‘I have never done anything I am ashamed of,’ he said.
‘I don’t think it’s very nice to do what you are doing now,’ Margaret retorted, coolly. ‘It doesn’t inspire confidence, you know.’
‘Can’t we part without quarrelling?’
‘Oh, certainly! Do you mean to go away?’
‘You leave me no choice. Shall we turn back to the house? It will soon be over. I can leave before dinner. It will be easy to find an excuse.’
‘Yes! Those proofs you have been talking of lately — your publishers — anything will do!’
Margaret was thoroughly angry with him and with herself by this time, and he was deeply hurt, and they turned and walked stiffly, with their noses in the air, as if they never meant to speak to each other again.
‘It’s very odd!’ Margaret observed at last, as if she had made a discovery.
‘What is very odd?’
‘I never liked you as much as I did a quarter of an hour ago, and I never disliked you as much as I do now! Do you understand that?’
‘Yes. You make it very clear. I never heard any thing put more plainly.’
‘I’m glad of that. But it’s very funny. I detest you just now, and yet, if you go away at once, I know I shall be sorry. On the whole, do you know? — you had better not leave to-night.’
Lushington turned sharply on her.
‘Are you playing with me?’ he asked, in an angry tone.
‘No,’ she answered with exasperating coolness, ‘I don’t think I am. Only, you are two people, you see. It confuses me. You are Mr. Lushington, and then, the next minute, you’re — Tom. I hate Mr. Lushington. I believe I always did. I wish I might never see him again.’
‘Oh indeed! How about Tom?’
‘Tom is rather bearable than otherwise,’ Margaret answered, laughing again. ‘He knows that I think so, too, and it’s no reason why he should be always trying to keep out of the way!’
‘He has no right to be in the way.’
‘Then he ought never to have come here. But since he has, I would rather have him stay.’
When she had thus explained herself with perfect frankness and made known her wishes, Margaret seemed to think that there was nothing more to be said. But Lushington thought otherwise.
‘Why do you hate Mr. Lushington?’ he asked.
‘Because he is a fraud,’ Margaret answered. ‘As you have just told me that he is, you cannot possibly deny it, and you can’t quarrel with me for not liking him. So there!’
All her good-humour had come back, the cold sparkle in her eyes had turned into afternoon sunshine, and she swung her closed parasol gently on one finger by its hook as she walked, nodding her head just perceptibly as if keeping time with it. She expected an answer, a laugh perhaps, or a retort; but nothing came. She glanced sideways at Lushington, thinking to meet his eyes, but they were watching the ground as he walked, a yard before his feet. She turned her head and looked at his face, and she realised that it was a little drawn, and had grown suddenly pale, and that there were dark shadows under his eyes which she had never seen before. The healthy, shy, rather too youthful mask was gone, and in its place she saw the features of a mature man who was quietly suffering a great deal. She fancied that he must often look as he did now, when he was alone.
‘Could any one do anything to make it easier for you?’ she asked softly, after a moment.
He looked up quickly in surprise, and then shook his head, without speaking.
‘Because, if I could help you, I would,’ she added.
‘Thank you. I know you would,’ He spoke with real gratitude, and the colour began to come back to his face. ‘You see, it’s not a thing that can be changed, or helped, or bettered. It’s a condition from which I cannot escape, and I’ve got to live in it. It would have been easier if I had never met you, my dear Miss Donne!’
He straightened himself and put on something of the formality that had become a habit with him, as it easily does with shy men who feel much.
‘Please don’t call me Miss Donne,’ Margaret said, very low.
‘Margaret — —’ he paused on the syllables, as he almost whispered them. ‘No!’ he said, suddenly, as if angry with himself. ‘That’s silly! Don’t make me do such things, please, or I shall hate myself! Nothing in the world can ever change what is, and I shall never have the right to put out my hand and ask you to marry me. The best we can do is to say good-bye, and I’ll try to keep out of your way. Help me to do that, for it’s the only help you can ever give me!’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Margaret answered. ‘We can always be friends, if we cannot be anything else.’
