Читать книгу Doreen, The Story of a Singer - Ada Ellen Bayly - Страница 10

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"December days were brief and chill;

The winds of March were wild and drear;

And, nearing and receding still,

Spring never would, we thought, be here.

The leaves that burst, the suns that shine,

Had, not the less, their certain date:—

And thou, O human heart of mine,

Be still; refrain thyself, and wait."—Clough.

Rathenow, the celebrated singing-master, was at first almost as depressing as Uncle Garth himself.

"The market is sadly over-crowded," he said, when at her first lesson Doreen showed him the letter of introduction from her old maestro in America. "You had better employ an agent, but you must not be over-sanguine."

"Which agent do you advise me to try?" said Doreen, her heart sinking a little.

"I should advise you to go to Freen, in New Bond Street, and have your name put down in his office; then, if anything turns up, he will let you know." As he spoke, he opened the copy of the "Elijah" which Doreen had brought, and began half dreamily to play the beautiful little fragment of chorus, "Open the heavens and send us relief: help thy servant now, O God!" Then, to her dismay, he turned the leaf and, playing the few bars of Elijah's part, bade her take the trying bit of recitative sung by the Youth—quite the last thing she would have chosen to begin with. However, Doreen had happily grown up with an innate tendency to grasp her bull by the horns. She conquered her nervousness, and her voice rang out gloriously toward the end of the brief dialogue. A curious change came over Rathenow's dark features. "You will succeed," he said quietly, glancing up at the girl's eager face. And then for the rest of the lesson he made her work hard at "Hear ye, Israel," bestowing no single word of praise, but parting with her at the end with a smile benignant enough to send her away in the seventh heaven of happiness. Sorrow and loneliness and anxiety were for a time non-existent; as if treading on air, she hurried away to New Bond Street, Mendelssohn's perfect music still ringing in her ears, and the exultant sense of the good gift that had been bestowed on her filling her with an exquisite happiness.

The agent was civil, business-like, and brisk; he might have been a clerk in a counting-house; there was nothing artistic about him; he seemed a combination of all those virtues of punctuality, despatch, appreciation of the worth of money, and capacity for bargaining in which artistes of all kinds are generally lacking. Though managing the affairs of most of the greatest singers of the day, Mr. Freen frankly owned that he was not musical. He was ready enough to admit a pupil of Rathenow's upon his books, and to accept the verdict of the American maestro as to her powers; but he himself could only judge that she was a blue-eyed Irish girl, winsome and attractive, without being strictly pretty, and with that terrible eagerness for work which distinguished almost all the younger portion of his visitors.

The next time Doreen visited the office, however, her face was less bright; no engagement had turned up. She went sorrowfully away, to wait as patiently as might be for that work which she so sorely needed. But the days passed into weeks, the weeks into months, and still Freen found nothing for her. When she had finished her course of twelve lessons she told Rathenow that she could at present afford no more.

"As to engagements, I begin to despair of them," she said, with a sound as of repressed tears in her voice, which made her teacher glance at her keenly.

"Oh, you must not be impatient," he said. "A year of waiting and practising will do you no harm at all. You are young and can afford to wait."

"But that is just what I cannot do," said Doreen. "How is it possible to afford a year's delay when I have myself and four children to support? We are orphans, and I, being far older than the rest, must, somehow, make enough to keep them."

"I have heard it rumoured that Madame De Berg is going next autumn to America, and if so, that will be very much in your favour. I think there would be some likelihood that Boniface might engage you for his series of concerts during her absence. I will mention your name to him. For the present, however, there is nothing for it but patience."

Unfortunately, patient perseverance in waiting was precisely the most difficult thing in the world to the girl's Keltic nature, and at this part of her life she was intensely lonely. Aunt Garth, though extremely kind, was too reserved to be quickly known, and far too quiet and self-contained to understand Doreen's more stormy temperament. Uncle Garth seemed to her overwrought and severely taxed brain the most intolerable combination of dulness and fussiness. The silence and the lack of mirth and light-heartedness in the Bloomsbury household weighed upon her like a pall; and the extraordinary contrast between this death in life and the scrambling, merry, happy-go-lucky home in America was too great to be wholesome. There was nothing to divert her attention from her sad memories, and her great anxiety as to the future; for Uncle Garth, like many antiquarians, was also a recluse. He found his friends in the strange hieroglyphic records of the past, and hated any interruptions, so that of society there was absolutely none in the Bernard Street home.

"Instead," wrote Doreen to Donal Moore, "of the perpetual coming and going of my father's friends, and of all the mirth that even in spite of trouble was seldom absent for long, we live through dreary, silent days. Aunt Garth is a great reader, and has learnt to make books her friends, and Uncle Garth has his mummies and things, and once or twice two old fossils have dined with us, but they could talk of nothing but Egyptology; otherwise he wouldn't have asked them, for he cares for nothing more modern than Moses."

