The house hushed and darkened till sight and sound were quenched, and only the huge red curtain was visible. Then, after dead silence, the faintest whisper of the strings began, dreaming as it were, of that which should come, like some beautiful consciousness asleep. The dream grew more vivid, though still dealing only with the swan and him who should come on the swan; it grew louder, more distinct, descending from the remote altitudes of sound to the levels of life; then, with full band, with shouting of brazen throats and ear-filling vibration of a hundred throbbing strings, it poured out the tidings of the glorious knight. And the beautiful consciousness that had but dreamed awoke to see its dream come true. It, it itself, music, filled the theatre like sunlight. Then it hushed again, repeating to itself that which it had dreamed and of which the fulfilment was now coming as the curtain rose.
The tale of slander, lying and baseless, was said, and Elsa called on the champion of whom she, too, had dreamed. Once she called, and there was no answer to her cry that died into stillness; again she called, and still salvation was withheld; but when she called the third time, a sudden stir of excitement began to move in the crowd that had waited, sorry but incredulous, and the most dramatic moment in all dramatic art grew imminent. One man pointed, and another, following his finger, whispered “A swan!” and head after head turned wondering eyes up the winding Scheldt. Another spoke of a knight who stood between its folded wings, and the buzz of the excited multitude grew higher and higher, rising on the wings of melody, blown onward, as it were, by the rushing current of the strings and the winds of the sonorous trumpets. Far away he was seen on the winding river, then nearer, and then close at hand, and the wonder died into silence, for the miracle was beyond speech. And Hugh was there!
Slowly and with very even motion the swan came to the near shore of the river. On it stood one in gleam of silver armour and pale cloak of blue, young and slim and tall—the stainless knight, the son of Parsifal.
Till that moment Edith had watched, and had felt in every nerve of her being the growing excitement of the crowded stage, the hurrying suspense and amazement of the music, and the thought of Elsa, of Lohengrin, of the play with all the perfection of this great dramatic climax had occupied her not to the exclusion—for that could not be—but to the subordination of all that it otherwise meant to her. But for one moment, as Lohengrin stepped ashore, it was Lohengrin no longer, but Hugh, her lover and her beloved, and wifehood and motherhood so stirred within her that she could look no more, and dropped her head on her hands for the wonder of all that was hers. Peggy, with quick impulsive sympathy, just laid a hand on her knee for a second, and then Edith looked up again, just smiled at her sister, and turned her eyes to the stage.
There was dead silence as the whisper of the muted violins grew mute. The crowd in the house was not less tense and motionless than the crowd on the stage. Hugh raised his arm, holding it out in gesture of farewell to his swan, standing sideways so that his face was in profile. On his head was the silver helmet with its golden wings, and from beneath it for once there drooped no long yellow effeminate locks that curled on to the knight’s shoulders, but his own dark close-cropped hair, short on the neck and crisp on his forehead. Body and legs and arms were clad in the close-fitting silver mail, and from his shoulders hung the cloak of pale blue. Never before had Lohengrin appeared thus; youth, not rouge-painted age, was his; it was no heavy-chested pendulous body, short-legged and middle-aged, that stood there. It was simply a young man, rather tall, long of thigh and slender of calf, rather brown-handed, and with a face of morning, who raised his arm in natural gracious gesture, as if alone with his feathered steed. Smooth, too, was his chin, with no overlaying of paint, but with the firm flesh of boyhood; it was with youth that his eyes were so bright and with brisk-beating blood that his lips were red.
Then he sang, and it seemed as if song was natural to him, even as speech is to others, and his voice came quite soft but sure and straight, as if a silver spear had shot from between his lips to every corner of the house.
“Nun Sie bedankt, mein lieber Schwan.”
London, fat London, just moved in its stalls and boxes and hushed again. For it was as if a fairy-tale had come true; it was surely the real Lohengrin who spoke in song, it must be Lohengrin himself!
Still in profile, he followed his swan with his eyes as it glided away at his bidding, and then he turned full-face to the house, and for one moment he looked straight across to where Edith sat. He—Hugh—had promised to look once at her if it was “all right,” as he had said. It appeared to be “all right.”
It is not only grief of which the brain can be so full that it can send to the memory cells no clear account of what it feels, knowing only that it is stunned by the violence of emotion and rendered unable to do its work, but joy can have the same effect. Thus the rest of the evening passed for Edith vaguely in point of detail. A few days ago only, on that last morning of gale at Mannington, she had thought that all that life could hold of happiness was gathered together as if under some ray-collecting lens into one point of light; but now new light had been added, a further completion was piled on what was already complete. And all through the acts that followed her mind moved as if in a dream; at one time it seemed to her that all the world of men and women, all the world even of angels and spirits was round her, looking at, absorbed in this incarnation of the spirit of music and romance, while she sat very small and quiet among them, one only among the infinite multitude, and having nothing more to do with the silver-mailed knight than any other of the listeners. Then again the aspect changed altogether, and she felt as if she was quite alone in the house, and that, as in a magic mirror, she saw some real scene of human history passing in actuality before her eyes. And then again—and this was the best of all—the mists cleared, and she knew Lohengrin, that supreme artist, nightingale-throated, to be Hugh, and Hugh was hers, and all the world were strangers in comparison. In those moments even Peggy was but an acquaintance, a moonlit figure compared to the one sunlit. It was only a play after all, and reality would begin again when she, waiting at the side entrance in her carriage for him to come, would see him step across the pavement, call “Right!” to the coachman before he got in, and sit down by her. In the interval, however, it was pleasant that Hugh was such a success, though she felt no surprise at it. Fat London was clapping its gloves to ribands at the end of the acts; it stood up again and again to welcome him. And her own darling boy was enjoying it so enormously; she could see how, as he was recalled again and again, it was no set respectful smile that was his; it was a smile of pure enjoyment, that often almost broadened into a laugh as he bowed this way and that.