CHAPTER IX
A CONTEST OF WILLS
Diana was sitting in Baroni's music-room, waiting, with more or less patience, for a singing lesson. The old maestro was in an unmistakable ill-humour this morning, and he had detained the pupil whose lesson preceded her own far beyond the allotted time, storming at the unfortunate young man until Diana marvelled that the latter had sufficient nerve to continue singing at all.
In a whirl of fury Baroni informed him that he was exactly suited to be a third-rate music-hall artiste—the young man, be it said, was making a special study of oratorio—and that it was profanation, for any one with so incalculably little idea of the very first principles of art to attempt to interpret the works of the great masters, together with much more of a like explosive character. Finally, he dismissed him abruptly and turned to Diana.
"Ah—Mees Quentin." He softened a little. He had a great affection for this promising pupil of his, and welcomed her with a smile. "I am seek of that young man with his voice of an archangel and his brains of a feesh! . . . So! You haf come back from your visit to the country? And how goes it with the voice?"
"I expect I'm a bit rusty after my holiday," she replied diplomatically, fondly hoping to pave the way for more lenient treatment than had been accorded to the luckless student of oratorio.
Unfortunately, however, it chanced to be one of those sharply chilly days to which May occasionally treats us. Baroni frankly detested cold weather—it upset both his nerves and his temper—and Diana speedily realised that no excuses would avail to smooth her path on this occasion.
"Scales," commanded Baroni, and struck a chord.
She began to sing obediently, but at the end of the third scale he stopped her.
"Bah! It sounds like an elephant coming downstairs! Be-r-r-rump . . . be-r-r-rump . . . be-r-r-rump . . . br-r-rum! Do not, please, sing as an elephant walks."
Diana coloured and tried again, but without marked success. She was genuinely out of practice, and the nervousness with which Baroni's obvious ill-humour inspired her did not mend matters.
"But what haf you been doing during the holidays?" exclaimed the maestro at last, his odd, husky voice fierce with annoyance. "There is no ease—-no flexibility. You are as stiff as a rusty hinge. Ach! But you will haf to work—not play any more."
He frowned portentously, then with a swift change to a more reasonable mood, he continued:—
"Let us haf some songs—Saint-Saens' Amour, viens aider. Perhaps that will wake you up, hein?"
Instead, it carried Diana swiftly back to the Rectory at Crailing, to the evening when she had sung this very song to Max Errington, with the unhappy Joan stumbling through the accompaniment. She began to sing, her mind occupied with quite other matters than Delilah's passion of vengeance, and her face expressive of nothing more stirring than a gentle reminiscence. Baroni stopped abruptly and placed a big mirror in front of her.
"Please to look at your face, Mees Quentin," he said scathingly. "It is as wooden as your singing."
He was a confirmed advocate of the importance of facial expression in a singer, and Diana's vague, abstracted look was rapidly raising his ire. Recalled by the biting scorn in his tones, she made a gallant effort to throw herself more effectually into the song, but the memory of Errington's grave, intent face, as he had sat listening to her that night, kept coming betwixt her and the meaning of the music—and the result was even more unpromising than before.
In another moment Baroni was on his feet, literally dancing with rage.
"But do you then call yourself an artiste?" he broke out furiously. "Why has the good God given you eyes and a mouth? That they may express nothing—nothing at all? Bah! You haf the face of a gootta-per-r-rcha doll!"
And snatching up the music from the piano in an uncontrollable burst of fury, he flung it straight at her, and the two of them stood glaring at each other for a few moments in silence. Then Baroni pointed to the song, lying open on the floor between them, and said explosively:—
"Pick that up."
Diana regarded him coolly, her small face set like a flint.
