“I did my best, Mr. Crane,” she confessed simply, with a forced little laugh.
“The Van Cortlandts have asked her to sing again next week,” declared her mother triumphantly.
“Well, say, girlie! that looks like success, don’t it?” broke in Ebner Ford. “Made a hit, did you?”
He slammed down the top of the roll-top desk, and locked it. Sue glanced at him with a pained expression.
“I’m afraid, Mr. Ford, it will be a good many years before I can really make a success,” she said evenly. Then turning to Enoch seriously: “I’m only a beginner, you know, Mr. Crane.”
“Of course you are,” he returned, “but there is a beginning to all art, a hard beginning, and you are beginning bravely, my dear. There is no short cut leading to art. It is a rough and stony road—mostly up-hill and very little down-dale, and for the most of its length hedged with thorns, masking so many pitfalls that many give up, faint and disheartened by the wayside, long before they reach the broad plateau of success at the top, and can stand there looking down over the valley of shadows and trials they have struggled up through safely.”
Sue caught her breath and looked at Enoch with her blue eyes wide open with eager interest. “Oh, how wonderful!” she cried. “Do go on.”
“I am not saying this to discourage you, my dear,” he continued, “but to encourage you. You are so young, so rich in years to come—years that we old fellows no longer have. Do your best; sing on to the best of your ability. In every fresh effort, in every new note lies the real lesson. Think of how happy you will be when at last you are sure of yourself, sure in making others feel what you feel. In painting, in sculpture, and in literature it is the same, and in no art is this rare ability of making others feel what you interpret so rare as in music. Music without it is simply a display of pretty noises. Only the artist can touch the heart.” The ugly little room was silent as he ceased speaking. Sue’s eyes were shining.
“And you were not frightened?” asked Enoch.
“Yes, Mr. Crane,” declared Sue frankly, “I was. I was just scared to death before all those people. New York is so critical, you know. They have a way of looking at you when you begin as if they had made up their minds to be bored. Think of it, mother, the ball-room was packed—the conservatory, too. Mrs. Van Cortlandt, you remember, said she had only asked a few intimate friends to drop in for a cup of tea.”