THIS has been a day of coincidences. They began in the afternoon and
ended an hour ago. And now, past midnight, in my sitting-room looking
out on the lights of the Rond Point, like Bret Harte’s heroine, “I am
sitting alone by the fire, dressed just as I came from the dance”--only
it wasn’t a dance, it was the opera.
But to get to the coincidences: This afternoon I was unpacking an old
trunk full of odds and ends that I brought when we came to Paris last
autumn, and at the bottom of it I found the manuscript I had written
four years ago at Mrs. Bushey’s. I laid it on the top to read over in
some idle moment when Roger wouldn’t catch me. For though we’ve been
married three years and talked over everything that ever happened to
either of us, Roger doesn’t know the whole story of that winter.
Of course I _have_ asked him if he wasn’t really in love with Lizzie,
and he always laughs and says he wasn’t, that he was attracted by her
and interested in her as a type. I don’t contradict him--it’s best to
let men rest peacefully in their innocent self-delusions. Besides, if I
pressed the subject we might have to go on to Lizzie and Masters, and
that’s the part of the story he doesn’t know. Sometimes I’ve thought
I’d tell him and then I’ve always stopped. Why should I? It’s all come
out right. Lizzie has traveled along the line of least resistance in
one direction and reached success, and Roger has done the same thing
in another and reached me. She _must_ be happy if fulfilled ambitions
can do it, and we _are_, with each other and last year--to crown it
all--our boy.
Well, I won’t go into that--I get too garrulous. When a woman of
thirty-six has a baby she never gets over the pride and wonder of it.
We came over to Paris last autumn for Roger to do some reading in the
Bibliothèque Nationale, and took this charming apartment near the Rond
Point. On bright mornings I can look into the little park and see Roger
Clements IX sitting out there in his perambulator studying Parisian
life. The day suddenly strikes me as unusually fine and I go out and
sit on the bench beside him and we study Parisian life together, while
his _nou-nou_ knits on a camp-chair near by.
Bother--I keep losing sight of the coincidences which are the only
reason I began to write this. To resume:
During these four years we have tried to keep track of Lizzie. It was
difficult because, of course, after the first few months, she stopped
writing. If it hadn’t been for Betty we should have lost her entirely,
but Betty, being the source of supplies, did know, at least, her
whereabouts. I may add, en passant, that Mrs. Ferguson stood by her
contract to the end and now is enjoying the fruits thereof. If she
isn’t known as the patron of the greatest living prima donna, she is
known as a lady who made a career possible to one of the rising singers
of Europe.
It was two years before Liza Bonaventura made her first hit, as
Elizabeth in _Tannhäuser_ at Dresden. Then we could follow her course
in the papers. I was as proud as if I’d done it myself when I read of
the excitement her Tosca created in Berlin. After that there was a
series of triumphs in the smaller cities of Germany. She sang Carmen at
a special performance where the royal family of something or other (I
never can remember those German names, if I did I couldn’t spell them)
were present, and the kinglet or princeling of the palace gave her a
decoration.
After that the papers began to print stories about her, which is the
forerunner of fame. Some of them were very funny, but most of them
sounded true. I don’t think her press-agent had to do much inventing.
All sorts of distinguished and wonderful men were in love with her, but
she would have none of them. There were some anecdotes of her temper
that I am sure were genuine: how she once slapped a rival prima donna
in the face, and threw her slipper at the head of a German Serene
Highness who must have lost his serenity for the moment.
When we came over here we had first-hand accounts of her, from
Americans who had been traveling in Germany and were bursting with
pride and enthusiasm, and foreigners, who knew more and were more
temperate, but admitted that a new star had risen on the horizon. “The
handsomest woman on the operatic stage since Malibran,” an old French
marquis, who had heard her as Tosca, told me one night at dinner.
Then some Italians who had seen her Carmen were quite thrilled--such
temperament--such passion! Only Calve in her prime had given such a
dramatic portrayal of the fiery gipsy. Opinions were divided about
her Brunhilda. A man Roger and I met at the house of a French writer,
where we sometimes go, told us that in majesty and nobility she was
incomparable, but that her voice was inadequate. Still, she was young,
hardly in her full vigor, with care and study, aided by her magnificent
physique, she might yet rise to the vocal requirements and then--he
spread out his hands and rolled up his eyes.
To-night I have come from the opera after hearing her in _Carmen_ and
the effect is with me still--the difficulty of shaking off the illusion
and getting back into life.
When I looked round from my seat in the orchestra and saw that house,
tier upon tier of faces, hundreds of small pale ovals in ascending
ranks, all looking the same way, all waiting to hear Lizzie, I couldn’t
believe it. The great reverberating shell of building held them like
bees in a hive, buzzing as they found places whence they could see the
queen bee. Through my own quivering expectancy I could sense theirs,
quieter but keen, and hear, thrown back from the resonant walls and
hollow dome, the sounds of fluttered programs, rustling fabrics, seats
dropping and the fluctuant hum of voices--the exhilarating stir and
bustle of a great audience gradually settling into stillness. They
couldn’t have come to see Lizzie--so many people? I was dreaming, it
was somebody else.
