There is in the Faubourg St. Honoré, not far from the Hotel of the
Silver Scissors, an old house set far back in a court-yard of its own. A
gray stone wall, the height of the first two stories, protects both
garden and house from the eyes of the passer-by; and, save for the sound
of singing, the place seems uninhabited most of the time.
On a misty morning in late November Katrine clapped the knocker of this
old house with fear in her heart, for her future hung on the word of the
great teacher who lived here, Josef, whose genius, generosity, and
brutal frankness were the talk of the musical world. A Brittany peasant
woman opened the door with no salutation whatever, for the huge
Brigitte, in her white _coiffe_ and blue flannel frock, spoke in awed
whispers only, when the master was at home.
"Mademoiselle Dulany?" she asked.
Katrine nodded an affirmative.
"The master is expecting you," Brigitte said, leading the way up a wide
oak staircase to the second floor, which had been made into one great
room. It was a bare place, with no draperies and little furniture. Two
grand pianos stood at one end near a small platform, like a model-stand.
There were photographs of some great singers on the walls, and a few
chairs huddled together.
In the corner at a desk a woman was writing from the dictation of a man
who stood gazing out of the window. He turned at Katrine's entrance. She
has seen his picture frequently, and knew on the instant that it was
Josef, the greatest teacher in Europe--in the world.
"You may go, Zelie," he said to the woman. "I shall not need you till
to-morrow." And the dismissal over, he came forward toward Katrine as
she stood by the entrance, uncertain what to do.
He was a man about fifty years of age, below the medium height, heavily
built, and dressed in black, with a waistcoat buttoned to the collar
like a priest's. His hair was iron-gray, his eyes brown, and the pupils
of them widened and contracted when he spoke. He had a clean-shaven
face of ivory paleness, a sensuous mouth and chin, and when he looked
at Katrine she understood his power, for it seemed to her as though he
could see backward to her past and forward to all of her future.
Being alone with her, he motioned her to a seat by the window, near
which he remained standing.
"I have been hearing that you have a voice. I have heard great things
concerning it. I hope they are true." His tone implied that he had small
belief that they were. "You have a serious drawback. You are too rich."
She started at this. "The management of your income, however, is given
to me, as I suppose you know. Will you be so good as to remove your
jacket and hat, and walk up and down the room several times?"
Katrine obeyed.
"Good!" he said, at the first turn; and at the last, "_Very_ good!
Sing," he said, as abruptly as he had issued his former order.
In the after years she was given to making light of her choice, but the
command was scarcely spoken before she began, in her lovely, sonorous
voice, the song which it was her heritage to sing well:
"'Tis the most distressful country that ever I have seen,
They're hanging men and women there for wearing of the green."
As she sang the three great stanzas, Josef stood motionless, his lips
drawn, his eyes half shut, his face like a wooden man's; but his hands
trembled, and as she ended her singing he opened the piano and seated
himself in front of it. "Take the notes I strike," he said,
"little--very little--so--so--so!" he sang.
Up and down, over and over, listening with his head turned to one side
like a dog, he had her sing the tones, saying only, "Once more!" and
"yet again!" and "over--over--over!" At last, with a sigh, he closed the
instrument. "I am not one given to extravagance in language," he said,
"but you have the greatest _natural_ voice I have ever heard. It is
almost placed. Sit down a minute, I want to talk to you. Two kinds of
pupils I have had in my life: those with voice and no temperament, and
those with temperament and no voice. God seldom gives both; if He does,
it is the great artist that may be made. To be great one must have both.
But even with both given, one must have the ability to work, to work
like a galley-slave, to work when all the world is resting, at the dead
of night, in the small hours of the morning. When all the others have
let go, you must hold on, till your head is tired and your body aches
and you faint by the wayside; but you must never let go, you must learn
to endure to the end. You will understand me. It is the _mental_ part of
which I speak. I do not mean that you are to wear your voice or your
body out practising. It's something far harder. You must learn to
surrender yourself, to lose your life to have it!" He looked at her
keenly. She was drinking his words in, as it were, and the expression on
her face assured even him. "Do you want me," he said, suddenly coming
nearer, "to tell you about yourself; what I see in you?"
