He swung round violently to the ledge of the box, he leaned forward over its ledge and his eyes met the eyes of the singer on the stage. He had no doubt now. It wasn’t that the lad was startled by this one swift movement when all the rest of the house was still. It wasn’t that he himself knew the features of Julian Linchcombe and the big eyes which lit his face. There was recognition in those eyes and upon the recognition the voice faltered. A woman in the pit cried out as though she swooned in pain. But that faltering was in the pattern of the scene. Achilles flung the lyre upon the floor, seized the golden shield, drew the sword from its golden scabbard and holding it high, seemed to challenge all the world.
“Ah, now I know myself Achilles.”
And with that the cheers broke out, a tumult! “Marelli! Marelli!” The name rang out. Achilles must bow. He must repeat his triumph. But he couldn’t. He stood, his hands outstretched at his sides, asking his audience for its forbearance, its pardon.
At the end of the Act, Elliot scribbled a note upon his tablet and seeking out an usher, sent it to the Signor Marelli. He had written in English a message that he would be taking supper with Charles Williams at the Caffé Grimani and that he would be delighted to see Signor Marelli there or to-morrow morning at his apartment on the Grand Canal.
“Shall we walk during the entr’acte?” said Williams and the two men sauntered down on to the floor of the pit. “Did you notice a box on the side of the house opposite to ours and the third to the right from the stage?”
“No,” answered Sir James. “I noticed nothing, of course, except—” and he stopped. “I mean that the auditorium was too dark.”
Mr. Williams agreed.
As they returned to their own box the usher brought a civil reply from Marelli. It was written in the Italian tongue and in a sloping foreign hand and in the third person. Signor Marelli understood that Sir James Elliot was kind enough to ask him to sup with him at the Caffé Grimani, but he had already been bidden to the house of the Conte Onocuto Vigano who, as Sir James would probably know, takes a great interest in the theatre of San Benedetto. Sir James knew nothing whatever of the Count Onocuto Vigano, but he understood that Julian Linchcombe refused to be recognized. That was as clear to him as that Marelli was Julian Linchcombe. If he had encouraged a tiny spark of doubt, it disappeared in the next act when the lad, dressed in the golden greaves and breastplate of the young Achilles with the golden helmet on his head, stood on the prow of Ulysses’ ship as the curtain fell.
Sir James was hurt by the letter, but condemned himself for being hurt. Between Julian and himself there had been as close a friendship as is possible between a boy and a man, but he had no claim upon the boy’s confidence. Sir James acknowledged it. He acknowledged too, that Julian, sunk forever in the grim reality of his unreal life, was ashamed and would always be ashamed, although no atom of the blame for it rested upon him. He would wish to hide away every association with his boyhood, his own familiar people, with the lost, beloved Grest; and above all, perhaps, with the older friend to whom he had talked of his ambitions. The recollection of those talks and of the scenes in which they took place must be, even now, poignant — intolerable. And indeed something of that anguish seemed to Elliot’s attentive ears to have made the passion of Achilles wring the hearts of his audience.
“He has to forget what he can forget,” Elliot agreed as he took his seat again in his box and the orchestra clattered back to its seats. “He has to build up his new shadow of a life into what solidity he can and find it in the idolization of the public.” Thus Elliot reasoned. But his love for the boy and his deep sympathy had sharpened his insight; and as the third act went forward, he felt a growing uneasiness. It was not caused by the struggles of Achilles between his ambitions and his love, however vividly acted or exquisitely sung — these were things of the theatre. Sir James Elliot was obsessed by the last scene in the previous act. He had before his eyes, not the distracted lovers, nor the gay marriage scene upon which the curtain fell — but the youth in the golden armour on the ship’s prow with the naked sword held high and his great blue eyes, fierce as only blue eyes can be and full of doom. Surely he was crying, “Woe, Woe!” to much more than fabled Troy.
