Mrs. Caffyn was not a very observant woman, but she made up her mind that she would never again write a letter of entreaty to Mr. Kelton concerning her concert. Even though the patronage of the Bowlby-Suthersts were reserved, still she would not bore him again.
The tenor’s two songs had no place in the first part of the programme, and he did not resume his seat on the platform after the interval between the parts. He always took care that his entrance was made at the effective moment—when the audience had become warmed up, but not weary; and of course Priscilla had to leave her place in the body of the hall to await his moment in the little room where tea was brewed upon the occasion of some festivity involving the brewing of tea and the distribution of buns. Here she sat with Mr. Kelton and a couple of “soprani,” as they were styled in the programme, whom Mr. Kelton made laugh by his clever imitation of Mr. Morley Quorn’s “Wolf.” He was under the impression, he said, that no concert direction was in so bad a way but that they could keep “The Wolf” from the door. But then Framsby was a funny place altogether. Fancy “Honour and Arms,” “The Wolf,” and that blessed “Moonlight Sonata” all in one evening! There was no other town known to him where so old-fashioned a programme would be tolerated.
Then he cleared his throat, and ran up the scale once or twice as he had heard artists do while waiting for their turn.
“Are you in good voice, Mr. Kelton?” enquired Priscilla. “Your song is the next.”
He smiled.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “I am not like one of those tenors of long ago who could never be depended on from one day to another—Sims Reeves, you know—people of that stamp. No, I am always to be depended on. I am always at my best.”
“And never nervous?” she suggested.
“I don’t know what nerves are,” he replied.
And then they heard the sound of the applause that marked the finish of the duet which, in the programme, preceded “In the Land of Sleep.” Priscilla jumped up from her seat. Mr. Kelton rose with the smile of a man of leisure and gave a self-satisfied glance at the little mirror. He improved the set of his collar by a deft little push and then saw to his cuffs.
“Don’t be in a hurry; there’s plenty of time,” he remarked to Priscilla. He had no idea of falling into line with the ordinary amateurs who aimed at expedition. He knew the importance of making an audience slightly impatient for his appearance. He even knew the value of opening the door leading on to the platform and allowing it to close again—giving them a false alarm or two after a prolonged delay. He smiled at Priscilla g it when, after that trick of opening the door and closing it on a blank, there was a movement among the people in the hall. But this was just where Priscilla drew the line. She detested being associated with such trickery. She pulled open the door and walked on to the platform alone, making a straight line to the piano, and acknowledging in no way the warm greeting of the audience.
She had spoiled his entree, and he was well aware of this fact. The audience had wasted their applause upon her; he only came in for the tail end of it. And he was not artist enough to be able at a moment’s notice to hide his discomfiture under the ingratiating smile of the professional, which is supposed to make the most critical audience become genial. His smile was the leer of a Cherokee when his successful opponent is removing his scalp.
Priscilla spread out the paper of the music and struck the first chord of the accompaniment. At the right moment the singer’s voice came in, and he meandered through the stanza, reaching up for his high note in the repetition of the refrain and taking it easily. There was a considerable amount of applause at this point, and upon that applause Priscilla the pianist had counted, when she ran pleasantly into that very expressive “symphony” which every one knows makes so effective a link from stanza to stanza of “In the Land of Sleep.” The accompaniment was still running along soothingly and dreamily when the vocalist once more took up the theme, and was perfectly well satisfied with his treatment of it until he got to the refrain. Then he became aware of the fact that his voice was rather strained. He felt that he must make an effort to do that high note, and when the moment came, he strained. He did not quite achieve it; every one that had ears to hear knew that he was flat; and he knew it himself. He found it necessary to resist the temptation—for the first time—of holding the note, and he finished the refrain in a hurry. Led by the Bowlby-Suthersts, however, the audience gave some applause to the second stanza; and once again Priscilla was grateful for it. She flashed into the introduction to the third stanza—the showy one, with the high A introduced twice, the second time with a grace-note that adds to its effect.
But it soon became plain that the vocalist, if he had never before known what nervousness meant, was quickly learning something of this mystery. It seemed as if his voice was becoming tired, and once there was actually a suggestion of breaking down. But then Mr. Kelton pulled himself together, lifted up his chin, and boldly attacked the refrain. In an instant it became certain that he would never be able to touch the high notes. For some reason or other, which was plain only to Mr. Mozart Tutt and a few other musicians who were present, Mr. Kelton’s voice had lost some notes out of its range. He slurred over the lower notes on the principle of an aeronaut throwing out a sandbag or two, in order that he might get up higher. He went up and up and then made a bold attempt to squeeze out the A by some means. The result sounded like the quivering shriek of a leaky steam whistle. No one, however, knew exactly what it was like, the fact being that its vibrations were drowned by the shrieks of laughter of the school girls in the gallery, and in another instant these infectious sounds had spread to the body of the hall, and there was a whole minute of irrepressible merriment; even the honest attempt made by some of the boys from the grammar school to suggest a natural parallel to Mr. Kelton’s note, failed to restore order; but this was only to be expected, considering that there was a serious difference of opinion among these authorities as to the direction in which the equivalent was to be found, a large and important section maintaining sturdily that the farmyard at the break of day provided a variety of such notes (examples given); while the lower forms rather more than hinted at their impression that not dawn but moonlight was made vocal with such sounds—moonlight and tiles, or perhaps a garden wall.
Mr. Kelton was unable to profit by this purely academical discussion, or to give his casting vote to decide which of the theories—equally well supported by the disputants—was the more plausible. His weird shriek had struck terror even to his own soul—the ravening howl of Morley Quorn’s old “Wolf” sounded domestic by comparison—and with a gasp he had crumpled up the pages of his music and dashed the parcel at his feet, making a rush for the door, through which he went, closing it with an echoing bang that deprived the scene of the last shred of seriousness, and Mr. Kelton of the last shred of sympathy which his misfortune may have tended to excite among the audience.
Miss Wadhurst, every one agreed, had behaved nobly under the ordeal to which she, as (to some extent) a participant in the fiasco, had been subjected. She showed that she was doing her best to mask the retreat of the tenor by limbering up and bringing into action all the heavy artillery within the compass of her piano, and she was smiling so good-naturedly all the time that soon the cat-calls and cock-crowing merged into applause. When she rose from the instrument with a laugh, and took her call, nodding to the boys in the distance, she received an ovation, and made a graceful retreat to a chair just below the altos of the chorus.
In another minute Mr. Mozart Tutt was tapping with his bâton on the music stand, the members of the chorus sprang to their feet, and order came about quite naturally while “When the Wind Bloweth in from the Sea” was being charmingly sung by the choir; and the remaining details of an admirably selected programme were tastefully performed.
The performing members of the choir seemed extremely well satisfied with themselves, especially the “bassi”; but Mr. Morley Quorn wore a solemn look, while his friends were inclined to be jocular. He was wondering if, in spite of the verdict of science and the agnostic trend of modern thought, there was not such a thing as retributive justice. He felt strongly on the vexed question of “lessons.” Surely the downfall of Mr. Kelton