Читать книгу Maidlin Bears the Torch - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 3

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‘And I wish to speak to Benedicta Bennett in my room, in half-an-hour.’ The headmistress ended her list of announcements.

Then she laughed, at sight of Benney’s startled face.

‘Oh, there’s nothing the matter! Don’t look so worried, Benney. I’m sorry I frightened you. I have a message from your mother; something pleasant.’ And she left Benney to think it over.

‘We wondered what you’d been doing, old Ben,’ one of her friends called across the classroom.

‘So did I!’ Benney said fervently. ‘When she called me Benedicta I nearly died. I knew I hadn’t done anything.’

‘Thought you might have been having a final fling, before saying good-bye to us for ever.’

‘Don’t rub it in,’ Benney pleaded. ‘I want to go to this new place; it sounds marvellous. But I hate the thought of leaving you all.’

‘So do we. You might have stayed with us for one more year.’

‘Oh, but I’m fifteen, and I’m going to specialise,’ Benney’s tone was full of importance. ‘Mother’s discovered this place that goes in for all sorts of outdoor stunts, and that’s what I want. I’ll never be any good at exams, because of my maths. I’m going to be a vet., or a kennel maid.’

‘You won’t be a vet. without exams, my good child,’ said a senior. ‘Not a real one.’

‘I wonder what Mother wants!’ Benedicta changed the subject. ‘Two days before the end of term! You’d think she could wait till Friday; she’ll have me to talk to then!’

She wondered throughout the half-hour of suspense, and was still puzzled as she went to the head’s study.

She was small for fifteen, with very brown eyes and short hair, which curled about her neck and was so very fair that it was almost white. Her face was full of curiosity as she looked at Miss Carstairs.

‘I have a letter from your mother, Benney. She asks me to send you home this afternoon, as she has tickets for a concert in the New Royal Hall, and she wants to take you with her. I understand she is taking your cousin, and she is anxious to have you for company for her. She will send you back to us early to-morrow, for the last two days of the term.’

Benney put in a word eagerly. ‘Clare always goes to concerts; she’s fearfully keen on music. If her people couldn’t go, they’d send the tickets to Mother, and ask her to look after Clare. But why doesn’t Father go? Or Jim?’

‘Your father has an engagement. I believe your brother is not able to go either.’

Benney’s eyes danced. ‘Miss Carstairs, is it an Ivor Quellyn concert? I mean, is he the conductor?’

‘That is so,’ the head agreed. ‘Why?’

‘Jim doesn’t like him. He won’t go to a Quellyn concert. That’s why Mother’s taking me.’

‘I don’t suppose your brother’s dislike will worry Sir Ivor Quellyn,’ Miss Carstairs said dryly. ‘Why doesn’t he like Sir Ivor?’

‘There was a girl,’ Benney explained. ‘She was Sir Ivor’s ward, and Jim was terribly keen on her. That old composer who died last summer was her grandfather—Alwyn, the man who wrote such weird stuff; I thought it was weird stuff, but Jim liked it. Jim was keen on Gail, the girl, and wanted to be friends; but I don’t think she knew. She disappeared, and Jim says Sir Ivor has sent her away somewhere and he can’t find out where. He asked Quellyn—I mean Sir Ivor!—when he met him at a reception one day; Jim knows all the musical people in London, and some day he’ll be famous. He’s written some music already. Sir Ivor wasn’t nice—Jim says he was rude; and he wouldn’t say where Gail had gone.’

‘And was this girl as young as your brother?’ asked the head. ‘He is only a few years older than you, isn’t he?’

‘Jim’s twenty. Gail was only sixteen.’

‘Then Sir Ivor was right, and I have no sympathy with Jim,’ Miss Carstairs said ruthlessly. ‘No doubt Sir Ivor has plans for his ward’s career, and he has her training to consider. It will be time enough for your brother to think about her seriously if he meets her again in five years’ time.’

‘That’s what Mother and I think,’ Benney agreed. ‘But Jim can’t see it. He doesn’t want to wait. He’s an ass—I mean, a silly boy!—not to go to the Quellyn concerts. He might see Gail at one of them. I’m always telling him so.’

‘I should have thought it was obvious. Well, Benney, if your brother chooses to sulk, the gain is yours. The concert is a good one, and it has a point of special interest. The soloist will be a young girl singer, who has never sung in public in London. She is a protégée of Sir Ivor’s, and is partly Italian; she has an Italian name, but she is half English, I believe. Sir Ivor thinks highly of her voice, and he is introducing her to the public to-night. She is quite young; you will be interested to hear her first performance, and perhaps she will become one of our great singers.’

‘Oh, good! I’ll love that! What’s her name, Miss Carstairs?’

‘Madalena di Ravarati. She’s very pretty, so you can weave all sorts of romantic dreams about her,’ the head said, laughing. ‘I’d go to hear her myself, if I could possibly get away.’

