Sacred and Profane Love Part 34

Diaz was then the centre of attraction. It was recognised that he had entered that sphere from a wider one, bringing with him a radiance brighter than he found there. He was divine last night. All felt that he was divine. He spoke to everyone with an admirable modesty, gaily, his eyes laughing. Several women kissed him, including Morenita. Not that I minded. In the theatre the code is different, coa.r.s.er, more ba.n.a.l. He alone raised this crowd above its usual level and gave it distinction.

Someone suggested that, as the piano was there, he should play, and the demand ran from mouth to mouth. Villedo, appreciating its audacity, made a gesture to indicate that such a thing could not be asked. But Diaz instantly said that, if it would give pleasure, he would play with pleasure.

And he sat down to the piano, and looked round, smiling, and the room was hushed in a moment, and each face was turned towards him.

'What?' he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. And then, as no definite recommendation was offered, he said: 'Do you wish that I improvise?'

The idea was accepted with pa.s.sionate, noisy enthusiasm.

A cold perspiration broke out over my whole body. I must have turned very pale.

'You are not ill, madame?' asked that ridiculous fop, Montferiot, who had been presented to me, and was whispering the most fatuous compliments.

'No, I thank you.'

The fact was that Diaz, since his retirement, had not yet played to anyone except myself. This was his first appearance. I was afraid for him. I trembled for him. I need not have done. He was absolutely master of his powers. His fingers announced, quite simply, one of the most successful airs from _La Valliere_, and then he began to decorate it with an amazing lacework of variations, and finished with a bravura display such as no pianist could have surpa.s.sed. The performance, marvellous in itself, was precisely suited to that audience, and it electrified the audience; it electrified even me. Diaz fought his way through kisses and embraces to Villedo, who stood on his toes and wept and put his arms round Diaz' neck.

'_Cher maitre_,' he cried, 'you overwhelm us!'

'You are too kind, all of you,' said Diaz. 'I must ask permission to retire. I have to conduct Mademoiselle Peel to her hotel, and there is much for me to do during the night. You know I start very early to-morrow.'

'_Helas!_ Morenita sighed.

I had blushed. Decidedly I behaved like a girl last night. But, indeed, the new, swift realization, as Diaz singled me out of that mult.i.tude, that after all he utterly belonged to me, that he was mine alone, was more than I could bear with equanimity. I was the proudest woman in the universe. I scorned the lot of all other women.

The adieux were exchanged, and there were more kisses. '_Au revoir! Bon voyage_! Much success over there.'

The majority of these good, generous souls were in tears.

Villedo opened a side-door, and we escaped into a corridor, only Morenita and one or two others accompanying us to the street.

And on the pavement a carpet had been laid. The electric brougham was waiting. I gathered up my skirt and sprang in. Diaz followed, smiling at me. He put his head out of the window and said a few words. Morenita blew a kiss. Villedo bowed profoundly. The carriage moved in the direction of the boulevard.... I had carried him off. Oh, the exquisite dark intimacy of the interior of that smooth-rolling brougham! When, after the theatre, a woman precedes a man into a carriage, does she not publish and glory in the fact that she is his? Is it not the most delicious of avowals?

There is something in the enforced bend of one's head as one steps in.

And when the man shuts the door with a masculine snap--

I wondered idly what Morenita and Villedo thought of our relations. They must surely guess.

We went down the boulevard and by the Rue Royale into the Place de la Concorde, where vehicles flitted mysteriously in a maze of lights under the vast dome of mysterious blue. And Paris, in her incomparable toilette of a June night, seemed more than ever the pa.s.sionate city of love that she is, recognising candidly, with the fearless intellectuality of the Latin temperament, that one thing only makes life worth living. How soft was the air! How languorous the pose of the dim figures that pa.s.sed us half hidden in other carriages! And in my heart was the lofty joy of work done, definitely accomplished, and a vista of years of future pleasure.

My happiness was ardent and yet calm--a happiness beyond my hopes, beyond what a mortal has the right to dream of. Nothing could impair it, not even Diaz' continued silence as to a marriage between us, not even the imminent brief separation that I was to endure.

