LADY JANE FINDS A MUSIC-TEACHER
On the occasion of Lady Jane’s first visit to the d’Hautreve ladies,
she had been so interested in Mam’selle Diane’s works of art that she
had paid no attention whatever to the piano and the flowers.
But on the second visit, while Tony was posing as a model (for suddenly
he had developed great perfection in that capacity), she critically
examined the ancient instrument.
Presently she asked a little timidly, “Is that what you make music on
when you sing, Mam’selle Diane?”
Mam’selle Diane nodded an affirmative. She was very busy modeling
Tony’s leg in sealing-wax.
“Is it a piano?”
“Yes, my dear, it’s a piano. Did you never see one before?”
“Oh yes, and I’ve played on one. Mama used to let me play on hers; but
it was large, very large, and not like this.”
“Where was that?” asked Mam’selle Diane, while a swift glance passed
between her and her mother.
“Oh, that was on the ranch, before we came away.”
“Then you lived on a ranch. Where was it, my dear?”
“I don’t know,” and Lady Jane looked puzzled. “It was just the ranch.
It was in the country, and there were fields and fields, and a great
many horses, and sheep, and lambs—dear little lambs!”
“Then the lady you live with is not your mama,” said Mam’selle Diane
casually, while she twisted the sealing-wax into the shape of the foot.
“Oh, no, she’s my Tante Pauline. My mama has gone away, but Pepsie says
she’s sure to come back before Christmas; and it’s not very long now
till Christmas.” The little face grew radiant with expectation.
“And you like music?” said Mam’selle Diane, with a sigh; she saw how
it was, and she pitied the motherless darling from the bottom of her
tender heart.
“Didn’t you ever hear me sing when I used to stand close to the
window?” Lady Jane leaned across Mam’selle Diane’s table, and looked
at her with a winsome smile. “I sang as loud as I could, so you’d hear
me; I thought, perhaps, you’d let me in.”
“Dear little thing!” returned Mam’selle Diane, caressingly. Then she
turned and spoke in French to her mother: “You know, mama, I wanted to
ask her in before, but you thought she might meddle with my wools and
annoy me; but she’s not troublesome at all. I wish I could teach her
music when I have time.”
Lady Jane glanced from one to the other gravely and anxiously. “I’m
learning French,” she said; “Pepsie’s teaching me, and when I learn it
you can always talk to me in French. I know some words now.”
Mam’selle Diane smiled. “I was telling mama that I should like to teach
you music. Would you like to learn?”
“What, to play on the piano?” and the child’s eyes glistened with
delight.
“Yes, to play and sing, both.”
“I can sing now,” with a little, shy, wistful smile.
“Well then, sing for us while I finish Tony’s leg, and afterward I will
sing for you.”
“Shall I sing, ‘Sleep, baby, sleep’?”
“Yes, anything you like.”
Lady Jane lifted her little face, flushed like a flower, but still
serious and anxious, and broke into a ripple of melody so clear, so
sweet, and so delicately modulated, that Mam’selle Diane clasped
her hands in ecstasy. She forgot her bunch of wool, the difficulty
of Tony’s breast-feathers, the impossible sealing-wax leg, and sat
listening enchanted; while the old lady closed her eyes and swayed back
and forth, keeping time with the dreamy rhythm of the lullaby.
“Why, my dear, you have the voice of an angel!” exclaimed Mam’selle
Diane, when the child finished. “I must teach you. You _must_ be
taught. Mama, she _must_ be taught. It would be wicked to allow such a
voice to go uncultivated!”
“And what can cultivation do that nature hasn’t done?” asked the old
lady querulously. “Sometimes, I think too much cultivation ruins a
voice. Think of yours, Diane; think of what it was before all that
drilling and training; think of what it was that night you sang
at Madame La Baronne’s, when your cousin from France, the Marquis
d’Hautreve, said he had never listened to such a voice!”
“It was the youth in it, mama, the youth; I was only sixteen,” and
Mam’selle Diane sighed over the memory of those days.
“It was before all the freshness was cultivated out of it. You never
sang so well afterward.”
“I never was as young, mama, and I never had such an audience again.
You know I went back to the convent; and when I came out things had
changed, and I was older, and—I had changed. I think the change was in
me.”
Here a tear stole from the faded eyes that had looked on such triumphs.
“It is true, my dear, you never had such an opportunity again. Your
cousin went back to France—and—and—there were no more _fêtes_ after
those days, and there was no one left to recognize your talent. Perhaps
it was as much the lack of recognition as anything else. Yes, I say, as
I always have said, that it’s recognition you need to make you famous.
It’s the same with your birds as with your singing. It’s recognition
you need.”
“And perhaps it’s wealth too, mama,” said Mam’selle Diane gently. “One
is forgotten when one is poor. Why, we have been as good as dead and
buried these twenty years. I believe there’s no one left who remembers
us.”
“No, no, my child; it’s not that,” cried the old lady sharply. “We are
always d’Hautreves. It was our own choice to give up society; and we
live so far away, it is inconvenient,—so few of our old friends keep
carriages now; and besides, we have no day to receive. It was a mistake
giving up our reception-day; since then people haven’t visited us.”
“I was thinking, mama,” said Mam’selle Diane timidly, “that if I did
as well with my ducks next year as I have this, we might have a ‘day’
again. We might send cards, and let our old friends know that we are
still alive.”
“We might, we might,” said the old lady, brightening visibly. “We are
always d’Hautreves”; then her face fell suddenly. “But, Diane, my dear,
we haven’t either of us a silk dress, and it would never do for us to
receive in anything but silk.”
“That’s true, mama. I never thought of that. We may not be able to have
a ‘day,’ after all,” and Mam’selle Diane bent her head dejectedly over
her sealing-wax and wool.
While these reminiscences were exchanged by the mother and daughter,
Lady Jane, whose singing had called them forth, slipped out into the
small garden, where, amid a profusion of bloom and fragrance, she was
now listening to the warbling of a canary whose cage hung among the
branches of a Maréchal Niel rose. It was the bird whose melody had
enraptured her, while she was yet without the paradise, and it was the
effigy of that same bird that she had seen on Mam’selle Diane’s green
woolen trees. He was a bright, jolly little fellow, and he sang as if
he were wound up and never would run down.
Lady Jane listened to him delightedly while she inspected the beds
of flowers. It was a little place, but contained a great variety of
plants, and each was carefully trained and trimmed; and under all the
seedlings were laid little sheets of white paper on which some seeds
had already fallen.
Lady Jane eyed the papers curiously. She did not know that these tiny
black seeds added yearly a few dollars to the d’Hautreve revenues, and,
at the same time, furnished the thrifty gardener with all she needed
for her own use. But whose hands pruned and trained, dug and watered?
Were they the hands of the myth of a servant who came so early before
madame was out of her bed—for the old aristocrat loved to sleep late—to
clean the gallery and _banquette_ and do other odd jobs unbecoming a
d’Hautreve?
Yes, the very same; and Mam’selle Diane was not an early riser because
of sleeplessness, nor was it age that made her slender hands so hard
and brown.