Part 47 (1/2)

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 pa.s.sion 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sociated with her name much in the same way that ”Home, Sweet Home” was a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sertion 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 friends.h.i.+p with her husband had helped to make s.h.i.+pwreck 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.