In the lives of professionals, whatever their profession may be, the
ordinary work of the day makes very little impression on the memory,
whereas a very strong and lasting one is often made by circumstances
which a man of leisure or a woman of the world might barely notice,
and would soon forget. In Margaret's life there were but two sorts of
days, those on which she was to sing and those on which she was at
liberty. In the one case she had a cutlet at five o'clock, and supper
when she came home; in the other, she dined like other people and went
to bed early. At the end of a season in New York, the evenings on
which she had sung all seemed to have been exactly alike; the people
had always applauded at the same places, she had always been called
out about the same number of times, she had always felt very much
the same pleasure and satisfaction, and she had invariably eaten her
supper with the same appetite. Actors lead far more emotional lives
than singers, partly because they have the excitement of a new piece
much more often, with the tremendous nervous strain of a first night,
and largely because they are not obliged to keep themselves in such
perfect training. To an actor a cold, an indigestion, or a headache
is doubtless an annoyance; but to a leading singer such an accident
almost always means the impossibility of appearing at all, with
serious loss of money to the artist, and grave disappointment to the
public. The result of all this is that singers, as a rule, are much
more normal, healthy, and well-balanced people than other musicians,
or than actors. Moreover they generally have very strong bodies and
constitutions to begin with, and when they have not they break down
young.
Paul Griggs had an old traveller's preference for having plenty of
time, and he was on board the steamer on Saturday a full hour before
she was to sail; his not very numerous belongings, which looked as
weather-beaten as himself, were piled up unopened in his cabin, and he
himself stood on the upper promenade deck watching the passengers as
they came on board. He was an observant man, and it interested him to
note the expression of each new face that appeared; for the fact
of starting on a voyage across the ocean is apt to affect people
inversely as their experience. Those who cross often look so
unconcerned that a casual observer might think they were not to start
at all, whereas those who are going for the first time are either
visibly flurried, or are posing to look as if they were not, though
they are intensely nervous about their belongings; or they try to
appear as if they belonged to the ship, or else as if the ship
belonged to them, making observations which are supposed to be
nautical, but which instantly stamp them as unutterable land-lubbers
in the shrewd estimation of the stewards; and the latter, as every old
hand is aware, always know everything much better than the captain.
Margaret Donne had been the most sensible and simple of young girls,
and when she appeared at the gangway very quietly dressed in brown,
with a brown fur collar, a brown hat, a brown veil, and a brown
parasol, there was really nothing striking to distinguish her from
other female passengers, except her good looks and her well-set-up
figure. Yet somehow it seems impossible for a successful primadonna
ever to escape notice. Instead of one maid, for instance, Cordova had
two, and they carried rather worn leathern boxes that were evidently
heavy jewel-cases, which they clutched with both hands and refused to
give up to the stewards. They also had about them the indescribable
air of rather aggressive assurance which belongs especially to
highly-paid servants, men and women. Their looks said to every one:
'We are the show and you are the public, so don't stand in the way,
for if you do the performance cannot go on!' They gave their orders
about their mistress's things to the chief steward as if he were
nothing better than a railway porter or a call-boy at the theatre;
and, strange to say, that exalted capitalist obeyed with a docility he
would certainly not have shown to any other passenger less than royal.
They knew their way everywhere, they knew exactly what the best of
everything was, and they made it clear that the great singer would
have nothing less than the very, very best. She had the best cabin
already, and she was to have the best seat at table, the best steward
and the best stewardess, and her deck-chair was to be always in the
best place on the upper promenade deck; and there was to be no mistake
about it; and if anybody questioned the right of Margarita da Cordova,
the great lyric soprano, to absolute precedence during the whole
voyage, from start to finish, her two maids would know the reason why,
and make the captain and all the ship's company wish they were dead.
That was their attitude.
But this was not all. There were the colleagues who came to see
Margaret off and wished that they were going too. In spite of the
windy weather there was Signor Pompeo Stromboli, the tenor, as broad
as any two ordinary men, in a fur coat of the most terribly expensive
sort, bringing an enormous box of chocolates with his best wishes; and
there was the great German dramatic barytone, Herr Tiefenbach, who
sang 'Amfortas' better than any one, and was a true musician as well
as a man of culture, and he brought Margaret a book which he insisted
that she must read on the voyage, called _The Genesis of the Tone
Epos_; and there was that excellent and useful little artist, Fräulein
Ottilie Braun, who never had an enemy in her life, who was always
ready to sing any part creditably at a moment's notice if one of the
leading artists broke down, and who was altogether one of the best,
kindest, and least conceited human beings that ever joined an opera
company. She brought her great colleague a little bunch of violets.