"No." She fairly threw the negative at him,
He stared at her—he was accustomed to more docile pupils—and the two girls who had remained in the room to listen to the lessons following their own huddled together with scared faces. The maestro in a royal rage was ever, in their opinion, to be regarded from much the same viewpoint as a thunderbolt, and that any one of his pupils should dare to defy him was unheard-of. In the same situation as that in which Diana found herself, either of the two girls in question would have meekly picked up the music and, dissolving into tears, made the continuance of the lesson an impossibility, only to be bullied by the maestro even more execrably next time.
"Pick that up," repeated Baroni stormily.
"I shall do nothing of the kind," retorted Diana promptly. "You threw it there, and you can pick it up. I'm going home." And, turning her back upon him, she marched towards the door.
A sudden twinkle showed itself in Baroni's eyes. With unaccustomed celerity he pranced after her.
"Come back, little Pepper-pot, come back, then, and we will continue the lesson."
Diana turned and stood hesitating.
"Who's going to pick up that music?" she demanded unflinchingly.
"Why, I will, thou most obstinate child"—suiting the action to the word. "Because it is true that professors should not throw music at their pupils, no matter"—maliciously—"how stupid nor how dull they may be at their lesson."
Diana flushed, immediately repentant.
"I'm sorry," she acknowledged frankly. "I was being abominably inattentive; I was thinking of something else."
The little scene was characteristic of her—unbendingly determined and obstinate when she thought she was wronged and unjustly treated, impulsively ready to ask pardon when she saw herself at fault.
Baroni patted her hand affectionately.
"See, my dear, I am a cross-grained, ugly old man, am I not?" he said placidly.
"Yes, you are," agreed Diana, to the awed amazement of the other two pupils, at the same time bestowing a radiant smile upon him.
Baroni beamed back at her benevolently.
"So! Thus we agree—we are at one, as master and pupil should be. Is it not so?"
Diana nodded, amusement in her eyes.
"Then, being agreed, we can continue our lesson. Imagine yourself, please, to be Delilah, brooding on your vengeance, gloating over what you are about to accomplish. Can you not picture her to yourself—beautiful, sinister, like a snake that winds itself about the body"—his voice fell to a penetrating whisper—"and, in her heart, dreaming of the triumph that shall bring Samson at last a captive to destruction?"
Something in the tense excitement of his whispering tones struck an answering chord within Diana, and oblivious for the moment of all else except Delilah's passionate thirst for vengeance, she sang with her whole soul, so that when she ceased, Baroni, in a sudden access of artistic fervour, leapt from his seat and embraced her rapturously.
"Well done! That is, true art—art and intelligence allied to the voice of gold which the good God has given you."
Absorbed in the music, neither master nor pupil had observed that during the course of the song the door had been softly unlatched from outside and held ajar, and now, just as Diana was somewhat blushingly extricating herself from Baroni's fervent clasp, it was thrown open and the unseen listener came into the room.
Baroni whirled round and advanced with outstretched hands, his face wreathed in smiles.
"A la bonne heure! You haf come just at a good moment, Mees de Gervais, to hear this pupil of mine who will some day be one of the world's great singers."
Adrienne de Gervais shook hands.
"I've been listening, Baroni. She has a marvellous voice.
But"—looking at Diana pleasantly—"we are neighbours, surely? I have
seen you in Crailing—where we have just taken a house called Red
Gables."
"Yes, I live at Crailing," replied Diana, a little shyly.
"And I saw you, there one day—you were sitting in a pony-trap, waiting outside a cottage, and singing to yourself. I noticed the quality of her voice then," added Miss de Gervais, turning to the maestro.
"Yes," said Baroni, with placid content. "It is superb."
Adrienne turned back to Diana with a delightful smile.
"Since we are neighbours in the country, Miss Quentin, we ought to be friends in town. Won't you come and see me one day?"
Diana flushed. She was undoubtedly attracted by the actress's charming personality, but beyond this lay the knowledge that it was more than likely that at her house she might again encounter Errington. And though Diana told herself that he was nothing to her—in fact, that she disliked him rather than otherwise—the chance of meeting him once more was not to be foregone—if only for the opportunity it would give her of showing him how much she disliked him!
