The Way of Ambition Part 105

Her long fingers closed on his hand.

"Charmian!"

He looked excited and startled. He stared at her.

"What's the matter?"

His face changed.

"Nothing. It's all going well so far."

"Perfectly. Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney's here."

"I know."

Charmian's fingers unclasped.

"You've seen her?"

"No, but I heard she was here with Jonson Ramer."

"Yes. I've--"

They fell into silence, concentrated upon the stage. In a few minutes they were joined by Gillier, who sat down just behind them. With his coming their attention was intensified. They listened jealously, attended as it were with every fiber of their bodies, as well as with their minds, to everything that was happening in this man-created world.

Charmian felt Gillier listening, felt, far away behind him, Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney listening. Gradually her excitement and anxiety became painful.

Her mind seemed to her to be burning, not smouldering but flaming. She clasped the two arms of her stall.

Something went wrong on the stage, and the opera was stopped. The orchestra died away in a sort of wailing confusion, which ceased on the watery sound of a horn. Enid Mardon began speaking with concentrated determination. Crayford and Mr. Mulworth came upon the stage.

"Where's Mr. Heath? Where's Mr. Heath?" shouted Crayford.

Claude, who was already standing up, hurried away toward the entrance and disappeared. Charmian sat biting her lips and tingling all over in an acute exasperation of the nerves. Behind her Armand Gillier sat in silence. Claude joined the people on the stage, and there was a long colloquy in which eventually Meroni, the conductor, took part. Charmian presently heard Gillier moving restlessly behind her. Then she heard a snap of metal and knew that he had just looked at his watch. What was Adelaide doing? What was she thinking? What did she think of this breakdown? Everything had been going so well. But now no doubt things would go badly.

"Will they ever start again?" Charmian asked herself. "What can they be talking about? What can Miss Mardon mean by those frantic gesticulations, now by turning her back on Mr. Crayford and Claude? If only people--"

Meroni left the stage. In a moment the orchestra sounded once more.

Charmian turned round instinctively for sympathy to Armand Gillier, and caught an unpleasant look in his large eyes. Instantly she was on the defensive.

"It's going marvellously for a first full rehearsal," she said to him.

"Claude expected we should be here for nine or ten hours at the very least."

"Possibly, madame!" he replied.

He gnawed his moustache. His head, drenched as usual with eau-de-quinine, looked hard as a bullet. Charmian wondered what thoughts, what expectations it contained. But she turned again to the stage without saying anything more. At that moment she hated Gillier for not helping her to be sanguine. She said to herself that he had been always against both her and Claude. Of course he would be cruelly, ferociously critical of Claude's music, because he was so infatuated with his own libretto. Angrily she dubbed him a poor victim of megalomania.

Claude slipped into the seat at her side, and suddenly she felt comforted, protected. But these alternations of hope and fear tried her nerves. She began to be conscious of that, to feel the intensity of the strain she was undergoing. Was not the strain upon Claude's nerves much greater? She stole a glance at his dark face, but could not tell.

The second act came to an end without another breakdown, but Charmian felt more doubtful about the opera than she had felt after the first act. The deadness of rehearsal began to creep upon her, almost like moss creeping over a building. Claude hurried away again. And Mrs. Haynes, the dressmaker, took his place and began telling Charmian a long story about Enid Mardon's impossible proceedings. It seemed that she had picked, or torn, to pieces another dress. Charmian listened, tried to listen, failed really to listen. She seemed to smell the theater. She felt both dull and excited.

"I said to her, 'Madame, it is only monkeys who pick everything to pieces.' I felt it was time that I spoke out strongly."

Mrs. Haynes continued inexorably. In the well of the orchestra a hidden flute suddenly ran up a scale ending on E flat. Charmian almost began to writhe with secret irritation.

"What a long wait!" she exclaimed, ruthlessly interrupting her companion. "I really must go behind and see what is happening."

"But they must have a quarter of an hour to change the set," said the dressmaker. "And it's only five minutes since--"

"Yes, I know. I'll look for you here when the curtain goes up."

As she made her way toward the exit she turned and looked toward the boxes. She did not see the distant figures of Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney and the financier. And she stopped abruptly. Could they have gone away already?

She looked at her watch. It was only ten o'clock. Her eyes travelled swiftly round the semicircle of boxes. She saw no one. They must have gone. Her heart sank, but her cheeks burned with an angry flush. At that moment she felt almost like a mother who hears people call her child ugly. She stood for a moment, thinking. The verdict in advance! If Mrs.

s.h.i.+ffney had gone away it was surely given already. Charmian resolved that she would say nothing to Claude. To do so might discourage him. Her cheeks were still burning when she pushed the heavy door which protected the mysterious region from the ba.n.a.lity she had left.

But there she was again carried from mood to mood.

She found everyone enthusiastic. Crayford's tic was almost triumphant.

His little beard bristled with an aggressive optimism.

"Where's Claude?" said Charmian, not seeing him and thinking of Mrs.

s.h.i.+ffney.

"Making some cuts," said Crayford. "The stage shows things up. There are bits in that act that have got to come out. But it's a bully act and will go down as easily as a--Hullo, Jimber! Sure you've got your motors right for the locust scene?"

He escaped.

"Mr. Mulworth!" cried Charmian, seeing the producer rus.h.i.+ng toward the wings, with the perspiration pouring over his now haggard features.

"_Mister_ Mulworth! How long will Claude take making the cuts, do you think?"

"He'll have to stick at them all through the next act. If they're not made the act's a fizzle! Jeremy! See here! We've got to have a pin-light on Miss Mardon when she comes down that staircase!"

He escaped.

"Signor Meroni, I hear you have to make some cuts! D'you think--"

"_Signora--ma si! Ma si!_"

He escaped.

"Take care, marm, if you please! Look out for that sand bank!"

Charmian withdrew from the frantic turmoil of work, and fled to visit the singers, and drink in more comfort. The only person who dashed her hopes was Miss Enid Mardon, who was a great artist but by nature a pessimist, ultra critical, full of satire and alarmingly outspoken.

"I tell you honestly," she said, looking at Charmian with fatalistic eyes, "I don't believe in it. But I'll do my best."

"But I thought you were delighted with the first act. Surely Monsieur Gillier told me--"

"Oh, I only spoke to him about the libretto. That's a masterpiece. Did you ever see such a dress as that elephant Haynes expects me to wear for the third act?"