Ritz-Carlton Hotel.Feb. 28th"Dear Charmian,—Only a word to wish you and your genius a gigantic success to-night. We've all been praying for it. Even Susan has condescended from the universal to the particular on this occasion, because she's so devoted to both of you. We are all coming, of course, Box Number Fifteen, and are going to wear our best Sunday tiaras in honor of the occasion. I hear you are to have a marvellous audience, all the millionaires, as well as your humble friends, the Adelaides and the Susans and the Henriette Senniers. Mr. Crayford is a magnificent drum-beater, but after to-night your genius won't need him, I hope and believe. I enclose a box for Jacques Sennier's first night, which, as you'll see by the date, has had to be postponed for four days—something wrong with the scenery. No hitch in your case! I feel you are on the edge of a triumph."Hopes and prayers for the genius.—Yours ever sincerely,"Adelaide Shiffney.""Susan sends her love—not the universal brand."
Ritz-Carlton Hotel.Feb. 28th
"Dear Charmian,—Only a word to wish you and your genius a gigantic success to-night. We've all been praying for it. Even Susan has condescended from the universal to the particular on this occasion, because she's so devoted to both of you. We are all coming, of course, Box Number Fifteen, and are going to wear our best Sunday tiaras in honor of the occasion. I hear you are to have a marvellous audience, all the millionaires, as well as your humble friends, the Adelaides and the Susans and the Henriette Senniers. Mr. Crayford is a magnificent drum-beater, but after to-night your genius won't need him, I hope and believe. I enclose a box for Jacques Sennier's first night, which, as you'll see by the date, has had to be postponed for four days—something wrong with the scenery. No hitch in your case! I feel you are on the edge of a triumph.
"Hopes and prayers for the genius.—Yours ever sincerely,
"Adelaide Shiffney."
"Susan sends her love—not the universal brand."
Claude read the note, and kept it for a moment in his hand. He was looking at it, but he knew Charmian's eyes were on him, he knew she was silently asking him to tell her all that had happened between Mrs. Shiffney and him. And he realized that her curiosity was the offspring of a jealousy which she probably wished to conceal, but which she suffered under even on such a day of anxiety and anticipation as this.
"Very kind of her!" he said at last, giving back the note with the box ticket carefully folded between the leaves. "Of course we will go to hear Sennier's opera. He is coming to ours."
"To yours!"
"Ours!" Claude repeated, with emphasis.
Charmian looked down. Then she went to the writing-table and put Mrs. Shiffney's note into one of its little drawers. She pushed the drawer softly. It clicked as it shut. She sighed. Something in the note they had just read made her feel apprehensive. It was almost as if it had given out a subtle exhalation which had affected her physically.
"Claudie!" she said, turning round. "I would give almost anything to be like Susan to-day."
"Would you? But why?"
"She would be able to take it all calmly. She would be able to say to herself—'all this is passing, a moment in eternity, whichever way things go my soul will remain unaffected'—something like that. And it would really be so with Susan."
"She certainly carries with her a great calmness."
Charmian gazed at him.
"You are wonderful to-day, too."
Claude had kept up to this moment his dominating, almost bold air of a conqueror of circumstances, the armor which he had put on as a dress suitable to New York.
"But in quite a different way," she added. "Susan never defies."
Claude was startled by her shrewdness but avoided comment on it.
"Madre must be thinking of us to-day," he said.
"Yes. I thought—I almost expected she would send us a cablegram."
"It may come yet. There's plenty of time."
Charmian looked at the clock.
"Only four hours before the curtain goes up."
"Or we may find one for us at the theater."
"Somehow I don't think Madre would send it there."
She went to sit down on the sofa, putting cushions behind her with nervous hands, leaned back, leaned forward, moved the cushions, again leaned back.
"I almost wish we'd asked Alston to come in to-day," she said.
"But he's resting."
"I know. But he would have come. He could have rested here with us."
"Better for him to keep his voice perfectly quiet. To-night is his début. He has got to pay back over three years to Crayford with his performance to-night. And we shall have him with us at supper."
Charmian moved again, pushed the cushions away from her.
"Yes, I've ordered it, a wonderful supper, all the things you and Alston like best."
"We'll enjoy it."
"Won't we? You sent Miss Mardon the flowers?"
"Yes."
The telephone sounded.
"It is Miss Mardon," Claude said, as he listened. "She's thanking me for the flowers."
"Give her my love and best wishes for to-night."
Claude obeyed, and added his own in a firm and cheerful voice.
"She's resting, of course," said Charmian.
"Yes."
"Everyone resting. It seems almost ghastly."
"Why?" he said, laughing.
"Oh, I don't know—death-like. I'm stupid to-day."
She longed to say, "I am full of forebodings!" But she was held back by the thought, "Shall I fail in resolution atthe last moment, show the white feather when he is so cool, so master of himself? I who have been such a courageous wife, who have urged him on, who have made this day possible!"
"It's only the physical reaction," she added hastily. "After all we've gone through."
"Oh, we mustn't give way to reaction yet. We've got the big thing in front of us. All the rest is nothing in comparison with to-night."
"I know! I hope Madre will cable. If she doesn't, it will seem like a bad omen. I shall feel as if she didn't care what happens."
He said nothing.
"Won't you?" she asked.
"I think she will cable. But even if she doesn't, I know she always cares very much what happens to you and me. Nothing would ever make me doubt that."
"No, of course not. But I do want her to show it, to prove it to us to-day. It is such a day in our lives! Never, so long as we live, can we have such another day. It is the day I dreamed of, the day I foresaw, that night at Covent Garden."
She felt a longing, which she checked, to add, "It is the day I decreed when I looked at Henriette Sennier!" But though she checked the longing, its birth had brought to her hope. She, a girl, had decreed this day and her decree had been obeyed. Her will had been exerted, and her will had triumphed. Nothing could break down that fact. Nothing could ever take from her the glory of that achievement. And it seemed to point to the ultimate glory for which she had been living so long, for which she had endured so patiently. Suddenly her restlessness increased, but it was no longer merely the restlessness of unquiet nerves. Anticipation whipped her to movement, and she sprang up abruptly from the sofa.
"Claude, I can't stay in here! I can't rest. Don't ask me to. Anything else, but not that!"
