Two nights later the tenor was to sing “Don Jose
Bengoa, hidalgo di Navarro” to Nagy's Carmen.
The very thought of it almost sickened him.
He wondered if he might not be suddenly indisposed. Then in an instant his egotism began to push itself forward.
Why should he not sing?
Nagy had been enjoying all the success.
As "Don Jose" he was at his best.
He would sing.
He would triumph over Nagy, especially in the last act.
He would show her that he, too, could have temperament when it was necessary.
He smiled as he thought of the splendours of his voice and style in "The Flower Song".
Yes, in "Don Jose" he would teach his mistress a lesson.
He was early at the theatre.
He did not see the assembling of the audience.
The Piazza San Ferdinando and the Strada San Carlo were crowded with equipages and pedestrians.
The nobility and the proletariat jostled one another in the streets.
The boxes and the galleries were packed.
The fame of the interpretations of the two forestieri had spread through the town, in spite the honourable endeavours of the local musical journals to convince every one that only Italians could disclose the real contents of Bizet s work.
The first act went with a fine vitality. Leander
had an excellent companion in the Italian Micaela
and the duet was beautifully sung.
The applause
was tumultuous.
Nagy gained no more for her
Habanera.
She was happy, for she rejoiced in it.
Leander s success.
He told her that he rejoiced
in hers.
He lied.
He had a canker at heart,
something that he could not explain.
The curtain rose on the second act.
More people had entered
the house. Certain persons of distinction who
always went late had come to occupy their boxes.
T
he dance was intoxicating.
Nagy flung herself
into its closing measures with all the sinuous grace
and abandon given to her by her gipsy nature.
To
her it was but another form of the friss of the
Czardas.
The "Escamillo" was a shouting Italian, who tore the Toreador song to tatters to the inexpressible delight of the gallery.
Everything
went with a swing till Nagy had hurled the inevitable chair up the stage and pitched the accouterments of the discomfited Don Jose at him, bidding
him to begone.
And then Leander poised himself for the triumph of "The Flower Song".
Nagy sank into a seat and he bent over her as he let the
opening measures flow from his throat in those
entrancing tones which had mastered two continents.
And at this moment he looked past Nagy into the lower box on the right of the stage and
full into the eyes of his wife.
The phrase which he was singing broke in two in the middle.
He felt his breath rush from him
in a sharp, convulsive gasp.
He made a desperate
effort to regain control of it.
A fiery red cloud rushed before his eyes.
He threw his hands over them.
He hurled his diaphragm upward with all the strength of his will.
No sound came.
He heard strange indefinable noises in the house.
They sounded like hisses and execrations.
There is no audience in the world so swift to proclaim
its opinions as that of San Carlo.
Leander
straightened himself up.
He dragged his gaze
away from that marvelous, proud, beautiful face,
which had burst upon him like a vision from paradise.
The next instant the fiery red cloud blinded
him and blackness followed it.
He fell prone upon the stage in a faint.
Wild confusion followed.
The curtain was
rung down and Nagy strove with her own lovely
hands to gather him into her arms.
Men hurried
upon the stage and the tenor was carried to his
dressing-room.
A physician was summoned.
A
quick examination showed that nothing serious
had befallen the singer.
A touch of vertigo, that
was all, the physician declared.
Oh, yes, he would
assuredly be able to finish the performance.
Leander, who had recovered his consciousness by
this time, looked up and smiled.
Something of
the bulldog feeling of college days came back to
him.
He murmured:
"I shall finish.
No fear that I shall not."
Nagy bent over him with cooing words, but he
quietly waved her away.
The stage manager went
before the curtain and told the audience that the
great Signor Baroni had unfortunately been attacked by vertigo, but that in a few minutes, a very
few minutes, he would be able to continue the,
performance.
If the highly honorable signoras
and signors would kindly be patient, it would be
well.
Meanwhile Leander had whispered to his
valet to clear the room.
The physician had done
all that he could, but there were still several persons in the little space.
Leander wished to be
alone.
Every one went out except Nagy.
She
of course remained.
Leander sat up and took a
drink of brandy.
Then he gazed at Nagy with
a long, thoughtful gaze.
She returned the look
with melting eyes.
Leander studied the eyes as
if they were some strange freak of nature which
had never before come within the sphere of his
experience.
Nagy was suddenly conscious of a
cold feeling at heart.
Leander rose.
" Come," he said, " let us go and finish the act.
We have played our little tragedy out to the end.
Now we must play that for which the audience is
waiting."
They returned to the stage.
The curtain was
raised again.
The audience applauded wildly.
The orchestra resumed at the beginning of "The Flower Song"
.
And this time Leander sang the song to the
end, but as he had never sung it before in all his
remarkable career.
Not once during the delivery
of the song did he look into the eyes of Nagy,
but always past them into that box on the right of
the stage.
And there was something poignant in the quality of his tone, something which seemed
new.
When he sang the LAST words --
"Lo schiavo suo, Carmen, mi fe"
he was still looking past Nagy into that box.
Helen sat erect and just a trifle pale.
When Leander had fallen, she had
turned swiftly to the Duchess of Fiesole, whose
guest she was, and said some words.
An attendant had been despatched to the stage with an inquiry and the answer had been reassuring.
The act ended in a storm of applause.
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