Most people know that particular love-song. Lady Bridget gave it with all the tricks and all the verve and whimsical audacity of a born Italian singer. Well, she was Italian—on one side at least, and had inherited the tricks and a certain quality of voice, irresistibly catching. And she looked captivating as she sang—the small pointed face within its frame of reddish-brown hair, the strange eyes, the expressive red lips, alive with coquetry. The men—even the old politicians, listened and stared, quite fascinated.
Some of the Leichardt's Town ladies—good, homely wives and mothers who, in their early married days of struggle, had toiled and cooked and sewed, with no time to imagine an aspect of the Eternal Feminine of which they had never had any experience, were perhaps a little shocked, perhaps a little regretful. One or two others, younger, with budding aspirations, but provincial in their ideals, were filled with wonder and vague envy.
A few of them had made the usual trip 'Home,' landing at Naples and journeying to London, via Monte Carlo and Paris, and these felt they had missed something in that journey which Lady Bridget was now revealing to them. Joan Gildea, whose profession it was to realise vividly such modes of life as came within her purview, felt herself once more in the blue lands girdling the Sea of Story—It all came back upon her—moonlight nights in Naples; on the Chiaja; looking down from her windows on sunny gardens on the Riviera, and the strolling minstrels in front of the hotel....
As for Colin McKeith who had never been in the Blue Land and knew little even of the British Isles except for London—chiefly around St Paul's School, Hammersmith—and the Scotch Manse where he had occasionally spent his holidays—even he was transported from the Government House drawing-room. Where? .... Not to the realm of visions such as he had seen in the smoke of his camp fire. Oh no. He had never dreamed of this kind of enchantment.
A fresh impulse seized the singer. She struck a few chords. A familiar lilt sounded. Her face and manner changed. She burst into the famous song of CARMEN. She WAS CARMEN. One could almost see the swaying form, the seductive flirt of fan. There could be no doubt that had the voice been more powerful, Lady Bridget might have done well on the operatic stage.
Yet it had a TIMBRE, a peculiar, devil-may-care passion which produced a very thrilling effect upon her audience. She got up when she had finished in a dead silence and was half-way across the room before the applause burst out. There was a little rush of men towards her.
'Beats Zelie de Lussan and runs Calve hard,' said the Premier who had made more than one trip to England and considered himself an authority in the matter.
Bridget skimmed through the groups of admirers, stopping to murmur something to Lady Tallant who had met her half way; then stopped with hands before her like a meek schoolgirl, in front of Mrs Gildea and Colin McKeith—he almost the only man who had made no movement towards her. Bridget sank into her former seat.
'The last time I sang that was at a Factory Girls' entertainment at Poplar,' she said... 'You should have seen them, Joan: they stood up and tried to sing in chorus and some of them came on to the platform and danced.... Mr McKeith you look at me as if I had been doing something desperately improper. Don't you like the music of CARMEN?'
Colin was staring at her dazedly.