第9章

The tenor, raised upon one hand, his shoulders supported by his friends, sustained the theme which the soprano led with the words:

"Je me meurs Ah malheur Ah je souffre Mon ame s'envole."The chorus formed a semi-circle just behind him.The women on one side, the men on the other.They left much to be desired; apparently scraped hastily together from heaven knew what sources, after the manner of a management suddenly become economical.The women were fat, elderly, and painfully homely; the men lean, osseous, and distressed, in misfitting hose.But they had been conscientiously drilled.They made all their gestures together, moved in masses simultaneously, and, without ceasing, chanted over and over again:

"O terror, O blasfema."

The _finale_ commenced.Everybody on the stage took a step forward, beginning all over again upon a higher key.The soprano's voice thrilled to the very chandelier.The orchestra redoubled its efforts, the director beating time with hands, head, and body.

"Il perfido, l'ingrato"

thundered the basso.

"Ineffabil mistero,"

answered the baritone, striking his breast and pointing with his sword; while all at once the soprano's voice, thrilling out again, ran up an astonishing crescendo that evoked veritable gasps from all parts of the audience, then jumped once more to her famous C in alt, and held it long enough for the chorus to repeat"O terror, O blasfema"four times.

Then the director's baton descended with the violence of a blow.There was a prolonged crash of harmony, a final enormous chord, to which every voice and every instrument contributed.The singers struck tableau attitudes, the tenor fell back with a last wail:

"Je me meurs,"

and the soprano fainted into the arms of her confidante.The curtain fell.

The house roared with applause.The scene was recalled again and again.The tenor, scrambling to his feet, joined hands with the baritone, soprano, and other artists, and all bowed repeatedly.Then the curtain fell for the last time, the lights of the great chandelier clicked and blazed up, and from every quarter of the house came the cries of the programme sellers:

"Opera books.Books of the opera.Words and music of the opera."During this, the last _entr'acte,_ Laura remained in the box with Mrs.Cressler, Corthell, and Jadwin.The others went out to look down upon the foyer from a certain balcony.

In the box the conversation turned upon stage management, and Corthell told how, in "L'Africaine," at the Opera, in Paris, the entire superstructure of the stage--wings, drops, and backs--turned when Vasco da Gama put the ship about.Jadwin having criticised the effect because none of the actors turned with it, was voted a Philistine by Mrs.Cressler and Corthell.But as he was about to answer, Mrs.Cressler turned to the artist, passing him her opera glasses, and asking:

"Who are those people down there in the third row of the parquet--see, on the middle aisle--the woman is in red.Aren't those the Gretrys?"This left Jadwin and Laura out of the conversation, and the capitalist was quick to seize the chance of talking to her.Soon she was surprised to notice that he was trying hard to be agreeable, and before they had exchanged a dozen sentences, he had turned an awkward compliment.She guessed by his manner that paying attention to young girls was for him a thing altogether unusual.Intuitively she divined that she, on this, the very first night of their acquaintance, had suddenly interested him.

She had had neither opportunity nor inclination to observe him closely during their interview in the vestibule, but now, as she sat and listened to him talk, she could not help being a little attracted.He was a heavy-built man, would have made two of Corthell, and his hands were large and broad, the hands of a man of affairs, who knew how to grip, and, above all, how to hang on.Those broad, strong hands, and keen, calm eyes would enfold and envelop a Purpose with tremendous strength, and they would persist and persist and persist, unswerving, unwavering, untiring, till the Purpose was driven home.And the two long, lean, fibrous arms of him; what a reach they could attain, and how wide and huge and even formidable would be their embrace of affairs.One of those great manoeuvres of a fellow money-captain had that very day been concluded, the Helmick failure, and between the chords and bars of a famous opera men talked in excited whispers, and one great leader lay at that very moment, broken and spent, fighting with his last breath for bare existence.Jadwin had seen it all.Uninvolved in the crash, he had none the less been close to it, watching it, in touch with it, foreseeing each successive collapse by which it reeled fatally to the final catastrophe.The voices of the two men that had so annoyed her in the early part of the evening were suddenly raised again:

"----It was terrific, there on the floor of the Board this morning.By the Lord! they fought each other when the Bears began throwing the grain at 'em--in carload lots."And abruptly, midway between two phases of that music-drama, of passion and romance, there came to Laura the swift and vivid impression of that other drama that simultaneously--even at that very moment--was working itself out close at hand, equally picturesque, equally romantic, equally passionate; but more than that, real, actual, modern, a thing in the very heart of the very life in which she moved.And here he sat, this Jadwin, quiet, in evening dress, listening good-naturedly to this beautiful music, for which he did not care, to this rant and fustian, watching quietly all this posing and attitudinising.How small and petty it must all seem to him!