Chapter XXV: A Last Struggle

"O sweet, they tell me that the world is hard and harsh of mind.
But can it be so hard, so harsh, as those that should be kind?
That matters not; let come what will; at last the end is sure,
And every heart that loves with truth is equal to endure."
TENNYSON.

"Now, Miss Claremont, suppose just for once you were to come to the theatre?" remarked Mr. Britton at breakfast the next morning. "I see they are giving _Il Barbiere_ on Wednesday night, and I have a sort of hankering to hear it once more. Will you come? Shall I take a box?"

But Clare was too staunch to her Puritan traditions, though she owned that she would much have liked to hear Carlo. As yet, however, he had not converted her; she still regarded the stage as at least a necessary evil, and felt bound to refuse Mr. Britton's offer.

"Then ask Signor Donati over to lunch to-morrow; it will be your last chance of seeing him; and I am afraid it is no good asking him to dinner, because, apparently, he can't sing after eating, and has to dine at some unconscionably early hour."

"I shall be going in to Ashborough at twelve o'clock in the pony-carriage, Clare," remarked Kate. "I can leave a note for you, if you like; or will you come in with me?"

Clare, who was fond of driving, said she should like to come, so when lessons were ended she joined her ex-pupil, and, well wrapped up, was able to enjoy even the stretch of bleak, dusty road that lay between Merlebank and Ashborough.

"We need not leave the note, for there is Signor Donati!" exclaimed Kate, as they drove down the High Street. "I do hate to see a man in fur like that. He seems to coddle himself dreadfully. Harry says he took quite an age wrapping up his throat last night."

"We will just stop a minute or two, if you don't mind," said Clare. "I will speak to him, and see if he can come."

Carlo did not at first notice them. He was walking rather slowly down the street, with Gigi, as usual, clinging to his hand. He looked ill and depressed, but when Gigi eagerly drew his attention to the pony-carriage and its occupants, his face lighted up, and he seemed for the time to return to his old self.

"We were just coming to ask you to lunch with us to-morrow," said Clare. "Will you come, you and Gigi? I suppose you couldn't dine with us, could you?"

"I am afraid not, thank you, for I'm singing both to-night and to-morrow; but I shall be very glad to come over to lunch."

He had a short, hard cough, which made Clare look at him anxiously.

"You look very poorly to-day, Carlo," she said.

"I awoke to the sad consciousness that the wind had gone back to the east," he said, laughing.

"And that cough? It seems very bad."

"Oh, it is only chronic!" he said, with a smile. "We have all suffered more or less from the long winter. It must be nearly over now; don't you think?"

"April and May are often nearly as cold," said Kate, perversely.

"Are they?" he said, with an expressive gesture. "My friend Sardoni has just given me a song called 'Welcome, cold North-easter,' but the very words makes one's teeth chatter!"

"One o'clock to-morrow, then," said Clare as they drove on again.

He took off his hat and bowed in foreign fashion, and was sedulously imitated by Gigi.

"Dreadfully Italian!" said Kate, whipping up the ponies with a touch of irritation in her manner. "I can't bear a man to be a sort of barometer--pretending to know which way the wind is before he had been out: such nonsense!"

"I have known many people with susceptible chests who were able to do that," said Clare.

"But no Englishman looks so miserable just because it happens to be a cold day," said Kate. "It seems so effeminate to mind a little fresh air."

"My dear, if you had to work hard through a very hot summer in Italy do you not think you might look flushed and over-tired?"

"Ah, but to feel heat is quite a different thing!" protested Kate. "There's nothing unmanly in that; why, don't you remember last August how limp and good-for-nothing Harry was in that very hot week?"

"Yes, because he was unused to it. You are illogical, Kate; it is not a bit more effeminate, as you say, to feel the physical effects of cold than of heat; the only difference is that you understand one feeling and don't understand the other."

"That may be," said Kate, "but I don't like Signor Donati; and as to saying that he works hard, why, what man who is hard-worked would be sauntering down the High Street like that, with a child? I don't call his sort of profession work at all!"