Least expected of them all, there was Schreiermeyer, with a basket
of grape fruit in his tightly-gloved podgy hands; and he was smiling
cheerfully, which was an event in itself. They followed Margaret up to
the promenade deck after her maids had gone below, and stood round her
in a group, all talking at once in different languages.
Griggs chanced to be the only other passenger on that part of the deck
and he joined the party, for he knew them all. Margaret gave him her
hand quietly and nodded to him. Signor Stromboli was effusive in his
greeting; Herr Tiefenbach gave him a solemn grip; little Fräulein
Ottilie smiled pleasantly, and Schreiermeyer put into his hands the
basket he carried, judging that as he could not get anything else out
of the literary man he could at least make him carry a parcel.
'Grape fruit for Cordova,' he observed. 'You can give it to the
steward, and tell him to keep the things in a cool place.'
Griggs took the basket with a slight smile, but Stromboli snatched it
from him instantly, and managed at the same time to seize upon the
book Herr Tiefenbach had brought without dropping his own big box of
sweetmeats.
'I shall give everything to the waiter!' he cried with exuberant
energy as he turned away. 'He shall take care of Cordova with his
conscience! I tell you, I will frighten him!'
This was possible, and even probable. Margaret looked after the broad
figure.
'Dear old Stromboli!' she laughed.
'He has the kindest heart in the world,' said little Fräulein Ottilie
Braun.
'He is no a musician,' observed Herr Tiefenbach; 'but he does not sing
out of tune.'
'He is a lunatic,' said Schreiermeyer gravely. 'All tenors are
lunatics--except about money,' he added thoughtfully.
'I think Stromboli is very sensible,' said Margaret, turning to
Griggs. 'He brings his little Calabrian wife and her baby out with
him, and they take a small house for the winter and Italian servants,
and live just as if they were in their own country and see only their
Italian friends--instead of being utterly wretched in a horrible
hotel.'
'For the modest consideration of a hundred dollars a day,' put in
Griggs, who was a poor man.
'I wish my bills were never more than that!' Margaret laughed.
'Yes,' said Schreiermeyer, still thoughtful. 'Stromboli understands
money. He is a man of business. He makes his wife cook for him.'
'I often cook for myself,' said Fräulein Ottilie quite simply. 'If I
had a husband, I would cook for him too!' She laughed like a child,
without the slightest sourness. 'It is easier to cook well than to
marry at all, even badly!'
'I do not at all agree with you,' answered Herr Tiefenbach severely.
'Without flattering myself, I may say that my wife married well; but
her potato dumplings are terrifying.'
'You were never married, were you?' Margaret asked, turning to Griggs
with a smile.
'No,' he answered. 'Can you make potato dumplings, and are you in
search of a husband?'
'It is the other way,' said Schreiermeyer, 'for the husbands are
always after her. Talking of marriage, that girl who died the other
night was to have been married to Mr. Van Torp yesterday, and they
were to have sailed with you this morning.'
'I saw his name on the--' Schreiermeyer began, but he was interrupted
by a tremendous blast from the ship's horn, the first warning for
non-passengers to go ashore.
Before the noise stopped Stromboli appeared again, looking very much
pleased with himself, and twisting up the short black moustache that
was quite lost on his big face. When he was nearer he desisted from
twirling, shook a fat forefinger at Margaret and laughed.
'Oh, well, then,' he cried, translating his Italian literally into
English, 'I've been in your room, Miss Cordova! Who is this Tom, eh?
Flowers from Tom, one! Sweets from Tom, two! A telegram from Tom,
three! Tom, Tom, Tom; it is full of Tom, her room! In the end, what
is this Tom? For me, I only know Tom the ruffian in the _Ballo in
Maschera_. That is all the Tom I know!'
They all looked at Margaret and laughed. She blushed a little, more
out of annoyance than from any other reason.
