A Cathedral Singer

by James Lane Allen

Thus with mortification he remembered the day. Then his thoughts were swept on to what now opened before him: he was to be taken into the choir, he was to sing in the cathedral. The high, blinding, stately magnificence of its scenes and processions lay before him.

More than this. The thing which had long been such a torture of desire to him, the hope that had grown within him until it began to burst open, had come true; his dream was a reality: he was to begin to learn music, he was to go where it was being taught. And the master who was to take him by the hand and lead him into that world of song sat there quietly talking with his mother about the matter and looking across at him, studying him closely.

No; none of this was true yet. It might never be true. First, he must be put to the test. The man smiling there was sternly going to draw out of him what was in him. He was going to examine him and see what he amounted to. And if he amounted to nothing, then what?

He sat there shy, silent, afraid, all the hardy boldness and business preparedness and fighting capacity of the streets gone out of his mind and heart. He looked across at his mother; not even she could help him.

So there settled upon him that terror of uncertainty about their gift and their fate which is known only to the children of genius. For throughout the region of art, as in the world of the physical, nature brings forth all things from the seat of sensitiveness and the young of both worlds appear on the rough earth unready.

"You do wish to come?" the choir-master persisted in asking.

"Yes, sir," he replied barely, as though the words sealed his fate.

The visitor was gone, and they had talked everything over, and the evening had ended, and it was long past his bedtime, and she waited for him to come from the bedroom and say good night. Presently he ran in, climbed into her lap, threw his arms around her neck and pressed his cheek against hers.

"Now on this side," he said, holding her tightly, "and now on the other side, and now on both sides and all around."

She, with jealous pangs at this goodnight hour, often thought already of what a lover he would be when the time came—the time for her to be pushed aside, to drop out. These last moments of every night were for love; nothing lived in him but love. She said to herself that he was the born lover.