Nothing more was said by Charmian or Claude about Mrs. Shiffney and the
rehearsal. Mrs. Shiffney made no sign. The rehearsals of Jacques
Sennier's new opera were being pressed forward almost furiously, and no
doubt she had little free time. Claude wondered very much what she would
do, debated the question with himself. Surely now she would not wish to
come to his rehearsal! And even if she did wish to be present, surely
she would not try to come now! But women are not easily to be read.
Claude was aware that he could not divine what Mrs. Shiffney would do.
He thought, however, that it was unlikely she would come. He thought
also that he wished her not to come.
Nevertheless, when the darkness gathered over New York on Friday
evening, he found himself wishing strongly, even almost painfully, for
her verdict.
Charmian was greatly excited. Claude still kept up his successful
pretense of bold self-confidence. He had to strain every nerve to
conceal his natural sensitiveness. But although he was racked by
anxiety, and something else, he did not show it. Charmian was astonished
by his apparent serenity now that the hour full of fate was approaching.
She admired him more than ever. She even wondered at him, remembering
moments, not far off, when he had shown a sort of furtive bitterness, or
weariness, or depression, when she had partially divined a blackness of
the depths. Now his self-confidence lifted her, and she told him so.
"There's an atmosphere of success round you," she said.
"Why not? We are going to reap the fruits of our labors," he replied.
"But even Alston is terribly nervous to-day."
"Is he? My hand is as steady as a rock."
He held it out, by a fierce effort kept it perfectly still for a moment,
then let it drop against his side.
The bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral chimed five o'clock.
"Only an hour and we begin!" said Charmian. "Oh, Claude! This is almost
worse than the performance."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Perhaps because it won't be final. And then they say at
dress rehearsals things always go badly, and everyone thinks the piece,
or the opera, is bound to be a failure. I feel wrinkles and gray hairs
pouring over me in spite of your self-possession. I can't help it!"
She forced a laugh. She was walking about the room.
"I'm devoured by nerves, I suppose!" she exclaimed. "By the way, hasn't
Mrs. Shiffney written about coming to-night?"
"No."
"You haven't seen her again?"
"Oh, no!"
"How very odd! Do you suppose she will try to get in?"
"How can I tell?"
"But isn't it strange, after her making such a fuss about coming--this
silence?"
"Probably she's immersed in Sennier's opera and won't bother about
mine."
"Women always bother."
There was a "b-r-r-r!" in the lobby. Charmian started violently.
"What can that be?"
Claude went to the door, and returned with Armand Gillier.
"Oh, Monsieur Gillier!"
Charmian looked at Gillier's large and excited eyes.
"You are coming with us?"
"If you allow me, madame!" said Gillier formally, bowing over her hand.
"It seems to me that the collaborators should go together."
"Of course. It's still early, but we may as well start. The theater's
pulling at me--pulling!"
"My wife's quite strung up!" said Claude, smiling.
"And Claude is disgustingly cool!" said Charmian.
Gillier looked hard at Claude, and Charmian thought she detected
admiration in his eyes.
"Men need to be cool when the critical moment is at hand," he remarked.
"I learned that long ago in Algeria."
"Then you are not nervous now?"
"Nerves are for women!" he returned.
But the expression in his face belied his words.
"Claude is cooler than he is!" Charmian thought.
She went to put on her hat and her sealskin coat. She longed, yet
dreaded to start.
When they arrived at the stage-door of the Opera House the dark young
man came from his office on the right with his hands full of letters,
and, smiling, distributed them to Charmian, Claude and Gillier.
"It will be a go!" he said, in a clear voice. "Everyone says so. Mr.
Crayford is up in his office. He wants to see Mr. Heath. There's the
elevator!"
At this moment the lift appeared, sinking from the upper regions under
the guidance of a smiling colored man.
"I'll come up with you, Claudie. Are you going on the stage, Monsieur
Gillier?"
"No, madame, not yet. I must speak to Mademoiselle Mardon about the
Ouled Nail scene."
People were hurrying in, looking preoccupied. In a small abode on the
left, a little way from the outer door, an elderly man in uniform, with
a square gray beard, sat staring out through a small window, with a
cautious and important air.
Charmian and Claude stepped into the lift, holding their letters. As
they shot up they both glanced hastily at the addresses.
"Nothing from Adelaide Shiffney!" said Charmian. "Have you got
anything?"
"No."
"Then she can't be coming."
"It seems not."
"I--then we shan't have the verdict in advance."
The lift stopped, and they got out.
