"Dear old Alston is safe."
Charmian turned her face toward the stage. Now and then she moved rather restlessly in her chair. She had a fan with her and began to use it. Then she laid it down on the ledge of the box, then took it up again, opened it, closed it, and kept it in her hand. She felt the audience almost like a weight laid upon her. Their silent attention began to frighten her. She knew that was ridiculous, that if this production did not intimately concern her the audience's silence would not strike her as strange. People listening attentively are always silent. She blamed herself for her absurdity. Leaning a little forward she could just see the outline of Madame Sennier, sitting very upright in the front of her box, with one arm and hand on the ledge. Crayford, who was determined to be "in the front artistically," kept the theater very dark when the curtain was up, in order to focus the attention of the audience on the stage. To Charmian, Madame Sennier looked like a shade, erect, almost strangely motionless, implacable. This shade drew Charmian's eyes as the act went on. She did not move her seat forward again, but she often leaned forward a little. A shade with a brain, a heart and a soul! What were they doing to-night? Charmian remembered the attempt to get the libretto away from Claude, Madame Sennier's remarks about Claude after the return from Constantine. The shade had done her utmost to ensure that this first night should never be. She had failed. And now she was sitting over there tasting her own failure. Charmian stared at her trying to triumph. All the time she was listening to the music, was saying to herself how splendid it was. They had made great sacrifices for it. And it was splendid. That was their reward.
The music sounded strangely new to her in this environment. She had heard it all at Djenan-el-Maqui, on the piano, sung by Alston and hummed by Claude. She had felt it, sometimes deeply on nights of excitement, when Claude had played till the stars were fading. She had had her favorite passages, which had always come to her out of the midst of the opera like friends, smiling, or passionate, or perhaps weeping, tugging at her heart-strings, stirring longings that were romantic. At the rehearsals she had heard the opera with the singers, the orchestra.
Yet now it seemed to her new and strange. The great audience had taken it, had changed it, was showing it to her now, was saying to her: "This is the opera of the composer, Claude Heath, a man hitherto unknown." And presently it seemed to be saying to her with insistence:
"It is useless for you to pretend to be apart from me, separate from me. For you belong to me. You are part of me. Your thought is part of my thought, your feeling is part of mine. You are nothing but a drop in me and I am the ocean."
Charmian felt as if she were struggling against this attempt of the audience to take possession of her, were fighting to preserve intact her independence, her individuality. But it became almost the business of a nightmare, this strange and unequal struggle in the artistic darkness devised by Crayford. And the audience seemed to be gaining in strength, like an adversary braced up by conflict.
Conflict! The word had appeared like a criminal in Charmian's mind. She strove vehemently to banish it. There was, there could be no conflict in such a matter as was now in hand. But, oh! this portentous silence!
It came to an end at last. The curtain fell, and applause broke forth. It resembled the applause after the first act. And once more there were three calls for the singers. Then the clapping died away and conversation broke out, spreading over the crowd. Many people got up from their seats and went out or moved about talking with acquaintances.
"I can see Mr. Van Brinen," said Charmian.
"Can you? Where is he?"