XII. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE THIRD BOX OPPOSITE
THE FALLING CURTAIN released such a fervid enthusiasm that it took Elliot’s breath away; and he had seen the Opera House in Rome on the first night of Carnival. There were women sobbing, gondoliers in the Gallery calling down blessings on Marelli and his parents, and the young elegants leaned from their boxes and showered upon the stage sonnets scribbled during the performance to the new idol and his exquisite voice. Marelli led forward his Deidamia with a low bow and a word of thanks to her, but the audience had no eyes to see nor hands to applaud her with. It was “Bravo Marelli! Evviva Marelli!” until once more the curtains swept down upon the marriage scene. But still they must be raised again, so loud and violent were the cries, so resolutely did each one in the theatre hold his place. Or was there one box empty now? For a moment it seemed to Elliot that there was — that box, the third to the right across the auditorium at which Williams had bade him look. He did look now curiously; and he saw a dark figure at the back of it, quite still and silent and remote. Man or woman he could not tell. But Sir James was in his “romantic” mood that night. He discovered a menace in that dark figure and a menace of which his companion Williams had from the beginning been aware. Once more he was uneasy. His eyes sought to pierce the gloom of that box, but quite in vain, and his attention was suddenly caught back to the stage.
Twice Marelli had led forward Maria Baretti. She was a beautiful, tall, dark woman — if she had passed her youth, the loss of it was not visible on the stage — with a resonant but undistinguished voice and she was a favourite in Venice. But this was not her night. Every turn and twist of her voice was known, her movements and gestures were familiar. To watch and hear Maria Baretti was to walk through a garden for the thousandth time where all the flowers were charming and none surprised you. The newcomer, with his beauty, his freshness and the rare compass of his voice, had quite eclipsed her. The cries were all for him:
“Viva pure Marelli! Bravo pure Marelli!”
That “pure,” that “however” was gall to Maria Baretti. Her smile became a grin of fury. When Marelli offered her his hand for the third time she refused it. She turned her back upon the audience, she raised her handkerchief to her eyes. Tears? Yes, but tears of rage. The curtains fell for the last time that night and Elliot looked again towards the third box. It was empty now and the door open. Whoever had occupied it had slipped away.
The Opera House emptied slowly. So many had so much to say that they must stop at every other step to say it; and those who were silent departed as reluctantly as pilgrims from a shrine. The two Englishmen were amongst the last to go, but gondolas still clustered about the portico of the theatre like a fleet, and they had much ado to find their own even with its orange liveries and still more to force a passage to the Grand Canal.
“To the Piazzetta,” Elliot ordered, and he sank back upon his cushions with a sigh of relief.
The cool of the night and its sudden quiet and the pleasant drip of the water from the blades of the oars drove his forebodings away but left him with a troublesome little problem to resolve.
“Of all the gifts of life,” — thus the argument ran—” music is the most divine. And of all the instruments of music the human voice is the most divine. I have heard it to-night, tender, glorious, moving as I have seldom heard it — Marelli’s. Well, then?”
The wrong — Elliot was frank enough not to blink his problem — done to Marelli was the sacrifice of one for the highest delight of the many, lifting them for a few precious hours out of the morass of their daily cares. And weren’t there compensations for the sacrificed? Elliot’s meanest side was ranging up his arguments. They were accepted, almost as gods. They lived at the houses and in the company of the greatest — in England at all ev
ents, — they made great fortunes; so long as they sang, they walked in a sunshine of flattery. Elliot was of his age, accustomed to its cruelties as to its elegances and fine manners, and contemplated this or that abomination as comfortably as his fellows. Indeed, as the gondola slid between the dark palaces and he still heard Galuppi’s music soaring and falling in delicious cadences, he came for just a little time very nearly to condoning the horrible crime.
But when they had disembarked and were ascending the steps of the piazzetta, Sir James was halted by a quite different argument. When all the lights were out, that boy — Achilles, Marelli — no, let him be honest! — Julian Linchcombe must go to his home! And to what sort of home? There rose before his eyes a picture of Grest, of old Timbertoes stumping it in the Italian garden amongst the shrill, laughing children who were never to be.