"If we had it would probably have been a wrong one," said Claude. "The
only real verdict is the one the great public gives."
"Yes, of course. But, still--"
"Hulloh, little lady! So you're sticking to the ship till she's safe in
port!"
Crayford met them in the doorway of his large and elaborately furnished
sanctum.
"Come right in! There's a lot to talk about. Shut the door, Harry. Now,
Mulworth, let's get to business. What is it that is wrong with the music
to go with the Fakir scene?"
At six o'clock the rehearsal had not begun. At six-thirty it had not
begun. The orchestra was there, sunk out of sight and filling the
dimness with the sounds of tuning. But the great curtain was down. And
from behind it came shouting voices, noises of steps, loud and
persistent hammerings.
A very few people were scattered about in the huge space which contained
the stalls, some nondescript men, whispering to each other, or yawning
and staring vaguely; and five or six women who looked more alert and
vivacious. There was no one visible in the shrouded boxes. The lights
were kept very low.
The sound of hammering continued and became louder. A sort of deadness
and strange weariness seemed to brood in the air, as if the great
monster were in a sinister and heavy mood, full of an almost malign
lethargy. The orchestral players ceased from tuning their instruments,
and talked together in their sunken habitation.
Seven o'clock struck in the clocks of New York. Just as the chimes died
away, Mrs. Shiffney drew up at the stage-door in a smart white
motor-car. She was accompanied by a very tall and big man, with a robust
air of self-confidence, and a face that was clean-shaven and definitely
American.
"I don't suppose they've begun yet," she said, as she got out and walked
slowly across the pavement, warmly wrapped up in a marvellous black
sable coat. "Have you got your card, Jonson?"
"Here!" said the big man in a big voice.
The dark young man came from his office. On seeing the big man he
started, and looked impressed.
"Mr. Crayford here?" said the big man.
"I think he's on the stage."
"Could you be good enough to send him in my card? There's some writing
on the back. And here's a note from this lady."
"Certainly, with pleasure," said the young man, with his cheerful smile.
"Come right into the office, if you will!"
"Hulloh!" said Crayford, a moment later to Claude. "Here's Mrs. Shiffney
wants to be let in to the rehearsal! And whom with, d'you think?"
"Whom?" asked Claude quickly. "Not Madame Sennier?"
"Jonson Ramer."
"The financier?"
"Our biggest! My boy, you're booming! Old Jonson Ramer asking to come in
to our rehearsal! We'll have that all over the States to-morrow morning.
Where's Cane?"
"I'll fetch him, sir!" said a thin boy standing by.
"Are you going to let them in?"
"Am I going to! Finnigan, go and take the lady and Mr. Ramer to any box
they like. Ah, Cane! Here's something for you to let yourself out over!"
Mr. Cane read Ramer's card and looked radiant.
"Well, I'm--!"
"I should think you are! Go and spread it. This boy's getting
compliments enough to turn him silly."
And Crayford clapped Claude almost affectionately on the shoulder.
"Now then, Mulworth!" he roared, with a complete change of manner. "When
in thunder are we going to have that curtain up?"
Claude turned away. He wished to find Charmian, to tell her that Mrs.
Shiffney had come and had brought Jonson Ramer with her. But he did not
know where she was. As he came off the stage into the wings he met
Alston Lake dressed for his part of an officer of Spahis.
"I say, Claude, have you heard?"
"What?"
"Jonson Ramer's here for the rehearsal!"
"I know. Can you tell me where Charmian is?"
"Haven't an idea! There's the prelude beginning! My! Where are my
formamints?"
Charmian meanwhile had gone into the theater with a dressmaker, who had
come to see the effect of Enid Mardon's costumes which she had
"created." Charmian and the dressmaker, a massive and handsome woman,
were sitting together in the stalls, discussing Enid Mardon's caprices.
"She tore the dress to pieces," said the dressmaker. "She made rags of
it, and then pinned it together all wrong, and said to me--to
_me_!--that now it began to look like an Ouled Nail girl's costume. I
told her if she liked to face Noo York--"
"H'sh-sh!" whispered Charmian. "There's the prelude beginning at last.
She's not going to--?"
"No. Of course she had to come back to my original idea!"
And the dressmaker pressed a large handkerchief against her handsome
nose, savored the last new perfume, and leaned back in her stall
magisterially with a faint smile.
It was at this moment that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of
the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat
she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space
before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat
within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat
back a little farther in the box, and whispered to Mr. Ramer.
"Are you really going to join the Directorate of the Metropolitan?" she
said.
"I may, when this season's over."
