It was towards the end of a crowded reception in the musician's studio.
Most of the people who had come from a sense of social obligation, and
they were chiefly the mothers of his fashionable pupils, had left when
the musician began to play his own compositions; and those who remained
behind, and occupied the position of the Greek chorus with regard to his
remarks, were his own chosen disciples, who were of course privileged to
stay much longer than ordinary acquaintances. The musician, perhaps, had
no effectual means of suggesting their departure; but neither was their
homage, being very womanly and obvious, unpleasing to him; and when the
well-dressed Philistines had driven away in their carriages, he
abandoned the attitude of the debonair host and took up that of the
prophet instead, which at once gave a serious turn to the conversation.
He then propounded his own theories, or somebody else's, at great
length, and the chorus assented with a gentle murmur of approbation
whenever there was a pause. Occasionally one of the elect would ask for
some music, and the musician would single out a pupil whom he considered
qualified to interpret what he had composed; and in the applause which
invariably followed, the performer would be entirely eclipsed by the
greater importance of what she had performed.
"Isn't it a beautiful thing? Such depth," said Mrs. Reginald Routh,
moving away from the piano where she had just been singing the
musician's last song. It was an uncomfortable habit she had of always
anticipating what the other people would have said if she had only given
them time to speak; and she had acquired it from living many years with
an unmusical though wealthy husband, who only acknowledged his wife's
musical talents by sending large checks annually to the musician. On
this occasion she caught the eye of some one who had just arrived, and
repeated her remark emphatically; for the new-comer was a stranger who
had unscrupulously interrupted the last verse of her song, and was now
absorbed in prolonging the existence of a modicum of bitter tea, one
sugar-plum, and a preserved cherry.
"Is it?" she answered hastily, seeing she was expected to say something.
"I suppose it is quite good, of course. Who is it by? I suppose you
can't say, though, without looking; and I haven't really the least
desire to know. Talking of music," she continued blandly, chasing the
sugar-plum round the saucer, "I have really had a treat this afternoon
at St. James's Hall. Of course you have often heard Sapolienski? Don't
ask me how to pronounce him; I think another of the horrors added to
modern composers is the length of their names. But I'm ashamed to say I
have never heard him before; I have been abroad, you see, and I am not a
bit musical either. I enjoyed it much more than I expected though, and
you should have seen the ovation he received at the end, ladies crowding
on to the platform and throwing their rings at him! Oh, no, I am clearly
not musical. But still, as he is the greatest musician of the day...."
Here Mrs. Reginald Routh found her opportunity, and used it.
"Oh, indeed? I have never heard of a player of that name, but really
there are so many third-rate 'eskis' now that we cannot be expected to
know them all. I dislike all kinds of sentimental effusion, and society
lions, especially when they are musical ones, are singularly unpleasing
to me. There can be no flattery where true genius exists, and if we were
to reserve our praise for real hidden talent," she paused as the
musician came within hearing and repeated her last words in a louder
tone, "_real hidden_ talent, music would at last find her rightful place
of honor among us. Do you not think so, Mr. Digby?"
Mrs. Reginald maintained a superb air of possession over music by making
it always of the feminine gender, just as she did over the musician by
calling him by his first name.
Mr. Digby Raleigh, thus intercepted in his passage across the room,
turned on his heel and ran his fingers through his hair as he launched
out on his favorite theme with enthusiasm. For besides being an
interesting musician with a studio in the West End, he had views on
metaphysics and Socialism as well, and although his warm discussions of
these and other modern subjects conveyed little but confused notions to
the minds of his feminine hearers, yet his enthusiasm only lent him a
more potent charm in their eyes.
"Not yet, Mrs. Routh, no, no, not yet," he exclaimed earnestly, "we are
not ready, not fit for it yet. Socialism has to come first; the people
must be taught the meaning of life and humanity before they can be made
ready for music. Music is the end and aim of every intelligent
Socialist. The people must suffer first, as _we_ have all had to suffer,
we who do understand and are waiting for the light which cannot shine
because of the materialists who do not even feel the need of it. Life is
a problem, but we at least are happiest who see that it is so, and seek
for the solution with our--with our heart's blood."
The end was not quite so eloquent as the beginning of his speech, but
the musician had also caught the eye of the latest comer as she stirred
the grounds of her tea mechanically and looked across the room at him,
and he became suddenly conscious that there was somebody in the room who
was actually inclined to laugh at him. So he stumbled slightly over his
last words, and blushed a little at his own emotion; but the other
ladies were glancing at one another with much sympathy as if to show
that they thoroughly understood all he meant and felt, and they
evidently expected some more to follow. So he ran his fingers through
his hair again, and looked at Mrs. Reginald Routh, and tried to forget
the gray-eyed girl in the warmth of his cause.
"It is not Parliamentary reform, it is not any revolution, or series of
revolutions, that will bring Socialism. It is we ourselves who must give
it birth after much pain and sorrow, even as a mother--" here the
exclusive nature of the audience struck him, and he paused abruptly,
until he remembered that he was a prophet, and might use any
questionable metaphor he pleased without impropriety--"even as a mother
brings forth the child who is to become her joy and her comfort. It is
the spirit of altruism that has to be diffused among us, and when we
have once realized that the 'will to live' as Schopenhauer puts it, is
the one to be controlled, and that the finest of all things is to
die,--that is, of course, to live,--to live for the good of the
Commonwealth, then shall we be prepared for the enjoyment of perfect
art, and then shall the musician,--that is, of course, the _art_ of the
musician,--be allowed to exist without such sordid considerations as
bread and butter and a roof. I use art in its highest, its only real
sense, as meaning music only; such imitative branches as literature and
painting will not then be practised. I--I beg your pardon?"
