It was still daylight as carriage after carriage drew up before the
colonnade of the opera house. Although the beauty of this evening in
May had called every one forth to enjoy the fresh air, the house was
sold out. Diana had not thought of such a possibility, and was
aggrieved, wellnigh humiliated, when she found herself unable to get
in, and saw other women mounting the red carpeted stairway which she
felt she should be treading in their stead. They were foes, making
no effort to conceal their triumph! The sound of the call-bell
irritated her; it seemed to go on interminably, summoning the
audience to hurry. She gazed with longing eyes at the press of
people entering the vestibule; then, slowly, she walked down the wide
steps.
Home? The word sent a chill through her. She could not face going
back defeated, to the little room which for two weeks now had served
her as sleeping place.
She had spent every evening of the fortnight in solitude. It was her
wont during such periods of vital change deliberately to impose
seclusion upon herself. She had written to none of her friends, for
she was saturated with a fatalistic sentiment of adventure which made
her await developments. At night she would go for a walk along the
water's edge; Sunday would be devoted to revisiting old favourites in
the museums, old yet ever fresh as endowed with eternal youth; or,
silently she would pursue her way along the streets, looking at new
buildings. Then, again, the big shops and cafes would attract her
critical eye, and she would study the present-day fashions and
tastes. Such were her recreations. Her work in Scherer's office
absorbed all her intellectual energies; and ambition, which ever
acted as a spur to this woman, goaded her on to give of her best.
Tonight, however, _Carmen_ was to be played, and this was an opera
which Diana could never bear to miss.
"Shut out! Here am I, not able to hear; and yet I belong to this
tragedy far more vitally than do all those women who have only come
to listen to the new singer. Shall I go for a drive? It would cost
too much; besides it's too late, and my dress is all wrong!"
An open car drove up. A tall man in evening dress stepped out,
flinging a black evening cloak over his arm. Diana was struck
pleasantly by the gesture. She was likewise delighted with the look
of the taxi, and moved forward to engage it. Suddenly she stopped,
drew back a pace or two, and turned pale from mingled alarm and joy.
"Sidney!"
"Diana!"
The exclamations rang out almost simultaneously as brother and sister
recognized one another. In three strides the young man was at her
side, feeling rather embarrassed, and as if caught in the act of
doing something he should not. He himself was at a loss to account
for the feeling. He bent over her gloved hand, and asked with a
smile:
"Are you startled?"
Yes, this was actually her brother. Those were his long, finely
chiselled features, his slim, delicately moulded limbs, his fair,
curly hair, which refused to submit to the discipline of a
parting--much to the chagrin of this fashionably dressed young
gentleman. How alike the two were! His skin, however, contrasted
with hers in that it was of the tint of ivory, whereas hers was a
golden brown. Her body too, as any one with an eye could guess in
spite of her cloak and her gown, differed greatly from that of the
frail, effeminate youth. If she displayed the physical vigour of a
Tobias, he, on the contrary, was cut in the softer lines of the
youthful Sebastian. For the moment, however, he was nothing but a
slender young gentleman in evening dress.
Diana's face melted into an almost childlike laugh. She looked like
a girl of seventeen. After years of being with persons of her own
choice, she suddenly found herself in the company of one to whom she
belonged through ties of kinship. Her proud nature was enchanted at
the thought of being dependent for a moment upon this callow boy of
nineteen whose senior she was by six years and upon whom she had
always looked as a kind of son.
With the adaptability of lively natures, they soon recovered from
their first surprise at the unexpected encounter, and, overcoming the
innate reserve peculiar to them both, they asked one another a few
pointed questions:
"Have you been here long?"
"A short while," was her answer.
"You wrote from Rome..."
"Did I?"
"Yes, a card with a pine tree on it and the words 'Via Appia'
beneath."
"Where is Father?"
"In London, I fancy. I have not seen him since March."
"And you?"
"Oh, I," he paused for a moment, nonplussed. Then: "I'm going to the
opera."
"There are no more tickets!"
"I've got a box."
"So well off?"
"I don't know. Did you think of going?"
"Are you alone?"
"Y--yes," he answered with some hesitancy.
