Margaret looked at him from under the brim of her hat, throwing her head far back so as to do so. Then they both laughed a little, and Lushington felt happy for a moment; but Margaret did not know what she felt, if indeed she felt anything at all, beyond a momentary satisfaction in the society of a man she really liked very much, whom she had once believed she loved, and whom she might still have been willing to marry if she had not been at the point of beginning her public career, and if he had asked her, and if — but there were altogether too many conditions, and for the moment matrimony was out of sight.
‘I like you very much,’ she said, suddenly thoughtful. ‘I’ve seen you act like a hero, and you always act like a gentleman. One cannot say that of many men. If I were not such a wicked flirt, I suppose I should be in love with you, as I was that day when you left here. I’m glad I’m not! Do you know that it’s frightfully humiliating to want to marry a man, and to have him object, no matter why?’
Lushington said something, but he felt that again the real Margaret had slipped away out of sight for a while, leaving somebody else in her place.
Whenever it happened, he felt a little painful sensation of choking, like a man who is suddenly deprived of air; until he looked at her and saw that she was outwardly herself. Then he adjusted the halo of ideality upon the artist again, and continued to love Margaret Donne with all his heart.
CHAPTER XIX
THERE IS A certain kind, or perhaps it is only a certain degree, of theatrical reputation, which makes its coming felt in all sorts of ways, like a change in the weather. The rise of literary men to fame is almost always a surprise to themselves, their families, and their former instructors. Especially the latter, who know much more than the young novelist does, but have never been able to do anything with their knowledge, hold up their shrivelled, or podgy, or gouty old hands in sorrow, declaring that the success of a boy who was such a dolt, such a good-for-nothing, such a conceited jackanapes at school, only shows what the judgment of the public is worth, and how very low its standard has fallen. But the great public does not think much of decayed schoolmasters at best, and is never surprised that a young man should succeed, for the very simple reason that if he did not, some other young man certainly would; and to those who do not know the colour of the author’s hair and eyes, the difference between Mr. Brown, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Robinson, in private life, must be purely a matter of imagination.
But theatrical reputation is a different matter, and its rise affects the professional barometer beforehand. The people who train great singers and great actors know what they are about and foresee the result, as no publisher can foresee it with regard to a new writer. There is a right way and a wrong way of singing, one must sing in tune unless one sings out of tune, there are standards of comparison in the persons of the great singers who are still at their best. It is not easy to be mistaken, where so much is a matter of certainty and so little depends on chance, and the facts become known very easily. The first-rate second-rate artists, climbing laboriously in the wake of the real first-rates, and wishing that these would die and get out of the way, feel a hopeless sinking at the heart as they hear behind them the rush of another coming genius. The tired critics sleep less soundly in the front row of the stalls, the fine and frivolous ladies who come to the opera to talk the whole evening are told that for once they will have to be silent, the reporters put on little playful airs of mystery to say that they have been allowed to assist at a marvellous rehearsal or have been admitted to see the future diva putting on her cloak after a final interview with Schreiermeyer, whose attitude before her is described as being that of the donor of the picture in an old Italian altar-piece.
And all this is not mere advertisement; much of it is, in fact, nothing of the sort, and is not even suggested by Schreiermeyer, for he knows perfectly well that one performance will place his new star very nearly at her true value before the public, who will flock to hear her and take infinite pains to find out where and when she is going to sing the next time. It is just the outward, healthy stir that goes before certain kinds of theatrical success, and which is quite impossible where most other arts are concerned; perhaps — I suggest it with apologies to all living prima donnas and first tenors — the higher the art, the less can success be predicted. Was ever a great painter, a great sculptor or a great poet ‘announced’? On the other hand, was there ever a great singer who was not appreciated till after death?
The public probably did not hear the name of Margaret Donne till much later, and then, with considerable indifference, but long before Margarita da Cordova made her début, her name was repeated, with more or less mistakes and eccentricities of pronunciation, from mouth to mouth, in London and Paris, and was even mentioned in St. Petersburg, Berlin and New York. Every one connected with the musical world, even if only as a regular spectator, felt that something extraordinary was coming.
