Unbidden Melody

by Mary Burchell

  Mary—who, like most of us, had always wondered if anyone ever really did that—was fascinated. But she re­mained obstinately silent until the offending bottle had been replaced by one that was approved. Then Torelli said, not unkindly,

  “Drink some of your wine. It will make you feel better. I suppose you are yourself in love with Nicholas. He has the misfortune to appeal to almost every type of woman, poor fellow. And you didn’t like the possessive way Su­zanne swarmed over him. Am I right?”

  “So right,” replied Mary in a low voice, “that I think you must be something of a witch.”

  “Most of my rivals would change one letter there,” Torelli amended drily. “I’m really neither. But you don’t get to the top of my profession by being sweet and silly. Has Nicholas shown any interest in you?”

  “Oh, yes. He—he says he loves me.”

  “He may mean it. Even tenors do sometimes,” conceded Torelli. “Why don’t you believe him?”

  “I did, I did! But then, after the recital, I—I came on them in each other’s arms, and he was calling her ‘darling’, and she was saying they ought always to be together—”

  Torelli laughed with rather heartless abandon and en­quired, as though it really mattered, “Was she hanging round his neck?”

  “She was, as a matter of fact,” Mary agreed distaste­fully.

  “Yes—yes. The bindweed type,” declared Torelli knowledgeably. “Very difficult to detach once they’ve taken hold. The only defence is quick evasive action be­forehand.”

  “He wasn’t taking evasive action,” muttered Mary re­sentfully. “He was calling her ‘darling’.”

  “A very ordinary term of address in our world,” Torelli assured her. “Some of us even mean it sometimes. But not often. Now eat your supper, child, and don’t take things too much to heart. That scene may not have meant a thing.”

  Twenty-four hours ago Mary would have argued that passionately. Now, as the good food and wine, and the exhilarating company of Torelli, began to have their affect, she was not so agonisingly certain about the sharp outlines of that scene.

  But, if she had misinterpreted it, the implications were even more dreadful. It would mean that she had done Nicholas, the most horrible and damaging injustice.

  “I’ll think about it when I’m alone,” she told herself desperately. For it was impossible to weigh the pros and cons here and now. Politeness—not to say genuine grati­tude—demanded that she gave her full attention to her famous and unexpectedly kind hostess.

  When they finally emerged from the restaurant Tor­elli said, with complete disregard for any wishes but her own, “We will walk a little. My apartment is quite near and I need some air.”

  So they walked—at an extraordinarily energetic pace. Until Mary, who had already walked miles the previous evening, began to feel she could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Torelli, however, had an unrivalled capacity for not seeing what she did not want to see. She had even, until now, applied this to the Paris traffic. A considerable feat, as everyone will agree.

  But, even to the Torellis of this world, there comes a moment when they meet their match. As they turned the last corner before her apartment, and she forged ahead into the road, there was a sharp squeal of brakes too late applied, and for a second Mary thought she was going to see the world’s leading soprano swept to her death.

  Whether it was professional responsibility, personal at­tachment, or just sheer instinct Mary never knew. But she instantly stepped out and, catching the singer by the arm, swung her round to safety.

  At the same time something hit her very hard. There was a sharp pain in her side and an even sharper pain a second later in her head as she hit the ground. After that she seemed to fall right through the road, down and down and down—into nothing.

  CHAPTER VIII

  As Mary slowly returned to consciousness once more she realised that she was lying in bed—in a large, soft, elegantly canopied bed, more suited to a stage than anything she had ever occupied before. The room in which she lay was also large, which contributed to the illusion of being in some magnificent stage set, and the sunlight which fell softly through fine net curtains picked out the subdued colours in a carpet of exquisite design.

  “I’m dreaming,” she decided, and closed her eyes again.

  Then she heard a totally unfamiliar voice, with a strong foreign accent, say, “She opened her eyes for a moment, madame. But she is asleep or unconscious again now.”

