by Edith Nesbit
“Yes, my dear, you are,” said the uncle, “and here I am at sixty-eight as sound as a bell.”
“Ah,” said the aunt, “it’s all very well. Henry, we must be moving; we’re lunching at the Jones’s. Good-bye for the present, Edmund. Don’t be late for dinner, and I do hope you wear a thick vest under your evening shirt. I always tell your uncle . . .”
He got away on that, and bought half a dozen papers at the corner of Trafalgar Square, and stood there turning them over with hands that trembled, and trying to look at them with eyes that were too eager to be able to focus the print. He stood there quite careless of the people who bumped and pushed and hustled by him until a policeman noticed him, thought he had been there quite long enough, and moved him on.
Then he went down into the Embankment Gardens, and presently found something that looked as though it might be what he wanted. The search had been complicated by the fact that Sandra had not told him the man’s name. It had not seemed to matter then.
“Death of a talented composer. We regret to record the death of Mr. Isidore Somerville Saccage, Mus. Bac., whose compositions have given pleasure to so many. Twenty years ago he was prominently before the public, but he retired into private life unable to bear the bitter jealousies and trivial annoyances incident to his profession, and has since his retirement lived almost the life of a hermit among his books, his flowers, and his beloved music. Double pneumonia was the cause of death.”
Mr. Templar had never heard of Mr. Saccage before, but the Daily Monocle, it seemed, had. He turned to the other papers. Each contained the same paragraph, or a modification of it. No other musician’s death was recorded. This must be the man. He turned to the list of deaths on the front page. Yes.
“SACCAGE. — At his residence at Stoke-Newington, on August the 15th, of pneumonia, Isidore Somerville Saccage, Mus. Bac. Friends will please accept this, the only intimation. No flowers.”
Templar bundled the papers together, got up from the iron seat, and stood a moment in the sunshine. He wanted to take his hat off — to thank Something or Somebody.
“He’s come across a bit of luck all right, anyhow,” said a binder’s girl to her pal. “ Wish you joy, mister,” she said impudently as she passed him. And laughed loud at the exquisite joke.
But Templar said “ Thank you very much “ so gravely and kindly that she was abashed; and, mumbling, “No offence meant,” hurried her friend away, and did not even look back. It was to her that he took off his hat.
He got back to his rooms, cut the two paragraphs from one of the papers and pinned them to the letter he wrote.
The letter was short.
“Where can I see you?” it said, with due endearments. That was all. He wanted her to have it at once. There might be a rehearsal or a matinee or something. If he took it to the theatre now, perhaps she would get it quite soon.
There was no matinee — and no rehearsal. Madame Sylvia would receive the letter when she arrived at the theatre that evening, not sooner. No, there were no seats to be had.
On which, Templar demanded to see the Management. And the Management being in a good humour, let itself be seen. Templar expected it to be a fat man with thick features and a big cigar between wet lips. It was a lean dry man of, at most, thirty, with a humorous eye nestling in a net of wrinkles.
“Your business, sir?” it said.
“I want,” said Templar very slowly, “ a box for to-night. In fact,” he added still more deliberately, “ I must have it.”
“There is not a seat in the house,” said the Management impatiently; “they ought to have told you so at the box office. Is there anything else you wished to see me about?” He turned towards the box office.
“The circumstances are peculiar,” said Templar. “If you’ll come three steps this way, I’ll tell you something that will surprise you. The lady you call Sylvia is going to marry
me.”
“That so?” said the Management imperturbably.
“There have been obstacles,” Templar went on coolly; “these are now removed. My relations wish to see Madame Sylvia. And I have promised to get them a box.”
“A line from the lady might make some difference,” the Management admitted.
“That’s just it,” said Templar. “She doesn’t know. And I” want to tell her myself. It’s a rather romantic business altogether. You see, we parted forever, and now it’s all right. And she doesn’t know. If I tell her before the performance it might upset her — prevent her dancing or something. I shall sit well back in the box — she won’t see me — and then tell her afterwards. It’s her last night this week. She’ll have a day or two to think it over. Come — I know these things can be worked. I’ll give thirty guineas for a box.”
