An Opera and Lady Grasmere/Book 2/Chapter 8

ARVEY'S self-possession had returned to him. The interview with Sopwith was succeeded by a calm, a passionate quietude; his nerves were steel, his thoughts perfectly controlled. His will power now gripped his whole being as in a vice. The tumult, the fever of revolt, which had seized upon him in the theatre, had given way to this colder passion. Sopwith's hysteria and incoherence had confronted him, a blurred reflection of his own excess, a danger-signal warning him of his own nearness to the chaotic.

He had left Lady Grasmere's box with a mind whirling methodless and destructive through his own career: for, with this reintroduction to Isabella, to this work of his, to this epitome of all that had been altruistic in his life, the musician had reawakened; the master-passion that had slumbered these nine months had opened wide its eyes, had called to him, and he had leapt upright at the sound. The craving of the artist to bring forth, the hunger to create, and the irresistible impulse towards expression, the full lust of conquest, had returned—a tide broad as infinity. Rushing and foaming and tumbling, it had swept down all the little dykes which he had built. And he had breasted these waters, had struck out alone from the dry land, had turned his face from all his erstwhile sheltering places—such refuges were pitiful! The half-life he had been leading, the people he had led it with, were alike pitiful and infirm. Theirs was the true half-world.

The desire to be alone, alone with the present and the future, alone as henceforth he must always be, had impelled him out of doors. He had taken his agony into the street, had paced up and down with it, till Sopwith had met him with another drama.

At first a play of marionettes, this drama of Sopwith's had not impinged until from the pigmy spectacle had developed a more pressing, immediate, active drama than Harvey's own, a tragi-comedy that had turned his inward-looking eyes outward. Only caused him to reverse his gaze, no single emotion. The com- poser's ragings had left him unmoved, for the material success or non-success of Isabella had no share in his own plight, and his fatherhood was intact—a wilderness of Sopwiths could not deprive him of this fatherhood, although they might steal his child. The one effect of the composer's moral dishevelment was to cause Harvey to turn his gaze outward; and he had recognised the drunken helot, a chaos that neared his own. The spectacle made him gather in his wandering senses, revert to sobriety. By the time that Sopwith had rushed off, reanimated by his audience's applause, Merceron had come to a complete understanding with himself. He regained the Countess' box, erect and self-possessed.

Lady Grasmere was surrounded by a changing group of visitors, the interval before the last act was at its noon. She gave Harvey a smile of welcome as he entered, and, for a moment, his own face softened.

Only Lady Waring remarked upon his lengthy absence, pouncing down upon him with—

"Drove you away, did it; come now, it wasn't quite as bad as all that? "

"A matter of taste," returned Harvey, grimly calm.

The Marquis of Stoke turned to him.

"Your friend, Mr. Sopwith, will have to try again. I don't say but that he has the root of the matter in him, but at present——" The tone of the voice and a gesture completed the sentence.

"Perhaps he will try again," said Harvey.

Here a Lady Soames joined in the discussion.

"The second act rather missed fire," she shrilly declared; " but there's the third—the third may pull it off, don't-cher know," and she wagged her head mysteriously. She was the proprietress of a well-known racing stable, and therefore a woman of much experience.

The Countess had made no remark.

The discussion continued.

"That song in the first act was quite pretty; I shall have to get that song," said Lady Waring.

"Wonder where he took it from?" drawled a well-known critic, who formed one of the company.

"Think he—think he inserted it?" asked Lady Soames.

"That has been done before," the Marquis gravely intoned.

Lady Grasmere was still only a listener.

The Marquis continued:

"I am disappointed; the work is not what it should be—not what it should be."

"A sincere opinion is always valuable," Harvey slowly returned; "even when it is worthless," he added, grimly.

Lady Horace, who had heard, shook a forefinger at him.

"Wicked," she said, laughing, "very wicked!"

Lord Stoke was unconsciously proceeding with further deliverances.

"Who's the American girl in the Bullers' box?" asked Lady Soames.

"Pretty girl, isn't she?" said the critic; "I thought she was French."

"Only the hair: the face is American, and so's the jewellery," diagnosed one of the men.

The conversation drifted from Sopwith's opera into more familiar channels. Only the Marquis clung to matters musical.

"I'm sorry," he said to Harvey; "I thought the young man might have made a beginning. There's a want of it—we English are terribly backward."

"He's young," answered Harvey, with twitching nerves.

"Yes—yes," the Marquis dubiously agreed.

They were interrupted by a new-comer, a lady whose evening had been a distracting medley of curiosity and generous applause.

"What do you think of it, Marquis?"

She rattled on without giving the old gentleman a chance of venting an opinion.

"We've all been clappin' as hard as we could. Mr. Sopwith's such a nice young man, and so very interesting; he dined with us the night before last, and we all promised we'd come and see him through: you 'll keep it up afterwards, and make him come on; and you, too, Mr. Merceron?" she pleaded.

And Mrs. Hopgood-Smyth smiled her sweetest on them and Lady Grasmere, then darted off to another box. Besides applauding herself, she was evidently bent on being the cause of applause in others.

"I'm going back to Mrs. Hodgson and Sir Horace—he's looking lonely!" cried Lady Waring, laying down an opera-glass. "Anybody supping at the Savoy—you—you?" She looked round as she spoke. "No—no? See you again then. Good-night."

"What are you going to say about the thing?" asked someone of the critic.

"State secret," he answered mysteriously "I must go downstairs again and find out—can't think about music up here."

He accentuated the compliment with a gallant inclination towards Lady Grasmere, and then went en to the verandah and smoked a cigarette, pondering over the new American beauty, his tailor's bill, Saturday's damnation of Francesca, and various other matters, till the bell rang for the final act.

In Lady Grasmere's box the coming and going continued. The previous conversations were repeated with temperamental differences. Harvey, rigidly courteous, suffered all these bland inanities, could even afford to smile over them. For to-morrow he would be rid of all these people, he would be at work again, and all these peacocking nonentities with their strident voices, steady conceit, and hundred limitations—even their very ignorance was limited, he reflected with a certain grim mirthfulness—all these sawdust masqueraders would be but an absurd recollection.

The chatter about him ran on to the end, till the conductor reappeared. And all the while Lady Grasmere had said no word to him; indeed, he had hardly heard her voice.