“How grand you are,” I said. “I told you it wasn’t a party.”
She flashed a look of her magnificent black eyes at Peter.
“Of course it’s a party. You told me your friend was a writer of talent. I am only an interpreter.” She ran one finger down her flashing bracelets. “This is the homage I pay to the creative artist.”
I did not utter the vulgar monosyllable that rose to my lips, but offered her what I knew was her favourite cocktail. I was privileged to call her Maria, and she always called me Master. This she did, first because she knew it made me feel a perfect fool, and secondly because, though she was in point of fact not more than two or three years younger than I, it made it quite clear that we belonged to different generations. Sometimes, however, she also called me you dirty swine. This evening she certainly might very well have passed for thirty-five. She had those rather large features which somehow do not seem to betray age. On the stage she was a beautiful woman, and even in private life, notwithstanding her big nose, large mouth, and fleshy face, a good-looking one. She wore a brown make-up, with dark rouge, and her lips were vividly scarlet. She looked very Spanish and, I suspected, felt it, for her accent at the beginning of dinner was quite Sevillian. I wanted her to talk so that Peter should get his money’s worth, and I knew there was but one subject in the world that she could talk about. She was in point of fact a stupid woman who had acquired a line of glib chatter which made people on first meeting her think she was as brilliant as she looked; but it was merely a performance she gave, and you soon discovered that she not only did not know what she was talking about, but was not in the least interested in it. I do not think she had ever read a book in her life. Her knowledge of what was going on in the world was confined to what she was able to gather by looking at the pictures in the illustrated press. Her passion for music was complete bunkum. Once at a concert to which I went with her she slept all through the Fifth Symphony, and I was charmed to hear her during the interval telling people that Beethoven stirred her so much that she hesitated to come and hear him, for with those glorious themes singing through her head, it meant that she wouldn’t sleep a wink all night. I could well believe she would lie awake, for she had had so sound a nap during the Symphony that it could not but interfere with her night’s rest.
But there was one subject in which her interest never failed. She pursued it with indefatigable energy. No obstacle prevented her from returning to it; no chance word was so remote that she could not use it as a stepping-stone to come back to it, and in effecting this she displayed a cleverness of which one would never have thought her capable. On this subject she could be witty, vivacious, philosophic, tragic and inventive. It enabled her to exhibit all the resources of her ingenuity. There was no end to its ramifications, and no limit to its variety. This subject was herself. I gave her an opening at once and then all I had to do was to make suitable interjections. She was in great form. We were dining on the terrace and a full moon was obligingly shining on the sea in front of us. Nature, as though she knew what was proper to the occasion, had set just the right scene. The view was framed by two tall black cypresses, and all round us on the terrace the orange trees in full flower exhaled their heady perfume. There was no wind, and the candles on the table flamed with a steady softness. It was a light that exactly suited La Falterona. She sat between us, eating heartily and thoroughly appreciating the champagne, and she was enjoying herself. She gave the moon a glance. On the sea was a broad pathway of silver.
“How beautiful nature is,” she said. “My God, the scenery one has to play in. How can they expect one to sing? You know, really, the sets at Covent Garden are a disgrace. The last time I sang Juliet I just told them I wouldn’t go on unless they did something about the moon.”
Peter listened to her in silence. He ate her words. She was better value than I had dared to hope. She got a little tight not only on the champagne but on her own loquaciousness. To listen to her you would have thought she was a meek and docile creature against whom the whole world was in conspiracy. Her life had been one long bitter struggle against desperate odds. Managers treated her vilely, impresarios played foul tricks on her, singers combined to ruin her, critics bought by the money of her enemies wrote scandalous things about her, lovers for whom she had sacrificed everything used her with base ingratitude; and yet, by the miracle of her genius and her quick wits, she had discomfited them all. With joyous glee, her eyes flashing, she told us how she had defeated their machinations and what disaster had befallen the wretches who stood in her way. I wondered how she had the nerve to tell the disgraceful stories she told. Without the smallest consciousness of what she was doing she showed herself vindictive and envious, hard as nails, incredibly vain, cruel, selfish, scheming, and mercenary. I stole a glance now and then at Peter. I was tickled at the confusion he must be experiencing when he compared his ideal picture of the prima donna with the ruthless reality. She was a woman without heart. When at last she left us I turned to Peter with a smile.
“Well,” I said, “at all events you’ve got some good material.”
“I know, and it all fits in so beautifully,” he said with enthusiasm.
“Does it?” I exclaimed, taken aback.
“She’s exactly like my woman. She’ll never believe that I’d sketched out the main lines of the character before I’d ever seen her.” I stared at him in amazement.
“The passion for art. The disinterestedness. She had that same nobility of soul that I saw in my mind’s eye. The small-minded, the curious, the vulgar put every obstacle in her way and she sweeps them all aside by the greatness of her purpose and the purity of her ends.” He gave a little happy laugh. “Isn’t it wonderful how nature copies art? I swear to you, I’ve got her to the life.”
I was about to speak; I held my tongue; though I shrugged a spiritual shoulder I was touched. Peter had seen in her what he was determined to see. There was something very like beauty in his illusion. In his own way he was a poet. We went to bed, and two or three days later, having found a pension to his liking, he left me.