In the meantime Carlo slowly made his way back to the hotel.

He was so tired and overdone that it was all he could do to bear Gigi's chatter. He wondered how he should get through with his "Count Rodolpho," remembered distastefully that he should have to make love to Mlle. de Caisne, who never would sink her own personality in that of "Lisa," and would have given all he possessed if any one had come to him with the news that for some good reason there could be no opera that night. Everything in the future which he had to undertake looked to him like a huge mountain which he must perforce climb; and, worst of all, he knew that the instant he faltered Comerio would come forward and offer to take his place. If it had not been for that thought he could have borne up better, but the consciousness that Gomez was carefully keeping watch on his health, like a vulture hovering over a dying man, and longing to swoop down on him,--this was almost maddening. He was troubled, too, about Sardoni, who, for the last day or two, had been unlike himself, moody and melancholy in the daytime, and wild and reckless towards night. He seemed to shun Carlo as much as possible, and when they were thrown together was so bitter and sarcastic that his friend could not imagine what had come over him; it was so unreasonable, so altogether improbable, that the sermon of Sunday night should still be rankling in his mind, that such a notion never occurred to Carlo. He was altogether perplexed and felt very anxious about him, nor could he help perceiving with a pang that in the time of his own greatest need Sardoni had deserted him, wholly failing to notice his desperate struggle to keep up. How he got through his work he scarcely knew; luckily for him, his throat was not much affected, though he was feeling far too weak and ill to be in good voice. At any rate, he did not break down, and he began to see that at present he must content himself with this poor comfort, and put up with cold receptions and the wretched consciousness of artistic failure. He went home wondering what poor old Piale would have said could he have heard him, and congratulating himself that the dear old Maestro was not likely even to see the unfavorable critiques on his singing which must inevitably follow upon so wretched a performance.

On the Wednesday morning, after a very restless night, he woke much worse than on the previous day, and feeling positively sick at the thought that he must either get through the trying part of "Figaro" that night or confess his illness, get a medical certificate to prove his inability to appear, and thus give all into the hands of Gomez and Comerio. For he knew too well that no doctor in his senses would permit him to sing in his present state, that he would infallibly be ordered to rest; and for this reason, while taking every possible precaution throughout the winter, he had avoided doctors as he would have avoided the plague. It was still just possible that he might struggle on till the warm weather came, then, in June, Merlino might, and probably would, renew the contract with him, and he should go to America with the troupe and once more baffle Comerio. If he could only hold out!

He lay in bed as long as he dared, then, knowing that Gomez would publicly comment on the fact if he failed to make his appearance, and that Merlino invariably wanted him if he happened to be late in the morning, dressed hastily, noticed with relief that he did not look nearly so ghastly as he felt, and went down to the crowded coffee-room. The hotel was full of people who had come down to Ashborough for the races; they were a noisy, disreputable crew; and as Carlo entered the room where they were all breakfasting before going to the racecourse, it seemed to him like coming into a pandemonium. His head was aching miserably, but his ears seemed preternaturally alive to the slightest sound, and he could distinctly hear several comments on "one of those operatic fellows" as he steered his way through the throng to the fireplace, nodding to Merlino and Tannini as he passed them.

"Good-day, Donati; how are you?" said a voice at his elbow.

He looked round and saw the Spaniard's malicious face.

"Good-morning," he replied.

"How are you?" repeated Gomez.

"I'm cold," said Carlo, drawing nearer to the fire, and determined that Gomez should gain nothing from his catechism. "They don't know how to build up fires in this place."

As he spoke he felt the Spaniard's searching glance, and knew that Gomez was far too shrewd not to find out the true state of the case. For although his rich, ruddy-brown coloring deceived many people, yet keen observers might easily note that day by day his cheeks grew more hollow, and that there were lines of pain about his mouth and eyes. There was to him a sort of horrible humiliation about it, for he had never been ill in his life, had thought it impossible that his perfect health should be broken, had almost laughed when Captain Britton had suggested the idea to him. It was useless, however, to blink the fact any longer; and when the place was quiet once more--the noisy guests gone off to the races, and Merlino and Marioni to the theatre--Carlo gave way, shivering from head to foot almost like one in a fit of ague.

