"Why shouldn"t Corry respect his mother"s convictions? She wants to prove that women oughtn"t to shrink from fighting for what they believe, even--"
"Even with their sons?" said Waggin, tremulously. "Lady Coryston is so splendid--so splendid!"
"Even with their sons!" cried Marcia, vehemently. "You take it for granted, Waggin, that they trample on their daughters!"
Waggin protested, and slipped her thin hand into the girl"s. The note of storm in Marcia"s mood struck her sharply. She tried, for a moment, to change the subject. Who, she asked, was a tall, fair girl whom she had seen with Mr. Arthur, "a week ago" at the National Gallery? "I took my little niece--and suddenly I turned, and there at the end of the room were Mr.
Arthur--and this lady. Such a remarkable-looking young woman!--not exactly handsome--but you couldn"t possibly pa.s.s her over."
"Enid Glenwilliam!" exclaimed Marcia, with a startled voice. "But of course, Waggin, they weren"t alone?"
"Oh no--probably not!--though--though I didn"t see any one else. They seemed so full of talk--I didn"t speak to Mr. Arthur. _Who_ do you say she was?" repeated Waggin, innocently.
Marcia turned upon her.
"The daughter of the man mother hates most in the world! It"s too bad of Arthur! It"s abominable! It would kill mother if she knew! I"ve heard things said sometimes--but I never believed them for a moment. Oh, Waggin!--you _didn"t_ see them alone?"
The voice changed into what was almost a wail of indignation. "Of course Enid Glenwilliam would never consider appearances for a moment. She does exactly what suits her. She never bothers about chaperons, unless she absolutely must. When she sees what she wants she takes it. But _Arthur_!"
Marcia leaned back in the car, and as in the crush of the traffic they pa.s.sed under a lamp Waggin saw a countenance of genuine distress.
"Oh, my dear, I"m so sorry to have worried you. How stupid of me to mention it! I"m sure there"s nothing in it."
"I"ve half suspected it for the last month," said Marcia with low-toned emphasis. "But I wouldn"t believe it!--I shall tell Arthur what I think of him! Though, mind you, I admire Enid Glenwilliam myself enormously; but that"s quite another thing. It"s as though mother were never to have any pleasure in any of us! Nothing but worry and opposition!--behind her back, too."
"My dear!--it was probably nothing! Girls do just as they like nowadays, and who notices!" said Waggin, disingenuously. "And as to pleasing your mother, I know somebody who has only to put out her hand--"
"To please mother--and somebody else?" said Marcia, turning toward her with perfect composure. "You"re thinking of Edward Newbury?"
"Who else should I be thinking of!--after all you told me last week?"
"Oh yes--I like Edward Newbury"--the tone betrayed a curious irritation--"and apparently he likes me. But if he tries to make me answer him too soon I shall say No, Waggin, and there will be an end of it!"
"Marcia--dearest!--don"t be cruel to him!"
"No--but he mustn"t press me! I"ve given him hints--and he won"t take them.
I can"t make up my mind, Waggin. I can"t! It"s not only marrying him--it"s the relations. Yesterday a girl I know described a week-end to me--at Hoddon Grey. A large, smart party--evening prayers in the private chapel, _before dinner_!--n.o.body allowed to breakfast in bed--everybody driven off to church--and such a _fuss_ about Lent! It made me shiver. I"m not that sort, Waggin--I never shall be."
And as again a stream of light from a music-hall facade poured into the carriage, Waggin was aware of a flushed, rebellious countenance, and dark eyes full of some pa.s.sionate feeling, not very easy to understand.
"He is at your feet, dear goose!" murmured the little gray-haired lady--"make your own conditions!"
"No, no!--never. Not with Edward Newbury! He seems the softest, kindest--and underneath--_iron_! Most people are taken in. I"m not."
There was silence in the car. Waggin was uneasily pondering. Nothing--she knew it--would be more acceptable to Lady Coryston than this match, though she was in no sense a scheming mother, and had never taken any special pains on Marcia"s behalf. Her mind was too full of other things. Still undoubtedly this would suit her. Old family--the young man himself heir presumptive to a marquisate money--high character--everything that mortal mother could desire. And Marcia was attracted--Waggin was certain of it.
The mingled feeling with which she spoke of him proved it to the hilt. And yet--let not Mr. Newbury suppose that she was to be easily run to earth! In Waggin"s opinion he had his work cut out for him.
Covent Garden filled from floor to ceiling with a great audience for an important "first night"--there is no sight in London, perhaps, that ministers more sharply to the l.u.s.t of modern eyes and the pride of modern life. Women reign supreme in it. The whole object of it is to provide the most gorgeous setting possible, for a world of women--women old and young--their beauty or their jewels, their white necks and their gray heads; the roses that youth wears--divinely careless; or the diamonds wherewith age must make amends for lost bloom and vanished years.
Marcia never entered the Coryston box, which held one of the most coveted positions on the grand tier, without a vague thrill of exultation; that instinctive, overbearing delight in the goods of Vanity Fair, which the Greek called _hubris_, and which is only vile when it outlives youth.
It meant in her--"I am young--I am handsome--the world is all on my side--who shall thwart or deny me?" To wealth, indeed, Marcia rarely gave a conscious thought, although an abundance of it was implied in all her actions and att.i.tudes of mind. It would have seemed to her, at any rate, so strange to be without it, that poverty was not so much an object of compa.s.sion as of curiosity; the poverty, for instance, of such a man as Mr.
Lester. But behind this ignorance there was no hardness of heart; only a narrow inexperience.