'The maids wished to put me out,' laughed Stromboli, 'but they could
not, because I am big. So I read everything. If I tell you I read,
what harm is there?'
'None whatever,' Margaret answered, 'except that it is bad manners to
open other people's telegrams.'
'Oh, that! The maid had opened it with water, and was reading when I
came. So I read too! You shall find it all well sealed again, have no
fear! They all do so.'
'Pleasant journey,' said Schreiermeyer abruptly. 'I'm going ashore.
I'll see you in Paris in three weeks.'
'Read the book,' said Herr Tiefenbach earnestly, as he shook hands.
'It is a deep book.'
'Do not forget me!' cried Stromboli sentimentally, and he kissed
Margaret's gloves several times.
'Good-bye,' said Fräulein Ottilie. 'Every one is sorry when you go!'
Margaret was not a gushing person, but she stooped and kissed the
cheerful little woman, and pressed her small hand affectionately.
'And everybody is glad when you come, my dear,' she said.
For Fräulein Ottilie was perhaps the only person in the company whom
Cordova really liked, and who did not jar dreadfully on her at one
time or another.
Another blast from the horn and they were all gone, leaving her and
Griggs standing by the rail on the upper promenade deck. The little
party gathered again on the pier when they had crossed the plank, and
made farewell signals to the two, and then disappeared. Unconsciously
Margaret gave a little sigh of relief, and Griggs noticed it, as he
noticed most things, but said nothing.
There was silence for a while, and the gangplank was still in place
when the horn blew a third time, longer than before.
'How very odd!' exclaimed Griggs, a moment after the sound had ceased.
'What is odd?' Margaret asked.
She saw that he was looking down, and her eyes followed his. A
square-shouldered man in mourning was walking up the plank in a
leisurely way, followed by a well-dressed English valet, who carried a
despatch-box in a leathern case.
'It's not possible!' Margaret whispered in great surprise.
'Perfectly possible,' Griggs answered, in a low voice. 'That is Rufus
Van Torp.'
Margaret drew back from the rail, though the new comer was already out
of sight on the lower promenade deck, to which the plank was laid to
suit the height of the tide. She moved away from the door of the first
cabin companion.
Griggs went with her, supposing that she wished to walk up and down.
Numbers of other passengers were strolling about on the side next to
the pier, waiting to see the start. Margaret went on forward, turned
the deck-house and walked to the rail on the opposite side, where
there was no one. Griggs glanced at her face and thought that she
seemed disturbed. She looked straight before her at the closed iron
doors of the next pier, at which no ship was lying.
'I wish I knew you better,' she said suddenly.
Griggs looked at her quietly. It did not occur to him to make a
trivial and complimentary answer to this advance, such as most men of
the world would have made, even at his age.
'I shall be very glad if we ever know each other better,' he said
after a short pause.
'So shall I.'
She leaned upon the rail and looked down at the eddying water. The
tide had turned and was beginning to go out. Griggs watched her
handsome profile in silence for a time.
'You have not many intimate friends, have you?' she asked presently.
'No, only one or two.'
She smiled.
'I'm not trying to get confidences from you. But really, that is very
vague. You must surely know whether you have only one, or whether
there is another. I'm not suggesting myself as a third, either!'
'Perhaps I'm over-cautious,' Griggs said. 'It does not matter. You
began by saying that you wished you knew me better. You meant that
if you did, you would either tell me something which you don't tell
everybody, or you would come to me for advice about something, or you
would ask me to do something for you. Is that it?'
'I suppose so.'
'It was not very hard to guess. I'll answer the three cases. If you
want to tell me a secret, don't. If you want advice without telling
everything about the case, it will be worthless. But if there is
anything I can do for you, I'll do it if I can, and I won't ask any
questions.'
'That's kind and sensible,' Margaret answered. 'And I should not be in
the least afraid to tell you anything. You would not repeat it.'
'No, certainly not. But some day, unless we became real friends, you
would think that I might, and then you would be very sorry.'
A short pause followed.
'We are moving,' Margaret said, glancing at the iron doors again.
'Yes, we are off.'
There was another pause. Then Margaret stood upright and turned her
face to her companion. She did not remember that she had ever looked
steadily into his eyes since she had known him.
