An Opera and Lady Grasmere/Book 2/Chapter 6

HE house was rapidly filling. A flowing stream of fashionable arrivals poured through the lobby, wound up the broad staircase, was dispersed in the curving corridors. The doors of the countless boxes that wall the auditorium, those doors whereon you may read some of the proudest names in Europe, turned ceaselessly on their hinges. A great crowd manifestly attracted by an exceptional occasion—this unique performance—was swiftly gathering. Years had elapsed since the work of a British-born composer had been presented in this classic house.

An air of expectancy, of anticipation, hung over the huge theatre. The performance that was about to open had been heralded with no common vigour. Long before the door had flung back a swarming queue had gathered about the entrances to the cheaper seats. The amateurs of the gallery, those rigid connoisseurs to whom such an evening meant a solid curtailment of more material delights, had paid their hard-earned silver and were preparing to sit in judgment. They had studied the libretto, read the evening paper, struck up casual acquaintanceships, or discussed the classics with feeling and determination, the half-hour past. It was hot up there—terribly hot and crowded; the seats hard as inferior railway accommodation.

Below these serried ranks sat the suburban enthusiast, feminine for the most part, who had sent postal orders to the booking-office weeks beforehand. A more serious and formal company this, muttering occasional complaint anent the inaccessibility of the score, occasionally proclaiming its relationship to a press-ticket in the stalls—some critic whom publicity had severed from the obscurity of the remnant. The foreign element so marked here on other nights, was conspicuously absent. The performances of a British composer it looked upon as an encroachment, as something "foul and most unnatural." Here, as above, all was compact and apprehensive, and the brilliant light that emanated from the huge chandelier showed no vacant seat. And the young women who preponderated, attired in costumes reminiscent of Liberty and the New Gallery, waited eager and discovered celebrities, in the mass below.

Even the stalls and boxes had shared in the prevailing punctuality. Sopwith's friends and patrons—and their tale was legion—had come to to a certain extent lacking in the discrimination of the cheaper seats, these later arrivals were better dressed, and most of them had come in their own carriages. They leavened the floor of the house, they leaned over the cushions of half the boxes. A certain satisfaction as of proprietorship overspread their features; the sense of an almost personal share in the evening's doings flattered agreeably. Even the least susceptible responded to this subtle invitation to play a gracious rôle. Their vanity had been caressed by an appeal so delicate as to have escaped consciousness.

Mingled with these dilettanti were the politer members of the profession, wearers of the laurel wreath, musicians of assured renown, middle-aged or grey, who had come in to assist at the enterprise of a junior; a polyglot community of carefully groomed lions, leonine too in the richness of their hirsute adornments; men and women whom the platform had set unmistakably apart from the pursuers of a less florid career. Secure upon pedestals whose stability no new arrival could endanger, these famous champions twirled their moustachios, and indulgently suffered the scrutiny of an admiring public. The younger generation was seated with its seniors, symbolising the Millennium. A sterner and a more exacting band this younger generation, it had evidently come prepared to accept nothing but a score entirely orchestral, methods the most advanced. Technique was manifest on its unflinching front, purity of feeling its most modest requirement; for the younger generation had lived and had frequented the new academies, and now waited, an uncompromising crew, gloomily expectant, and pessimistically scenting a barbarous rejection of all its own most cherished theories.

In the stalls, too, were the critics, a row of strangely assorted faces bespeaking varieties of temperament sufficient to furnish an anthropological museum; a veritable Noah's Ark of representative types—the thoughtful and scholarly, severely conscientious and of an open mind; the facile egotistical and the facile plausible, both equally bent on concealment of ignorance though differing in method; the accidentally critical, irresponsible and scintillating; the missionary enthusiastic, ardent and filled with prophesy; the sound and weighty, unadventurous and shy of innovation; the prettily sensuous, emotional and ladylike; the Cockney brilliant, anarchic and in constant opposition—the list is endless. The woman-critic too, the reticent and the gushing, the classical and the flamboyant, was also in pursuit. And interleaving this varied assembly was the fashionable mob, bejewelled and bediademed, the heroes and heroines of the London season, the children of light whose ease and radiance had so shaken our friend Merceron some nine months since, when, with Hutchinson on his arm, he had re-entered the world.

Now, above the chatter, the greetings and speculations, the movement of all this eager multitude, arose the scrapings and strange noises of an orchestra making ready. This tuning-up ceased and with it the well-bred gossip. The conductor had stepped into his place; expectation electrified the air.

In the box where sat Harvey and Lady Grasmere reigned an alert silence. The libretto of Francesca had been laid aside. They were waiting. The conductor gave the signal. From the 'cello yearned pianissimo the first bars of the overture—the overture to.

The violins swelled the movement, the flutes and oboes softened the rising volume, and Harvey sat in the semi-darkness wondering whether he were asleep or waking. He looked across at his companion, but she was listening unmoved, an arm resting on the cushioned front of their box. The quiet was unbroken, the music continued, undisturbed save for the rustle of a few late-comers tiptoeing to their seats. The overture proceeded, ebbing and flowing, theme melting into theme, as he had planned it; no break in the familiar continuity, episode on episode, till, at the end, only the violins spoke, dwelling on that minor melody which Harvey had improvised from that night when he took train for London, when he had played as never before—for her. The incomplete thing sighed out its woe, a sweet enough trifle—too sweet, perhaps—yet of a certain grace and beauty; an undeniably promising youthfulness. The conductor's wand dropped. The house hesitated a moment. Then Sopwith's friends broke the silence, applauding from the three quarters. Other hands followed, filling the theatre with an encouraging echoing and re-echoing. Merceron, deathly pale, was gazing straight ahead, speechless and vaguely wondering as to what would follow upon this opening of surprise and betrayal.

The curtain rose upon a splendid imposition, upon a libretto transformed, an Isabella masquerading as Francesca, a Lorenzo impersonifying Paolo. Harvey's music had been all but retained. The two stories were so nearly alike, and Sopwith had made full use of opportunity, had deftly altered the libretto, yet retained the setting—Sopwith, the thief!

Instead of the household of the two brothers, the movement of the first act transpired at the palace of the lord of Rimini. Very cleverly was this transposition effected. The license of the librettist had been taken full advantage of by the author of the book. He had retained the exact form of the original version, had retold his story in the very mould of Merceron's Isabella. The two tales were so nearly alike, and he had overlooked all difference, following the expression, of the music, and unfolding his tragic history with a singular dexterity. A clever rogue undoubtedly was this librettist, despite the many advantages of the situation. For the most had been in his favour. The suppressed passion of the lovers, half confessed, yet only half suspected—the two narratives were identical. Their meetings, clandestine in the one case, permitted in the other, and then the avowal (here over the open book that told of the fall of Lancelot and Guinevere), the impassioned declaration that followed—their stories held no vital difference.

Merceron sat silent to the end, till that one redeeming melody, Lorenzo's heated confession, brought down the curtain on the opening act. Again the audience wavered, till Sopwith's friends leading the applause decided the undecided. The lights flashed up, the singers responded; then a babel of chatter, a flourish of critical pencils, and invasion. And all the while Harvey had not spoken, nor had the Countess. Their thoughts were speedily disturbed. Sir Horace and Lady Waring had come in with Mrs. Hodgson.

"Rather ambitious," ventured Sir Horace. "Rather ambitious." But Harvey had no heart for discussion. He wanted fresh air.

"I am going out to see a man—excuse me for a moment?" he said, snapping his opera-hat. Then he left them.