When she had written this her conscience began to prick her, and she reflected that her unmethodical ways must be extremely trying to the Egyptologist, and that a girl who sang as she ran up and downstairs and who had a fatal readiness to chatter upon the smallest provocation, who laughed when she should have merely smiled, and wholly declined to take Uncle Garth's decisions as being unquestionably right, must be a very disturbing element. Happily, they had two bonds of union: one was their mutual devotion to little Mollie, whose sweet, sunshiny nature had made her the darling of the whole house. The other was Uncle Garth's love of ballads. He was not a musical man; elaborate music was to him a weariness of the flesh; but Doreen's beautiful rendering of her own native songs and of many of the old English ballads delighted him, and more than once had lured him from his study to the drawing-room, to Aunt Garth's surprise and satisfaction.

Then again, when all four of the children fell ill with the measles, Uncle Garth showed in his best colours. He never once grumbled at having his house turned into a hospital, but went to and from the Museum every morning, and worked in his study all the evening, just as if nothing unusual had been going on. Many men would have murmured, but the Egyptologist never made a single complaint, and looked distinctly pleased when the invalids began to come downstairs. Perhaps, in his quiet fashion, he had missed them a little.

One bleak day when, what with the trying spring weather, the fatigue she had undergone during the children's illness, the grief of her bereavement, and the wearing disappointment of each day of expectation, Doreen was feeling more than usually depressed, it chanced that she had to take a note to her uncle at the Museum. The sight of Mr. Garth's absorbed, happy face awakened in her a sort of envy. She paced miserably through the long galleries, conscious of being a mere unit in the great realm of Art, yet hungering with an indescribable hunger to "make good" her "standing-place, and move the world."

Crossing the great entrance hall, she pushed open the swing door impatiently, and made her way past the drinking-fountain and the great dingy columns, pausing for a moment at the top of the steps to watch the pigeons as they swooped gracefully down into the gravelled inclosure. Just then a young man strode quickly up the broad flight. Something in the girl's attitude and in the outline of her slim figure arrested his attention; he glanced at the pale, wistful face,—surely he had somewhere before seen those pathetic blue eyes, and the white skin, which contrasted so curiously with the dark hair and humorous-looking dark brows?

Meanwhile, the pigeons flew off, and Doreen, glancing at the passer-by, encountered his eyes, and instantly recognized Max Hereford. Her whole face lighted up,—had she not been longing to meet this sharer of her secret ever since they quitted America?

"You will hardly remember me, Mr. Hereford," she said, greeting him warmly; "I am Doreen O'Ryan."

"I was certain I knew your face," he said, taking her hand in his. "It was your height which puzzled me."

"Yes, yes, I knew quite well you thought I was still a child," said Doreen, her eyes dancing with fun. "Did I not have your fat robins and your Father Christmas cards every year? Confess now that you thought I was still a little girl with a bush of hair and short skirts?"

"I plead guilty," said Max, laughing, "to invariably picturing you in a little red cloak. But tell me, are you living in London? Has your career begun? and when am I to have the pleasure of hearing you sing at St. James' Hall?"

"Oh," said Doreen, "I begin to despair of ever getting a hearing. I was going to New Bond Street now to see if my agent has heard of anything, but always there is disappointment."

"Will you let me walk with you there?" said Max, quickly falling back into the frank and friendly tone of intimacy which they had gained in Ireland.

"It will seem very natural," replied Doreen, "to be walking once more with you, though Oxford Street is but a poor exchange for our mountains and valleys. But were you not just going to the Museum?"

"I can go later on," said Max. "I had only to verify one or two quotations in the Reading Room."

"Then your career has begun?"

"Yes, after a fashion. I am chosen as the Liberal Candidate for Firdale at the next election, and in the mean time am working my own particular hobby, and speaking now and then when there is a chance."

"What is your hobby? What do you speak about?"

"Temperance," he replied.

"I wish it were Ireland," said Doreen.

"Well, that is to come," he said, smiling. "At least, I hope so. You have my promise. And, as to temperance, why, you ought to be enthusiastic about that, for one of the pioneers of the movement was your fellow-countryman, Father Matthew,—the noblest worker the cause has ever seen. How is little Michael, by the bye? I suppose he is at school now?"

"Not yet," she replied. "I am too poor to send him. We have been in such great trouble. My father and mother died just after Christmas, within a few days of each other, and Michael and I and the three little ones whom you have not seen are living with my uncle and aunt in Bernard Street. In time, no doubt, I shall be able to support and educate the children, but this dreadful struggle for fame must come first, and it is so hard to be patient."

Max, for whom such an easy lot had been provided, felt aghast at her description of the plight in which she had been left.

