Back to the hall in the Court—another swift transformation. Back to Arthur, charging his Knights to undertake the Holy Quest for the Grail, which shall be the heart and splendour of his new chivalry. He lifts the great sword to ask a blessing on it, and while he does so Morgan Le Fay steals the scabbard. Splendid scene of mounting vigour culminating in a great Chorale of the Grail, almost Wagnerian in conception.

“Going well,” said Hollier, as he and Darcourt made their way up the aisle. But when Darcourt went into the little room behind the manager’s office he found Geraint, drinking whisky in huge swigs, and furious.

“What in the name of God do those morlocks think they’re up to?” he said. “Applauding the scenery!”

“Its very fine scenery,” said Darcourt. “Most of them have never seen such scenery. It was outlawed sixty years ago when there was all that blethers about letting the audience use its imagination. A fat lot of good that was!”

“I think it’s the acting they like,” said Hollier. “Do you remember what Byron said? ‘I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.’ You must remember, Powell; you’re a great Byron enthusiast. That little chap Panisi is marvellous. And Hoizknecht, too, of course, but one always admires villains more than heroes.”

It was plain that Hollier had something on his mind, and after he had accepted a drink he overcame his diffidence. “Geraint, about curtain calls—I suppose it will be expected that those of us who have provided the libretto for the opera should make some appearance? Not that I am anxious to do so. I really hate all this sort of public nonsense. But if it’s expected—?”

“Just go around through the pass-door when the final curtain comes down,” said Geraint. “Gwen will show you what to do, and you’ll have lots of time, because there will be plenty of applause—that’s guaranteed. When Gwen shoves you on, you’ll be blinded by the lights, so don’t fall into the orchestra. Try not to look any more of a mutt than literary people usually do on a stage full of actors. Just bow. Don’t do anything fancy. And don’t leave the stage till all the hullabaloo is over.”

“You’ll be there, yourself, of course?”

“I may, or I may not.”

“But you’re the director!”

“Indeed I am, and since this afternoon at four o’clock I have been the most unnecessary creature involved in this opera. Nobody needs me. My work is done. I am wholly superfluous.”

“Surely not!”

“Surely yes! If I cut my throat at this minute the opera would progress through its appointed number of performances not a whit the worse.”

“But you’ve made it.”

“I have not made it. Hoffmann, and Gunilla and Schnak, and all those singers and musicians have made it. And even you fellows have made it. I have supplied the trickery and whoredom of the show. The stuff that appeals to people who don’t care much for music.”

“Rubbish, Geraint,” said Darcourt, who saw a fine Powell tantrum coming. “You’ve been the energy and encouragement of the whole affair. We’ve all warmed ourselves at your fire. Don’t think we don’t know it. You’re indispensable. So cheer up.”

“I know you, Sim bach. In a minute you’ll be rebuking me for self-pity.”

“Perhaps so.”

“You don’t know what an artist is, you nice, controlled, reasonable man. You don’t know the shadow of the artist—the sieve of vanity, the bile of bitterness, the bond of untruth that is bound with icy chains to all the sunlight and encouraging and hes-a-jolly-good-fellow of being an opera director. I am exhausted and I am not needed. I am sinking into such a slough of despond as only an artist whose job is finished must endure. Go on, both of you! Go back to your seats. Float in the warm waters of assured success. Leave me! Leave me!” By this time he was drinking straight from the bottle.

“I really think we’d better go,” said Darcourt. “I couldn’t bear to miss what’s coming next. But do try to pull yourself together, Geraint bach. We all love you, you know.”

What was coming next, to begin Act Two, was the scene of The Queen’s Maying, over which Powell, and Waldo, and Dulcy had toiled and contrived for months. As the curtains drew back, after a brief and lovely prelude, it seemed to the audience that they could see immeasurably deep into a grove of hawthorn trees in snowy bloom. Far in the blossom-misted distance appeared Queen Guenevere, mounted on a black horse, riding at ease in her side-saddle, as a page led the horse forward. One by one, wearing white mantles, the Ladies of the Court made their way into the front of the scene, but never so far as to obscure the figure of the distant Queen. They did not sing; they seemed enchanted, as the whole scene was one of enchantment, and while the music rose and fell, they grouped themselves in a tableau of expectation. They carried garlands of May blossom. Something truly wonderful was happening.

Darcourt knew how the effect was achieved. He had attended most of the rehearsals and heard many of the arguments during which the notable scene had been planned. Nevertheless, he was caught in its magic and he understood, what he had not known before, that much of the magic of a great theatrical moment is created by the audience itself, a magic impalpable but vividly present, and that what begins as trickery of lights and paint is enlarged and made fine by the response of the beholders. There are no great performances without great audiences, and this is the barrier that film and television, by their utmost efforts, cannot cross, for there can be no interaction between what is done, and those to whom it is done. Great theatre, great music-drama, is created again and again on both sides of the footlights.

He enjoyed the extra pleasure of the man who knows how it has been done. It had been the suggestion of Waldo Harris, not to the casual eye an imaginative man, that for this scene the forty-foot depth of the stage should be increased by opening the huge sliding doors to the storage rooms, and beyond them into the workshops, so that in the end a vista of a hundred feet could be attained. Not a great depth, surely, but with the aid of perspective painting it could be made to seem limitless. And—this had tickled Waldo and Dulcy so that they giggled for days—when first Queen Guenevere was seen, at the farthest distance, on her black steed, it was not Donalda Roche, a woman of operatic sturdiness of figure, but a child of six, mounted on a pony no bigger than a St. Bernard. At a point perhaps sixty feet from the footlights the midget Guenevere rounded a grove of trees to be replaced by a larger child, mounted on a larger pony, led by a larger page. This Guenevere, forty feet from the footlights, disappeared for a moment in May blossom and it was Donalda Roche from then onward, on a black horse of normal stature. Behind her, pages led two magnificent white goats with gilded horns. Waldo and Dulcy had played with this illusion, and refined it, until it changed from a simple trick of perspective into a thing of beauty.

Of course, it would not have been possible without the finest pages in Schnak’s score. There had been three related themes, obviously meant as the foundation for an extended piece of music in Hoffmann’s notes, and Schnak and Gunilla had decided that these should be developed into a prelude to Act Two, a preparation for the scenes of love and betrayal in which Guenevere and Lancelot, under the malign influence of Morgan Le Fay, would consummate their passion and suffer a double remorse, for Lancelot had also been tricked into a union with the maiden Elaine. But when Geraint heard the first developments of the prelude, he demanded that it shouldbe the music for The Queen’s Maying, and overbore the musicians, who of course wanted it as pure music. This was the passage which, at her examination, had persuaded Schnak’s examiners (all but the difficult Dr. Pfeiffer) that Schnak was certainly a doctor of music, and probably a good deal more than that.