“It’s her protégée, Dana,” interposed Miss Cahill. “Edith won’t tell you the straight of it, so I shall. Edith found her already at the settlement. She was awfully poor, but she had this glorious voice and she was trying to support herself, and earn enough to have her voice trained. And she would come over Sunday evenings—she lived near the settlement—and sing for the men and women. You ought to see how they appreciate it and how they listen to her quite quietly, as if astonished and charmed into silence. She is nearly as poor as they, and it is all she can do for them, she says—I forget what she did, type-writing or something—and she was going to an awfully bad teacher and getting her voice ruined, and so Edith made friends with her in that way. She has now sent her to Alden and really supports her so she can devote herself entirely to her music.”
Miss Minot glanced quickly up in a little embarrassed way.
“Louise is terrible!” she said, laughing. “But you cannot imagine how wonderfully beautiful her voice is. It is one of those naturally perfect voices—she had always sung, but never suspected what an extraordinary gift she had until two or three years ago. It’s such a tremendous satisfaction to do something for a voice like that. One gets so tired spending on one’s self and cultivating one’s own little society voice, that can just be heard across the drawing-room if everyone keeps quite still! Alden says she will be ready for Marchesi in six months, and for the Grand Opera in a year.”
“And one of these days, when she is a great prima donna and has married a marquis, or a count at least, she will come back and patronize you and send you a box for the matinée!” remarked Cahill.
Miss Minot shook her head smilingly.
“You are very cynical and you don’t know her in the least. She is very beautiful and very fine and most grateful—absurdly grateful.”
“And she adores Edith,” put in Miss Cahill. “She has been her only friend and confidant, and she worships her and treats her as if she were a goddess, and I believe she would have her hands chopped off or her eyes burned out, or be executed quite cheerfully, to show her devotion.”
Miss Minot looked openly amused. “I don’t know about all that, I’m sure!” she said, “but I don’t think she would patronize me. Besides it would not be strange if she were cynical and hard like yourself, Mr. Cahill,” she went on smiling over at him, “for she has had a great deal of trouble already.” The girl pushed her chair back a little, and her fine, earnest face grew grave and perplexed.
Miss Cahill gave a little gasp. “I knew she had a history, Edith! She looks like it. She is awfully pretty,” she went on, turning to her brother. “I have seen her several times at the settlement, but we are not friends yet—I doubt if she even knows my name. I would like to know her, though—there is something so sad about her eyes and mouth, and her voice makes one cry.”
“And Alden—you know Alden, Mr. Cahill?—well, he’s rather brutal, sometimes—thinks only of his art—and he told her one day that she was particularly fortunate to have had a great trouble in her life, and that it would do more for her voice than ten years of training. You ought to have seen how she looked at him! But men are brutal; it was a man who made her suffer first. She only told me part of the story, I don’t quite understand, but I know it nearly broke her heart, young as she was, and that she will never get over it or be the same again. I am not sure,” went on the girl thoughtfully, “it was before she came to Boston, but I don’t know the details, and of course I could ask no questions. She met him quite a while ago, out West, I believe, where she lived, and she thought he loved her, he led her to believe so, and she loved him, I know. He must have been quite different from the men she had known. He had everything and she nothing. It was a sort of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid episode, only the king was not kingly at all, and when the time came for him to go, he left her quite calmly.”