That was all very well, of course, but it hardly settled her problem, thought Anna.
Schreiner guardedly expressed himself as pleased with her. She was docile, she was hard-working, and her technique was good. But one morning he sprang up unexpectedly from the piano seat and walked up and down the studio, his hands thrust into the pockets of his smoking-jacket, the inevitable cigar in the corner of his mouth.
“Something is missing,” he said, frowning. “You sing like someone in a dream. Technically—good. But you—you are not really here!”
He stopped abruptly in front of her and stared at her through a cloud of cigar-smoke.
Anna stared back with wide, troubled eyes. “I’m sorry—” she began.
“No, no,” he interrupted, and she was relieved to see that he looked at her not unkindly. “You need not be sorry. It is not that you do not work. It is something in you. When first you sang here for me you were not like this. When you cry, you sing with all your heart and feeling. But I cannot make you cry each time. That would be too inconvenient.”
“I—I was very unhappy that morning,” Anna explained.
“Yes?” Schreiner looked at her very thoughtfully. Then he said abruptly: “Tell me, do you love Mario Frayne?”
“No!” Anna looked horrified.
“Very well.” He brushed aside her indignation. “It would not be surprising. Many women do. But if you do not love him then he may be useful.”
He didn’t elaborate on the subject, and Anna, who was still very much in awe of him, felt that she dared not inquire further.
But that afternoon when Mario looked in to see them, as he always did at least once in the day, Schreiner said: “Frayne, I want that you have Anna study a role with you.”
Mario looked up with a smile. “Dramatically, you mean?”
“Of course.”
“It would give me great pleasure—if she would like it.” He glanced inquiringly at Anna, but Schreiner seemed to think it a foolish formality to consult her wishes in the matter.
“What role do you want us to take as a start?” Mario asked.
“Antonia in Hoffmann.” Schreiner was quite positive. “Musically she knows it well, and there is something in the character which is like her. I do not know the English way to say it.”
“I do.” Mario smiled. “Like Antonia, she is a little bit bewitched—under a spell.”
“Oh, no!” Anna was surprised herself at the pain and sharpness in her voice. But, as Mario spoke, it had seemed to her that she was lying again in Tony’s arms by the fire in that room at home, and she heard him say, with that teasing smile of his: “You are like a princess in a fairy-tale. A princess who is under a spell.”
Both men looked surprised.
“Don’t you want me to teach you?” Mario’s voice was gentle.
“Oh yes—yes. I didn’t mean that at all.” She was very eager not to hurt him, or to seem ungrateful. “It’s very, very kind of you. Only please don’t talk about—my being—under a spell.”
“I do not understand,” said Schreiner.
“It’s not necessary that you should,” said Mario curtly, with one of his quick flashes of insight. Then, turning to Anna: “We’ll study Antonia together. Come over to my place tomorrow afternoon, Anna, and we’ll make a beginning.”
Anna agreed with a smile of genuine pleasure, for where most women, she knew, found Mario Frayne exciting, she found him oddly soothing.
It was strange, going back the next day into that flat to which she had gone in such broken despair only a short while ago. The same manservant admitted her, but not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash did he betray that he remembered ever having seen her before.
Mario himself came out into the hall to greet her. He took her into the same room that she had been in on that awful evening, and for a moment she hesitated at the door, thinking how many things had happened since that last time. Then, quite unbidden, came the thought: “But only one of those things really matters—the fact that I’ve left Tony.”
But she mustn’t think along those lines. She had come there to work and to show how grateful she was for all that was being done for her.
“I hope I’m not going to be too much trouble,” she said to Mario, with a shy smile. “I think Schreiner is afraid that I’m really no actress at all.”
Mario settled her in a comfortable chair, and calmly sat down on the rug at her feet. She wondered why for a moment, and then she felt almost sure it was because he knew she would feel less constrained if she didn’t have to face him.
“Well, Anna,” he said, as though he had been considering her remark, “I suppose the fact is that you instinctively suppress your feelings instead of expressing them.”
“I suppose so,” she agreed slowly.
“Particularly just now?”
There was a pause, and then Anna said: “Yes.” Her voice seemed to fade for a moment. Then she said, with a sort of desperation: “It isn’t that I—try to suppress them. It’s—it’s—”
“Just the numbness which comes after a great shock or great pain,” finished Mario gently.
“Yes.”
She sat quite still for a while, feeling soothed. He made no attempt to speak—simply lounged gracefully at her feet waiting until she should choose to break the silence herself.
“How did you—know?” she said at last. “I mean, how did you know how it feels?”
Mario glanced up quickly at her. “Well, I have done other things in my life besides play-acting and flirting, you know,” he said, smiling.
“You mean—you’ve been utterly wretched too?” She looked down at him, and realised for the first time that there was really a sprinkling of grey in his thick, dark hair.
He didn’t answer at once. And then he said, with a slight laugh that had no amusement in it: “It’s nearly twenty years ago, Anna. Long enough for me to have forgotten.”
