Manora turned round from her dressing-table. “No?” she said, holding Anna’s hand and smiling up at her. “My throat feels better. I think perhaps the gargling did good. Maybe I shall not have a cold after all.”
“And the headache?” Anna was still anxious.
“A little better.” Manora put her hand to her head. “You enjoy the performance, eh?” She glanced indulgently at Anna.
“Oh yes!” Anna overlooked her misery of anxiety earlier in the evening.
“Very well. Run along now,” Manora said, as though Anna were a child. “But come and see me in the next interval,” she called cheerfully after her.
Immeasurably relieved, Anna thoroughly enjoyed the second act. As she made her way slowly through the crowd in the interval, she heard two people speaking near her:
“Do you see that lovely girl there—the one with the smooth, dark hair and honey-coloured skin? She’s wearing an ivory dress.”
“They mean me!” thought Anna, astounded, as she glanced round cautiously to see that there was no one else in an ivory-coloured dress.
“Yes. What about her?” said the second voice.
“She’s a find of Schreiner’s. I’ve been told she has a glorious voice. We’re going to hear a lot about her when he does finally launch her.”
With the oddest little thrills running up and down her spine Anna slipped through the door that led back-stage.
Was that really true? Were people going to “hear a lot about her” in just the exciting and impressive way that man’s voice had suggested?
“Tony!” she said suddenly to the empty corridor. And then, with a happy laugh, she caught up her long skirt and ran childishly along the passage and up the stairs to Manora’s room.
Manora glanced at her absently, and said: “Did you want something?”
“N-no.” Anna was slightly dashed. “Only to tell you how beautifully the performance is going.”
“So?” Manora scarcely appeared to be listening. “I am glad you enjoy it.”
“Manora dear, there’s only one more act,” Anna pointed out anxiously. “You’ll be all right now, won’t you?”
“The third act is the most difficult of all,” Manora said gloomily. “I do not know how I shall get through it.”
“Is your headache worse?”
Manora nodded, and Anna, with all her anxiety returning, and full of remorse that she should have been rushing about so happily herself, went in search of smelling-salts and eau-de-Cologne.
That seemed to cheer Manora a little, and she squeezed Anna’s hand when she went, and said: “Do not worry.”
But of course Anna did worry—right through that third act, until the curtain fell, on thunders of applause which confirmed her own opinion that Manora had given a truly great performance.
She felt almost hysterical with relief as she stood there clapping. It was incredible that Manora could have risen above so much misfortune and sung so magnificently.
Anna half expected to find her in a state of collapse afterwards. But nothing was further from the case. She was flushed, bright-eyed, and radiant when Anna came in.
“Hello!” she cried, as though she had not seen Anna for months. “Was good, the performance?”
“It was heavenly.” Anna came over and kissed her warm cheek very tenderly. “I can’t imagine how you did it, feeling as you did.”
“Oh,” Manora shrugged, “the throat is all right, after all.”
“But I expect you want to get home to bed,” Anna said understandingly.
“No, no.” Manora dismissed. that suggestion at once. “Conrad will take us out to supper somewhere.”
“But your headache?” Anna looked surprised.
“Headache?” Manora paused in the act of removing her make-up and looked equally surprised. “I have no headache now,” she explained briskly, beginning to smear cold cream over her face. “I am ravenous with hunger, that is all.”
“Then be quick, for I too am ravenous,” said Schreiner’s voice from the door.
“Ich komme, ich komnte!” exclaimed Manora, who always seemed a trifle nervous of keeping the great man waiting.
And as soon as she was ready Schreiner swept them both off to the Cafe de Paris, where a table had been reserved for them, and where they held court until the early hours, among the dozens of friends and acquaintances who came up to congratulate them.
When at last they went home Anna said, with a smile to Schreiner: “It is good that Manora has completely recovered, isn’t it?”
Schreiner and Manora both laughed.
“You must not notice that,” Manora told her gaily. “I am always like that. Is only nerves.”
“Always like it?” Anna looked appalled; but Manora nodded indifferently.
“You will be just the same. Won’t she?” she added to Schreiner.
Schreiner smiled then, and said: “When her turn comes, yes.” Which somehow brought back with redoubled effect Anna’s earlier excitement.
“When my turn comes,” she repeated, and her lips curved in a smile which the other two thought singularly lovely.
And her turn came very much sooner than she expected.
Two days later Schreiner came in, tossed down his hat on the table, and announced: “Next Friday you sing Antonia.”
“Sing Antonia? Where?” Anna stammered.
“Where? At the theatre, of course.”
“In public?—”
“Certainly in public. Why should I wish you to sing it to yourself?”
“Oh, but I couldn’t.” Anna was quite positive in her terror.
Schreiner was unmoved. “It is a great chance,” he said carelessly. “You wish that I give it to someone else?”
Anna was silent.
“Come here, my child.”
Anna went slowly over to the great director, and he took both her hands. His own hands were strong and beautiful, and she knew he was inordinately proud of them, but there was great kindness now in the strength and warmth of his clasp.
“Have you any confidence in me as a director and conductor?” he asked her.
