"Broken Music"

“ BROKEN MUSIC ”
By Phyllis Bottome , Author of “The Imperfect Gift,” “Crooked Answers,” “The Common Chord,” etc.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE 1914
Printed in Great Britain
DEDICATION
“ To the Memory of the Siegfried Idyll ”
The material for the French life in this book I owe entirely to a friend, without whose knowledge and assistance it would not have been written, but whose name I am not at liberty to disclose.
The faults of the work are my own, but the merit, if there is any merit, is his; if there is not, the misfortune is his as well as the public’s, since an abler hand should have made something of the material he placed at my disposal.
The actual characters are not, as children say of fairy tales, “true”; but many of them belong to that system of parallel cases which runs side by side with the truth.
“SO she’s sent for you too, has she?” said the doctor. Of course he knew that Miss Prenderghast must have sent for Monsieur le Curé as she had sent for the doctor himself, for neither of them would have gone to the Castle uninvited. They would have cheerfully borne with many things for the sake of Jean D’Ucelles, but they would not have gone uninvited to see his aunt, especially not for déjeuner .
The Curé hesitated; if he could have made a mystery out of his invitation he would have done so; he loved mysteries quite as much as the doctor loved probing them, but he was not quite such an adept at inventing them—he preferred those which had been already invented for him.
“She intimated that she desired to see me,” he cautiously replied. “I could have refused, but she is, as we all know, alas! a Protestant, and as such her soul is in hourly peril. I said to myself: ‘Perhaps this is an awakening to the truth.’ It’s true I should have preferred to go up to the Castle after déjeuner . It is a strange thing—I have often remarked it—that Protestants enjoy neither the fruits of the spirit nor the fruits of the earth. It was not so always at the Château. I can remember well enough in the late Baron’s time what a table she kept—the poor young English wife—even in his absence. She was not born a Catholic, it is true; but she became one. She spared no expense, and she had a great respect for the clergy. She was always telling me to take care of myself. She had a cook trained in Paris.”