They were grey and rather deeply set under grizzled eyebrows that
were growing thick and rough with advancing years, and they met hers
quietly. She knew at once that she could bear their scrutiny for any
length of time without blushing or feeling nervous, though there was
something in them that was stronger than she.
'It's this,' she said at last, as if she had been talking and had
reached a conclusion. 'I'm alone, and I'm a little frightened.'
'You?' Griggs smiled rather incredulously.
'Yes. Of course I'm used to travelling without any one and taking care
of myself. Singers and actresses are just like men in that, and it did
not occur to me this morning that this trip could be different from
any other.'
'No. Why should it be so different? I don't understand.'
'You said you would do something for me without asking questions. Will
you?'
'If I can.'
'Keep Mr. Van Torp away from me during the voyage. I mean, as much
as you can without being openly rude. Have my chair put next to some
other woman's and your own on my other side. Do you mind doing that?'
Griggs smiled.
'No,' he said, 'I don't mind.'
'And if I am walking on deck and he joins me, come and walk beside me
too. Will you? Are you quite sure you don't mind?'
'Yes.' He was still smiling. 'I'm quite certain that I don't dislike
the idea.'
'I wish I were sure of being seasick,' Margaret said thoughtfully.
'It's bad for the voice, but it would be a great resource.'
'As a resource, I shall try to be a good substitute for it,' said
Griggs.
Margaret realised what she had said and laughed.
'But it is no laughing matter,' she answered, her face growing grave
again after a moment.
Griggs had promised not to ask questions, and he expressed no
curiosity.
'As soon as you go below I'll see about the chair,' he said.
'My cabin is on this deck,' Margaret answered. 'I believe I have a
tiny little sitting-room, too. It's what they call a suite in their
magnificent language, and the photographs in the advertisements make
it look like a palatial apartment!'
She left the rail as she spoke, and found her own door on the same
side of the ship, not very far away.
'Here it is,' she said. 'Thank you very much.'
She looked into his eyes again for an instant and went in.
She had forgotten Signor Stromboli and what he had said, for her
thoughts had been busy with a graver matter, but she smiled when she
saw the big bunch of dark red carnations in a water-jug on the table,
and the little cylinder-shaped parcel which certainly contained a
dozen little boxes of the chocolate 'oublies' she liked, and the
telegram, with its impersonal-looking address, waiting to be opened by
her after having been opened, read, and sealed again by her thoughtful
maids. Such trifles as the latter circumstance did not disturb her in
the least, for though she was only a young woman of four and twenty,
a singer and a musician, she had a philosophical mind, and considered
that if virtue has nothing to do with the greatness of princes, moral
worth need not be a clever lady's-maid's strong point.
'Tom' was her old friend Edmund Lushington, one of the most
distinguished of the younger writers of the day. He was the only son
of the celebrated soprano, Madame Bonanni, now retired from the stage,
by her marriage with an English gentleman of the name of Goodyear, and
he had been christened Thomas. But his mother had got his name and
surname legally changed when he was a child, thinking that it would be
a disadvantage to him to be known as her son, as indeed it might have
been at first; even now the world did not know the truth about his
birth, but it would not have cared, since he had won his own way.
Margaret meant to marry him if she married at all, for he had been
faithful in his devotion to her nearly three years; and his rivalry
with Constantine Logotheti, her other serious adorer, had brought some
complications into her life. But on mature reflection she was sure
that she did not wish to marry any one for the present. So many of
her fellow-singers had married young and married often, evidently
following the advice of a great American humorist, and mostly with
disastrous consequences, that Margaret preferred to be an exception,
and to marry late if at all.
In the glaring light of the twentieth century it at last clearly
appears that marriageable young women have always looked upon marriage
as the chief means of escape from the abject slavery and humiliating
dependence hitherto imposed upon virgins between fifteen and fifty
years old. Shakespeare lacked the courage to write the 'Seven Ages of
Woman,' a matter the more to be regretted as no other writer has ever
possessed enough command of the English language to describe more than
three out of the seven without giving offence: namely, youth, which
lasts from sixteen to twenty; perfection, which begins at twenty and
lasts till further notice; and old age, which women generally place
beyond seventy, though some, whose strength is not all sorrow and
weakness even then, do not reach it till much later. If Shakespeare
had dared he would have described with poetic fire the age of the girl
who never marries. But this is a digression. The point is that the
truth about marriage is out, since the modern spinster has shown the
sisterhood how to live, and an amazing number of women look upon
wedlock as a foolish thing, vainly imagined, never necessary, and
rarely amusing.
