By now there was a certain amount of press speculation about the new opera by a totally unknown composer; and the equally unknown soprano who was to sing the leading role came in for some notice too. Warrender kept Amanda very much in the background, discouraging anything in the nature of interviews, saying the time for those would be when she had made the grade.
As they all were guests in the big country house from which the Festival was organised he was able to keep a firm hand on Amanda and dictate almost every detail of her daily life. With Lewis he was naturally in a less authoritative position. But Lewis himself seemed only too willing to remain out of the direct limelight until the great first night should be over.
During all this time Amanda had made no further attempt to question him about his involvement in her personal affairs. Only when Nan wrote to say that Henry was coming home in a couple of weeks—if not completely restored to health at least with the confident expectation that he would be so in time—she handed the letter to Lewis, and said, ‘I think this concerns you as much as us.’
She watched him while he read it and she saw the colour come and go in his face. Even when she knew he must have reached the end he did not look up immediately, and she had the curious impression that he was nervous and was at a loss for the right words in which to make any comment.
This reversal of their usual roles touched her to such a degree that she gently took the letter from him, kissed his cheek and just said, ‘Thank you, Lewis.’
‘That’s all right,’ he replied a little awkwardly, ‘There’s nothing to thank me for. But I’m very glad about it.’
‘So are we all. I’ll tell you how glad when the first night is over.’
He did not query that, for by now it seemed to everyone concerned that all life was leading up to that great evening on which so much depended.
The dress rehearsal went well, giving Amanda a feeling of relative security about the task on which she was engaged. But when she awoke on the morning of the performance she was immediately aware of the most frightful sinking of the heart. Any confidence she had ever had seemed to have drained out of her, leaving her to wonder what insane impulse had prompted her to engage in this appalling gamble.
During the morning she reached the desperate conclusion that she must opt out entirely and leave the task to her understudy—an experienced artist a good deal older than herself and surely, surely much better fitted to do justice to Lewis’s lovely work?
Pale and determined she finally went in search of Lewis. But in the big panelled hall she ran into Warrender, who looked at her, took her lightly by the arm and said, ‘I know exactly how you’re feeling. Come with me and let me talk to you for a few minutes.’
‘You can’t know how I’m feeling,’ she muttered as he led her into their private sitting room and made her sit down. ‘How could you? You’re famous and secure, while I’m only the idiot of a girl who has just let herself be talked into an impossible task.’
‘I also had a first performance,’ he reminded her with a smile. Then he said, slowly and with considerable emphasis, ‘Amanda, I seldom offer praise until a performance is safely over. But just because this is your first performance I’m going to tell you that in my judgment—which is a very good one—you are probably the only person who can do full justice to this unique role which Lewis has created.’
‘But why? I’m totally inexperienced and sick with nervousness!’
‘You’re right to be nervous—you wouldn’t be an artist if you were not. But your very inexperience is one of your advantages in this role. You’re portraying a girl who is unknowing, bewildered, groping for the truth. This would not be sufficient of course if you had not got in the background of your experience an impeccable vocal technique, taught you by Lewis, and in charge of the performance probably the most experienced operatic conductor in the world,’ he added almost carelessly.
She gave a shaky little laugh at that and said, ‘With the last statement I entirely agree.’
‘Then you may believe the rest. For if I may say so without false modesty—I know. You are the one person who can make an instant success of Lewis’s work—so long as you do not yield to your own cowardice.’
Amanda sat up and unconsciously squared her shoulders.
‘You mean that? You don’t in your heart think that perhaps someone more experienced would do it better?’
‘If I had thought that, my dear, I should have replaced you before now,’ he told her drily. ‘Lewis Elsworth’s future is quite possibly in your hands. Don’t think of your future only. Think about his. If you love him——’
‘If I—what?’ Again she laughed unsteadily.
‘All right. If you only like him—if you feel no more than grateful to him for all he has done—call on your courage, do your utmost as you have been taught during these many weeks, and leave the rest to me.’
He held out both hands to her and slowly she put hers into that firm, strong clasp which had, metaphorically speaking, upheld many a nervous performer long before Amanda had learned to sing a scale.
