He told her briefly of his adventure with the wardrobe mistress and the candlestick.
“I don’t remember her,” Florence went on. “Well, father, that is, Victor Ballau, was in charge of the Goldsmith Theater at that time and mother was playing the leads in the repertoire bills they put on. Things were going nicely, and apparently poor mother had forgotten the hell she’d been through with Bandoux.
“Then one day father had to leave London on business, and in his absence the leading man fell ill. I forget his name. The manager in charge dashed around frantically in search of some experienced repertoire man to take his place, and found—Bandoux. He’d had a hard time of it and was willing to join the company for anything he could get. Mother objected violently at first. But it was either Bandoux or shutting down for the week, there being no actor available at the price they could pay for a mid-season employment. And so mother finally agreed. Bandoux played in the cast that night. Oh, he was a scoundrel! Everything that has happened, all the tragedy that haunted poor Victor Ballau’s life, came from him and his rottenness. The play that night was Sardou’s ‘Tosca.’
“Father has told me all these details. I was about three years old at the time. But I seem to remember the creature, a flamboyant type of cheap actor. With a grand manner and a nasty temper. Terribly vain of his looks. An unscrupulous rogue who devoted himself to boasting and to women.
“Anyway, Bandoux took the part of Baron Scarpia. Mother played Floria La Tosca. It had always been one of her favorite rôles. The play went through the first act with nothing unusual happening. Mother was nervous and excited but managed to restrain herself. Her loathing of this man Bandoux was almost too much for her. And in the second act the thing happened. The grief he had caused her, the hatred his perfidy had left in her heart, flamed out. And when the murder scene arrived, poor mother went out of her head. She raised the dagger to kill Baron Scarpia as she had so often done in other performances. But this time she screamed and hurled herself at Bandoux. He was almost taken by surprise but managed to defend himself and escaped with a slight wound. Mother fainted. There was pandemonium and the curtain was rung down.
“Father came back the next morning and found her still raving. She had been taken to a hospital and was completely out of her mind. She was Floria La Tosca, screaming the idiotic lines of the play and going through the pantomime of the stage murder. For a month she lay completely insane. Her mildest moments were spent in weeping. The rest of the time she lay crying out that she wanted to kill Scarpia, who had betrayed her. Poor father was beside himself with grief. Nothing, of course, could be done with Bandoux. They got rid of him and hushed up the scandal. The theater was closed and father devoted himself to her. He was a wonderful man, the finest man that ever lived.”
She paused in her story, her eyes glistening with tears.
“An impression I always had,” whispered De Medici, “a man smiling courteously at grief.”
“He did his best,” Florence continued. “And gradually the active mania left her. She became what we grew to regard as normal. But she was no longer Florence Ballau. When she got over her violence she had forgotten who she was, she’d forgotten even that she was father’s wife. All memory of the past had been wiped out. She left the bed in the hospital one day, quiet once more and unaware of her name, unaware even that she was my mother.
“Father took us both away to a place in the north of England and we lived there for some time. He did everything that could be done to restore her. But it was futile. Apparently she had recovered from her mania. But she was unable to return to herself. She developed during the year in England into a docile, simple-minded woman—the woman you knew as Jane. Father’s friends insisted that he put her into an insane asylum. But he refused indignantly. He tried for a time to convince her she was his wife. This fact, however, struck her as preposterous. She refused to believe it or to have anything to do with father. And he was afraid of talking too much to her about it, afraid of bringing on her insanity again—I mean the active part of it. The result was that he finally hit on the plan of convincing her that she was his housekeeper. This was successful. She seemed willing to accept the part as his housekeeper, and he brought us both to America, giving her another name. And our strange life with Jane started.