Salome and the Head/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII
THE HEAD
Denny had gone to the music room, and was playing that same air whose spirit she had likened to that of Tristan. Sandra was tired—tired to the soul. All these new dreams and sensations and half-understood awakenings, coming into a life that had, for many months, held only hard work and deserved successes, had worn her out. She was like a man who, long living on bread and water, abruptly dines too well. She now experienced a sort of emotional indigestion—a desire not to have any more. The little adventure of the new chauffeur had been the last course—the course too much. She wanted to be quiet—not to have things happening—to go to bed early, and sleep long.
It seemed to her that what would be the best of all, would be to see him at the theatre; to hear what had happened to keep him away from her; to say a few fond, tired words as she drove back with him from the theatre; and then to say good-night to him at the top of the lift, to go to bed and to sleep and sleep and sleep—and to wake up in the morning to the soft cradling sense that he loved her, that he couldn’t help not having come on Sunday, and that they were going to be married quite soon (she would tell him that in the motor), that everything was perfectly right, and that there was nothing to worry about. She would wire for Dusa to come up tomorrow. She longed for another woman now to whom to show her “trousseau things.”
Yet to-night she would be alone in the House with no Address. She had arranged to get rid of Denny. Was it not foolish to waste a chance like that? If her lover insisted on coming in to say good-night. . . . Well, if he wanted to, very much. . . She threw away the lily, now nearly dead and smelling too sweet; and, going into Gertrude Steinhart’s room telephoned to the florist in Regent Street for roses—red roses—plenty of them, and at once. Miss Steinhart was a good customer. The flowers arrived quite quickly. Sandra carried the wooden box into The House With No Address, and filled bowls, vases, tall glasses and fat pots. Then she remembered how she had filled The Wood House with flowers yesterday and he had not come. It was a bad omen. She swept the roses, dripping, into her looped skirt, made to throw them into the dust-box in the kitchen—and hesitated—that seemed a desecration. After all, flowers were flowers, and why be profane? Finally, she carried them into her bedroom and filled wash hand basin and jug and tumbler with them. The omen would not work there. From that distance they could not prevent his coming. She wanted him to come then? The farewell in the motor would not, after all, content her? Who knows? It is certain that she did not know herself.
She and Denny drove to the Hilarity together.
“You’re sure the head’s all right?” she asked as they went. “It must be right tonight because this is your benefit—your music. Everything must be perfect.”
“I’m quite sure,” he said. “Would I fail you? What is Salome’s dance without the Head—the dance of love and horror? It is a better head than the last one, too. It’s made of something different: not wax—a new composition. It’s much more like life—like death, I mean. You’ll find it will inspire you, Princess. I wish I could see you dance it. I hate having to work that silly trick, to take the head from you. It means I never see you dance. I want to see you dance. . . .”
“Couldn’t you get someone else to work the thing?”
“No—never. Promise me you’ll never let anyone else give you the head or take it from you. It’s not much I can do for you—don’t let anyone else do that. But I do want to see the dance just this once. The first and last time.”
“Well, look here. . .” The jealous love in his voice moved her. She was going to be so happy herself. She wanted to make everyone else happy. At that moment she would have denied Denny nothing. And this was such a natural, loving, flattering little wish of his. “I’ll tell you what. Slip up and see the dance. You can easily get back in time to take the head. And I’ll dance my very best, dear, to please you.” She found his hand, cold and thin as a bird’s claw, and pressed it between her warm palms.
“You’re always doing something for me,” he said. “Every bit of life I’ve had you’ve given me. It all belongs to you, princess.”
“Then I’m very rich,” she said lightly. “I think I am the richest girl in the world—but I wish I wasn’t so tired.”
“You won’t be tired when you begin,” he said. “I often feel like that—as if I couldn’t be troubled to lift the bow—and yet when I begin—the first note—glory and fire! it’s all changed and I feel that I could play forever. But you have to keep alive—not to rest too long. If I didn’t play every day—if I were to keep my hands still for a day and a night and another day,—I should never play any more, never be tired any more, never want to play or to rest or to do anything at all, ever any more, for ever and ever.”
