The servant who opened the door smiled. He was a man of thirty-five, or thereabouts, with cheerful blue eyes, a brown moustache and pink cheeks. He wore a blue cotton ap.r.o.n and had a feather duster in his hand; and he smiled very pleasantly.
"Madame Bonanni said she would see me this morning," Margaret explained.
"What name, if you please?" the man asked, contemplating her with approval.
"Miss Donne."
"Very well. But Madame is in her bath," observed the servant, showing no inclination to let Margaret pa.s.s. "Mademoiselle would do better to come another day."
"But Madame Bonanni has given me an appointment."
"It is possible," the man replied, still smiling calmly.
"I have come to sing to her," Margaret said, with a little impatience.
"Ah--then it is different!" He positively beamed. "Then Mademoiselle is a musician? Who would have thought it?"
Margaret was not quite sure who would have thought it, but she thought the servant decidedly familiar. At that moment he stood aside for her to pa.s.s, shut the front door after her and led the way to the short flight of steps that gave access to the house from the carriage entrance.
"This way, Mademoiselle. If Mademoiselle will be good enough to wait, I will inform Madame."
"Please don"t disturb her! You said she was in her bath."
"Oh, that has no importance!" the man cried cheerfully, and disappeared at once.
Margaret looked about her, but if she had been blind she would have been aware that she was in a place quite unlike any she had ever been in before. The air had an indescribable odour that was almost a taste; it smelt of Houbigant, Greek tobacco, Persian carpets, women"s clothes, liqueur and late hours; and it was not good to breathe--except, perhaps, for people used to the air of the theatre. Margaret at first saw nothing particular to sit upon, and stood still.
It was a big room, with two very large windows on one side, a ma.s.sive chimney-piece at the end opposite the door, and facing the windows the most enormous divan Margaret had ever seen. Over this a great canopy was stretched, a sort of silk awning of which the corners were stretched out and held up by more or less mediaeval lances. The divan itself was so high that an ordinary person would have to climb upon it, and it was completely covered by a wild confusion of cushions of all colours, thrown upon it and piled up, and tumbling off, as if a Homeric pillow fight had just been fought upon it by several scores of vigorous school-girls.
The room was plethoric with artistic objects, some good, some bad, some atrocious, but all recalling the singer"s past triumphs, and all jumbled together, on tables, easels, pedestals, brackets and shelves with much less taste than an average dealer in antiquities would have shown in arranging his wares. There was not even light enough to see them distinctly, for the terrifically heavy and expensive Genoa velvet curtains produced a sort of dingy twilight. Moreover the Persian carpet was so extremely thick that Margaret almost turned her ankle as she made a step upon it.
As she knew that she must probably wait some time she looked for a seat. There were a few light chairs here and there, but they were occupied by various objects; on one a framed oil-painting was waiting till a place could be found for it, on another there was a bandbox, on a third lay some sort of garment that might be an opera-cloak or a tea-gown, or a theatrical dress, a little silver tray with the remains of black coffee and an empty liqueur gla.s.s stood upon a fourth chair, and Margaret"s searching eye discovered a fifth, with nothing on it, pushed away in a corner.
She took hold of it by the back, to bring it forward a little, and the gilt cross-bar came off in her hand. She stuck the piece on again as well as she could, and as she did not like to disturb any of the things she stood still, in the middle of the room, wondering vaguely whether Madame Bonanni"s visitors usually sat down, and if so, on what.
Suddenly her eyes fell upon a piano, standing behind several easels that almost completely hid it. A piano usually has a stool, and Margaret made her way between the easels and the little oriental tables, and the plants, and the general confusion, towards the keyboard. She was not disappointed; there was a stool, and she sat down at last.
The air was oppressive and she wished herself out in the Pare Monceau, in the May morning. The time seemed endless. By sheer force of habit she slowly turned on the revolving stool and touched the keys; then she struck a few chords softly, and the sound of the perfect instrument gave her pleasure. She played something, trying to make as little noise as possible so long as she remembered where she was, but presently she forgot herself, her lips parted and she was singing, as people do who sing naturally.
She sang the waltz song in the first act of Gounod"s _Romeo and Juliet_, and after the first few bars she had altogether forgotten that she was not at home, with her own piano, or else standing behind her teacher"s shoulder in the Boulevard Malesherbes.
Now there are not many singers living who can sing the waltz song and accompany themselves without making a terrible mess of the music; but Margaret did it well, and much more than well, for she was not only a singer with a beautiful voice but a true musician. There was not a quaver or hesitation in her singing from beginning to end, nor a false note in the accompaniment.