Lushington shook his head incredulously, but said nothing.
‘Why not?’ Margaret asked, clinging to her idea. ‘Why can’t we like each other, be very, very fond of each other, and meet often, and each help the other in life? I don’t want to know your secret. I won’t even call you Tom, as I want to, and you shall be as stiff and formal with me as you please. What do such things matter, if we really care? If we really trust one another, and know it? The main thing is to know, to be absolutely sure. Why do you wish to go away, just when I’ve found out how much I want you to stay? It’s not right, and it’s not kind! Indeed it’s not!’
They had been walking very slowly, and now she stood still and faced him, waiting for his answer.
He looked steadily into her eyes as he spoke.
‘I don’t think I can stay,’ he said slowly. ‘You can’t tear love up by the roots and plant it in a pot and call it friendship. If you try, something will happen. Excuse me if the simile sounds lyric, but I don’t happen to think of a better one, on the spur of the moment. I’ll behave all right before the others, but I had better go away to-morrow morning. The thing will only get worse if I keep on seeing you.’
Margaret heard the short, awkward sentences and knew what they cost him. She looked down and stuck the bright metal tip of her parasol into the thin dry mud of the macadamised road, grinding it in slowly, half round and half back, with both hands, and unconsciously wondering what made the earth so hard just in that place.
‘I wish I were a man!’ she said all at once, and the parasol bent dangerously as she gave it a particularly vicious twist, leaning upon it at the same time.
‘It would certainly simplify matters for me, if you were,’ said Lushington coldly.
She looked up with a hurt expression.
‘Oh, please don’t go back to that way of talking!’ she said. ‘It’s bad enough, as it is! Don’t you see how hard I am trying?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lushington said. ‘Don’t pay any attention to what I say. I’m all over the place.’
He mumbled the words and turned away from her as he stood. She watched him, and desisted from digging holes in the ground. Then, as he did not look at her again she put out one hand rather shyly and touched his sleeve.
‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘What is this for? What are we making ourselves miserable about? We care for each other a great deal, much more than I had any idea of this morning. Why should we say good-bye? I don’t believe it’s at all necessary, after all. You have got some silly, quixotic idea into your head, I’m sure. Tell me what it is, and let me judge for myself!’
‘I can’t,’ he answered, in evident distress. ‘You may find out what it is some day, but I cannot tell you. It’s the one thing I couldn’t say to anybody alive. If I did, I should deserve to be kicked out of decent society for ever!’
She saw the look of suffering in his face again, and she felt as if she were going to cry, out of sympathy.
‘Of course,’ she faltered, ‘if it would be — what you call dishonourable — to tell — —’
‘Yes. It would be dishonourable to tell.’
There was a little silence.
‘All I can hope,’ he continued presently, ’is that you won’t believe it’s anything I’ve done myself.’
‘Indeed, indeed I don’t. I never could!�
��
She held out her hand and he took it gladly, and kept it in his for a moment; then he dropped it of his own accord, before she had made the least motion to take it back.
They walked on without speaking again for a long time, and without wishing to speak. When they were in sight of Mrs. Rushmore’s gate Margaret broke the silence at last.
‘Do you mean to take an early train to-morrow morning?’ she asked.
‘Nine o’clock, I think,’ he answered.
There was another little pause, and again Margaret spoke, but very low, this time.
‘I shall be in the garden at half-past eight — to say good-bye.’
‘Yes,’ Lushington answered. ‘Thank you,’ he added after a moment.
They were side by side, very near together as they walked, and her left hand hung down close to his right. He caught her fingers suddenly, and they pressed his, and parted from them instantly.
CHAPTER V
LITTLE MADAME DURAND-DE Rosa took Margaret behind the scenes just before the second act of Romeo and Juliet was over. The famous teacher of singing was a privileged person at the Opéra, and the man who kept the side door of communication between the house and the stage bowed low as he opened for her and Margaret. Things are well managed in the great opera-houses nowadays, and it is not easy to get behind when anything is going on.