The state of perpetual unsanctified virginity, however, is not for
poor girls, nor for operatic singers, nor for kings' daughters, none
of whom, for various reasons, can live, or are allowed to live,
without husbands. Unless she be a hunchback, an unmarried royal
princess is almost as great an exception as a white raven or a cat
without a tail; a primadonna without a husband alive, dead, or
divorced, is hardly more common; and poor girls marry to live. But
give a modern young woman a decent social position, with enough money
for her wants and an average dose of assurance, and she becomes so
fastidious in the choice of a mate that no man is good enough for
her till she is too old to be good enough for any man. Even then the
chances are that she will not deeply regret her lost opportunities,
and though her married friends will tell her that she has made a
mistake, half of them will envy her in secret, the other half will not
pity her much, and all will ask her to their dinner-parties, because a
woman without a husband is such a convenience.
In respect to her art Margarita da Cordova was in all ways a thorough
artist, endowed with the gifts, animated by the feelings, and
afflicted with the failings that usually make up an artistic nature.
But Margaret Donne was a sound and healthy English girl who had been
brought up in the right way by a very refined and cultivated father
and mother who loved her devotedly. If they had lived she would not
have gone upon the stage; for as her mother's friend Mrs. Rushmore had
often told her, the mere thought of such a life for their daughter
would have broken their hearts. She was a grown woman now, and high
on the wave of increasing success and celebrity, but she still had
a childish misgiving that she had disobeyed her parents and done
something very wrong, just as when she had surreptitiously got into
the jam cupboard at the age of five.
Yet there are old-fashioned people alive even now who might think that
there was less harm in becoming a public singer than in keeping Edmund
Lushington dangling on a string for two years and more. Those things
are matters of opinion. Margaret would have answered that if he
dangled it was his misfortune and not her fault, since she never, in
her own opinion, had done anything to keep him, and would not have
been broken-hearted if he had gone away, though she would have missed
his friendship very much. Of the two, the man who had disturbed her
maiden peace of mind was Logotheti, whom she feared and sometimes
hated, but who had an inexplicable power over her when they met: the
sort of fateful influence which honest Britons commonly ascribe to all
foreigners with black hair, good teeth, diamond studs, and the other
outward signs of wickedness. Twice, at least, Logotheti had behaved in
a manner positively alarming, and on the second occasion he had very
nearly succeeded in carrying her off bodily from the theatre to
his yacht, a fate from which Lushington and his mother had been
instrumental in saving her. Such doings were shockingly lawless, but
they showed a degree of recklessly passionate admiration which was
flattering from a young financier who was so popular with women that
he found it infinitely easier to please than to be pleased.
Perhaps, if Logotheti could have put on a little Anglo-Saxon coolness,
Margaret might have married him by this time. Perhaps she would have
married Lushington, if he could have suddenly been animated by a
little Greek fire. As things stood, she told herself that she did not
care to take a man who meant to be not only her master but her tyrant,
nor one who seemed more inclined to be her slave than her master.
Meanwhile, however, it was the Englishman who kept himself constantly
in mind with her by an unbroken chain of small attentions that often
made her smile but sometimes really touched her. Any one could cable
'Pleasant voyage,' and sign the telegram 'Tom,' which gave it a
friendly and encouraging look, because somehow 'Tom' is a cheerful,
plucky little name, very unlike 'Edmund.' But it was quite another
matter, being in England, to take the trouble to have carnations of
just the right shade fresh on her cabin table at the moment of her
sailing from New York, and beside them the only sort of chocolates she
liked. That was more than a message, it was a visit, a presence, a
real reaching out of hand to hand.
