the world wotted not
of. I gave Apollo most of the money when I was in love with him. And I gave
the rest of it today to do a special favor for me."
"You gave the money to him today? But he was buried yesterday."
"Time seems to go faster as we get older, doesn't it?"
Meanwhile, back on the opera stage, a new Verdi was being hammered out.
Leslie Whitemansion was playing Manrico. X. Paul McCoffin was playing
Ferrando. Hubert Saint Nicholas was playing Count di Luni. ApolIlo
Mont-de-Marsan was playing the ghost. But was there a ghost in the libretto
besides the double ghost of the two females playing the same role? Yes, there
was; there was a real ghost in the libretto. It was written in there in a
queer "other" hand, really a "ghostly" hand, and it wrote that Apollo was
playing the role of the ghost.
So the merry comic opera went along almost to its end. It was just when
Manrico was being led to the executioner's block and the evil Count di Luni
was gloating in triumph, when everything was finally being shaped up in that
drama that had some pleasure for everybody, that a horrible thing happened in
one of the loges or boxes that overhung the stage.
Aurelian Bentley was knifed there in his box at the opera. Oh God, this
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