"A future Melba—Patti—Tetrazzini, I should have said," Eleanor returned gravely. "But I see from your bewildered expression that you haven't very much idea what I am talking about, so I will explain. As a child at home I did not care much about music, chiefly, I think, because I did not want to be made to practice too much, and when I first went to Waterloo House I felt I liked it still less. The pianos there were mostly cracked and old, the girls, very few of whom had a note of music in their composition, thumped them all day long until I grew fairly sick of the sound, and as I had to superintend the practising of the younger ones, you may guess how much I enjoyed myself. But last Christmas holidays, during which I was left by myself as usual, for Miss McDonald always went away for a change, and she was so delicate, poor thing, that unless she had gone away to the country or to the seaside two or three times a year she could never have got through the terms, I took to practising a good deal. It may sound horribly conceited, but I fell in love with my own voice on the spot, and there, in the cold drawing-room, I used to sit and sing all sorts of rubbishy, sentimental songs until my voice was husky with mingled emotion and fatigue. Then I thought I would go to a few concerts and find out if any of the great singers had such a lovely voice as mine."
"And had they?" queried Margaret, as Eleanor, who had been talking at a great rate, paused for breath.
"Had they?" repeated Eleanor with a little laugh. "They had. I came home that evening quite out of love with my own voice, and before those holidays were over I spent my half-yearly allowance, which I had only just got, as well as my last quarter's salary, in tickets for concerts and operas. It was the best time I had had since I left Ireland. In the afternoons and evenings I used to go to concerts, and the mornings I spent practising. But I gave up the songs and went in for scales only, and I could hear my voice improving every day. I longed for some one who really knew to tell me if my voice was any good, but I didn't know who to ask. Miss Marvel, the school singing mistress, had no more voice than a mouse, and what was worse, no ear. She would let a whole class sing out of tune and never turn a hair. She did not like me because I had once pointed this out to her, and I knew that if I asked for her opinion of my voice she would only run it down. Then a daring idea came to me. Can you guess what it was?"
"No, I cannot," said Margaret quickly, warned by her last experiment, "I have never been taught to guess. Please continue."
"Very well," said Eleanor, smiling a well-pleased smile, for Margaret's impatience was a tribute to the interest she was imparting to her tale. "Have you ever heard of Signor Vanucci? No," as Margaret shook her head. "He was one of the greatest singing masters in London, and a professor of I don't know how many academies and schools of music in London. My great idea was to go straight to him and to ask him if he would hear my voice, and tell me if it was worth training. And on the very last day of the holidays, when I had only about enough money left to pay my fare into town and back, I went to his house. The servant didn't want to admit me when she heard I had no appointment, but I told her what I wanted, and begged so hard that she hadn't the heart to refuse, although she told me that she would be pretty sure to get into trouble afterwards with her master. But I don't believe he was cross with her, for he was a dear old man, and didn't look as though he could be angry with any one. Of course, I began by apologising for having ventured to come, and said I was afraid he must be very much astonished at my having dared to do such a thing as to force my way into his house. He looked at me quite gravely, and said, did I think, then, that I was the first young lady who had conceived the idea of coming to him to be told whether her voice was most like Patti's or Melba's. I said I had thought so; and then he said that I was the nine-hundredth-and-thirty-seventh that week. 'And Martha lets them all in, every one,' he said, with such a comical look of despair that I could not help laughing outright. 'And she thinks that I have only to hear them sing, and they straightway become famous on the spot. Well, well,' he went on, 'you did not come here to hear me talk, but to listen to yourself singing, is it not so? There is the piano. Take your seat. Where are your songs?'"
"And then he yawned, and walked away to the window, and stood there humming a little tune. I could see that he was already getting tired of me, and sorry that he had let me in, and though the thought that he was looking upon me as an awful nuisance would have made me awfully nervous if I had let it, I just said to myself, 'here is your opportunity, seize it. What does it matter about any one else?' And I sat down and sang a scale, beginning with the lowest note I could manage, and going up, up, up, and ending with a long shake on the two top notes."
"Bravo! bravo!" he said when I had finished, and he was no longer standing at the window humming a tune, but he was at my side clapping his hands and patting my shoulder. "Do you know," Eleanor said, her eyes aglow with triumph at the recollection of that moment, "I had come in hoping that he would give me five minutes of his time, and he kept me for an hour, although two pupils were waiting for him in the ante-room."
"And what did he say?" queried Margaret, with an interest that was positively breathless.
Eleanor suddenly sprang to her feet and began restlessly to pace the room. The glow of triumph had faded from her face, and had been replaced by a look of impatient despair that was almost fierce in its intensity.
"Oh, I can't bear to think of what he said!" she burst out. "I feel as though I should go wild sometimes when I remember, when I know that I have a gift which is given to few, and that it is wasted on me, locked away, unless—for do you know what Signor Vanucini said to me?" she asked, coming to an abrupt pause by the table. "He told me that I ought to be the greatest singer of my generation, that he foresaw a splendid future before me, that my voice had infinite possibilities, but that, of course, it was utterly untrained, and that years of hard work and study lay in front of me. That I must work, and work, and learn, and learn, and above all have the best training from the first. And then he said that I had better enter my name as a student at one of the colleges where he was a professor, and that he himself would give me lessons. And, oh! the bitterness of the moment when I had to say that I had no money, no friends to pay for my education, and that I was earning my living as a pupil teacher in a third-rate school in the suburbs. Do you know he seemed almost as much upset as I was. He said it was a great pity, that a voice like mine ought not to be thrown away, and he asked me a lot of questions about Miss McDonald and the school. Did I think she would continue to let me live with her, and come up to town three or four times a week, and he would give me lessons for nothing. I said I was afraid not, for I knew the school was in rather low water, and that Miss McDonald, so far from being able to keep me for nothing, had dismissed the junior governess, and that I was to fill the vacant post.