Читать книгу The Second Fiddle - Bottome Phyllis - Страница 5

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Stella knew no Russian; she had no idea that anything worse could happen to this seriously broken people ruled by knouts. But there was still something that could happen: this proclamation touched their religion.

It seemed that they actually had a possession that they weren't prepared to let go. They could let their daughters and sons go, their houses and their lives; but there was something they held on to and refused to renounce.

This was enough to irritate any tyrant. The bare existence of anything that is uncontrollable always annoys a tyrant. There was a power in these people still unsubdued, so the proclamation said that unless they gave up their religion and became orthodox they would be killed. Then Chaliapine entered.

Eurydice gave a long gasp of emotion, and sank silently into her dream; no more could be expected of her as a companion. Stella endeavored to be more critical. She felt at once that Chaliapine's power wasn't his voice. It was a fine, controlled voice, it seemed more resonant and alive than any other in the company, and vastly easier; but his genius was behind his voice. It was not merely his acting, though immediately every one else on the stage appeared to be acting, and Chaliapine alone was real.

It consisted in that very uncontrollable something that tyrants cannot kill, that circumstances do not touch, that surmounts every stroke of fate, and is the residuum which faces death. There was a little more of it in Chaliapine than there is in most people.

She tried to follow the score of "Boris Goudonoff"; it was not easy music, and the story hardly seemed to matter.

Chaliapine was the leader of the religious sect that the Czar was going to stamp out. Everything was against him; was he going to conquer? The English audience expected him to conquer. It understood conquests. First, you started all wrong, because you hadn't taken the trouble not to, because you hadn't measured your antagonist, and because you did not think that preparation was necessary.

The audience allowed for things going wrong to begin with, and sat cheerfully expecting the miracle.

The opera went on, and it became apparent to Stella that Chaliapine was not going to get his people out of their difficulties.

They sank deeper and deeper into them. Tyranny was behind and in front of them; they were being steadily hemmed in and beaten down. What they held on to did them no apparent good; it didn't comfort them or relieve their necessities or hold out a helping hand to them. It did nothing against their enemies. It simply burned in them like a flame. It didn't even consume them; it left them to be consumed by the Czar.

The English audience listened breathlessly and a little surprised, but not troubled, because they felt quite sure that everything would come out all right in the last act.

Religion would triumph, it always did, even when you took no notice of it.

You didn't, as a rule, notice the police either, and yet when burglars broke in to steal your plate, they were caught climbing over the back fence by a policeman. Religion was there, like the police, to catch your troubles and restore your spiritual silver plate.

The melancholy minor Russian music couldn't mean that you weren't going to get anything out of it. It would wake up soon and be triumphant.

In the pauses between the acts Eurydice sat in a trance. Stella amused herself with picking out the kind of people she would have liked to know. One in particular in a box to the right of them, she found herself liking. His frosty-blue eyes had the consciousness of strength in them; the line of his jaw and the ironic, well-chiseled mouth spoke of a will that had felt and surmounted shocks. He was still a young man in the early thirties, but he had made his place in the world. He looked as secure as royalty. With a strange little thrill that was almost resentment Stella realized that she knew the woman beside him. Marian sat there very straight and slim in the guarded radiance of her youth, as intact as some precious ivory in a museum. She was Stella's greatest friend; that is to say, she gave to her the greatest amount of pleasure procurable in her life.

Stella couldn't have told why her heart sprang to meet Marian Young's. She had nothing in common with her. They had met at a course of lectures on the Renaissance, and out of a casual meeting had grown a singular, unequal, relationship.

Marian saw Stella very rarely, but she told her everything. She hadn't, however, told her of this new man. His strong, clever face had in it something different, something unnecessarily different, from Marian's other young men.

He lifted his head, and looked up toward the balconies above him. His eyes did not meet Stella's, but she took from them the strangest sensation of her life. A pang of sheer pity shot through her. There was no reason for pity; he looked aggressively strong and perfectly sure of himself. He even looked sure of Marian, and not without reason. He was all the things Marian liked best in a man, courageous, successful, handsome. Providence had thrown in his brains. That was the unnecessary quality.

Stella wondered a little wistfully what it must be like to talk to a really clever man. Her father was very clever, but he was not socially pliable, and he didn't exactly talk to Stella; he merely expressed in her presence conclusions at which he had arrived. It clarified his ideas, but it didn't do anything particular to Stella's.

Sir Richard Verny was taking trouble to talk to Marian; he bent his powerful head toward the girl and told her about Siberia. He knew Siberia well; he had often started from there upon important Arctic explorations. Marian wondered when he was going to propose. Siberia did as well as anything else till then. She knew he was going to propose; she didn't know anything at all about Siberia. She did not see Stella; it had not occurred to her that any one she knew could be sitting in the gallery.

The curtain rose again, and the last act began.

Chaliapine did not turn defeat into victory; no rabbit rose triumphantly, to satisfy the British public, out of a top-hat. Chaliapine led his people into a fire, and they were burned to death.

Some of them were frightened, and he had to comfort them, to hold them, and sustain them till the end. He had nothing at all to do it with, but he did sustain them. They all went into the flames, singing their disheartening music till the smoke covered them. Chaliapine sang longest, but there was nothing victorious in his last notes. They were very beautiful and final; then they weakened and were still.

The stillness went on for some time afterward. Everybody had been killed, and life had been so unendurable that they had faced death without much effort to avoid it. They could have avoided it if they had given up their faith. Their faith had vanished off the face of the earth, but they hadn't given it up.

Stella gave a long sigh of relief; she felt as if she had been saved from something abominable that might have happened.

Applause broke out all round them, a little uncertainly at first, because it was difficult for the audience to realize that the heavens weren't going to shoot open and do something definitely successful about it; but finally sustained and prolonged applause. Chaliapine had taken them all by storm. It was not the kind of storm that they were used to, but it was a storm.

"I love Russians," a lady exclaimed to Stella. "Such delightful people, don't you think, so full of color and what d' you call it?"

Eurydice shook herself impatiently like a dog after a plunge through water.

"Hurry! Let's get out of this," she said to Stella, "or I shall be rude to somebody. Idiots! Idiots! Don't they see that we've been listening to the defeat of the soul?"

"No, no," whispered Stella half to herself; "we've been listening to how it can't be defeated, how nothing touches it, not even death, not even despair, not even flames. The end of something that has never given in is victory."

They passed behind Marian outside the opera house, but Stella did not speak to her. She heard Sir Julian saying in a determined, resonant voice: "Well, of course I'm glad you liked it. Chaliapine is a good workman, but personally I don't think much of Russian music. It has a whine in it like a beggar's, sounds too much as if it had knocked under. My idea, you know, is not to knock under."

And Stella, slipping into the crowd, was aware again of a sharp pang of pity for him, as if she knew that, after all, his strength would meet and be consumed by fire.