“But it’s ludicrous,” she said. “I never heard anything so unfair and malicious.”
“No, he’s not that,” said Hugh. “He is only very, very much in character. You see he is a clergyman, and, whereas a judge isn’t judging all the time, but can get off the bench and commit, if he likes, the crimes for which he sentences other people, and Parliament rises for the M. P., and everybody else has their Saturday afternoons out and their Sundays off, the clergyman goes on all the time. And, do you know, I think being any one thing quite all the time tends to make people a little narrow.”
“You don’t really mean that?” asked Edith, with immense gravity.
“I do, indeed! Up to this point I hadn’t been able to get a word in edgeways, but here I plunged and told him I went several times a week. Oh, and I haven’t told you what Andrew Robb has done for me!”
“No; what except make you spend a good deal of time at the theatre?”
“Well, he’s made me determine to spend more,” said Hugh. “Can’t you guess?”
Edith’s face flushed, and she stood quite still.
“The opera, do you mean?” she asked.
“Yes. He, and the sight of the theatre crammed every night with silent, eager people made me feel what I hadn’t ever really felt when you spoke to me once about it at Cookham, namely, what a big and wonderful thing it must be to impress yourself on other people. Also, in my small way, I began to see what Reuss meant by its not being fair on him. For suppose Andrew, capable of writing that play, had not done so, how rightly indignant we should have been. So, perhaps in our own little ways, we all have to do our tricks. I wrote to Reuss three days ago, and heard from him this morning, and so I have to go to Frankfort early in October, and study there all winter, unless I can induce Reuss to come to London. I wish to heaven I had a voice like a crow. I shan’t have time for anything all winter except singing and singing and never satisfying Reuss. And what does it all come to, compared to the fact that months and months will have gone, and I shall have nothing, nothing out of them except a slightly better pronunciation of German, and a rather more finished way of leaving off loud on a top-note. All in order to sing to a lot of people who are merely waiting till the end of the act in order to see who it is in the box opposite with the diamonds. Mrs. Allbutt, do you really think it is worth while?”
She shook her head at him.