The Box on the Grand Tier

by Zona Gale

THE BOX ON THE GRAND TIER

Wherein a Great Russian Tenor Recovered the Lost Happiness of his Youth

By ZONA GALE

SO” cried Sonia as the carriage door shut smartly (how that smart closing of a carriage door sets the blood dancing when there is an adventure afoot!)—“so now will come the opera! I have only to sit here in the dark and immediately I shall see the opera. But it can never be I, Sonia, and it must be that there will be an earthquake beneath the pit before ever the curtain lifts itself.”

Opposite to Sonia in the shadow sat two deeper shadows—her Aunt Aniela and her Uncle Sergius—the one ponderous, suspicious of a duty in every pleasure, a mound of purple and black; the other ponderous, suspicious of pleasure and duty alike, a mound of opinion. The lights on Fifth-ave. flashed among these shadows and touched the jet and gems and the glass of a pince-nez, and departed without betraying anything of deeper interest, save only Sonia—Sonia, little, vibrant, eager thing in a mist of white cloaked by a blur of rose; Sonia, who in the joy of this night could almost imagine herself back in St. Petersburg and could almost forget the long winter of her discontent in the American school where her Uncle Sergius—that mound of opinion—had condemned her at the beginning of his own indignant exile. How should it not be good, thought Sonia, to be free at last of the convent walls, at large upon this great Fifth-ave. of America, with the opera less than an hour away?

“I love it!” she said, half without knowing.

“One loves one’s friends, Panienka. One only likes occasions,” remarked the mound of opinion from out the cave of shadow.

“One cultivates repose when one is twenty,” remarked the mound of purple and black in exactly the same tone.

“But I love it, all the same,” whispered Sonia to herself, with the elastic convictions of twenty.

In the glitter and crush of the carriage entrance at the Metropolitan, in the glitter and crush of the lobby and corridor, Sonia looked about her with eyes of delight. But it was Petersburg itself, she decided exultantly: there were lights and jewels and laughter at nothing at all and the sounds of the world even in this America, which had seemed made up of convent walls and wistful nuns who spoke the language of gentle though perpetual reproof.

“I shall hear the opera,” Sonia repeated, longing to draw in a deep breath of the bright air, “and I shall hear him sing. Can he be so near—can Dragomir himself really be beneath this roof?”

Sonia moved forward, smiling a little for the very joy of the hour, forgetful of the mound of opinion, unconscious of the existence of all the purple and black in the world. Therefore, how it happened is not in all respects a mystery; similar things occur in broad daylight all day long; and it must be borne in mind that this great Aunt Aniela and this great Uncle Sergius had long been wont to come to the opera with no little mist of white and blur of rose to be considered. At all events, in the light of what came after, they must have one's merry forgiveness for the perplexity with which they turned to each other outside the door of their box in the second tier; for it was inconceivable, amazing, eminently impossible—but Sonia was not with them.

There was a moment of stifled reproaching—well-bred, modulated. conjugal reproaching suited to the hovering ear of the concerned usher—then Aunt Aniela billowed into the box and subsided in a torrent of drapery, and Uncle Sergius, ponderous, suspicious of the entire matter, bundled away back down the corridor, alarm in the very light upon his pince-nez. In ten minutes he returned, the usher, with anxious, lifted eyebrows, following after.

“Of all things extraordinary!” he ejaculated, and dropped like a fallen star on the edge of a fragile chair of gilt. “The child is nowhere. She is not to be found. She is not anywhere!” he announced.

“But have you—did you—what have you—” squeaked Aunt Aniela-with the incoherence of the desperate and the useless.

And in the mist of explanations which followed, with two added ushers arriving to put their explanations in the mist, down went the lights, up trembled the first faint thread of a violin, and the best to be done for fifteen minutes was to abide in the knowledge that the entire corps of ushers in the Metropolitan, the private detectives, the men at the door, in the box-office, out on the very street with the carriages, were each absorbed in the search, his palm tingling with the phantom touch of his reward.

“The rich Russian’s niece,” the word went round, “niece of the subscriber who looks like a cinnamon bear!”

And meanwhile Sonia, with the most innocent intent in the world, had turned aside in the most innocent mistake. At the top of the grand stairway—Aunt Aniela was more suspicious of the “lift” than of a bomb—Sonia’s eye had been caught by an approaching cloud of butterfly women as blue and gold and glittering as civilization allows; and while she watched them disappearing with soft laughter into the crimson interior of their waiting box, Aunt Aniela and Uncle Sergius, ponderous, absorbed, near-sighted, had turned to mount the second stairs. Thus when Sonia missed them she kept on, with the most innocent intent in the world, straight down the broad corridor of the grand tier.