“I’m not a romantic,” Sir James cried aloud, much to his companion’s astonishment. “I’m a blackguard. That’s what I am, Sir,” and he turned with so stem a face upon Williams that that unfortunate man almost toppled backwards into the water. “A cowardly, selfish blackguard! And if you can’t stand on your feet, Sir, you’ll get a bath in the Grand Canal.”
He stalked on indignantly between the pillars on to the Piazza and then caught Mr. Williams by the arm.
“I beg your pardon. I treated you with a lamentable want of ceremony.
“No one stands on it with me,” said Williams.
“I was angry with myself—”
“And so fell foul of the nearest person. It was natural,” said Williams, “and here we are at the Caffé Grimani.”
Although it was one o’clock of the morning, the Piazza was lively with the lights of Cafés and Casinos and groups of gaily dressed people with masks covering their faces. They found a table and Elliot left the ordering of the supper to his companion.
“An omelette, some quails and a bottle of your Orvieto,” said Williams and turning back to James Elliot, “It is the best wine they keep here and we should drink it, if only to grace an evening out of a thousand.”
Elliot looked quickly at Williams.
“You enjoyed it?”
Mr. Williams talked with his hands for a few enthusiastic moments and added:
“When shall I enjoy such another? The surprise, the delight!” Only his fingers could express it.
The reply was a little too apposite to the problem which had been troubling Elliot, for him to refrain from probing a little deeper.
“And how many of those who were listening and seeing with us are at this moment saying what you say with the same pleasure?”
“All,” cried Charles Williams, and then caught himself stiffly up. “All, that is, except one.”
“Ah, yes.”
Sir James Elliot smiled.
“I remember! The man — if it was a man, in the third box opposite.”
Charles Williams drew back. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Yes, it was a man.” He raised his voice again with a glance at his neighbours. “I was thinking of Maria Baretti.”
But Elliot was not so easily to be diverted from the solitary secret man in the third box opposite. He had no wish to return to the callous problem which he had solved — hadn’t he? — with shame that he had ever set it up. Moreover he was curious — not more than curious. The sharpened insight had ceased to worry him. He was just lazily, comfortably curious.
“You shall tell me as we sup the story of this man in the third box opposite,” he said, and he saw Mr. Williams’ face grow blank and ignorance shroud him like a domino.
Sir James was to grow familiar during the next few weeks with that sudden change from animation to vacancy and hebetude when public affairs and Government men were mentioned in Venice, but he was surprised now.
“I have no story to tell you,” said Williams simply, and he started up out of his chair with a wave of his hand and a greeting on his lips.
To Sir James Elliot the movement and the cry were a ruse to avoid an unwelcome subject. Certainly a small group of gaily-dressed, masked people had gathered just outside the open door of the café and were chattering noisily; and certainly Mr. Williams went out and greeted a lady of that company. In a moment or two he brought her up to his table which was just within the door.
“Sir James, may I present you to the Signora Columba Tadino? The Signora is the chief mezzo-soprano of the Opera Company.”
Sir James rose and bowed over the hand she held out to him.
“There was no part for her unfortunately in Achilles in Scyros,” he said.
“No,” she answered lightly, “so I went on in the Chorus.”
Sir James’s eyebrows went up to the curls of his peruke. Chief mezzo-sopranos were not usually so complaisant.
“It was an occasion not to be missed,” she continued, “and I enjoyed myself immensely”; she laughed mischievously. “It is not so often that we see our dear Maria Baretti weeping.”
Sir James was not so engrossed in music as not to be well aware of the jealousies which it provoked amongst its exponents.
“Deidamia,” he said, a trifle sternly, “is an emotional part.”
“To be sure it is,” said Golumba Tadino merrily, “and especially so when the Achilles carries all the audience away with him to Troy.”