‘I will succeed,’ she said resolutely, and was unaware that the difference between that assertion and her first tentative, ‘I’ll do my best,’ represented the completeness of her development under Warrender’s tuition.
She felt almost tranquil for the rest of the day. And when Lewis came to her in her dressing-room to wish her luck before the performance, it was she who said to him, ‘Don’t be nervous. Remember, you said we were going to succeed together, and we are.’
‘Darling——’ he took her face between his hands and kissed her on the lips. Then suddenly, as though recalling some barrier he had inadvertently breached, he released her abruptly and went from the room. Amanda looked after him, faintly chilled by the curtness of his departure, but indefinably warmed by the way he had addressed her.
‘He called me “darling”,’ she told herself. ‘He never called me that before.’ And though she forced herself to put that thought to the back of her consciousness for the rest of the evening, it was that word—and the sure hand of Oscar Warrender—which sustained her from the first note to the last.
That was the only part of her which had anything to do with Amanda Lovett. For the rest of the time she was the strange, elusive, elemental creature who was struggling out of the darkness into the light. And, as Oscar Warrender had said, it was her essential inexperience and uncertainty which made the impersonation riveting. When she came to the almost primitive prayer to be saved from the Evil One, the deathly silence in the auditorium was the measure of the effect she created.
‘That,’ Warrender told his wife afterwards, ‘was the moment when I knew she had made it.’
To Amanda herself the stunning awareness that she had made it came only with the final fall of the curtain and the almost bewildering ovation she received. Half frightened, she took one curtain call after another—with her colleagues, with Warrender and, finally, amid insistent calls for the composer, with Lewis. Then he left her alone on the stage and, looking out into the now lighted house, she saw Max Arrowsmith leaning on the orchestra rail and applauding enthusiastically, and she thought, ‘None of this is really happening.’
In her tremulous joy she smiled uncertainly at him, and saw him make a gesture of complete approval before the curtains came together again. Then she left the stage to Lewis and his personal ovation, as the man principally responsible for what everyone clearly agreed was a great occasion.
When he came from the stage and found her in the wings he put his arm round her and went with her towards her dressing-room. Then in the narrow corridor outside the room he took both her hands and turned her to face him.
‘I want to tell you——’ he began. But suddenly, looking over his shoulder, she saw the totally unexpected figure of Nan, and with her a tall sunburned man she had never again expected to see standing so entirely erect.
‘Henry!’ she cried—‘Henry!’ and almost pushing Lewis from her, she r
ushed into her brother’s arms. ‘Henry——’ She was unable to do anything but repeat his name over and over again, while she tried, not entirely successfully, to keep back the happy, excited tears. He patted her back as though she were a child, kissed her once or twice and then handed her on to Nan’s warm embrace. By the time Amanda turned to include Lewis in the scene he had gone.
‘Where’s Lewis? I didn’t hear what it was he wanted to say,’ she exclaimed distractedly. But other people were crowding in on her, demanding her attention, congratulating, questioning and in some odd way taking possession of her. Indeed, it was all Nan could do to rescue her and come with her into the dressing-room, where Amanda dropped down in front of the mirror, started absently to remove her make-up and continued to say, ‘Nan, Lewis was saying something. I didn’t even answer him.’
‘It probably wasn’t important,’ Nan told her soothingly.
‘It was terribly important. I know it was!’ Amanda sounded almost querulous and Nan too patted her as though she were a child, which illogically made Amanda even more distressed. And when Anthea came in a few minutes later she cut across any congratulations with the one, almost frantic question, ‘Where is Lewis?’
‘In Oscar’s room.’ Anthea looked surprised.
‘I must go to him.’ Ignoring any objections from the other two, she flung on her wrap and went out into the corridor, where she found she had to push her way through a crowd of delighted wellwishers who sought to bar her way.