“That’s not business,” the Management reminded him reprovingly. “The box is six guineas.” Then it stood in thought.
“How am I to know all this is so,” it said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Templar.
“Oh, I don’t mean I doubt your word,” said the other. “Don’t you think that: but if there were some mistake?”
“The mistake will be if you don’t get me a box,” said Templar. “ You know her. How do you think she’ll take it when she knows you wouldn’t let me in — on this night of all nights?”
The Management did know her. It knew that she was capable of leaving him on an instant’s pique, and though he might make her pay forfeit, that would not fill his house as she had filled it. Then there was Mr. Mosenthal, a power behind those scenes. If this were true, and the Management thought it was — a refusal would only exasperate the girl and her lover and would not retard that abandonment of the boards which marriage usually spelt. If it were not true — well, this man’s six guineas were as good as the next man’s: and he seemed a gentleman, he wouldn’t make a scene or anything.
“Well?” said Templar.
“Well,” said the Management, “ as a matter of fact, there is a box. Lady Jute — killed by her own motor this morning — yes, there is a box.”
“It is an odd thing,” said Templar, relaxing his face to a smile that would have convinced the Management more than any words could have done that he was indeed a lover beloved, “ it’s an odd thing, but somehow I knew all the time that there was a box.”
Then they both laughed, and Templar left the theatre with the laurels of victory and a six guinea slip of paper.
CHAPTER X. LOVERS’ MEETING
That was how it happened that when Sylvia stood that night before her audience she stood before her lover, and among the hands that applauded the radiant appearance his hands were.
The aunt, looking really very nice in her black satin, and old Honiton sat in the front of the box with the uncle.
Templar, true to his understanding with the Management, kept well back among the shadows.
And Sylvia danced. Pan was a triton now. A glittering, scaly fish-tail shewed instead of the poor lame foot, and the other foot that did not match. His golden hair was crowned with brown, glistening, wet seaweed, and from a collar of seaweed trails of it drooped above his chest and arms. The music he made came from his pipe — but it seemed as though it came from a long seashell that he held to his lips.
And Sylvia danced. How pretty she was — how dear! How fresh and sweet, how lovely and beloved! Mr. Templar, lurking behind his aunt, longed to cry out in the face of the crowded house: “She is mine. She belongs to me,” to catch her in his arms then and there, and to carry her away to that island which glowed in faint amber and opal and gold far away across the painted sea of the scene behind her.
All the jealous irritation that he had felt in gazing on her face, gay in spite of what lay between them, had vanished now. Now he had eyes to see that she had been brave, not heartless — for as he watched her, the conviction grew in him that she also knew that now nothing lay between them. Nothing but love. He knew that she knew it — because the unclouded sunlight of joy in her eyes shewed him for the fir
st time that the light that had been there in the dances of these long weeks had been only the light of a candle carefully lit and guarded. And the delicate, joyous abandon of her every movement was new — new as his own new joy.
The dance ended.
“It is pretty,” said the aunt. “ Do you remember Miss Clara Vaughan, Henry. She reminds me of her a little. How did you like it, Henry?”
“It’s remarkable, remarkable,” he said. “ She is certainly a very talented young woman. She doesn’t look a day over eighteen. And yet I suppose she must be.”
“Oh, you may depend she’s over thirty,” said the aunt confidently. “ All these actresses are. But they always make up young. I’m sure it’s wonderful how they do it.”
“She is only twenty-one,” said Edmund shortly.
“Come out and take a turn,” said the uncle. “ There’s an interval, I suppose.”
“Only a minute or two while they change the scene,” said Edmund, but he rose and followed his uncle.