She went to him, put her hands on his shoulders.
"Be a dear! Take me out!"
"Where to?"
"Anywhere! Fifth Avenue, Central Park! Let us walk! I know! Let us walk across the park and look at the theater, our theater. A walk will do me more good than you can dream of, genius though you are. And the time will pass quickly. I want it to fly. I want it to be night. I want to see the crowd. I want to hear it. How can we sit here in this hot red room waiting? Take me out!"
Claude was glad to obey her. They wrapped themselves up, for it was a bitter day, and went down to the hall. As they passed the bureau the well-dressed, smooth-faced men behind the broad barrier looked at them with a certain interest and smiled. Charmian glanced round gaily and nodded to them.
"I am sure they are all wishing us well!" she said to Claude. "I quite love Americans."
"A taxi, sir?" asked a big man in uniform outside.
"No, thank you."
They went to the left and turned into Fifth Avenue.
How it roared that day! An endless river of motor-cars poured down it. Pedestrians thronged the pavements, hurrying by vivaciously, brimming with life, with vigor, with purpose. The nations, it seemed, were there. For the types were many, and called up before the imagination a great vision of the world, not merely a conception of New York or of America. Charmian looked at the faces flitting past and thought:
"What a world it is to conquer!"
"Isn't it splendid out here!" she said. "What an almost maddening whirl of life. Faces, faces, faces, and brains and souls behind them. I love to see all these faces to-day. I feel the brains and the souls are wanting something that you are going to give them."
"Let us hope one or two out of the multitude may be!"
"One or two! Claudie, you miserable niggard! You always think yourself unwanted. But you will see to-night. Every reserved seat and every box is taken, every single one! Think of that—and all because of what you have done. Are we going to Central Park?"
"Unless you wish to promenade up and down Fifth Avenue."
"No, I did say the Park, and we will go there. But let us walk near the edge, not too far away from this marvellous city. Never was there a city like New York for life. I'm sure of that. It's as if every living creature had quicksilver in his veins—or her veins. For I never saw such vital women as one sees here anywhere else! Oh, Claude! When you conquer these wonderful women!"
Her vivacity and excitement were almost unnatural.
"New York intoxicates me to-day!" she exclaimed.
"How are you going to do without it?"
"When we go?"
"Yes, when we go home?"
"Home? But where is our home?"
"In Kensington Square, I suppose."
"I don't feel as if we should ever be able to settle down there again. That little house saw our little beginnings, when we didn't know what we really meant to do."
"Djenan-el-Maqui then?"
"Ah!" she said, with a changed voice. "Djenan-el-Maqui! What I have felt there! More than I ever can tell you, Claudie."
She began to desire the comparative quiet of the Park, and was glad that just then they passed the Plaza Hotel and went toward it.
"I wonder how Enid Mardon is feeling," she said, looking up at the ranges of windows. "Which is the tenth floor where she is?"
"Don't ask me to count to-day. I would rather play with the squirrels."
They were among the trees now and walked on briskly. Both of them needed movement and action, something to "take them out of themselves." A gray squirrel ran down from its tree with a waving tail and crossed just in front of them slowly. Charmian followed it with her eyes. It had an air of cheerful detachment, of self-possession, almost of importance, as if it were fully conscious of its own value in the scheme of the universe, whatever others might think.
"How contented that little beast looks," said Claude.
"But it can never be really happy, as you and I could be, as we are going to be."
"No, perhaps not. But there's the other side."
He quoted Dante:
"Quanto la cosa è più perfetta, più senta il bene, e così la doglienza."
"I don't wish to prove that I'm high up in the scale by suffering," she said. "Do you?"
"Ought not the artist to be ready for every experience?" he answered.
And she thought she detected in his voice a creeping of irony.
"We are getting near to the theater," she said presently, when they had walked for a time in silence. "Let us keep in the Park till we are close to it, and then just stand and look at it for a moment from the opposite side of the way."
"Yes," he said.
Evening was falling as they stood before the great building, the home of their fortune of the night. The broad roadway lay between them and it. Carriages rolled perpetually by, motor-cars glided out of the dimness of one distance into the dimness of the other. Across the flood of humanity they gazed at the great blind building, which would soon be brilliantly lit up for them, because of what they had done. The carriages, the motor-cars filed by. A little later and they would stop in front of the monster, to give it the food it desired, to fill its capacious maw. And out of every carriage, out of every motor-car, would step a judge, or judges, prepared to join in the great decision by which was to be decided a fate. Both Claude and Charmian were thinking of this as they stood together, while the darkness gathered about them and the cold wind eddied by. And Charmian longed passionately to have the power to hypnotize all those brains into thinking Claude's work wonderful, all those hearts into loving it. For a moment the thought of the human being's independence almost appalled her.
"It looks cold and almost dead now," she murmured. "How different it will look in a few hours!"
"Yes."
They still stood there, almost like two children, fascinated by the sight of the theater. Charmian was rapt. For a moment she forgot the passers-by, the gliding motor-cars, the noises of the city, even herself. She was giving herself imaginatively to fate, not as herself, but merely as a human life. She was feeling the profound mystery of human life held in the arms of destiny. An abrupt movement of Claude almost startled her.
"What is it?" she said.
She looked up at him quickly.
"What's the matter, Claude?"
"Nothing," he answered. "But it's time we went back to the hotel. Come along."
And without another glance at the theater he turned round and began to walk quickly.
He had seen on the other side of the way, going toward the theater, the colored woman in the huge pink hat, of whom he had caught a glimpse on the night when Alston Lake had fetched him and Charmian to see the rehearsal of the "locust-effect." The woman turned her head, seemed to gaze at him across the road with her bulging eyes, stretched her thick lips in a smile. Then she took her place in a queue which was beginning to lengthen outside one of the gallery doors of the theater.
The great theater which Jacob Crayford had built to "knock out" the Metropolitan Opera House filled slowly. Those dark and receding galleries, which had drawn the eyes of Charmian, were already crowded, alive with white moving faces, murmurous with voices. In the corridors and the lobbies many men were standing and talking. Smartly dressed women began to show themselves in the curving ranges of boxes. Musical critics and newspaper men gathered in knots and discussed the musical season, the fight that was "on" between the two opera houses, the libretto-scandal, which had not yet entirely died down, Jacob Crayford's prospects of becoming a really great power in opera.
