The song was perhaps just a shade low for him, for his voice was not that which so often does duty for a tenor—namely, a baritone, screwed up, as it were, and nailed firmly to its new pitch, but a real tenor, soft on its high notes, and with the intense purity of tone that is seldom heard except in a boy’s unbroken voice. But here there was the passion of the adult voice, passion in all its simplicity and noble sincerity. Also, so she knew instantly, that voice, so wonderful in itself, had been trained to the utmost pitch of perfection. Years of work, years of patient learning under some supreme teacher had gone to the making of it. All this she perceived almost at once, for the fine mind and the cultivated taste require but little on which to found their judgment; and then she thought no more either of the voice or the singer or the wonderful accompaniment so easily and surely handled. It was just the song that filled her: its first fine careless rapture, its more meditative sequel, its whole-hearted cry of love and devotion at the end. And on “Mein gute Geist, mein besseres Ich!” she just laughed; laughed aloud for the pure pleasure of it. Since the beginning of the scarred and maimed years she had not laughed quite like that. And from inside Hugh heard her laugh, and that pleased him enormously. He knew he was singing to some one who understood, and no applause, no words of thanks and praise could have spoken to him so directly.
And when he had finished, Edith sat still, saying nothing, for really there was nothing to say, her mouth smiling from that laugh, her eyes a little dim. And Peggy’s “Oh, Hugh!” which was all she said, was nearly as appreciative as her sister’s silence.
He sang a couple more songs, one by Brahms and the short one-versed “Am Jordan” from the “Meistersingers,” and then came and joined them on the veranda.
“And that’s the end of my parlour tricks this evening,” he said. “I promised Reuss not to sing much on days when I smoked much. And I have smoked much, and will now smoke more.”
“I wonder if you enjoyed it as much as I did?” said Edith.
“Oh, more probably, because it is such fun doing things oneself!” said he.
“You must have worked very hard. Did Reuss teach you entirely?”
At this moment the children’s nurse appeared in the drawing-room, and Peggy went in to see what she wanted. The interview seemed not to be satisfactory, for she went upstairs with her, leaving the other two alone.
“Yes, and the brute says he won’t give me any more lessons. Oh, not because I don’t need any more—he made that delightfully clear, though, of course, one knew it—but because I won’t take it up professionally!”
He lit his cigarette and turned around to Edith.
“Why should I?” he said. “We really had rather a row; he says it isn’t fair on him.”
Edith felt so keenly on this point that before she answered she had to remind herself that she had met this young man for the first time that evening.
“Ah, I see his point of view, I must say!” she said. “No voice is, as we both know, worth anything till it is trained. You owe him a good deal; everyone who hears you sing owes him a good deal.”
“But I don’t want to,” said Hugh, as if that quite settled the matter.
He paused a moment.
“Do let me consult you,” he said, “if it doesn’t bore you. You see, what has happened is that the Opera Syndicate have asked him if I would take an engagement for next year. That’s what we had a row about.”
“Did you definitely say you would not?”
“Yes, but he refused to take any answer until I had thought about it. He said I must take a fortnight to consider it.”
“And what were you to sing in?”
Hugh laughed again.
“Really it sounds quite ridiculous,” he said, “but they suggested ‘Tristan,’ ‘Meistersingers,’ and ‘Lohengrin.’ Of course, I have studied those particular parts though I should have to work hard all autumn and winter. I imagine Reuss told them that. In fact, I imagine he worked the whole thing.”
Edith looked at him gravely, and across her brain there came so vividly the impression of how he would look in the blue and silver of Lohengrin, of how that silken voice would sound in that dead silence of Lohengrin’s entry, when he turns to the swan with the “Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan,” that it had almost the effect of actual hallucination. Again she had to remember that he was but a stranger to her, so intimate in that quarter of an hour when he sang had his voice made him.
“I don’t think it sounds ridiculous, Mr. Grainger,” she said. “Of course, it is your business and yours only whether you say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ But—but I think we should all come and hear you,” she added.
“Then if you were me——”
“Ah, if I were you I should, of course, do whatever you do. But not being you, I can’t understand you refusing.”
She got up.
“Good gracious!” she said. “Haven’t you any desire, any instinct to make yourself felt? I have it so strongly. I should so love to impress myself on the world, to know that there were hundreds of people listening to me, to make them laugh or cry, to make them beside themselves with happiness or mute from pure misery.”
She paused a moment.
“You have consulted me, you know,” she said, “and so it is your own fault. I do see also Reuss’s point of view.”
Then suddenly she burst out laughing.
“And here am I advising you as to your career when a few hours ago I had never seen you!” she said.
Hugh went straight off on this tack.
“Oh, but it’s such dreadful waste of time getting to know people!” he said. “Either one knows a person in a couple of hours or so, or else one never knows him at all.”
Peggy came down again at this moment, looking as if she had been trying anyhow to be severe.
“Edith, it’s really bedtime,” she said. “Besides, I’m going to talk to you in your bedroom probably for hours.”
Edith got up.
“Nothing wrong, Peggy?” she asked. “Are the children all right?”
“Yes, only Daisy has announced her firm determination to sit up in bed and not go to sleep. That child can when she chooses be naughtier than all the rounds of the Inferno.”
“What does Daisy want?” asked Hugh.
“Oh, she heard you singing, and demanded that you should come up and sing to her, otherwise she was going to sit up in bed until morning!”
“That doesn’t sound a very good plan,” he observed.
“It’s a remarkably bad one, but her own. Daisy has great strength of character, and I’m sure I don’t know where she gets it from. Good night! Put the lights out, won’t you, when you come upstairs?”
It was a very hot night, and Hugh stood at the window for a minute or two, thinking over the evening. He felt somehow rather stirred and excited by his two-minute talk with Mrs. Allbutt, for it had literally not occurred to him at all to think of his decision as affecting anybody but himself, and the idea that he and his actions could affect other people