PAIN
Summer had come and gone, and Diana, after a brief visit to Crailing,
had returned to town for the winter season.
The Crailing visit had not been altogether without its embarrassments.
It was true that Red Gables was closed and shuttered, so that she had
run no risk of meeting either her husband or Adrienne, but Jerry, in
the character of an engaged young man, had been staying at the Rectory,
and he had allowed Diana to see plainly that his sympathies lay
pre-eminently with Max, and that he utterly condemned her lack of faith
in her husband.
"Some day, Diana, you'll be sorry that you chucked one of the best
chaps in the world," he told her, with a fierce young championship that
was rather touching, warring, as it did, with his honest affection for
Diana herself. "Oh! It makes me sick! You two ought to have had such
a splendid life together."
Rather wistfully, Diana asked the Rector if he, too, blamed her
entirely for what had occurred. But Alan Stair's wide charity held no
room for censure.
"My dear," he told her, "I don't think I want to _blame_ either you or
Max. The situation was difficult, and you weren't quite strong enough
to cope with it. That's all. But"--with one of his rare smiles that
flashed out like sunshine after rain--"you haven't reached the end of
the chapter yet."
Diana shook her head.
"I think we have, Pobs. I, for one, shall never reopen the pages. My
musical work is going to fill my life in future."
Stair's eyes twinkled with a quiet humour.
"Sponge cake is filling, my dear, very," he responded. "But it's not
satisfying--like bread."
Since Diana had left her husband, fate had so willed it that they had
never chanced to meet. She had appeared very little in society,
excusing herself on the plea that her professional engagements demanded
all her energies. And certainly, since the immediate and overwhelming
success which she had achieved at Covent Garden, her operatic work had
made immense demands both upon her time and physical strength.
But, with the advent of autumn, the probabilities of a meeting between
husband and wife were increased a hundredfold, since Diana's
engagements included a considerable number of private receptions in
addition to her concert work, and she never sang at a big society crush
without an inward apprehension that she might encounter Max amongst the
guests.
She shrank from meeting him again as a wounded man shrinks from an
accidental touch upon his hurt. It had been easy enough, in the first
intolerant passion which had overwhelmed her, to contemplate life apart
from him. Indeed, to leave him had seemed the only obvious course to
save her from the daily flagellation of her love, the hourly insult to
her dignity, that his relations with Adrienne de Gervais and the whole
mystery which hung about his actions had engendered.
But when once the cord had been cut, and life in its actuality had to
be faced apart from him, Diana found that love, hurt and buffeted
though it may be, still remains love, a thing of flame and fire, its
very essence a desire for the loved one's presence.
Every fibre of her being cried aloud for Max, and there were times when
the longing for the warm, human touch of his hand, for the sound of his
voice, grew almost unbearable. Yet any meeting between them could be
but a barren reminder of the past, revitalising the dull ache of
longing into a quick and overmastering agony, and, realising this,
Diana recoiled from the possibility with a fear almost bordering upon
panic.
She achieved a certain feeling of security in the fact that she had
made her home with Baroni and his sister. Signora Evanci mothered her
and petted her and fussed over her, much as she did over Baroni
himself, and the old _maestro_, aware of the tangle of Diana's
matrimonial affairs, and ambitious for her artistic future, was likely
to do his utmost to avert a meeting between husband and wife--since
emotional crises are apt to impair the voice.
From Baroni's point of view, the happenings of life were chiefly of
importance in so far as they tended towards the perfecting of the
artiste.
"Love is good," he had said on one occasion. "No one can interpret
romantic music who has not loved. And a broken heart in the past, and
plenty of good food in the present--these may very well make a great
artiste. But a heart that _keeps on_ breaking, that is not permitted
to heal itself--no, that is not good. _A la fin_, the voice breaks
also."
Hence he regarded his favourite pupil with considerable anxiety. To
his experienced eye it was palpable that the happenings of her married
life had tried Diana's strength almost to breaking point, and that the
enthusiasm and energy with which, seeking an anodyne to pain, she had
flung herself into her work, would act either one way or the
other--would either finish the job, so that the frayed nerves gave way,
culminating in a serious breakdown of her health, or so fill her
horizon that the memories of the past gradually receded into
insignificance.
The cup of fame, newly held to her lips, could not but prove an
intoxicating draught. There was a rushing excitement, an exhilaration
about her life as a well-known public singer, which acted as a constant
stimulus. The enthusiastic acclamations with which she was everywhere
received, the adulation that invariably surrounded her, and the intense
joy which, as a genuine artist, she derived from the work itself, all
acted as a narcotic to the pain of memory, and out of these she tried
to build up a new life for herself, a life in which love should have
neither part nor lot, but wherein added fame and recognition was to be
the ultimate goal.