"Have you no friends to help you?" he asked, looking at the girlish profile beside him, and marvelling how, with such a load of care, she endured life at all.

"Oh yes," replied Doreen brightly. "Not rich friends, but very good ones. My uncle, Mr. Garth, has a post at the British Museum, and the house in Bernard Street is his own property, so that he can at any rate put a roof over our heads; and then there is father's friend and executor, Donal Moore,—he would take good care that we did not actually starve. And perhaps the greatest help of all is a most quaint American woman who crossed over in the same steamer with us. Her name is Hagar Muchmore. She grew so fond of us all, and specially of the baby, that when my mother died she offered to stay with us for a year without thinking of wages. I don't know how the children would have fared without her."

The relief of having a good talk with any contemporary was so great that the walk from the Museum to New Bond Street seemed far too short. At the door of Freen's office she paused to take leave of Max, but he was not so easily dismissed.

"Let me at any rate hear the result," he pleaded. "If the news is good, you will want some one to share it with; and if bad, why then, perhaps, all the more you will have some use for me."

She laughed, and entered the office with the same eager hope which had so often been doomed to bitter disappointment.

"I suppose you have not heard of anything yet?" she said wistfully, to the brisk Mr. Freen.

"I was just about to write to you," he said. "It is not much of an engagement. You must not raise your expectations; but Warren, the tenor, who is arranging the music for one of the city dinners the day after to-morrow, has just been in to inquire for some one to fill the place of Miss Latouche, who is suddenly indisposed. The fee for your services would be three guineas. I should advise you to accept it."

"Why, yes, to be sure," said Doreen, smiling. "I would sing in the street if any one promised me three guineas."

The agent smiled.

"Oh, you will get on; you have a career before you, and spirit enough to win through the struggle."

"So every one tells me," said Doreen, with a little sigh. "I hope it is true. What shall I have to sing?"

"The solo in 'God save the Queen,' the soprano part in the Grace,—here is a copy which Mr. Warren left for you,—and two other songs, whatever you yourself prefer. Mr. Warren will be here at twelve o'clock to-morrow to hear you sing through your part."

In the highest spirits Doreen quitted the office, and Max Hereford, by the merest glance at her face, knew that she had heard of work.

"And where are you to make your first appearance?" he inquired, as they walked back together to Bernard Street.

"You will never guess," she said, laughing. "Not as you predicted, at St. James' Hall, before a crowded and appreciative gathering, but just to a lot of city dignitaries, after they have been feasting on turtle soup."

"No!" he said, in deep disgust. "You surely are not going to do that?"

"Why, yes, I am," she said. "Who am I to pick and choose,—I, who have four children to support! Oh, I dare say you know a great deal about temperance, but you know just nothing at all about poverty. It is a highly respectable dinner at the Grocer's Hall, and the great contralto, Madame St. Pierre, is the star of the evening. I shall be just a nobody; you seem to think I am doing them an honour in going at all!"

"So you are," he muttered, looking positively out of temper. "I hope they pay you well."

"Oh, the dignitaries have nothing to do with the music; all that is managed by Mr. Warren. I forget whether he is one of St. Paul's choir or Westminster Abbey; it's one or the other. He will give me three guineas. I am so glad it is guineas, not pounds. The three shillings will buy my white gloves, and the sovereigns can all go to the children. Why do you look so grave? Are you unhappy to think that you'll never know the bliss of earning money which you really need?"

"I am afraid I grudge you to the aldermen," he said, his eyes resting tenderly on her bright face, just for a minute.

"For my part, I think they are a very good old institution," she said gaily. "And think how inexpressibly funny it will be to sing the Grace when we have had just no dinner at all!"

"You can think of your guineas," said Max, laughing. "What other songs shall you sing?"

"I wish you would come home and help me to decide," said Doreen. "I should like very much to introduce you to my aunt."

Max was not slow to avail himself of the suggestion; for Doreen fascinated him, and he recognized the same curiously winsome nature that had so greatly taken his fancy years ago. Since then, he had been courted and made much of by dozens of far prettier, far richer, far better-dressed girls, but to none of them had his heart responded in the same way. Doreen, with her varying Irish nature, now sad, now gay, and invariably warm-hearted and courageous, fairly bewitched him.

Mrs. Garth seemed a little startled when her niece appeared in the drawing-room with Max in attendance; however, she quickly realized that to a girl brought up in America all seemed natural enough, and then, moreover, this handsome Mr. Hereford was an old friend and had known her as a child. She had not talked with him for ten minutes before she was fully satisfied that he was the sort of a man her sister would have approved of. Together they discussed the important question of what songs should be sung, and Aunt Garth having counselled something tolerably well known, Max turned over the songs in the portfolio, till he came to Bishop's "Tell me my Heart," and protested that it was precisely the song to suit the audience, who would be sure to like what they remembered in the days of their youth. He was intensely eager to know how Doreen's voice had developed, and his face, as she sang the song, was a study. Was it, Mrs. Garth wondered, merely admiration of her singing, which brought the glow to his cheeks and the light to his eyes, or was it some deeper feeling? The great charm of Doreen's voice lay in its mellow sweetness; she had no very great compass, but her notes had that fresh purity which one hears now and then in the voice of a boy, while she had gained from her woman's heritage of pain and sorrow a depth of expression to which no boy chorister could possible attain.