There followed the inevitable moment of bewilderment, a return, a hurried survey of the gay throng in which she was herself like a little lost butterfly in an exceptionally brilliant field, and at last her appeal to a faint polite usher who listened to her anxious explanation, pricked to more than professional regret at the quandary of the mist of white and the blur of rose. And while he listened, a bit bewildered by Sonia’s beauty and by her appeal to him, he suddenly bethought himself, as even faint polite ushers may do, of an expedient:

The box of the Holliday-Noels! Was it not empty? Had not the Holliday-Noels sailed that day for Carlsbad, as all the world knew? Why not—what was to prevent? In the name of charity now, the little usher told himself, and immediately stammered out a suggestion, given authority by the deep brown of Sonia’s eyes and the cloud of her dark hair. Even an usher may look upon a damsel in distress.

Sonia’s eyes sparkled bewilderingly. A box on the grand tier! But to sit there safely in a box on the grand tier until her uncle came to claim her, breathing out a thousand opinions! Perhaps even to sit there alone and hear Dragomir sing! She cast a terrified glance over her shoulder—the round, white shoulder from which the rose cloak had slipped—and her glance was all of apprehension—but apprehension, if the truth must be told, lest her Uncle Sergius be already returning.

“Quickly then! Oh, but quickly!” she bade the usher, her little gloved fingers fumbling in her bag for her purse of seed-pearls.

In another instant the faint polite functionary had thrown wide the door of the box of the Holliday-Noels and had closed it upon the vision of white and rose and turned away, his professional mien fairly disarranged by the look of the crisp thing that Sonia had slipped in his hand. No wonder that he thereafter remained loyal for a space, though in the teeth of the entire force of his brother ushers! An hour later, so he arranged it with himself, he would impart to the cinnamon bear how matters stood. Meanwhile, in gratitude, he blessed the Holliday-Noels.

And so did Sonia. For a moment, as the door of the box closed upon her, she stood breathless, dazzled by the lights, by the stir in the pit, by the shining of the great splendid horseshoe of boxes of which she found herself a part; the next, she had stepped boldly forward and sunk in the depths of a plump, hospitable fauteuil of dark velvet, her cloak falling in a blur of rose about the slim grace of her little figure in its mist of white.

"But no!” she breathed in an ecstasy. “This cannot be I, Sonia! There must this moment be an earthquake beneath the pit!”

There was no earthquake. But twenty glasses in the opposite boxes were instantly turned and focused upon the girl. The word of wonder and amazement went softly round. Who was she—who was this girl in the box of the Holliday-Noels? But she was beautiful, distinguished, exquisite—her gown, her air, the cunning of that line of rose where her cloak fell along her white skirts! And alone!—it was impossible. Who was she, in the box of the Holliday-Noels?

Then the lights were lowered, and there uptrembled from the orchestra the faint thread of a violin. The twenty glasses in the opposite boxes had found out nothing. And presently Sonia, with a delicious breath of excitement, saw that although Uncle Sergius was manifestly nowhere at all, and though no earthquake disturbed the clouds of chiffon in the pit, the curtain was slowly lifting itself and the opera was begun.

They were singing “The Rhinegold.” Sonia, as she listened, was half of the opinion that it was she herself who was gliding and waving forward and back in the maze of green waters—surely it was no more wonderful to be a Rhine maiden than to be Sonia, free of convent walls and alone in a box of the grand tier listening to the opera, waiting to hear Dragomir? All the sweet of her liberty and her adventure were singing in her veins, all the sweet of young life and the “honey of romance” were in her heart—so little it takes to make one mad with delight when she is twenty and safe away from two who are ponderous and done with glamour.

 

"Wavering waters, weaving and whirling
Rhinegold—Rhinegold!
Glorious joy.—

 

Sonia could have sung aloud with the gliding figures in the green waters on the stage. And all the while she was waiting for one voice—the voice that was almost the first memory of her little girlhood, the voice of Dragomir, now the great Russian tenor who had driven two continents mad. Could it be Dragomir—her Dragomir? she wondered, as she waited tensely; and she dreamed again of the long-ago picture that had never faded: the great white room in the winter palace at Peterhof where she had been caressed and paid homage by the idle women-in-waiting, when in had burst Dragomir, his dark eyes alight with the news of his permission to go to Berlin to study and to sing.

“But Dragomir,” she had wailed in the midst of the rejoicing, her baby hands tugging at his sleeve, "you said I was to grow up to be your wife! When shall I grow up to be your wife now?”

Whereat he had laughed and caught her up and kissed her and, with her throned on his knee in the midst of the idle women-in-waiting, he had set a little ring upon her hand and called them to witness that when he was great and rich and famous and happy he would come back to claim her for his own. Then had followed troublous times, disorders at home and abroad, suspicion and revolt, and in the end her Uncle Sergius, deposed from his place of trust, wounded and outraged by those nearest his office, had fled to America—and since then there had been only the walls of the school and the gentle reproof of the nuns, and no word at all of Dragomir. Save that now, this very night, he was to sing!