She bent her head, quivering from head to foot, before the power of this
man, who seemed uncanny in his knowledge.
"You have had some great sorrow. It is an unhappy love-affair. I
understand." Here he smiled his critical, unfathomable, remote smile.
"You are not yet eighteen, and have been capable of a great sorrow!
Child," he said, "thank God for it! You have a voice of gold. We will
make of that sorrow diamonds and rubies and pearls to set in the voice,
so that the world will stand at gaze before you. When you have real
insight you will know that nothing was ever taken from us that more was
not put in its place."
"Master," she said, with something of his own abruptness, "may I talk to
you a little, a very little, about myself?"
Already Josef realized the charm of her companionship as well as the
adoring humility with which her eyes shone into his and the
unquestioning way she placed herself under his direction. He nodded his
permission with a smile.
"I want to be taught in _everything_. I know so little. It is not book
studies I mean. I want to learn to be bigger, to think great thoughts. I
want, most of all, to develop the power to be happy, to make the people
around me happy. _Most_, I want"--she drew up her chest and made an
outward gesture with her arms, a gesture significant of her whole nature
in its indication of courage and generosity--"I want," she repeated, "to
grow soul!"
Josef laughed aloud. "Ah," he cried, "you funny, little, unusual thing!
I'm glad you've come to me. We will study, study, _and grow soul
together_, you and I. We will not accumulate facts to be laid on
shelves, like mental lumber, but grow bigger thoughts: see ourselves and
people clearer that the work may be broadened. And we will find our
ideals changing, changing, getting bigger, higher. And the little people
will fall away from us, like Punch-and-Judy shows, painlessly, with kind
thoughts, because we will have no further use for them. Wait! Trust the
master! Nothing makes one forget like a great art! In three--four years,
you will meet the man, and say: 'Ach, Heaven! is it for this I suffered?
Stupid me! Praise God things are as they are, and that I still have
Josef.'"
"I have thought sometimes," Katrine went on, "that men have many fine
traits, which, without becoming masculine, women might study to acquire.
I remember once I went to spend the day with a boy and a girl whose
mother punished them both for some slight misdemeanor. Afterward the
girl cried all the rest of the morning, but the boy went out and made a
swing, and in a little while was quite happy. I was only five, but I saw
then, and later, that women bear their sorrows differently from men. I
don't want to cry; I want to make swings."
"Very well. It is _very_ well," said the great man, and there was a mist
in his eyes as he looked at the valiant little creature. "It's a great
gospel--that! I wish I could teach it to every woman on earth. _Don't
cry! Make swings_!"
She had resumed her hat and jacket, and, with the lesson-day slip in her
hand, was at the farther door, when she turned with sweetest pleading in
her eyes. "Illustrious One!" she said, "I've not told you all. I've not
asked you what I really want to know."
Already there was between them that quick comprehension of each other
which exists for those people who have special gift.
"Well?" he said, waiting with a smile.
"You remember a pupil of yours named Charlotte Hopkins?"
"Very well, indeed."
"You changed her greatly."
"It is to be hoped so," he answered, with a laugh.
"She told me much of you: of your power, of your ability to make people
over. And she said you had studied in the East, and had learned how to
make people do your will, even when they were far away from you. Is it
true?"
"Some say so," he answered.
"It is not hypnotism?" she questioned.
"I'm no Svengali, if that's what you mean," he responded, grimly. "I'll
watch you, Katrine Dulany, and, if I find you worthy, some day I may
tell you more."
More moved by her personality than he had been by any other in the
twenty-five years of his teaching, he stood by the window and watched
her cross the court-yard below and disappear through the great iron
gates.
"Poor little girl!" he thought. "Beauty and gift and a divine despair.
Everything ready to make the great artist. And then the heart of a
woman, which is like quicksilver, to reckon with. I spoke bravely about
her forgetting, but I have doubts. Sometimes I wonder if it be possible
for a person with a fine and generous nature to become a really great
artist. Perhaps it is necessary to have great egotism and selfishness
for the arts' development. I wonder," he said, aloud; repeating, after a
minute's silence, "I wonder--"