At the Theatre Francais, the next afternoon, Darrow yawnedand fidgeted in his seat.
The day was warm, the theatre crowded and airless, and theperformance, it seemed to him, intolerably bad. He stole aglance at his companion, wondering if she shared hisfeelings. Her rapt profile betrayed no unrest, butpoliteness might have caused her to feign an interest thatshe did not feel. He leaned back impatiently, stiflinganother yawn, and trying to fix his attention on the stage.
Great things were going forward there, and he was notinsensible to the stern beauties of the ancient drama. Butthe interpretation of the play seemed to him as airless andlifeless as the atmosphere of the theatre. The players werethe same whom he had often applauded in those very parts,and perhaps that fact added to the impression of stalenessand conventionality produced by their performance. Surelyit was time to infuse new blood into the veins of themoribund art. He had the impression that the ghosts ofactors were giving a spectral performance on the shores ofStyx.
Certainly it was not the most profitable way for a young manwith a pretty companion to pass the golden hours of a springafternoon. The freshness of the face at his side,reflecting the freshness of the season, suggested dapplingsof sunlight through new leaves, the sound of a brook in thegrass, the ripple of tree-shadows over breezy meadows...
When at length the fateful march of the cothurns was stayedby the single pause in the play, and Darrow had led MissViner out on the balcony overhanging the square before thetheatre, he turned to see if she shared his feelings. Butthe rapturous look she gave him checked the depreciation onhis lips.
"Oh, why did you bring me out here? One ought to creep awayand sit in the dark till it begins again!""Is THAT the way they made you feel?""Didn't they YOU?...As if the gods were there all thewhile, just behind them, pulling the strings?" Her handswere pressed against the railing, her face shining anddarkening under the wing-beats of successive impressions.
Darrow smiled in enjoyment of her pleasure. After all, hehad felt all that, long ago; perhaps it was his own fault,rather than that of the actors, that the poetry of the playseemed to have evaporated...But no, he had been right injudging the performance to be dull and stale: it was simplyhis companion's inexperience, her lack of occasions tocompare and estimate, that made her think it brilliant.
"I was afraid you were bored and wanted to come away.""BORED?" She made a little aggrieved grimace. "You meanyou thought me too ignorant and stupid to appreciate it?""No; not that." The hand nearest him still lay on therailing of the balcony, and he covered it for a moment withhis. As he did so he saw the colour rise and tremble in hercheek.
"Tell me just what you think," he said, bending his head alittle, and only half-aware of his words.
She did not turn her face to his, but began to talk rapidly,trying to convey something of what she felt. But she wasevidently unused to analyzing her aesthetic emotions, andthe tumultuous rush of the drama seemed to have left her ina state of panting wonder, as though it had been a storm orsome other natural cataclysm. She had no literary orhistoric associations to which to attach her impressions:
her education had evidently not comprised a course in Greekliterature. But she felt what would probably have beenunperceived by many a young lady who had taken a first inclassics: the ineluctable fatality of the tale, the dreadsway in it of the same mysterious "luck" which pulled thethreads of her own small destiny. It was not literature toher, it was fact: as actual, as near by, as what washappening to her at the moment and what the next hour heldin store. Seen in this light, the play regained for Darrowits supreme and poignant reality. He pierced to the heartof its significance through all the artificial accretionswith which his theories of art and the conventions of thestage had clothed it, and saw it as he had never seen it: aslife.
After this there could be no question of flight, and he tookher back to the theatre, content to receive his ownsensations through the medium of hers. But with thecontinuation of the play, and the oppression of the heavyair, his attention again began to wander, straying back overthe incidents of the morning.
He had been with Sophy Viner all day, and he was surprisedto find how quickly the time had gone. She had hardlyattempted, as the hours passed, to conceal her satisfactionon finding that no telegram came from the Farlows. "They'llhave written," she had simply said; and her mind had at onceflown on to the golden prospect of an afternoon at thetheatre. The intervening hours had been disposed of in astroll through the lively streets, and a repast, luxuriouslylingered over, under the chestnut-boughs of a restaurant inthe Champs Elysees. Everything entertained and interestedher, and Darrow remarked, with an amused detachment, thatshe was not insensible to the impression her charmsproduced. Yet there was no hard edge of vanity in her senseof her prettiness: she seemed simply to be aware of it as anote in the general harmony, and to enjoy sounding the noteas a singer enjoys singing.
After luncheon, as they sat over their coffee, she had againasked an immense number of questions and delivered herselfof a remarkable variety of opinions. Her questions testifiedto a wholesome and comprehensive human curiosity, and hercomments showed, like her face and her whole attitude, anodd mingling of precocious wisdom and disarming ignorance.
When she talked to him about "life"--the word was often onher lips--she seemed to him like a child playing with atiger's cub; and he said to himself that some day the childwould grow up--and so would the tiger. Meanwhile, suchexpertness qualified by such candour made it impossible toguess the extent of her personal experience, or to estimateits effect on her character. She might be any one of adozen definable types, or she might--more disconcertingly toher companion and more perilously to herself--be a shiftingand uncrystallized mixture of them all.
