The Way of Ambition Part 104

Hitherto she had supposed that Claude was behind the scenes, or perhaps in the orchestra sitting near the conductor, Meroni; but now jealousy sprang up in her. If Claude were with Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney in that box while she sat alone! If Claude had really known all the time that Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney was coming and had not told her, Charmian! Unreason, which is the offspring of jealousy, filled her mind. She burned with anger.

"I know he is in that box with her!" she thought. "And he did not tell me she was coming because he wanted to be with her at the rehearsal and not with me."

And suddenly her intense, her painful interest in the opera faded away out of her. She was concentrated upon the purely human things. Her imagination of a possibility, which her jealousy already proclaimed a certainty, blotted out even the opera. Woman, man--the intentness of the heart came upon her, like a wave creeping all over her, blotting out landmarks.

The curtain fell on the first act. It had gone well, unexpectedly well.

Behind the scenes there were congratulations. Crayford was radiant. Mr.

Mulworth wiped his brow fanatically, but looked almost human as he spoke in a hoa.r.s.e remnant of voice to a master carpenter. Enid Mardon went off the stage with the ma.s.sive dressmaker in almost amicable conversation.

Meroni, the Milanese conductor, mounted up from his place in the subterranean regions, smiling brilliantly and twisting his black moustaches. Alston Lake had got rid of his nervousness. He knew he had done well and was more "mad" about the opera than ever.

"It's the bulliest thing there's been in New York in years!" he exclaimed, as he went to his dressing-room, where he found Claude, who had been sitting in the orchestra, and who had now hurried round to ask the singers how they felt in their parts. Gillier was with Miss Mardon, at whose feet he was laying his homage.

Meanwhile Charmian was still quite alone.

She sat for a moment after the curtain fell.

"Surely Claude will come now!" she said to herself. "In decency he must come!"

But no one came, and anger, the sense of desertion, grew in her till she was unable to sit still any longer. She got up, turned, and again looked toward the box in which she had fancied that she saw something move. Now she saw a woman's arm and hand, a bit of a woman's shoulder. Somebody, a woman, wearing sables, was in the box turning round, evidently in conversation with another person who was hidden.

Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney owned wonderful sables.

Without further hesitation Charmian, driven, made her way to the exit from the stalls on her right, went out and found herself in the blackness of the huge corridor running behind the ground tier boxes.

Before leaving the stalls she had tried to locate the box, and thought that she had located it. She meant to go into it without knocking, as one who supposed it to be empty. Now, with a feverish hand she felt for a door-handle. She found one, turned it, and went into an empty box.

Standing still in it, she listened and heard a woman's voice that she knew say:

"I dare say. But I don't mean to say anything yet. I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."

The words ended in a little laugh.

"It is Adelaide. She's in the next box!" said Charmian to herself.

For a moment a horrible idea suggested itself to her. She thought of sitting down very softly and of eavesdropping. But the better part of her at once rebelled against this idea, and without hesitation she slipped out of the box. She stood still in the corridor for three or four minutes. The fact that she had seriously thought of eavesdropping almost frightened her, and she was trying to come to the resolve to abandon her project of interrupting Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney's conversation with the hidden person who, she felt sure, must be Claude. Presently she walked away a few steps, going toward the entrance. Then she stopped again.

"I have my reputation to take care of, you must remember."

Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney's words kept pa.s.sing through her mind. What had Claude said to evoke such words? In the darkness, Charmian, with a strong and excited imagination, conceived Claude faithless to her. She did more. She conceived of triumph and faithlessness coming together into her life, of Claude as a famous man and another woman's lover.

"Would you rather he remained obscure and entirely yours?" a voice seemed to say within her. She did not debate this question, but again turned, made her way to Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney's box, which she located rightly this time, pushed the door and abruptly went into it.

"Hulloh!" said a powerful and rather surprised voice.

In the semi-obscurity Charmian saw a very big man, whom she had never seen before, getting up from a chair.

"I beg your pardon," she exclaimed, startled. "I didn't know--"

"Charmian! Is it you?"

Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney's voice came from beyond the big man.

"Adelaide! You've come to our rehearsal!"

"Yes. Let me introduce Mr. Jonson Ramer to you. This is Mrs. Heath, Jonson, the genius's good angel. Sit down with us for a minute, Charmian."

Adelaide s.h.i.+ffney's deep voice was almost suspiciously cordial. But Charmian's sense of relief was so great that she accepted the invitation, and sat down feeling strangely happy.

But almost instantly with the laying to rest of one anxiety came the birth of another.

"Well, what do you think of the opera?" she asked, trying to speak carelessly.

Jonson Ramer leaned toward her. He thought she looked pretty, and he liked pretty women even more than most men do.

"Very original!" he said. "Opens powerfully. But I don't think we can judge of it yet. It's going remarkably well."

"Wonderfully!" said Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney.

Charmian turned quickly toward her. It was Adelaide's verdict that she wanted, not Jonson Ramer's.

"Enid Mardon's perfect," continued Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney. "She will make a sensation. And the _mise-en-scene_ is really exquisite, not overloaded.

Crayford has evidently learnt something from Berlin."

"How malicious Adelaide is!" thought Charmian. "She won't speak of the music simply because she knows I only care about that."

She talked for a little while, sufficiently mistress of herself to charm Jonson Ramer. Then she got up.

"I must run away. I have so many people to see and encourage."

Her gay voice indicated that she needed no encouragement, that she was quite sure of success.

"We shall see you at the end?" said Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney.

"But will you stay? It may be six o'clock in the morning," said Charmian.

"That is a little late. But--"

At this moment Charmian saw Claude coming into the stalls by the left entrance near the stage.

"Oh, there's Claude!" she exclaimed, interrupting Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney, and evidently not knowing that she did so. "Au revoir! Thank you so much!"

She was gone.

"Thank me so much!" said Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney to Jonson Ramer. "What for? Do you know, Jonson?"

"Seems to me that little woman's unfas.h.i.+onable--mad about her own husband!" said Jonson Ramer.

The curtain went up on the second act.

Claude had sat down in the stalls. In a moment Charmian slipped into a seat at his side and touched his hand.

"Claude, where have you been?"