"Does Crayford know it?"
Mr. Ramer shook his massive and important head.
"I'm not certain of it myself," he observed, with a smile.
"And if you do join?"
"If I decide to join"--he glanced round the enormous empty house. "I
think I should buy Crayford out of here."
"Would he go?"
"I think he might--for a price."
"If this new man turns out to be worth while, I suppose you would take
him over as one of the--what are they called--one of the assets?"
"Ha!" He leaned toward her, and just touched her arm with one of his
powerful hands. "You must tell me to-night whether he is going to be
worth while."
"Won't you know?"
"I might when I got him before a New York audience. But you are more
likely to know to-night."
"I have got rather a flair, I believe. Now--I'll taste the new work."
She did not speak again, but gave herself up to attention, though her
mind was often with the woman in the sealskin coat who sat so near to
her. Had Claude said anything to that woman? There was very little to
say. But--had he said it? She wondered on what terms Charmian and Claude
were, whether the Puritan had ever found any passion for the
Charmian-creature. Claude's music broke in upon her questionings.
Mrs. Shiffney had a retentive as well as a swift mind, and she
remembered every detail of Gillier's powerful, almost brutal libretto.
In the reading it had transported her into a wild life, in a land where
there is still romance, still strangeness--a land upon which
civilization has not yet fastened its padded claw. And she had imagined
the impression which this glimpse of an ardent and bold life might
produce upon highly civilized people, like herself, if it were helped by
powerful music.
Now she listened, waited, remembering her visits to Mullion House, the
night in the cafe by the city wall when Said Hitani and his Arabs
played, the hour of sun in the pine wood above the great ravine, other
hours in New York. There was something in Heath that she had wanted,
that she wanted still, though part of her sneered at him, laughed at
him, had a worldly contempt for him, though another part of her almost
hated him. She desired a fiasco for him. Nevertheless the art feeling
within her, and the greedy emotional side of her, demanded the success
of his effort just now, because she was listening, because she hated to
be bored, because the libretto was fine. The artistic side of her nature
was in strong conflict with the capricious and sensual side that
evening. But she looked--for Jonson Ramer--coolly self-possessed and
discriminating as she sat very still in the shadow.
"That's a fine voice!" murmured Ramer presently.
Alston Lake was singing.
"Yes. I've heard him in London. But he seems to have come on
wonderfully."
"It's an operatic voice."
When Alston Lake went off the stage Ramer remarked:
"That's a fellow to watch."
"Crayford's very clever at discovering singers."
"Almost too clever for the Metropolitan, eh?"
"Enid Mardon looks wonderful."
Silence fell upon them again.
The dressmaker had got up from her seat and slipped away into the
darkness, after examining Enid Mardon's costume for two or three minutes
through a small but powerful opera-glass. Charmian was now quite alone.
While the massive woman was with her Charmian had been unconscious of
any agitating, or disturbing influence in her neighborhood. The
dressmaker had probably a strong personality. Very soon after she had
gone Charmian began to feel curiously uneasy, despite her intense
interest in the music, and in all that was happening on the stage. She
glanced along the stalls. No one was sitting in a line with her. In
front of her she saw only the few people who had already taken their
places when the curtain went up. She gave her attention again to the
stage, but only with a strong effort. And very soon she was again
compelled by this strange uneasiness to look about the theater. Now she
felt certain that somebody whom she had not yet seen, but who was near
to her, was disturbing her. And she thought, "Claude must have come in!"
On this thought she turned round rather sharply, and looked behind her
at the boxes. She did not actually see anyone. But it seemed to her
that, as she turned and looked, something moved back in a box very near
to her, on her left. And immediately she felt certain that that box was
occupied.
"Adelaide Shiffney's there!"
Suddenly that certainty took possession of her. And Claude? Where was
he?
Hitherto she had supposed that Claude was behind the scenes, or perhaps
in the orchestra sitting near the conductor, Meroni; but now jealousy
sprang up in her. If Claude were with Adelaide Shiffney in that box
while she sat alone! If Claude had really known all the time that
Adelaide Shiffney was coming and had not told her, Charmian! Unreason,
which is the offspring of jealousy, filled her mind. She burned with
anger.
"I know he is in that box with her!" she thought. "And he did not tell
me she was coming because he wanted to be with her at the rehearsal and
not with me."
And suddenly her intense, her painful interest in the opera faded away
out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her
imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a
certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man--the intentness of the
heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all over her, blotting out
landmarks.
The curtain fell on the first act. It had gone well, unexpectedly well.