Sonia waited, sunk in rememberings and thrilling with anticipation. For it was not strange that in the pleasant confusion of her entrance to the busy shining lobby she had missed what had sent numbers from the place: the chilling perfunctory announcement that Dragomir was indisposed and would not appear that evening. Sonia waited, unconscious of this, sunk in her rememberings and her dreams. And nothing told her that Dragomir was not to sing, and nothing warned her that though he was not to appear he had, against his physicians’ orders, slipped from his hotel, minded to hear a bit of the opera from the front. Nor could she know that, as he came down the corridor of the grand tier, he was passing the doors of a dozen boxes that would gladly have opened to him; and instead, acknowledging his insufferable weariness of all that they had to offer, was remembering with gratitude the key that day placed at his disposal by his departing friend—young Holliday-Noel himself.

She heard the door of the box softly open, and turned, with a sinking heart, expecting to meet the hoarse reproaches of Uncle Sergius. Instead she saw a figure—huge, towering, erect—outlined for a moment against the brightness of the door, then cut solidly in blacker shadow than that of the box's dimness. He sank in an arm-chair beside hers, and it was as if some one living, instinct with life and with the pride of strength had come, somehow giving something of his presence to the very air. Sonia turned—the glow from the stage was in his face and lighting his eyes—but across the gulf of the years that had separated them it was impossible for her to guess that this was Dragomir. Besides, she was happily expecting Dragomir upon the stage.

He had at first hardly been conscious that anyone else was in the box. When he saw the whiteness of her gown he half rose with a gesture of apology, and at the same moment he saw her face—dimly, as she saw his, but since she was so little a child when he had left her, without the possibility of recognition. But something else he did recognize, and his pleasure leaped impetuously to his lips:

“You are of my country?” he said.

She nodded, with the shy confidence of a child. Without her knowledge something in his manner impressed her—less, perhaps, as familiar to her than as remembered; but she had no thought that this was Dragomir, for whose coming she was waiting.

“Then have I permission, mademoiselle,” he said, with the grave directness which was never bluntness, “to sit here until the act is closed? M. Holliday-Noel has kindly left me a key. Shall I intrude for these few moments?”

“Stay—but stay,” said Sonia simply, and if there was a thought of what the twenty glasses would feel at this added impropriety it quickly gave place to assurance. “He is of my country,” thought Sonia, brushing the thought aside.

On the stage, risen from a black chasm of rock, had appeared the Nibelung, and at his first call to the Rhine maidens Sonia bent eagerly forward.

"Is it he?” she asked, scanning the dim waters. “Is that Dragomir?”

Dragomir, courted by the multitude, yet felt an indefinable pleasure as she spoke his name. His eyes were wonted to the twilight of the place, and he was amazed at her beauty.

“No, mademoiselle,” he said courteously, “it is not he. He will not sing to-night.”

She turned upon him swiftly. “He will not sing?” she echoed. “Dragomir will not sing to-night? Oh, how unfortunate I am!”

“Pardon, mademoiselle," insisted Dragomir gravely, “the English tenor Waldwyn—he will sing in his place. He is infinitely suited to the rôle.”

“The rôle!” said Sonia, her little gloved palm caressing her cheek. "I care nothing for the rôle! I wish to see Dragomir.”

The great tenor scanned her face. “Tell me, mademoiselle,” he said abruptly, “why do you wish to see this fellow Dragomir?”

Sonia hesitated. “He is of my country,” she said at last inconsequently.

“But I, for example—I am of your country, mademoiselle,” he rejoined—Dragomir, who was wont to call the Americans men and women of wood and ice because they chattered through the opera!

His words suggested to Sonia a remote possibility. “Do you know Dragomir, monsieur?” she asked.

“But assuredly,” he answered tranquilly, as if one might know Dragomir every day.

Sonia made a little exclamation of pleasure. In an instant she was alive, eager, forgetful of both time and the hour. “Tell me!” she begged. “Tell me, monsieur! He longed to be great and rich and famous and happy. He is great and rich and famous. Do you know, perhaps—is he happy?”

It was no strange thing to the tenor to hear his ambitions, his traits, his tastes, on lips unknown. He was well accustomed to seeing his favorite flower, his make of cravat, his way of religion, set forth in the penny papers. Yet, weary as he was of the ironies of his importance, this unexpected encounter and its whimsical turn, and above all the fresh youth and ardor of Sonia, beguiled him. He watched the Rhine maidens for a moment, frowning at the absurd machinery of their swimming, and then:

"Ah, well now, since you ask me,” he declared, “he makes no secret. He has found nothing of the sort. Who does?”

