Between the acts people came in shoals to her box, all talking at once in a sort of whirl of enthusiastic congratulation; but they, too, were dim; she felt as if she scarcely knew who they were. There was but little for her to say. They were all very kind and friendly, but not one of them understood in the slightest degree how utterly vague they were to her, how little it mattered just now even to her eager and kindly soul what anybody thought or said. She could only think of the moment when Hugh would step into the carriage and she would be alone with him, driving through the gleaming, crowded streets, which, too, would be so unreal and remote. Once only did her ordinary normal perceptions usurp their usual place, and that was when an elderly banker, who was famed for wealth and musical parties, asked her if her husband could possibly be induced to sing at his forthcoming concert at “Melba prices.” She could not help laughing at that, but checked it, and said she would ask him.
And then at last and at last it was all over, and it was still all quite unreal except just for a moment, when, as Peggy left her in her box, where she meant to sit for a few minutes till the staircase and gangway were emptier, she said, “You and Hugh driving home together! Oh, Edith!”
That was real. Peggy understood.
So she waited alone while the theatre slowly emptied, and, alone, reality began to reassert itself, and, lo, all the wonderful dream of the evening was true! She had seen and heard the ideal Lohengrin in flesh and blood and voice and acting, and Lohengrin was he whose wife she was, the mother of whose child she would be. It was not a dream; she had to remind herself of that. It was all true, happening now and here to her; those people crowded round the doors and exits would be her witnesses; they, too, had seen and heard. But all that was the world’s side, “there was the wonder;” the Hugh who had driven fat London off its head to-night was but the aspect he turned to the public, to everybody who cared to pay and come and see him. That Hugh she loved; but what of the other who loved her? That was her secret Hugh.
The crowd slowly melted away from round the doors of exit, and before many minutes she went downstairs. She had told her carriage to wait at the end of the rank of those going to the side entrance, but so quickly in the last minute or two had the rank gone off that it was close to the door when she came out. So she walked a yard or two and got in, having arranged with Hugh that he should come out at this entrance. From time to time it moved a step or two nearer the door as the carriages in front of it drove off, and it was not long before she was drawn up opposite the door itself, waiting for the moment when he should appear and step in. Meantime, all the dreamlike sense of the evening was passing rapidly away; it was but a film of mist that separated her from reality. Already Lohengrin was Hugh to her, and all that was left of the dreamlike was the ignorance she was in about the other actors. She did not really know what Ortrud was like, or Telramund, still less did she know Elsa. For she, she herself, as she saw now, had been Elsa throughout. It was to her that Hugh, whether as Lohengrin, or in those few moments of reality as himself, had played. It had been she, in her thought, who had gone through the play with him, as so often she had done it at Mannington; all she knew of Elsa was that she had not been conspicuously bad, otherwise there would have been an interruption in the flow of her own artistic delight. But there had been none; there was never a performance so smooth, as her exterior sense now recognised, as that which she had just witnessed. And then there came what she had been waiting for. A boyish staccato voice said “Good night!” to the man at the door, there were two quick steps across the pavement, the door of her carriage was opened, and Hugh said “Right!” to the coachman and sat down beside her. Then the carriage moved, and a quick arm was thrown round her shoulders, and he kissed her.
“Well?” he said.
She sat upright, almost pushing him from her, and searched for and found his hands.
“You kissed my hands, you know, when I was Andrew Robb,” she said. “Oh, Hugh, don’t be ridiculous, give me your hands!”
“Ah, but what nonsense!” he said quickly.
“No, not nonsense. See, this is this dear hand and that dear hand! Oh, not yours, Hugh, but Lohengrin’s! My homage, Lohengrin!”