I left the stage without bowing, jostled the stupid doorkeeper, and fled through the room where the other numbers huddled like sheep for the slaughter. Seizing my hat I went out into the rain, and when the concierge tried to stop me I shook a threatening fist at him. He stepped back in a fine hurry, I assure you. When I came to my senses I found myself on my bed, my head buried in the pillows. Luckily I had no mirror, so I was spared the sight of my red, mortified face. That night I slept as if drugged.
In the morning a huge envelope with an official seal was thrust through a crack in my door—there were many—and in it I found a notification that I was accepted as a pupil of the Paris Conservatoire. What a dream realized! But only to be shattered, for, so I was further informed, I had succeeded in one test and failed in another—my sight reading was not up to the high standard demanded. No wonder! Music reversed, and my fingers mechanically playing could be hardly called a fair sight-reading trial. Therefore, continued this implacable document, I would sit for a year in silence watching other pupils receiving their instruction. I was to be an auditeur, a listener—and all my musical castles came tumbling about my ears!
What I did during that weary year of waiting cannot be told in one article; suffice it to say I sat, I heard, I suffered. If music-students of today experience kindred trials I pity them; but somehow or other I fancy they do not. Luxury is longed for too much; young men and young women will not make the sacrifices for art we oldsters did; and it all shows in the shallow, superficial, showy, empty, insincere pianoforte-playing of the day and hour.
XV
TONE VERSUS NOISE
The tropical weather in the early part of last month set a dozen problems whizzing in my skull. Near my bungalow on the upper Wissahickon were several young men, camping out for the summer. One afternoon I was playing with great gusto a lovely sonata by Dussek—the one in A-flat—when I heard laughter, and, rising, I went to the window in an angry mood. Outside were two smiling faces, the patronizing faces of two young men.
"Well!" said I, rather shortly.
"It was like a whiff from the eighteenth century," said a stout, dark young fellow.