CHAPTER XIX
THE "FIRST NIGHT" PERFORMANCE
The curtain fell amidst a roar of applause, and the lights flashed up over the auditorium once more. It was the first night performance of "Mrs. Fleming's Husband," and the house was packed with the usual crowd of first-nighters, critics, and members of "the" profession who were anxious to see Miss de Gervais in the new part Max Errington had created for her.
Diana and Joan Stair were in a box, escorted only by Jerry, since Max had firmly refused to come down to the theatre for the first performance.
"I can't stand first nights," he had said. "At least, not of my own plays." And not even Diana's persuasions had availed to move him from this decision.
Joan was ecstatic in her praise.
"Isn't Adrienne simply wonderful?" she exclaimed, as the music of the entr'acte stole out from the hidden orchestra.
"'M, yes." Diana's reply lacked enthusiasm.
Joan, if she could not boast great powers of intuition, was dowered with a keen observation, and she had not spent a week at Lilac Lodge without putting two and two together and making four of them. She had noticed a great change in Diana. The girl was moody and unusually silent; her gay good spirits had entirely vanished, and more than once Joan had caught her regarding her husband with a curious mixture of resentment and contempt in her eyes. Joan was frankly worried over the state of affairs.
"Why this nil admirari attitude?" she asked. "Have you and Adrienne quarrelled?"
"Quarrelled?" Diana raised her brows ever so slightly. "What should we quarrel about? As a matter of fact, I really don't see very much of her nowadays."
"So I imagined," replied Joan calmly. "When I stayed with you last May, either she came to the Lodge, or you went to Somervell Street, every day of the week. This time, you've not seen each other since I came."
"No? I don't think"—lightly—"that Adrienne cares much for members of her own sex. She prefers—their husbands."
Joan stared in amazement. The little acid speech was so unlike Diana that she felt convinced it sprang from some new and strong antagonism towards the actress. What could be the cause of it? Diana and Adrienne had been warm friends only a few months ago!
Joan's eyes travelled from Diana's small, set face to Jerry's pleasant boyish one. The latter had opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it, and closed it again, reddening uncomfortably, and his dismayed expression was so obvious as to be almost comic.
The rise of the curtain for the third and last act put a summary end to any further conversation and Joan bent her attention on the stage once more, though all the time that her eyes and ears were absorbing the shifting scenes and brilliant dialogue of the play a little, persistent inner voice at the back of her brain kept repeating Diana's nonchalant "I really don't see very much of her nowadays," and querying irrepressibly, "Why not?"
Meanwhile, Diana, unconscious of the uneasy curiosity she had awakened in the mind of Joan, was watching the progress of the play intently. How designedly it was written around Adrienne de Gervais—calculated to give every possible opportunity to a fine emotional actress! Her lips closed a little more tightly together as the thought took hold of her. The author must have studied Adrienne, watched her every mood, learned every twist of her temperament, to have portrayed a character so absolutely suited to her as that of Mrs. Fleming. And how could a man know a woman's soul so well unless—unless it were the soul of the woman he loved? That was it; that was the explanation of all those things which had puzzled, and bewildered her for so long. And the author was her husband!
Diana, staring down from her box at that exquisite, breathing incarnation of grace on the stage below, felt that she hated Adrienne. She had never hated any one before, and the intensity of her feeling frightened her. Since a few months ago, strange, deep emotions had stirred within her—a passion of love and a passion of hatred such as in the days of her simple girlhood she would not have believed to be possible to any ordinary well-brought-up young Englishwoman. That Max was capable of a fierce heat of passion, she knew. But then, he was not all English; wilder blood ran in his veins. She could imagine his killing a man if driven by the lash of passionate jealousy. But she had never pictured herself obsessed by hate of a like quality.
And yet, now, as her eyes followed Adrienne's slender figure, with its curious little air of hauteur that always set her so apart from other women, moving hither and thither on the stage, her hands clenched themselves fiercely, and her grey eyes dilated with the intensity of her hatred. Almost—almost she could understand how men and women killed each other in the grip of a jealous love. . . .
The play was ended. Adrienne had bowed repeatedly in response to the wild enthusiasm of the audience, and of a sudden a new cry mingled with the shouts and clapping.
"Author! Author!"
