‘I tell you quite frankly,’ Lady Maud wrote in conclusion, ‘that my friend Mr. Van Torp has begged me very urgently to use any friendly influence I may possess, to induce you to reconsider your engagement, because he hopes that you will accept him instead. You will not think any less well of him for that. A man may ask his best friend to help him to marry the girl he is in love with, I am sure! I told him that I would not do anything to make trouble between you and Logo. If I am making trouble now, by writing all this, it is therefore not to help Mr. Van Torp, but because the impression I have had about Logo has really frightened me, for you. I made such a wretched failure of my own married life that I have some right to warn a friend who seems to be on the point of doing just the same thing. I don’t forget that in spite of all your celebrity — and its glories — you are nothing but a young girl still, under twenty-five; but you are not a schoolgirl, my dear, and you do not expect to find that a man like Logo, who is well on towards forty now, is a perfect Galahad. Even I didn’t flatter myself that Leven had never cared for any one else, when I married him, and I had not half your knowledge of the world, I fancy. But you have a right to be sure that the man you marry is quite free, and that you won’t suddenly meet a lovely Eastern girl of twenty who claims him after you think he is yours; and your friend has a right to warn you, if she feels sure that he is mixed up in some affair that isn’t over yet. I’m not sure that I should be a good friend to you if I held my tongue. Our fathers were very close friends before us, Margaret, and there is really a sort of inheritance in their friendship, between you and me, isn’t there? Besides, if you think I’m doing wrong, or that I’m making trouble out of nothing, just to help Mr. Van Torp, you can tell me so and we shall part I suppose, and that will be the end of it! Except that I shall be very, very sorry to lose you.
‘I don’t know where Logo is, but if he were near enough I should go to him and tell him what I think. Of course he is not in town now — nobody is, and I’ve only stayed on to clear everything out of my house, now that I’m giving it up. I suppose he is with you, though you said you did not want him at Bayreuth! Show him this letter if you like, for I’m quite ready to face him if he’s angry at my interference. I would even join you in Paris, if you wanted me, for I have nothing to do and strange to say I have a little money! I’ve sold almost all my furniture, you know, so I’m not such a total pauper as usual. But in any case answer this, please, and tell me that I have done right, or wrong, just as you feel about it — and then we will go on being friends, or say good-bye, whichever you decide.’
Lady Maud signed this long letter and addressed it to Miss Margaret Donne, at Bayreuth, feeling sure that it would be delivered, even without the name of the hotel, which she did not know. But the Bayreuth post-office was overworked during the limited time of the performances, and it happened that the extra assistant through whose hands the letter passed for distribution either did not know that Miss Donne was the famous Cordova, or did not happen to remember the hotel at which she was stopping, or both, and it got pigeonholed under D, to be called for. The consequence was that Margaret did not receive it until the morning after the performance of Parsifal to which she had taken Van Torp, though it had left London only six hours after him; for such things will happen even in extremely well-managed countries when people send letters insufficiently addressed.
Furthermore, it also happened that Logotheti was cooling himself on the deck of his yacht in the neighbourhood of Penzance, while poor Baraka was half-stifled in the Police Station. For the yacht, which was a very comfortable one, though no longer new, and not very fast according to modern ideas, was at Cowes, waiting to be wanted, and when her owner parted from Van Torp after promising to dine on the next day but one, it occurred to him that the smell of the wood pavements was particularly nasty, that it would make no real difference whether he returned to Pinney’s at once or in two days, or two weeks, since the ruby he had left must be cut before it was mounted, and that he might just as well take the fast train to Southampton and get out to sea for thirty-six hours. This he did, after telegraphing to his sailing-master to have steam as soon as possible; and as he had only just time to reach the Waterloo Station he did not even take the trouble to stop at his lodgings. He needed no luggage, for he had everything he wanted on board, and his man was far too well used to his ways to be surprised at his absence.
