Margaret received her friend's letter and the account of Baraka's trial by the same post on the morning after she and Mr. Van Torp had been to hear Parsifal together, and she opened the two envelopes before reading her other letters, though after assuring herself that there was nothing from Logotheti. He did not write every day, by any means, for he was a man of the world and he knew that although most women demand worship at fixed hours, few can receive it so regularly without being bored to the verge of exasperation. It was far better, Logotheti knew, to let Margaret find fault with him for writing too little than to spoil her into indifference by writing too much. Women are often like doctors, who order their patients to do ten things and are uncommonly glad if the patient does one.
So Margaret had no letter from Logotheti that morning, and she read Lady Maud's and the enclosure before going on to the unpaid bills, religious tracts, appeals for alms, advertisements of patent medicines, 'confidential' communications from manufacturers of motor cars, requests to sing for nothing at charity concerts, anonymous letters of abuse, real business letters from real business men, and occasional attempts at blackmail, [{210}] which are the usual contents of a celebrity's post-bag, and are generally but thinly salted with anything like news from friends.
The Primadonna, in her professional travels, had grown cautious of reading her letters in a room where there were other people; she had once surprised a colleague who was toying with an opera-glass quite absently, ten paces away, as if trying its range and focus, but who frequently directed it towards a letter she was perusing; and short-sighted people had dropped a glove or a handkerchief at her very feet in order to stoop down and bring their noses almost against a note she held in her hand. The world is full of curious people; curiosity is said, indeed, to be the prime cause of study and therefore of knowledge itself. Margaret assuredly did not distrust Mrs. Rushmore, and she did not fear Potts, but her experience had given her the habit of reading her important letters alone in her own room, and sometimes with the door locked. Similarly, if any one came near her when she was writing, even about the most indifferent matters, she instinctively covered the page with her hand, or with a piece of blotting-paper, sometimes so hastily as to lead a person to believe that she was ashamed of what she had written. Natural habits of behaviour remind us how we were brought up; acquired ones recall to us the people with whom we have lived.
Margaret read the newspaper cutting first, supposing that it contained something flattering about herself, for she had been a little short of public admiration for nearly a fortnight. Baraka's case was reported with [{211}] the rather brutal simplicity which characterises such accounts in the English papers, and Logotheti's name appeared in Mr. Pinney's evidence. There had been the usual 'laughter,' duly noted by the stenographer, when the poor girl's smart man's clothes were produced before the magistrate by the policeman who had arrested her. The magistrate had made a few stern remarks when ordering the delinquents to prison, and had called Baraka 'hardened' because she did not burst into tears. That was all, and there were barely five-and-twenty lines of small print.
But the Primadonna bit her handsome lip and her eyes sparkled with anger, as she put the cutting back into the first envelope, and took the folded letter out of the other. The girl had not only stolen a ruby, but it was Margaret's ruby, her very own, the one Logotheti had given her for her engagement, and which she had insisted upon having set as a ring though it would cover more than half the space between her knuckle and the joint of her third finger. Further, it had been stolen by the very girl from whom Logotheti had pretended that he had bought it, a fact which cast the high light of absurdity on his unlikely story! It was natural enough that she should have seen it, and should have known that he was taking it to Pinney's, and that she should have been able to prepare a little screw of paper with a bit of glass inside, to substitute for it. The improbabilities of such an explanation did not occur to Lady Maud, who saw only the glaring fact that the handsome Tartar girl had accompanied Logotheti, between [{212}] London and Paris, disguised as a man, and had ultimately robbed him, as he richly deserved. She had imposed upon Van Torp too, and had probably tried to sell him the very stone she had stolen from Logotheti, and the one she had made him take as a gift was nothing but a bit of glass, as he said it might be, for all he knew.
She devoured Lady Maud's letter in a few moments, and then read it twice again, which took so long that Mrs. Rushmore sent Justine to tell Potts to ask if Miss Donne did not mean to go out that morning, though the weather was so fine.
Great singers generally develop a capacity for flying into rages, even if they have not been born with hot tempers. It is very bad for the voice, but it seems to be a part of the life. Margaret was very angry, and Potts became as meek and mild as a little lamb when she saw the storm signals in her mistress's face. She delivered her message in a pathetic and oppressed tone, like a child reciting the collect for the day at a Sunday school.
The Primadonna, imposing as a young lioness, walked slowly backwards and forwards between her window and the foot of the iron bedstead. There was an angry light in her eyes and instead of flushing, as her cheeks did for any ordinary fit of temper, they were as white as wax. Potts, who was a small woman, seemed to shrink and become visibly smaller as she stood waiting for an answer. Suddenly the lioness stood still and surveyed the poor little jackal that served her.
'Ask Mrs. Rushmore if she can wait half an hour,' [{213}] she said. 'I'm very angry, Potts, and it's not your fault, so keep out of the way.'
She was generous at all events, but she looked dangerous, and Potts seemed positively to shrivel through the crack of the door as she disappeared. She was so extremely glad to keep out of the way! There were legends already about the great singer's temper, as there are about all her fellow-artists. It was said, without the slightest foundation, that she had once tossed a maid out of the window like a feather, that on another occasion she had severely beaten a coachman, and that she had thrown two wretched lap-dogs into a raging fire in a stove and fastened the door, because they had barked while she was studying a new part. As a matter of fact, she loved animals to weakness, and was kindness itself to her servants, and she was generally justified in her anger, though it sometimes made her say things she regretted. Œdipus found the right answer to the Sphinx's riddle in a moment, but the ingenious one about truth propounded by Pontius Pilate has puzzled more than sixty generations of Christians. If the Sphinx had thought of it, Œdipus would never have got to Thebes and some disgustingly unpleasant family complications would have been prevented by his premature demise.