  “I’m not asleep,” said a weak voice, just above a whis­per, and Mary was surprised to realise it was her own.

  “Are you not, dear child? Then open your eyes again and try to say a few words to us.”

  Mary knew that voice all right. The strong, beautiful, resonant tones were unmistakable. That was the voice of Gina Torelli, to whom she had been speaking some min­utes—or was it hours?—ago.

  “I’m all right.” She cleared her throat and spoke a little more distinctly. “It was—the taxi, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. That taxi!” Torelli used a very naughty and vul­gar French expression to describe the taxi-driver who had, broadly speaking, been within his rights when she stepped out in front of him.

  Mary opened her eyes again, and this time she was able to focus her gaze on the two women in the room. One of them was a thin, sallow, dark-eyed woman in a white overall. The other was Torelli, clad in a superbly chic black afternoon dress which Mary had never seen before.

  “You’ve changed your dress,” she murmured stupidly.

  “Changed my dress?” Torelli looked down at herself. ‘Well, of course, child. I’ve changed more than once since you last noticed me.”

  “She must not talk too much, madame,” said the other woman.

  “Mind your own business, Lisette,” snapped Madame.

  “It is my business to see that she does not tire herself. The doctor said so.”

  There was mulish obstinacy in the expression of the thin woman and lively annoyance in the face of Torelli. For a moment Mary thought a passionate argument was about to break almost literally over her head. But sud­denly, with a self-control which she usually kept only for her singing, Torelli checked herself. Then she said softly, in tones that sounded like a stage benediction, “Sleep a little longer, if you wish to. We will talk later.”

  So Mary closed her eyes once more, and immediately fell asleep.

  When she woke again her mind was much clearer. She knew it must be night-time, or at least late in the evening, for heavy brocade curtains had been drawn across the windows and there was a shaded lamp in one corner of the room, set where the light from it could not disturb her.

  Then she thought perhaps it must have been the open­ing of the door which had roused her. For Torelli came silently across the wide expanse of carpet to stand beside her bed. She was in evening dress, with a long tawny-coloured velvet coat open over her golden dress, and she was wearing the kind of jewellery which made Mary blink.

  “You look like Tosca,” Mary smiled at her. “You look lovely.”

  “This light is kind to one,” Torelli replied realistically. “And you look much better. How are you feeling now?”

  “Nearly all right—I think. Are you going out some­where?”

  “No. I have just come in. I was at a reception at the Elysée. It is after midnight now.”

  “Which midnight?” asked Mary, making an effort to bring times and days into their proper order. “I mean—how long have I been here in bed?”

  “There is no need to worry.” Torelli seemed to think she was forestalling some sort of hysterical outburst. “You are getting on very well now. But you were uncon­scious for more than twenty-four hours.”

  “Twenty-four hours!”

  “Even after that you kept on drifting away again. Sometimes Lisette and I could not leave you at all.”

  “But, Madame Torelli, have you been nursing me your­self?” Mary was touched beyond expression.

  “With Li
sette,” was the slightly grudging admission. “I suppose Lisette did most of it. But I wished to nurse you too. Why not? You saved my life,” she added, drop­ping her voice a semi-tone or two to express the depth of her feelings.

  “Oh, no—not really—” Mary was slightly embarrassed by what she felt to be more than a touch of artistic licence.

  “But yes, indeed!” Torelli would not be done out of her moment of enjoyable drama. “If you had not stepped forward when you did, regardless of yourself—But per­haps it distresses you to recall the scene?”

  “Not in the least.” Mary shook her head and smiled. “I don’t remember much about it. You were almost run down by the taxi, weren’t you, and I grabbed you back just in time. But I suppose, as I turned, it hit me. I feel rather—” experimentally she breathed deeply and winced—”my side must have been quite badly bruised.”

  “You broke a couple of ribs,” Torelli informed her. “You are all strapped up. And you were quite badly con­cussed too.”