The young girl felt a new sensation of awe and excitement. It was the first time she had ever found herself on the working side of the vast machinery of artistic pleasure, and her first impression was that she had been torn from an artificial paradise and was being dragged through an artificial inferno. Huge and unfamiliar objects loomed about her in the deep shadows; men with pale faces, in working clothes, stood motionless at their posts, listening and watching; others lurked in corners, dressed in mediæval costumes that glittered in the dark. Between the flies, Margaret caught glimpses of the darkened stage, and the sound of the orchestra reached her as if muffled, while the tenor’s voice sounded very loud, though he was singing softly. On a rough bit of platform six feet above the stage, stood Madame Bonanni in white satin, apparently laced to a point between life and death, her hands holding the two sides of the latticed door that opened upon the balcony. In a loft on the stage left a man was working a lime-light moon behind a sheet of blue glass in a frame; the chorus of old retainers in grey stood huddled together in semi-darkness by a fly, listening to the tenor and waiting to hear Madame Bonanni’s note when she should come out.
“The young girl felt a new sensation of awe and excitement.”
Margaret would have waited too, but her teacher hurried her along, holding her by the hand and checking her when they came to any obstacle which the girl’s unpractised eyes might not have seen in time. To the older woman it was all as familiar as her own sitting-room, for her life had been spent in the midst of it; to Margaret it was all strange, and awe-inspiring, and a little frightening. It was to be her own life, too, before long. In a few months, or perhaps a few weeks, she, too, would be standing on a platform, like Madame Bonanni, waiting to go out into the lime-light, waiting to be heard by two thousand people. She wondered whether she should be frightened, whether by any possibility her voice would stick in her throat at the great moment and suddenly croak out a hideous false note, and end her career then and there. Her heart beat fast at the thought, even now, and she pressed her teacher’s guiding hand nervously; and yet, as the music reached her ears, she longed to be standing in Madame Bonanni’s place with only a latticed balcony door between her and the great public. She was not thinking of Lushington now, though she had thought all day of his face when she had met him for one moment under the trees, yesterday morning, and had felt that something was gone from her life which she was to miss for a long time. That was all forgotten in what she felt at the present moment, in the wild quivering longing to be in front, the centre of the great illusion, singing as she knew that she could sing, as she had never sung before.
Madame De Rosa led her quickly down a dark corridor and a moment later she found herself in a dazzling blaze of light, in the prima donna’s dressing-room.
The ceiling was low, the walls were white, and innumerable electric lamps, with no shades, filled the place with a blinding glare. It all looked bare and uncomfortable, and very untidy. There was a toilet-table, covered with little pots of grease and paint, and well-worn pads and hare’s-feet, and vast stores of hairpins, besides a quantity of rings and jewels of great value, all lying together in bowls in the midst of the confusion. A tall mirror stood on one side, with wing mirrors on hinges, and bunches of lamps that could be moved about. On one of the walls half-a-dozen theatrical gowns and cloaks hung limply from pegs. Two large trunks were open and empty not far from the door. The air was hot and hard to breathe, and smelt of many things.
There were three people in the room when the two visitors entered; there was a very tall maid with an appallingly cadaverous face and shiny black hair, and there was a short fat maid who grinned and showed good teeth at Madame De Rosa. Both wore black and had white aprons, and both were perspiring profusely. The third person was an elderly man in evening dress, who rose and shook hands with the retired singer, and bowed to Margaret. He seemed to be a very quiet, unobtrusive man, who was nevertheless perfectly at his ease, and he somehow conveyed the impression that he must be always dressed for the evening, in a perfectly new coat, a brand-new shirt, a white waistcoat never worn before, and a made tie. Perhaps it was the made tie that introduced a certain disquieting element in his otherwise highly correct appearance. He wore his faded fair hair very short, and his greyish yellow beard was trimmed in a point. His fat hands were incased in tight white gloves. His pale eyes looked quietly through his glasses and made one think of the eyes of a big fish in an aquarium when it swims up and pushes its nose against the plate-glass front of the tank to look at visitors.