When she had finished, her lips closed and she went on playing the music of the scene that follows. She had not gone on a dozen bars, however, when a head appeared suddenly round the corner of a picture on an easel.
"Ah, bah!" exclaimed the head, in an accent of great surprise.
Its thick dark-brown hair was all towzled and standing on end, its brown eyes were opened very wide in astonishment, and it was showing magnificently strong teeth, a little discoloured.
Margaret sprang to her feet with an apology for having forgotten herself, but the head laughed and came forward, bringing with it a large body wrapped in an enormous gown of white Turkish towelling, evidently held together by the invisible hands within. Margaret thought of the statue of Balzac.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Margaret sprang to her feet with an apology."]
"I thought it was Caravita," said Madame Bonanni. "We are great friends you know. I sometimes find her waiting for me. But who in the world are you?"
"Margaret Donne."
"Ah, bah!" exclaimed the great singer again, the two syllables being apparently her only means of expressing surprise.
"But I told your servant----" Margaret began.
"Why have you not made your _debut_?" cried Madame Bonanni, interrupting her, and shaking her disordered locks as if in protest. "You have millions in your throat! Why do you come here? To ask advice? To let me hear you sing? Let the public hear you! What are you waiting for?
To-morrow you will be old! And all singers are young. How old do you think I am? Forty-five, perhaps, because it is printed so! Not a bit of it! A prima donna is never over thirty, never, never, never! Imagine Juliet over thirty, or Lucia! Pah! The idea is horrible! Fortunately, all tenors are fat. A Juliet of thirty may love a fat Romeo, but at forty it would be disgusting, positively disgusting! I am sick at the mere thought."
Margaret stood up, resting one hand on the corner of the piano and smiling at the torrent of speech. Yet all the time, while Madame Bonanni was saying things that sounded absurd enough, the young girl was conscious that the handsome brown eyes were studying her quietly and perhaps not unwisely.
"I am twenty-two," she said by way of answer.
"I made my _debut_ when I was twenty," answered the prima donna. "But then," she added, as if in explanation, "I was married before I was seventeen."
"Indeed!" Margaret exclaimed politely.
"Yes. He died. Let us sing! I always want to sing when I come out of my bath. Do you know the duo at the beginning of the fourth act? Yes?
Good. I will sing Romeo. Oh yes, I can sing the tenor part--it is very high for a man. Sit down. Imagine that you admire me and that the lark is trying to imitate the nightingale so that we need not part. We have not heard it yet. The man is beginning to turn up the dawn outside the window behind us, but we do not see it. We are perfectly happy. Now, begin!"
The chords sounded softly, the two voices blended, rose and fell and died away. The elder woman"s rich lower tones imitated a tenor voice well enough to give Margaret the little illusion she needed, and her overflowing happiness did the rest. She sang as she had not sung before.
"I wish to embrace you!" cried Madame Bonanni, when they had finished.
And forthwith Margaret felt herself enveloped in the Turkish bath-gown, and entangled in the towzled hair and held by a pair of tremendously strong white arms; and being thus helpless, she experienced a kindly but portentous kiss on each cheek; after which she was set at liberty.
"You are a real musician, too!" Madame Bonanni said with genuine admiration. "You can play anything, as well as sing. I hope you will never hear me play. It is awful. I could empty any theatre instantly, if there were a fire, merely by playing a little!"
She laughed heartily at her little joke, for like many great singers she was half a child and half a genius, and endowed with the huge vitality that alone makes an opera singer"s life possible.
"I would give my playing to have your voice," Margaret said.
"You would be cheated in your bargain," observed Madame Bonanni. "Let me look at you. Have you a big chest and a thick throat? What are your arms like? If you have a voice and talent, strength is every thing!
Young girls come and sing to me so prettily, so sweetly! They want to be singers! Singers, my dear, with chests like paper dolls and throats like plucked spring chickens! Bah! They are good for nothing, they catch cold, they give a little croak and they die. Strength is everything. Let me see your throat! No! You will never croak! You will never die. And your arms? Look at mine. Yes, yours will be like mine, some day."
Margaret hoped not, for Madame Bonanni seemed to be a very big woman, though she still managed to look human as Juliet. Perhaps that was because the tenors were all fat.
Again a hand emerged from the thick white folds and grasped Margaret"s arm firmly above the elbow, as a trainer feels an athlete"s biceps.
"Good, good! Very good!" cried Madame Bonanni approvingly. "It is a pity you are a lady! You are a lady, aren"t you?"
Margaret smiled.