'My child,' said Diaz suddenly, 'I'm very hungry. I've never been so hungry.'

'You surely didn't forget to have your dinner?' I exclaimed.

'Yes, I did,' he admitted like a child; 'I've just remembered.'

'Diaz!' I pouted, and for some strange reason my bliss was intensified, 'you are really terrible! What can I do with you? You will eat before you leave me. I must see to that. We can get something for you at the hotel, perhaps.'

'Suppose we go to a supper restaurant?' he said.

Without waiting for my reply, he seized the dangling end of the speaking-tube and spoke to the driver, and we swerved round and regained the boulevard.

And in the private room of a great, glittering restaurant, one of a long row of private rooms off a corridor, I ate strawberries and cream and sipped champagne while Diaz went through the entire menu of a supper.

'Your eyes look sad,' he murmured, with a cigar between his teeth. 'What is it? We shall see each other again in a fortnight.'

He was to resume his career by a series of concerts in the United States.

A New York agent, with the characteristic enterprise of New York agents, had tracked Diaz even into the forest and offered him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for forty concerts on the condition that he played at no concert before he played in New York. And in order to reach New York in time for the first concert, it was imperative that he should catch the _Touraine_ at Havre. I was to follow in a few days by a Hamburg-American liner. Diaz had judged it more politic that we should not travel together. In this he was undoubtedly right.

I smiled proudly.

'I am both sad and happy,' I answered.

He moved his chair until it touched mine, and put his arm round my neck, and brought my face close to his.

'Look at me,' he said.

And I looked into his large, splendid eyes.

'You mustn't think,' he whispered, 'that, because I don't talk about it, I don't feel that I owe everything to you.'

I let my face fall on his breast. I knew I had flushed to the ears.

'My poor boy,' I sobbed, 'if you talk about that I shall never forgive you.'

It was heaven itself. No woman has ever been more ecstatically happy than I was then.

He rang for the bill.

We parted at the door of my hotel. In the carriage we had exchanged one long, long kiss. At the last moment I wanted to alter the programme, go with him to his hotel to a.s.sist in his final arrangements, and then see him off at early morning at the station. But he refused. He said he could not bear to part from me in public. Perhaps it was best so. Just as I turned away he put a packet into my hand. It contained seven banknotes for ten thousand francs each, money that it had been my delight to lend him from time to time. Foolish, vain, scrupulous boy! I knew not where he had obtained--

It is now evening. Diaz is on the sea. While writing those last lines I was attacked by fearful pains in the right side, and cramp, so that I could not finish. I can scarcely write now. I have just seen the old English doctor. He says I have appendicitis, perhaps caused by pips of strawberries. And that unless I am operated on at once--And that even if--He is telephoning to the hospital. Diaz! No; I shall come safely through the affair. Without me Diaz would fall again. I see that now. And I have had no child. I must have a child. Even that girl in the blue _peignoir_ had a--Chance is a strange--

_Extract translated from 'Le Temps,' the Paris Evening Paper_.

OBSEQUIES OF MISS PELL (_sic_).

The obsequies of Mademoiselle Pell, the celebrated English poetess, and author of the libretto of _La Valliere_, were celebrated this morning at eleven o'clock in the Church of St. Honore d'Eylau.

The chief mourners were the doctor who a.s.sisted at the last moments of Mademoiselle Pell, and M. Villedo, director of the Opera-Comique.

Among the wreaths we may cite those of the a.s.sociation of Dramatic Artists, of Madame Morenita, of the management of the Opera-Comique, and of the artists of the Opera-Comique.

Ma.s.s was said by a vicar of the parish, and general absolution given by M. le Cure Marbeau.

During the service there was given, under the direction of M. Letang, chapel-master, the _Funeral March_ of Beethoven, the _Kyrie_ of Neidermeyer, the _Pie Jesu_ of Stradella, the _Ego Sum_ of Gounod, the _Libera Me_ of S. Rousseau.