  “But why didn’t you have me sent to hospital?” Mary could not help enquiring.

  “Hospitals are no good,” stated Torelli, who had never been inside one. “A hospital is not the place for someone who has saved my life. I preferred to have you here. Lisette has some experience of nursing, and I also am not a fool. I owed you that at least. I have my faults—” Mary realised this admission was not to be taken too seriously—”but ingratitude is not one of them.”

  “Thank you. You’ve been very kind,” Mary said. And then, somewhat anxiously as the realities of her position became more clearly defined, she added, “What day of the week is this?”

  “Monday.”

  “Oh, I should have been back in the office this morn­ing! What will Mr. Deane think?—and my mother—”

  “It has all been attended to.” Torelli calmed her with a kind but authoritative gesture. “I called Dermot last night and explained that you had met with a slight accident and would be staying with me for the rest of the week. He undertook to inform your family. In a day or two I shall telephone again, to say you will stay longer. In this way no one will be excessively anxious. And by the time we have to admit you have been rather ill the worst will be over.”

  “I don’t think that will satisfy my mother! She would much rather know the truth, I’m sure. I think I should phone her, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not tonight, dear. Tomorrow you shall.”

  Mary remembered then that it was after midnight, and any telephone call at that time of night would increase rather than quiet her mother’s anxieties.

  “First thing in the morning then—please,” she begged. And to this Torelli agreed.

  She had a rather restless night after that. During the hours of sleep or unconsciousness her worries and prob­lems had been suspended. But, now that her mind was active again, her thoughts ranged backwards and forwards, not only over her mother’s possible anxieties and the in­convenience to her employer, but over the events imme­diately preceding her journey to Paris.

  What had Nicholas thought when he found her gone? They had parted on such a confused and discordant note that, at the time, the break had seemed to her final and inevitable. In her dismayed certainty that he had been be­traying her with Suzanne she intended that break to be final. It had seemed to her the only answer.

  But since then something of Torelli’s trenchant good sense had been poured over her. And in one layer of her consciousness some of that lingered, to colour her own more reasonable second thoughts.

  Was it possible, she wondered now, that, in her inse­curity and loneliness—and jealousy, for she must not make excuses for herself—she had given the most absurd significance to a scene which could be duplicated over and over again between stage colleagues sharing a moment of excited triumph?

  Nicholas himself had said, “It didn’t mean a thing.” And Torelli, speaking with careless, scornful confidence at the supper table, had used exactly the same expression: “That scene might not have meant a thing.”

  Only to Mary, insecure, unknowing and scared, it had meant so much—so much. And because of it, on impulse, she had rushed away into the night, her anger hot and her judgment clouded.

  By the time she came face to face with Nicholas she was in a fever of doubt and misery and all she could do was pour out her furious, agonised suspicions. But how, she wondered now, must that have appeared to him?

  Unannounced and without warning, she had erupted into his professional world. Not the quiet girl with the beautifully pitched voice which soothed his tense nerves, but someone who seemed to have been following him round, trying in some vulgar way to see what he was up to when she was not there.

  Mary gave a little groan which had nothing to do with the dull ache in her cracked ribs. It was because, slowly but irresistibly, she was recalling that scene as he must have viewed it. She could not remember her exact words. She only knew that she must have seemed like the ter­rible echo of the unhappy Monica, who had poisoned both their lives with just such unreasonable jealous out­bursts.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean it! Nicholas, I didn’t mean it,” she whispered into the darkness. And as she did so, she found herself wondering if perhaps Monica had not meant it either in the beginning.—If perhaps she had just let the cancer of her jealousy grow upon her until it almost de­stroyed them both.

  “If I can have another chance! Oh, please, if I can have another chance.” That was Mary’s last thought as she fell asleep again.

  The next morning, Torelli was as good as her word. A telephone was brought to Mary and plugged in beside the bed by Lisette, who informed her that she was to talk to her mother for as long as she liked.