"Cold morning, sir," said one of the over-worked waiters, putting fresh coals on the fire. "Have you breakfasted, sir?"

"I won't take anything, thank you," said Carlo, feeling not the slightest inclination for food.

"Some nice hot rashers, sir, or an egg?" suggested the waiter. But Carlo was not to be tempted.

"We shall have to put you on my '_Don't be dainty_'," said Gigi, taking off his bib embroidered with this moral precept and trotting up to Carlo with it.

It was impossible not to laugh. The waiter smiled politely and withdrew, but returned before long with a cup of coffee.

"Try that, sir," he said kindly; "it's just fresh made and will do you good. You have a heavy cold coming on, sir."

Carlo was touched by the man's courtesy, he did not deny the advent of the heavy cold.

"Gigi," he said, "I'm afraid we must give up going to Merlebank to lunch. You shall take a note over there, if I can find someone to send with you."

"Are you ill, _zio caro_?" asked the child, frightened by the look of pain which he for the first time noticed in the face so familiar to him.

"The waiter says it's a heavy cold coming on, and anyhow I must save up for to-night. I'm sorry to disappoint you."

"I wish we could go," said Gigi, wistfully, "but I more wish you wasn't ill;" and he raised his quaint, pitiful little face to Carlo's with one of those childish caresses which made Carlo feel that everything he had been through was worth while.

He sat down to write to Clare, and Gigi ran back to his beloved soldiers, monotonously chanting in his rather pretty little voice,--

"'Pray, Mr. Frog, will you give us a song,
But let it be something that's not very long.'
'Indeed, Mrs. Mouse,' replied Mr. Frog,
'A cold has made me as hoarse as a hog.'"

Carlo was fain to confess that day that it was a relief to get rid of his little companion. He sent him off to Merlebank with a friendly scene-shifter, and sat in a great armchair drawn close to the fire, bearing miserable headache and backache, yet finding a sort of relief in the consciousness that he could cough and shiver to his heart's content now that no one was near.

The morning passed in a strange quiet, like the pause before a storm; the very streets were deserted, for all Ashborough was on the racecourse; Nita, who was not singing that evening, was still in her room; Mlle. de Caisne was closeted with her dressmaker; there was nothing to break the peace of Carlo's solitude, if indeed such feverish misery could be called peace.

The clock struck twelve, and he started from a troubled waking dream of Francesca to the recollection that in another eight hours he should have to transform himself somehow into Figaro; and with nervousness far greater than that which he had felt at his first appearance, he made his way to the private sitting-room which was the joint property of Merlino's troupe, and began to practise. But five minutes completely exhausted him, he shut the piano, and in a sort of despair stretched himself at full length on the hearth-rug.

"I don't know what is going to happen to me," he thought to himself, with the misery of a thoroughly healthy man for the first time attacked by serious illness. "But if I am to sing, I can sing, that much is certain; I'll at least die in harness."

Resolutely driving back the crowd of cares that surged in upon him, taking advantage of his physical weakness, he lay in a sort of enforced quiet,--the quiet which can only come to a good man well schooled in self-discipline. He was failing, and knew it all too well, but he knew still better that he was but a unit in the great army of One who cannot fail, knew that

"He
Alone may say, ''Tis finished all and very good.'
We only do a part, and partly well,
And others come and mend it."

He must have dozed for a few minutes, for on suddenly opening his eyes he found that Nita had come into the room, and was looking down upon him with her beautiful heartless face, and once again that look of suppressed excitement which had pained him so much at Birmingham.

"You are ill," she said, breathlessly. "You are not going to sing to-night?"

He was on his feet in a moment. "Certainly I am going to sing," he said. "Marioni advised me not to go out this morning, to save up for the opera, as I have a cold coming on."

