“Don’t let us talk of it,” she said. “Let us say it is sufficient that you are happy now, and that Hugh is. It is stupid to think unless one feels one has to think. It is anyhow a divine gift to receive without question; children can do it, you can do it. This too: I longed only, dear, as you know, for your happiness and his. You have had, both of you, a great shining piece of it already, and why not many more shining pieces? He has had no less than you. By the way, what nonsense you talked about giving him nothing in return! You have given him not only yourself but himself. You have made him. Anyone can see that.”
Then she took Edith’s hand.
“One word more,” she said. “In a few months you will give him a child. And, oh, my dear, when you see your husband looking at your child! Why—why, you hear the morning stars singing together!”
There was no more of intimate talk after this, and, indeed, but a moment after they turned out of Long Acre into Bow Street, and the immediate excitement of the evening again took possession of Peggy.
“Oh, we’re here,” she half groaned, “and it matters so much to us and so little to the people in the street! Look at that footman’s impassive back on the box. In a minute he will open the door, with a set wooden face, and I shall say ‘Side entrance at twelve,’ and he will touch his hat and go away. And, oh, Edith, what will have happened by twelve? By the way, in case I forget, as I probably shall, you both come down to Cookham, don’t you, to-morrow?”
Though they were in such good time the house was already half full, and was filling now with great rapidity so that the alleys and gangways were choked by a crowd that evidently wanted to get into its places for the overture. Early as it was in the season, it was certainly going to be a crowded house, for the boxes were already fuller than the stalls, a sure criterion that both would be crammed before the night was many minutes older. And the indescribable glitter was there, the subdued radiance of the shimmer of silk and the harder, more brilliant gleam of thousands of jewels all round the rows of boxes that made moving and changing points of coloured light as if a swarm of gem-like fireflies had settled all over the house. And as Peggy saw that, while she stood for a moment or two in the front of her box, looking and being looked at, she felt, despite Edith’s triumphant confidence, a sudden sinking of the heart. All her world, all Edith’s, all Hugh’s was here; his peers had come to judge him. He would soon step on to that vast stage and have to please them, for they had paid to be pleased. It struck her suddenly that the artist’s life was an awful one; whether he sang to the tiara-wearers and the stars and garters, or whether in a music-hall he did card tricks, it was all one. He had guaranteed to please; if he did not he was a swindler, a fraud. But while for them only their guinea was at stake, for him his career was at stake. True, it was no question of bread-and-butter for him, as it might be for the Peckham conjurer, whose failure to please might be a step along the road of starvation; but the very fact that that stake was not there made the other, his success or failure as an artist, appear the more stupendous. For the moment she wished with all her heart that he had not been persuaded to appear. But it was even at the moment a slight consolation to her to know how completely she personally had failed to influence him. Edith was responsible, and Edith was radiant.
The two were alone in the box in the middle of the grand tier, and Peggy drew her chair to the front, and, in order to occupy herself for these dreadful minutes, took her glasses and searched for friends and acquaintances. Sometimes the sight of so many familiar faces gave her pleasure; at another moment it seemed to her quite dreadful that everybody should have come like this. She would sooner it had been a wet night, or that there was some great counter-attraction. And she groaned!
“Oh, dear, I have never seen so many people whom I knew together before!” she said. “They have all come to see Hugh; I see hundreds who never by any chance come to the opera at all. Oh, there is Canon Alington in the stalls with his wife! They have got a copy of ‘Lohengrin,’ words and music, and will probably follow it instead of looking. How precisely like them! I wish I could tell Hugh that; it would cheer him. Doesn’t it cheer you, Edith?”
“I don’t want cheering.”
“No, I forgot. I think it is scarcely human of you. Oh, the lights are going out. Canon Alington won’t be able to read after all.”