Behind the scenes there were congratulations. Crayford was radiant. Mr.
Mulworth wiped his brow fanatically, but looked almost human as he spoke
in a hoarse remnant of voice to a master carpenter. Enid Mardon went off
the stage with the massive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation.
Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the
subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black
moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had
done well and was more "mad" about the opera than ever.
"It's the bulliest thing there's been in New York in years!" he
exclaimed, as he went to his dressing-room, where he found Claude, who
had been sitting in the orchestra, and who had now hurried round to ask
the singers how they felt in their parts. Gillier was with Miss Mardon,
at whose feet he was laying his homage.
Meanwhile Charmian was still quite alone.
She sat for a moment after the curtain fell.
"Surely Claude will come now!" she said to herself. "In decency he must
come!"
But no one came, and anger, the sense of desertion, grew in her till she
was unable to sit still any longer. She got up, turned, and again looked
toward the box in which she had fancied that she saw something move. Now
she saw a woman's arm and hand, a bit of a woman's shoulder. Somebody, a
woman, wearing sables, was in the box turning round, evidently in
conversation with another person who was hidden.
Adelaide Shiffney owned wonderful sables.
Without further hesitation Charmian, driven, made her way to the exit
from the stalls on her right, went out and found herself in the
blackness of the huge corridor running behind the ground tier boxes.
Before leaving the stalls she had tried to locate the box, and thought
that she had located it. She meant to go into it without knocking, as
one who supposed it to be empty. Now, with a feverish hand she felt for
a door-handle. She found one, turned it, and went into an empty box.
Standing still in it, she listened and heard a woman's voice that she
knew say:
"I dare say. But I don't mean to say anything yet. I have my reputation
to take care of, you must remember."
The words ended in a little laugh.
"It is Adelaide. She's in the next box!" said Charmian to herself.
For a moment a horrible idea suggested itself to her. She thought of
sitting down very softly and of eavesdropping. But the better part of
her at once rebelled against this idea, and without hesitation she
slipped out of the box. She stood still in the corridor for three or
four minutes. The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping
almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to
abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. Shiffney's conversation with
the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she
walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped
again.
"I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."
Adelaide Shiffney's words kept passing through her mind. What had
Claude said to evoke such words? In the darkness, Charmian, with a
strong and excited imagination, conceived Claude faithless to her. She
did more. She conceived of triumph and faithlessness coming together
into her life, of Claude as a famous man and another woman's lover.
"Would you rather he remained obscure and entirely yours?" a voice
seemed to say within her. She did not debate this question, but again
turned, made her way to Mrs. Shiffney's box, which she located rightly
this time, pushed the door and abruptly went into it.
"Hulloh!" said a powerful and rather surprised voice.
In the semi-obscurity Charmian saw a very big man, whom she had never
seen before, getting up from a chair.
"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, startled. "I didn't know--"
"Charmian! Is it you?"
Adelaide Shiffney's voice came from beyond the big man.
"Adelaide! You've come to our rehearsal!"
"Yes. Let me introduce Mr. Jonson Ramer to you. This is Mrs. Heath,
Jonson, the genius's good angel. Sit down with us for a minute,
Charmian."
Adelaide Shiffney's deep voice was almost suspiciously cordial. But
Charmian's sense of relief was so great that she accepted the
invitation, and sat down feeling strangely happy.
But almost instantly with the laying to rest of one anxiety came the
birth of another.
"Well, what do you think of the opera?" she asked, trying to speak
carelessly.
Jonson Ramer leaned toward her. He thought she looked pretty, and he
liked pretty women even more than most men do.
"Very original!" he said. "Opens powerfully. But I don't think we can
judge of it yet. It's going remarkably well."
"Wonderfully!" said Mrs. Shiffney.
Charmian turned quickly toward her. It was Adelaide's verdict that she
wanted, not Jonson Ramer's.
"Enid Mardon's perfect," continued Mrs. Shiffney. "She will make a
sensation. And the _mise-en-scene_ is really exquisite, not overloaded.
Crayford has evidently learnt something from Berlin."
"How malicious Adelaide is!" thought Charmian. "She won't speak of the
music simply because she knows I only care about that."
She talked for a little while, sufficiently mistress of herself to charm
Jonson Ramer. Then she got up.
"I must run away. I have so many people to see and encourage."
Her gay voice indicated that she needed no encouragement, that she was
quite sure of success.
"We shall see you at the end?" said Mrs. Shiffney.
"But will you stay? It may be six o'clock in the morning," said
Charmian.