Adrienne came forward again and bowed, smilingly shaking her head, gesturing a negative with her hands. But still the cry went on, "Author! Author!"—the steady, persistent drone of an audience which does not mean to be denied.
Diana experienced a brief thrill of triumph. She felt convinced that Adrienne would have liked to have Max standing beside her at this moment. It would have set the seal on an evening of glorious success, completed it, as it were. And he had refused to come, declined—so Diana put it to herself—to share the evening's triumph with the actress who had so well interpreted his work. At least this would be a pin-prick in the enemy's side!
And then—then—a hand pulled aside the heavy folds of the stage curtain, and the next moment Max and Adrienne were standing there together, bowing and smiling, while the audience roared and cheered its enthusiasm.
Diana could hardly believe her eyes. Max had told her so emphatically that he would not come. And now, he was here! He had lied to her! The affair had been pre-arranged between him and Adrienne all the time? Only she—the wife!—had been kept in the dark. Probably he had spent the entire evening behind the scenes. . . . In her overwrought condition, no supposition was too wild for credence.
Vaguely she heard some one at the back of the house shout "Speech!" and the cry was taken up by a dozen voices, but Max only laughed and shook his head, and once more the heavy curtains fell together, shutting him and Adrienne from her sight.
Mechanically Diana gathered up her wraps and prepared to leave the box.
"Aren't you coming round behind to congratulate them, Mrs. Errington?"
Jerry's astonished tones broke on her ears as she turned down the corridor in the direction of the vestibule.
"No," she replied quietly. "I'm going home."
* * * * * *
"You told me you wouldn't come to the theatre—and you intended going all the time!"
Diana's wraps were flung on the chair beside her, and she stood, a slim, pliant figure in her white evening gown, defiantly facing her husband.
"No, I'd no intention of going. I detest first nights," he answered.
"Then why were you there? Oh, I don't believe it—I don't believe it! You simply wanted to spend the evening with Adrienne; that was why you refused to go with me."
"Diana!" Max spoke incredulously. "You can't believe—you can't think that!"
"But I do think that!"—imperiously. "What else can I think?" Her long-pent jealousy had broken forth at last, and the words raced from her lips. "You refused to come when I asked you—offered me Jerry as an escort instead. Jerry!"—scornfully—"I'm to be content with my husband's secretary, I suppose, so that my husband himself can dance attendance on Adrienne de Gervais?"
Max stood motionless, his eyes like steel.
"You are being—rather childish," he said at last, with slow deliberation. His cool, contemptuous tones cut like a whip.
She had been rapidly losing her self-command, and, reading the intense anger beneath his outward calm, she made an effort to pull herself together.
"Childish?" she retorted. "Yes, I suppose it is childish to mind being deceived. I ought to have been prepared for it—expected it."
At the note of suffering in her voice the anger died swiftly out of his eyes.
"You don't mean that, Diana," he said, more gently.
"Yes, I do. You warned me—didn't you?—that there would be things you couldn't explain. I suppose"—bitterly—"this is one of them!"
"No, it is not. I can explain this. I didn't intend coming to-night, as I told you. But Miss de Gervais rang up from the theatre and begged me to come, so, of course, as she wished it—"
"'As she wished it!' Are her wishes, then, of so much more importance than mine?"
Errington was silent for a moment. At last he replied quietly:—
"You know they are not. But in this case, in the matter of the play, she is entitled to every consideration."
Diana's eyes searched his face. Beneath the soft laces of her gown her breast still rose and fell stormily, but she had herself in hand now.
"Max, when I married you I took . . . something . . . on trust." She spoke slowly, weighing her words, "But I didn't expect that something to include—Adrienne! What has she to do with you?"
Errington's brows came sharply together. He drew a quick, short breath as though bracing himself to meet some unforeseen danger.
"I've written a play for her," he answered shortly.
"Yes, I know. But is that all that there is between you—this play?"
"I can't answer that question," he replied quietly.
Diana flung out her hand with a sudden, passionate gesture.
"You've answered it, I think," she said scornfully.
He took a quick stride towards her, catching her by the arms.
"Diana"—his voice vibrated—"won't you trust me?"