Madame Bonanni wrote to Margaret that she wished to see her, and would come over to Paris expressly, if Margaret would only telegraph. She would come out to Versailles, she would make the acquaintance of that charming Mrs. Rushmore. Margaret wondered what would happen if the two women met, and what mutual effect they would produce upon each other, but her knowledge of Mrs. Rushmore made her doubt whether such a meeting were desirable. Instead of telegraphing to Madame Bonanni, she wrote her answer, proposing to go to the prima donna’s house. But Madame Bonanni was impatient, and as no telegram came when she expected one, she did not wait for a possible letter. To Margaret’s dismay and stupefaction, she appeared at Versailles about luncheon time, arrayed with less good taste than the lilies of the field, but yet in a manner to outdo Solomon in all his glory, and she was conveyed in a perfectly new motor car. When Margaret, looking on from beyond the pond, saw her descend from the machine, she could not help thinking of a dreadful fresco she had once seen on the ceiling of an Italian villa, representing a very florid, double-chinned, powerful eighteenth-century Juno apparently in the act of getting down into the room from her car, to the great inconvenience of every one below.
The English servant who opened the door was in distress of mind when he saw her, for since he had served in Mrs. Rushmore’s very proper household he had never seen anything like Madame Bonanni as she stood there asking for Miss Donne, and evidently not in a mood to be patient. He was very much inclined to tell her that she had mistaken the house, and to shut the door in her face. There were people coming to luncheon, and it was just possible that she might be one of them; but if she was not, and if the others came and found such a person there, how truly awful it would be! Thus the footman reflected as he stood in the doorway, listening to Madame Bonanni’s voluble French speech.
As she paused for a moment, he heard some one on the stairs. It was Mrs. Rushmore herself. He recognised her step and turned sharp round on his heels, still filling the door but exposing his broad back to the visitor.
‘Very odd person asking to see Miss Donne, ma’am,’ he said in low and hurried tones. ‘Shall I say “not at home,” ma’am?’
‘By all means “not at home,” James,’ said Mrs. Rushmore.
James had not miscalculated his breadth, as to the door, but his height as compared with that of the odd person outside. She put her head over his shoulder and looked in at Mrs. Rushmore.
‘May I please come in?’ she asked in comprehensible English. ‘I am Bonanni, the singer, and I want to see Miss Donne. I’ve come from London to — please? Yes?’
‘Goodness gracious!’ cried Mrs. Rushmore. ‘Let the lady in at once, James!’
James disappeared, somehow, and the artist came into the darkened hall, and met Mrs. Rushmore.
The latter did not often meet a woman much bigger than herself, and actually felt small when she held out her hand. Madame Bonanni seemed to fill the little hall of the French cottage, and Mrs. Rushmore felt as if she were in danger of being turned out of it to make room.
‘Margaret is in the garden,’ she said. ‘I am so pleased to
meet you, Madame Bonanni! I hope you’ll stay to lunch. Do come in, and I’ll send for her. James!’
All this was said while the two large hands were mildly shaking one another; Mrs. Rushmore was not easily startled by the sudden appearance of lions — or lionesses — and was conscious of being tolerably consecutive in her speech. It was not Madame Bonanni’s greatness that had taken her by surprise, but her size and momentum. The prima donna answered in French.
‘You understand? Of course! Thank you! Then I will speak in my own language. I will go out to Miss Donne, if you permit. Luncheon? Ah, if I could! But I have just eaten. I am sure you have so many good things! Little Miss Donne — ah! here she is!’
At this point Margaret came in, pulling off the old garden hat she had worn when Lushington had come to see her. She was surprised that the prima donna did not throw her arms round her and kiss her, but the artist had judged Mrs. Rushmore in a flash and behaved with almost English gravity as she took Margaret’s hand.
‘I have come to Paris expressly to see you,’ she said.
‘Let me introduce you to Mrs. Rushmore,’ said Margaret.
‘It is done,’ said Madame Bonanni, making a little stage courtesy at the elder woman. ‘I broke into the house like a burglar, and found a charming hostess waiting to arrest me with the kindest invitation to luncheon!’
