Part 20 (1/2)
”He wouldn't sit in a box. If he went at all, it would be in some obscure place where he would not be seen.”
”You had better send him a box, a stall and a dress circle, then he can take his choice.... But perhaps you had better not send. His presence among the audience would only make you nervous.”
”No, on the contrary, his presence would make me sing.”
For whatever reason she had certainly sung and acted with exceptional force and genius, and Margaret was at once lifted out of the obscurity into which it was slipping and took rank with her Elizabeth and her Elsa. As they drove home together in the brougham after the performance, Owen a.s.sured her that she had infused a life and meaning into the part, and that henceforth her reading would have to be ”adopted.”
”I wonder if father was there? He was not in the box. Did you look in the stalls?”
”Yes, but he was not there. You'll go and see him to-morrow.”
”No, not to-morrow, dear.”
”Why not to-morrow?”
”Because I want him to see the papers. He may not have been in the theatre; on Thursday night is Lady Ascott's ball; then on Friday--I'll go and see father on Friday. I'll try to summon courage. But there is a rehearsal of 'Tannhauser' on Friday.”
And so that she might not be too tired on Friday morning, Owen insisted on her leaving the ball-room at two o'clock, and their last words, as he left her on her doorstep, were that she would go to Dulwich before she went to rehearsal. But in the warmth of her bed, not occupied long enough to restore to the body the strength of which a ball-room had robbed it, her resolution waned, and her brain, weak from insufficient sleep, shrank from the prospect of a long drive and a face of stone at the end of it. She sat moodily sipping her chocolate and _brioche_.
”You were at the opera last night, Merat. Was Mademoiselle Helbrun a success?”
”No, mademoiselle, I'm afraid not.”
”Ah!” Evelyn put down her cup and looked at her maid. ”I'm sorry, but I thought she wouldn't succeed in London. She was coldly received, was she?”
”Yes, mademoiselle.”
”I'm sorry, for she's a true artist.”
”She has not the pa.s.sion of mademoiselle.”
A little look of pleasure lit up Evelyn's face.
”She is a charming singer. I can't think how she could have failed. Did you hear any reason given?”
”Yes, mademoiselle, I met Mr. Ulick Dean.”
”What did he say? He'd know.”
”He said that Mademoiselle Helbrun's was the true reading of the part.
But 'Carmen' had lately been turned into a _femme de la balle_, and, of course, since the public had tasted realism it wanted more. I thought Mademoiselle Helbrun rather cold. But then I'm one of the public.
Mademoiselle has not yet told me what I am to tell the coachman.”
”You do not listen to me, Merat,” Evelyn answered in a sudden access of ill humour. ”Instead of accepting the answer I choose to give, you stop there in the intention of obtaining the answer which seems to you the most suitable. I told you to tell the coachman that he was to get a map and acquaint himself with the way to Dulwich.”
And to bring the interview to a close, she told Merat to take away the chocolate tray, and took up one of the scores which lay on a small table by the bedside--”Tannhauser” and ”Tristan and Isolde.” It would bore her to look at Elizabeth again; she knew it all. She chose Tristan instead, and began reading the second act at the place where Isolde, ignoring Brangane's advice, signals to Tristan with the handkerchief. She glanced down the lines, hearing the motive on the 'cellos, then, in precipitated rhythm, taken up by the violins. When the emotion has reached breaking point, Tristan rushes into Isolde's arms, and the frantic happiness of the lovers is depicted in short, hurried phrases. The score slipped from her hands and her thoughts ran in reminiscence of a similar scene which she had endured in Venice nearly four years ago. She had not seen Owen for two months, and was expecting him every hour. The old walls of the palace, the black and watchful pictures, the watery odours and echoes from the ca.n.a.l had frightened and exhausted her. The persecution of pa.s.sion in her brain and the fever of pa.s.sion afloat in her blood waxed, and the minutes became each a separate torture. There was only one lamp.
She had watched it, fearing every moment lest it should go out.... She had cast a frightened glance round the room, and it was the spectre of life that her exalted imagination saw, and her natural eyes a strange ascension of the moon. The moon rose out of a sullen sky, and its reflection trailed down the lagoon. Hardly any stars were visible, and everything was extraordinarily still. The houses leaned heavily forward and Evelyn feared she might go mad, and it was through this phantom world of lagoon and autumn mist that a gondola glided. This time her heart told her with a loud cry that he had come, and she had stood in the shadowy room waiting for him, her brain on fire. The emotion of that night came to her at will, and lying in her warm bed she considered the meeting of Tristan and Isolde in the garden, and the duet on the bank of sultry flowers. Like Tristan and Isolde, she and Owen had struggled to find expression for their emotion, but, not having music, it had lain cramped up in their hearts, and their kisses were vain to express it.
She found it in these swift irregularities of rhythm, replying to every change of motion, and every change of key cried back some pang of the heart.
This scene in the second act was certainly one of the most difficult--at least to her--and the one in which she most despaired of excelling. It suddenly occurred to her that she might study it with Ulick Dean. She had met him at rehearsal, and had been much interested in him. He had sent her six melodies--strange, old-world rhythms, recalling in a way the Gregorian she used to read in childhood in the missals, yet modulated as unintermittently as Wagner; the same chromatic scale and yet a haunting of the antique rhythm in the melody. Ulick knew her father; he had said, ”Mr. Innes is my greatest friend.” He loved her father, she could see that, but she had not dared to question him.