'Of course?' she repeated, in a thoughtful way. 'Did you mean "of
course it is possible--and easy," my dear? The tone of your voice made
me think that was what you meant. Yes--you meant that, and you have a
right to mean it, but you don't know. That's the great difference--you
don't know! You haven't begun as I did. You're a lady, a real lady,
brought up amongst ladies from your childhood. But that's not what will
keep you good! It's not your refinement, nor your good manners, nor
your white hands that never milked a cow, or swept a stable, or hoed
the weeds out from between the vines in summer. That was my work till I
was seventeen. And my mother was a good woman, my dear, just as good as
yours, though she was only a peasant of Provence. How do I know it? If
she had not been good, my father would have killed her, of course. That
was our custom. And he was good, in his way, too, and kind. He always
told me that if I went wrong he would shoot me--and when the English
artist came and lodged in our house for the summer and made love to me,
my father explained everything to him also. So poor Goodyear saw that
he must marry me, and we were married, before I was eighteen. He took
me away to Paris, and tried to make a lady of me, and he had me taught
to sing, because he loved my voice. Do you see? That was how it all
happened--and still I was good, as good as you are! Yes--"of course,"
as you say! It was easy enough!' 'He died young, didn't he?' Margaret asked quietly.
She had seated herself on the corner of the toilet-table to listen,
while Madame Bonanni leaned back in the low chair and looked at
herself, sometimes absently, some times with pity.
'Yes,' she answered. 'He died very soon and left me nothing but Tommy
and my voice. Poor Goodyear! He painted very badly, he never sold
anything, and his father starved him because he had married me. It was
far better that he should die of pneumonia than of hunger, for that
would certainly have been the end of it.
'And you went on the stage at once?' Margaret asked, wishing to hear
more.
Madame Bonanni shrugged her shoulders and leaned forward to the
looking-glass.
'I had a fortune in my throat,' she said, daubing rouge on the cheek
that was only half done. 'I had been well taught in those years, and
there were plenty of managers only too anxious to offer me their
protection--managers and other people, too. What could I do?' She shrugged her shoulders again, and laughed a little harshly as she
gave a half-shy glance at Margaret. The latter was not a child, but a
grown woman of two-and-twenty. She answered gravely.