The slow dreamy voice made it seem necessary to break in on it with sharp commonplace. This kind of talking—“mooning” Aunt Dusa called it, always preceded the worst of his states.
“Well,” she said, “you’re going to play your very best to-night—and I’m going to dance my very best. And to-morrow you and Aunt Dusa will come up to London, and we’ll have a special supper party, and enjoy ourselves very much, indeed; and next month we shall have a holiday, and you can go to any place in Europe you like, and see new things, and everything’s going to be lovely.”
She kept the tap of small talk running till they came to the stage door, when she scurried in, bundled up unrecognisably, as usual. Denny followed, on his crutch. She turned back quickly, and before she had time to reckon, John Smith was beside her.
“If Mr. Templar—the gentleman I spoke to you about—if you see him don’t forget to tell him to wait in Dean Street, and we can pick him up as we go.”
For it had suddenly struck her that perhaps he would not come into the theatre, lest the sight of him should unnerve her as it had done the last time.
He might just wait opposite the stage door as he had done that other night that seemed so long past, and was really only four days ago.
Denny’s symphony began. He had insisted at the last moment, that the orchestra should only perform the last two movements. In the others, he made new arrangements. The forest dance was beautiful as always, but the more severe among the critics observed that Sylvia was not at her best. But the same critics did not fail to perceive that Pan surpassed himself. Never had he played so perfectly. And never before had he played on the stage without the accompaniment of the orchestra; for after the first air the orchestra was silent, and the sound of the flute alone showered clear bird notes faster and faster in an air that no one in the audience had heard before. And as the tender gaiety of the air asserted itself again and again through the bird trills and flutings, the spirit of it entered into Sylvia—and the forest dance became a dance of youth and spring and happy love.
In the sea-dance, the orchestra supplied only the murmur of a sea far away; the flute, hidden by the shelter, made the music for it. And the music was the Love Symphony’s second movement—doubt, yearning, sadness, regret, and longing, beyond words. Sylvia wove it all into the dance, and it became a new dance, a dance that troubled the hearts of those who beheld it, stirring old memories and the ghosts of forgotten desire.
The Dance of Worship was like nothing that she had ever done. Thrilled in every fibre by the music, and by the wild leap of her genius to answer it, Sylvia robed herself for the Salome dance. She never left much to her dresser; to-night she left nothing. Dusky draperies, gleaming jewels—she put all in its place with fingers that did not tremble, but were alive to their tips with conscious mastery of the coming hour. In each of her dances tonight she had gone beyond all that her genius had ever taught her to do. The Salome dance should surpass those last dances, by just so much. To find that she could, without anything that could be called a rehearsal, adapt her dance to Denny’s music exalted her with the pride of achievement and the confidence of proved power.
She leaned her hands on her long dressing table and looked at her reflection in the glass. The expression was exactly right—she had caught it at last: the look of the woman tormented by the flame of desire, beaten by the rods of terror and remorse—a woman on whose jewelled brow were heaped the sorrows and despairs of a lost world.
“My!” said her dresser, “you do look awful, Miss. Keep it up. That’ll knock ’em!”
“I mean to,” said Sandra, smiling brilliantly.”
“You do, every time,” said the dresser. “But to-night you’ve done the trick and a bit over. I never heard anything like it. Howling like wild beasts they was. There ain’t no one like you, Miss, and never has been. And you deserve it every inch. That’s what I say. There’s heaps of time; they ain’t got the throne on yet. Here’s your veil. I suppose we shall be seeing you in a white one with orange blossoms one of these days.”
“What makes you say that?” Sandra asked, stock still, with the veil in her hands.
“Well—no offence, miss, but you keeping yourself so to yourself—of course we know it’s because you’ve got a gentleman that gives satisfaction. And you aren’t one of the kind you could think of anything short of marriage about.”
“Well,” said Sylvia on the impulse of the full moment, “the fact is, I am. Going to be married, I mean.”
“Lor!” said the dresser, overcome by surprise, “if I didn’t think so! Well, miss, I wish you joy, and I do hope it won’t be quiet at a registry, and the papers saying, ‘Secret Wedding. Dancer weds Peer.’”