The consequence of this was that when Baraka’s case came up the next morning there was no one to say a word for her and Spiro. Mr. Pinney identified the ruby ‘to the best of his belief’ as the one stolen from his counter, the fact that Baraka had been disguised in man’s clothes was treated as additional evidence, and she and Spiro were sent to Brixton Gaol accordingly, Spiro protesting their innocence all the while in eloquent but disjointed English, until he was told to hold his tongue.
Further, Lady Maud read the Police Court report in an evening paper, cut it out and sent it to Margaret as a document confirming the letter she had posted on the previous evening; and owing to the same insufficiency in the address, the two missives were delivered together.
Lastly, Mr. Pinney took the big ruby back to his shop and locked it up in his safe with a satisfaction and a sense of profound relief such as he had rarely felt in a long and honourable life; and he would have been horrified and distressed beyond words if he could have even guessed that he had been the means of sending an innocent and helpless girl to prison. The mere possibility of such a mistake would have sent him at the greatest attainable speed to Scotland Yard, and if necessary in pursuit of the Home Secretary himself. The latter was in the north of Scotland, on a friend’s moor, particularly preoccupied about his bag and deeply interested in the education of a young retriever that behaved like an idiot during each drive instead of lying quiet behind the butts, though it promised to turn out a treasure in respect of having the nose and eye of a vulture and the mouth of a sucking-dove. The comparisons are those of the dog’s owner, including the ‘nose’ of the bird of prey, and no novelist can be held responsible for a Cabinet Minister’s English.
One thing more which concerns this tale happened on that same day. Two well-dressed young men drove up to the door of a quiet and very respectable hotel in the West End; and they asked for their bill, and packed their belongings, which were sufficient though not numerous; and when they had paid what they owed and given the usual tips, they told the porter to call two hansoms, and each had his things put on one of them; and they nodded to each other and parted; and one hansom drove to Euston and the other to Charing Cross; and whether they ever met again, I do not know, and it does not matter; but in order to clear Baraka’s character at once and to avoid a useless and perfectly transparent mystery, it is as well to say directly that it was the young man who drove to Euston, on his way to Liverpool and New York, who had Logotheti’s ruby sewn up in his waistcoat pocket; and that the ruby really belonged to Margaret, since Logotheti had already given it to her, before he had brought it to Mr. Pinney to be cut and set. But the knowledge of what is here imparted to the reader, who has already guessed this much of the truth, would not help Baraka out of Brixton Gaol, where the poor girl found herself in very bad company indeed; even worse, perhaps, than that in which Spiro was obliged to spend his time.
CHAPTER VIII
MARGARET RECEIVED HER friend’s letter and the account of Baraka’s trial by the same post on the morning after she and Mr. Van Torp had been to hear Parsifal together, and she opened the two envelopes before reading her other letters, though after assuring herself that there was nothing from Logotheti. He did not write every day, by any means, for he was a man of the world and he knew that although most women demand worship at fixed hours, few can receive it so regularly without being bored to the verge of exasperation. It was far better, Logotheti knew, to let Margaret find fault with him for writing too little than to spoil her into indifference by writing too much. Women are often like doctors, who order their patients to do ten things and are uncommonly glad if t
he patient does one.
So Margaret had no letter from Logotheti that morning, and she read Lady Maud’s and the enclosure before going on to the unpaid bills, religious tracts, appeals for alms, advertisements of patent medicines, ‘confidential’ communications from manufacturers of motor cars, requests to sing for nothing at charity concerts, anonymous letters of abuse, real business letters from real business men, and occasional attempts at blackmail, which are the usual contents of a celebrity’s post-bag, and are generally but thinly salted with anything like news from friends.