The curtain lifted, the illuminated stage was set in the gloom like a
glowing picture. Figures moved across it, voices sang, and then Carmen
came with the red flower in her mouth and it _was_ Lizzie.
She was changed, matured, grown fuller and handsomer, much
handsomer--her beauty in full flower. Her voice, too, was immensely
improved; a fine voice, full, clear and large, not, as she had once
said to me, one of the world’s great voices, but enough for her,
sufficient for what she has to do with it. It is she, her personality,
her magnetic and compelling self, that is the potent thing.
Just as she used to seize upon and subdue us at Mrs. Bushey’s, she
seized upon and subdued those close-packed silent ranks. From the
brilliant picture, cutting the darkness in front of us, she reached
out, groped for and grasped at every consciousness, waiting to receive
its impression. The other singers lost their identity, faded into a
colorless middle distance, as we used to fade when Lizzie came among
us. She held the house, not so much charmed as subjugated, more as
the conqueror than the enchantress. As the opera progressed I, with my
intimate knowledge of her, could see her gaining force, could feel her
fierce exhilaration, as she realized her dominance was growing secure.
Her voice grew richer, her performance more boldly confident. To me
she reached her highest point in the scene over the cards, her face
stiffened to a tragic mask, the cry of “_La Mort_” imbued with horror.
I can’t get it out of my mind--the Gitana, terrible with her lust of
life, suddenly looking into the eyes of death.
I don’t know how to write about music, but it wasn’t all music. It was
the woman, the combination of her great endowment with her power of
vitalizing an illusion, of putting blood and fire into an imaginary
creation, that made it so remarkable. Her portrayal had not the vocal
beauty or sophisticated seduction of Calve’s. It was more primitive,
farther from the city and closer to the earth. It seemed to me more
Merimée’s Carmen than Bizet’s. Of its kind, I, anyway--and Roger agreed
with me--thought it superb.
When it ended and she came before the curtain there were bursts upon
bursts of applause and “bravas” dropping from the galleries. I dare
say I will never again see a dream so completely realized. Then the
house began to empty itself down that splendid stairway, a packed,
slow-moving, voluble crowd, praise, criticism, comment, flung back and
forth in the excited French fashion. I was silent, holding Roger’s arm.
A short fat Frenchman behind me puffed almost into my ear, “_Quelle
femme, mais, quelle femme!_” A woman in front in a Chinese opera
cloak, leaned back to say over her shoulder to a man squeezing past
Roger, “_La voix est bonne, mais n’est pas grande chose, mais c’est
une vraie artiste._” And an angular girl at my elbow, steering an old
lady through cracks in the mass, murmured ecstatically to herself,
“_Mon Dieu, quelle_ temperament!” That was the word I heard oftenest,
temperament.
So in a solid brilliant throng we descended the stairs, all engaged
with Lizzie, discussing her, lauding her, wondering at her--Lizzie,
whom I had seen in the making, learning to be the _vraie artiste_,
wounded, desperate and despairing that this might be.
At the stair-foot--this is the last of the coincidences--the crowd
broke into lines and clumps, scattering for the exits, and through
a break I saw a man standing by a pillar. He was looking up at the
descending people, but not as if he was interested in them, in fact
by the expression of his face I don’t think he saw them. It was John
Masters.
If he hadn’t been so absorbed he would have seen me for I was close to
him. But his eyes, set in that fixity of inner vision, never swerved.
He looked much older, more lined, his bald spot grown all over the top
of his head. Though the glimpse I had of him was fleeting, the crowd
closing on him almost directly, it was long enough for me to see that
the change was deeper than what the years might have wrought. It was
spiritual, diminished will power, self-reliance grown weak. Shabby,
thin, discouraged, he suggested just one word--failure.
My hand involuntarily shut on Roger’s arm and I whispered to him to
hurry. I could not bear the thought of meeting Masters--not for my sake
but for his. I couldn’t bear to look into his face and see him try to
smile.
It is nearly one. Roger is writing in his study and Roger Clements IX
is sleeping in his crib by my bed. How strange it all is. Four years
ago not one of us, except Lizzie, the impossible and irresponsible,
had the least idea that any of us would be where we are now. It was
Lizzie, fighting out her destiny, who crowded and elbowed us all into
our proper places, Lizzie, rapt in her vision, who brought us ours.
This is the real end of my manuscript. It _has_ got somewhere after
all. I can write “finis” with a sense of its being the fitting word.
But before I do I want to just say that I made up my mind to-night,
while we were driving home in the taxi, that I’ll never tell Roger now.