“It won’t be that,” said Sylvia.
“What I mean is,” said the dresser, “I hope we’ll all be there to wish you joy, for of all the dear, kind, good ladies. What might his name be, miss, if I might ask?”
“Mr. Templar—Edmund Templar,” said Sandra, and really, if you come to think of it, there seemed no reason why she should not say it.
“Well,” said the dresser, “he’s a lucky gentleman—that’s all I can. . . There—there’s your call, miss. You go on and knock ’em.”
Salome’s dismal draperies swished through the narrow passage and the orchestra called, called, called, in the deep, troubled notes of the last movement of the Love Symphony.
The dresser, when she had laid everything in order, strayed out to chat a little with the stage carpenter, and told him the romantic news, and the name of the fortunate man who was to marry Miss Sylvia. There was—any way you look at it—no reason why she should not have done so. Sylvia had made no secret of it. The carpenter, for his part, saw no reason for secrecy. Thus, before the Salome dance was over, everyone behind the scenes knew Sylvia’s beautiful secret—and even the name of her fortunate lover. Dressing rooms, corridors, and the green room hummed on the news, like bees on a honeyed flower.
And on the stage, Salome was treading the first measure of her dance to the music of the Love Symphony’s last movement. She had only heard the airs of it, roughly represented by Denny with flute and violin. The stately tragic splendour of it, the fulness of the orchestration, the mastery of the technique, caught her in a web of wonder that he, her poor, dear, lame Denny, should be the Master that this music proved him. But the web broke almost on the instant, to set her free to interpret the music; and almost before the conscious power so to interpret it had crowned her soul with pride and sovereignty, all conscious effort vanished, swept away like a veil in a storm wind, leaving her soul naked and subject before the music’s supreme control.
She danced—and her audience were held by her magic, and by the spell that held her. The house was hushed to a breathless rapture of horror and delight.
The grey veils descended—slowly the king and the queen, the courtiers and the slaves faded away and Salome danced alone among the shadows.
The little ticking sound which warned her that it was time to take the head, was, for the first time, heard by the audience. In the swirl and swing of her dance she caught at the head, and whirled it with her in the wild rhythm of her going. And at the touch of it, there came for the first time to her nerves, strung far beyond their natural pitch, the sense of what it was that she was representing.
She had danced the Salome because the Management and Uncle Moses told her that she must dance it—and she had said that the wax head was “gruesome,” and “horrid,” and “creepy”; but she had felt these things only with the surface of her soul. Now in its very depths she felt that she was dancing to express the horrible desire of a woman for a dead man—and that the head that she held in her hands was the head of that man who in life had been desired, but whom now no one would ever any more desire. It may have been the texture of the head that drove this new-old thought home to her—it was, as Denny had said, of some material other than wax, a new composition. It was colder than wax, and heavier. Its surface yielded a little to her finger-tips. A dead man’s head, she thought, would feel just like that. She wished Denny had ordered another wax head—she was used to the wax head. This one was too heavy, and she didn’t like the feel of it. It was like the indiarubber stalks of artificial roses—only colder. She would have one like the other, after to-night.
And all the time her dancing feet twinkled to the passionate, tragic rhythm, and the head swayed in her hands to the rush and pulse of the passionate, tragic air.
This head was heavier—but it was more inspiring, too. One ought to feel what one was dancing. The features of the head were masked by the flowing hair and beard, just as the wax head’s had been—but there was something about it that made the dance real—real. Suppose it really were the head of someone she loved—Edmund. Oh, horrible!—but she caught it to her breast in a transport of imagined anguish: if Edmund had not loved her, and she had really been a dancing girl, and had asked for his head—not expecting to get it—and then held it, adored, desired, but still unpossessed, in her hands! She raised the head above her in an agony of almost real emotion, and the music throbbed its agony into hers. Denny had been right—this was the music for the dance of Love and Death. She was creeping over the stage now, in wide curves, the head cradled in her arms, as a mother cradles a child.
