Among the crowd in the top gallery at St. James’s Hall was one very
remarkable figure who was an object of speculation to most of his
fellow-listeners at the Monday Popular Concerts. He was a regular and
unfailing attendant for many, many years, but not very long ago he
disappeared suddenly in the middle of the season, and his place knew
him no more.
He was an old man, apparently between seventy and eighty, very tall,
thin almost to emaciation, with a magnificent head, white hair that
was still thick and rather long, a short white beard and moustache, a
fine straight nose, and very sad, kindly grey eyes. His hands, though
old and shrunken, with their veins standing out in relief, were well
shaped, and still had the trained, capable look that only those people
possess who, having been taught to use and develop the muscles of their
hands while young, keep them in constant use and practice afterwards.
That he was very poor was certain, for year by year he appeared in
the same clothes. A very old, threadbare, but well-brushed Inverness
cape, a white woollen comforter, and a soft felt hat that had once been
black, but was now of the indescribable greenish-brown tint that black
hats assume in their last stages of existence. He also wore grey cloth
gloves and carried a thick blackthorn walking-stick with a knob handle.
He came alone to the concerts and sat on the extreme right-hand of
the gallery, close against the wall, in the third row from the front.
Sometimes he was joined by a young man, who was the only person he was
ever seen to converse with at length, though he would answer politely
any chance question about the music or the artists, on both of which
subjects he appeared to have considerable knowledge.
His English was perfect and fluent, but the impression prevailed in the
gallery that he was foreign.
One Monday evening a few years ago he came to the gallery at seven
o’clock and took his usual place. It happened to be the first
appearance of Joachim that season, and it was not unreasonable to
suppose that there might be a crowd. The old gentleman looked round
anxiously as each new-comer opened the door, fearing evidently that
some stranger would take the seat next him. His fears, however, were
vain ones on that night, and at about twenty minutes before eight,
looking round as the door opened, his face lighted up with joy as his
friend, a rather good-looking, dark young man, pushed his way across
the gallery to his side.
“Dear Professor Crowitzski,” he said affectionately, “I am sorry to be
so late. I knew you would be anxious, but I have come straight from
Grignoletti’s house in the Avenue Road.”
“My dear boy—my dear boy,” returned the old man tremulously, “I
have been anxious about you for several reasons. I have thought much
about your interview with Grignoletti and its possible result, and I
also began to fear you would not get here in time to hear the Brahms
Sextett, which is placed first upon the programme to-night. I would not
have you miss it if you could possibly help it; you should hear Brahms
as often as you can. Do not neglect the other masters of course. Hear
and study the works of all; but especially those of that great trinity,
Bach, Beethoven, Brahms. Now, however, tell me about yourself. Did
Grignoletti hold out any hope to you?”
“Indeed he did,” said the young man, “almost too much, for I do not
quite see how the hope is to be realised. He spoke in high terms of
my voice, said I had a career before me, and advised my entering the
Royal Academy at once, saying he should not let me study with anyone
but himself.”
“That is a high compliment,” said the Professor. “Grignoletti is the
finest teacher of singing in London. Moreover, he is a true artist and
an honest man. He will say nothing to you he does not mean. But tell me
what difficulties stand in your way.”
Herbert Maxwell sighed. It was so hard to see the bright pathway of his
highest wishes shining in the distance, and to realise that between him
and the beginning of it lay a dark stream that could only be crossed by
means of golden stepping-stones.
“I’m afraid money is the chief difficulty,” he said rather sadly. “The
Academy fees are ten pounds a term. The half-term examination is next
Monday, and I have not the means of raising five pounds. You know my
mother and I depend entirely on my weekly wage, and it is not a very
large one.”
“I know—I know,” replied the old man; “but supposing this amount could
be found, how would you support your mother and yourself when you give
up your present work? If you mean to adopt singing as your profession,
you must give your whole time to the study of music.”
