It was a yearly custom of the Antient Orpheus Society to give what they called a soiree, to which they invited all the celebrated persons who were at all likely to come. These meetings took place at a house in Harley Street. Large gilt tickets, signed by three of the committee, were sent to any distinguished foreign composers who happened to be in London, as well as to the president of the Royal Academy, the musical Cabinet Minister (if there was one), the popular tragedian of the day, and a few other privileged persons. The rest had little cards of invitation from the members, who were each entitled to introduce a few guests.
To the one of these entertainments next following the fantasia concert came a mob of amateurs, and a select body of pianists, singers, fiddlers, painters, actors and journalists. The noble vice-president of the society, assisted by two of the committee, received the guests in a broad corridor which had been made to resemble a miniature picture gallery. The guests were announced by two Swiss waiters, who were supposed to be able to pronounce foreign names properly because they could not pronounce English ones. Over one name on a gilt ticket, that of a young lady, they broke down; and she entered unannounced with her mother. After her came a member and his party of four: Mr and Mrs Phipson, Mr Charles Sutherland, Miss Sutherland, and Mr Adrian Herbert. Then other members with their parties.
Then the last of the gilt tickets, Mr Owen Jack, who presented the novelty of a black silk handkerchief round the neck with the bow under his right ear.
The company was crowded into two large rooms. There were many more guests than seats; and those who were weak or already weary stood round the walls or by the pianoforte and got what support they could by leaning on them. Mary Sutherland was seated on the end of a settee which supported four other persons, and would have accommodated two comfortably.
"Well?" said Jack, coming behind the settee.
"Well," echoed Mary.*Why are you so late?"
"For the usual reason—because women are so meddlesome. I could not find my studs, nor anything. I will endure Mother Simpson no longer. Next week I pack."
"So you have been threatening at any time within the last two years. I wish you would really leave Church Street."
"So you have been preaching anytime these fifty years. But I I must certainly do so: the woman is unendurable. There goes Charlie. He looks quite a man, like the rest of us, in his swallow-tail coat."
"He looks and is insufferably self-conscious. How crowded the rooms are: They ought to give their conversazione in St James's Hall as well as their concerts."
"They never did and never will do anything as it ought to be done. Where's your guide, philosopher, and friend?"
"Whom do you mean, Mr Jack?"
"What color is your dress?"
"Sea green. Why?"
"Nothing. I was admiring it just now."
"Does my guide, philosopher, et cetera, mean Mr Herbert?"
"Yes, as you know perfectly well. You are not above giving yourself airs occasionally. Come, where is he? Why is he not by your side?"
"I do not know, I am sure. He came in with us—Charlie?"
"Well?" said Charlie, who was beginning to stand on his manhood. "What are you shouting at me for? Oh, how d'ye do, Mr Jack?"
"Where is Adrian?" said Mary.
"In the next room, of course."
"Why of course?" said Jack.
"Because Miss Spitsneezncough—or whatever her unpronounceable name may be—is there. If I were you, Mary, I should look rather closely after Master Adrian's attentions to the fair Polack."
"Hush. Pray do not talk so loud, Charlie." Charlie turned on his heel, and strolled away, buttoning on a white glove with a negligent air.
"Come into the next room," said Jack.
"Thank you. I prefer to stay where I am."
"Come, Mrs. Obstinate. I want to see the fair Polack too: I love her to distraction. You shall see Mister Herbert supplanting me in her affections."
"I shall stay with Mrs. Phipson. Do not let me detain you, if you wish to go."
"You are going to be ill-natured and spoil our evening, eh?"
Mary suppressed an exclamation of impatience, and rose. "If you insist on it, of course I will come. Mrs. Phipson: I am going to walk through the rooms with Mr Jack."
Mrs Phipson, from mere habit, looked doubtful the propriety of the arrangement; but Jack walked off with Mary before anything further passed. In the next room they found a dense crowd and a very warm atmosphere. A violinist stood tuning his instrument near the pianoforte at which the young Polish lady sat. Close by was Adrian Herbert, looking intently at her.
"Aha!" said Jack, following his companion's look, "Mister Adrian's thoughts have come to an anchor at last." As he spoke, the music began.
"What are they playing?" said Mary with affected indifference.
"The Kreutzer Sonata."
"Oh! I am so glad."
"Are you indeed? What a thing it is to be fond of music! Do you know that we shall have to stand here mumchance for the next twenty minutes listening to them?"
"Surely if I can enjoy the Kreutzer Sonata, you can. You are only pretending to be unmusical."
"I wish they had chosen something shorter. How- ever, since we are here, we had better hold our tongues and listen."
The Sonata proceeded; and Adrian listened, rapt. He did not join in the applause between the movements: it jarred on him.
Why don't you teach yourself to play like that?" said Jack to Mary.