"Trust you! How can I?" she broke out wildly. "If trusting you means standing by whilst Adrienne— Oh, I can't bear it. You're asking too much of me, Max. I didn't know . . . when you asked me to trust you . . . that it meant—this! . . . And there's something else, too. Who are you? What is your real name? I don't even know"—bitterly—"whom I've married!"
He released her suddenly, almost as though she had struck him.
"Who has been talking to you?" he demanded, thickly.
"Then it's true?"
Diana's hands fell to her sides and every drop of colour drained away from her face. The question had been lying dormant in her mind ever since the day when Olga Lermontof had first implanted it there. Now it had sprung from her lips, dragged forth by the emotion of the moment. And he couldn't answer it!
"Then it's true?" she repeated.
Errington's face set like a mask.
"That is a question you shouldn't have asked," he replied coldly.
"And one you cannot answer?"
He bent his head.
"And one I cannot answer."
Very slowly she picked up her wraps.
"Thank you," she said unsteadily. "I'll—I'll go now."
He laid his hand deliberately on the door-handle.
"No," he said. "No, you won't go. I've heard what you have to say; now you'll listen to me. Good God, Diana!" he continued passionately. "Do you think I'm going to stand quietly by and see our happiness wrecked?"
"I don't see how you can prevent it," she said dully.
"I? No; I can do nothing. But you can. Diana, beloved, have faith in me! I can't explain those things to you—not now. Some day, please God, I shall be able to, but till that day comes—trust me!" There was a depth of supplication and entreaty in his tone, but it left her unmoved. She felt frozen—passionless.
"Do you mean—do you mean that Adrienne, your name, everything, is all part of—of what you can't tell me? Part of—the shadow?"
He was silent a moment. Then he answered steadily:—
"Yes. That much I may tell you."
She put up her hand and pushed back her hair impatiently from her forehead.
"I can't understand it . . . I can't understand it," she muttered.
"Dear, must one understand—to love? . . . Can't you have faith?"
His eyes, those blue eyes of his which could be by turns so fierce, so unrelenting, and—did she not know it to her heart's undoing?—so unutterably tender, besought her. But, for once, they awakened no response. She felt cold—quite cold and indifferent.
"No, Max," she answered wearily. "I don't think I can. You ask me to believe that there is need for you to see so much of Adrienne. At first you said it was because of the play. Now you say it has to do with this—this thing I may not know. . . . I'm afraid I can't believe it. I think a man's wife should come first—first of anything. I've tried—oh, I've tried not to mind when you left me so often to go to Adrienne. I used to tell myself that it was only on account of the play. I tried to believe it, because—because I loved you so. But"—with a bitter little smile—"I don't think I ever really believed it—I only cheated myself. . . . There's something else, too—the shadow. Baroni knows what it is—and Olga Lermontof. Only I—your wife—I know nothing."
She paused, as though expecting some reply, but Max remained silent, his arms folded across his chest, his head a little bent.
"I was only a child when you married me, Max," she went on presently.
"I didn't realise what it meant for a husband to have some secret
business which he cannot tell his wife. But I know now what it means.
It's merely an excuse to be always with another woman—"
In a stride Max was beside her, his eyes blazing, his hands gripping her shoulders with a clasp that hurt her.
"How dare you?" he exclaimed. "Unsay that—take it back? Do you hear?"
She shrank a little, twisting in his grasp, but he held her remorselessly.
"No, I won't take it back. . . . Ah! Let me go, Max, you're hurting me!"
He released her instantly, and, as his hands fell away from her shoulders, the white flesh reddened into bars where his fingers had gripped her. His eyes rested for a moment on the angry-looking marks, and then, with an inarticulate cry, he caught her to him, pressing his lips against the bruised flesh, against her eyes, her mouth, crushing her in his arms.
She lay there passively; but her body stiffened a little, and her lips remained quite still and unresponsive beneath his.
"Diana! . . . Beloved! . . ."
She thrust her hands against his chest.
"Let me go," she whispered breathlessly, "Let me go. I can't bear you to touch me."
With a quick, determined movement she freed herself, and stood a little away from him, panting.
"Don't ever . . . do that . . . again. I—I can't bear you to touch me . . . not now."
She made a wavering step towards the door. He held it open for her, and in silence she passed out and up the stairs. Presently, from the landing above, he heard the lock of her bedroom door click into its socket. . . .