“Ah! Yes,” murmured Audrey, fatally struck, but admirably dissembling, for she was determined to achieve the evening successfully. “Madame Piriac, will she come to-night?”
“I fear not,” replied Madame Foa. “She would if she could.”
“I should so like to have seen her again,” said Audrey eagerly. She was so relieved at Madame Piriac’s not coming that she felt she could afford to be eager.
And Monsieur Foa, a little distance off, threw a sign into the duologue, and called:
“You permit me? Your dress ... Exquise! Exquise! And these pigs of French persist in saying that the English lack taste!” He clapped his hand to his forehead in despair of the French.
Then the clanging sound supervened, and the little fox-terrier yapped, and Monsieur Foa went out, ejaculating “Ah!” and Madame Foa went into the doorway. Audrey glanced round for Musa, but he was out of sight in the dining-room. Several people turned at once and spoke to her, including two composers who had probably composed more impossibilities for amateur pianists than any other two men who ever lived, and a musical critic with large dark eyes and an Eastern air, who had come from the Opera very sarcastic about the Opera. One of the composers asked the critic whether he had not heard Musa play.
“Yes,” said the critic. “I heard him in the Ternes Quarter—somewhere. He plays very agreeably. Madame,” he addressed Audrey. “I was discussing with these gentlemen whether it be not possible to define the principle of beauty in music. Once it is defined, my trade will be much simplified, you see. What say you?”
How could she discourse on the principle of beauty in music when she had the whole weight of the evening on her shoulders? Musa was the whole weight of the evening. Would he succeed? She was his mother, his manager, his creator. He was her handiwork. If he failed she would have failed. That was her sole interest in him, but it was an overwhelming interest. When would he be asked to play? Useless for them to flatter her about her dress, to treat her like a rarity, if they offered callous, careless, off-hand remarks, such as “He plays very agreeably.”
She stammered:
“I—I only know what I like.”