"Where is Gigi?" she asked, with nervousness, which he hailed with relief. Since the child's narrow escape from death she had certainly learnt to think much more of him, and that she should trouble herself as to his safety was something quite new.

"Gigi has gone over to Merlebank with a note; I meant to have gone to see Miss Claremont, but thought it was wiser to save up for Figaro. I sent him over with Adamson, he'll take great care of him."

"But here is Adamson coming down the street alone. What can have happened to the child? Why did you send him?"

She refused to hear reason, but Carlo was only too glad to be scolded, for every word revealed to him how much she loved the child.

The discussion was soon ended by the arrival of the scene-shifter, with a message to the effect that Master Gigi was staying to lunch at Merlebank, and that Miss Claremont would bring him back in the carriage that afternoon.

Nita was pacified, and asked Carlo to accompany her while she practised a new song; she seemed to forget her first impression on seeing him, got absorbed in the music, and thought no more of his possible illness and Comerio's possible advent. He was relieved, and presently went down to lunch with her, made a feint of eating something, and heard with satisfaction that a plan was proposed for hiring a brake and going on to the racecourse, since he knew that he should be left in peace most of the afternoon. But as the hours passed by he grew steadily worse, and not even the rest and solitude prepared him for the great effort of the evening. He was sitting crouched up by the fire, his head resting on his hands, when Domenica Borelli came into the room. She was tall and stately, with something both in her face and in her way of walking which revealed her character, a noble-minded, upright woman, whom to know was to revere. She was some years older than he was, and off the stage her face bore the stamp of its thirty years.

"I thought perhaps you would just go through '_Dunque io son_' with me," she said, as she crossed the room; then as she drew nearer, and could see his face more clearly, "but I'm afraid you are really ill, you don't look fit to be up."

"I would rather not try the _duetto_ now, if you don't mind," he said. "Don't say anything to the rest; I may be better to-morrow."

"But you ought to see a doctor," she said; "you ought to have a rest, I am sure. Signor Merlino must find a substitute till you are fit to sing again, since Fasola is able to take so few of your parts."

"It may come to that," he said, with a sigh that was almost a groan. "I wish I had a respectable under-study, who could at any rate do the work on occasion."

Domenica Borelli had a woman's quick perception, she instantly understood the whole story, that story to which Merlino was deaf and blind, though it concerned him so nearly. For the first time she understood Carlo. Hitherto she had liked him as a fellow-artist, now she felt that she longed to be his friend.

"Is there anything I could do to help you?" she said, and there was something in her kind, quiet, unsentimental tone which conveyed to him perfectly the sense of that true friendship which, though many deny it, can most assuredly exist between man and woman.

In his great distress of mind and body her help was precisely what he needed.

"Indeed you can," he said, with tears in his eyes. "If at any time I should be obliged to leave the troupe,--if I should fall ill,--will you be a friend to my sister and to Gigi?"

It was asking a hard thing of her, for she particularly disliked Anita, but, guessing his reason for asking her, she could not possibly have refused him.

"There is one other thing," he continued; "I am unhappy about Sardoni, he is in some trouble, I think. Be his friend, too, as you are mine."

She colored, not feeling at all sure that Sardoni was the sort of man with whom friendship would be possible.

"I don't understand Signor Sardoni," she said, doubtfully.

"Nor I, just now, but he has been a good friend to me. I wish you would see a little more of him; you might be his good angel."

She made no very definite promise, but something in her face satisfied Carlo.

"And you?" she said; "you mean to go on singing----"

"Till I come to grief,--yes. I shall make you a miserable Figaro to-night, but perhaps you'll put up with me."

There was something which touched her very deeply in his humility, for she knew how painful it must be to his artist nature to face the thought of attempting a part to which he could not possibly do justice.

"I shall have the satisfaction of acting with a brave man, at any rate," she said. "It needs no small courage to face an audience when you know you can't please them. Perhaps with rest, though, you may be feeling better; I shall not stay tiring you any longer."