Crayford's indomitable pluck and determined spending of money, had impressed the American imagination. There were many who wished him well. The Metropolitan Opera House, with the millionaires behind it, could be trusted to take care of itself. Crayford was spending his own money, won entirely by his own enterprise, cleverness and grit. He was a man. Men instinctively wished to see him get in front. And to-night Claude stood side by side with Crayford, his chosen comrade in the battle. Critics and newspaper men were disposed to lift him on their shoulders if only he gave them the chance. The current of opinion favored him. Report of his work was good. Jaded critics, newspaper men who had seen and known too much, longed for novelty. Crayford's prophecy was coming true. America was turning its bright and sharp eyes toward the East. And out of the East, said rumor, this new opera came. Surely it would bring with it a breath of that exquisite air which prevails where the sands lift their golden crests, the creaking rustle of palm trees, the silence of the naked spaces where God lives without man, the chatter, the cries, the tinkling stream voices of the oases.
Even tired men and men who had seen too much knewanticipation to-night. Word had gone around that Crayford had brought the East to America. People were eager to take their places upon his magic carpet.
The crowd in the lobbies increased. The corridors were thronged.
Van Brinen passed by, walking slowly, and looking about him with his rather pathetic eyes. He saw Jacob Crayford, smartly dressed, a white flower in his buttonhole, standing in a group of pressmen, went up to him and gently took him by the arm.
"Hulloh, Van Brinen! Going to be kind to us to-night?"
"I hope so. Your man is a man of value."
"Heath? And if he weren't, d'you think I'd be spending my last dollar on him? But what do you know of his music more than the others?"
And Crayford's eyes, become suddenly sharp and piercing, fixed themselves on the critic's face.
"I heard some of it one night in his room at the St. Regis."
"Bits of the opera?"
"One bit. But there was something else that impressed me enormously—almost terrible music."
"Oh, that was probably some of his Bible rubbish. But thank the Lord we've got him away from all that. Hulloh, Perkins! Come here to see me get in front?"
In box fifteen, on the ground tier, Mrs. Shiffney settled herself with Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Jonson Ramer. Susan Fleet was next door with friends, a highly cultivated elderly man, famous as a lawyer and connoisseur, and his wife. Alston Lake's family and most of his many friends were in the stalls, where Armand Gillier had a seat close to a gangway, so that he could easily slip out to pay his homage to Enid Mardon. His head was soaked with eau-de-quinine. On his muscular hands he wore thick white kid gloves. And he gazed at his name on the programme with almost greedy eyes.
Mrs. Shiffney glanced swiftly about the immense house, looking from box to box. She took up her opera glasses.
"I wonder where the Heaths are sitting," she said. "Henriette, can you see them?"
Madame Sennier looked round with her hard yellow eyes.
"No. Perhaps they aren't here yet. Or they may be above us. Or perhaps they are too nervous to come."
Her painted lips stretched themselves in a faint and enigmatic smile.
"I'm quite sure Charmian Heath will be here. This is to be the great night of her life. She is not the woman to miss it."
Mrs. Shiffney leaned round to the next box.
"Susan, can you see the Heaths?"
"Yes," returned the theosophist, in her calm chest voice. "She is just coming into a box on the same tier as we are in."
"Where? Where?"
"Over there, on my right, about ten boxes from us. She is in pale green."
"That pretty woman!" said the elderly lawyer. "Is she the composer's wife?"
He put up his glasses.
"Yes, I see now," said Mrs. Shiffney.
She drew back into her box.
"There she is, Henriette! She seems to be alone. But Heath is sitting behind her in the shadow. I saw him for a minute before he sat down."
Madame Sennier looked at Charmian as Charmian had once looked at her across another opera house. But her mind contemplated Charmian in this hour of her destiny implacably. She said nothing.
Jacques Sennier began to chatter.
At a few minutes past eight the lights went down and the opera began.
Charmian and Claude were alone in their box. On the empty seat beside hers Charmian had laid some red roses sent to her by Alston Lake before she had started. Five minutes after the arrival of the flowers had come a cablegram from England addressed to Claude: "I wish you both the best to-night love. Madre."
Just before the opera began, as Charmian glanced down at her roses, she saw a paper lying beside them on the silk-covered chair.
"What's that?" she said.
"Madre's cablegram," said Claude. "I found I had brought it with me, so I laid it down there. If Madre had come with us she might have occupied that seat. I thought I would let her wish lie there with Alston's roses."
Their eyes met in the shadow of the box. On coming into it Claude had turned out the electric burner.
"It's strange to think of Madre in Berkeley Square to-night," said Charmian slowly. "I wonder what she is doing."
"I am quite sure she is alone, up in her reading-room thinking of us, in one of her white dresses."
"And wishing us—" she paused.
The first notes of the Prelude sounded in the hidden orchestra.
Claude fixed his mind on the thought of Madre, in a white dress, sitting alone in the well-known quiet room, thinking of him—in that moment he was an egoist—wishing him the best. He could almost see Madre's face rise up before him, as it must have looked when she wrote that cablegram, a face kind, intense, with fire, sorrow, and love in the burning eyes. And the thought of that face helped him very much just then, more than he would have thought it possible that anything could help him, was a firm and a tender friend to him in a difficult crisis of his life.
He sat back in the shadow behind Charmian in a sort of strange loneliness, conscious of the enormous crowd around him. He could not see the members of this crowd. He saw only Charmian in her pale green gown, with a touch of green in her cloud of dark hair, and a long way off the stage. He heard perpetually his own music. But to-night it did not seem to him to be his own. He listened to it with a kind of dreadful and supreme detachment, as if it had nothing to do with him. But he listened with great intensity, with all his critical intelligence at work, and with—so at least it seemed to him—his heart prepared to be touched, moved. It was not a hard heart which was beating that night in the breast of Claude, nor was it the foolish, emotional heart of the partisan, lost to the touch of reason, to the influence of the deepest truth which a man of any genius dare not deny. No criticin the vast theater that night listened to Claude's opera more dispassionately than did Claude himself. Sometimes he thought of the colored woman in the huge pink hat. He knew she was somewhere in the theater, probably far up in that dim gallery toward which he had looked at rehearsal, when the building had presented itself to his imagination as a monster waiting heavily to be fed. On this one night at least he had fed it full. Was notshestretching her great lips in a smile?
