The Challoners

by E. F. Benson

“I know it is,” he said. “I can just, just see that. I think I had better try to be a little man for a change.”

The hall was crammed to overflowing, as if some pianist of world-wide fame was to make his appearance, and not a young man who had never performed in public before. Several causes had contributed to this, the first and most important being that Mr. Martin Challoner was actually a pupil of Karl Rusoff’s, who for years had never consented to teach. Furthermore, Karl Rusoff had the very highest opinion of him,—exaggeratedly high perhaps, since he was his pupil,—and had not only allowed, but wished him to give a concert. Surely, then, he would run no risks; Martin Challoner must have some merit. In addition, no English pianist of more than mediocre powers had appeared for years, and patriotism called. Finally, for the last fortnight Lady Sunningdale had worn her coachman to a shadow and her horses to skin and bones, so incessantly and unintermittently had she driven about, first of all to the houses of her intimates, then of her ordinary friends, and lastly of the merest acquaintances, practically insisting that they should all appear. Karl Rusoff had done what he could to discourage this, but his efforts were totally void of effect, for Lady Sunningdale had told him that it was her “duty” to do her best for Martin. She seldom used the word “duty,” but when she did, it might be defined as anything she was irrevocably determined to do, from which no argument could move her.

So for the first time Martin found himself in that unspeakable position of being alone on the shore of a sea of faces, the owners of which had paid money in anticipation of the pleasure he had undertaken to provide for them. Opposite him, a few yards off only, but looking misty and unreal, was the Steinway Grand, and he found himself wondering what on earth it was for. When he remembered, he felt towards it as a condemned man may feel when he sees the execution shed, at a few minutes before eight. Then he bowed in answer to a very fair reception, and walked straight to the piano. He glanced at his programme, and saw he had to begin with Schumann’s “Études Symphoniques.” He sat down, waited a moment for silence, and began.

He played one bar only and then stopped. He had not the very faintest idea of how it went on, and in a sort of mild despair—he felt as if his powers of feeling were packed in cotton wool—looked down to where Karl was sitting in the third row. Those great grey eyes were fixed on him with an expression of supreme appeal; he could see the master’s hands clutching convulsively at the back of the seat in front of him. And at that sight, at the sight of the agony Karl was in, Martin was able for one moment to forget himself and all the bewildering crowd of faces. So, fighting against the paralysis that was on him, no longer for his own sake, but for Karl’s, he again turned to the piano.

But still he could think of nothing, nothing; he could not even remember the first bar that he had played just now, and he bit his lip with his teeth till the blood came, saying to himself, “It will break his heart; it will break his heart.” The numb, dulled sense was gone, in that half-minute he endured an agony of years.

Then, quite suddenly, like the passage of the sun from behind some black cloud, all came back to him, and he sat still a moment longer, in sheer happiness. At the concentrated thought of what Karl was suffering, his nervousness, his paralysis of mind went entirely from him, and with complete certainty, with the assured knowledge, too, that he was going to play his very best, he began again.

At the end of the slow Thema he paused, looked up at Karl and smiled nearly to laughing-point at him, pushed back the plume of hair that drooped over his forehead, and—played. And at that smile and at the gesture that was frequent with him, Karl gave one immense sigh of relief that Martin could hear. But now it meant nothing to him: he was busy.

Martin’s face, during those few horrible moments, had grown absolutely colourless, so that Karl had thought, and almost wished—for so the public shame would be lessened and people would be compassionate—that he was going to faint. For when for the second time Martin had turned to the piano and still could not begin, he believed for that moment that the boy could not pull himself together; that unless he fainted he would simply have to walk off the platform again. But now the colour came back, slowly at first, then, with sudden flushes, the dead apathy of his face changed, and began to live again. Soon his mouth parted slightly, as if wondering at the magic of the music which blossomed like roses underneath his flying fingers. Once or twice between the variations he brushed back his hair again; once he looked up at Karl, with the brilliant glance his master knew and loved, asking with his eyes, “Will that do? Will that do for you?” before he went on interpreting to the breathless crowd the noble joy which must have filled the composer as he wrote. Full of artistic triumph as Karl’s life had been, never before had it mounted and soared so high as now, when not he, but his pupil, held the hall enchained.

And in that moment his own ambitions, which he had so splendidly realised for so long, dropped dead. He and Martin, he knew now, were master and pupil no longer; it was the master’s turn—and with what solemn joy he did it—to sit and learn, to hear—and he longed for a myriad ears—what was possible, for even Martin had never played like that before. Even admiration was dead; there was no room for anything except listening. Admiration, wonder, delight, laughter of joy might come when the last note had sounded, but at present to listen was enough.

Martin held the last chord long. Then he took both hands off, as if the keys were hot, and rose, facing the hall. For him, too, just then, personal ambition was dead; he had played, as David played before Saul, in order to drive from his master’s face the demon of agony that he had seen there. And he looked not at Stella, not at Lady Sunningdale, not at Frank and Helen, nor did his eyes wander over the crowded rows, but straight at Karl, while the hall grew louder and louder, till the air was thick with sound, still asking him, “Did I play it well?” And when Karl nodded to him, he was content, and bowed in front of him and to right and left, thinking “How kind they all are!” He caught Stella’s eye and smiled, Frank’s, Helen’s, Lady Sunningdale’s. Then he sat down at the piano again.