Anna thought of Tony, and said: “Does it take twenty years to stop hurting?”
Mario shook his head slowly. “No. Not hurting as badly as you mean. But even after twenty years the bruise aches a bit if you touch it carelessly.”
“I’m sorry.” Anna’s voice was very tender. “Did I touch the bruise?”
“No, my dear.” He smiled a little. “At least—” He turned suddenly and, leaning his arm against the side of her chair, he gazed up at her thoughtfully. “I don’t know why, but somehow you remind me of her. It isn’t that you’re at all alike—except that you both have the strange quality of attraction that makes men want to know more about you.”
Their eyes met in a quick flash of understanding.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Anna said quietly.
“Yes—oh, yes. Seventeen years, or more ago,” Mario said absently.
“Will you tell me about her?” A warmth and gentleness had crept into her voice. She wondered if Mario understood that to speak to her like this made her feel less frozen and isolated, more as though she could stretch out her hand and be in contact with people again.
Perhaps he did understand, because after a moment he said slowly: “I don’t expect her name would mean anything to you, but she was a very great dancer in Italy when I was a boy. I was eighteen when I first saw her. She came to the town where I lived, to give a short season of ballet. I was a stage-hand at the theatre there.”
“You were—” Anna looked astonished, and he smiled a little.
“Didn’t you know that I, too, came from nothing?” he said, with a simple frankness that somehow took away all the sting of that.
She shook her head. “I always imagined that because of your father—”
“Oh no.” Mario laughed without rancour. “The Frayne part of me was not remembered until long after, when I had made myself famous. Then the people who think they matter were only too pleased to accept me—as they will accept you, Anna, when Schreiner has finished with you.”
She smiled a little unbelievingly, and said: “Well, go on.
”
“My mother had taken me back to Italy when I was a child, and there I stayed. The first time I saw her, she was coming from the stage after a rehearsal, and I was in her way—nailing something together, I think, on the ground. She was in a temper. She often was,” he added, with a little reminiscent smile; “because she lived on her nerves and was never very happy. I did not move from her path quickly enough, and she said something sharply to me and stamped her little foot down on my hand.”
“Oh!” Anna looked horrified. “But how hateful of her!”
“Oh no.” That funny, indulgent smile still lingered round Mario’s mouth. “I think perhaps she had just been hurt and had to hurt someone else in her turn. Anyway, I scarcely felt what she had done to my hand. I thought I had never seen anything so lovely as she was, and I expect I just knelt there gaping at her.”
“But didn’t she say she was sorry?” Anna thought it a queer way to begin a love affair.
“No. But two days later she asked me abruptly how my hand was, and I showed her the mark she had made, and told her she had made a deeper mark on my heart.” He grinned up at Anna suddenly. “In England you do not do these things, but in Italy any man may tell a woman she has bruised his heart.”
Anna laughed a little, and thought she could visualise the eighteen-year-old Mario Frayne smilingly using all his physical charm on the spoilt little dancer.
“After that, she always noticed me. If things had gone badly she would just nod, but if things had gone well she would smile, and perhaps ask how my hand and heart were.”
“And that was all?”
“Yes, that was all. Except that I would stand in the wings every night and watch her dance. At the end of the season I asked her to marry me.”
“You—” Anna gave an incredulous little laugh.
“Yes. She laughed too, of course. She had such a pretty laugh—even when she laughed at me, a little spitefully. She told me that she never meant to marry until her career was over—and then only someone who could keep her in luxury to the end of her days.”
“And so?”
“And so, Anna, I determined to make money. To make her take me seriously one day. I had always had a great flair for the theatre—even more than most Italians—only I’m by nature extremely lazy. But she was something to slave for, and when one loves the almost unattainable, one must work hard and be very patient.”
Anna suddenly put out her hand and gripped his shoulder. “Say that again,” she exclaimed with a curious intentness.
He smiled and just put his hand over hers for a moment, “When one loves the almost unattainable, one must work hard and be very patient,” he repeated.
“I hadn’t thought of it like that, Mario,” she said slowly. And at her first use of his Christian name he bent his head quickly and pressed his cheek against the hand which lay on his shoulder.
Anna drew her hand away almost immediately, but her voice was very gentle as she said: “And so you began to work?”
“Work!” He laughed. “Work was hardly the word, Anna. I slaved. I took any job and every job that brought me on to a stage. I did crowd work, small-part work, then crowd work again. I was understudy to people who never had an evening’s illness, and I travelled up and down Italy the whole of one sun-baked summer in a tenth-rate touring company.
“From time to time I heard of her in other parts of Italy—usually the important places, where I couldn’t hope to go—Rome, Milan, Genoa, and so on. For about two years I didn’t see her at all. Meanwhile my luck had turned, and I began to make money—and I saved it. Then I met her again—and she told me she had leukaemia.
“Her doctor told me that she had only about three months to live. I remembered then what she had said years ago—that she would never marry anyone until her career was over, and then only someone who could keep her in luxury to the end of her days.
