In due time Margaret reappeared in her man's dress, but almost
completely wrapped in the traditional riding mantle. Rigoletto is off
when Gilda comes on alone at this point, outside the inn, and the stage
gradually darkens while the storm rises. When the trio is over and
Gilda enters the ruined inn, the darkness is such, even behind the
scenes, that one may easily lose one s way and it is hard to recognise
any one.
Margaret disappeared, and hurried off, expecting to meet her maid with
the sack ready for the final scene. To her surprise a man was standing
waiting for her. She could not see his face at all, but she knew it was
Lushington who whispered in her ear as he wrapped her in the big cloak
he carried. He spoke fast and decidedly.
'That is why the door at the end of the corridor is open to-night,' he
concluded. 'I give you my word that it s true. Now come with me.' Margaret had told Lushington not very long ago that he always acted
like a gentleman and sometimes like a hero, and she had meant it. After
all, the opera was over now, and it was only a rehearsal. If there was
no sack scene, no one would be surprised, and there was no time to
hesitate not an instant.
She slipped her arm through Lushington's, and drawing the hood almost
over her eyes with her free hand and the cloak completely round her,
she went where he led her. Certainly in all the history of the opera no
prima donna ever left the stage and the theatre in such a hurry after
her first appearance.
One minute had hardly elapsed in all after she had disappeared into the
ruined inn, before she found herself driving at a smart pace in a
closed carriage, with Lushington sitting bolt upright beside her like a
policeman in charge of his prisoner. It was not yet quite dark when the
brougham stopped at the door of Margaret's hotel, and the porter who
opened the carriage looked curiously at her riding boot and spurred
heel as she got out under the covered way. She and Lushington had not
exchanged a word during the short drive.
He went up in the lift with her and saw her to the door of her
apartment. Then he stood still, with his hat off, holding out his hand
to say good-bye.
'No,' said Margaret, 'come in. I don't care what the people think!' He followed her into her sitting-room, and she shut the door, and
turned up the electric light. When he saw her standing in the full
glare of the lamps, she had thrown back her hood; she wore a wig with
short tangled hair as part of her man's disguise, and her face was
heavily powdered over the paint in order to produce the ghastly pallor
which indicates a broken heart on the stage. The heavily-blackened
lashes made her eyes seem very dark, while her lips were still a deep
crimson. She held her head high, and a little thrown back, and there
was something wild and almost fantastic about her looks as she stood
there, that made Lushington think of one of Hoffmann's tales. She held
out her whitened hand to him; and when he took it he felt the chalk on
it, and it was no longer to him the hand of Margaret Donne, but the
hand of the Cordova, the great soprano.