  It was a wonderfully healing and reassuring conversa­tion. After all she had been through, Mary felt she had never before so valued her mother’s kindly composure and common sense. Yes, they had been anxious, of course, though a good deal reassured to hear that she was being looked after by the famous Gina Torelli. And how was dear Mary feeling now >

  Dear Mary was able to reassure her mother that she was rapidly improving. She owned to the cracked ribs and the concussion, though she refrained from saying just how long she had been unconscious.

  “But why aren’t you in hospital, you poor child?” her mother not unnaturally demanded. And Mary had to ex­plain about Torelli not believing in hospitals (to which her mother said, “What nonsense!”) and how the singer had some exaggerated idea that Mary had saved her life and therefore insisted on looking after her in her own home.

  “Well, so long as you’re being properly looked after—” Mrs. Barlow said doubtfully.

  “Oh, Mother, of course I am! You have no idea what care and luxury are being lavished on me.”

  “And you don’t feel that your father or I should come over?”

  “No, truly not I expect I’ll be allowed to travel in a few days. Well—a week, anyway.”

  So her mother was more or less satisfied, and Mary was free to stay where she was and enjoy the sensation of feel­ing a little stronger each day. She was pampered beyond belief. She could hardly express a wish without having it granted, and every delicacy of French cooking was there to tempt her naturally very healthy appetite.

  Torelli brought her papers and magazines, in a variety of languages, for her amusement and edification. And it was in one of these that she came across a photograph of Nicholas. A full-page photograph of him smiling, with a caption about one of his German appearances. On the facing page, inevitably, there was a photograph of Su­zanne, but by turning back the page Mary could avoid looking at that. Instead, she lay there gazing at the strong yet sensitive face of the man she loved.

  For so long now, it seemed to her, she had recalled him only in a tragic mood. But now, as she looked into those smiling eyes, she could see him once more in the gay early days of their acquaintanceship, when everything had seemed to go well. They had laughed a good deal together then, she recalled, with surprise and indescribable nostal­gia. She had
seemed to know how to charm away those occasional moments of remembered tragedy, and he had looked at her as though he saw the sun come out from be­hind clouds. Those were the happy days when he had been sure of her trust and understanding, and the nightmare of his past life with Monica had almost left him.

  “Oh, my dear!” she actually addressed the photograph. “Give me just one more chance, and I’ll never, never, never let you down again.”

  She was still gazing at him when Torelli came into the room. And, although she hastily tried to turn the page, the singer’s keen powers of observation were quicker.

  “Aha, you’ve found the charming photograph, I see.” Torelli picked up the magazine in her strong, capable hands. “He really is an attractive brute. Almost too much so.” She studied the page. “There’s something beguiling about a tenor voice that already gives them an unfair ad­vantage. The good looks ought to go to the baritones and basses if life were strictly fair, which of course it isn’t.”

  Before Mary had time to consider this interesting theory, Lisette followed her mistress into the room, hold­ing some letters in her hand.

  “The post has come, Madame. You wanted—”

  “Oh, to be sure!” Torelli took the letters and quickly shuffled through them until she found the one she evidently wanted. “From my husband,” she explained to Mary in parenthesis. “And about time too!” she added, with a curious note of almost bullying affection in her expressive voice which secretly amused and intrigued Mary.

  Torelli turned away, presumably to go and enjoy her letter on her own. But at the door she paused, glanced down at a larger envelope among those in her hand and observed, “From Dermot, I see. And with an enclosure. I suppose it might be—” She slit open the envelope with one of those strong, decisive movements so characteristic of her.

  “Yes—here you are.” She came back to the bed with a thin, foreign-looking letter in her hand, which she exam­ined with frank interest, curiosity being a perfectly per­missible emotion in her opinion. At least, so far as she herself was concerned. “From Amsterdam. Now I know that writing. Handwriting always interests me. So revealing.