Jacob Crayford was not the man to be beaten when he had set his heart
on, put his hand to, any enterprise. On the day he had fixed upon for
the production of Claude's opera the opera was ready to be produced. At
the cost of heroic exertions the rough places had been made plain, every
stage "effect" had been put right, all the "cuts" declared by Crayford
to be essential had been made by Claude, the orchestra had mastered its
work, the singers were "at home" in their parts. How it had all been
accomplished in the short time Charmian did not understand. It seemed to
her almost as if she had assisted at the accomplishment of the
incredible, as if she had seen a miracle happen. She was obliged to
believe in it after the final rehearsal, which was, so Crayford, Mr.
Mulworth, Meroni, and it was even rumored Jimber declared, the most
perfect rehearsal they had ever been present at.
"Exactly three hours and a half!" Crayford had remarked when the curtain
came down on the fourth act. "So we come ahead of the Metropolitan. I've
just heard they've had a set back with Sennier's opera; can't produce
for nearly a week after the date they'd settled. We needn't have been in
such a devil of a hurry after all. But we've got the laugh on them now.
Sennier's first opera was a white man. No doubt about that. But the
hoodoo seems out against this one. I tell you"--he had swung round to
Claude, who had just come upon the stage--"I'd rather have this opera of
yours than Sennier's, although he's known all over creation and you're
nothing but a boom-boy up to now. I used to believe in names, but upon
my word seems to me the public's changing. Give 'em the goods and they
don't care where they come from."
His eyes twinkled as he added, clapping Claude on the shoulder:
"All very well for you now, my boy! But you'll wish it was the other
way, p'raps, when you come round to the stage door with your next opera
on offer!"
He was in grand spirits. He had "licked" the Metropolitan to a "frazzle"
over the date of production, and he was going to "lick them to a
frazzle" with the production. Every reserved seat in the house was sold
for Claude's first night. Crayford stepped on air.
In the afternoon of the day of production, when Charmian and Claude,
shut up in their apartment at the St. Regis, and denied to all visitors,
were trying to rest, and were pretending to be quite calm, a note was
brought in from Mrs. Shiffney. It was addressed to Charmian, and
contained a folded slip of green paper, which fell to the ground as she
opened the note. Claude picked it up.
"What is it?" said Charmian.
"A box ticket for the Metropolitan. It must be for Sennier's first
night, I suppose."
"It is!" said Charmian, who had looked at the note.
In a moment she gave it to Claude without comment.
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
debut. 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 at the 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 e piu perfetta, piu senta il bene, e cosi 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.