"I should like to come very much," she answered.
"Then come and have tea with me to-morrow—no, to-morrow I'm engaged.
Shall we say Thursday?"
Diana acquiesced, and Miss de Gervais turned to Baroni with a rather mischievous smile, saying something in a foreign tongue which Diana took to be Russian. Baroni replied in the same language, frowningly, and although she could not understand the tenor of his answer, Diana was positive that she caught her own name and that of Max Errington uttered in conjunction with each other.
It struck her as an odd coincidence that Baroni should be acquainted both with Miss de Gervais and with Errington, and at her next lesson she ventured to comment on the former's visit. Baroni's answer, however, furnished a perfectly simple explanation of it.
"Mees de Gervais? Oh, yes, she sings a song in her new play, 'The Grey Gown,' and I haf always coached her in her songs. She has a pree-ty voice—nothing beeg, but quite pree-ty."
Diana set forth on her visit to Adrienne with a certain amount of trepidation. Much as she longed to see Max Errington again, she felt that the first meeting after that last episode of their acquaintance might well partake of the somewhat doubtful pleasure of skating on thin ice.
It was therefore not without a feeling of relief that she found the actress and her chaperon the only occupants of the former's pretty drawing-room. They both welcomed her cordially.
"I have heard so much about you," said Mrs. Adams, pleasantly, "that I've been longing to meet you, Miss Quentin. Adrienne calls you the 'girl with the golden voice,' and I'm hoping to have the pleasure of hearing you sing."
Diana was getting used to having her voice referred to as something rather wonderful; it no longer embarrassed her, so she murmured an appropriate answer and the conversation then drifted naturally to Crailing and to the lucky chance which had brought Errington past Culver Point the day Diana was marooned there, and Diana explained that the Rector and his daughter had intended calling upon the occupants of Red Gables, but had been prevented by their sudden departure.
Adrienne laughed.
"Yes, I expect every one thought we were quite mad to run away like that so soon after our arrival! It was a sudden idea of Mr. Errington's. He declared he was not satisfied about something in the staging of 'The Grey Gown,' and of course we must needs all rush up to town to see about it. There wasn't the least necessity, as it turned out, but when Max takes an idea into his head there's no stopping him."
"No," added Mrs. Adams. "And the sheer cruelty of bustling an elderly person like me from one end of England to the other just to suit his whims doesn't seem to move him in the slightest."
She was smiling broadly as she spoke, and, it was evident to Diana that to both these women Max Errington's word was law—a law they obeyed, however, with the utmost cheerfulness.
"But, of course, we are coming back again," pursued Miss de Gervais. "I think Crailing is a delightful little place, and I am going to regard Red Gables as a haven of refuge from the storms of professional life. So I hope"—smilingly—"that the Rectory will call on Red Gables when next we are 'in residence.'"
The time passed quickly, and when tea was disposed of Adrienne looked out from amongst her songs one or two which were known to Diana, and Mrs. Adams was given the opportunity of hearing the "golden voice."
And then, just as Diana was preparing to leave, a maid threw open a door and announced:—
"Mr. Errington."
Diana felt her heart contract suddenly, and the sound of his voice, as he greeted Adrienne and Mrs. Adams, sent a thrill through every nerve in her body.
"You mustn't go now." She was vaguely conscious that Adrienne was speaking to her. "Max, here is Miss Quentin, whom you gallantly rescued from Culver Point."
The actress was dimpling and smiling, a spice of mischief in her soft blue eyes. She and Mrs. Adams had not omitted to chaff Errington about his involuntary knight-errantry, and the former had even laughingly declared it her firm belief that his journey to town the next day partook more of the nature of flight than anything else. To all of which Errington had submitted composedly, declining to add anything further to his bare statement of the incident of Culver Point—mention of which had been entailed by his unexpected absence from Red Gables that evening.
