Perhaps you know how Henriette received him? She took his hands and
looked long and softly in the clear-cut, vivid face, and said, while
great tears brimmed her white underlids and fell softly down her cheeks:
“Oh, you are noble! Why have I not known you before? Why must we only
meet as late as this?”
And presently:
“What other man would be capable of such generosity? And you ask
nothing--you who might demand so much!”
De Roux was absent on official business. Dunoisse remained some
hours, went away, and returned to dinner. Madame de Roux had a box
at the Italiens for that evening. It was perfectly proper that the
sub-Adjutant of the 999th should escort his Colonel’s wife.
* * * * *
The opera was “Semiramide.” Carnavale was in the stalls, wearing the
crimson dress-coat dedicated to that special opera. On nights when
“Der Freischütz” was given he appeared in apricot,--when “Lucia” was
performed you saw him in pale blue. Giulia Gigi sang,--upon that
night of all the nights the glorious artist reached the apex of her
triumph. The great pure voice flowed forth, the soul was caught upon
and carried away by wave upon wave of wonderful music; the Opera-House
was filled with them; the atmosphere, saturated with mille-fleurs and
frangipani, was electrical with human passion. Dunoisse looked, not
at the beautiful singer, who trod the stage and sang as one inspired,
but at Henriette.... Her head was thrown back, her transparent eyelids
were closed, her delicate nostrils quivered, her throat throbbed and
swelled. The curve of it suggested the swan dying in melody. For
Dunoisse the music was she. She sat forwards upon her chair of velvet,
and the diamond cross upon her bosom wakened into vibrant light and
sank into soft suggestive shadow as she drew and exhaled deep, sighing
breaths. Below the line of her short glove a blue vein leaped in her
delicate wrist. To see it was to long to kiss it. Dunoisse’s eyes could
not keep away.
And Gigi sang more and more divinely, and at the end of her greatest
_scena_, sweeping off the stage like a human tornado, you might, had
you been sitting in the shadow of velvet curtains, in a certain box
upon the Grand Tier, occupied by two people who hardly looked at the
stage, have seen her seize from the grasp of a giant fireman in a
shining helmet, tight shell-jacket with enormous shoulder-straps and
cavalry trousers, a glittering pewter--pour down that statuesque throat
of hers a copious draught of English porter, frothing, mellow, and
mild; kick out her imperial train with one backward movement of a foot
too solid for a fairy’s, and storm back again amidst the thundering
cries of “Bis!” and “Brava!” to grant the demanded encore.
Who grudges the Gigi her porter? I have seen the nightingale, that
unrivaled soloist, at the finish of a marvelous series of runs and
trills, a fine frenzy of jug-jug-jugging, look about him, preen his
snuff-colored breast-feathers, and presently hop down to a lower branch
and help himself to a snack. Why, then, should we chide the prima-donna
for her draught of stout, or cavil at the grilled lobsters, risotto, or
macaroni dressed with chillies and tomatoes, that her soul loves? For
are not these, by the alchemy of digestion, equally with the earwig,
woodlouse, or grub of the other singer, transmuted into heavenly sounds?
Henriette said to Dunoisse, as the great waves of melody broke over
them:
“You said that night in the boudoir that you would not take advice from
me as a sister. But I am your sister!--nothing but your sister! Let us
make a compact upon that?”
Dunoisse agreed, without enthusiasm. She thanked him in a velvety
whisper. Presently she said:
“If all men were as noble as you, this world would be a happy place for
women. How wonderful to have met a nature such as yours! Another man
would have kissed me--that night when I made my terrible confession.
But I knew that I was secure,--I rested upon your honor. Let it be
always thus between us. Let me always feel when I am with you that I
am a soul without a body--a pure spirit floating in clear ether with my
friend.”
Dunoisse gave the promise with obvious reluctance. Then they talked
about the music energetically. But presently, when the great
gilded chandelier soared up into the artificial firmament of the
domed ceiling, and the stage-lights were lowered, and the flats
parted--revealing the Tomb of Ninus, by the pale mysterious rays of
the calcium moon--a cheek that was warm and satiny, and glowing as a
nectarine plucked from a south wall in the ripening heats of July,
brushed Dunoisse’s--and his trumpery promise broke its gilded string,
and flew away upon the wind of a double sigh.
De Roux looked in to escort his wife home, at the conclusion of
the opera. He had been winning at cards,--was smiling and urbane,
and Dunoisse, looking at the dyed, red-faced, dissipated, elderly
dandy, knew the sickness of loathing. De Roux had shown him civility,
courtesy, even friendliness, yet he hated him with zeal and rancor.
He watched the Colonel as he wrapped his beautiful wife in her ermine
mantle--the same that she had worn, Dunoisse remembered, upon the
evening of the bloodshed at the Hotel of Foreign Affairs. And as the
almond-nailed, plump fingers of one of the Colonel’s well-kept, ringed
hands touched Henriette’s bare shoulder, she winced and shuddered. Her
mouth contracted as though to stifle a cry--her long eyes shot a glance
at her friend that seemed a mute appeal to be saved from the indignity
of that touch.... And so fierce was the jealous impulse urging
Dunoisse to dash his clenched fist into the gross, sensual face of her
possessor, that he was fain to thrust his tingling right hand deep into
his trouser-pocket and clench it there until the glove split.