‘What a delightful way of putting it!’ cried Mrs. Rushmore, much pleased.
Margaret felt that Madame Bonanni was showing a side of her nature which she had not yet seen. It had never occurred to the girl that the singer could make pretty society speeches. But Madame Bonanni had seen many things in her time.
Margaret carried her off to her own room, after a few words more, for it was clear that her visitor had something private to say, and had come all the way from London to say it, apparently out of pure friendship. Her manner changed again when they were alone. By force of habit the big woman sat down on the piano-stool and turned over the music that was open on the instrument, and she seemed to pay no heed to what Margaret said. Margaret was thanking her for her visit, arranging the blinds, asking her if there was enough air, for the day was hot, inquiring about the weather in London, moving about the room with each little speech, and with the evident desire to start the conversation so as to find out why Madame Bonanni had come. But the singer turned over the pages obstinately, looked up rather coldly at Margaret now and then, and once or twice whistled a few bars of Rigoletto in a way that would have been decidedly rude, had it not been perfectly clear that she did not know what she was doing, and was really trying to make up her mind how to begin. Margaret understood, and presently let her alone, and just sat down on a chair at the corner of the piano with a bit of work, and waited to see what would happen.
‘I thought it might help you a little if I ran through the opera with you,’ said Madame Bonanni, after a long time. ‘I have sung it very often.’
But as she spoke she shut the score on the piano rather sharply, as if she had changed her mind. Margaret looked up quickly in surprise and dropped her work in her lap.
‘You did not come all the way from London for that?’ she asked, in a voice full of gratitude and wonder.
There was a moment’s pause, during which the singer looked uneasy.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I didn’t. I never could lie very well — I can’t at all to-day! But I would have come, only for that, if I had thought you needed it. That is the truth.’
‘How good you are!’ Margaret cried.
‘Good!’
The singer’s hand covered her big eyes for a moment and her elbow rested on the edge of the piano desk. There was a very sad note in the single word she had spoken, a note of despair not far off; but Margaret did not understand.
‘What is the matter?’ she asked, leaning forward, and laying one hand gently on Madame Bonanni’s wrist. ‘Why do you speak like that?’
‘Do you think you would have been any better, in my place?’
The question came in a harsh tone, suddenly, as if it broke through some opposing medium, the hand dropped from the brow, and the big dark eyes gazed into Margaret’s almost fiercely. Still the girl did not understand.
‘Better? I? In what way? Tell me what it is, if something is distressing you. Let me help you, if I can. You know I will, with all my heart.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Madame Bonanni’s voice sank again. ‘But how can you? The trouble is older than you are. There is one thing — yes — there is one thing, if you could say it truly! It would help me a little if you could say it — and yet — no — I’m not sure — if you did, it would only show that you have more heart than he has.’
‘Who?’ Margaret vaguely guessed the truth.
‘Who? Tom — my son! “Edmund Lushington,” who feels that he cannot ask a respectable girl to marry him because his mother has been a wicked woman.’
The big woman shook from head to foot as she spoke.
Margaret was pained and her fingers tightened nervously on the other’s wrist.
‘Oh, please don’t!’ she cried. ‘Please don’t!’
‘He’s right,’ answered Madame Bonanni, hanging her large head and shaking it despairingly. ‘Of course, he’s right, and it’s true! But, oh! — she looked up again, suddenly— ‘oh, how much more right it must be for a man to forgive his mother, no matter what she has done!’
Margaret’s fingers glided from the wrist they held, to the large hand, and pressed it sympathetically, but she could not find anything to say which would do. The friendly pressure, however, evidently meant enough to the distressed woman.
‘Thank you, dear,’ she said gratefully. ‘You’re very good to me. I know you mean it, too. Only, you’re not placed as he is. If you were my daughter, you would think as he thinks — you would not live under my roof! Perhaps you would not even see me when we met in the street! You would look the other way!’
Margaret could not have told, for her life, what she would have done, but she was far too kind-hearted not to protest.
‘Indeed I wouldn’t!’ she cried, with so much energy that Madame Bonanni believed her.