‘Jim ought to go. He is an idiot!’ Benney murmured, as she went off to tell the rest of her form of her good luck.

She repeated her opinion to Jim, when he brought the car to fetch her just after tea. The school was in a western suburb of London, and Benedicta’s home was not far away.

‘Jim, you ass! Why don’t you go to the concert with Mother? You might see Gail there, silly!’

Jim frowned. ‘Chuck it, Ben. I’m not going to any of that fellow’s shows.’

‘That’s mad. Sir Ivor Quellyn won’t know whether you’re there or not. It only does you out of a jolly lot of fun. You’re keen on good music.’

‘Oh, dry up!’ growled her brother. His intercourse with Sir Ivor had included more than Benney had told Miss Carstairs. Jim, ambitious but inexperienced, had composed what he called a Heroic March and had sent it to the great conductor for criticism, with high hopes that the criticism would be enthusiastic praise. Instead, Sir Ivor had returned the music with a courteous, but definite, suggestion that the writer was too young to know enough about heroism, and that he must study the rules of composition for some years before he attempted anything so elaborate. Jim had been bitterly hurt, and Sir Ivor’s later refusal to tell him where his ward, Gail Alwyn, had gone when she left town had been the final blow. Jim refused to be one of the admiring host who cheered Quellyn whenever he appeared on a platform, and would not go to any concert of which he was the conductor.

‘Well, I’m jolly glad you don’t want to go to-night,’ Benney assured him. ‘But I should have thought you’d want to hear this new Italian girl who’s going to sing. Miss Carstairs says she’s partly English, but she sounds all Italian. Clare will love her; she’s mad about contraltos. I’d rather have the orchestra. I wonder what she’ll sing?’

Jim had read the accounts of the new contralto. He answered the question curtly. ‘Some songs by Lady Quellyn, for one thing.’

‘The new Lady Quellyn? The one Sir Ivor’s just married?’ Benney cried in excitement. ‘Does she write songs? Oh, how jolly of the Italian girl! Is she a friend of theirs?’

‘Lives with them. I expect the songs are amateurish,’ Jim said gloomily. ‘He’ll have to put her stuff in his programmes now.’

‘It doesn’t sound like Sir Ivor Quellyn. He knows good things, you bet.’

It was an unfortunate remark, and Benney realised it the moment she had spoken, for she had known all about the fate of the Heroic March. She lapsed into contrite silence after a glance at Jim’s grim face, and sat thinking over what she had heard of Sir Ivor’s recent marriage to the beautiful young widow, who had lost her explorer husband nearly eight years before.

Then the car drew up at the door, and there were excited greetings to her parents, sympathy for her father because he must miss the concert for a stuffy business dinner, a quick change into a white frock and a hurried meal, and she and her mother were off again in the car, to call for Clare on their way to town.

When they had gone, Jim carried the portable wireless up to his den. He had no intention of missing the Italian girl’s début, though nothing would have induced him to go to the concert. In the solitude of his own room he could banish the thought of Sir Ivor Quellyn receiving the rapturous applause of the crowd.

The wireless would not have satisfied Benedicta and Clare. Clare went to concerts continually, but it was Benney’s first experience of a big evening event, and she was thrilled by every moment—the sight of the crowded hall, the gathering of the orchestra and the tuning-up, the strangeness of some of the instruments, which Clare said were the horns and the tuba.

Clare seized her arm. ‘Look, Ben! In that box! It must be the new Lady Quellyn, just coming in—marvellous red hair! Oh, look, look! Are they twins? Oh, what sweet kids!’

‘They’re too little to come to an evening concert. They won’t be good,’ Benney whispered, gazing fascinated as Lady Quellyn sat down, with a red-haired twin on each side of her. The children were not quite eight years old, but they seemed impressed by the importance of the occasion, and their behaviour, so far, was perfect. One seemed excited and kept looking up at her mother and asking questions; the other surveyed the hall and the crowd with serious brown eyes, then broke into a little laugh of amusement as Sir Ivor entered and the tumult of applause broke out. Lady Quellyn said a word and began to clap, and the two joined in enthusiastically.

‘They’re the image of her.’ Benney gazed in ecstatic delight at the three, who, with their bronze hair cut short and waving naturally, were so very much alike.

‘I’ve heard about those twins,’ said Mrs. Bennett. ‘They say Sir Ivor is very fond of his step-daughters.’

‘Do you think they’ll be good all through the concert? They’re too little to be out so late,’ said Clare.

‘I expect it’s a very special occasion. Isn’t the Italian girl a friend of Lady Quellyn’s?’ Benney whispered. ‘Perhaps they’ve come to hear her sing.’

‘I’m quite sure Lady Quellyn wouldn’t have brought them unless she could trust them to behave,’ Mrs. Bennett remarked.

