5
The preliminary music neared its ending; and the first part of Aliette's ordeal, even more terrible than she had anticipated, was almost over by the time that Mary O'Riordan billowed her imposing way to the front of the stage-box. Other people followed, but Mary's hoydenish bulk, draped in the gold and scarlet of some super-Wagnerian goddess, dwarfed them to the insignificance of pygmies.
Aliette's heart, still numb from its effort at self-control, gave one pleasurable beat at sight of her friend. She smiled across the house at Mary. Their eyes met, clashed. And in that moment, the house darkled.
The curtain had been up a full three minutes before Aliette realized that those blue eyes of Mary's intended the cut direct. Realizing, every nerve in her tense body throbbed with resentment at the ingratitude. Mary to cut her! Mary of all people! Mary, by whose side she had stood stanch through a year of trouble! Mary, whose affair with Letchingbury provided the very money which sent up the curtain, which bought the scenery and paid the actors of "Khorassan"!
Gradually, the first throbs of Aliette's resentment subsided, leaving her every nerve a living pain. Mary's ingratitude hurt, hurt. "Most women are awful rotters"; Mollie's words, uttered long ago at Moor Park, came back to her.
She tried to distract her mind with the play; but O'Riordan's play--poor, thinly-poetic stuff, indifferently mouthed by mummers whose sole claim to their salary was their supping-acquaintance with the fringe of Society--failed to hold her thoughts. Her thoughts hovered between the enemy audience, blur of heads below, and the two friends, her only friends in a hostile world, on either side.
Thinking of their loyalty, Aliette no longer shrank from her ordeal. Her heart swelled, resolute against all hostility. It became two hearts: the one, warm and throbbing with partizanship for the stark old lady beside her, the old lady who had never turned a hair since they entered the theater, and for the "old lady's" son, for the man whose love was a rock: the other, icy-cold, almost beatless, frozen to contempt.
What a farce was this social game! As if the world's hostility mattered! One played one's little part on the stage of life, played it as best one might to the prompting of conscience, till the curtain fell, as it was falling now to a subdued rattle of perfunctory applause and the usual "snatched" calls.
Aliette felt Ronnie's fingers tighten on her own, relax. The house lights went up.