The box door behind Charmian was opened and Alston came in.

"Old Claude's too busy to come. He wants me to take you home."

"What has he been doing all this time?"

"No end of things. It's just as I said. Crayford's determined to be first in the field. This move of the Metropolitan has put him on the run, and he'll keep everyone in the theater running till the opera's out. Claude's been with the pressmen behind, and having a hairy-teary heart to heart with Enid Mardon. Come, Mrs. Charmian!"

"But I don't like to leave Claude."

"There's nothing for us to do, and he'll follow us as soon as ever he can. I'll just leave you at the hotel."

"What was the matter with Miss Mardon?" Charmian asked anxiously, as she got up to go.

"Oh, everything! She was in one of her devil's moods to-night; wanted everything altered. She's a great artist, but as destructive as a monkey. She must pull everything to pieces as a beginning. So she's pulling her part to pieces now."

"How did Claude take it?"

"Very quietly. Tell the truth I think he's a bit tired out to-night."

"Alston," Charmian said, stopping in the corridor, "I won't go home without him. No, I won't. We must stick to Claude, back him up till the end. Take me into the stalls. I'm going to sit where he can see us."

"He'll send us away."

"Oh, no, he won't!" she replied, with determination.

The Madame Sennier spirit was upon her in full force.

CHAPTER x.x.x

It was nearly four o'clock when they left the theater. Jacob Crayford, Mr. Mulworth and Jimber were still at work when they came out of the stage door into the cold blackness of the night and got into the taxi-cab. Alston said he would drive with them to the hotel and take the cab on to his rooms in Madison Avenue. But when they reached the hotel Claude asked him to come in.

"I can't go to bed," he said.

"But, Claudie, it's past four," said Charmian.

"I know. But after all this excitement sleep would be out of the question. Come in, Alston, we'll have something to eat, smoke a cigar, and try to quiet down."

"Right you are! I feel as lively as anything."

"It would be rather fun," said Charmian. "And I'm fearfully hungry."

At supper they were all unusually talkative, unusually, excitedly, intimate. Instead of "quieting down" Claude became almost feverishly vivacious. Although his cheeks were pale, and under his eyes there were dark shadows, he seemed to have got rid of all his fatigue.

"The climate here carries one on marvellously," he exclaimed. "When I think that I wanted to go to bed just before you came, Alston!"

He threw out his hand with a laugh. Then, picking up a gla.s.s of champagne, he added:

"I say, let us make a bargain!"

"What is it, old chap?"

"Let us--just us three--have supper together after the first performance. I couldn't stand a supper-party with a lot of semi-strangers."

"I'll come! Drink to that night!"

They drank.

Cigars were lit and talk flooded the warm red room. Words rushed to the lips of them all. Charmian lay back on the sofa, with big cushions piled under her head, and Claude, sometimes walking about the room, told them the history of the night in the theater. They interrupted, put questions, made comments, protested, argued, encouraged, exclaimed.

Mr. Cane had brought pressman after pressman to interview Claude on the libretto scandal, as they called it. It seemed that Madame Sennier had made her libelous statement in a violent fit of temper, brought on by a bad rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera House. Annie Meredith, who was to sing the big role in Sennier's new opera, and who was much greater as an actress than as a vocalist, had complained of the weakness of the libretto, and had attacked Madame Sennier for having made Jacques set it. Thereupon the great Henriette had lost all control of her powerful temperament. The secret bitterness engendered in her by her failure to capture the libretto of Gillier had found vent in the outburst which, no doubt with plenty of amplifications, had got into the evening papers.

The management at first had wished to attempt the impossible, to try to muzzle the pressmen. But their publicity agent knew better. Madame Sennier had been carried by temper into stupidity. She had made a false move. The only thing to do now was to make a sensation of it.

As Claude told of the pressmen's questions his mind burned with excitement, and a recklessness, such as he had never felt before, invaded him. He had been indignant, had even felt a sort of shame, when he was asked whether he had been "cute" in the libretto matter, whether he had stolen a march on his rival. Crayford's treatment of the affair had disgusted him. For Crayford, with his sharp eye to business, had seen at once that their "game" was, of course with all delicacy, all subtlety, to accept the imputation of shrewdness. The innocent "stunt"

was "no good to anyone" in his opinion. And he had not scrupled to say so to Claude. There had been an argument--the theater is the Temple of Argument--and Claude had heard himself called a "lobster," but had stuck to his determination to use truth as a weapon in his defense. But now, as he told all this, he felt that he did not care either way. What did it matter if dishonorable conduct, if every deadly sin, were imputed to him out here so long as he "made good" in the end with the work of his brain, the work which had led him to Africa and across the Atlantic?