The overture had begun--in a shadowy house. But the stream of the audience was still pouring in from all sides, in spite of the indignant "Hush" of those who wanted not to lose a note of something new and difficult. Marcia sat in the front of the box, conscious of being much looked at, and raising her own opera-gla.s.s from time to time, especially to watch the filling up of two rows of chairs on the floor, just below the lower tier of boxes. It was there that Mr. Newbury had told her to look for him. James, who had joined them at the entrance of the theater and was now hanging on the music, observed her once or twice uneasily. Presently he bent over.
"Marcia--you vandal!--listen!"
The girl started and blushed.
"I don"t understand the music, James!--it"s so strange and barbarous."
"Well, it isn"t Gluck, certainly," said James, smiling.
Marcia turned her face toward it. And as she did so there rose from the crash of its opening tumult, like a hovering bird in a clear s.p.a.ce of sky, a floating song of extraordinary loveliness. It rose and fell--winds caught it--s.n.a.t.c.hes of tempest overpowered it--shrieking demons rushed upon it and silenced it. But it persisted; pa.s.sing finally into a processional march, through which it was still dimly, mysteriously traceable to the end.
"The song of Iphigenia!" said James. And as the curtain rose, "And here are the gulfs of Aulis, and the Greek host."
The opera, by a young Bavarian of genius, a follower of Strauss, who had but recently captured Munich and Berlin, was based on the great play of Euripides, freely treated by a translator who had known, a hundred and fifty years after Gluck, how to make it speak, through music, to more modern ears. It was carried through without any lowering of the curtain, and the splendid story unfolded itself through a music at once sensuous and heroic, with a swiftness and a pa.s.sion which had soon gripped Covent Garden.
There, in a thousand ships, bound motionless by unrelenting winds, lies the allied host that is to conquer Troy and bring back the stolen Helen. But at the bidding of Artemis, whose temple crowns the coast, fierce, contrary blasts keep it prisoner in the harbor. h.e.l.las cannot avenge itself on the Phrygian barbarians who have carried off a free Greek woman. Artemis holds back the hunters from the prey. Why? Because, as G.o.ddess of the land, she claims her toll, the toll of human blood. Agamemnon, the leader of the host, distracted by fears of revolt and of the break-up of the army, has vowed to Artemis the dearest thing he possesses. The answer is, "Your daughter!--Iphigenia!"
Under pressure from the other chiefs of the host, and from the priests, the stricken father consents at last to send a letter to Clytemnestra at Argos, bidding her bring their young daughter to the camp, on the pretext that she is to become the bride of the hero Achilles. The letter is no sooner despatched than, tormented with remorse, he tries to recall it. In vain.
Mother and child arrive, with the babe Orestes; the mother full of exultant joy in such a marriage, the daughter thinking only of her father, on whose neck she throws herself with fond home prattle, lifting Orestes to him to kiss, saying tender, touching things--how she has missed him--how long the time has been....
The young singer, an American, with a voice and a magic reminding many an old frequenter of Covent Garden, through all difference, of Giulia Ravogli in her prime, played this poignant scene as though the superb music in which it was clothed was her natural voice, the mere fitting breath of the soul.
Marcia sat arrested. The door of the box opened softly. A young man, smiling, stood in the doorway. Marcia, looking round, flushed deeply; but in the darkness only Waggin saw it. The girl beckoned to him. He came in noiselessly, nodded to James, bowed ceremoniously to Waggin, and took a seat beside Marcia.
He bent toward her, whispering, "I saw you weren"t very full, and I wanted to hear this--with you."
"She"s good!" was all that Marcia could find to whisper in return, with a motion of her face toward the Iphigenia.
"Yes--but only as part of the poem! Don"t mistake it--please!--for the ordinary "star"--business."
"But she is the play!"
"She is the _idea_! She is the immortal beauty that springs out of sorrow. Watch the contrast between the death she shrinks from--and the death she accepts; between the horror--and the greatness! Listen!--here is the dirge music beginning."
Marcia listened--with a strange tremor of pulse. Even through the stress of the music her mind went wandering over the past weeks, and those various incidents which had marked the growth of her acquaintance with the man beside her. How long had she known him? Since Christmas only? The Newburys and the Corystons were now neighbors indeed in the country; but it was not long since his father had inherited the old house of Hoddon Grey, and of the preceding three years Edward Newbury had spent nearly two in India.
They had first met at a London dinner party; and their friendship, then begun, had ripened rapidly. But it was not till the Shrewsbury House ball that a note of excitement, of uncertain or thrilled expectation, had crept into what was at first a mere pleasant companionship. She had danced with him the whole night, reckless of comment; and had been since, it seemed to her, mostly engaged in trying to avoid him. But to-night there was no avoiding him. And as his murmured yet eager comments on the opera reached her, she became more and more conscious of his feelings toward her, which were thus conveyed to her, as it were, covertly, and indirectly, through the high poetry and pa.s.sion of the spectacle on which they both looked.
With every stage of it Newbury was revealing himself; and exploring her.
Waggin smiled to herself in the darkness of the box. James and she once exchanged glances. Marcia, to both of them, was a dim and beautiful vision, as she sat with her loosely clasped hands lying on the edge of the box, her dark head now turned toward the stage, and now toward Newbury.
The ghastly truth had been revealed; Iphigenia, within earshot, almost, of the baffled army clamoring for her blood, was clinging to her father"s knees, imploring him to save her:
"Tears will I bring--my only cunning--all I have! Round your knees, my father, I twine this body, which my mother bare you. Slay me not, before my time! Sweet, sweet is the light!--drive me not down into the halls of death. "Twas I first called you father--I, your firstborn. What fault have I in Paris"s sin? Oh, father, why, why did he ever come--to be my death?
Turn to me--give me a look--a kiss! So that at least, in dying, I may have that to remember--if you will not heed my prayers."