As he closed it again, she caught the name on the cover, and gave a little cry, putting out her hand.
“It was! I knew it was! I heard you——”
Wiggie grabbed the hand and squeezed it, he was so anxious to stop her. The conductor looked round hurriedly.
“Thought you were going to cry or have hysterics, Miss Leyburne! Don’t be nervous. You’ll feel as right as rain the minute you hear the first note of your beautiful voice. (I think everything is ready, now, so we can go in.) Look at Mr. Wigmore there, as easy as you like!”
Elijah smiled politely. His hands were icy, and his heart was beating in great, wavering bumps, but that had nothing to do with the conductor.
“He’s wrong, isn’t he?” the Widow whispered—she had touched his hand—and he nodded.
“It’s my belief you don’t do anything great if you’re not frightened beforehand. A self-possessed performer may get at an audience’s admiration, but it takes the inside-frightened person to get at their hearts. It’s like going into battle—the trembling Tommy hits hardest when he starts.”
Seated at last under the reading-desk palm, with the Angel beside him, the sea of faces so near seemed to rise and engulf him, turning him faint. His heart still hammered its wavering stroke, like a bad workman. It was a blessing Gardner could not hear it—Gardner in London; though it was almost a wonder, it thumped so loudly.
And then he saw Gardner, with his hatchet-face over the pew-front as if he meant to leap it—Gardner and the other dear old watchdog!—and the sickening nervousness changed to a freakish joy, a mischievous delight. Edgar looked upset; he had forgotten poor old Edgar. There were the children, too—but it didn’t do to think of them. Edgar would understand. He would have done the same himself. He sent a brilliant smile to the men in the front pew, a smile so gaily defiant that Lancaster, far behind, wondered. The organist played the first of the four big chords, but he was too busy smiling to heed, until the Angel nudged him, alarmed. But, once up, he forgot the watchdogs, forgot the palm tickling his ear, forgot even the children of whom he would not think. He was Elijah, flinging out his mighty message to a cowering people.
During his long wait following, he did not look at the audience again. They did not matter any more. The big thing that was happening was not on their side of the building. Most of the time he sat with his eyes on the well-known notes, but when he turned ever so little to the right, he could see Dandy singing with every inch of her, her rapt gaze fixed on the whirling beat. How the Dandy Shaw of Halsted would have scoffed, not unkindly, but with sincere amusement, at such rustic enthusiasm! He saw an admiring young joiner offer her a paper bag when the close air caught her throat during Obadiah’s pushed-up solo, and watched her abstract the offering without a qualm. Absurd details like these were little wind-arrows, pointing the trackless way along which she was drifting, further and further from him.