The Primadonna, in her professional travels, had grown cautious of reading her letters in a room where there were other people; she had once surprised a colleague who was toying with an opera-glass quite absently, ten paces away, as if trying its range and focus, but who frequently directed it towards a letter she was perusing; and short-sighted people had dropped a glove or a handkerchief at her very feet in order to stoop down and bring their noses almost against a note she held in her hand. The world is full of curious people; curiosity is said, indeed, to be the prime cause of study and therefore of knowledge itself. Margaret assuredly did not distrust Mrs. Rushmore, and she did not fear Potts, but her experience had given her the habit of reading her important letters alone in her own room, and sometimes with the door locked. Similarly, if any one came near her when she was writing, even about the most indifferent matters, she instinctively covered the page with her hand, or with a piece of blotting-paper, sometimes so hastily as to lead a person to believe that she was ashamed of what she had written. Natural habits of behaviour remind us how we were brought up; acquired ones recall to us the people with whom we have lived.
Margaret read the newspaper cutting first, supposing that it contained something flattering about herself, for she had been a little short of public admiration for nearly a fortnight. Baraka’s case was reported with the rather brutal simplicity which characterises such accounts in the English papers, and Logotheti’s name appeared in Mr. Pinney’s evidence. There had been the usual ‘laughter,’ duly noted by the stenographer, when the poor girl’s smart man’s clothes were produced before the magistrate by the policeman who had arrested her. The magistrate had made a few stern remarks when ordering the delinquents to prison, and had called Baraka ‘hardened’ because she did not burst into tears. That was all, and there were barely five-and-twenty lines of small print.
But the Primadonna bit her handsome lip and her eyes sparkled with anger, as she put the cutting back into the first envelope, and took the folded letter out of the other. The girl had not only stolen a ruby, but it was Margaret’s ruby, her very own, the one Logotheti had given her for her engagement, and which she had insisted upon having set as a ring though it would cover more than half the space between her knuckle and the joint of her third finger. Further, it had been stolen by the very girl from whom Logotheti had pretended that he had bought it, a fact which cast the high light of absurdity on his unlikely story! It was natural enough that she should have seen it, and should have known that he was taking it to Pinney’s, and that she should have been able to prepare a little screw of paper with a bit of glass inside, to substitute for it. The improbabilities of such an explanation did not occur to Lady Maud, who saw only the glaring fact that the handsome Tartar girl had accompanied Logotheti, between London and Paris, disguised as a man, and had ultimately robbed him, as he richly deserved. She had imposed upon Van Torp too, and had probably tried to sell him the very stone she had stolen from Logotheti, and the one she had made him take as a gift was nothing but a bit of glass, as he said it might be, for all he knew.
She devoured Lady Maud’s letter in a few moments, and then read it twice again, which took so long that Mrs. Rushmore sent Justine to tell Potts to ask if Miss Donne did not mean to go out that morning, though the weather was so fine.
Great singers generally develop a capacity for flying into rages, even if they have not been born with hot tempers. It is very bad for the voice, but it seems to be a part of the life. Margaret was very angry, and Potts became as meek and mild as a little lamb when she saw the storm signals in her mistress’s face. She delivered her message in a pathetic and oppressed tone, like a child reciting the collect for the day at a Sunday school.
The Primadonna, imposing as a young lioness, walked slowly backwards and forwards between her window and the foot of the iron bedstead. There was an angry light in her eyes and instead of flushing, as her cheeks did for any ordinary fit of temper, they were as white as wax. Potts, who was a small woman, seemed to shrink and become visibly smaller as she stood waiting for an answer. Suddenly the lioness stood still and surveyed the poor little jackal that served her.
‘Ask Mrs. Rushmore if she can wait half an hour,’ she said. ‘I’m very angry, Potts, and it’s not your fault, so keep out of the way.’