What did it matter if the work were a spurious thing, a pasticcio, a poor victim which had been pulled this way and that, changed, cut, added to? What did it matter if the locusts swarmed over it--so long as it was a success? The blatant thing--everyone, every circ.u.mstance, was urging Claude to s.n.a.t.c.h at it; and in this early hour of the winter morning, excited by the intensity of the strain he was undergoing, by the pull on his body, but far more by the pull on his soul, he came to a sudden and crude decision; at all costs the blatant thing should be his, the popular triumph, the success, if not of the high-bred merit, then of sheer spectacular sensation. There is an intimate success that seems to be of the soul, and there is another, reverberating, resounding, like the clashing of bra.s.s instruments beaten together. Claude seemed to hear them at this moment as he talked with ever-growing excitement.

One of the pressmen had mentioned Gillier, who had arrived and been interviewed at the docks. He had evidently been delighted to find his work a "storm center," but had declined to commit himself to any direct statement of fact. The impression left on the pressmen by him, however, had been that a fight had raged for the possession of his libretto, which must have been won by the Heaths since Claude Heath had set it to music. Or had the fight really been between Joseph Crayford and the management of the Metropolitan Opera House? Gillier had finally remarked, "I must leave it to you, messieurs. All that matters to me is that my poor work should be helped to success by music and scenery, acting and singing. I am not responsible for what Madame Sennier, or anyone else, says to you."

"Then what do they really believe?" exclaimed Charmian, raising herself up on the cushions, and resting one flushed cheek on her hand.

"The worst, no doubt!" said Alston.

"What does it matter?" said Claude.

Quickly he took out of a box, clipped, lit, and began to smoke a fresh cigar.

"What does anything matter so long as we have a success, a big, resounding success?"

Charmian and Alston exchanged glances, half astonished, half congratulatory.

"I never realized till I came here," Claude continued, "the necessity of success to one who wants to continue doing good work. It is like the breaths of air drawn into his lungs by the swimmer in a race, who, to get pace, keeps his head low, his mouth under water half the time. I've simply got to win this race. And if anything helps, even lies from Madame Sennier, and the sly deceit of Gillier, I mean to welcome it.

That's the only thing to do. Crayford is right. I didn't see it at first, but I see it now. It's no earthly use the artist trying to keep himself and his talent in cotton wool in these days. If you've got anything to give the public it doesn't do to be sensitive about what people say and think. I had a lecture to-night from Crayford on the uses of advertis.e.m.e.nt which has quite enlightened me."

"What did he say?" interjected Alston.

"'My boy, if I were producing some goods, and it would help any to let them think I'd killed my mother, and robbed my father of his last nickel, d'you think I'd put them right, switch them on to the truth? Not at all! I'd get them all around me, and I'd say, "See here, boys, mother's gone to glory, and father's in the poorhouse, but it isn't up to me to say why. That's my affair. I know I can rely on you all to--keep my name before the public."'"

Charmian and Alston broke into laughter, but Claude's face continued to look grave and excited.

"The fact of the matter is that the work has got to come before the man," he said. "And now we've all got so far in this affair nothing must be allowed to keep us back from success. Let the papers say whatever they like so long as they talk about us. Let Madame Sennier rail and sneer as much as she chooses. It will be all to the good. Crayford told me so to-night. He said, 'My boy, it shows they're funky. They think our combination may be stronger than theirs.' It seems Sennier's new libretto has come out quite dreadfully at rehearsal, and they've been trying to re-write a lot of it and change situations. Now, we got nearly everything cut and dried at Djenan-el-Maqui. By Jove, how I did work there! D'you remember old Jernington's visit, Charmian? He believed in the opera, didn't he?"

"I should think so!" she cried. "Why, he positively raved about it. And he's not an amateur. He only cares for the music--and he's a man who knows."

"Yes, he does know. What a change in our lives, eh, Charmian, if we bring off a big success! And you'll be in it Alston."