Logotheti, on the contrary, behaved as if he had forgotten Margaret's
existence as soon as he was out of her sight; and they now no longer
met often, but when they did he had a way of taking up the thread as
if there had been no interval, which was almost as effective as his
rival's method; for it produced the impression that he had been
thinking of her only, and of nothing else in the world since the last
meeting, and could never again give a thought to any other woman. This
also was flattering. He never wrote to her, he never telegraphed good
wishes for a journey or a performance, he never sent her so much as a
flower; he acted as if he were really trying to forget her, as perhaps
he was. But when they met, he was no sooner in the same room with her
than she felt the old disturbing influence she feared and yet
somehow desired in spite of herself, and much as she preferred the
companionship of Lushington and liked his loyal straightforward ways,
and admired his great talent, she felt that he paled and seemed less
interesting beside the vivid personality of the Greek financier.
He was vivid; no other word expresses what he was, and if that one
cannot properly be applied to a man, so much the worse for our
language. His colouring was too handsome, his clothes were too good,
his shoes were too shiny, his ties too surprising, and he not only
wore diamonds and rubies, but very valuable ones. Yet he was not
vulgarly gorgeous; he was Oriental. No one would say that a Chinese
idol covered with gold and precious stones was overdressed, but it
would be out of place in a Scotch kirk; the minister would be thrown
into the shade and the congregation would look at the idol. In
society, which nowadays is far from a chiaroscuro, everybody looked at
Logotheti. If he had come from any place nearer than Constantinople
people would have smiled and perhaps laughed at him; as it was, he was
an exotic, and besides, he had the reputation of being dangerous to
women's peace, and extremely awkward to meddle with in a quarrel.
Margaret sat some time in her little sitting-room reflecting on these
things, for she knew that before many days were past she must meet
her two adorers; and when she had thought enough about both, she gave
orders to her maids about arranging her belongings. By and by she went
to luncheon and found herself alone at some distance from the other
passengers, next to the captain's empty seat; but she was rather glad
that her neighbours had not come to table, for she got what she wanted
very quickly and had no reason for waiting after she had finished.
Then she took a book and went on deck again, and Alphonsine found her
chair on the sunny side and installed her in it very comfortably and
covered her up, and to her own surprise she felt that she was very
sleepy; so that just as she was wondering why, she dozed off and began
to dream that she was Isolde, on board of Tristan's ship, and that she
was singing the part, though she had never sung it and probably never
would.
When she opened her eyes again there was no land in sight, and the big
steamer was going quietly with scarcely any roll. She looked aft and
saw Paul Griggs leaning against the rail, smoking; and she turned her
head the other way, and the chair next to her own on that side was
occupied by a very pleasant-looking young woman who was sitting up
straight and showing the pictures in a book to a beautiful little girl
who stood beside her.
The lady had a very quiet healthy face and smooth brown hair, and was
simply and sensibly dressed. Margaret at once decided that she was not
the child's mother, nor an elder sister, but some one who had charge
of her, though not exactly a governess. The child was about nine years
old; she had a quantity of golden hair that waved naturally, and a
spiritual face with deep violet eyes, a broad white forehead and a
pathetic little mouth.
She examined each picture, and then looked up quickly at the lady,
keeping her wide eyes fixed on the latter's face with an expression of
watchful interest. The lady explained each picture to her, but in such
a soft whisper that Margaret could not hear a sound. Yet the child
evidently understood every word easily. It was natural to suppose that
the lady spoke under her breath in order not to disturb Margaret while
she was asleep.
'It is very kind of you to whisper,' said the Primadonna graciously,
'but I am awake now.'
The lady turned with a pleasant smile.
'Thank you,' she answered.
The child did not notice Margaret's little speech, but looked up from
the book for the explanation of the next picture.
'It is the inside of the Colosseum in Rome, and you will see it
before long,' said the lady very distinctly. 'I have told you how the
gladiators fought there, and how Saint Ignatius was sent all the way
from Antioch to be devoured by lions there, like many other martyrs.'
The little girl watched her face intently, nodded gravely, and looked
down at the picture again, but said nothing. The lady turned to
Margaret.
'She was born deaf and dumb,' she said quietly, 'but I have taught her
to understand from the lips, and she can already speak quite well. She
is very clever.'
'Poor little thing!' Margaret looked at the girl with increasing
interest. 'Such a little beauty, too! What is her name?'
'Ida--'
The child had turned over the pages to another picture, and now looked
up for the explanation of it. Griggs had finished his cigar and came
and sat down on Margaret's other side.