Sometimes Claude heard faint movements, slight coughing, little sounds like minute whispers from the crowd. Now and then there was applause. Alston Lake was applauded strongly once after a phrase which showed off his magnificent voice, and Charmian looked quickly round at Claude with cheeks flushing, and shining eyes, which said plainly, "It is coming! Listen! The triumph is on the way!" Then the widespread silence of an attentive crowd fell again, like some vast veil falling, and Claude attended intensely to the music as if it were the music of another.
After the first act there was more applause, which sounded in their box rather strong in patches but scattered. The singers were called three times, but always in this unconcentrated way.
"It's going splendidly. They like it!" said Charmian quickly. "Three calls. That's unusual after a first act, when the audience hasn't warmed up. Isn't it odd, Claudie, that Americans always applaud quite differently from the way the English do? They always applaud like that."
She had turned right round and was almost facing him.
"How do you mean?" he said.
"Didn't you notice? Persistently, but in clumps as it were. It is by their persistence they show how pleased they are, rather than by their—their—I hardly know just how to put it."
"By their unanimity perhaps."
"Oh, no! Not exactly that! Here's Mr. Crayford."
Crayford slipped in, but only stayed for a moment.
"Hear that applause?" he said. "They're mad about it. Alston's got them. I knew he would. That boy's goingto be famous. But wait till the second act. They're in a fine humor, only asking to be pleased. I know the signs. The libretto's hit them hard. They're all asking what's to happen next."
"You're satisfied then?" said Charmian.
"Satisfied! I'm so happy I don't know what to do."
He was gone.
"He knows!" Charmian said.
Her eyes were fixed upon Claude. They looked almost defiant.
"If anyone in America knows what he is talking about I suppose it is Mr. Crayford," she added.
There was a tap at the door. Claude opened it and two of their American friends came in and stayed a few minutes, saying how well the opera was going, how much they liked it, how splendidly it was "put on"—all the proper and usual things which are said by proper and usual persons on such occasions. One of them was an acquaintance of Van Brinen's. Claude asked him if Van Brinen were in the house. He said yes. Claude then inquired whether Van Brinen knew the number of his box, and was told that he did know it. The conversation turned to other topics, but when the two men had gone out Charmian said:
"Why did you ask those questions about Mr. Van Brinen, Claudie?"
"Only because I thought if he knew where our box was he might pay us a visit. No one has been more friendly with us than he has."
"I see. He's certain to come after the next act. Ah! the lights are going down."
She had been standing for a few minutes. Now she moved to sit down. Before doing so she drew her chair a little way back in the box.
"I don't want to be distracted from the stage—my attention, I mean—by seeing too many people," she whispered, in explanation of her action. "You are quite right to keep at the back. One can listen much better if one doesn't see too much of the audience."
Claude said nothing. The curtains were parting.
The second act was listened to by the vast audience in a silence that was almost complete.
Now and then Charmian whispered a word or two to Claude. Once she said:
"Isn't it wonderful, the silence of a crowd? Doesn't it show how absorbed they are?"
And again:
"I think it's such a mercy that modern methods of composition give no opportunity to the audience to break in with applause. Any interruption would ruin the effect of the act as a whole."
Claude just moved his head in reply.
Everything was satisfactory. Jacob Crayford had been right. The opera was ready for production and was "going" without a hitch. The elaborate scenic effects were working perfectly. Miss Mardon had never been more admirable, more completely mistress of her art. Nor had she ever looked more wonderful. Alston Lake's success was assured. His voice filled the great house without difficulty. Even Charmian and Claude were surprised by its volume and beauty.
"Isn't Alston splendid?" whispered Charmian once.
"Yes," Claude replied.
He added, after a pause:
"Dear old Alston is safe."
Charmian turned her face toward the stage. Now and then she moved rather restlessly in her chair. She had a fan with her and began to use it. Then she laid it down on the ledge of the box, then took it up again, opened it, closed it, and kept it in her hand. She felt the audience almost like a weight laid upon her. Their silent attention began to frighten her. She knew that was ridiculous, that if this production did not intimately concern her the audience's silence would not strike her as strange. People listening attentively are always silent. She blamed herself for her absurdity. Leaning a little forward she could just see the outline of Madame Sennier, sitting very upright in the front of her box, with one arm and hand on the ledge. Crayford, who was determined to be "in the front artistically," kept the theater very dark when the curtain was up, in order to focus the attention of the audienceon the stage. To Charmian, Madame Sennier looked like a shade, erect, almost strangely motionless, implacable. This shade drew Charmian's eyes as the act went on. She did not move her seat forward again, but she often leaned forward a little. A shade with a brain, a heart and a soul! What were they doing to-night? Charmian remembered the attempt to get the libretto away from Claude, Madame Sennier's remarks about Claude after the return from Constantine. The shade had done her utmost to ensure that this first night should never be. She had failed. And now she was sitting over there tasting her own failure. Charmian stared at her trying to triumph. All the time she was listening to the music, was saying to herself how splendid it was. They had made great sacrifices for it. And it was splendid. That was their reward.
The music sounded strangely new to her in this environment. She had heard it all at Djenan-el-Maqui, on the piano, sung by Alston and hummed by Claude. She had felt it, sometimes deeply on nights of excitement, when Claude had played till the stars were fading. She had had her favorite passages, which had always come to her out of the midst of the opera like friends, smiling, or passionate, or perhaps weeping, tugging at her heart-strings, stirring longings that were romantic. At the rehearsals she had heard the opera with the singers, the orchestra.
Yet now it seemed to her new and strange. The great audience had taken it, had changed it, was showing it to her now, was saying to her: "This is the opera of the composer, Claude Heath, a man hitherto unknown." And presently it seemed to be saying to her with insistence:
"It is useless for you to pretend to be apart from me, separate from me. For you belong to me. You are part of me. Your thought is part of my thought, your feeling is part of mine. You are nothing but a drop in me and I am the ocean."