Her singing had improved; there was a new depth of feeling in her
interpretation which her own pain and suffering had taught her, and it
was no infrequent thing for part of her audience to be moved to tears,
wistfully reminded of some long-dead romance, when she sang "The Haven
of Memory"--a song which came to be associated with her name much in
the same way that "Home, Sweet Home" was associated with another great
singer, whose golden voice gave new meaning to the familiar words.
Olga Lermontof still remained her accompanist. For some unfathomed
reason she no longer flung out the bitter gibes and thrusts at
Errington which had formerly sprung so readily to her lips, and Diana
grimly ascribed this forbearance to an odd kind of delicacy--the
generosity of the victor who refuses to triumph openly over the
vanquished!
Once, in a bitter mood, Diana had taxed her with it.
"You must feel satisfied now that you have achieved your object," she
told her.
The Russian, idly improvising on the piano, dropped her hands from the
keys, and her eyes held a queer kind of pain in them as she made answer.
"And what exactly did you think my object was?" she queried.
"Surely it was obvious?" replied Diana lightly. "When Max and I were
together, you never ceased to sow discord between us--though why you
hated him so, I cannot tell--and now that we have separated, I suppose
you are content."
"Content?" Olga laughed shortly. "I never wanted you to separate.
And"--she hesitated--"I never hated Max Errington."
"I don't believe it!" The assertion leaped involuntarily from Diana's
lips.
"I can understand that," Olga spoke with a curious kind of patience.
"But, believe it or not as you will, I was working for quite other
ends. And I've failed," she added dispiritedly.
With the opening of the autumn season and the ensuing rebirth of
musical and theatrical life, London received an unexpected shock. It
was announced that Adrienne de Gervais was retiring from her position
as leading lady at the Premier Theatre, and for a few days after the
launching of this thunderbolt the theatre-going world hummed with the
startling news, while a dozen rumours were set on foot to account for
what must surely prove little less than a disaster to the management of
the Premier.
But, as usual, after the first buzz of surprise and excitement had
spent itself, people settled down, and reluctantly accepted the
official explanation furnished by the newspapers--namely, that the
popular actress had suffered considerably in health from the strain of
several successive heavy seasons and intended to winter abroad.
To Diana the news yielded an odd sense of comfort. Somehow the thought
of Adrienne's absence from England seemed to bring Max nearer, to make
him more her own again. Even though they were separated, there was a
certain consolation in the knowledge that the woman whose close
friendship with her husband had helped to make shipwreck of their
happiness was going out of his life, though it might be only for a
little time.
One day, impelled by an irresistible desire to test the truth of the
newspaper reports, Diana took her way to Somervell Street, pausing
opposite the house that had been Adrienne's. She found it invested
with a curious air of unfamiliarity, facing the street with blank and
shuttered windows, like blind eyes staring back at her unrecognisingly.
So it was true! Adrienne had gone away and the house was empty and
closed.
Diana retraced her steps homeward, conscious of a queer feeling of
satisfaction. Often the thought that Max and Adrienne might be
together had tortured her almost beyond endurance, adding a keener edge
to the pain of separation.
Pain! Life seemed made up of pain these days. Sometimes she wondered
how much a single human being was capable of bearing.
It was months--an eternity--since she and Max had parted, and still her
heart cried out for him, fighting the bitter anger and distrust that
had driven her from him.
She felt she could have borne it more easily had he died. Then the
remembrance of his love would still have been hers to hold and keep,
something most precious and unspoilt. But now, each memory of their
life together was tarnished with doubt and suspicion and mistrust. She
had put him to the test, bade him choose betwixt her and Adrienne,
claiming his confidence as her right--and he had chosen Adrienne and
declined to trust her with his secret.
She told herself that had he loved her, he must have yielded. No man
who cared could have refused her, and the scourge of wounded pride
drove her into that outer darkness where bitterness and "proper
self-respect" defile the face of Love.
She had turned desperately to her work for distraction from the
ceaseless torture of her thoughts, but not all the work in the world
had been able to silence the cry of her heart.
For work can do no more than fill the day, and though Diana feverishly
crammed each day so full that there was little time to think and
remember, the nights remained--the interminable nights, when she was
alone with her own soul, and when the memories which the day's work had
beaten back came pressing in upon her.
Oh, God! The nights--the endless, intolerable nights! . . .