He gave a scarcely perceptible start of surprise as his eyes fell upon Diana, but he betrayed no pleasure at seeing her again. His face showed nothing beyond the polite, impersonal interest which any stranger might exhibit.
"I have just missed the pleasure of hearing you sing, I'm afraid," he said, shaking hands. "Have you been back in town long, Miss Quentin?"
"No, only a few days," she answered. "I had my first lesson with
Signor Baroni the other day, and it was then that I met Miss de
Gervais."
"At Baroni's?" Diana intercepted a swift glance pass between him and
Adrienne.
"Yes," said the latter quickly. "I went to rehearse my song in 'The Grey Gown' with him. He was rather crochety that day," she added, smiling.
Diana smiled in sympathy.
"Well, if he was crochety with you, Miss de Gervais," she observed, "you can perhaps imagine what he was like to me!"
"Was he so very bad?" asked Adrienne, laughing. "Every one says his temper is diabolical."
"It is," replied Diana, with conviction.
"Still," broke in Errington's quiet voice, "I should have thought he would have found it somewhat difficult to be very angry with Miss Quentin."
Diana fancied she detected the familiar flavour of irony in the cool tones.
"On the contrary, he apparently found it perfectly simple," she retorted sharply.
"And yet," interposed Adrienne, "from the panegyrics he indulged in upon the subject of your voice after you had gone, I'm sure he thinks the world of you."
"Oh, I'm just a voice to him—nothing more," said Diana.
"To be 'just a voice' to Baroni means to be the most important thing on earth," observed Errington. "I believe he would imperil his immortal soul to give a supremely beautiful voice to the world."
"Nonsense, Max," protested Adrienne. "You talk as if he were perfectly conscienceless."
"So he is, except in so far as art is concerned, and then his conscience assumes the form of sheer idolatry. I believe he would sacrifice anything and anybody for the sake of it."
"Well, it's to be hoped you're wrong," said Adrienne, smiling, and again Diana thought she detected a glance of mutual understanding pass between the actress and Max Errington.
A little uncomfortable sense as of being de trop invaded her. She felt that for some reason Errington would be glad when she had gone. Possibly he had come to see Miss de Gervais about some business matter in connection with the play he had written, and was only awaiting her departure to discuss it. He had not appeared in the least pleased to find her there on his arrival, and from that moment onward the conversation had become distinctly laboured.
She wished very much that Miss de Gervais had not pressed her to stay when he came, and at the first opportunity she rose to go. This time, Adrienne made no effort to detain her, although she asked her cordially to come again another day.
As Diana drove back in a taxi to Brutton Square she was conscious of a queer sense of disappointment in the outcome of her meeting with Max Errington. It had been so utterly different from anything she had expected—quite commonplace and ordinary, exactly as though they had been no more than the most casual acquaintances.
She hardly knew what she had actually anticipated. Certainly, she told herself irritably, she could not have expected him to have treated her with marked warmth of manner in the presence of others, and therefore his behaviour had been just what the circumstances demanded. But, notwithstanding the assurance she gave herself that this was the common-sense view to take of the matter, she had an instinctive feeling that, even had there been no one else to consider, Errington's manner would still have shown no greater cordiality. For some reason he had decided to lock the door on the past, and the polite friendly indifference with which he had treated her was intended to indicate quite clearly the attitude he proposed to adopt.
She supposed he repented that brief, vivid moment in the car, and wished her to understand that it held no significance—that it was merely a chance incident in this world where one amuses oneself as occasion offers. Presumably he feared that, not being a woman of the world, she might attach a deeper meaning to it than the circumstances warranted, and was anxious to set her right on that point.
Her pride rose in revolt. Olga Lermontof's words returned to her mind with fresh enlightenment: "I shouldn't allow myself to become too interested in him, if I were you." Surely she had intended this as a friendly warning to Diana not to take anything Max Errington might do or say very seriously!
Well, there would be no danger of that in the future; she had learned her lesson and would take care to profit by it.