Outside, “My boy,” the uncle said, “I’m sorry to see this. I don’t want to preach, dear lad — young men will be young men, but I’m sorry to see it.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” lied Edmund.
“You shouldn’t look at her like that, you know,” the uncle went on. “Lord, I’ve been young myself, and no one saw it but me. But you should be careful. There’s many a young man has had reason to wish he’d never entered such walls as these and . . .”
“I ought to tell you,” said Templar carefully, “ that that lady and I are engaged to be married.”
“Lord,” said the uncle, “there — the lights are down — not a word to your aunt. It’s lucky she won’t own to needing glasses. She can’t see half of it.”
Edmund had this to think of through the next, the Dance of War.
“She is rather clever,” was the aunt’s verdict. “Really, Henry, she made me want to get up and go and fight somebody — didn’t she you?”
Edmund got his uncle out again.
“What did you mean by what you said just now? That my aunt didn’t see half of it. You can’t mean that you think it’s a thing she ought not to see?”
“Bless my soul, no,” said the uncle, full of a raging conflict between hurt family pride and gentlemanly feeling—” of course not. I never saw a more modest dancer — never, upon my word. It’s quite amazing. I assure you if you’d asked me what was the first thing that had struck me about her I should have said her modesty. I should, indeed.”
“Then, what did you mean?”
“Well — the fact is ... I’d rather have broken it to you gently, my boy, but if you will have it . . .”
“I will have it, please.”
“Then, what I mean to say . . . this young lady is the young lady. That poor neglected young thing we were talking about only to-day. I recognised her at once, and so would your aunt if she’d got her spectacles on. It’s no use beating about the bush, my boy. That young lady’s real name is Sandra Mundy.”
“Is that all?” said Edmund with a laugh of relief. “ Why, I knew that all along!”
“Oh, well — ah — then there’s no more to be said ... at present, Edmund. We must talk it all over quietly to-morrow, eh, my boy, and see what can be done.”
Edmund in sharp surprise blessed the uncle for his intelligent sympathy. The uncle was saying to himself:
“I must humour him, humour him. Anything to gain time. And then we can look about us and see if she can’t be bought off. I wouldn’t stand out against anything reasonable. Poor lad — poor young fool. But I was just like it. Poor little Carlotta . . . ! Well, well.”
The curtain was rising for the last dance. It was the dance of Salome. This only, of all her dances, her lover had never seen. The idea of it repelled him — and he knew from her that it had at first repelled her also.
“But I had to do it,” she had said: “everyone does it now. Your repertoire’s not complete without a Salome dance with that horrible head. But I’ve made it something different from any of the others. For one thing, I don’t take the head off the sideboard as if it were the cold joint of beef. It just comes to me. Maskelyne and Devant fixed that up for me — and Denny works it. He’s not on in that scene.”
But now Templar had to see it. There was no way out of it, short of closing his eyes, and that he could not do. The curtain was up.
The Court of an Eastern King: Attendants with fans and torches, and fire in braziers on tall iron pillars. On the throne Herod, sick unto death, beside him a white-faced, shrinking Herodias. Courtiers, slaves. And the eyes of all fixed on Salome.
Straight drapery covered her from breast to ankle. A half transparent veil was drawn about her in folds that, across neck and face, shewed opaque and heavy where the light stuff was crushed and held in folds by the hand beneath her chin. Through it the jewels on neck and arms gleamed fitfully. A golden fillet confined her long hair, a heavy red gem glowed on her brow, and between veil and jewel her eyes shone like sombre stars.
The King, the Queen, the courtiers and slaves were immobile; they were only the living background to the moving picture of Salome’s dance.
She moved slowly, with little steps and the ^patent consciousness that she was in the presence of the King. She danced to please him. To him, with obeisance and gestures of deferent humility, she dedicated her dance.