“Ah!” she sighed on a note of incommunicable triumph and despair, and the music drew towards its ending. The machine ticked like a death-watch in an old wall, and she resigned the head at the right moment—the only act in which her dance resembled any dance that she had ever danced before. The grey veils lifted—and Salome lay, her dance ended, before the feet of Herod and Herodias.
And there was a hush of moments before the applause broke out. They rose in their places—they shouted for her—men clapped and shouted themselves hoarse—women screamed their Bravas, and tore the flowers from their bosoms to throw on the stage. But Salome would not show herself.
“I am tired,” she said.
“They’ll shout the house down,” said the Management: “you must go.”
“I won’t,” said Sylvia; “let them shout.”
She dressed quickly and got to her brougham, already heaped with flowers and packets and letters. She had thrown herself back on the cushions, her heart beating almost to the choking point, and the motor was a couple of hundred yards on its roundabout way before she remembered Edmund. She had not seen him. She had not even looked for him.
“Drive back,” she said. “I’ve forgotten something—I mean. . .”
The chauffeur stopped the car and came to the window.
“If it’s the man you spoke to me about,” he said. “He was at the theatre an hour ago, asking for Mr. Denis.”
“Did he see him?”
“I believe so, ma’am. He stayed a very short time, and then went away in a hansom.”
“Did you see Mr. Denis?”
“About a quarter of an hour ago, madam. He put one or two packages into the brougham and went off in a taxi.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He told me to be very careful of the big parcel, ma’am. It was priceless, he said.”
“That’ll do,” said Sandra, “Home, please, as quickly as you dare.”
Why had he asked for Denny? To find out whether she would be alone? Would she find him waiting for her? Or perhaps he had wanted to leave a message for her? And had asked for Denny so that she might not to talked about at the theatre? That would be like him. And if he had done that she would find Denny at home. He would have gone in as usual by Miss Gertrude Steinhart’s door, and with her lover’s message. Well, she would be glad—yes, even if it meant that she could not see her lover alone. Poor Denny! what a brute she had been, to want to get rid of him on the very night of his success! To think of him driving down to Yalding all alone, on the very night when his music had set the crown on her triumphs—the very night when she ought to have had him near her, praising him, thanking him, making his triumph sweet with the sweetness of hers. Decidedly, she was glad that Denny would be at home.
She looked out eagerly as the motor turned into the windowless cul-de-sac, at the end of which the garage was. Her lover might be waiting there for her—but he was not. John Smith ran the motor into its garage, and closed and locked the outer doors, before extinguishing the lights and working the lift for her.
Then he came to the door of the brougham.
“Will you allow me to come in with you, madame, to carry your parcels?” he asked. “And you might be nervous, going into an empty house alone.”
Sandra thanked him. “I’m never nervous,” she said, and at the word knew that, for the first time in her life, she was. “And I don’t think it’s necessary, indeed,” she added. “I expect Mr. Denny will be there.”
“I think not,” said John Smith. “I heard Mr. Denis telling the commissionaire at the theatre that he was going away to rest.”
“Was that after he saw Mr. Templar?”
“It would be after that, madame.”
“But I think we shall find him at home, all the same.”
But they did not find him at home. Instead, they found Uncle Mosenthal, back for an hour or two from Germany and his secret business—very cheerful, indeed, uncorking champagne, and quite incoherent with excitement and enthusiasm.
“Ah!” he cried, “you are heaven-blessed in the service of such an incomparable danseuse to be. She is prima-donna assoluta—goddess over all the goddesses that ever on heaven’s floor danced have. Drink, Forrester—drink, mein lieber—drink to the Incomparable Salome.”
“It’s not Forrester, uncle. It’s our new chauffeur, John Smith. It’s all right, really.”
Uncle Mosenthal turned and looked at the new chauffeur.
“John Smith?” he said, and looked very straight into the man’s eyes. “I see. Well—Mr. John Smith will be honoured to drink your health, my child.”
“I drink to your happiness, madam, if you will allow me,” said the chauffeur primly, glass in hand. And he drank.