‘No matter what I had done?’ asked she pathetically eager for the assurance.
‘You’d have been my mother just the same,’ answered Margaret softly.
As the girl spoke, she felt a little sharp revolt in her heart against what she had said, at the mere thought of associating the word ‘mother’ with Madame Bonanni.
There was nothing at all psychological in that, and it would hardly bear analysing even by a professional dissector of character. It was just the natural feeling, in a natural girl, whose mother had been honest and good. But Madame Bonanni only heard the kind words.
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I should have been your mother, just the same. But I couldn’t have been a better mother to you than I’ve been to Tom. I couldn’t, indeed!’
‘No,’ Margaret said, in the same gentle tone as before, ‘you’ve been very good to him.’
‘Yes! I have! He knows it, and he does not deny it!’ Madame Bonanni suddenly sat up quite straight and squeezed Margaret’s hands by way of emphasis. ‘But he does not care,’ she went on, her anger rising a little. ‘Not he! He would rather that I should have been any sort of miserable little proper middle-class woman, if I could only have been technically “virtuous”! If I had been that, I might have beaten him to an omelette every day when he was a boy, and tormented him like a gadfly when he was a man! He would have preferred it — oh, by far! That is the logic of men, my dear, their irrefutable logic that they are always talking about and facing us down with! The miserable little animal! I will give up loving him, I will hate him, as he deserves, I will tell him to go to Peru, where he will never see his wicked old mother again! Then he will be sorry, he will wish he were dead, but I shall not go to him, never, never, never!’
She spoke the last words with tremendous energy, and a low echo of her voice came back out of the open piano from the strings. She clen
ched her fist and shook it at an imaginary Lushington in space, and for a moment her face wore a look of Medean menace.
Margaret might have smiled, if she had not felt that the strange creature was really and truly suffering, in her own way, to the borders of distraction. Then, suddenly, the great frame was convulsed again and quivered from head to foot.
‘I’m going to cry,’ she announced, in rather shaky tones.
And she cried. She slipped from the piano-stool to the floor, upon her knees, and her heavy arms fell upon the keys with a crashing discord, and her face buried itself in the large depths of one bent elbow, quite regardless of damage to Paquin’s masterpiece of a summer sleeve; and with huge sobs the tears welled up and overflowed, taking everything they found in their way, including paint, and washing all down between the ivory keys of Margaret’s piano.
Margaret saw that there was nothing to be done. At first she tried to soothe her as best she could, standing over her, and laying a hand gently on her shoulder; but Madame Bonanni shook it off with a sort of convulsive shudder, as a big carthorse gets rid of a fly that has settled on a part of his back inaccessible to his tail. Then Margaret desisted, knowing that the fit must go on to its natural end, and that it was hopeless to try and stop it sooner. Women are very practical with each other in crying matters, but it is bad for us men if we treat them in the same sensible way under the identical circumstances. Margaret sat down again in her chair, and instead of taking up her work, she leaned forward towards the weeping woman, to be ready with a word of sympathy as soon as it could be of any use. She watched the heavy head, the strong and coarse dark hair, the large animal construction of the neck and shoulders, the massive hands, discoloured now with straining upon themselves; nothing escaped her, as she quietly waited for the sobbing to cease; and though she felt the peasant nature there, close to her, in all its rugged strength, yet she felt, too, that with certain differences of outward refinement, it was not unlike her own. Her own hair, for instance, was much finer; but then, fair hair is generally finer than dark. Her own hands were smaller than Madame Bonanni’s; but then, they had never been used to manual labour when she had been a girl. And as for the rest of her, she knew that Madame Bonanni had been reckoned a beauty in her day, such a beauty that very great and even royal personages indeed had done extremely foolish things to please her; and that very beauty had been in part the cause of those very tears the poor woman was shedding now. Margaret was quite sensible enough to admit that she herself, after a quarter of a century of stage life, might turn into very much the same type of woman. While waiting to be sympathetic at the right moment, therefore, she studied Madame Bonanni’s appearance with profound and melancholy interest. She had never had such a good chance.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1127