"That is a little late. But--"
At this moment Charmian saw Claude coming into the stalls by the left
entrance near the stage.
"Oh, there's Claude!" she exclaimed, interrupting Mrs. Shiffney, and
evidently not knowing that she did so. "Au revoir! Thank you so much!"
She was gone.
"Thank me so much!" said Mrs. Shiffney to Jonson Ramer. "What for? Do
you know, Jonson?"
"Seems to me that little woman's unfashionable--mad about her own
husband!" said Jonson Ramer.
The curtain went up on the second act.
Claude had sat down in the stalls. In a moment Charmian slipped into a
seat at his side and touched his hand.
"Claude, where have you been?"
Her long fingers closed on his hand.
"Charmian!"
He looked excited and startled. He stared at her.
"What's the matter?"
His face changed.
"Nothing. It's all going well so far."
"Perfectly. Adelaide Shiffney's here."
"I know."
Charmian's fingers unclasped.
"You've seen her?"
"No, but I heard she was here with Jonson Ramer."
"Yes. I've--"
They fell into silence, concentrated upon the stage. In a few minutes
they were joined by Gillier, who sat down just behind them. With his
coming their attention was intensified. They listened jealously,
attended as it were with every fiber of their bodies, as well as with
their minds, to everything that was happening in this man-created world.
Charmian felt Gillier listening, felt, far away behind him, Adelaide
Shiffney listening. Gradually her excitement and anxiety became painful.
Her mind seemed to her to be burning, not smouldering but flaming. She
clasped the two arms of her stall.
Something went wrong on the stage, and the opera was stopped. The
orchestra died away in a sort of wailing confusion, which ceased on the
watery sound of a horn. Enid Mardon began speaking with concentrated
determination. Crayford and Mr. Mulworth came upon the stage.
"Where's Mr. Heath? Where's Mr. Heath?" shouted Crayford.
Claude, who was already standing up, hurried away toward the entrance
and disappeared. Charmian sat biting her lips and tingling all over in
an acute exasperation of the nerves. Behind her Armand Gillier sat in
silence. Claude joined the people on the stage, and there was a long
colloquy in which eventually Meroni, the conductor, took part. Charmian
presently heard Gillier moving restlessly behind her. Then she heard a
snap of metal and knew that he had just looked at his watch. What was
Adelaide doing? What was she thinking? What did she think of this
breakdown? Everything had been going so well. But now no doubt things
would go badly.
"Will they ever start again?" Charmian asked herself. "What can they be
talking about? What can Miss Mardon mean by those frantic
gesticulations, now by turning her back on Mr. Crayford and Claude? If
only people--"
Meroni left the stage. In a moment the orchestra sounded once more.
Charmian turned round instinctively for sympathy to Armand Gillier, and
caught an unpleasant look in his large eyes. Instantly she was on the
defensive.
"It's going marvellously for a first full rehearsal," she said to him.
"Claude expected we should be here for nine or ten hours at the very
least."
"Possibly, madame!" he replied.
He gnawed his moustache. His head, drenched as usual with
eau-de-quinine, looked hard as a bullet. Charmian wondered what
thoughts, what expectations it contained. But she turned again to the
stage without saying anything more. At that moment she hated Gillier for
not helping her to be sanguine. She said to herself that he had been
always against both her and Claude. Of course he would be cruelly,
ferociously critical of Claude's music, because he was so infatuated
with his own libretto. Angrily she dubbed him a poor victim of
megalomania.
Claude slipped into the seat at her side, and suddenly she felt
comforted, protected. But these alternations of hope and fear tried her
nerves. She began to be conscious of that, to feel the intensity of the
strain she was undergoing. Was not the strain upon Claude's nerves much
greater? She stole a glance at his dark face, but could not tell.
The second act came to an end without another breakdown, but Charmian
felt more doubtful about the opera than she had felt after the first
act. The deadness of rehearsal began to creep upon her, almost like moss
creeping over a building. Claude hurried away again. And Mrs. Haynes,
the dressmaker, took his place and began telling Charmian a long story
about Enid Mardon's impossible proceedings. It seemed that she had
picked, or torn, to pieces another dress. Charmian listened, tried to
listen, failed really to listen. She seemed to smell the theater. She
felt both dull and excited.
"I said to her, 'Madame, it is only monkeys who pick everything to
pieces.' I felt it was time that I spoke out strongly."
Mrs. Haynes continued inexorably. In the well of the orchestra a hidden
flute suddenly ran up a scale ending on E flat. Charmian almost began to
writhe with secret irritation.