"Please don't stop," urged the gray-eyed girl, who had painted certain
hot sunsets and purple mists during her travels on the Continent, and
had shown in her face what she thought of the musician's last words, "I
would not interrupt for the world. I don't know anything about
Socialism, or any of the other things you mention except painting, which
is evidently doomed. So pray go on, I find it most entertaining."
And a laugh, in which derision was plainly discernible, rang out to
bear testimony to her words. She evidently did not realize the serious
nature of the assemblage in which she found herself, and Mrs. Reginald
acquired a distinct antipathy for her when she leaned back in her chair
carelessly, and proceeded to argue with Digby as though he were any
ordinary young man, with no ideas, and no studio, and no deep and hidden
tragedy in his life which could be alluded to darkly whenever the topic
of conversation required it. And no one in the room could forgive her
when the musician threw himself on the chair at her side, and
condescended to parry her objections as though he thoroughly enjoyed the
attack she was daring to make upon his favorite principles.
"Do you not see that the language of painting is limited?" he cried. "It
has told us all it had to tell; it is not adapted to modern needs and
modern craving, though the impressionists have made a fine attempt, a
noble attempt, to make it express more than it can. Do you not see that
while music is purely spiritual, purely intellectual, painting is a mere
imitation of the common objects of nature?"
"Man and woman being among the common objects?" murmured the girl. But
he did not heed her tiresomely obvious remark, and plunged onwards.
"Is not art finer, ten times finer than nature? You cannot see below the
surface, you painters who copy nature, poor ignorant nature, who is only
on the threshold of knowledge herself. You say you can paint a tree; but
when it is done, what is it? A tree!"
"No, it is not only the tree," objected the other, "it is the picture in
the artist's mind that the tree makes. When you and I look at a tree we
see two different things,--apparently; and as I live in the country most
of the year, I am thankful I am not a musician. Voilà tout!"
"But even then? You can put into your picture none of the workings of
the human mind, none of the aspirations of the human soul. When you
have a great happiness or a great sorrow, does it help you to paint your
pictures? No, no, your painting is apart from your existence, your mind
has no place there. In the future we shall have but one art, and that
art will be music!"
"Oh, Mr. Raleigh!" laughed the girl, "you are making a world for one
kind of people. What will happen to the poor luckless ones like myself
who are not musical? I suppose there will have to be some in your
world?"
"Je n'en vois pas la nécessité," said the musician, relaxing into a
laugh too; but Mrs. Routh, who had never read Voltaire, thought it was
quite time to interfere when she could not even understand what they
were saying, and she dropped her parasol. Digby stooped to pick it up,
and she asked him promptly to play something.
The spell was broken, and the chorus round the room echoed the request.
The musician smiled in a forced manner, and said he would play the
thirty-seven variations of Beethoven.
"Oh, no, something of your own," begged the chorus.
"Yes, please, Mr. Raleigh, something full of the workings of the human
mind and the aspirations of the human soul," said the girl, merrily; and
as the musician sat down and began to play, she again shocked everybody
by walking round the room and examining the photographs.
"How exquisite, how emotional!" cried the easily moved Mrs. Reginald
when he had finished.
"Is he not bound to get on?" said the other upholders of altruism. But
the musician did not seem to hear them, for he crossed over to the girl
by the bookshelves.
"Now tell me," she said, hardly lowering her voice, "is it possible to
compose anything that would express the aspirations of Mrs. Reginald
Routh's soul? That is she, is it not, the one in the black silk who
glares at me and is so maternal to you? Oh, I shall never understand the
language of music; I wonder if you find the language of painting as
difficult, and if that is why you have acquired such an unflattering
opinion of it?"
"May it not be because I have as yet seen none of your sketches?" he
said gallantly; but she shrugged her shoulders and turned away.
"What stacks of photographs you have. Cleverly arranged too, I see:
pupils in evening dress from twenty to twenty-five on the piano; pupils
with long hair and pinafores on the mantelshelf with the pipe-racks;
mammas in velvet and fur behind the fern-pots. Ah, the workings of the
musical mind are most subtle. Good-bye; I suppose I shall see you down
at the Manor on Saturday?"
"I hope to run down for the week end; I have not seen my people for
months. And perhaps I may have an opportunity of converting you yet! Is
your carriage here?"
"Who is she?" asked some one, when the musician had followed her into
the hall.
"Don't ask me, dear," said Mrs. Reginald, with her habitual smile, "I am
quite unacquainted with the person."
"Poor Mr. Raleigh, I quite felt for him," said another; "but how
chivalrous he is! No one would have suspected how much her impertinence
was torturing his sensitive nature."
"I should not call her impertinent myself," said Mrs. Reginald,
charitably, "I think it is merely want of breeding. Provincial, I should
say. Some friend of the family perhaps; I have heard--that is to say,
Mr. Digby has often talked to me of his home in the country. Strange
that so many of our greatest men should have come up from the provinces.
Take--take Händel, for instance, or even Charlotte Brontë."
"What a pretty girl, Mr. Raleigh; who is she?" asked the first speaker,
when the musician returned, with rather a conscious look on his face.
"Ah, yes, charming, isn't she? She is Lady Joan Relton, the Relton Court
family, you know; came into the title unexpectedly through the death of
a great-uncle. Not much wealth, I believe; no doubt, all the money has
been squandered by her worthless and immoral ancestors," he added,
remembering his prophet's mantle in time to justify his momentary
interest in the aristocracy. "Will you give us another song, Mrs.
Routh?"
And, the room having been cleared, as it were, of the heretical element,
the atmosphere of music once more settled down solidly on that studio in
the West End.