"I suppose because I have no genius," she replied, not pleased by the question.
"Genius! Pshaw! What are you clapping your hands for?"
"You seem to be in a humor for asking unnecessary questions tonight, Mr Jack. I applaud Herr Josefs because I admire his playing."
"And Mademoiselle. How do you like her?"
"She is very good, of course. But I really do not see that she is so much superior to other pianists as you seem to consider her. I enjoy Josefs' playing more than hers."
"Indeed," said Jack. "Ho! Ho! Do you see that hoary-headed villain looking across at us? That is the man who protested against my fantasia as a work of the devil; and now he is coming to ask me to play."
"And will you play?"
"Yes. I promised Miss Szczympliça that I would."
"Then you had better take me back to Mrs Phipson."
"What! You will not wait and listen to me?"
"It cannot possibly matter to you whether I listen or not. I cannot stand here alone."
"Then come back to Mrs. Phipson. I will not play."
"Now pray do not be so disagreeable, Mr Jack. I wish to go back because no one wants me here."
"Either you will stay where you are, or I will not play."
"I shall do as I please, Mr Jack. You have Mademoiselle Sczympliça to play for. I cannot stay here alone."
"Mr Herbert will take care of you."
"I do not choose to disturb Mr Herbert."
"Well, well, here is your brother. Hush!—if you call him Charlie aloud here, he will be sulky. Mr Sutherland."
"What's the matter?" said Charlie gratefully. Jack handed Mary over to him and presently went to the piano at the invitation of the old gentleman he had pointed out, who wore a gold badge on his coat as one of the stewards of the entertainment. He had composed a symphony—his second—that year for the Antient Orpheus: a laborious, conscientious, arid symphony, full of unconscious pickings and stealings from Mendelssohn, his favorite master, scrupulously worked up into the strictest academic form. It was a theme from this symphony that Jack now sounded on the pianoforte with one finger.
"That is not very polite." said Mr Phipson, after explaining this to the Polish lady. "Poor Maclagen! He does not seem to like having his theme treated in that fashion."
"If he intends it derisively," said Adrian indignantly, "it is in execrable taste. Mr Maclagan ought to leave the room."
"You think like me, Monsieur Herbert," said Mademoiselle Szczympliça "All must be forgiven to Monsieur Jacques; but he should not insult those who are less fortunately gifted than he. Besides, it is an old man."
Jack then began improvising on the theme with a capriciousness of which the humor was lost on the majority of the guests. He treated it with an eccentricity which burlesqued his own style, and then with a pedantry which burlesqued that of the composer. At last, abandoning this ironical vein when it had culminated in an atrociously knock-kneed fugato, he exercised his musical fancy in earnest, and succeeded so well that Maclagan felt tempted to rewrite the middle section of the movement from which the subject was taken. The audience professed to be delighted, and were in truth dazzled when Jack finished by a commonplace form of variation in which he made a prodigious noise with his left hand, embroidered by showers of arpeggios with his right.
" Magnificent!" said Mr Phipson, applauding. "Splendid."
"Ah!" said Mdlle Szczympliça, sighing, "if I had but his strength, I should fear no competitor."
"Is it possible," said Herbert, "that you, who play so beautifully, can envy such a man as that. I would rather hear you play for one minute than listen to him for an hour."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Alas!" she said, "you know what I can do; and you are so good as to flatter me that I do it well. But I! I know what I cannot do."
"How are you, Mademoiselle?" said Jack, approaching them without staying to answer several persons who were congratulating him. "Good evening, Mr Herbert. Ah, Mr Phipson."
"Mademoiselle Szczympliça has been paying you a high compliment—I fully agree with Mr Herbert that it is an exaggerated one," said Phipson, "She wishes she could play like you."
"And so Mr Herbert thinks 'God forbid! does he? Well, he is right Why do you want to trample on the pianoforte as I do, Fraulein, when you can do so much better? What would you think of a skiff on the waters envying the attempts of a cavalry charger to swim?"
"I see from your playing how far I fall short in the last movement of the fantasia, Monsieur Jacqes. I am not strong enough to play it as you think it should be played. Ah yes, yes, yes; but I know—I know."
"No, Mademoiselle; nor are you strong enough to dance the war-dance as an Iroquois Indian thinks it should be danced. The higher you attain, the more you leave below you. Eh, Mr Herbert?"
"I am not a musician," said Herbert, irritated by Jack's whimsical appeals to him. "My confirmation of your opinion would not add much to its value."
"Come," said Jack: "I care nothing for professional opinions. According to them, I do not know the rudiments of music. Which would you rather hear the Fraulein play or me?"
"Since you compel me to express a preference, I had rather hear Mademoiselle Sczympliça."
