She sang by heart the little story drawn from the writing of Jalalu’d dinu’r Rumi. The poet who had taken it had made a charming poem of it, delicate, fragile, and yet dramatic and touched with fervour, porcelain with firelight gleaming on it here and there. Lady Holme had usually a power of identifying herself thoroughly with what she was singing, of concentrating herself with ease upon it, and so compelling her hearers to be concentrated upon her subject and upon her. To-day she was deeper down in words and music, in the little drama of them, than ever before. She was the man who knocked at the door, the loved one who cried from within the house. She gave the reply, “C’est moi!” with the eagerness of that most eager of all things—Hope. Then, as she sang gravely, with tender rebuke, “This house cannot shelter us both together,” she was in the heart of love, that place of understanding. Afterwards, as one carried by Fate through the sky, she was the man set down in a desert place, fasting, praying, educating himself to be more worthy of love. Then came the return, the question, “Qui est la?” the reply;—reply of the solitary place, the denied desire, the longing to mount, the educated heart—“C’est toi!” the swiftly-opening door, the rush of feet that were welcome, of outstretched arms for which waited a great possession.
Something within her lived the song very fully and completely. For once she did not think at all of what effect she was making. She was not unconscious of the audience. She was acutely conscious of the presence of people, and of individuals whom she knew; of Fritz, of Lady Cardington, Sir Donald, even of poor, horrible Rupert Carey. But with the unusual consciousness was linked a strange indifference, a sense of complete detachment. And this enabled her to live simultaneously two lives—Lady Holme’s and another’s. Who was the other? She did not ask, but she felt as if in that moment a prisoner within her was released. And yet, directly the song was over and the eager applause broke out, a bitterness came into her heart. Her sense, banished for the moment, of her own personality and circumstances returned upon her, and that “C’est toi!” of the educated heart seemed suddenly an irony as she looked at Fritz’s face. Had any lover gone into the desert for her, fasted and prayed for her, learned for her sake the right answer to the ceaseless question that echoes in every woman’s heart?
The pianist modulated, struck the chord of a new key, paused, then broke into a languid, honey-sweet prelude. Lady Holme sang the Italian song which had made Lady Cardington cry.
Afterwards, she often thought of her singing of that particular song on that particular occasion as people think of the frail bridges that span the gulfs between one fate and another. And it seemed to her that while she was crossing this bridge, that was a song, she had a faint premonition of the land that lay before her on the far side of the gulf. She did not see clearly any features of the landscape, but surely she saw that it was different from all that she had known. Perhaps she deceived herself. Perhaps she fancied that she had divined something that was in reality hidden from her. One thing, however, is certain—that she made a very exceptional effect upon her audience. Many of them, when later they heard of an incident that occurred within a very short time, felt almost awestricken for a moment. It seemed to them that they had been visited by one of the messengers—the forerunners of destiny—that they had heard a whispering voice say, “Listen well! This is the voice of the Future singing.”
Many people in London on the following day said, “We felt in her singing that something extraordinary must be going to happen to her.” And some of them at any rate, probably spoke the exact truth.
Lady Holme herself, while she sang her second song, really felt this sensation—that it was her swan song. If once we touch perfection we feel the black everlasting curtain being drawn round us. We have done what we were meant to do and can do no more. Let the race of men continue. Our course is run out. To strive beyond the goal is to offer oneself up to the derision of the gods. In her song, Lady Holme felt that suddenly, and with great ease, she touched the perfection that it was possible for her to reach. She felt that, and she saw what she had done—in the eyes of Lady Cardington that wept, in Sir Donald’s eyes, which had become young as the eyes of Spring, and in the eyes of that poor prisoner who was the real Rupert Carey. When she sang the first refrain she knew.
“Torna in fior di giovinezza
Isaotta Blanzesmano,
Dice: Tutto al mondo e vano:
Nell’amore ogni dolcezza.”
She understood while she sang—she had never understood before, nor could conceive why she understood now—what love had been to the world, was being, would be so long as there was a world. The sweetness of love did not merely present itself to her imagination, but penetrated her soul. And that penetration, while it carried with it and infused through her whole being a delicate radiance, that was as the radiance of light in the midst of surrounding blackness—beams of the moon in a forest—carried with it also into her heart a frightful sense of individual isolation, of having missed the figure of Truth in the jostling crowd of shams.
Fritz stood there against the wall. Yes—Fritz. And he was savagely rejoicing in the effect she was making upon the audience, because he thought, hoped, that it would lessen the triumph of the woman who was punishing him.
She had missed the figure of Truth. That was very certain. And as she sang the refrain for the last time she seemed to herself to be searching for the form that must surely be very wonderful, searching for it in the many eyes that were fixed upon her. She looked at Sir Donald: