"Well, you did better than I expected," the young man replied, "but this one who promised to read it—this wonderful man—he wasn't the Reverend Cecil Chillingworth? I'd bet my head against that!"
"Why, what do you know about it?" asked Roland, in surprise.
"Oh, I've been having a sort of musical evening with him!" returned Waldberg, smiling. "I went in to make some arrangements about the practice for his oratorio—he's going to have the "Messiah" given for the benefit of his church, you know, and I'm to be accompanist, of course. So he got me to go over some of the tenor airs with him on his parlor-organ, while he sang them. He has really a good voice, and he is enthusiastic in music, if he is not in social reform."
"But how do you know about that last?" inquired Roland, who found it difficult to imagine Mr. Chillingworth talking freely to Waldberg. And what had become of the "important work" that prevented his having a few minutes to bestow on him, and on these grave questions?
"Oh, very easily, indeed. He began to talk about some of the passages we were going over, for my benefit, of course. And we were discussing the question of a soprano for the air 'Come Unto Him, All Ye That Labor And Are Heavy-laden,' for which he said he specially wanted an effective rendering. He grew quite eloquent; I think he must have been rehearsing a bit of his Sunday sermon. He said the world was 'laboring and heavy-laden,' (thought I, 'That's true enough') and 'that it was because men would not take upon them the right yoke. There was no end of nostrums, nowadays,' he said, (and I felt quite sure he was thinking of you and the Brotherhood,) 'but the only radical cure was the self-surrender of each individual heart to the yoke which is easy and the burden which is light.' There, you see how well I've got my lesson off by heart! You are welcome to that, for your report of his next sermon, in advance. It'll be there, sure enough!"
Roland could not help smiling at Waldberg's close imitation of Mr. Chillingworth's measured and impressive manner. But he sighed the next moment, a little impatient sigh, as he broke forth:
"That's the stereotyped way they all talk. But, how much 'self-surrender' does he get from his own 'prominent man,' Mr. Pomeroy, for instance? He could make a good many people's yoke easier and their burdens lighter if he chose! When men like that show the cure, we'll begin to believe in it. Yet he listens to Mr. Chillingworth, Sunday after Sunday, and I don't suppose he ever hears a word to wake him up to the fact that he's actually a murderer, in 'wearing out human creatures' lives.' But, in the name of all that's honest, Waldberg, how can you go through such a thing as the 'Messiah' with a man like Mr. Chillingworth, when you know you don't believe either in the theme or the treatment of it."
"Ah, but then, you don't understand Art, mein Roland; dramatically, you see, I can feel the very spirit of the music; as for the words, what matters? I rather suspect Mr. Chillingworth has a pretty good idea that I don't believe very much, and no doubt he thinks he is doing a good work in giving me some light, as we go along."
"Well, of course, you don't sing, only accompany," said Roland, meditatively.
"Oh, that's nothing," said Waldberg, coolly. "Professionals simply go in for art in all these things. I know one of the soloists, at any rate, that I am getting for him, believes even less than I do—an atheist out and out."