I
The last notes of “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!”—sung as no other boy on earth could sing it—had just died away in a storm of applause. Now and again the surge of voices reached the green-room in a muffled roar, where Eric was protesting to the Manager that nothing would induce him to sing another note that night. “They’ve had four songs,” he said, “what on earth do they want more? As it is, I shall break my voice some day in that confounded hall. It was never meant for a boy to sing in—all wood and iron and glass—with nothing to help you or carry the voice. No! I won’t sing, that’s flat; tell them I’m ill, or my mother’s come for me, or anything you like. Sing again, I won’t.” “Yes, I’ll tell them your mother’s come for you,” said the Manager with a laugh, “but, remember, they’ll be clamouring for ‘A boy’s best friend is his mother’ if I do.”
As if to confirm Eric in his determination there came a knock at the door, and a boyish face peeped in. “Sorry, Hudson, if I’ve interrupted business, but they told me the show was over, and I want Eric for supper. By the way, you can come too, if you like. Andrews and Thorne are there already, and have finished supper by this time, I expect. But there’ll be some champagne and lobster-salad left for us.”
“Thanks, Lord Eastonville, I’ll come with pleasure, but I must first go and quiet these lunatics. They’re roaring for Eric like a lioness robbed of her cub.”
Ten minutes later the three were entering a room in Hope Square, so rich in its decorations of china, tapestries, and antique bronzes that it might have been transported by a slave of the lamp direct from Aladdin’s palace, or have done duty for a catalogue of Roman luxury: “The merchandise of gold and silver and precious stones and of pearls and fine linen and silk and scarlet and all manner of vessels of most precious wood and of brass and iron and marble and frankincense, and souls of men.”
By the fire (for it was early in May) stood an oval table, covered with old glass and silver in pleasant confusion. The fruit—a distinctive feature—piled artistically in a ribbed basket of the Queen Anne period, not disposed at the rate of four apples here, flanked by four oranges there, after the fashion dear to the soul of the British householder when he calls his neighbours to a feast.
The three new comers were greeted with a round of applause as hearty in spirit as the cheer which had followed them from the hall.
“Why, Bindo, you’ve the very boy we’ve been longing for. We’ve finished supper and used up our talk, and it’s too late for a theatre and too early for bed. Singing will just fill the interval before cards.”
“Not a note from me, Thorne, till I’ve had some supper. I must clear my throat from the dust of the hall with champagne first. Why you’re as bad as the audience, who think that songs can be pumped out of one as easily as you can get squeaks out of a gutta-percha doll.”
While Eric is better employed we can introduce the party.
Lord Eastonville, who owns the rooms, is a thorough gentleman of the well-bred English type, with brains enough to carry him safely through life—good-looking, generous, easy-going to a fault, and twenty-five. Too fond, it may be, of taking his ease, as all well-to-do Englishmen are now-a-days, but a man who could fight for his country, as in the old Crimean times, when war galvanised our lethargy into life. War is no unmixed evil; it carries with it a blessing in disguise. It is the scare and shadow of war that is the curse without the blessing.
Thorne, as a minute in his company would prove to you, is a hard-headed journalist; witty, and an excellent talker; facile, of course, with his pen, and ready to turn out a new theology as easily as he could write an article on the last discovered butterfly or grub.
Andrews is a graduate of London University, spending with Eastonville the remnant of a holiday. Fairly humorous and incorrigibly deaf—never more so (his friends say) than when a subject bores him—he is himself a trifle of a bore to-night. In his latest translation of Vergil “ploughed with a team” has become in the hands of the printers “ploughed with steam,” an anachronism that pleases him mightily.
He is also sorely exercised over the term “Prolegomena,” used in connexion with our classical editions. “Either the word’s bad Greek,” he says, “or else it’s rank nonsense. ‘Things that are being said before’ means just nothing at all. What they want is a Perfect, ‘things that have been said beforehand,’ which is not only more grammatical, but also (he adds with a chuckle) much more descriptive of prefaces in general.”
“Well, I don’t understand Greek and Latin,” said Thorne, “so suppose we talk English. I have been studying you carefully, Bindo, and have come to the conclusion that you look highly picturesque among all that fruit and flowers. I wonder what made you so good looking; was your father particularly lovely?”