“It was in that matter that Grignoletti showed himself so very kind,”
said Herbert. “He asked me how I lived, and promised, if I were
admitted to the Academy, he would find work for me by which I could
earn at least as much as I do now, and which would also increase my
musical knowledge. He——”
A sudden storm of applause interrupted him, in which he joined
vigorously, as Joachim, followed by the other artists, emerged from
the curious little well at the end of the platform, where those of the
players and singers who are not performing assemble to listen to those
who are, sitting on the stairs or on the settee just inside.
Nothing more was said by the old Professor or Herbert himself on the
subject of his musical education. The concert absorbed them both
entirely, and in the intervals between each item on the programme no
other subject was discussed by them but the music and the performers.
It was a shorter concert than usual, and as they were slowly making
for the door with the rest of the crowd, the old man said to his young
friend, “Can you come home with me to-night, my dear boy? I have
something more to say to you, and I cannot say it here. I do not think
it will make you very late.”
“I shall be very glad to,” replied Herbert, “and very glad to hear
anything from you. You are the only person in the world to whom I can
go for advice about music. It is very good of you to take so much
interest in me.”
At Piccadilly Circus they got into that red omnibus which is
affectionately called by those who use it constantly “The Kennington
Lobster,” and travelled over Westminster Bridge some little distance
down the wide Kennington Road.
“Green Street,” said the Professor after a time, and the conductor
stopped the omnibus almost immediately.
They got down and turned into a little street on the right-hand of the
main road; one of those streets still to be found here and there in
some of the older parts of London, though they are fast being swept
away by the remorseless builder to make room for the huge piles of
model dwellings that are springing up on every side.
It was a narrow street of small but still respectable-looking houses,
not detached. Each had a tiny square of garden in front of its one
window, and a path of flagstones led from the gate to the front door.
The old man stopped at No. 9, opened the door with a latch-key, and led
the way up a narrow staircase to the second floor.
“Wait a moment till we have a light,” he said; “you may fall over
something in my tiny room.”
It was a tiny room indeed that Herbert found himself in when the
Professor had lighted the lamp, and, as might have been expected, not
a luxurious one; but it was as neatly arranged as a ship’s cabin, and
everything was scrupulously clean.
On one side of the room stood a very narrow bed covered with a
patchwork quilt, at its foot a tiny square washstand of painted deal.
An old-fashioned mahogany chest of drawers piled high with books, a
small deal table in the middle of the room, an old stuffed chair by the
fireplace, and a low wooden one by the head of the bed completed the
tale of furniture, with the exception of—a piano!
It was of the small, old-fashioned, cottage kind, with a square lid and
faded green silk fluting for its front. It looked thin and worn like
its master; but there it was. It proved, too, that its owner must be a
musician, for there was nothing on the top of it. There was not much
room anywhere, save on the little table, to put anything down; but the
Professor would have been horrified at the idea of using the piano as a
resting-place for anything. He would not even let Herbert put his hat
on it.
“I should like to hear you sing,” he said, going to a large square pile
of something by the piano covered with an old cloth. “Do you know the
‘Elijah’?” He lifted the cloth as he spoke and disclosed a quantity
of music; sheet music, loose and bound, and scores of many famous
works—all old, all worn, but still his treasures. He picked out a
vocal score of the “Elijah” and put it on the piano desk.
“Yes,” said Herbert. “Shall I try ‘If with all your hearts’?”
The old man nodded with a smile, and, sitting down on the crazy music
stool, laid his aged hands upon the aged keys.
It needed but two bars to show Herbert that his old friend was a real
artist. The piano’s tone was like a tone ghost; but it was in perfect
tune. The Professor saw to that himself. And his touch seemed so to
caress the yellow keys that they gave him the very best they still had
in them.
As the song proceeded, the old gentleman smiled and nodded gently to
himself, as if he, too, were pleased and satisfied with what he heard.
He had good reason. Herbert’s voice was of that rare delicious quality
given perhaps to one singer in a generation. Full, rich, intensely
sympathetic, without a trace of that metallic hardness in the upper
notes so often found in tenor voices. He sang the great solo with the
utmost simplicity, but with a beauty of expression that would have gone
straight to the heart of any audience, musical or unmusical.
