She was stout and ugly; but her voice was still beautiful, and as she sang the theatre murmured like a hive of happy bees.All through the coloratura she was accompanied by sighs, and its top note was drowned in a shout of universal joy.
So the opera proceeded.The singers drew inspiration from the audience, and the two great sextettes were rendered not unworthily.
Miss Abbott fell into the spirit of the thing.She, too, chatted and laughed and applauded and encored, and rejoiced in the existence of beauty.As for Philip, he forgot himself as well as his mission.
He was not even an enthusiastic visitor.For he had been in this place always.It was his home.
Harriet, like M.Bovary on a more famous occasion, was trying to follow the plot.Occasionally she nudged her companions, and asked them what had become of Walter Scott.She looked round grimly.The audience sounded drunk, and even Caroline, who never took a drop, was swaying oddly.Violent waves of excitement, all arising from very little, went sweeping round the theatre.The climax was reached in the mad scene.Lucia, clad in white, as befitted her malady, suddenly gathered up her streaming hair and bowed her acknowledgment to the audience.Then from the back of the stage--she feigned not to see it--there advanced a kind of bamboo clothes-horse, stuck all over with bouquets.It was very ugly, and most of the flowers in it were false.Lucia knew this, and so did the audience; and they all knew that the clothes-horse was a piece of stage property, brought in to make the performance go year after year.None the less did it unloose the great deeps.With a scream of amazement and joy she embraced the animal, pulled out one or two practicable blossoms, pressed them to her lips, and flung them into her admirers.They flung them back, with loud melodious cries, and a little boy in one of the stageboxes snatched up his sister's carnations and offered them."Che carino!" exclaimed the singer.She darted at the little boy and kissed him.Now the noise became tremendous."Silence! silence!" shouted many old gentlemen behind."Let the divine creature continue!" But the young men in the adjacent box were imploring Lucia to extend her civility to them.She refused, with a humorous, expressive gesture.
One of them hurled a bouquet at her.She spurned it with her foot.
Then, encouraged by the roars of the audience, she picked it up and tossed it to them.Harriet was always unfortunate.The bouquet struck her full in the chest, and a little billet-doux fell out of it into her lap.
"Call this classical!" she cried, rising from her seat."It's not even respectable! Philip! take me out at once.""Whose is it?" shouted her brother, holding up the bouquet in one hand and the billet-doux in the other."Whose is it?"The house exploded, and one of the boxes was violently agitated, as if some one was being hauled to the front.Harriet moved down the gangway, and compelled Miss Abbott to follow her.Philip, still laughing and calling "Whose is it?" brought up the rear.He was drunk with excitement.The heat, the fatigue, and the enjoyment had mounted into his head.
"To the left!" the people cried."The innamorato is to the left."He deserted his ladies and plunged towards the box.
A young man was flung stomach downwards across the balustrade.Philip handed him up the bouquet and the note.Then his own hands were seized affectionately.It all seemed quite natural.
"Why have you not written?" cried the young man.
"Why do you take me by surprise?"
"Oh, I've written," said Philip hilariously.
"I left a note this afternoon."
"Silence! silence!" cried the audience, who were beginning to have enough."Let the divine creature continue."Miss Abbott and Harriet had disappeared.
"No! no!" cried the young man."You don't escape me now." For Philip was trying feebly to disengage his hands.Amiable youths bent out of the box and invited him to enter it.
