Sabine said nothing. Fascinated, she watched him quietly until, as the music died suddenly, the dancer stood motionless as a statue of bronze and gold. There was a ripple of embarrassed applause and she disappeared, then another hush and the nervous murmur of many voices. On her little throne Thérèse, like a plump Buddha, nodded her approval and beat her plump hands together. “C’est une vraie artiste,” she murmured, leaning toward Mrs. Sigourney, in whose eyes there glittered the light of jealousy at being outdone in spectacularity by a hired entertainer.
In her corner Sabine said, “Beautiful!” To which young Callendar made no reply. He fingered his mustache and presently, smiling slowly, he murmured, “Mama shouldn’t have done it. She has shocked some of them. This isn’t Paris. Not yet!”
They were different from the others—Thérèse and her son.
While he was still speaking the gypsies deserted the stage, leaving it bare now save for the great piano. Again a brief hush and there emerged from behind the painted screen with a curious effect of abruptness and lack of grace a tall girl, very tall and very straight, with smooth black hair done in the style of Cléo de Merode and cheeks that were flushed. She wore a plain gown of black very tight and girdled with rhinestones that, shimmering, threw off shattered fragments of light as she walked. Her strong white arms were bared to the shoulder. There was pride in her walk, and assurance, yet these things hid a terror so overpowering that only those who sat quite near saw that her lip was bleeding where she had bitten it.
On her little throne Thérèse Callendar in cold blood waited. She wondered, doubtless, whether Sanson had failed her, and slowly she began to perceive that he had not. Somehow as she emerged from behind the screen, the American girl captured the imagination of her audience; it was as if she dominated them by some unreal power. They stirred and looked more closely. It was not altogether a matter of beauty, for the dancer who had preceded her was by all the rules far more beautiful. It was something beyond mere physical beauty. It emanated from her whole body, running outward, engulfing all the little audience. They became aware of her.
“Hm!” murmured Mrs. Callendar. “Here is something new. Something magnificent. A born actress ... crude still, but with magnetism!” And she raised her lorgnettes and peered very hard with her short sighted little eyes.
To Richard Callendar, Sabine murmured, “Interesting! Who is she?”
“She’s very handsome.... A discovery of Mama’s.”
And then, seating herself the girl began after a shower of liquid notes, to play, softly and suggestively, a Chopin valse, one that was filled with melody and simple rhythm. After the hot passion of the dancer she filled the great room with the effect of a soft wind infinitely cool and lovely, serene in its delicacy. She appeared presently to forget her fright and gave a performance that was beautiful not alone in sound but in manner as well. It may have been that old Sanson taught her that a great performance meant more than merely making beautiful sounds. All her face and body played their part in the poise, the grace of every movement, the sweep and the gesture. But it is more probable that she was born knowing these things, for they are a matter more of instinct than of training and lie thus beyond the realm of mere instruction.
There could be no doubt of the impression she made, yet in all the audience there was none, unless it was old Thérèse Callendar, who suspected that she had never before played in the presence of anything but a small town audience. There was in her performance the fire of wild Highland ancestors, the placidity of English lanes, the courage of men who had crossed mountains into a wilderness, perhaps even the Slavic passion of a dim ancestress brought from Russia to live among the dour Scots of Edinburgh, the hard, bright intelligence of Gramp, and the primitive energy of Hattie Tolliver. There was all the stifled emotion pent so long in a heart dedicated to secrecy, and the triumph of wild dreams; and there was too a vast amount of passion for that little company who believed in her, whom she dared not betray by failure ... for Lily whose very gown she wore, and the withered Miss Ogilvie; for Gramp, and young Fergus who worshiped her with his eyes, for her gentle father and the fierce old woman in Shane’s Castle; but most of all for that indomitable and emotional woman whom she must repay one day by forcing all the world to envy her.