"There is no course, Charles, that I do not consider you equal to; but I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to bind you to a service so signal for my own sake,—it is a mere sketch of a Spanish castle I had reared in an idle hour."
"We will raise a sure fame on solid foundations, Lenhart, and I do not care about fame for its own sake. After all, you cannot, with your musical electicism, prefer me to become mixed up in the horrible struggle for precedence which, in London, degrades the very nature of art, and renders its pursuit a misnomer."
"You have not given up one of your old prejudices, Charles."
"No, Davy. I feel we can do more acting together than either separately, for the cause we love best and desire to serve. You know me well, and that, whatever I have learned in my life abroad, no taste is so dear to me as yours,—no judgment I should follow to the death so gladly. Besides all the rest, which is made up of a good deal more than one can say, I could never consent, as an instrumentalist, and as holding that instrument to be part of myself, to infect my style with whims and fashions which alone would render it generally acceptable. I must reserve what I musically believe as my musical expression, and nothing can satisfy me in that respect but the development of the orchestra."
"Poor orchestra! it is a very germ, a winter-seed at present, my ever-sanguine Charlie."
"I am not sanguine; on the contrary, I am disposed to suspect treachery everywhere, even in myself, and certainly in you, if you would have me go to London, take fashionable lodgings, and starve myself on popular precedents, among them that most magnificent one of lionizing musical professors. No, I could not bear that, and no one would care a whit for my playing as I feel. I should be starved out and out. If you can initiate me a little yourself into your proceedings, I think I shall be able to persuade you that I ought to be only where my impulse directs me to remain."
Davy at this juncture deprived me of the baby, who had been munching my finger all the time we talked; and when he had placed her in her nest,—a portent of vast significance,—he enlightened me indeed to the full, and we informed Millicent when she came upstairs; for nothing could be done without asking her accord. It was greatly to my satisfaction that she entirely agreed with me, and a great relief to Davy, who in the plenitude of his delicate pride could hardly bear the thought of suggesting anything to anybody, lest his suggestion should unsteady any fixed idea of their own. Millicent cordially asserted that she felt there was a more interesting sphere about them than she could imagine to exist anywhere else; and perhaps she was right, for no one could sufficiently laud the extirpation of ancient prejudices by Davy's firm voice and ardent heart. I could not possibly calculate at that moment the force and extent of his singular efforts, and their still more unwonted effects in so short a time made manifest. I heard of these from Millicent, who could talk of nothing else, to me, at least, after Davy, ever anxious, had left us for his morning's lessons, which occupied him in private, though not much more than formerly, as his peculiar attention and nearly his whole time were devoted more determinately than ever to the instruction and elevation of the vocal institution he had organized.
"No one can tell, Charles," said Millicent, among other things, "how heroically and patiently he has worked, rejecting all but the barest remuneration, to bring all forward as he has succeeded in doing, and has nobly done. You will say so when you hear, and you must hear, to-morrow evening."
"I shall indeed feel strange, Millicent," I replied, "to sit at his feet once more, and to feel again all that went through me in the days when I learned of him alone. But I am very curious about another friend of mine. I suppose you can tell me just as well as he."
"About Miss Benette, Charles?"