"What a long wait!" she exclaimed, ruthlessly interrupting her
companion. "I really must go behind and see what is happening."
"But they must have a quarter of an hour to change the set," said the
dressmaker. "And it's only five minutes since--"
"Yes, I know. I'll look for you here when the curtain goes up."
As she made her way toward the exit she turned and looked toward the
boxes. She did not see the distant figures of Mrs. Shiffney and the
financier. And she stopped abruptly. Could they have gone away already?
She looked at her watch. It was only ten o'clock. Her eyes travelled
swiftly round the semicircle of boxes. She saw no one. They must have
gone. Her heart sank, but her cheeks burned with an angry flush. At that
moment she felt almost like a mother who hears people call her child
ugly. She stood for a moment, thinking. The verdict in advance! If Mrs.
Shiffney had gone away it was surely given already. Charmian resolved
that she would say nothing to Claude. To do so might discourage him. Her
cheeks were still burning when she pushed the heavy door which protected
the mysterious region from the banality she had left.
But there she was again carried from mood to mood.
She found everyone enthusiastic. Crayford's tic was almost triumphant.
His little beard bristled with an aggressive optimism.
"Where's Claude?" said Charmian, not seeing him and thinking of Mrs.
Shiffney.
"Making some cuts," said Crayford. "The stage shows things up. There are
bits in that act that have got to come out. But it's a bully act and
will go down as easily as a--Hullo, Jimber! Sure you've got your motors
right for the locust scene?"
He escaped.
"Mr. Mulworth!" cried Charmian, seeing the producer rushing toward the
wings, with the perspiration pouring over his now haggard features.
"_Mister_ Mulworth! How long will Claude take making the cuts, do you
think?"
"He'll have to stick at them all through the next act. If they're not
made the act's a fizzle! Jeremy! See here! We've got to have a pin-light
on Miss Mardon when she comes down that staircase!"
He escaped.
"Signor Meroni, I hear you have to make some cuts! D'you think--"
"_Signora--ma si! Ma si!_"
He escaped.
"Take care, marm, if you please! Look out for that sand bank!"
Charmian withdrew from the frantic turmoil of work, and fled to visit
the singers, and drink in more comfort. The only person who dashed her
hopes was Miss Enid Mardon, who was a great artist but by nature a
pessimist, ultra critical, full of satire and alarmingly outspoken.
"I tell you honestly," she said, looking at Charmian with fatalistic
eyes, "I don't believe in it. But I'll do my best."
"But I thought you were delighted with the first act. Surely Monsieur
Gillier told me--"
"Oh, I only spoke to him about the libretto. That's a masterpiece. Did
you ever see such a dress as that elephant Haynes expects me to wear for
the third act?"
"Really Miss Mardon's impossible!" Charmian was saying a moment later to
Alston Lake.
"Why, Mrs. Charmian?"
"Oh, I don't know! She always looks on the dark side."
"With eyes like hers what else can she do? Isn't it going stunningly?"
"Alston, I must tell you--you're an absolute darling!"
She nearly kissed him. A bell sounded.
"Third act!" exclaimed Alston, in his resounding baritone.
Charmian escaped, feeling much more hopeful, indeed almost elated.
Alston was right. With eyes like hers how could Enid Mardon anticipate
good things?
Nevertheless Charmian remembered that she had called the libretto a
masterpiece.
Oh! the agony of these swiftly changing moods! She felt as if she were
being tossed from one to another by some cruel giant. She tried to look
forward. She said to herself, "Very soon we shall know! All this will be
at an end."
But when the third act was finished she felt as if never could there be
an end to her acute nervous anxiety. For the third act did not go well.
The locusts were all wrong. The lighting did not do. Most of the
"effects" missed fire. There were stoppages, there were arguments, there
was a row between Miss Mardon and Signor Meroni. Passages were re-tried,
chaos seemed to descend upon the stage, engulfing the opera and all who
had anything to do with it. Charmian grew cold with despair.
"Thank God Adelaide did go away!" she said to herself at half-past one
in the morning.
She turned her head and saw Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer sitting in
the stalls not far from her. Mrs. Shiffney made a friendly gesture,
lifting up her right hand. Charmian returned it, and set her teeth.
"What does it matter? I don't care!"
The act ended as it had begun in chaos. In the finale something went all
wrong in the orchestra, and the whole thing had to be stopped. Miss
Mardon was furious. There was an altercation.
"This," said Charmian to herself, "is my idea of Hell."