“Oh, yes,” Anna said eagerly.
“And if I say to you, ‘Such-and-such a singer is good—even great,’ you believe me?”
“Why, of course.”
“Then why doubt it when I say to you, ‘You are a good singer, perhaps a great singer’ ?”
Anna hung her head. “It isn’t that I doubt your judgment It’s just—I’m so afraid.”
“That is inevitable. All artistes are afraid. Even I am afraid sometimes,” Schreiner added, with that ingenuous vanity of his that was so entirely inoffensive.
“Are you?”
“Certainly.”
“Oh.” Anna considered that. Then, after a pause, she said. “How did you arrange that I should sing?”
Schreiner smiled at the implication that he had won his point.
“That is too much for my English to explain,” he said. “I will call Manora.”
He summoned Manora and talked to her for a few minutes in rapid German. Then she flung her arms impulsively round Anna.
“Is too exciting!” she declared. “You do indeed sing next Friday. The Antonia is ill and cannot sing.”
“But there must be a dozen singers in Paris who could do Antonia at a few days’ notice,” Anna pointed out timidly.
“Yes, yes. But this is a special occasion. There are to be very important English visitors there. Conrad thinks they are diplomats or something,” said Manora, with engaging vagueness. “And you see, is a pleasant compliment to them that an English girl should make a great success that night.”
“Mr. Schreiner is sure that I shall be a great success?” asked Anna doubtfully.
“Perfectly sure,” said Mr. Schreiner between puffs at his cigar.
“Then I will do it,” Anna promised suddenly.
“Good girl!” they both said.
The next few days were a nightmare. There were continual rehears
als, during which Anna was subjected in her turn to the iron discipline of Schreiner. There were minutes when she felt sure she would be a success and hours when she knew quite positively that she would not.
A thousand times she regretted her decision to play the part. And then she would remember that, on the other hand, she could not possibly have gone on imposing on the generosity of Manora.
At the dress rehearsal everything which could go wrong did, or so it seemed to her. But never once did Schreiner’s inexorable patience break down. By the end she was almost in tears, and her nerves were stretched to breaking-point.
She went slowly and dejectedly to her dressing-room, and on the way she met the tenor of the production, humming cheerfully. For a moment she quite hated him for being able to remain so calm.
He stopped her and said: “ You are really quite well, I hope?”
Anna looked surprised. “Yes, thank you. Why? Did I sing so badly?”
“No, no. Your singing is most beautiful. But you play the consumptive girl so convincingly that at times I’m quite nervous,” he told her half seriously.
“Oh, how absurd!” Anna laughed. “But how nice of you,” she added.
And she went on, considerably cheered. It was thanks to Mario, of course, she thought, with a warm rush of gratitude, that her playing of the part was so convincing. Thanks to Mario and the long-dead Italian dancer, on whom he had modelled his idea of the consumptive girl.
Suddenly she thought very tenderly of Mario, and wished frantically that he could have been there tomorrow. It would have made a difference to have known that such a good friend was in the house.
And when she reached the hotel there was a letter from Mario, saying that, if he could possibly arrange to get away the next day, he would fly over to hear her “triumph.”
It raised Anna’s spirits miraculously, and when Schreiner assured her that the rehearsal had been much better than she imagined, she felt almost cheerful again.
But the next day her terror returned with redoubled force, and she wandered about, unable to rest or to do any of the sensible things that Manora suggested.
“I must go out,” she said desperately in the afternoon. “I can’t stay boxed up here.”
“Well, we will go for a short walk,” Manora agreed. “Although is not good in this damp weather.”
As they came out of the hotel, into the Place de la Concorde, Anna caught herself wondering if the victims of the French Revolution had felt very much as she did now when they were brought here on their last journey to the guillotine.
But at least the walk filled in a little time and made her feel less sick. And she was thrilled as well as frightened when Manora pointed out her own name on the playbill for the evening, pasted up on the Colonnes Morris pillars, which they passed.
Sometimes it seemed to her afterwards that those were the last clear impressions in her mind, until she was sitting in her dressing-room, with Manora putting the finishing touches to her make-up. The waiting had been almost unendurably long, because she did not come in until the last act.
When the call came for her Manora said quickly: “All the waiting is over now, and that is always the worst part.”
Anna didn’t believe it, as she moved into the wings. Her face felt stiff with make-up and her limbs felt stiff with terror. Above all, she had a terrible desire to yawn. It was ridiculous, but almost irresistible.
She never knew how she found herself on the stage staring at the blank curtain. She could hear the storm of clapping greeting Schreiner’s entrance. The strains of the orchestra, muffled, reached her ears, And then, in a moment of unspeakable horror, she realised that the curtain was rising.
In a sort of dream she saw Schreiner’s keen, handsome face in the light from his desk, the dimly lit, bustling activity of the orchestra, and beyond that a great cloudy space. She could hear someone singing very beautifully—a voice that seemed to float on the air, resting lightly from time to time on the supporting notes of the orchestra.
And then suddenly she realised that the voice was her own.