In course of time his book appeared, and like most second novels by young people it had but a very moderate success. The critics had overpraised his first effort and now were unduly censorious. It is of course a very different thing to write a novel about yourself and the people you have known from childhood and to write one about persons of your own invention. Peter’s was too long. He had allowed his gift for word-painting to run away with him, the humour was still rather vulgar; but he had reconstructed the period with skill, and the romantic story had that same thrill of real passion which in his first book had so much impressed me.
After the dinner at my house I did not see La Falterona for more than a year. She went for a long tour in South America and did not come down to the Riviera till late in the summer. One night she asked me to dine with her. We were alone but for her companion-secretary, an Englishwoman, Miss Glaser by name, whom La Falterona bullied and ill-treated, hit and swore at,
But whom she could not do without. Miss Glaser was a haggard person of fifty, with grey hair and a sallow, wrinkled face. She was a queer creature. She knew everything there was to be known about La Falterona. She both adored and hated her. Behind her back she could be extremely funny at her expense, and the imitation she gave in secret of the great singer with her admirers was the most richly comic thing I have ever heard. But she watched over her like a mother. It was she who, sometimes by wheedling, sometimes by sheer plainness of speech, caused La Falterona to behave herself something like a human being. It was she who had written the singer’s exceedingly inaccurate memoirs.
La Falterona wore pale-blue satin pyjamas (she liked satin) and, presumably to rest her hair, a green silk wig; except for a few rings, a pearl necklace, a couple of bracelets, and a diamond brooch at her waist, she wore no jewellery. She had much to tell me of her triumphs in South America. She talked on and on. She had never been in more superb voice and the ovations she
had received were unparalleled. The concert halls were sold out for every performance, and she had made a packet.
“Is it true or is it not true, Glaser?” cried Maria with a strong South American accent.
“Most of it,” said Miss Glaser.
La Falterona had the objectionable habit of addressing her companion by her surname. But it must long since have ceased to annoy the poor woman, so there was not much point in it.
“Who was that man we met in Buenos Aires?”
“Which man?”
“You fool, Glaser. You remember perfectly. The man I was married to once.”
“Pepe Zapata,” Miss Glaser replied without a smile.
“He was broke. He had the impudence to ask me to give him back a diamond necklace he’d given me. He said it had belonged to his mother.”
“It wouldn’t have hurt you to give it him,” said Miss Glaser. “You never wear it.”
“Give it him back?” cried La Falterona, and her astonishment was such that she spoke the purest English. “Give it him back? You’re crazy.”
She looked at Miss Glaser as though she expected her there and then to have an attack of acute mania. She got up from the table, for we had finished our dinner.
“Let us go outside,” she said. “If I hadn’t the patience of an angel I’d have sacked that woman long ago.”
La Falterona and I went out, but Miss Glaser did not come with us. We sat on the veranda. There was a magnificent cedar in the garden, and its dark branches were silhouetted against the starry sky. The sea, almost at our feet, was marvellously still. Suddenly La Falterona gave a start.
“I almost forgot. Glaser, you fool,” she shouted, “why didn’t you remind me?” And then again to me: “I’m furious with you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t remember till after dinner,” I answered.
“That friend of yours and his book.”
I didn’t immediately grasp what she was talking about.
“What friend and what book?”
“Don’t be so stupid. An ugly little man with a shiny face and a bad figure. He wrote a book about me.”
“Oh! Peter Melrose. But it’s not about you.”
“Of course it is. Do you take me for a fool? He had the impudence to send it me.”
“I hope you had the decency to acknowledge it.”
“Do you think I have the time to acknowledge all the books twopenny-halpenny authors send me? I expect Glaser wrote to him. You had no right to ask me to dinner to meet him. I came to oblige you, because I thought you liked me for myself, I didn’t know I was just being made use of. It’s awful that one can’t trust one’s oldest friends to behave like gentlemen. I’ll never dine with you again so long as I live. Never, never, never.”
She was working herself into one of her tantrums, so I interrupted her before it was too late.
“Come off it, my dear,” I said. “In the first place the character of the singer in that book, which I suppose is the one you’re referring to …”
“You don’t suppose I’m referring to the charwoman, do you?”
“Well, the character of the singer was roughed out before he’d even seen you, and besides, it isn’t in the least like you.”
“How d’you mean, it’s not like me? All my friends have recognized me. I mean, it’s the most obvious portrait.”
“Mary,” I expostulated.
“My name is Maria and no one knows it better than you, and if you can’t call me Maria you can call me Madame Falterona or Princess.”
I paid no attention to this.
“Did you read the book?”
“Of course I read it. When everyone told me it was about me.”
“But the boy’s heroine, the prima donna, is twenty-five.”
“A woman like me is ageless.”
“She’s musical to her finger-tips, gentle as a dove, and a miracle of unselfishness; she’s frank, loyal, and disinterested. Is that the opinion you have of yourself?”
“And what is your opinion of me?”
“Hard as nails, absolutely ruthless, a born intriguer, and as self-centred as they make “em.”