She felt that she was being punished for every sin, however tiny, that
she had ever committed. She longed to creep away and hide. She thought
of all she had done to bring about the opera, of the flight from
England, of the life at Djenan-el-Maqui, of the grand hopes that had
lived in the little white house above the sea.
"Start it again, I tell you!" roared Crayford. "We can't stand here all
night to hear you talking!"
"Yes," a voice within Charmian said, "this is Hell!"
She bent her head. She felt like one sinking down.
When the act was over she went out at once. She was afraid of Mrs.
Shiffney.
The smiling colored man took her up in the elevator to a room where she
found Claude in his shirt sleeves, with a cup of black coffee beside
him, working at the score. He looked up.
"Charmian! I've just finished all I can do to-night. What's the time?"
"Nearly two."
"Did the third act go well?"
She looked at his white face and burning eyes.
"Yes," she said.
"Sit down. You look tired."
He went on working.
Just as two o'clock struck he finished, and got up from the table over
which he had been leaning for hours.
"Come along! Let's go down. Oh!"
He stopped, and drank the black coffee.
"By the way," he said, "won't you have some?"
"Yes," she said eagerly.
He rang and ordered some for her. While they were waiting for it she
said:
"What an experience this is!"
"Yes."
"How quietly you take it!"
"We're in for it. It would be no use to lose one's head."
"No, of course! But--oh, what a fight it is. I can scarcely believe that
in a few days it must be over, that we shall _know_!"
"Here's the coffee. Drink it up."
She drank it. They went down in the lift. As they parted--for Claude had
to go to Meroni--Charmian said:
"Adelaide Shiffney's still here."
"If she stays to the end we must find out what she thinks."
"Or--shall we leave it? After all--"
"No, no! I wish to hear her opinion."
There was a hard dry sound in his voice.
"Very well."
Claude disappeared.
The black coffee which Charmian had drunk excited her. But it helped
her. As she went back into the theater for the fourth and last act she
felt suddenly stronger, more hopeful. She was able to say to herself,
"This is only a rehearsal. Rehearsals always go badly. If they don't
actors and singers think it a bad sign. Of course the opera cannot sound
really well when they keep stopping." Another thing helped her now. She
was joined by Alston Lake who was not on in the last act. He took her to
a box and they ensconced themselves in it together. Then he produced
from the capacious pockets of his overcoat a box of delicious sandwiches
and a small bottle of white wine. The curtain was still down. They had
time for a gay little supper.
How Charmian enjoyed it and Alston's optimism! The world changed. She
saw everything in another light. She ate, drank, talked, laughed. Mrs.
Shiffney and Ramer had vanished from the stalls, but Alston said they
were still in the theater. They were having supper, too, in one of the
lobbies. Crayford had just gone to see them.
"And is he satisfied?"
"Oh, yes. He says it's coming out all right."
"But it can't be ready by the date he's fixed for the first night!"
"Yes, it can. It's got to be."
"Well, I don't see how it can be."
"It will be. Crayford has said so. And that settles it."
"What an extraordinary man he is!"
"He's a great man!"
"Alston!"
"Yes, Mrs. Charmian?"
"He wouldn't make a great mistake, would he?"
"A mistake!"
"I mean a huge mistake."
"Not he! There goes the curtain at last."
"And there's Adelaide Shiffney coming in again. She is going to stay to
the end. If only this act goes well!"
She shut her eyes for a minute and found herself praying. The coffee,
the little supper had revived her. She felt renewed. All fatigue had
left her. She was alert, intent, excited, far more self-possessed than
she had been at any other period of the night. And she felt strongly
responsive. The power of Gillier's libretto culminated in the last act,
which was short, fierce, concentrated, and highly dramatic. In it Enid
Mardon had a big acting chance. She and Gillier had become great allies,
on account of her admiration of his libretto. Gillier, who had been
with her many times during the night, now slipped into the front row of
the stalls to watch his divinity.
"There's Gillier!" whispered Charmian. "He's mad about Miss Mardon."
"She's a great artist."
"I know. But, oh, how I hate her!"
"Why?"
But Charmian would not tell him. And now they gave themselves to the
last act.
It went splendidly, without a hitch. After the misery of the third act
this successful conclusion was the more surprising. It swept away all
Charmian's doubts. She frankly exulted. It even seemed to her that never
at any time had she felt any doubts about the fate of the opera. From
the first its triumph had been a foregone conclusion. From the abysses
she floated up to the peaks and far above them.
"Oh, Alston, it's too wonderful!" she exclaimed. "If only there were
someone to applaud!"
"There'll be a crowd in a few days."