‘Excuse me—oh, thank you—excuse me—yes, of course I’m delighted—excuse me—how kind of you—excuse——’
At last she stood before the conductor’s door and, rapping peremptorily, she went in even before Warrender’s voice bade her enter. He was sitting in shirtsleeves, putting some splendid diamond links in his cuffs. But Amanda had no eyes for him—or his cufflinks. She went straight to the other figure in the room and said urgently,
‘Lewis, what was it you were going to say to me? I didn’t mean to push you aside—it was my joy and surprise at seeing Henry. I wanted him to speak to you—to thank you himself, but you were gone. What was it you meant to say to me?’
‘Just that there was no question of thanks any more. That you need never, never again think you were under any sort of obligation, because tonight you made me a success. I’m free! That damned weight is gone and——’
‘What damned weight?’ She looked up at him in puzzled dismay. ‘It’s I who had the weight of obligation if anyone did.’
‘But that was it; that was what coloured our whole relationship. There was not a thing I could say to you or ask you without the blight of your insisting that you owed me too much to make an impersonal decision. Even Warrender was ass enough to say——’
‘At the risk of being an ass enough to say the wrong thing again—’ Warrender’s cool voice suddenly reminded them that they were not alone—‘I apologise for taking part quite involuntarily in this scene, but this does happen to be my dressing-room. However, if you will be patient three minutes longer—’ he reached for his jacket and shrugged himself into it—‘I will leave you in full possession.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ exclaimed Amanda and Lewis in chastened chorus.
‘No, no, don’t be sorry,’ Warrender strapped on his wrist watch and swept some odd coins into his pocket. ‘You chose the scene rather well, as a matter of fact, for your confusing and confused conversation had a salutary touch of nostalgia for an old stager like myself.’ He paused and looked thoughtfully at them both. ‘Perhaps one should not give advice to young people, except professionally, but—’ he shrugged slightly—‘it is now many years since I discovered the profound truth that between people who love each other there should be no argument about who owes whom, or how to balance out this or that. That is for people who do not love each other. They of course can argue academically about these things for hours.’
He wound a white muffler round his throat and took down his overcoat. Then at the door he turned and smiled at them. ‘I’m expecting you to join us for supper in half an hour. If you don’t arrive, I shall know you are still arguing.’
Then he went out of the room, to the confused chorus of, ‘Sir Oscar, could I have your autograph?’ ‘Sir Oscar, if you would just——’
The door closed, shutting out the rest of the world, so far as Amanda and Lewis were concerned.
‘I love you,’ he said before she could. ‘I’ve loved you almost since I first heard you sing “Hear ye, Israel”. I would have told you so long, long ago, my little Amanda, if I hadn’t been so afraid that your sense of obligation would confuse your real feelings.’
‘How silly of you, darling. How absolutely idiotic of you,’ replied Amanda fondly, and she put her arms round his neck and kissed him. ‘You just made things unnecessarily difficult. It took me much longer than it need have to discover that I loved you. You were so—so discouraging, Lewis!’
He laughed at that, much more heartily and uninhibitedly than she had ever heard him laugh before. Then he kissed her and began to say, ‘If you only knew——’ but Warrender’s dresser looked in and said, ‘Oh, Sir Oscar——’
‘It’s all right,’ Lewis told him gaily, as he glanced round evidently thinking he had mistaken the room. ‘Sir Oscar just went out ahead of us.’ And he ushered Amanda into the corridor, where several people were still hanging about.
‘Would you please sign my programme?’ An earnest-looking schoolgirl thrust her programme into Amanda’s hand. ‘I’ve waited so long. And this is my first time ever at the opera.’
‘Oh, my dear!’ Suddenly Amanda felt gloriously grown-up and experienced and professional. ‘It’s my first opera too—and the first time anyone has ever asked me for my autograph. I’m sorry I kept you waiting.’
‘We’re both sorry,’ said Lewis behind her, and there was a note of happy laughter in his voice. ‘But, you see, we were getting engaged.’
If you enjoyed Nightingales, please share your thoughts by leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads.
For more discounted reads and a free eBook when you join, sign up to our newsletter.
And why not follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for more great book news.
Nightingales (Warrender Saga Book 11) Page 16