"I thought so," said Jack, delighted "Now I must go back to Miss Sutherland, who has been left to take care of herself whilst I was playing."
Herbert reddened. Jack nodded and walked away.
"Miss—Miss—, I cannot say it. She is the young lady who was with you at the concert, when Monsieur Feepzon introduced us. She is very dark, and wears lunettes. Is not that so?"
"Yes."
"She is not stiff, like some of the English ladies. Is she a great friend of yours?"
"She—Her elder brother, who is married to Mrs Phipson's daughter, was at school with me; and we were great friends."
"Perhaps I should not have asked you. I fear I often shock your English ideas of reserve. I beg your pardon."
"Not at all," said Herbert, annoyed at himself for having betrayed his uneasiness. "Pray do not let any fear of our national shyness—for it is not really reserve—restrain you from questioning me whenever you are interested in anything concerning me. If you knew how much I prize that interest—" She drew back a little; and he stopped, afraid to go on without encouragement, and looking wistfully at her in the hope of seeing some in her face.
"How do you call this lady who is going to sing?" she said, judging it better to ask an irrelevant question than to look down and blush. Jack's voice, speaking to Mary close by, interrupted them.
"I can listen to Josefs because he can play the fiddle," said he, "and to Szczympliça because she can play the piano; and I would listen to her"—pointing to the singer—if she could sing. She is only about four years older than you; and already she dare attempt nothing that cannot be screamed through by main force. She has become what they call a dramatic singer, which means a singer with a worn out voice. Come, make haste: she is going to begin."
"But perhaps she will feel hurt by your leaving the room. Now that you are famous, you cannot come and go unnoticed, as I can."
"So much the worse for those who notice me. I hate singers, a miserable crew who think that music exists only in their own throats. There she goes with her Divinités du Styx. Come away God's sake."
"I think this room is the pleas— No, I do not— Let us go."
Mary's habitual look of resolution had gathered into a frown. They went back to the settee which was now deserted: Mrs Phipson and her neighbors having gone to hear the music.
Ä penny for your thoughts," said Jack, sitting down beside Mary. "Are you jealous?"
She started and said "What do you mean?" Then, recovering herself a little, "Jealous of whom; and why?"
"Jealous of Sczympliça because Master Herbert seems to forget that there anyone else in the whole world tonight."
"] did not notice his absorption. I am sure she is very welcome. He ought to be tired of me by this time."
"You think to hoodwink me, do you? I saw you watching him the whole time she was playing. I wish you would quarrel with him."
"Why do you wish that."
"Because I am tired of him. If you were well rid of the fellow, you would stick to your music; pitch your nasty oil paints into the Thames; and be friendly to me without accusing yourself of treason to him. He is the most uncomfortable chap I know, and the one least suited to you. Besides, he can't paint. I could do better myself, if I tried."
"Other people do not think so. I have suspected ever since I first met you in his studio you did not admire his painting."
"You had the same idea yourself, or you would never have detected it in me. I am no draughtsman; but I recognize weakness by instinct. You feel that he is a duffer. So do I."
"Do you think, if he were a duffer, that his picture of last year would have been hung on the line at the Academy; or that the Art Union would have bought it to engrave; or that the President would have spoken of it so highly to Adrian himself?"
"Pshaw! There must be nearly two hundred pictures on the line every year at the Academy; and did you, or anyone else, ever see an Academy exhibition with ten pictures in it that had twenty years of life in them? Did the President of the Academy of Music ever speak well of me; or, if he did, do you think I should fell honored by his approval? That is another superfine duffer's quality in your Mr Adrian. He is brimming over with reverence. He is humble, and speaks with bated breath of every painter that has ever had a newspaper notice written about him. He grovels before his art because he thinks that grovelling becomes him."
"I think his modesty and reverence do become him."
"Perhaps they do, because he has nothing to be bumptious about; but they are not the qualities that make a creative artist. Ha! ha!"
Mary opened her fan, and began to fan herself, with her face turned away from Jack.
Well," said he, "are you angry?"
"No. But if you must disparage Adrian, why do you do so to me? You know the relation between us."
"I disparage him because I think he is a humbug. If he spends whole days in explaining to you what a man of genius is and feels, knowing neither the one nor the other, I do not see why I should not give you my opinion on the subject, since I am in my own way—not a humble way—a man of genius myself."
"Adrian, unfortunately, has not the same faith in himself that you have."
"Perhaps he has got a good reason. A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to to cheat than the rest of the world. I sometimes wonder whether I am not an impostor. Old Beethoven once asked a pupil whether he really considered him a good composer. Shakespeare, as far as I can make out, only succeeded about half-a-dozen times in his attempts at play writing. Do you suppose he didn't know it?"
"Then why do you blame Adrian for his diffidence?"