"How glorious! How I long to see them, the dear thousands shouting for
Claude. I must go to Adelaide Shiffney. I must catch her before she
goes. There can't be two opinions. An act like that is irresistible.
Oh!"
She almost rushed out of the box.
In the stalls she came upon Mrs. Shiffney and Jonson Ramer who were
standing up ready to go. A noise of departure came up from the hidden
orchestra. Voices were shouting behind the scenes. In a moment the
atmosphere of the vast theater seemed to have entirely changed. Night
and the deadness of slumber seemed falling softly, yet heavily, about
it. The musicians were putting their instruments into cases and bags. A
black cat stole furtively unseen along a row of stalls, heading away
from Charmian.
"So you actually stayed to the end!" Charmian said.
Her eyes were fastened on Mrs. Shiffney.
"Oh, yes. We couldn't tear ourselves away, could we, Mr. Ramer?"
"No, indeed!"
"The last act is the best of all," Mrs. Shiffney said.
"Yes, isn't it?" said Charmian.
There was a slight pause. Then Ramer said:
"I must really congratulate you, Mrs. Heath. I don't know your husband
unfortunately, but--"
"Here he is!" said Charmian.
At this moment Claude came toward them, holding himself, she thought,
unusually upright, almost like a man who has been put through too much
drill. With a determined manner, and smiling, he came up to them.
"I feel almost ashamed to have kept you here to this hour," he said to
Mrs. Shiffney. "But really for a rehearsal it didn't go so badly, did
it?"
"Wonderfully well we thought. Mr. Ramer wants to congratulate you."
She introduced the two men to one another.
"Yes, indeed!" said Ramer. "It's a most interesting work--most
interesting." He laid a heavy emphasis on the repeated words, and
glanced sideways at Mrs. Shiffney, whose lips were fixed in a smile.
"And how admirably put on!"
He ran on for several minutes with great self-possession.
"Miss Mardon is quite wonderful!" said Mrs. Shiffney, when he stopped.
And she talked rapidly for some minutes, touching on various points in
the opera with a great deal of deftness.
"As to Alston Lake, he quite astonished us!" she said presently. "He is
going to be a huge success."
She discussed the singers, showing her usual half-slipshod
discrimination, dropping here and there criticisms full of acuteness.
"Altogether," she concluded, "it has been a most interesting and unusual
evening. Ah, there is Monsieur Gillier!"
Gillier came up and received congratulations. His expression was very
strange. It seemed to combine something that was morose with a sort of
exultation. Once he shot a half savage glance at Claude. He raved about
Enid Mardon.
"We are going round to see her!" Mrs. Shiffney said. "Come, Mr. Ramer!"
Quickly she wished Charmian and Claude good-night.
"All my congratulations!" she said. "And a thousand wishes for a triumph
on the first night. By the way, will it really be on the twenty-eighth,
do you think?"
"I believe so," said Claude.
"Can it be ready?"
"We mean to try."
"Ah, you are workers! And Mr. Crayford's a wonder. Good-night, dear
Charmian! What a night for you!"
She buttoned her sable coat at the neck and went away with Ramer and
Armand Gillier.
As she turned to the right in the corridor she murmured to Gillier:
"Why didn't you give it to Jacques? Oh, the pity of it!"
Claude and Charmian said scarcely anything as they drove to their hotel.
Charmian lay back in the taxi-cab with shut eyes, her temples throbbing.
But when they were in their sitting-room she came close to her husband,
and said:
"Claude, I want to ask you something."
"What is it?"
"Have you had a quarrel with Adelaide Shiffney?"
Claude hesitated.
"A quarrel?"
"Yes. Have you given her any reason--just lately--to dislike you
personally, to hate you perhaps?"
"What should make you think so?"
"Please answer me!" Her voice had grown sharp.
"Perhaps I have. But please don't ask me anything more, Charmian. If you
do, I cannot answer you."
"Now I understand!" she exclaimed, almost passionately.
"What?"
"Why she turned down her thumb at the opera."
"But--"
"Claude, she did, she did! You know she did! There was not one real word
for you from either her or Mr. Ramer, not one! We've had her verdict.
But what is it worth? Nothing! Less than nothing! You've told me why.
All her cleverness, all her discrimination has failed her, just
because--oh, we women are contemptible sometimes! It's no use our
pretending we aren't. Claude, I'm glad--I'm thankful you've made her
hate you. And I know how!"
"Hush! Don't let us talk about it."
"Poor Adelaide! How mad she will be on the twenty-eighth when she hears
how the public take it!"
Claude only said:
"If we are ready."