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 knew anticipation
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 critic in 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
not _she_ stretching 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 going to 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 audience on 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
Charmian made 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 premiere."
"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 of _Le 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 handkerchief to 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 of the 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 of _Le 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 the people 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 was full 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 of _Le 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.