“My boy, you have a gift—a great gift,” said the Professor solemnly
at the end. “See that you use it well. You may, if you choose, be one
of the singers of the world; but it will mean more than three years at
the Academy, and then to sing at ballad concerts. Aim at the highest,
and make up your mind that it must be your life work. You must let me
help you put your foot on the lowest rung of the ladder. You can climb
yourself afterwards.”
He went to the bed and drew from underneath it a small old-fashioned
box covered with skin with the hair on and studded with brass nails.
This he unlocked, and took from it a small yellow canvas bag.
“I have here,” he said, “a kind of nest egg which I have managed to put
by from time to time out of my little income. It is the exact sum you
need just now, and you must pay your first fees with it.”
“My dear Professor,” stammered Herbert, completely taken aback,
“indeed, I cannot! I should never forgive myself for taking money that
you might possibly want for all sorts of things before I had a chance
of paying it back again!”
“Nonsense!” replied the old man, rather sternly. “You must take it!
I will have it so. I should never forgive _myself_ if I allowed your
young life and precious talent to be wasted because you were in want of
what I had lying idle! You can repay me some day when you can spare it.”
“But what will you do in the meantime?” asked the young man rather
diffidently, for he felt a delicacy about inquiring too closely into
the old man’s circumstances.
“My dividend falls due to-morrow,” was the reply. “There is not the
smallest reason for your refusing to take this. Go home to your mother,
tell her everything is decided, and take care of your voice for the
next week. Shall you be at the concert next Monday? Perhaps not, if you
are kept late at your work. If I do not see you there, will you come
here the next day and tell me about it all?”
His young friend promised this gladly; and in order to cut short his
expressions of thanks, the Professor took up the lamp and lighted him
downstairs, giving him a last warning against taking cold or overtiring
his throat as he let him out.
“He is a good boy,” he said to himself as he went back to his little
room. “I am very glad I was able to do it. It is for the young ones to
carry on the world. We old ones who have served our time must stand by
and encourage the others.”
He set about preparing his frugal supper—a small loaf and a pennyworth
of milk, which he took from a cupboard in one corner of the room. He
put the milk into a tiny tin saucepan, and, as of course there was no
fire in the grate, he lighted a little spirit lamp, set the saucepan
over the flame, and sat down to watch till it boiled.
His mind was still running on Herbert Maxwell and his probable career,
and from that it wandered back to his own young days. Gradually he
seemed to live through the whole of his past life. He recalled the
early home life in the comfortable house at Clapham; his kind Polish
parents who had been driven like so many others from their own
country; his childish passion for music which had caused him so often
to be laughed at by his English schoolfellows, and the decision of
his parents that he should adopt it as a profession. Then came those
happy student days at Leipzig, with the growing consciousness of his
own powers and the encouragement of his teachers and fellow students,
his _début_ at the Gewandhaus, with the applause and laurel wreaths,
succeeded by his first concert tour in Germany. He remembered his
return home, to his parents’ joy, and his success in London as a player
and teacher, with constant tours on the Continent, during one of which
he met that lovely girl he afterwards wooed and won, to spend those few
happy years with him till her sudden death abroad.
Then followed a ghastly blank, with isolated memories of being in some
great building with many other people, who were all waited on by kindly
men and sweet-faced women, and he could remember the feeling of having
been ill and not knowing how. Till one day, when he had grown stronger,
the knowledge came to him that, for a time, his mind had left him.
He vividly recalled his return to England, to find himself forgotten
and eclipsed by others who had sprung to fame during his long absence,
his failure to obtain either engagements or pupils, and, finally, the
collapse of the bank in which almost all his savings had been placed.
At this point, as if in sympathy with his thoughts, the spirit-lamp
went out with a little “fuff,” and the milk, which was on the verge of
boiling over, collapsed too.
This recalled him from his sad memories, and he tried, as he ate
his bread and milk, to put them out of his mind and to think of the
pleasanter events of the evening—of the fine concert, how splendidly
Joachim played, and of his young friend, whose mother would be so glad
at her boy’s good fortune.
But he could not rid himself of them, and even through the night his
broken sleep was haunted by harassing dreams and vague feelings of some
impending evil.
(_To be concluded._)
ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.
BY JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of “Sisters
Three,” etc.