Michael laughed.
“When you have finished drivelling,” he said, “you might let me know.”
“I have finished drivelling, Michael. I was thinking about something else.”
“Not really?”
“Really.”
“Then it was impolite of you, but you haven’t any manners. I was talking about my career. I want to do something, and these large hands are really rather nimble. But I must be taught. The question is whether you will teach me.”
Falbe hesitated.
“I can’t tell you,” he said, “till I have heard you play. It’s like this: I can’t teach you to play unless you know how, and I can’t tell if you know how until I have heard you. If you have got that particular sort of temperament that can put itself into the notes out of the ends of your fingers, I can teach you, and I will. But if you haven’t, I shall feel bound to advise you to try the Jew’s harp, and see if you can get it out of your teeth. I’m not mocking you; I fancy you know that. But some people, however keenly and rightly they feel, cannot bring their feelings out through their fingers. Others can; it is a special gift. If you haven’t got it, I can’t teach you anything, and there is no use in wasting your time and mine. You can teach yourself to be frightfully nimble with your fingers, and all the people who don’t know will say: ‘How divinely Lord Comber plays! That sweet thing; is it Brahms or Mendelssohn?’ But I can’t really help you towards that; you can do that for yourself. But if you’ve got the other, I can and will teach you all that you really know already.”
“Go on!” said Michael.
“That’s just the devil with the piano,” said Falbe. “It’s the easiest instrument of all to make a show on, and it is the rarest sort of person who can play on it. That’s why, all those years, I have hated giving lessons. If one has to, as I have had to, one must take any awful miss with a pigtail, and make a sham pianist of her. One can always do that. But it would be waste of time for you and me; you wouldn’t want to be made a sham pianist, and simply I wouldn’t make you one.”