She sang several numbers, but nothing half so beautiful as the low, entreating tones in which she breathed out “Kathleen Mavourneen.” As the words rolled out, “It may be for years, and it may be forever,” many an eye filled with tears at the tender pathos in which she veiled the uncertainties of the future.
Kate went to Italy with her mother (who had become a widow), and studied under the direction of the great maestro, Lamperti. She had but few faults to overcome, but she applied herself unceasingly. The voice is a jealous mistress, and stands guard over every thought and action, demanding high recompense from the being who possesses the power to soothe or thrill a soul in darkness. Any letting down the bars of stern discipline of the intellect, finds that vigilant sentinel inquiring the cause.
The ear of the lover becomes aware that the divine voice has lost its love tones; those pure heaven-born messages come to him with a harsher sound. Then when the singer’s thoughts have drifted into some dark miasma, the sensitive instrument cannot attune itself in those dreamy poisonous vapours, and the delicate string loses its perfect harmony. The lover again wonders what powers of earth or air have taken possession of that erstwhile melodious instrument, now, “like sweet bells jangled and out of tune.”
Thus it is if, from looking and listening, with hearing keen and heart responsive, the eyes of the soul ever upward turned for inspiration (the only attitude that makes the spirit by and by victorious), she ceases for a moment, and, hearing the jingling of false bells, looks below; she sees the reflection of the sun on some tinsel-robed, fair, but deluded sister, and is attracted to her. The delights of dissipation in the society of thoughtless, undedicated companions allure her from the path where gleams the pure, white light of art. As she turns, thinking to live only for a little hour with her companions, the gates of the lighted realm, where few enter, close behind her. When she has wandered through the pleasures, which prove to be but the shadows of reality, the temple of that beautifully-tuned and soul-inspiring instrument is a wreck, and the angel-voice fled. Such is the result of neglecting that exacting sovereign, the goddess of music.
She demands the consecration of the whole self, in return for the prize she offers. And none realised it better than Kate. So she gained the excellence of real attainment.
After a brilliant career of seven years, she wearied of incessant travel, and longed to make her home in some quiet corner, away from the sound and whirl of the great busy world, and yet near enough to its heartbeats to feel the pulsation. She found such a spot near London, where she took her old mother, for whom she had an idolatrous love, and where she hoped to enjoy her life in semi-seclusion for a season. She furnished her gem of a house with rare taste, and filled it with souvenirs of the world she had conquered. There her mother fell ill, and demanded, in her nervous, irritable state, in which she would allow the service of no other nurse, constant, care from Kate.
Often when Kate returned home late at night from some concert where she had been the idol of the hour, she would sit and hold her mother in her arms until the cold night air had chilled her to the very bone, for the invalid could not endure a fire in the room. No murmur fell from Kate’s lips, and when the dear sufferer succumbed to the disease and passed quietly away, her grief was overwhelming.
But joy trod on the heel of sorrow. A presence had come into her life which grew to be a part of it.
He was one whom everybody admired; a man of culture and refinement, an able musical critic and no mean musician.