THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER
"She is singing an air that is known to me;
A passionate ballad gallant and gay,
A martial song like a trumpet's call."
Tennyson.
All that had been in November. It was now January—which brings me back to the Phœnix Hut, where Golden van Huysen was preparing to sing.
Advancing to the edge of the platform, she said, smiling, but as quietly as if she'd been proposing a game in a room full of children:
"What'll I sing you, boys?"
An instantaneous chorus of men's voices answered her, and she laughed. Evidently she had heard, though Olwen hadn't caught a word of which song it was they all wanted.
It was "the" sentimental song of the moment, that song whose name varies from season to season. As I write, it is called differently from what it will be called by the time you read. Once it was "Until," once "Roses of Picardy." The soul of it remains the same. "Cheap and common," smile the superior. Yes! Cheap as the air we breathe. Common as sunlight.
Golden van Huysen pronounced its present name to the accompanist, who struck four cords on the piano. Then, into a dead silence, her voice stole out.