"Ah! that's a horse another color. He thinks himself worse than other men, mortal like himself. I think myself a fool occasionally, because there are times when composing music seems to me to be a ridiculous thing in itself. Why should a rational man spend his life in making jingle-jingle with twelve notes? But at such times, Bach seems just as great a fool as I. Ask me at any time whether I cannot compose as good or better music than any Tom, Dick, or Harry now walking upon two legs in England; and I shall not trouble you with any cant about my humbleness or unworthiness."
"Can you compose better music than Mozart's? I believe you are boasting out of sheer antipathy to poor Adrian."
"Does Mozart's music express me? If not, what does it matter to me whether it is better or worse? I must make my own music, such as it is or such as I am—and I would as soon be myself as Mozart or Beethoven or any of them. To hear your Adrian talk one would think he would rather be anybody than himself. Perhaps he is right there, too."
"Let it be agreed, Mr Jack, that you have a low opinion of Adrian; and let us say no more about him."
"Very well. But let us go back to the other room. You are in a bad humor for a quiet chat, Miss Mary."
"Then go alone; and leave me here. I do not mind being here by myself at all. I know I am not gaily disposed; and I fear I am spoiling your evening."
"You are gay enough for me. I hate women who are always grinning. Besides, Miss Mary, I am fond of you, and find attraction in all your moods."
"Yes, I am sure you are very fond of me," said Mary with listless irony, as she walked away with him. In the other room they came upon Herbert, seeking anxiously someone in the eddy near the door, formed by people going away. Mary did not attempt to disturb him; but he presently caught sight of her. Thinking that she was alone—for Jack, buttonholed by Phipson, had fallen behind for a moment—he made his way to her and said:
"Where is Mrs Phipson, Mary? Are you alone?"
"I have not seen her for some time." She had all but added that she hoped he had not disturbed himself to come to her; but she refrained, feeling that spiteful speeches were unworthy of herself and of him.
"Where did you vanish to for so long?" he said. "I have hardly seen you the whole evening."
"Were you looking for me?"
He avoided her eyes, and stepped aside to make way for a lady who was passing. "Shall I get you an ice he said, after this welcome interruption. "It is very warm in here."
"No. thank you. You know that I never eat ices."
"I thought that this furnace of a room might have prevailed over your hygienic principles. Have you enjoyed yourself?"
I have not been especially happy or the reverse. I enjoyed the music."
"Oh yes. Don't you think Mlle. Sczympliça plays beautifully?"
"I saw that you thought so. She is able to bring an expression into your face that I have never seen there before."
Herbert looked at her quickly: he became quite red. "Yes." he said, "she certainly plays most poetically. By the bye, I think Mr. Jack behaved very badly in publicly making game of Mr. Maclagan. Everyone in the room was disgusted."
Mary was ready to retort in defence of Jack; but before she could utter it Mrs Phipson came up, aggrieved and and speaking more loudly than was at all necessary. "Well, Mr Herbert," she was saying, "you really have behaved most charmingly to us all the evening. I think we may go now, Mary. Josefs has gone; and Szczympliça is going, so there is really nothing to stay for. Why Adrian Herbert is gone again! How excessively odd!"
"He is gone to get Mdlle Sczympliça's carriage," said Mary, quietly. "Be careful," she added, in a lower tone: "Mdlle Sczympliça is close behind us."
"Indeed! And who is to get our carriage?" said Mrs Phipson, crossly, declining to abate her voice in the least. "Oh, really, Mary, you must speak to him about this. What is the use of your being his fiancée if he never does anything for you? He has behaved very badly. Mr Phipson is with that Frenchwoman who sang. He is only happy when he is running errands for celebrities. I suppose we must either take care of ourselves, or wait until Adrian condescends to come back for us."
"We had better not wait. I see Charlie in the next room: he will look after us. Come."
The Polish lady passed them, and followed her mother down the staircase. The cloak room was crowded; but Madame Sczympliça fought her way in, and presently returned with an armful of furs. She was assisted into some of these by her daughter, who was about to wrap herself in a cloak, when it was taken from her by Herbert.
"Allow me," he said, placing the cloak on her shoulders. "I must not delay you: your servant has brought up your carriage; but— "
"Let us go quickly, my child," said Madame. "They scream like devils for us. Au revoir, Monsieur Herbert. Come, Aurélie!"
"Adieu," said Aurélie, hurrying away. He kept beside her until she stepped into the carriage. "Certainly not adieu," he said eagerly. "May I not come to see you, as we arranged?"
"No," she replied. "Your place is beside Miss Sutherland, your affianced. Adieu." The carriage sped off; and he stood, gaping, until a footman reminded him that he was in the way of the next party. He then returned to the hall, where Mrs Phipson informed him coldly that she was sorry she could not offer him a seat in her carriage, as there was no room. So he bade them good-night, and walked home.