She was distinctly conscious of thinking, “How beautifully I am singing.” And that was the last time she thought about herself as a person at all. For the rest of the act she was Antonia.
So much so that, when the curtain finally fell, she was faintly surprised to find she was not really dead.
The part she had just played seemed far more real to her than the scenes that followed. The curtain calls, the applause, the congratulations, Manora kissing her—and Schreiner, too, for that matter. And they all clapped again, and she had to take a call alone, feeling perilously near tears.
“Now hurry to your room and change,” Schreiner ordered her. “You come to a celebration supper. All is arranged.” Wild with excitement and happiness, Anna ran to her room, where her dresser was eagerly waiting to point out all her flowers to her, and to help her to make ready quickly for the celebration supper.
Every few seconds there was a knock at the door, and someone would put in their head to call out good wishes and congratulations. And Anna thought she would never be ready in time.
But at last all her makeup was off, and she had changed into the slim ivory dress which showed off her honey-gold skin so beautifully. She stood up, and slipped on the little sable cape that Manora had lent her for the great occasion. She was standing there, pinning in a spray of orchids which Schreiner had sent her, when yet another knock came.
“See who it is, please,” she said to the dresser. “But I can’t wait more than a minute.”
The dresser went to the door and spoke to someone. Then she came back and said: “It is a gentleman, madame, who says he has come all the way from England to hear you.”
Mario! Darling Mario had managed to come after all. It was the crowning touch.
“Oh, come in!” she called eagerly. “Come in, Mario dear!” She went forward towards the door, and then stopped dead.
The gentleman who had come all the way from England to hear her was Tony.
CHAPTER NINE
“Tony!” The word broke from her in a mixture of joy, and astonishment, and something like dismay. Then she stood there staring at him, unable to think of anything else to say. That she should have flung at him a rapturous greeting intended for another man was beyond her powers of explaining.
He came forward into the room. His face, she saw, was rather pale and set, but his voice was perfectly calm as he said:
“I—just wanted to come round and congratulate you, Anna. You were perfectly wonderful.”
“Oh, thank you. How—how nice of you, Tony.” She wished her voice wouldn’t sound so nervous. She held out her hand to him, though it seemed a silly way to greet him, and when he took it and kissed it gravely she felt almost shocked. It was all very well for Schreiner—or even Mario—to greet her like that. But for Tony it seemed almost frightening in its incongruity.
She made a little sign of dismissal to the dresser. But even when they were alone the only foolish sentence she could summon to her lips was: “It seems odd for you to kiss my hand.”
“Why?” He smiled faintly, but not as though he were genuinely amused. “Am I not to be allowed to add homage at the shrine of the new prima donna?”
“I’m not a prima donna,” she said hastily.
“Oh, yes, Anna. See, you have only to look in the glass.” He spoke gently and, she thought, with an odd little feeling of puzzlement, his voice sounded almost sad.
She turned quickly to the dressing-table, and stared at her own reflection wonderingly.
She had the odd sensation that she didn’t really recognise herself in the lovely, radiant creature who looked back at her. She thought perhaps it had something to do with Manora’s sables and Schreiner’s orchids. But it was not that at all, of course. It was just that the shining crown of success was resting lightly on her smooth dark head.
“The—the cape isn’t mine at all—I borrowed it from Manora,” she stammered childishl
y. “And Schreiner sent me the orchids, more—more for fun than anything, I suppose. Just to pretend I was a prima donna.”
“Don’t, Anna dear.” Tony’s voice was suddenly very tender. “Why should you try to explain away your triumph? Do you think I grudge it to you? Tonight perhaps your sables are borrowed, and your orchids sent half in fun, but there will be sables of your own in future and orchids sent in admiration and all seriousness. And I’m very glad it should be so.”
She stood with her lashes cast down to hide the tears which threatened.
“Thank you,” she said, in a whisper. “Thank you, Tony, it’s sweet of you to want me to be a success.”
“But of course I want it.” Tony was smiling now. “I want you to have whatever will make you happy.”
Anna gripped her hands together nervously. This wasn’t, of course, the moment to tell him what would really make her happy. To explain that all this excitement and triumph meant nothing in itself, that it was simply a means to an end. One brief triumph didn’t entitle her to speak... One must be patient, Mario had said.
But oh, she had been patient—so desperately, achingly patient...
“What is it, Anna?” Tony gently took her hands and unlaced them. Something in his voice reminded her irresistibly of that very first evening when he had been so dear and kind to her. She thought for a moment that she could yield to the bitter longing to tell him everything.
Then the next moment she shrank back from the idea, frightened that she had come even so near to spoiling everything.
“Oh, it’s nothing.” She gave a nervous little laugh, and then said: “I was just wondering how you knew about my singing here tonight.”
“I happened to see a line or two in the gossip columns of a lunch-time paper today. Something about Schreiner’s English find making her debut tonight. I knew it must be you.”
“But wasn’t it terribly difficult for you to get away at such short notice?”
He pressed the palms of her hands together, and now it was he who seemed nervous.
“Yes,” he said abruptly, “it was difficult, but I was determined to come.”
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