Mr. Kelton professed himself delighted. He was patronizingly polite in his reference to Miss Wadhurst’s “touch”—it was quite creditable, he said; occasionally it had reminded him of Wallace Clarke—it really had. Wallace Clarke was the very prince of accompanists; it was a pleasure to sing to his playing. But lest Miss Wadhurst should allow her head to be turned by his encomiums, Mr. Kelton very discreetly expressed the hope that she would spend the evening with the music, so that when the time came for her to accompany him in public she should be able to give all her attention to his singing, and not have to glance at the pages of the music before her.
“Keep your eye on me,” he said. “I never bind myself down to sing a song twice in the same way—I trust to the inspiration of the moment. My accompanist must be prepared for anything.”
“You must not be too hard on Miss Wadhurst,” said Mrs. Caffyn, smiling.
“Oh, dear, no! you may trust me,” he said heartily. “I know Miss Wadhurst will trust me. By the way, Miss Wadhurst, I think I shall sing ‘The Message’ for the encore. I hope you know the accompaniment.”
“I think I can manage it,” said Priscilla.
“It is so good of you to promise us an encore,” cried Mrs. Caffyn, “and I am sure that Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst will be delighted.”
“I am always ready to comply with an encore,” said Mr. Kelton, “but I simply decline to respond when people encore my encore. Please bear that in mind, Mrs. Caffyn. I cannot in justice to myself do more than respond to one encore, let that be clearly understood. No matter how enthusiastic your friends may become——”
“I am going home. Are you coming, Priscilla?” cried Rosa Caffyn, breaking in on the cautionary remarks of the tenor with such abruptness as caused him to be startled, and put on his pince-nez for the purpose of giving her a rebuking stare. But she was off before he had fallen into the right pose to obtain the best results, and Priscilla was only a pace behind her.
“Did you ever hear such a bounder?” cried Rosa, before they were quite off the platform. “The idea of taking an encore—a double encore—for granted! Priscilla, I would give my second best hat to be sure that he did not get even the first encore.”
“He knows that an encore is a foregone conclusion: every one encores the tenor,” said Priscilla, smiling queerly. “Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if for once—
“What are you grinning about in that way? Do you mean to get up a claque to shout him down?” said Rosa, fancying that she saw some intelligence behind the smile of the other.
“Goodness! Do you think that it would be possible to import the tactics of Italian opera into our peaceful village?” cried Priscilla. “Besides, how could any one prevent an encore being given? It is easy enough to force one on, but how are you, short of hissing, to keep down the applause?”
Rosa looked at her searchingly.
“I don’t know, but I believe that you do,” she said.
“Oh, Laura Mercy!” exclaimed Priscilla, and laughed.
Before Rosa could demand an explanation of the laugh, they came face to face with Mr. Mozart Tutt. He was smiling, but not quite easily; it was plain that he was not sure how his behaviour in regard to the accompaniment would be regarded by the young women; he had a great respect for their point of view, and so his smile was a little blurred. Its outlines were fluctuating.
He raised a playful forefinger to Priscilla.
“I am ashamed of you,” he said in a low voice.
“You need not be, Mr. Tutt. You know that I played the accompaniment quite well,” said she.
“You played it artfully, not artistically,” he replied. “The composer would be ready to tear his hair at the way you pandered at his expense to that fellow. Did you mean to teach me a lesson in manners?”
“I mean to teach him a lesson in manners, and music,” said Priscilla confidentially.
“What do you say?” cried Rosa, who had failed to hear every word.
“I only mean that in my opinion Mr. Tutt showed himself singularly lacking in tact as well as tactics,” said Priscilla. “The idea of a capable musician standing on his dignity with a man who sings without any knowledge of music! You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Tutt. You a master, and yet incapable of teaching him a lesson!”
“I think that you were quite right, Mr. Tutt,” said Rosa. “You showed the most marvellous patience with that bounder, and you were fully justified in throwing him over. If he were Caruso himself he could not have behaved more insolently.”
“I am so glad that you take my part, Miss Caffyn,” said Mr. Tutt. “I am sorry that you have not been able to persuade Miss Wadhurst to take your view of the incident. I assure you that in all my experience I never found it necessary to act as I did to-day. It was very painful to me. I wish I understood you better, Miss Wadhurst.”
“Didn’t some one say that to be understood was to be found out?” said Priscilla. “Good-bye, Mr. Tutt. Mr. Kelton instructed me to spend the rest of the day in the company of—of the accompaniment, and I mean to obey him. I think I see my way to do a good deal with that accompaniment. Good-bye. I suppose you mean to wait for your mother, Rosa?”
“I wouldn’t if you would make it worth my while not,” said Rosa.
Priscilla shook her head and hurried off.
CHAPTER II
Attention was called to the fact that Mr. Kelton, the great tenor, who had come from Great Gagglington to sing at Mrs. Caffyn’s concert, was walking about the streets—to be strictly accurate, the street—of Framsby in the morning, just as if he was an ordinary person. He was greatly looked at, and it was clearly understood that he was fully cognisant of this fact, for the self-conscious way in which he tried not to appear self-conscious could scarcely fail to strike even the young women of the Glee and Madrigal choir, who, it was understood, were devoted to him, not merely collectively, but individually.
It was a great gift, surely, that with which he was endowed, but at the same time, like other precious endowments of Nature, it carried with it a great responsibility—perhaps greater than any one man should be asked to sustain, was what Mr. Eggston, the Nonconformist draper of Framsby High Street, remarked to his two assistants (male) when he had returned to the low level of his shop work, after gazing out at Mr. Kelton, who went by with Clara Gibson, of the Bank. (Mr. Kelton was the guest of the Gibsons of the Bank—the Gibsons of the Bank were said to be “very musical.”) Perhaps there was something in the Nonconformist judgment on this point, and perhaps there was also something in the view taken of the whole case of Mr. Kelton and his assumptions by the friends of Mr. Mozart Tutt, and crystallized into the one word “puppy!”
At any rate, during the day (the concert was to begin at eight o’clock in the evening) the topic of the town was the quarrel—perhaps it should rather be called an artistic misunderstanding—between Mr. Tutt and Mr. Kelton; and of course it was inevitable that the action of Miss Wadhurst in coming forward to play the accompaniment when Mr. Tutt had felt