“Neither my father nor my mother, Thorne, though she has contrived to marry again; and the consequence is I’m not so well looked after as I ought to have been, else I shouldn’t be here to-night. Fate, I think, must have made a judicious blend of the best points in his face with the best features of hers. And the result is me.”
“First class grammar, Bindo. She must have sent you to a good school at any rate.”
“Anything else to ask, old man? You seem to be in an inquisitive mood to-night.”
“Yes; who taught you to sing?”
“Le bon Dieu, I suppose, as Patti said. I had only the training of a country choir boy. By the by, my master’s name was Thorne, a matter full of interest to you. I believe I sang by intuition.”
“A Hamiltonian philosopher,” muttered Andrews, “only he has developed theory into practice.”
“Anyhow, when your voice goes I shall put on mourning,” said Eastonville, “not black, for I don’t believe in it. Purple’s the farthest I can go.”
“You may put on white or canary yellow, like a heathen Chinee, for all I care.”
“Don’t lose your temper, Bindo.”
And Eric, alias Bindo, how shall I describe him? A fair boy, delicate looking, but with lungs that can fill the biggest concert room in London, with wavy golden hair flung back on his forehead, and the long dreamy eyes so dear to the soul of Raphael. In fact, it was Raphael’s picture of Bindo Altoviti (long supposed to be a portrait of the painter) that had won him his name. Framed in the cabin window of a Bournemouth steamer (excursion boats in these days do not condescend to port holes), his arms resting on the sill, the resemblance had struck me irresistibly. From that day he became “Bindo” to all of us, and would scarcely have recognised an appeal to him as “Eric,” if we had lighted on the name by accident. His hair perhaps was one of his most telling points. It reflected under strong lights brilliant flakes of gold, isolated like the motes that are suspended in certain liqueurs.
But after all it was his manner that took so much with all his friends. He had the timid deprecating caress of a half-tamed animal, like Hawthorne’s Donatello before he had won himself a soul. Alas! poor Bindo was hardly allowed time to win it.
“And what was the show like to-night, Bindo?” asked Eastonville.
“Oh, the same old game. Nothing would suit them out of sixty songs but ‘Jerusalem,’ ‘Rags and Tatters,’ and ‘Home, sweet Home.’ They don’t mind ‘A boy’s best friend’ for an encore when they are in a strictly domestic mood. But anything really worth singing they won’t look at.”
“Well, we’ll follow their better mood and have ‘Jerusalem.’ You’ve got back your voice by now, old chap, and we’ve been waiting for you patiently this last half-hour or more.”
Once again that night the glorious voice rang out into the thin air, startling the silent square. Windows were hastily flung up, and the word “Bindo” was passed from sill to sill. Even a drowsy canary was stimulated to try a note or two in emulation of a method more attractive than its own. And through the open window came, for an accompaniment, the voice of London, soft as the murmur of a far-off sea.
With the end of the song a sharp rattle of applause ran round the square, marked by distinctive intervals, like the volley at a soldier’s funeral.
“Bravo, Bindo,” said Eastonville, “it would pay you to send the hat round to-night. Here’s a fiver, young ’un, to open the bank with, though why I should give it you passes my comprehension. A boy who can earn ten pounds a night at sixteen is a sight better off than I am. If you lose it, you’ll have to try the others. I’m pretty well cleared out. After all you’re detestable, Bindo. Just when we want you most, your voice will be gone, and you’ll have spoiled us for all other singing, precisely as the great Sarah has spoiled us for any acting but her own. If we could only forget and start fresh with each week, how nice and pleasant everything would be. I believe Nelly is right in ‘Cometh up,’ when she says that memory is often a cruel gift. No one would choose to remember a feeble show, or to spoil his enjoyment of average singing by a recollection of the best. Why are ‘Jack Sheppard’ and ‘Geneviève de Brabant’ practically withdrawn from the London stage? Because elderly playgoers cannot forget the days when Mrs. Keeley played ‘Jack,’ or when Emily Soldene and the Dolaro drew all Mayfair to Islington by the witchery of a serenade. But now for ‘A boy’s best friend’—we’re all in a domestic mood to-night—and then cards.”