"So is the legend of the Sirens, I suppose," said Blake listlessly.
"Of course the man who is drawn away from Nature by the alluring voice of the world always loses his happiness and genius."
"I don't think much of your world's singing," retorted Blake, a trifle cynically. "It would never allure me."
"It's alluring you now," thought Beaumont, although he did not say so, but merely remarked, "Too much of modern sentimentality about it, perhaps, or you think the world's voice pipes too vulgar a ditty. There I agree with you, but, unfortunately, in this age we vulgarise everything; we drag forth the lovely mysterious dreams of mediævalism from their enchanted twilights into the broad blaze of day and then reject them in disgust because we are disillusionized. Ah, bah' the world of to-day, which reduces everything to plain figures, always puts me in mind of a child spoiling a drum to find out what's inside."
"Unpleasant, but true."
"The truth is always unpleasant my friend, that is why people so seldom tell it," said Beaumont, "but listen to this recitation, it's the best thing of the evening."
The reciter was a celebrated actress who had been induced to appear upon the music-hall platform by way of an experiment, to see if the ordinary audience of such a place would take to the higher form of art as exemplified by the recitation.
Simply dressed, with no scenic effect, but only her wonderful voice and strong dramatic instinct to rely on, the lady recited a touching little piece about a dying woman, and it was truly wonderful the effect it had upon the pleasure-loving audience. In spite of the attractions of comic songs, of pretty girls, of grotesque tumblers, and of daring gymnasts, the whole body of men and women yielded to the spell of the recitation. The poem was full of human nature, and the intensity of the reciter's voice carried the pathos of the pitiful little story home to everyone. The intense humanity of the tale, declaimed in a most dramatic way by an artist, came like a breath of cool mountain air into the perfumed close atmosphere of a ball-room, and the storm of applause which broke forth at the conclusion of the recitation showed how powerful genius is to move even the most blasé of humanity.
"That is a step in the right direction," said Beaumont as he left the music-hall with Reginald, "everyone prophesied failure for such an experiment, but you see the voice of the heart can always reach the heart. There is more culture even among music-hall audiences than we give them credit for."
"I don't think it's a question of culture at all," replied Blake bluntly; "that simple story declaimed in such a way would appeal to the lowest audience in Whitechapel.