She was generous at all events, but she looked dangerous, and Potts seemed positively to shrivel through the crack of the door as she disappeared. She was so extremely glad to keep out of the way! There were legends already about the great singer’s temper, as there are about all her fellow-artists. It was said, without the slightest foundation, that she had once tossed a maid out of the window like a feather, that on another occasion she had severely beaten a coachman, and that she had thrown two wretched lap-dogs into a raging fire in a stove and fastened the door, because they had barked while she was studying a new part. As a matter of fact, she loved animals to weakness, and was kindness itself to her servants, and she was generally justified in her anger, though it sometimes made her say things she regretted. Œdipus found the right answer to the Sphinx’s riddle in a moment, but the ingenious one about truth propounded by Pontius Pilate has puzzled more than sixty generations of Christians. If the Sphinx had thought of it, Œdipus would never have got to Thebes and some disgustingly unpleasant family complications would have been prevented by his premature demise.
Margaret’s wrath did not subside quickly, and as it could not spend itself on any immediate object, it made her feel as if she were in a raging fever. She had never been ill in her life, it was true, and therefore did not know what the sensation was. Her only experience of medical treatment had been at the hands of a very famous specialist for the throat, in New York, to whom she went because all her fellow-artists did, and whose mere existence is said by grateful singers to effectually counteract the effects of the bad climate during the opera season. He photographed her vocal chords, and the diagrams produced by her best notes, made her breathe pleasant-smelling sprays and told her to keep her feet dry in rainy weather. That was the sum of her experience with doctors, and it was not at all disagreeable.
Now, her temples throbbed, her hands trembled and were as hot as fire, her lips were drawn and parched, and when she caught sight of herself in the looking-glass she saw that she was quite white and that her eyes were bloodshot.
But she was really a sensible English girl, although she was so very angry.
‘This is ridiculous!’ she said aloud, with emphasis. ‘I won’t be so silly!’ And she sat down to try and think quietly.
It was not so easy. A Tartar girl indeed! More probably a handsome Greek. How could they know the difference in a London Police Court? She was not aware that in London and other great cities the police disposes of interpreters for every known language, from the Malay dialects to Icelandic. Besides, it did not matter! She would have been angry if Logotheti had made love to the Duchess of Barchester, or to Lady Dick Savory, the smartest woman in London, or to Mrs. Smythe-Hockaday, the handsomest woman in England; she would have been angry of course, but not so furious as she was now, not in a white rage that made her teeth chatter, and her eyes burn as if they were red-hot in her head. An ignorant Eastern girl! A creature that followed him about in man’s clothes! A thief! Pah! Disgusting!
Each detail that occurred to her made it more unbearable. She remembered her conversation with him through the telephone when she was at Versailles, his explanation the next day, which s
he had so foolishly accepted, his kiss! Her blood raged in her eyes, and her hands shook together. On that evening he had refused to stay to dinner; no doubt he had gone back to his house in Paris, and had dined with the girl — in the hall of the Aphrodite! It was not to be believed, and after that memorable moment under the elm-tree, too, when the sun was going down — after an honest girl’s first kiss, the first she had given any man since she had been a child and her lips had timidly touched her dead father’s forehead! People would not believe it, perhaps, because she was an artist and an opera-singer; but it was true.
It was no wonder that they had succeeded in deceiving her for a while, the two Orientals together! They had actually made Rufus Van Torp believe their story, which must have been a very different matter from lying to a credulous young woman who had let herself fall in love! But for her friend Lady Maud she would still be their victim. Her heart went out to the woman who had saved her from her fate, and with the thought came the impulse to send a message of gratitude; and the first fury of her anger subsided with the impulse to do so. By and by it would cool and harden to a lasting resentment that would not soften again.
Her hand still shook so that she could hardly hold the pen steady while she wrote the telegram.
‘Unspeakably grateful. If can join me here will gladly wait for you. Must see you at once. Do come.’
She felt better as she rose from the table, and when she looked at herself in the mirror she saw that her face had changed again and that her natural colour was returning. She rang for Potts, remembering that the half-hour must be almost up.
The maid appeared at once, still looking very small and mild; but one glance told her that the worst was past. She raised her head, threw back her shoulders and stood up straight, apparently growing visibly till she regained her ordinary size.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1242