"You don't know how much good you have done me!" he said, gratefully, feeling that her promise in case of his illness had removed part of the burden from his mind.

She left him to prepare as best he might for the evening, and to count the quarters chimed by the clock in the Town Hall much as a prisoner might have counted them while waiting for the hour of execution. Sounds of bustle and confusion in the street warned him that the races must be over; he left the sitting-room, feeling quite unable to meet the scrutiny of Gomez, or to endure the talk of any of his _confrères_, and dragged himself up to No. 62; and here, after a while, Gigi found him.

"What! gone to bed so early, San Carlo!" he exclaimed, trotting up, with his merry little face, but growing grave and gentle as the truth began to dawn on his childish mind. "Are you better now?" he asked, very anxiously.

"I am only resting. Don't look so frightened, _mio caro_."

"They sent you some flowers," said Gigi, putting a lovely bunch of snowdrops and aconites on the bed; "and here is a letter too."

Carlo tried to seem pleased, and to take an interest in the child's account of his day at Merlebank; then he opened Clare's letter. Mr. Britton would send the close carriage over for him in the morning, and hoped he would be well enough to come and say good-bye before leaving Ashborough to-morrow. The kind words cheered him, but he was much too ill to look so far ahead, and the words of an old eastern poem floated through his mind--

"To-morrow!--why, to-morrow I may be
Myself with yesterday's seven thousand years."

"You must go down to dinner, little one," he said, after a silence, in which Gigi had sat watching him with big solemn eyes. "If any one asks why I don't come, say I have a bad headache, and shall rest till it is time to go to the theatre."

The hours passed by and Gigi did not return. Carlo imagined that Domenica Borelli had kept him, and was grateful to her. The clock struck seven; he prayed in brief, disconnected sentences that he might be able to get through his work, that no evil might befall Anita, that he might judge rightly as to what could be done. Again, with a quickness which startled him, the quarter was chimed; he tried to think of Figaro, sang a snatch or two of "Zitti, Zitti," and felt that he would have given anything to be able to escape from that night's performance.

Should he even now follow Domenica's suggestion and send for a doctor? There was yet time. For an instant the thought of the intense relief to himself was almost more than he could withstand. But then, on the other hand, he argued, people who had never been ill were apt to think themselves dying when there was nothing serious the matter with them, and, if he gave up tamely now, Comerio would certainly put himself forward to fill the vacancy in the troupe. No; he must fight for his post to the last gasp. The half hour struck as he formed his final resolution, and with an effort he flung back the rugs and coats which were heaped up on the bed, staggered to his feet, lit the gas, and, standing before the mirror, threw himself into one of Figaro's characteristic attitudes, and sang a bar or two of "_Largo al factotum_."

"Passable, if I can only hold out," he thought to himself. "And, after all, I'm not the first man who has made merry, and sung, and paced the stage with aching bones. Was it Grimaldi or Liston who made the people laugh till they cried while he was bearing torments?"

He made his way to the sitting-room and looked in to see if Sardoni was there, but heard that he had already started. Merlino joined him in a grumbling humor; Gigi trotted up to say good-night; and then, feeling like one in a bad dream, he found himself walking through the street among jostling passengers, and getting a sort of confused vision of the bad faces which always make their appearance in a town where races are being held. The distance between the Royal Hotel and the theatre was quite short, but it seemed to him that night almost endless; it was only by a great effort that he kept up with Merlino, and when he reached his dressing-room he felt as if he could not have stood another minute.

"You are ill, sir?" said Sebastiano, the dresser, with anxiety.

"It's all right, I will rest a minute," he replied breathlessly. "Where is Signor Sardoni?"

"In the green-room, Signor; he dressed earlier than usual. Let me call him."

"No, no," said Carlo, quickly. "I am better alone."