She then called me a name which a lady does not habitually apply to a gentleman who, whatever his faults, has never had his legitimacy called in question. But though her eyes flashed I could see that she was not in the least angry. She accepted my description of her as complimentary.
“And what about the emerald ring? Are you going to deny that I told him that?”
The story of the emerald ring was this: La Falterona was having a passionate love-affair with the Crown Prince of a powerful state and he had made her a present of an emerald of immense value. One night they had a quarrel, high words passed, and some reference being made to the ring she tore it off her finger and flung it in the fire. The Crown Prince, being a man of thrifty habit, with a cry of consternation, threw himself on his knees and began raking out the coals till he recovered the ring. La Falterona watched him scornfully as he grovelled on the floor. She didn’t give much away herself, but she could not bear economy in others. She finished the story with these splendid words:
“After that I couldn’t love him.”
The incident was picturesque and had taken Peter’s fancy. He had used it very neatly.
“I told you both about that in the greatest confidence and I’ve never told it to a soul before. It’s a scandalous breach of confidence to have to put it into a book. There are no excuses either for him or for you.”
“But I’ve heard you tell the story dozens of times. And it was told me by Florence Montgomerie about herself and the Crown Prince Rudolf. It was one of her favourite stories too. Lola Montez used to tell it about herself and the King of Bavaria. I have little doubt that Nell Gwyn told it about herself and Charles II. It’s one of the oldest stories in the world.”
She was taken aback, but only for an instant.
“I don’t see anything strange in its having happened more than once. Everyone knows that women are passionate and that men are as mean as cat’s-meat. I could show you the emerald if you liked. I had to have it reset, of course.”
“With Lola Montez it was pearls,” I said ironically. “I believe they were considerably damaged.”
“Pearls?” She gave that brilliant smile of hers. “Have I ever told you about Benjy Riesenbaum and the pearls? You might make a story out of it.”
Benjy Riesenbaum was a person of great wealth, but it was common knowledge that for a long time he had been the Falterona’s lover. In fact it was he who had bought her the luxurious little villa in which we were now sitting.
“He’d given me a very handsome string in New York. I was singing at the Metropolitan, and at the end of the season we travelled back to Europe together. You never knew him, did you?”
“No.”
“Well, he wasn’t bad in some ways, but he was insanely jealous. We had a row on the boat because a young Italian officer was paying me a good deal of attention. Heaven knows, I’m the easiest woman in the world to get on with, but I will not be bullied by any man. After all, I have my self-respect to think of. I told him where he got off, if you understand what I mean, and he slapped my face. On deck if you please. I don’t mind telling you I was mad. I tore the string of pearls off my neck and flung it in the sea. ‘They cost fifty thousand dollars,’ he gasped. He went white. I drew myself up to my full height. ‘I only valued them because I loved you,’ I said. And I turned on my heel.”
“You were a fool,” I said.
“I wouldn’t speak to him for twenty-four hours. At the end of that time I had him eating out of my hand. When we got to Paris the first thing he did was to go to Cartier’s and buy me another just as good.”
She began to giggle.
“Did you say I was a fool? I’d left the real string in the bank in New York, because I knew I was going back next season. It was an imitation one that I threw in the sea.”
She started to laugh, and her laugh was rich and joyou
s and like a child’s. That was the sort of trick that thoroughly appealed to her. She chortled with glee.
“What fools men are,” she gasped. “And you, you thought I’d throw a real string into the sea.”
She laughed and laughed. At last she stopped. She was excited.
“I want to sing. Glaser, play an accompaniment.”
A voice came from the drawing-room.
“You can’t sing after all that food you walloped down.”
“Shut up, you old cow. Play something, I tell you.”
There was no reply, but in a moment Miss Glaser began to play the opening bars of one of Schumann’s songs. It was no strain on the voice, and I guessed that Miss Glaser knew what she was doing when she chose it. La Falterona began to sing, in an undertone, but as she heard the sounds come from her lips and found that they were clear and pure she let herself go. The song finished. There was silence. Miss Glaser had heard that La Falterona was in magnificent voice, and she sensed that she wished to sing again. The prima donna was standing in the window, with her back to the lighted room, and she looked out at the darkly shining sea. The cedar made a lovely pattern against the sky. The night was soft and balmy. Miss Glaser played a couple of bars. A cold shiver ran down my spine. La Falterona gave a little start as she recognized the music, and I felt her gather herself together:
Mild und leise wie er lachelt
Wie das Auge er offnet.
It was Isolde’s death song. She had never sung in Wagner, fearing the strain on her voice, but this, I suppose, she had often sung in concerts. It did not matter now that instead of an orchestral accompaniment she had only the thin tinkle of a piano. The notes of the heavenly melody fell upon the still air and travelled over the water. In that too romantic scene, in that starry night, the effect was shattering. La Falterona’s voice, even now, was exquisite in its quality, mellow and crystalline; and she sang with wonderful emotion, so tenderly, with such tragic, beautiful anguish that my heart melted within me. I had a most awkward lump in my throat when she finished, and looking at her I saw that tears were streaming down her face. I did not want to speak. She stood quite still looking out at that ageless sea.