The eyes examined Margaret attentively.
‘Monsieur Schreiermeyer, this is Miss Donne, my pupil,’ said Madame De Rosa.
‘Enchanted,’ mumbled the manager.
He continued to scrutinise the young girl’s face, and he looked so much like a doctor that she felt as if he were going to feel her pulse and tell her to put out her tongue. At the thought, she smiled pleasantly.
‘Hum!’ Schreiermeyer grunted softly, almost musically, in fact.
Perhaps this was a good sign, for little Madame De Rosa beamed. Margaret looked about for an empty chair, but there never seemed to be any in a room used by Madame Bonanni. There was one indeed, but Schreiermeyer had appropriated it, and sat down upon it again with perfect calm.
‘Sit down,’ he said, as he did so himself.
‘Yes,’ answered Margaret sweetly, and remained standing.
Suddenly he seemed to realise that she could not, and that the maids were not inclined to offer her a seat. His face and figure were transfigured in an instant, one fat, gloved hand shot out with extended forefinger in a gesture of command and his pale eyes flashed through his glasses, and glared furiously at the maids.
‘Clear two chairs!’ he shouted in a voice of thunder.
Margaret started in surprise and protest.
‘But the things are all ready — —’ objected the cadaverous maid.
‘Damn the things!’ yelled Schreiermeyer. ‘Clear two chairs at once!’
He seemed, on the verge of a white apoplexy, though he did not move from his seat. The cadaverous maid lifted an embroidered bodice from one of the chairs and laid it in one of the black trunks; she looked like a female undertaker laying a dead baby in its coffin. The fat maid showed all her teeth and laughed at Schreiermeyer and cleared the other chair, and brought up both together for the two ladies.
‘Give yourselves the trouble to be seated,’ said Schreiermeyer, in a tone so soft that it would not have disturbed a sleeping child.
As soon as he was obeyed he became quite quiet and unobtrusive again, the furious glare faded from his eyes, and the white kid hand retur
ned to rest upon its fellow.
‘How good you are!’ cried Madame De Rosa gratefully, as she sat down on the cane chair.
‘Hum!’ grunted Schreiermeyer, musically, as if he agreed with her.
‘Miss Donne has a good soprano,’ the teacher ventured to say after a time.
‘Ah?’ ejaculated the manager in a tone of very indifferent interrogation.
There was a little pause.
‘Lyric,’ observed Madame De Rosa, breaking the silence.
Another pause. Schreiermeyer seemed not to have heard, and neither moved nor looked at the two.
‘Lyric?’ he inquired, suddenly, but with extreme softness.
‘Lyric,’ repeated Madame De Rosa, leaning forward a little, and fanning herself violently.
Another pause.
‘Thank God!’ exclaimed Schreiermeyer, without moving, but so very devoutly that Margaret stared at him in surprise.
Madame De Rosa knew that this also was an excellent sign; she looked at Margaret and nodded energetically. Whatever Schreiermeyer might mean by returning devout thanks to his Maker at that moment, the retired singer was perfectly sure that he knew his business. He was probably in need of a lyric soprano for the next season, and that might lead to an immediate engagement for Margaret.
‘How hot it is!’ the latter complained, in an undertone. ‘There is no air at all here!’
The maids were mopping their faces with their handkerchiefs, and Madame De Rosa’s fan was positively whirring. Schreiermeyer seemed quite indifferent to the temperature.
He must nevertheless have been reflecting on Margaret’s last remark when he slowly turned to her after a silence of nearly a minute.
‘Have you a good action of the heart?’ he inquired, precisely as a doctor might have done.
‘I don’t know.’ Margaret smiled. ‘I don’t know anything about my heart.’
‘Then it is good,’ said the manager. ‘It ought to be, for you have a magnificent skin. Do you eat well and sleep well, always?’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1108