'At all events,' she concluded, 'you won't have to do it on the real
night.' They were in the larger room again. But for the decided damage done to
her sleeve by her tears, Madame Bonanni had restored her outward
appearance tolerably well. She stood at the corner of the piano,
resting one hand upon it.
'I'm sorry for you, my dear,' she said cheerfully, because I've given
you so much trouble, but I'm glad I cried as much as I wanted to. It's
horribly bad for the voice and complexion, but nothing really refreshes
one so much. I felt as if my heart were going to break when I got
here.' 'And now?' Margaret smiled, standing beside the elderly woman and idly
turning over the music on the desk of the instrument.
'I suppose it has broken,' Madame Bonanni answered. 'At all events, I
don't feel it any more. No--really--I don't! He may go to Peru, if he
likes--I hope he will, the ungrateful little beast! I'll never think of
him again! When you have made your début, I'm going to live in the
country. There's plenty to do there! Bonanni shall milk cows again and
hoe the furrows between the vines this summer! Bonanni shall go back to
Provence and be an old peasant woman, where she was once a peasant
girl, and married the English painter. Do you think I've forgotten the
language, or the songs?' One instant's pause, and the singer's great voice broke out in the
small room with a volume of sound so tremendous that it seemed as if it
would rend the walls and the ceiling. It was an ancient Provençal song
that she sang, in long-drawn cadences with strange falls and wild
intervals, the natural music of an ancient, gifted people. It was very
short, for she only sang one stanza of it, and in less than a minute it
was finished and she was silent again. But her big dark eyes, still
swollen and bloodshot, were looking out to a distance far beyond the
green trees she saw through the open window.
Margaret, who had listened, repeated the wild melody very softly, and
sounded each note of it without the words, as if she wished to remember
it always; and a nearer sight came back to the elder woman's eyes as
she listened to the true notes that never faltered, and were as pure as
sounding silver, and as smooth as velvet and as rich as gold. It was a
little thing, but one of those little things that only a born great
singer could have done faultlessly at the first attempt; and Madame
Bonanni listened with rare delight. Then she laughed, as happily as if
she had no heartaches in the world.