Charmian felt as if she were struggling against this attempt of the audience to take possession of her, were fighting to preserve intact her independence, her individuality. But it became almost the business of a nightmare, this strange and unequal struggle in the artistic darkness devised by Crayford.And the audience seemed to be gaining in strength, like an adversary braced up by conflict.
Conflict! The word had appeared like a criminal in Charmian's mind. She strove vehemently to banish it. There was, there could be no conflict in such a matter as was now in hand. But, oh! this portentous silence!
It came to an end at last. The curtain fell, and applause broke forth. It resembled the applause after the first act. And once more there were three calls for the singers. Then the clapping died away and conversation broke out, spreading over the crowd. Many people got up from their seats and went out or moved about talking with acquaintances.
"I can see Mr. Van Brinen," said Charmian.
"Can you? Where is he?"
Claude got up slowly, picked up the roses and the cablegram from the chair beside Charmian, put them behind him, and took the chair, bringing it forward quite to the front of the box. As he did so Charmian made a sound like a word half-uttered and checked.
"Where is he?" Claude repeated.
Many people in the stalls were looking at him, were pointing him out. He seemed to ignore the attention fixed upon him.
"There!" said Charmian, in a low voice.
She pointed with her fan, then leaned back.
Claude looked and saw Van Brinen not far off. He was standing up in the stalls, facing the boxes, bending a little and talking to two smartly dressed women. His pale face looked sad. Presently he stood up straight and seemed to look across the intervening heads into Claude's eyes.
"He must see me!" Claude thought. "He does see me!"
Van Brinen stood thus for quite a minute. Then he made his way to one of the exits and disappeared.
"He is coming round to the box, I'm sure," said Charmian cheerfully. "He evidently saw us."
"Yes."
But Van Brinen did not come. Nor did Jacob Crayford. Several others came, however, and there were comments, congratulations. The same things were repeated by several mouths with strangely similar intonations. And Charmianmade appropriate answers. And all the time she kept on saying to herself: "This is my hour of triumph, as Madame Sennier's was at Covent Garden. Only this is America and not England. So of course there is a difference. New York has its way of setting the seal on a triumph and London has its way."
Moved presently to speak out of her mind she said to a Boston man, called Hostatter, who had looked in upon them:
"It is so interesting, I think, to notice the difference between one nation and another in such a matter for instance as this receiving of a new work."
"Very interesting, very interesting," said Hostatter.
"You Americans show what you feel by the intensity of your si—by the intensity, the concentration with which you listen."
"Exactly. And what is a London audience like? I have never been to a London première."
"Oh, more—more boisterous and less intense. Isn't it so, Claude?"
"No doubt there's a difference," said Claude.
"Do you mean they are boisterous at Covent Garden?" said Hostatter, evidently surprised. "I always thought the Covent Garden audience was such a cold one."
"Oh, no, I don't think so," said Charmian.
She remembered the first night ofLe Paradis Terrestre. Suddenly a chill ran all through her, as if a stream of ice-cold water had trickled upon her.
"Really!" said Hostatter. "And yet we Americans are said to have a bad reputation for noise."
He had been smiling, but looked suddenly doubtful.
"But as you say," he added, rather hastily, "in a theater we concentrate, especially when we are presented with something definitely artistic, as we are to-night."
He shook hands.
"Definitely artistic. My most sincere congratulations."
He went out, and another man called Stephen Clinch, an ally of Crayford's immediately came in. After a few minutes of conversation he said:
"Everybody is admiring the libretto. First-rate stuff,isn't it? I expected to find the author with you. Isn't he in the house?"
"Yes, but he told us he would sit in the stalls," said Charmian.
"Haven't you seen him?"
"No," said Claude.
"Well, of course you'll appear after the next act with him. There's sure to be a call. And I know Gillier will be called for as well as you."
His rather cold gray eyes seemed to examine the two faces before him almost surreptitiously. Then he, too, went out of the box.
"A call after this act!" said Charmian.
"I believe they generally summon authors and composers after the penultimate act over here."
"You'll take the call, of course, Claudie?"
There was a silence. Then he said:
"Yes, I shall take it."
His voice was hard. Charmian scarcely recognized it.
"Then you'll have to go behind the scenes."
"Yes."
"Will you—"
"I'll wait till the curtain goes up, and then slip out."
Again there was a silence. Charmian broke it at length by saying:
"I think Monsieur Gillier might have come to see us to-night. It would have been natural if he had visited our box."
"Perhaps he will come presently."
A bell sounded. The third act was about to begin.
Soon after the curtains had once more parted, disclosing a marvellous desert scene which drew loud applause from the audience, Claude got up softly from his seat.
"I'll slip away now," he whispered.
She felt for his hand in the dimness, found it, squeezed it. She longed to get up, to put her lips to his, to breath some word—she knew not the word it would be—of encouragement, of affection. Tears rushed into her eyes as she felt the touch of his flesh. As the door shut behind him she moved quite to the back of the box and put her handkerchiefto her eyes. She had great difficulty just then in not letting the tears run over her face. For several minutes she scarcely heard the music or knew what was happening upon the stage. There was a tumult of feeling within her which she did not at all fully understand, perhaps because even now she was fighting, fighting blindly, desperately, but with courage.
There came a tap at the door. Charmian did not hear it. In a moment it was softly repeated. This time she did hear it. And she hastily pressed her handkerchief first against one eye, then against the other, got up and opened the door.
"May I come in for a little while?" came a calm whisper from Susan Fleet, who stood without in a very plain black gown with long white gloves over her hands and arms.
"Oh, Susan—yes! I am all alone."
"That is why I came."
"How did you know?"
"My friend, Mr. Melton, happened to be in the corridor with Mr. Ramer and they saw your husband pass. Mr. Ramer spoke to him and he said he was going behind the scenes. So I thought I would come for a minute."
She stepped gently in and closed the door quietly.
"Where were you sitting?" she whispered.
"Here, at the back. Sit by me—oh, wait! Let me move Alston's flowers."
She took them up. As she did so she remembered Madre's cablegram, and looked for it. But it was no longer there. She searched quickly on the floor.
"What is it?" said Susan.
"Only a cablegram from Madre that was with the flowers. It's gone. Never mind. Claude must have taken it."