‘I suppose not,’ Clare conceded. ‘I expect they’ve been trained to listen to music. I like this new hall! I’ve never been in it before.’

The applause died down, as Sir Ivor turned to the orchestra. He raised his baton, and Clare lapsed into concentration on the overture.

Benney’s interest was centred in the group in the box. She could not take her eyes off the bronze-haired mother and children. The twins relaxed and were still, one sitting upright, watching and listening with keen attention, the other lying quietly against her mother’s arm. Both kept darting quick glances up at Lady Quellyn’s face, as if to be sure she was enjoying herself as much as they were. She smiled down at them, and they turned to watch their stepfather again. It was still a new experience to them to have a father, and this was the first time they had been allowed to come with their mother, though they had often listened to his concerts at home.

‘I wonder what their names are!’ Benney thought. ‘There’s someone else with them, sitting behind. I suppose she’d take them out if they got tired. I can just see her; tall and pretty, with yellow hair. I wonder if she’s their nurse? More likely a friend; a nurse wouldn’t wear a white frock like that. Perhaps she’s their aunt.’

The overture to ‘Figaro’ came to its triumphant end, and Lady Quellyn spoke to the girl who sat behind. The excitement of the twins seemed rising; the more lively one was on her feet, jumping up and down; her sister held her by the arm and seemed to be warning her. Her mother said a word, too, and she subsided into her chair, but leaned over the front of the box with sparkling brown eyes.

Sir Ivor had left the platform. He appeared again, leading a slim, small girl in white, whose great dark eyes swept over the hall and the audience just once, then sought the box where her friends were sitting. She gave them a little smile; then, in spite of the tension of the moment, she laughed, for above the applause with which the audience was encouraging her, a child’s voice had rung out in greeting. Several others heard it, and glanced up at the family party and smiled, for the twins were clapping frantically to welcome their friend, and one was being admonished by the laughing girl in white.

Then the clapping died away and the singer, looking small and lonely but very composed, stood ready, as the introduction to the aria from an opera began. And then came a breathless hush as she sang, and her voice filled the hall and soared above the orchestra.

In the stalls Mrs. Bennett was gripping Benney’s arm. ‘Benedicta! Be quiet! I’ll take you home at the end of the song!’

‘But, Mother! Don’t you see——’

‘Yes, I see. Be quiet, or you’ll go right out into the street!’

Benney bit her lip and controlled herself by a mighty effort. Her wild cry of amazement at the Italian girl’s appearance had been drowned by the applause. Only those nearest had heard her bewildered exclamation—‘But I know her! Mother, it’s the Daffodil girl! Oh, Mother, don’t you see?’

She sat staring at the singer. Yes, she had seen her before. There was a difference; that day in France the girl’s black hair had been coiled over her ears in thick plaits, and now it was rolled up behind, low on her neck; it altered the look of her face, but the eyes were the same, big and clear and very dark, and it was same smile, breaking out suddenly from a rather grave expression, as she looked up at the twins and their mother. Benney remembered that sudden smile very well. The dress made a difference too; the white evening frock was very simple, but it was a great change from the little yellow suit and the white frilled apron which the girl in France had worn. But she was the same girl; there was no possible doubt of it—the girl who had forgotten their order in the restaurant in Annecy and had come back to apologise and to ask what they wanted, and about whose eyes Jim had made the remark which she had unfortunately understood.

‘We thought she was French,’ Benney chuckled. ‘And she went red and said, “I’m so sorry. I’m English.” And Jim felt awful! It is the same girl, and I haven’t heard a word of her song, but I know it was marvellous!’

A storm of applause had broken out. The twins in the box were jumping and clapping and shouting. The singer seemed to wake from a dream; she gave a quick, shy look round, bowed and bowed again, turned to give a special curtsy towards the box where her friends sat, and then escaped thankfully from the platform.

‘She’ll have to come back,’ said Mrs. Bennett. ‘Sir Ivor is going to fetch her. It’s a wonderful voice; I’m glad he has discovered her.’

‘Mother, it is our girl from Annecy!’ Benney pleaded. ‘The one with the eyes; Jim’s girl, with the daffodil in her hair!’

‘I thought Jim’s girl was Abigail Ann Alwyn,’ said Clare.

‘Oh, but this is another one! Mother—yes, I see; she’s going to sing again. It is our girl, isn’t it, Mother?’

‘Yes, I’m sure it is, Benney. But you must be quiet, you know.’

‘I’m going to listen this time. I didn’t hear a word of the first thing, I was so stunned,’ Benney whispered, and settled down to listen to Madalena di Ravarati’s second song, a gay little ballad—

‘Silvy, Silvy, all on one day,

She dressed herself in man’s array,

A sword and pistol all by her side,

To meet her true love she did ride.’