"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 a.s.surance.

"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 a.s.sociating the word "mother"

with Madame Bonanni.

There was nothing at all psychological in that, and it would hardly bear a.n.a.lysing 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-cla.s.s 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 clenched her fist and shook it at an imaginary Lushington in s.p.a.ce, 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 circ.u.mstances.

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 coa.r.s.e dark hair, the large animal construction of the neck and shoulders, the ma.s.sive 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.

The convulsive sobbing grew regular, then more slow, then merely intermittent, and then it stopped altogether. But before she lifted her face from the hollow of her elbow, Madame Bonanni felt about for something with her other hand; and Margaret, being a woman, knew that she wanted her handkerchief before showing her face, and picked it up and gave it to her. A man would probably have taken the groping fingers and pressed them, or kissed them, probably supposing that to be what was wanted, and thereby much r.e.t.a.r.ding the progress of events.

Madame Bonanni pushed up the handkerchief between her face and her elbow and moved it about, with a vague idea of equalising her colour in one general tint, then blew her nose, and then sprang to her feet at once, with that wonderful elasticity which was always so surprising in her sudden movements. Moreover, she got up turning her face away from Margaret, and made for the nearest mirror.

"Lord!" she exclaimed, laconically, as she looked at herself and realised the full extent of the damage done.

"Wouldn"t you like to wash your face?" asked Margaret, following her at a discreet distance.

"My dear," answered Madame Bonanni, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, "it"s awful, of course, but there"s nothing else to be done!"

"Come into my dressing-room."

"If I were at home, I should take a bath and dress over a--a--a----"

One last most unexpected sob half choked her and then made her cough, till she stamped her foot with anger.

"Bah!" she cried with contempt when she got her breath. "If I had often made myself look like such a monster, I should have been a perfectly good woman! The men would have run from me like mice from a barn on fire! Have you got any of that Vienna liquid soap, my dear!"

Margaret had the liquid soap, as it chanced, and in a few moments she was busily occupied in helping Madame Bonanni to restore her appearance. Though long, the process was only partially successful, from the latter"s own point of view. Having washed away all that had been, she produced a gold box from the bag she wore at her side. The box was divided into three compartments containing respectively rouge, white powder and a miniature puff for applying both, which she proceeded to do abundantly, sitting at Margaret"s toilet-table and talking while she worked. She had made more confusion in the small dressing-room in five minutes than Margaret could have made in dressing twice over. Paint-stained towels strewed the floor, chairs were upset, soap and water was splashed everywhere. Now she started afresh, by rubbing plentiful daubs of rouge into her dark cheeks.

"But why do you put on so much?" Margaret asked in wonder.

"My dear, I"m an actress," said Madame Bonanni. "I"m not ashamed of my profession! If I didn"t paint, people would say I was trying to pa.s.s myself off for a lady! Besides, now that I have cried, nothing but powder will hide it. Look at my nose, my dear--just look at my nose!

Little Miss Donne"--she turned upon Margaret with sudden, tragic energy--"don"t ever let that wretched boy know that I cried about him!

Eh? Never! Promise you won"t!"

"No, indeed! You may trust me. Why should I tell?"

"But it doesn"t matter. Tell him if you like. I don"t care. My life is over now, and there is no reason why I should care about anything, is there?"

"What do you mean by saying that your life is over?" Margaret asked.

Madame Bonanni"s head fell upon the edge of the table and she looked at herself in the gla.s.s for some moments before she answered.

"I have left the stage," she said, very quietly.

"Left the stage? For good?" Margaret was amazed.

"Yes. I was not going to have any farewells or last appearances. Those things are only done to make money. Schreiermeyer was very nice about it. He agreed to cancel the rest of my engagements in a friendly way."

"But why? Why have you done it?" asked Margaret, still bewildered by the news.

Madame Bonanni had done one cheek and half the other. She leaned back in the comfortable chair before the gla.s.s and looked at herself again, not at all at the effect of her work, but at her eyes, as if she were searching for something.

"There is not room for you and me," she said, presently.

"I don"t understand," Margaret answered. "Not room? Where?"

"On the stage. I have been the great lyric soprano a long time. Next month you will be the great lyric soprano--there is not room----"