Part 114 (1/2)

Soon after the curtains had once more parted, disclosing a marvellous desert scene which drew loud applause from the audience, Claude got up softly from his seat.

”I'll slip away now,” he whispered.

She felt for his hand in the dimness, found it, squeezed it. She longed to get up, to put her lips to his, to breath some word--she knew not the word it would be--of encouragement, of affection. Tears rushed into her eyes as she felt the touch of his flesh. As the door shut behind him she moved quite to the back of the box and put her handkerchief to her eyes. She had great difficulty just then in not letting the tears run over her face. For several minutes she scarcely heard the music or knew what was happening upon the stage. There was a tumult of feeling within her which she did not at all fully understand, perhaps because even now she was fighting, fighting blindly, desperately, but with courage.

There came a tap at the door. Charmian did not hear it. In a moment it was softly repeated. This time she did hear it. And she hastily pressed her handkerchief first against one eye, then against the other, got up and opened the door.

”May I come in for a little while?” came a calm whisper from Susan Fleet, who stood without in a very plain black gown with long white gloves over her hands and arms.

”Oh, Susan--yes! I am all alone.”

”That is why I came.”

”How did you know?”

”My friend, Mr. Melton, happened to be in the corridor with Mr. Ramer and they saw your husband pa.s.s. Mr. Ramer spoke to him and he said he was going behind the scenes. So I thought I would come for a minute.”

She stepped gently in and closed the door quietly.

”Where were you sitting?” she whispered.

”Here, at the back. Sit by me--oh, wait! Let me move Alston's flowers.”

She took them up. As she did so she remembered Madre's cablegram, and looked for it. But it was no longer there. She searched quickly on the floor.

”What is it?” said Susan.

”Only a cablegram from Madre that was with the flowers. It's gone. Never mind. Claude must have taken it.”

The conviction came to her that Claude had taken it with him, as a man takes a friend he can trust when he is going into a ”tight place.”

”Sit here!” she whispered to Susan.

Susan sat softly down beside Charmian at the back of the box, took one of her hands and held it, not closely, but gently. They did not speak again till the third act was finished.

It was the longest act of the opera, and the most elaborate. Charmian had always secretly been afraid of it since the first full rehearsal.

She could never get out of her mind the torture she had endured that evening when everything had gone wrong, when she had said to herself in a sort of fierce and active despair: ”This is my idea of h.e.l.l.” She felt that even if the opera were a triumphant success, even if the third act were acclaimed, she would always dread it, almost as a woman may dread an enemy. Once it had tortured her, and she had a feminine memory for a thing that had caused her agony.

Now she sat with her hand in Susan's, face to face with the dangerous act, and antic.i.p.ating the end, when at last Claude would confront the world he had avoided so carefully till she came into his life.

The act, which had been chaotic at rehearsal, was going with perfect smoothness, almost too smoothly Charmian began to think. It glided on its way almost with a certain blandness. In Algeria, Crayford had devoted most of his attention to this act, which he had said ”wanted a lot of doing to.” He had ”made” the whole of it ”over.” Charmian remembered now very well the long discussions which had taken place at Djenan-el-Maqui about this act. One discussion stood out from the rest at this moment. She almost felt the heat brooding over the far-off land.

She almost saw the sky shrouded in filmy gray, the white edge of the sea breaking sullenly against the long line of sh.o.r.e, the beads of sweat on the forehead of Claude, his clenched hands, the expression in his eyes when he said, after her answered challenge to Crayford, ”Tell me what you want, all you want, and I'll try to do it.”

This act to which this vast audience, in which she was now definitely included against her will, was listening was the product of that scene, that discussion, that resignation of Claude's.

Charmian's hand twitched under Susan's, but she did not draw it away, though Susan--as she knew--would have made no effort to retain it. She was thankful Susan was with her. To-night it was impossible for her to feel calm. No one could have communicated calm to her. But Susan did give her something which was a help to her. Always, when with Susan, she was able to feel, however vaguely, something of the universal, something of the largeness which men feel when they look at the stars, or hear the wind across vast s.p.a.ces, or see a great deed done. As the act ran its course her mind became fixed upon the close, upon the call for Claude. Armand Gillier was blotted out from her mind. The cry that went up would be for Claude. Would it be a cry from the heart of this crowd? She remembered, she even heard distinctly in her mind, the cry the Covent Garden crowd had sent up for Jacques Sennier on the first night of _Le Paradis Terrestre_. There had been in it a marvellous sound which had stirred her to the depths. It was that sound which had made her speak to Claude, which had determined her marriage with Claude.

If a similar sound burst from the lips and the hearts of the crowd at the end of this act, it would determine Claude's fate as an artist, her fate with his.

Her hand twitched more convulsively under Susan's as she thought of, waited for, the sound.

The locust scene was a triumph for Crayford, Mr. Mulworth, and Jimber.