The conviction came to her that Claude had taken it with him, as a man takes a friend he can trust when he is going into a "tight place."
"Sit here!" she whispered to Susan.
Susan sat softly down beside Charmian at the back of the box, took one of her hands and held it, not closely, but gently. They did not speak again till the third act was finished.
It was the longest act of the opera, and the most elaborate.Charmian had always secretly been afraid of it since the first full rehearsal. She could never get out of her mind the torture she had endured that evening when everything had gone wrong, when she had said to herself in a sort of fierce and active despair: "This is my idea of Hell." She felt that even if the opera were a triumphant success, even if the third act were acclaimed, she would always dread it, almost as a woman may dread an enemy. Once it had tortured her, and she had a feminine memory for a thing that had caused her agony.
Now she sat with her hand in Susan's, face to face with the dangerous act, and anticipating the end, when at last Claude would confront the world he had avoided so carefully till she came into his life.
The act, which had been chaotic at rehearsal, was going with perfect smoothness, almost too smoothly Charmian began to think. It glided on its way almost with a certain blandness. In Algeria, Crayford had devoted most of his attention to this act, which he had said "wanted a lot of doing to." He had "made" the whole of it "over." Charmian remembered now very well the long discussions which had taken place at Djenan-el-Maqui about this act. One discussion stood out from the rest at this moment. She almost felt the heat brooding over the far-off land. She almost saw the sky shrouded in filmy gray, the white edge of the sea breaking sullenly against the long line of shore, the beads of sweat on the forehead of Claude, his clenched hands, the expression in his eyes when he said, after her answered challenge to Crayford, "Tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it."
This act to which this vast audience, in which she was now definitely included against her will, was listening was the product of that scene, that discussion, that resignation of Claude's.
Charmian's hand twitched under Susan's, but she did not draw it away, though Susan—as she knew—would have made no effort to retain it. She was thankful Susan was with her. To-night it was impossible for her to feel calm. No one could have communicated calm to her. But Susan did give her something which was a help to her. Always, when with Susan, she was able to feel, however vaguely, something ofthe universal, something of the largeness which men feel when they look at the stars, or hear the wind across vast spaces, or see a great deed done. As the act ran its course her mind became fixed upon the close, upon the call for Claude. Armand Gillier was blotted out from her mind. The cry that went up would be for Claude. Would it be a cry from the heart of this crowd? She remembered, she even heard distinctly in her mind, the cry the Covent Garden crowd had sent up for Jacques Sennier on the first night ofLe Paradis Terrestre. There had been in it a marvellous sound which had stirred her to the depths. It was that sound which had made her speak to Claude, which had determined her marriage with Claude.
If a similar sound burst from the lips and the hearts of the crowd at the end of this act, it would determine Claude's fate as an artist, her fate with his.
Her hand twitched more convulsively under Susan's as she thought of, waited for, the sound.
The locust scene was a triumph for Crayford, Mr. Mulworth, and Jimber. The scene which succeeded it was a triumph for Alston Lake. Whatever else this night might bring forth one thing was certain; Alston had "made good." He had "won out" and justified Crayford's belief in him. Even his father, reluctantly sitting in the stalls after a hard day in Wall Street, was obliged to be proud of his boy.
"Dear old Alston!" Charmian found herself whispering. "He's a success. Alston's a success—a success!"
She kept on forming the last word, and willing with all her might.
"Success! Success—it is coming; it is ours! In a moment we shall know it, we shall have it! Success! Success!"
With her soul and—it seemed to her—with her whole body, tense in the pretty green gown so carefully chosen for the great night, she willed, she called upon, she demanded success. And then she prayed for success. She shut her eyes, prayed hard, went on praying, marshalling all she and Claude had done before the Unseen Power, as reason for the blessing she entreated. And while she prayed, her hand ceased from twitching in Susan Fleet's.
Long though the third act was, at last it drew near its end. And then Charmian began to be afraid, terribly afraid. She feared the decisive moment. She wished she were not in the theater. She thought of the asking eyes of the pressmen, expressing silently but definitely the great demand of this wonderful city, this wonderful country: "Be a success!" If that demand were not complied with! She recalled the notoriety she and Claude had had out here, the innumerable attentions which had been showered upon them, the interest which had been shown in them, the expectations aroused by Claude. She recalled the many allusions that had been made to herself in the papers, the interviews with the "clever wife" who had done so much for her husband, the columns about her expedition to Paris to get Gillier's libretto for Claude. Crayford had taken good care that the "little lady" should have her full share of the limelight. Now, through shut eyelids she saw it blaze like an enemy.
If the opera should go down despite all that had been done how could she endure the situation that would be hers? But it would not go down. She remembered that she had once heard that fear of a thing attracts that thing to you. Was she who had been so full of will, so resolute, so persistent, so marvellously successful up to a point, going to be a craven now, going to show the white feather? When that evening began she had been sitting in the front of the box, in full view of the audience. Now she was sitting in the shadow, clasping a woman's hand. Claude had gone to the front of the box when she retreated. Now, in a very few minutes, he was going to face the great multitude. He was showing will, grit, to-night. And she felt, she knew, that, whatever the occasion, there was in Claude something strong enough to turn a bold front to it to-night, perhaps on any night or any day of the year. She must help him. Whether he could see her from the stage, she did not know. She doubted it. But he knew where she was sitting. He might look for her at such a moment. He might miss her if she were hidden away in the shadow like a poltroon.
She drew her hand away from Susan's, got up, and took her place alone in the front of the box, in sight of all thepeople in the stalls, in sight also of Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier. Susan remained where she was. She felt that Charmian needed to be alone just then. She liked her for the impulse which she had divined.
At last the curtain fell.
People applauded.
"This is the American way," Charmian was saying to herself. "Not our way! But they keep on! That shows it is a success. I mustn't think of Covent Garden."
Nevertheless, with her ears, and with her whole soul, she was listening for that wonderful sound, heard at the Covent Garden, the sound that stirs, that excites, that is soul in utterance.
"This is for the singers," she said to herself, "not for Claude. Bravo, Alston! Bravo! Bravo!"
The sound from the audience suddenly rose as Alston Lake showed himself, and, as it did so, Charmian was sharply, and deliciously, conscious of the long power that lay behind, like a stretching avenue leading down into the soul of the audience.