And, unperceived by any save those who knew what to look for, a veil of almost invisible gauze fell between her and her living background. A few more steps, a few more gestures of the veiled arms, and another curtain fell — another, as the slow steps traced circles on the marble floor, slid out from one side across the stage — now, from the opposite side, another — grey veils falling, falling, gliding across, produced to the utmost the illusion of a gathering dusk, a deepening twilight through which the figures of King and Queen and deferent courtiers shewed dim and vague as shadows, and the lights of torch and brazier shone like marsh-lights in a marsh mist. The grey veils thickened to darkness — the lights were gone — Salome was alone in a twilight that slowly lightened to moonlight, in which she stood, arms reached out, her veil round her feet.
Then the dance began — all before had been but posturing — the wild dance of a passionate unreal longing that ate the flesh as it were fire. It was not joy and love that gave wings to her feet — it was fear — it was desire. Salome whirled like a leaf in the wind, as pricked and driven by the seven devils that had caught her unawares.
At the wildest of the dance — her arms empty, yearning, reaching out to her desire — suddenly a swift turn, and she held in her arms the Head — the head of him for whom Salome’s longings were. A moment before the head was not there. Now it was. Maskelyne and Devant had been adequate.
A movement shivered through the audience as the wind shivers through a field of ripe corn.
Mad delight, achievement, the attainment of the uttermost desire, these were on arms and neck and swaying shape, adorning them like malign jewels, and on her brow her triumph poised like a crown.
Then, through the flame of the pit came an air as from a dewy garden. Passion flickered, waned — and, on a pause of doubt and misgiving, tenderness dawned — tenderness, pity, remorse, regret, a growing horror and anguish, a growing knowledge of Heaven forfeited, of Hell made sure — a crescent terror, and dismay unspeakable, and under it all tenderness deepening, deepening, deepening, like a flood pressing against a barrier that it must at last break down.
Then, in the moveless hush of the two thousand people who, hardly breathing, hung upon her least pace or gesture, she gathered the horrible head to her bosom as a mother gathers the head of her sleeping child, and with a cry of love and agony that thrilled the silence as pain thrills a bared nerve, she turned on her audience the full fire of eyes where madness shone, and
She should have sunk to the ground, the lights should have gone up and discovered Herod and his Queen and his slaves, the braziers and the torches, and Salome in t
he midst — senseless from the drug of a dream, of the head of a man still alive in the King’s prison.
Instead, as the white lights intensified to shew that last awful look, they fell on the face of the man in the stage box.
For Edmund had forgotten aunts and uncles and his promise to the management — his own name, his own identity, with other unimportant things — and had pressed forward to the front of the box between those forgotten relatives, and, hands on the velvet ledge, had leaned his body forward towards her who had with the magic of her dancing absorbed his whole being. And when she raised her eyes in that last look, that ended all things, she met full in her eyes the eyes of her lover — saw the love, the terror, the bewitchment in his face.
“Ah,” she breathed with a white smile that shook her audience with a deeper thrill than that laid on them by her eyes, “ ah!”
The waxen head dropped to the ground with’ a dull crash, rebounded, struck the corner of Herod’s throne and split horribly in two. A long breath indrawn to a thousand lungs sighed through the theatre.
From the dress circle came the shrill cackle of a schoolgirl afraid.
“It’s only wax,” it said; and an answering titter bore witness that the gallery and the dress circle were of one brotherhood.
The head — split from brow to chin — lay there plain in the yellow torch light.
The lights went up in the house.
Then everyone remembered that this was only play-acting, and clapped. Clapped and shouted to lift the roof.
Only a few perceived with comprehension that the lifeless Herodias had become alive and was stooping over Salome, lifting her, holding her in her arms, and that Herod was coming down from his throne. To most it was just part of the play.
Then the curtain came down. And the audience yelled for their darling, yelled and yelled again.
But when the stiff curtain swerved aside and the applause doubled itself, it was not Salome who stood there, as of old, drooping and sweet, with hands too tired to hold the flowers they threw her, and with lips nearly, but not quite, too tired to smile.