“Well, her career was over, and, even if I was not yet rich, I could at least keep her in luxury to the end of her short days. So I married her.”
“You married her? I never heard anyone mention that you had been married.”
“No. No one has ever heard this story before,” Mario explained quietly. “We took a villa among the hills outside Florence. It had always been the height of my peasant ambition to. live in such a place, and she had a fancy to go there because she had lived in Florence as a little girl.”
Anna gently took his hand in both of hers. “And she died there?”
“Yes. She lived just three months, as the doctor had said, but they were three months of absolutely perfect happiness. I spent every penny I had on her, so that she should live in luxury to the end of her days. And she died one evening when the sun was setting across the Arno, and the water was looking like liquid gold. She didn’t really know anything about it. She had been talking of when she would be well enough to go back to the stage. And then she was gone—just like a light being blown out.”
There was a long silence. And then Anna said soberly: “I never associated you with anything—like that.”
He smiled. “You mean, I’m not the faithful type?”
“Yes, I suppose I did mean that,” she agreed diffidently. “Particularly—” She stopped, and then went on: “Mario, I know it isn’t my business, but—are the stories about you true?”
“Most of them,” he admitted.
She looked troubled, and he patted her hand kindly. “I know. You can’t reconcile the two things, can you? But in a man of my type they haven’t really much connection, you know.”
“No?” She looked at him very seriously, and all the while she was thinking: “But if I never see Tony again, I couldn’t—couldn't let any other man make love to me.”
Presently she said: “Did you mean, all along, to tell me that story?”
“Yes,” he smiled.
“Why?”
“For two reasons, I think.” He looked thoughtful. “One was to show that one can make the effort to get over the frozen despair after one’s world has crashed.”
“Oh, Mario!” Light suddenly broke on her. “How very sweet you are to me.” Her voice shook a little. “You mean that you understand what is the matter when Schreiner says I sing like someone in a dream?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to show me that it lies with me to get over it—and that it can be done?”
He nodded, with his smiling eyes on her face.
She shyly tightened her fingers on his, a little surprised to find she was still holding his hand. “You—have helped me. I can’t feel so lost and—and frozen when you take me into your confidence and make me feel I’m not isolated because of my unhappiness.”
“I’m glad, Anna dear.” He let his hand lie slackly in hers, and made no movement that might scare her.
“Your saying that about having to work hard and be patient seemed to give me something to hold on to again,” she said slowly.
“You feel more like working now? Wanting to work, I mean?”
“Oh yes!”
“Then let’s begin at once.”
And after that they talked no more of personal affairs, but worked. And to Anna it was more absorbingly interesting than she could ever have believed possible.
It was not until she was going that she suddenly remembered something.
“Mario!”
“Yes?”
“You said there were two reasons why you told me about—about her. What was the second one?”
“Oh,” Mario laughed a little and-coloured—a very rare thing with him. “I’ll tell you that the night you make your first great success.”
“But—”
“No. Run along now.” And bending his handsome head he lightly kissed first one hand and then the other, as he had that evening in the hall at Eaton Square.
And slowly Anna went back across the wide landing to Manora’s flat, thinking rather hard.
CHAPTER EIGHT
After that oddly revealing talk with Mario Frayne, Anna
found that, for some reason, life seemed to flow much more smoothly.
It was not that the thought of Tony hurt any less or that, even now, she could remember the disastrous two days at Eaton Square without wincing. But there was some purpose slowly creeping back into the weary business of living.
No wonder she loved her lessons with Mario, she told herself. He was endlessly patient and a brilliant teacher, but, above all, he was kind, kind, kind.
It was not that he paid her the smiling, almost exaggerated attentions he paid most women. It was something much deeper, warmer, and more sincere.
The thought did just enter her mind once or twice that perhaps the very fact that he did not make love to her held a warning significance. But, a little frightenedly, she dismissed the thought almost before it was formed.
In the first days after that terrible scene in Tony’s office she had supposed that she would hear something from him. Surely he would write to her, make some attempt to see her? Surely it couldn’t all just end like that, as though a path had broken off at the edge of a cliff?
She was a little surprised to find how quickly the days passed, now that she was concentrating her whole heart and soul on learning to be the success which Schreiner vowed he would make her. And it was with something curiously like alarm that she heard Manora say:
“One week—two weeks more, and then we leave for Paris.” She and Schreiner were to do an opera season there, and Anna was going with them.
“Are you sorry?” Anna asked, with that funny little feeling of scared regret herself.
“Me? No, no,” Manora laughed. “At first I am so pleased that I have a holiday, but now I am impatient to go back. Like a horse stamping in his stable and waiting to be let out so that he can run.”
“Do you love the life so much?” Anna smiled a little wistfully.
“In some way—yes. But at times I hate it, and I long and long to be free. And then Conrad is very wise, and if he possibly can he says to me: ‘Go away then and be free. Take your holiday.’ ”
“And do you go?” Anna asked, amused and curious.
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