"Ah, they can be as we are!" she thought. "They are only waiting to show it. I am going to hear the sound."
With a sharp change of mood she exulted. She savored the triumph that was close at hand. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes shone, her heart beat violently.
"The sound! The sound!"
The last of the singers disappeared behind the curtain. The applause continued persistently, but, so at least it must have seemed to English ears, lethargically. A few cries were heard.
"They are calling for Claude!"
Charmian turned round to Susan Fleet. Susan was clapping her hands forcibly. She stood up as if to make her applause more audible.
The cries went up again. But in the stalls the applause seemed to be dying down, and Charmian had a moment of such acute, such exquisite apprehension, that always afterward she felt as if she had known the bitterness of death. Scarcely knowing what she did, and suddenly quite pale, she began to clap with Susan. She felt like one fighting against terrible odds. And the enemy sickened her because it wasfull of a monstrous passivity. It seemed to exhale inertia. To fight against it was like struggling against being smothered by a gigantic feather bed.
But she clapped, she clapped. And as she did so, moved to look round, she saw Mrs. Shiffney and Madame Sennier watching her through two pairs of opera-glasses.
Her hands fell apart, dropped to her sides mechanically.
Still cries, separated, far, it seemed, from one another, went up.
"Heath! Heath!" Charmian now heard distinctly.
"Gillier! Author! Author!"
The curtains moved. One was drawn back. A strangely shaped gap showed itself. But for a long moment no one emerged through this gap. And again the applause died down. Charmian sat quite still, her arms hanging, her eyes fixed on the gap, her cheeks still very white.
Just as the applause seemed fading beyond recall Claude stepped through the gap, followed by Armand Gillier.
Once more the cries were heard. The applause revived. Charmian gazed at Claude. His face, she thought, looked set but quite calm. He stood at the very edge of the stage, and she saw him look, not toward where she was, but up to the gallery as if in search of someone. Then he stepped back. He had come to the audience before Gillier. He now disappeared before Gillier, who seemed about to follow him closely, hesitated, looked round once more at the audience, and stood for an instant alone on the stage.
Then suddenly came from the audience the sound!
It was less full, less strong, less intense than it had been at Covent Garden on the night of the first performance ofLe Paradis Terrestre. But essentially it was the same sound.
Charmian heard it and her lips grew pale. But she sat well forward in the box, and, though she saw two opera-glasses levelled at her, she lifted her hands again and clapped till Armand Gillier passed out of sight.
In the red sitting-room at the St. Regis Hotel a supper-table was laid for three people. It was decorated with some lilies-of-the-valley and white heather, which Jacob Crayford had sent in the afternoon to the "little lady." On a table near stood a gilded basket of tulips, left by Gillier with a formal note. The elderly German waiter, who looked like a very respectable butler, placed a menu beside the lilies and the heather soon after the clock struck twelve. Then he glanced at the clock, compared it with his silver watch, and retired to see that the champagne was being properly iced. He returned, with a subordinate, about half-past twelve, and began to arrange an ice pail, from which the neck of a bottle protruded, and other things on a side table. While he was still in the room he heard voices in the corridor, and the three people for whom the preparations had been made came in.
"Supper is ready? That's right!" Charmian said, in a high and gay voice.
She turned.
"Doesn't the table look pretty, Alston, with Mr. Crayford's white heather?"
She had Alston's red roses in her hand.
"I am going to put your roses in water now."
She turned again to the waiter.
"Could I have some water put in that vase, please? And we'll have supper at once."
"Certainly, ma'am!"
"Come and see the menu, both of you, and tell me if you are satisfied with it."
She picked it up and handed it to Alston.
"And then show it to Claude while I take off my cloak."
She went away, smiling.
The waiters had gone out for a moment. The two friends were alone together.
Claude put his arm round Alston Lake's shoulder.
"Alston, this has been my first chance to congratulate you without a lot of people round us, or—really to tell you, I mean, how fine your performance was. There is no doubt that you are a made man from to-night. I am glad for you. You've worked splendidly, and you deserve this great success."
Alston wrung his friend's hand.
"Thank you, Claude. But I only got my chance through you and Mrs. Charmian. If you hadn't composed a splendid opera, I couldn't have scored in it."
"You would have scored in something else. You are going to."
"I shall never enjoy singing any rôle so much as I have enjoyed singing your Spahi."
"I don't see how you are ever going to sing any rôle better," said Claude.
Their hands fell apart as Charmian quickly came in.
"You've put your coats in the lobby? That's right. Oh, here is supper! Caviare first! I'll sit here. Oh, Alston, what a comfort to be quietly here with just you and Claude after all the excitement!"
For a moment her mouth dropped, but only for a moment.
"But I'm wonderfully little tired!" she continued. "It all went so splendidly, without a single hitch. Mr. Crayford must be enchanted. I only saw him for a moment coming out after I had congratulated Miss Mardon. There were so many people. There was no time to hear all he thought. But there could not be two opinions. Claudie, do you feel quite finished?"
"No," said Claude, in a strong voice, which broke in almost strangely upon her lively chattering.
Both Charmian and Alston looked at him for an instant with a sort of inquiry, which in Charmian was almost furtive.
"That's good!" Charmian began, after a little pause. "I was almost afraid—here's the champagne! We ought to drink a toast to-night, I think. Suppose we—"
"We'll drink to Alston's career," interrupted Claude. And he lifted his glass.
"Alston!" said Charmian, swiftly following his example.
"And now no more toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them. Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you take Madre's cablegram with you when you went to answer your call?"
"Yes."
"I thought you had, because I couldn't find it. Well Mr. Whistler came to lunch with us, Alston. And he talked about nothing but oysters."
"Was he painting them at the time? A nocturne of natives?"
"How absurd you are! But he knew everything that could be known about Blue Points—"
She ran on vivaciously. Alston seconded her, when she gave him an opportunity. Claude listened, sometimes smiled, spoke when there seemed to be any necessity for a word from him. Alston was hungry after his exertions, and ate heartily. Charmian pretended to eat and sipped her champagne. On each of her cheeks an almost livid spot of red glowed. Her eyes, which looked more sunken than usual in her head, were full of intense life, as they glanced perpetually from one man to the other with a ceaseless watchfulness. She pressed Claude to eat, even helped him herself from the dishes. The clock had just struck a quarter-past one when a buzzing sound outside indicated the presence of someone at the door of the lobby.