“You will, I hope, have supper with us,” said Sir James, who had a thought that he might hear from her lips something more of the history of the boy from the sea than he knew himself.
She dropped him a curtsey, laughing.
“I may not. A patron who has a casino next door has bidden some of us to celebrate the opening of the season.”
“Ah!” The word slipped out of Elliot’s unguarded mouth. “The Count Onocuto Vigano.”
Mr. Williams made a movement of surprise, but he said nothing. Columba Tadino shook her head.
“The Count is presenting his new wonder to the nobility of Venice. When you have a bright candle, your Excellency, you do not surround it with farthing dips — even if,” and again the mischievous smile played about her lips, “even if one is Columba Tadino, at your service, and the other Maria Baretti.”
Mr. Williams uttered a little exclamation of warning.
But Elliot had still a question to ask.
“In the theatre, he is happy? — you like him?”
Columba Tadino’s face, or what they could see of it, changed. It seemed to the two men to become pitiful.
“Happy? He has not enough vanity. You must understand that whatever triumphs those singers carry off, without an insufferable vanity they cannot be happy. As for our liking him in the theatre, he is charming, modest, kind, and we love him. But—” she stopped and took a step nearer to Elliot. “You know Marelli, your Excellency?”
But Sir James had won his little battle with himself. The boy with whom he had ridden and indeed conspired against his tutor at Grest did not want to know him any more, and Sir James could understand his refusal.
“No. I have never seen Marelli before.”
“It is a pity.”
“Why?”
“Because,” and she lowered her voice to a note so soft that it could hardly have been heard a yard away, “for a throat as delicate as his, the climate of Venice is not too healthy.”
Columba Tadino resumed her vivacity with a laugh.
“But I keep my friends waiting. I shall be in disgrace,” she cried, and with a whisk of her skirts she was gone.
Sir James Elliot returned to his table, once more uneasy and bewildered. Charles Williams chattered away through the omelette and the quails and ordered coffee and a ratafia. Sir James meanwhile pursued his own thoughts.
“But if he has Onocuto Vigano and the nobility of Venice on his side, what has he to fear?” he asked suddenly.
“Nothing, of course, my friend, nothing,” Williams answered hurriedly. “I must take you whilst you are here to the glass-blowing on the island of Murano. It is a sight which no stranger to Venice should omit.”
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Elliot could take a hint as quickly as another man and here was not so much a hint as a notice on a signboard. He was quite willing to visit Murano and make up his mind whether the fragility of blown glass was to be preferred to the more durable run glass. It was two o’clock in the morning before the last almond kernels at the bottom of the jug of ratafia were reached, and Sir James called for the bill.
“The gondola shall drop me at my steps and take you on to your house,” he said.
The piazza was growing quiet now. A few gondolas with their crews asleep waited at the steps of the piazzetta. Sir James’s drew quietly in and the two men stepped on board.
“To the Palazzo San Polo first,” said Elliot, and with smooth strokes the gondola glided over the black water. Sir James took off his hat and pushed back his peruke and after the agitations of the evening refreshed his soul with the cool silence. But he had covered no more than half the distance to his lodging when ahead, beyond the elbow of the canal, there rose the sound of voices singing to an accompaniment of violins.
“An accademia,” said Elliot, but Mr. Williams shook his head. The voices were louder with each stroke of the paddles. If it was a concert, it was a concert on the water, and in a few moments a great cluster of boats with lanterns swinging on the bows swept round the bend. It was led by a single gondola with its canopy thrown back, and on the black cushions a youth dressed all in white reclined alone. The fitful light now gleamed on the embroidery and jewelled buttons of his white satin coat, now revealed the black mask which he wore upon his face. He did not join in the singing, he lay rather than sat, with his head thrown back, his face upwards to the stars. A few yards behind the escort followed. Now from one gondola the music rose and when that ceased from one further back; another set of voices with another set of instruments, horns and mandolins, took up the serenade.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 736