YESTERDAY was the concert day and I couldn’t go--a bad cold. The house
lamented from all its floors, for it was going en masse, even the
trained nurse with a usurped right to the sun-dial.
The only way I could add to the festivity of the occasion was to
distribute my possessions among that section of the audience drawn
from Mrs. Bushey’s light housekeeping apartments. It began with the
Signorita Bonaventura, who wore my mother’s diamond pendant, then
went down the line:-- Miss Gorringe my green satin (she said it
would be horribly unbecoming, but the audience wouldn’t notice her),
Miss Bliss my black lynx furs, Mrs. Phillips, the nurse, my evening
cloak, Mr. Hazard my opera glasses, Mr. Weatherby my umbrella--his
had a broken rib and it looked like snow. We were afraid the count
couldn’t find anything suitable to his age and sex, but he emptied my
bottle of Coty’s Jacqueminot on his handkerchief and left, scented
like a florist’s. Mrs. Bushey came last and gleaned the field, a
gold bracelet, a marabou stole and a lace handkerchief she swore she
wouldn’t use.
Much noise accompanied the passage of the day and some threatening
mishaps. At eleven we heard Berwick was hoarse, but at one (by
telephone through my room) that raw eggs and massage were restoring
him. At midday Miss Gorringe sent a frantic message that the sash of
the green satin wasn’t in the box. Gloom settled at two with a bulletin
that Mrs. Stregazzi’s second child had croup. It was better at five.
Mr. Hazard’s dress suit smelled so of moth balls that the prima donna
said it would taint the air, and Emma, the maid, hung it out on the
sacred sun-dial. There was a battle over this. For fifteen minutes
it raged up two flights of stairs, then Mr. Hazard conquered and the
sun-dial was draped in black broadcloth.
At intervals Lizzie came down to see me and use the telephone. She
was in her most aloof mood, forbidding, self-absorbed. On one of her
appearances she found a group of us congregated about my steam kettle.
Our chatter died away before her rapt and unresponsive eye. Even I, who
was used to it, felt myself fading like a photographic proof in a too
brilliant sun. As for the others they looked small and frightened,
like mice in the presence of a well-fed lioness, who, though she might
not want to eat them, was still a lioness. They breathed deep and
unlimbered when the door shut on her.
In the late afternoon Roger came to see me. He brought a bunch of
violets and a breath of winter into my bright little room. The
threatening snow had begun to fall, lodging delicately on eaves and
ledges, a scurry of tiny particles against the light of street-lamps.
We stood in the window and watched it, trimming the house-fronts with
white, carpeting the steps, spreading a blanket ever so softly and
deftly over the tin roof. How different to the rain, the insistent
ruthless rain. The night when the rain fell came back to me. How
different that was from to-night!
There was a hubbub of voices from the hall and then a knock. They
were coming to see me before they left. They entered, streaming in,
grubs turned to butterflies. The house was going cheaply in cars over
the bridge; only the prima donna and Miss Gorringe were to travel
aristocratically in a cab.
Strong scents from the count’s Jacqueminot mingled with the faint
odor of moth balls that Mr. Hazard’s dress suit still harbored. Miss
Gorringe had rouged a little and the green satin was quite becoming.
Miss Bliss had rouged a good deal and had had her hair marcelled. In
the doorway the trained nurse hung back, sniffing contemptuously at
Mr. Hazard’s back. Mrs. Bushey, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Weatherby grouped
themselves by the fireplace.
“Where’s the prima donna?” I asked.
“Coming,” cried a voice from the stairs, and the air was filled with
silken rustlings.
It was like an entrance on the stage, up the passage and between the
watching people, and I don’t think any actress could have done it with
more aplomb. In her evening dress she was truly superb--a goddess
of a woman with her black hair in lusterless coils and her neck and
shoulders as white as curds. Upon that satiny bosom my mother’s pendant
rose and fell to even breathings. Whatever anybody else may have felt,
the star of the occasion was calm and confident.
Her appearance had so much of the theatrical that it must have made
us suddenly see her as the professional, the legitimate object of
glances and comments. Nothing else could explain why I--a person of
restrained enthusiasms--should have broken into bald compliments. She
took them with no more self-consciousness than a performing animal
takes the gallery’s applause, smiled slightly, then looked at Roger,
the stranger. I did so, too, childishly anxious to see if he admired my
protégée. He evidently did, for he was staring with the rest of them,
intent, astonished.
Her glance appeared to gather up his tribute as her hands might have
gathered flowers thrown to her. He was one of the watching thousands
that it was her business to enthrall, his face one of the countless
faces that were to gaze up at her from tier upon tier of seats.
When the door shut on the last of them, laughter and good nights
diminishing down the stairs, he turned to me with an air that was at
once bewildered and accusing.
“Why in heaven’s name didn’t you tell me she was so good-looking?”
“I did and you wouldn’t believe me,” I answered gaily, for I was
greatly pleased. It was a little triumph over Roger with his
hypercritical taste and his rare approvals.
The next morning I waited anxiously for news. I thought Lizzie would
be down early, but the others came before her, dropping in as the
morning wore away. With each entrance I grew more uneasy.
Mr. Hazard was first, in a gray sweater.
“Well, she looked great. I wish I could have painted her that way.
But--” he tilted his head, his expression grown dubious. “You know,
Mrs. Drake, I don’t know one tune from another--but--”
“But what?” I said sharply.
“Well, it seemed to me Berwick got away with it.”
“Do you mean the audience liked him better?”
He nodded, a grave agreeing eye on me.
“He got them when he sang that thing about _The Three Grenadiers_. It
made your heart swell up.”
He leaned nearer, lowering his voice. “And he got them in that German
duet, too.”
He drew back and nodded again darkly, as if wishing me to catch a
meaning too direful for words.
An hour later Miss Bliss blew in in a blue flannel jacket and the
remnants of her marcelle wave. By contrast with her flushed and
blooming appearance of the evening before, she looked pinched and
pallid. She cowered over the fire, stretching her little chapped hands
to the blaze and presenting a narrow humped back to my gaze.
“She didn’t seem to catch on some way or other. I don’t know why but--”
She stopped and leaned forward for the poker.
“But what?”
“Well--” She poked the fire, the edge of the flannel jacket hitched
up by the movement, showing a section of corset laced with the golden
string that confines candy boxes. “She doesn’t give you any thrill.
I’ve heard people without half so much voice who could make the tears
come into your eyes. I tell you what, Mrs. Drake,” she turned round
with the poker uplifted in emphasis, “_I_ wouldn’t spend _my_ good
money to hear a woman sing that way. If I shell out one-fifty I want to
get a thrill.”
She was still there when the count came in. He sat between us gently
rocking and eying her with a pensive stare. She pulled down her jacket
and patted solicitously at the remains of her marcelle.
“She looked,” said the count, pausing in his rocking, “she looked like
a queen.”
“Good gracious,” I cried crossly, “_do_ drop her looks. I saw her.”
The count, unmoved by my irritation, answered mildly:
“One can’t drop them so easily.”
“But her singing, her performance?”
“Her performance,” murmured the young man, and appeared to look through
Miss Bliss at a distant prospect. “It was good, but--”