“It is the new head,” Uncle Mosenthal went on. “I wish I had thought to bring it from the theatre. We would have crowned it with roses”—he pointed to the sheaf of bouquets that Smith had brought up—“and set it on the table and done honour to it.”
“It was not the head: it was Denny’s music—wasn’t it glorious?” She was glad that the head was not there. She was in no mood for that sort of mumming.
“The music was of the finest—he is the child of Tchaikovsky and the grandchild of Beethoven. Why is he not here for me to tell him so?”
“He was tired,” said Sandra, in a very tired voice; “he wanted to rest.”
“Oh, well, he will have all that is left of his life in which to rest and praised to be. But the head we could have praised to-night. I wish it were here. I see it with the roses. Ah! Uncle Moses is the old man for the romance, eh? And The House With No Address the true home of romance. Is it not so, Smith? You also, like me, love the romance. Good night. Schlafen sie wohl!”
“You have luck always,” he said, when John Smith had gone. “That man—how did you find him?”
She told.
“You know something about him?”
“We have met before,” said Uncle Mosenthal, “not as tonight. But I say nothing. Let him keep his secrets. And he will let us keep ours.”
As Sandra unwound her wraps she became aware of an impression of having seen—and not at the time noticed—that while Mr. Mosenthal had been speaking, the chauffeur had been trying to attract her attention, and to direct it, when he should have attracted it, to the further room where the parcels were that he had carried up from the brougham. Of course, there had been a letter from Him, and Denny had put it in the brougham with the other things. But why hadn’t he told her so? Perhaps he had meant to tell her when they got in, and had not liked to speak of it before Mr. Mosenthal.
“I’ll change my dress,” she said gaily. “I won’t be a minute, Uncle.”
She passed into the next room, and turned up the light and gathered all the letters from the table. Among the parcels, in brown paper and pink paper and white paper—parcels tied with blue ribbon, and silver string, and common twine—was a large bundle in a black cloth. She touched it curiously. Lifted a corner. It was the Head. Denny must have sent it home; it was broken perhaps—injured in some way. She was not going to have Uncle Moses find it. She did not want the thick-skinned jests of his Teutonic romanticism. She gathered the head up with the letters and ran up to her room, full-scented with the roses she had hidden there, laid all that she carried on her white pillow, changed her dress to a white and gold kimono, and went down to Uncle Mosenthal and the champagne and the lights and the supper and the loving flattery and the thought of her triumph. Edmund’s letter lay among the other letters upstairs—the letter that would explain everything, make everything right. The letter could lie there, waiting for her, and the knowledge that it was there would sweeten, while it lengthened, the hour that she must spend with the old millionaire, pleased as a child with her success, glad as a father in her joy.
It was a good hour, after all. She told him all about the pneumonia and her new freedom, and he was kind and quiet and gentle; and when he left her to catch the midnight train he blessed her as a father might have done.
The moment she was gone she turned out the electric lights and ran up to her room, extinguishing lights as she went. Arrived in the thick rose-scent of her room, she lighted the wax candles which it was her fancy to have, in just that room which sheltered her dreams, and turned to the bed for her letter.
The head lay there, as she had laid it—oh, no!—not just as she had laid it, for it had slipped from her pillow and rolled down onto the quilt and lay there among the letters.
She lifted it to hide it away—the sight of it gave her an uncomfortable little shock. It was not a nice thing to have in one’s bedroom. She would take it downstairs.
As she touched it, she touched also something else—something wet and sticky. There was something on the head. How horrid! some of the paint must have run—or the new composition had melted. It was all over the letters, too, and the white quilt. She dropped the head, and went to the dressing-table where the candles burned in their silver candlesticks. The stuff on her hands was red. Almost as if. . .
The thought was intolerable. She could not bear it an instant. With the courage of terror she sprang to the bed, lifted the head again and carried it to the dressing-table where the candles were.
She stood there a very long time, quite without moving. It was not possible to move. For it was not paint that had run. And the head she held was of no new composition, but of the old composition—as old as Adam. And the stains on her hands were of blood—and the head that she held in her hands was the head of a dead man.