Crash! went the piano. "They're off!" hoarsely chuckled a sporting man next to me, with a wilted collar, and Moszkowski's "Nations" welled up from the vicinity of the piano, two young women exploiting their fingers in its delivery. The talking in the back drawing-rooms went on furiously, and I saw the hostess coming toward me. I escape her by edging into the back hall, despite the smothered complaints of my displaced neighbors.
I got into the doorway, or rather into the angle of a door leading into the back room. The piano had stopped; while wondering what to do next my attention was suddenly attracted by a conversation to which I had to listen; it was impossible to move away. "So she is going to sing, is she? Well, we will see if this great and only true Italian method will put brains into a fool's head or voice into her chest." This was said in a guttural voice, the accent being quite Teutonic. A soprano voice was heard, and I listened as critically as I could. The voice sang the Jewel Song from "Faust," and it seemed to me that its owner knew something about singing. I understood the words. She sang in English, and what more do you want in singing?
But the buzz at my left went on fiercely. "So the Bujoli calls that voice-production, does she? Humph! In Germany we wouldn't call the cows home with such singing." It was surely Frau Makart who spoke. There was a huge clapping of hands, fans waved, and I heard whispers, "Yes, rather pretty; but dresses in bad taste; good eyes; walks stiffly. Who is she? What was it she sang?"
More chatter. I wriggled away to my first position near the piano, but not without much personal discomfort. I was allowed to pass because, for some reason or other, I was supposed to be running the function. Upon reaching the piano Edith beckoned to me rapidly, and I slid across the polished floor, where she was talking to that hated Tompkins, and asked what I could do for her.
"Hold my music until I play; that's a good fellow." I hate to be considered a "good fellow," but what could I do? Edith, who seemed to have recovered her aplomb, continued her conversation with Percy Tompkins.
"You know, Mr. Tompkins, Chopin is for me the only composer. You know, his nocturnes fill me with a sense of nothingness—the divine néant, nirvana, you call it. Now, Grünfeld—"
Tompkins interrupted rudely: "Grünfeld can't play Chopin. Give me the 'Chopinzee.' He plays Chopin. As Schumann says: 'The Chopin polonaises are cannon buried in flowers,' Now, Grünfeld is a—"
"No poet!" said I, indignantly, for I never could admire the chubby Viennese pianist. Tompkins turned and looked at me, but never noticed my correction.
"Oh, Miss Wegstaffe," he continued vivaciously—how I hated that vivacity—"did you hear that new story about a wit and the young man who asked him to define George Meredith's position in literature? 'Meredith,' said the other, pompously, 'Meredith is a prose Browning,' and the young man thanked the great man for this side light thrown on English letters, when the poet added with a twinkle in his eye, 'Browning himself was a prose Browning.' Now, isn't that delicious, Miss Wegstaffe; isn't that—"
A volley of hists-hists and hushes came over the room as I vainly tried to see the point of Tompkins' story. Every one laughed at his jokes, but to me they seemed superficial and flippant.