Charmian moved uneasily.
"Who can it be so late? Perhaps it's Mr. Crayford."
She got up.
"I'll go and see what it is," said Claude.
He went out. Charmian stood, watching the door.
"D'you think it's Mr. Crayford?" she asked of Alston Lake.
"Hardly!"
"What is it, Claude?"
"A note or letter."
"A letter! Whom can it be from! Has it only come now?"
"Apparently."
"Do read it. But have you finished?"
"Quite. I couldn't eat anything more."
He went to the sofa, behind which, on a table, an electric light was burning, sat down and tore the envelope which he held. Charmian and Alston remained at the supper-table. Charmian had sat down again. She gazed at Claude, and saw him draw out of the envelope not a note, but a letter. He began to read it, and read it slowly. And as he did so Charmian saw his face change. Once or twice his jaw quivered. His brows came down. He turned sideways on the sofa. Very soon she saw that he was with difficulty controlling some strong emotion. She began to talk to Alston Lake and turned her eyes away from her husband. But presently she heard the rustle of paper and looked again. Claude, with a hand which slightly trembled, was putting the letter back into its envelope. When he had done so he put both into the breast-pocket of his evening coat, and sat quite still gazing on the ground. Charmian went on talking, but she did not know what she was saying, and at last she felt that she could not endure to sit any longer at the disordered supper-table. Movement seemed necessary to her body, which felt distressed.
"Do have some more champagne, Alston!" she said.
"Not another drop, Mrs. Charmian, thank, you! I must think of my voice."
"Well, then—"
She pushed back her chair, glanced at Claude. He moved, lifted his eyes.
"Dare you smoke, Alston?" he said.
"I've got to, whether I dare or not. But"—his kind and honest eyes went from Charmian to Claude—"I think, if you don't mind, I'll smoke on the way home. I'll go right away now if you won't think it unfriendly. The fact is I'm a bit tired, and I bet you both are, too. These things take it out of one, unless one is made of cast-iron like Crayford, or steel like Mulworth, or whipcord like Jimber. You must bothwant a good long rest after all you've been through over here in God's own country, eh?"
He fetched his coat from the lobby. Claude got up and gave him a cigar, lit it for him.
"Well, Mrs. Charmian—" he said.
He held out his big hand. His fair face flushed a little, and his rather blunt features looked boyish and emotional.
"We've brought it off. We've done our best. Now we can only leave it to the critics and the public."
He squeezed her hand so hard that all the blood seemed to leave it.
"Good-night! I'll come round to-morrow. Good-night."
He seemed reluctant to depart, still held her hand. But at last he just repeated "Good-night!" and let it go.
"Good-night, dear Alston," she murmured.
Claude went with him into the lobby and shut the sitting-room door behind them. She heard their voices talking, but could not hear any words. The voices continued for what seemed to her a long while. She moved about the room, saw Alston's red roses where she had laid them down when she came in from the theater, and the vase full of water which the German waiter had brought. And she began to put the flowers in the water, lifting them carefully and slowly one by one. They had very long stems and all their leaves. She arranged them with apparent sensitiveness. But she was scarcely conscious of what she was doing. When all the roses were in the vase she did not know what else to do. And she stood still listening to the murmur of those voices. At last it ceased. She heard a door shut. Then the sitting-room door opened, and Claude came in.
"What a lot you had to say to each—" she began.
She stopped. Claude's face had stopped her.
"Shall I ring for the waiter to clear away?" she said falteringly, after a moment of silence.
"He came when Alston and I were in the lobby. I told him to leave it all till to-morrow. Do you mind?"
"No."
Claude shut the door. His eyes still held the intensity, the blazing expression which had stopped the words on herlips. Always Claude's face was expressive. She remembered how forcibly she had been struck by that fact when she walked airily into Max Elliot's music-room. But she had never before seen him look as he was looking now. She felt frightened of him, and almost frightened of herself.
"I had something to say to Alston," Claude said, coming up to her. "I don't think I could have rested to-night unless I had said it. I'm sure I couldn't."
"You were telling him again how splendidly—"
"No. He knew what I thought of his work. I told him that before supper. I had to tell him something else—what I thought of my own."
"What you—what you thought of your own!"
"Yes. What I thought of my own spurious, contemptible, heartless, soulless, hateful work."
"Claude!" she faltered.
"Don't you know it is so? Don't you know I am right? You may have deceived yourself in Algeria. You may have deceived yourself even here at all the rehearsals. But, Charmian"—his eyes pierced her—"do you dare to tell me that to-night, when you were part of an audience, when you were linked with those hundreds and hundreds of listeners, do you dare to tell me you didn't know to-night?"
"How can you—oh, how can you speak like this? Oh, how can you attack your own child?" she cried, finding in herself still a remnant of will, a remnant of the fierceness that belongs to deep feeling of any kind. "It's unworthy. It's cruel, brutal. I can't hear you do it. I won't—"
"Do you mean to tell me that to-night when you sat in the theater you didn't know? Well, if you do tell me so I shall not believe you. No, I shall not believe you."
She was silent, remembering her sense of struggle in the theater, her strong feeling that she was engaged on a sort of horrible, futile fight against the malign power of the audience.
"You see!" he said. "You dare not tell me you didn't know!"
His eyes were always upon her. She opened her lips. She tried to speak, to say that she loved the opera, that she thought it a work of genius, that everyone would recognize it as suchsoon, very soon, if not now, immediately. Words seemed to be struggling up in her, but she could not speak them. She felt that she was growing paler and paler beneath his gaze.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed, with violence. "You've got some sincerity left in you. We want it, you and I, to-night!"
He turned away from her, went to the sofa, sat down on it, put his hand to the breast-pocket of his coat, and drew out two papers—Madre's cablegram and the letter which had come while they were at supper.
"Come here, Charmian!" he said, more quietly.
She came to him, hesitated, met his eyes again, and sat down in the other corner of the sofa beside him.
"I want you to read that."
He gave her the letter.
"Read it carefully. Don't hurry!" he said.
She took the letter and read.