“No, no,” said la Zia, shaking her head vehemently; “it is not that. He has done no wrong. He has paid for her lessons, paid her rent, he has done much for us. Only she loved him, and he did not love her. She is like a child. She will not be consoled.”
Zinco nodded a vague assent, but did not believe the good aunt’s assurance. Of course this man was the father of her child. Of course she had been his mistress. He had brought her from Venice, and established her in these comfortable lodgings, and now he was tired of her. These things always end so. “Chi va all’acqua si bagna, e chi va a cavallo cade.”
The good little Zinco crept into the room as softly as a cat, and seated his stout and oily person by the bed, where Lisa was lying face downwards, her tearful countenance buried in the pillow, and nothing but a mass of tangled black hair visible above the gaudy Mexican blanket. He gently patted her shoulder, which acknowledged the attention with an angry shrug.
“Come, come, cara mia,” pleaded the singing-master. “Is not this a mere childishness, to cry for the moon, when we have good fortune almost at our feet? To cry because just one foolish young man among all the men in the world is not wise enough to know that there is no more beautiful woman than us in London! And not to eat, and not to sleep, and to cry and sob all day and night. Ahimé, che bestia! This is just the very way to lose our voice, to become mute as one of those nightingales whose tongues were cut out to flavour the pasta for Vitellius. Was there ever such foolishness? Were I a beautiful girl with a fine voice, I would be queen of the world. If he has been cold and cruel show him what a pearl he has lost. It is not by lying here and crying that you will bring him to reason. Get up and dress yourself, and come to the piano. I’ll wager you will not be able to take the upper C in ‘Roberto.’ ”
Lisa listened in sullen silence, but she did listen, and it seemed to her that the words of Zinco were the words of wisdom. To lose her voice—her voice which was her fortune—and to lose her good looks, which alone had lifted her from the herd of peasants, living in penury, toiling from sunrise to sunset, unknown and ill-clad, and dying uncared for, save by creatures as poor and as hopeless as themselves! Yes, Zinco was right; that would indeed be foolishness, and not the way to win him whose love her sick soul longed for. Perhaps if she were a public singer, and all the world admired her, he would admire her too. He would see in the eyes of other men that she was handsome, and worthy to be admired. He would hear on the lips of other men that she was worthy of praise.
“I’ll get up,” she said, without lifting her tear-stained face from the pillow. “Go into the sala and wait for me. I won’t be long. You shall see I haven’t lost my voice.”
“Bene, benissimo, Si’ora,” cried the master, rubbing his fat little hands, “now she speaks like a woman of spirit. She is not going to give up the world for love, like Marc Antony at Actium.”
He shuffled off to the sitting-room, seated himself at the piano, and began to play the symphony of “Una Voce” with that grandly decisive style of a man who has played all his life in an orchestra. It was a refreshment to Lisa’s weary spirit to hear that sparkling music, light, gay, capricious as summer wavelets.
She joined her teacher at the piano in a much shorter time than a young Englishwoman would have needed to complete her toilet, yet she looked fresh enough in her southern beauty, and there were glittering water-drops in her hair which gave a suggestion of a young river goddess.
“Now, then, sir, play ‘Roberto’ and you will see if my voice is broken.”
She attacked the scena with wonderful dash and spirit, and was, in sporting phraseology, winning easily till she came to that C in alt—but here her voice snapped. She tried a second time, and a third time—but the note was gone. She gave a cry of rage, and then burst into tears.
“Ecco,” exclaimed Zinco, with a triumphant air, “that is what your lovesick nonsense has done for you. You have been singing as false as a prima donna at a café chantant in the Boulevard St. Michel, and your upper C is gone. It would have been worth £40 a week to you, but you have thrown it away.”
At this; Lisa continued her lamentation, deeply sorry for herself.
“There’s no use in crying,” said Zinco; “that only makes things worse. Bisogna sempre aver pazienza in questo mondo. You had better dry your tears and eat a beefsteak—bleeding—and drink a pint of port-beer. Malibran used to drink port-beer. In one of her great scenes she had her quart pot on the stage, hidden behind a set piece—a rock, or whatnot—and after her cavatina she would fall on the stage as if fainting, and drag herself to the back of the rock and drink; ah, how she would drink!”
“I don’t want to lose my voice,” sobbed Lisa, to whom Malibran was but an empty name.
“No. Yet you go just the right way to lose it. Come, cheer up, Si’ora. Eat much steaks, drink much stout, for the next three days. Andiamo adagio. Don’t sing a note till I come next Saturday afternoon to give you your lesson.”
Zinco’s policy prevailed.
