Next morning, at ten o'clock, Ivan heard his quartet sung with a strictness of tempo, rhythm, and expression, far surpassing anything yet accomplished by any of the principals of the company.
By Christmas week, all Moscow knew that a Gregoriev opera, The Boyar—"written by the man who had been too drunk to conduct his symphony in the previous October, you know"—(as good an advertisement as any, and costing nothing)—was to be produced at the Grand Theatre, at eight o'clock on the evening of January 1, 1868; the evening's ballet, "Rêve d'Été" being by the same composer. Ivan's friends were in a state of high excitement at a prospective success of which Merelli seemed very sure. But they suddenly discovered that the composer himself had not the slightest intention of being present to hear his work. For three days they besieged Ivan with expostulation, incredulity, persuasion. All in vain. When, twenty minutes after the hour on the night named, the curtain rose, disclosing to the chorus a house packed to the doors, the composer's box—reserved for him—contained only the two Rubinsteins, Balakirev, Kashkine, and Laroche. Ostrovsky, the librettist, was behind the scenes, still on his knees before the Menschikov, in a mad endeavor to obtain her promise to abstain from the French habit of adding an e to the end of every word.
Ivan, deserted even by Sósha, who had a seat in the topmost gallery of the opera-house, sat before his dying fire, enduring the last throes of that long struggle for recognition which, he believed in the depths of his soul, was finally to end, to-night. It is seldom, indeed, that there does not linger, however unwelcomed, one little shred of hope for the success of one's own work. But with Ivan there now remained not even this. The struggle of the past weeks, the glaring imperfections that had crowded yesterday's dress rehearsal, had brought him despair unutterable. Up to yesterday afternoon, all had been hopelessly wrong. And the last thing he had heard, on the previous day, as he fled the theatre, had been the loud echoes of the latest quarrel between Mesdames Menschikov and Castello, in which the former sat alternately reviling her companion and wailing that her voice, on the morrow, would be a mere hoarse shred. This Ivan did not doubt:—and the first important solo of the first act, whereby he had planned to capture and hold the interest of the audience, depended wholly upon her!—Moreover, Finocchi's costumes, finished barely in time for the dress-rehearsal, had been discovered to be hopeless anachronisms, which the ridiculous little man had violently refused to have altered in the least.—And the result of Merelli's last, special appeal, Ivan had not cared to learn.
These incidents, and many earlier ones of his long season of trial, whirled in a numbing chaos through Ivan's tired brain, wreathing themselves in malevolent phantasies about the undimmed picture of his bald failure at the concert, in the presence of his father. Indeed, unsuspected though it remained by any of his friends, it was really this fact of Prince Michael's witness of his misfortune—his second disgrace—which, through all these months, had been eating, like some poisonous acid, into the very vitals of Ivan's manhood, Ivan's courage. It was evident to him that his father, having somewhere beheld a programme of the concert, finding his son's name in famous company, had determined to give him one more chance of favor. He had come to hear the symphony: to find out whether, after all, the last Gregoriev were worth something. And—he had found out, indeed!
Thus, for the thousandth time, the unhappy man reviewed the history of the past three months. Minutes dragged themselves away. His thoughts grew less keen. The intense nervousness that had possessed him earlier, diminished. Little by little his pulses quieted, his temples ceased to throb. He sat wondering, vaguely, what new labor his hands must turn to, now that he had proved himself a fool in the profession he loved. His education might, possibly, be found of some account. There were such things as army coaches, he believed:—poor, broken-down creatures, living upon broken possibilities and the sale of their commissions. Then there recurred the memory of his old tutor, Ludmillo. He had not always been unhappy. His life had been dull enough, certainly; but there was nothing of this hideous notoriety in it. He—perhaps—
The great Kremlin clock sent twelve, slow strokes booming through the frosty air. Ivan started, suddenly.—By now, at least, the performance must be at an end! And—nobody had come to him!—They had all dreaded the breaking of the news. Even Sósha:—Then it had failed!—Failed.—Ah, that spark of hope! Good Heavens! Had it actually existed, after all? Why else this terrible pain? this sickness? This conscious pallor?—Nonsense! Had he dreamed of anything else for one moment? He tried, desperately, for a shred of philosophy; and then found himself pacing the floor, knees trembling, heart in throat, that sense of nauseated faintness boding little good to a man seeking tranquillity.—Truly, it was in the ten ensuing minutes that the climax of his long, desperate struggle was reached, at last.
Hark! What hear we afar off? This pæan of trumpets? this rolling of chariot-wheels? No ghosts, to-night. Surely, this time, these are the gods themselves, that wait without this humble door!
At least the sound that smote Ivan's ears was real enough. A burly fist was pounding on the knocker. An instant's pause. Then—ah, then he flew, shakily, to open;—to be greeted by a volley of wreaths, of ribbons, more precious yet, of flowers—just single, spontaneous flowers, perfumed and wilted from their recent warm contact with human flesh, a spangle or a shred of lace still hanging to more than one audacious thorn!
Ivan, surrounded, heaped, by these tributes, deathly white and visibly shaking now, received the rush of a dozen men, and,—wonder of wonders, one woman! For presently, out of the mêlée of shaking hands and emotional bear-hugs, he found himself gazing into the velvet eyes of—Irina Petrovna, from whom, hopelessly dazed, he turned to the damp and shining face of Nicholas Rubinstein; (Anton, be it observed, not having come!)