"Andiamo," cried she, slipping her hand lightly through his arm. As
they gaily ascended the steps she had recently come down in so
disappointed a mood, she thought: "I've a brother. He's
good-looking. He drove up in a taxi, through this town, on this
evening, to the very opera I want to hear.... Life, O Life!"
The lights had been lowered. As Diana let fall her cloak, the
orchestra struck up the first barbaric strains of the prelude. The
sounds surged over her, submerging her. In two seconds she had
completely forgotten her companion.
Sidney was deaf to the music. Withdrawn into a corner of the box, he
sat obliquely behind Diana and contemplated her with an expression
mature beyond his age. He had not seen her for three years. She had
left London for Paris, in the middle of winter, and had disappeared.
Had those been quiet days, he asked himself with the inner
perturbation of a youth whose childhood had been an agitated one.
She had been working in the British Museum Reading Room; every
morning she had gone there, to a seat immediately on the left as you
entered, beneath the huge glass dome. When he came to fetch her, she
would take him to the galleries where the classical marbles were.
Father would have tea with them at the little boarding-house, they'd
chat together, the old man would pay the weekly bill and would give
them some pocket money. Diana used to go out in the evening; he
rarely knew who her companion was on these occasions.... She had no
women friends, nor, indeed, had she ever had any. What could she be
doing here? Was she having a good time? How lovely she looked in
her green-and-white crêpe de chine dress! Mentally, he estimated its
cost. Her arms are sunburned, she must have spent a long time in the
country. He paused in his meditation, and blinked his eyes in the
darkness. "All alone, without a ticket, at the opera.... And she is
wearing a white camellia. Could this be a shield against love's
attacks? In that case she must just have emerged from a passionate
episode! Yes, that's what it is; and now she's in one of her ascetic
periods. I could wager she was not on the look-out for any one. A
romantic love affair ... somewhere away in the country.... Fairly
long ... probably in the south ... the camellia for remembrance..."
The curtain went up on the chorus of young folk in the wide square of
Seville. Diana, recovering from her absorption in the music and the
darkness, turned her head towards her companion; her movement was
deliberate, as if she hoped it would give her once again the
pleasurable surprise of a few minutes ago. She liked him immensely,
and touched his foot softly with the point of her slipper:
"Sidney! How tall you have grown! Ti amo!"
He whispered back:
"Diana, I'm ever so proud of you. Why shouldn't I... Why can't you
be my sweetheart?"
"You're not old enough!"
Carmen's motif was being played; Carmen herself appeared. Diana's
eyes dilated, she raised her brows so high that her forehead was
wrinkled while with her right hand she seized the edge of the box as
if to steady herself. Always when Carmen's voice fell on her ear,
when the tragically bold glance shot across the footlights, Diana
felt a premonitory flutter at her heart, a prophetic warning of
something still far away, hidden in the night of the future. When,
however, Carmen made her advances and withdrew again, when at one
moment she was unrestrained and at another reserved, when she flung
her sweet, mad song at the officer's head, and with an almost sexual
bravado made as if to draw the young man into her arms, Diana relaxed
her hold, sank back on her chair, and drew her wrap about her
shoulders. She seemed to be the prey of a mood which her brother
could not fathom.
The lights went up, and Diana hardly had time to pull herself
together before the door of the box was thrown open and an officer
came in. He brought his heels smartly together on the threshold, and
then advanced to kiss Diana's hand. Diana sat quietly for a moment
recovering from her surprise.
"You, Major!" she said at last.
"My presence here is far less surprising than yours, for I'm an
habitué of the opera and have searched its seats in vain for a sight
of you for three years now."
"My brother," said Diana who had been quick to observe her visitor's
uneasy glance towards the corner where Sidney had ensconced himself.
"Oh, I beg your pardon.... Had I not the pleasure once...?" The
words fell heavily like great drops of rain before a storm. Indeed,
one could almost fancy that the growl of thunder was already in the
air. "At that time I did not know," the officer continued
cautiously, for he hardly believed in the kinship between the two,
"that this lady was your sister...."
"I, too, had no idea that you had already met a member of my family,"
interposed the young man with subtle irony.
Diana thought:
"Our two terriers, Jack and Jill, used to snarl at one another in
exactly the same way over their feeding bowl in the old days in
London!"