Her talk, as usual, had promptly reverted to the stage. Shewas eager to learn about every form of dramatic expressionwhich the metropolis of things theatrical had to offer, andher curiosity ranged from the official temples of the art toits less hallowed haunts. Her searching enquiries about aplay whose production, on one of the latter scenes, hadprovoked a considerable amount of scandal, led Darrow tothrow out laughingly: "To see THAT you'll have to waittill you're married!" and his answer had sent her off at atangent.
"Oh, I never mean to marry," she had rejoined in a tone ofyouthful finality.
"I seem to have heard that before!""Yes; from girls who've only got to choose!" Her eyes hadgrown suddenly almost old. "I'd like you to see the onlymen who've ever wanted to marry me! One was the doctor onthe steamer, when I came abroad with the Hokes: he'd beencashiered from the navy for drunkenness. The other was adeaf widower with three grown-up daughters, who kept aclock-shop in Bayswater!--Besides," she rambled on, "I'm notso sure that I believe in marriage. You see I'm all forself-development and the chance to live one's life. I'mawfully modern, you know."It was just when she proclaimed herself most awfully modernthat she struck him as most helplessly backward; yet themoment after, without any bravado, or apparent desire toassume an attitude, she would propound some social axiomwhich could have been gathered only in the bitter soil ofexperience.
All these things came back to him as he sat beside her inthe theatre and watched her ingenuous absorption. It was on"the story" that her mind was fixed, and in life also, hesuspected, it would always be "the story", rather than itsremoter imaginative issues, that would hold her. He did notbelieve there were ever any echoes in her soul...
There was no question, however, that what she felt was feltwith intensity: to the actual, the immediate, she spreadvibrating strings. When the play was over, and they cameout once more into the sunlight, Darrow looked down at herwith a smile.
"Well?" he asked.
She made no answer. Her dark gaze seemed to rest on himwithout seeing him. Her cheeks and lips were pale, and theloose hair under her hat-brim clung to her forehead in damprings. She looked like a young priestess still dazed by thefumes of the cavern.
"You poor child--it's been almost too much for you!"She shook her head with a vague smile.
"Come," he went on, putting his hand on her arm, "let's jumpinto a taxi and get some air and sunshine. Look, there arehours of daylight left; and see what a night it's going tobe!"He pointed over their heads, to where a white moon hung inthe misty blue above the roofs of the rue de Rivoli.
She made no answer, and he signed to a motor-cab, callingout to the driver: "To the Bois!"As the carriage turned toward the Tuileries she rousedherself. "I must go first to the hotel. There may be amessage--at any rate I must decide on something."Darrow saw that the reality of the situation had suddenlyforced itself upon her. "I MUST decide on something,"she repeated.
He would have liked to postpone the return, to persuade herto drive directly to the Bois for dinner. It would havebeen easy enough to remind her that she could not start forJoigny that evening, and that therefore it was of no momentwhether she received the Farlows' answer then or a few hourslater; but for some reason he hesitated to use thisargument, which had come so naturally to him the day before.
After all, he knew she would find nothing at the hotel--sowhat did it matter if they went there?
The porter, interrogated, was not sure. He himself hadreceived nothing for the lady, but in his absence hissubordinate might have sent a letter upstairs.
Darrow and Sophy mounted together in the lift, and the youngman, while she went into her room, unlocked his own door andglanced at the empty table. For him at least no message hadcome; and on her threshold, a moment later, she met him withthe expected: "No--there's nothing!"He feigned an unregretful surprise. "So much the better!
And now, shall we drive out somewhere? Or would you rathertake a boat to Bellevue? Have you ever dined there, on theterrace, by moonlight? It's not at all bad. And there's noearthly use in sitting here waiting."She stood before him in perplexity.
"But when I wrote yesterday I asked them to telegraph. Isuppose they're horribly hard up, the poor dears, and theythought a letter would do as well as a telegram." The colourhad risen to her face. "That's why I wrote instead oftelegraphing; I haven't a penny to spare myself!"Nothing she could have said could have filled her listenerwith a deeper contrition. He felt the red in his own faceas he recalled the motive with which he had credited her inhis midnight musings. But that motive, after all, hadsimply been trumped up to justify his own disloyalty: he hadnever really believed in it. The reflection deepened hisconfusion, and he would have liked to take her hand in hisand confess the injustice he had done her.
She may have interpreted his change of colour as aninvoluntary protest at being initiated into such shabbydetails, for she went on with a laugh: "I suppose you canhardly understand what it means to have to stop and thinkwhether one can afford a telegram? But I've always had toconsider such things. And I mustn't stay here any longernow--I must try to get a night train for Joigny. Even ifthe Farlows can't take me in, I can go to the hotel: it willcost less than staying here." She paused again and thenexclaimed: "I ought to have thought of that sooner; I oughtto have telegraphed yesterday! But I was sure I should hearfrom them today; and I wanted--oh, I DID so awfully wantto stay!" She threw a troubled look at Darrow. "Do youhappen to remember," she asked, "what time it was when youposted my letter?"