Sonia sighed. “There was happiness for him somewhere, though,” she said with charming positiveness. “One is certain of that.”

“Yes, mademoiselle,” assented Dragomir, watching the antics of black Alberich, “he knows that very well. But he missed that. He threw it away, as we all throw away happiness. Is there anyone who does not? Is there anyone, do you think, there, or there,” he swept the circle of the listening pit and of the boxes, “who has not thrown away happiness? Who does not long, hour by hour, for the second chance that never, never comes?”

“The second chance?” repeated Sonia vaguely. For Sonia at twenty the world held nothing but chances to happiness—shining, beckoning, everywhere manifest.

“This Dragomir’s happiness, since you are graciously pleased to be interested, mademoiselle,” said the tenor, turning to her, “lay in a cabinet-maker’s shop in Petersburg where he was contented until the Empress heard him sing while he was at work in a closet of the Winter Palace. After that it lay once again in a certain dream—”

He had half forgotten Sonia. It was never the way of the great impressionable creature to cloak his moods or his estimates; what he was feeling was always for the eye to see. The twilight of the box, the caress of the music, the exquisite youth and response of Sonia and the mere picturesqueness of the interval tempted him.

“Will you believe, mademoiselle," he said, smiling, ”that this fellow Dragomir, in whom you show such generous interest, has a certain consolation, which is also a thing to grieve for; a very little dream of his youth which someway will not crowd itself out? That is very foolish, is it not, mademoiselle—to remember a thing of one's youth? But for Dragomir, I have heard that the thrill was there—and nowhere else. So he remembers.”

Sonia listened.

“That is it, mademoiselle,” said Dragomir suddenly, nodding toward the stage. “There we are, all, all of us, saving in our own way precisely what Alberich himself said.”

In the green waters Black Alberich was leaping to the rock where the Rhinegold lay, and crying out:

 

All the wealth of the world! For that who would not give up love?

 

“Did Dragomir say that, monsieur?” asked Sonia curiously.

“Ah, so I think, mademoiselle!” cried the tenor lightly. “He is a foolish fellow—I tell him this a thousand times. Fancy remembering a ring given to one’s sweetheart when he was sixteen and she was six! But who would do that in this day? We of this adopted America have less of romance. Is it not so, mademoiselle?”

He spoke lightly, almost absently, and entirely without a wish, one would have said, to excite either sympathy or curiosity. He spoke simply, and chiefly, perhaps, because it was his royal way to say the greater part of what he chose to say. He was not unlike a god relating a bit of some Olympian lore to a child of earth, without in the least considering the effect of his words.

Sonia sat up straight in the velvet fauteuil. What had this man said? Was it really of Dragomir that he was speaking? Involuntarily she touched the ring beneath her glove—the ring now too tiny for all save her smallest finger, outgrown as she had thought that this great Dragomir had outgrown its memory, but cherished all these years. She bent forward swiftly and looked upward to the dark face seen dimly in the twilight of the box. Who was he who knew this of Dragomir? And even as she wondered, with a swift flash of that magic intuition that is like an alien sense, suddenly and inexplicably she knew the truth.

‘You are speaking of the winter palace at Peterhof,” she said in an excitement that had something of entreaty to be told. “The women-in-waiting were here—is it not so, monsieur?—they were expecting a summons. And Dragomir came in to tell them of his going to Berlin? He was going to Berlin to be great and rich and famous and happy, and they were all glad, all save one.”

Dragomir wheeled in his chair. “How do you know that, mademoiselle?” he said almost aloud—so that, indeed, the Americans in the adjoining box glared at them as at people of wood and ice who chatter through the opera.

Then she knew, and one little hand groped toward him. “Isn’t it Dragomir?” breathed Sonia tremulously.

It is certain that those in the adjoining box and in the greater part of the house were at that moment listening with satisfaction to a sentiment of Woglinda, one of the Rhine maidens, who swam absurdly in the green stage-waters and sang:

 

We have nothing to fear! For everyone who lives must love!

 

But it is doubtful if the two who could have confirmed her words heard either this or anything at all that followed.

*

When the carriage door shut smartly—how that smart closing of a carriage door keeps the blood dancing when the world of adventure is one’s own!—the lights of Broadway came flashing within upon the jet and gems and the glass of a pince-nez—exactly as if all the world was not changed in these four hours.

“Dragomir is quite like his old self,” remarked Aunt Aniela absently. “To think of his saving you in that useful manner! And did you enjoy the opera, Sonia—when your fright was well over?”

“But I loved—loved—loved it!” cried Sonia.

“One only loves one’s friends, Panienka,” protested the mound of opinion from out the cave of shadows.

But Aunt Aniela had gone to sleep, and nobody heard.