And so perhaps he was, yet Sardoni's defection pained him--his friend had studiously avoided him the whole day. The dresser proposed all sorts of remedies, and Carlo patiently endured the well meaning chatter till he was thoroughly equipped in his Spanish costume and had been duly "made up;" then he begged that no one might disturb him till the very last moment, and sat crouched up by the little fire, hearing in the distance the familiar sounds of the overture and the succeeding choruses. At last his hour came.

"Quite time, Signor," said Sebastiano, rapping on the door. He threw it open and walked slowly along the winding passages, arriving at the wings just in time to encounter the chorus as they came off the stage. Some rumor as to his illness had got abroad, and many good wishes and inquiries were made in the quick, silent Italian fashion from his friends among the chorus singers. With very few exceptions he was extremely popular in the Company, and much sympathy was felt for him when it became apparent that he was far more fit to be in bed than at the theatre. An attendant handed him a guitar, he heard the orchestra begin the introduction to his song, and his thoughts flew back from this miserable present to the sunny past. He remembered how on his last day of unalloyed happiness he had sung this very song in Piale's room in the Strada Mont' Oliveto, and how the old Maestro had been in despair over his refusal to go on the stage.

"Thank Heaven he is not here to-night to be tortured by my bad performance!" was his last reflection as he drew himself together and walked on to the stage. The house was full, but by this time he had become rather discerning in the matter of audiences, and perceived at once that it had a larger proportion than on the previous night of the rowdy element, introduced into Ashborough by the races. He hardly knew whether to be relieved or vexed at seeing Mr. Britton and his son in the stalls, and, indeed, was able to spare little time to think of them, since he had to devote all his powers to conquering the agony of nervousness which had overwhelmed him. In vain he struggled to feel himself Figaro, his head swam, every bone in his body seemed to assert itself achingly as though protesting that it belonged to one, Donati who ought to have been in his bed at that moment, and not at all to the blithe, merry barber of Seville.

"Courage!" he said to himself. "If I can't get into my character I'll at least walk through the part like a man, for Nita's sake!"

He set to work manfully, fully conscious that the conductor was eyeing him with fear and trembling, and anticipating some dire mishap. Still he struggled on, exerting himself to the utmost and trying to disregard the evident symptoms of disappointment which began to be manifest in the audience. He would not be influenced by them, though he was too keenly sensitive not to perceive the sort of wave of impatience and disapproval which passed over the faces of the listening crowd. Endless seemed the song! At each brief interval it seemed to him more impossible that he should ever get through it safely, and the mockery of the oft-repeated words, "_Ah! che bel vivere, eke bel piacere!_" made matters still worse. At length the end drew near; with relief at the prospect, and with a desperate effort, he dashed off into the final and more florid repetitions of "_Ah, bravo Figaro!_" not without, even at that moment, a humorous perception of the effect such words from such a singer must produce on the hearers. "Were I there instead of here I should laugh till I cried," he reflected.

But it was almost over; he had survived the last long florid passage; there remained only four more notes. Exhausted, strung up to the very highest pitch of endurance, he tried to take the quick breath which was indispensable at that moment, but to draw it seemed impossible. He felt a sharp stab of pain as though a knife had been suddenly plunged in his side, yet the fatal white stick in Marioni's hand was raised, and with a last effort he forced himself to attack the high G.

What followed was to him ever after a sort of nightmare recollection. His voice failed utterly, and the high note, which should have been the climax of the song, broke into a discordant sound that only ceased to ring in his ears when overpowered by a storm of hissing. Such a hopeless failure was too much even for the patience and kindliness of an English audience: hisses resounded on all sides. It was intolerable to have paid money to listen to such a miserable performance. The people were really angry, and would not be pacified.

For a moment or two Carlo stood looking at the angry, contemptuous faces with a sore-hearted sense of rejection and a keen, personal pain; then seeing that they would no longer tolerate his presence he turned and walked away, but had only gone a few steps when a sudden remembrance that this defeat meant Comerio's probable triumph all at once overpowered him. The brightly lighted stage became black as night, the hisses were drowned by a rushing sound in his ears, and he fell back in a dead faint.