"That is perfect," said Max, at the close.

"I was afraid you were going to make the remark that I am weary of hearing," said Doreen, laughing. "Every one says, 'Ah, what a great career you have before you!' and the wretched thing will not begin."

"It is to begin the day after to-morrow," said Max; "and you must certainly give them something Irish."

"The 'Minstrel Boy,' perhaps," she said. "It ought to be something familiar,—something to which they will wag their feet in time, you know, which is always a soothing sensation, and conducive to applause at the end."

Mrs. Garth left them for a while, and Doreen eagerly availed herself of the chance of asking a question which had just occurred to her.

"There is one thing I have been longing to know all these years," she said; "have you heard anything more about the search for Lord Byfield's agent? or has it now passed out of memory?"

"I have heard nothing more of it since we left Ireland," said Max; "the affair caused great commotion just at the time, and every effort was made to get some clue to the mystery; but it has fairly baffled them all."

"Do you remember," said Doreen, with a shudder, "how they said his wife had vowed that she would never rest until she had brought some one to the gallows for it?"

"Yes, poor creature; I heard that her grief had taken the form of a thirst for vengeance, but the secret has been faithfully kept, you see, and she is baffled."

"What became of Mr. Desmond?"

"I have lost sight of him. He recovered from his attack of brain fever, or insanity,—for undoubtedly it amounted to that,—and while I was at Oxford I saw him once or twice; then he went abroad, and for the last five years I have been unable to learn his whereabouts."

"Do you know," said Doreen musingly, "since I have grown older, I have often thought it was very wrong of him to let four people bind themselves by such an oath. You would never have done such a thing,—you would have gone straight to the nearest magistrate and told the whole truth; that it was just a quarrel, and that the provocation had been intense; and you would have gone to prison for manslaughter, and borne it all nobly. And then you would have come out again stronger than ever to help Ireland."

"I am not so sure," said Max; "your ideal is a high one. I should probably not have done anything so heroic. As for poor Desmond, we must not forget the state of mind he was in,—utterly bewildered by the shock, and incapable of judging. He meant to shield my mother and Miriam from discomfort, and he sacrificed us. I have often been miserable enough at the thought of what had been forced upon you."

"When I feel very wretched about it all," said Doreen, "I think how it was a little like Moses killing the Egyptian and burying him in the sand. It was the wrong way of delivering his countrymen from the oppressors, and yet God let him afterwards become a true deliverer. Perhaps even our mistakes will teach us."

"You must have longed for some one to speak to about it."

"Yes; I can't tell you how terrible the craving was. The worst of all was just before my father and mother died."

"Had your father any sort of guess, do you think, as to the affair?"

"Never," she said. "Once he asked a few questions as to the condition of the tenants on Lord Byfield's estate, and actually inquired what the missing agent was like. But they say every girl with a secret becomes a good actress; I described that dreadful face, which you and I shall always be able to see, and he knew nothing from my look or tone that I did not wish him to learn. I still burn your little lamp," she concluded, looking with a smile into his face; "nothing would induce me to be without it; it has been my good friend all these years. The other night when Brian Osmond, our young Irish doctor, came to see Mollie, who sleeps in my room, he was quite taken with it, and vowed that he should get one like it when next he goes to Ireland."

"Who is Mr. Osmond?" asked Max, with an unreasonable pang of jealousy. "Is he a friend of Mrs. Garth's?"

"Yes, and of mine; that is, of course, a new friend," she added, colouring a little, as she realized how much more Max Hereford was to her. "He was very good when the children were ill, and I like him; but he is rather too grave and silent; I take great pleasure in obliging him to laugh."

"You leave me jealous, both of doctors and aldermen," said Max, rising to take leave as Mrs. Garth returned. "I must tell my mother that you are in London, and if you will allow it, we will come the day after the concert to inquire after you."

"I should so much like to show Mrs. Hereford the children," said Doreen; "and Michael has never forgotten the corn-popping over the fire at Castle Karey."

"But our kernels behaved badly, if I remember right," said Max, taking a long look into the merry blue eyes.

"Yes; it was foretold that we should agree to part," said Doreen, her face assuming a comical expression of mock gravity. "Good-bye."

"May the aldermen value their privileges," said Max. "I wish you good luck."