The Way of Ambition Part 111

"Yes."

They still stood there, almost like two children, fascinated by the sight of the theater. Charmian was rapt. For a moment she forgot the pa.s.sers-by, the gliding motor-cars, the noises of the city, even herself. She was giving herself imaginatively to fate, not as herself, but merely as a human life. She was feeling the profound mystery of human life held in the arms of destiny. An abrupt movement of Claude almost startled her.

"What is it?" she said.

She looked up at him quickly.

"What's the matter, Claude?"

"Nothing," he answered. "But it's time we went back to the hotel. Come along."

And without another glance at the theater he turned round and began to walk quickly.

He had seen on the other side of the way, going toward the theater, the colored woman in the huge pink hat, of whom he had caught a glimpse on the night when Alston Lake had fetched him and Charmian to see the rehearsal of the "locust-effect." The woman turned her head, seemed to gaze at him across the road with her bulging eyes, stretched her thick lips in a smile. Then she took her place in a queue which was beginning to lengthen outside one of the gallery doors of the theater.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

The great theater which Jacob Crayford had built to "knock out" the Metropolitan Opera House filled slowly. Those dark and receding galleries, which had drawn the eyes of Charmian, were already crowded, alive with white moving faces, murmurous with voices. In the corridors and the lobbies many men were standing and talking. Smartly dressed women began to show themselves in the curving ranges of boxes. Musical critics and newspaper men gathered in knots and discussed the musical season, the fight that was "on" between the two opera houses, the libretto-scandal, which had not yet entirely died down, Jacob Crayford's prospects of becoming a really great power in opera.

Crayford's indomitable pluck and determined spending of money, had impressed the American imagination. There were many who wished him well.

The Metropolitan Opera House, with the millionaires behind it, could be trusted to take care of itself. Crayford was spending his own money, won entirely by his own enterprise, cleverness and grit. He was a man. Men instinctively wished to see him get in front. And to-night Claude stood side by side with Crayford, his chosen comrade in the battle. Critics and newspaper men were disposed to lift him on their shoulders if only he gave them the chance. The current of opinion favored him. Report of his work was good. Jaded critics, newspaper men who had seen and known too much, longed for novelty. Crayford's prophecy was coming true.

America was turning its bright and sharp eyes toward the East. And out of the East, said rumor, this new opera came. Surely it would bring with it a breath of that exquisite air which prevails where the sands lift their golden crests, the creaking rustle of palm trees, the silence of the naked s.p.a.ces where G.o.d lives without man, the chatter, the cries, the tinkling stream voices of the oases.

Even tired men and men who had seen too much knew antic.i.p.ation to-night. Word had gone around that Crayford had brought the East to America. People were eager to take their places upon his magic carpet.

The crowd in the lobbies increased. The corridors were thronged.

Van Brinen pa.s.sed by, walking slowly, and looking about him with his rather pathetic eyes. He saw Jacob Crayford, smartly dressed, a white flower in his b.u.t.tonhole, standing in a group of pressmen, went up to him and gently took him by the arm.

"Hulloh, Van Brinen! Going to be kind to us to-night?"

"I hope so. Your man is a man of value."

"Heath? And if he weren't, d'you think I'd be spending my last dollar on him? But what do you know of his music more than the others?"

And Crayford's eyes, become suddenly sharp and piercing, fixed themselves on the critic's face.

"I heard some of it one night in his room at the St. Regis."

"Bits of the opera?"

"One bit. But there was something else that impressed me enormously--almost terrible music."

"Oh, that was probably some of his Bible rubbish. But thank the Lord we've got him away from all that. Hulloh, Perkins! Come here to see me get in front?"

In box fifteen, on the ground tier, Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney settled herself with Madame Sennier, Jacques Sennier, and Jonson Ramer. Susan Fleet was next door with friends, a highly cultivated elderly man, famous as a lawyer and connoisseur, and his wife. Alston Lake's family and most of his many friends were in the stalls, where Armand Gillier had a seat close to a gangway, so that he could easily slip out to pay his homage to Enid Mardon. His head was soaked with eau-de-quinine. On his muscular hands he wore thick white kid gloves. And he gazed at his name on the programme with almost greedy eyes.

Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney glanced swiftly about the immense house, looking from box to box. She took up her opera gla.s.ses.

"I wonder where the Heaths are sitting," she said. "Henriette, can you see them?"

Madame Sennier looked round with her hard yellow eyes.

"No. Perhaps they aren't here yet. Or they may be above us. Or perhaps they are too nervous to come."

Her painted lips stretched themselves in a faint and enigmatic smile.

"I'm quite sure Charmian Heath will be here. This is to be the great night of her life. She is not the woman to miss it."

Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney leaned round to the next box.

"Susan, can you see the Heaths?"

"Yes," returned the theosophist, in her calm chest voice. "She is just coming into a box on the same tier as we are in."

"Where? Where?"

"Over there, on my right, about ten boxes from us. She is in pale green."

"That pretty woman!" said the elderly lawyer. "Is she the composer's wife?"

He put up his gla.s.ses.

"Yes, I see now," said Mrs. s.h.i.+ffney.

She drew back into her box.

"There she is, Henriette! She seems to be alone. But Heath is sitting behind her in the shadow. I saw him for a minute before he sat down."

Madame Sennier looked at Charmian as Charmian had once looked at her across another opera house. But her mind contemplated Charmian in this hour of her destiny implacably. She said nothing.

Jacques Sennier began to chatter.

At a few minutes past eight the lights went down and the opera began.

Charmian and Claude were alone in their box. On the empty seat beside hers Charmian had laid some red roses sent to her by Alston Lake before she had started. Five minutes after the arrival of the flowers had come a cablegram from England addressed to Claude: "I wish you both the best to-night love. Madre."

Just before the opera began, as Charmian glanced down at her roses, she saw a paper lying beside them on the silk-covered chair.

"What's that?" she said.

"Madre's cablegram," said Claude. "I found I had brought it with me, so I laid it down there. If Madre had come with us she might have occupied that seat. I thought I would let her wish lie there with Alston's roses."

Their eyes met in the shadow of the box. On coming into it Claude had turned out the electric burner.