Rose looked at the angular figure opposite, and the color came again slowly to her cheeks and the light to her eyes. “I’m so glad you came, Cousin Emily!” she exclaimed; “without you I should have just given up, they looked so—so indifferent, those men with their eye-glasses and their notebooks and their stare.”
“Stare? I should think so!” replied Miss Carter severely; “I’ll put a Frenchman against anything for staring. I believe myself that Paris is a Sodom and Gomorrah boiled into one, let me tell you! How any nice sweet girl can marry one of them— Rose, if anything should ever induce me at any time to think of marrying one, clap me into an insane asylum, you hear?”
And Rose, burying her face in her hands, laughed until she cried.
But without Miss Carter and Aunt Hannah her courage would have failed her often in the months which followed. She was put back at the alphabet of music and worked with the beginners. More than one night she secretly cried herself to sleep without daring to tell Cousin Emily of her weakness. Homesickness, too, pinched her and took the color from her cheeks, but she worked bravely on. She had reached Paris in June and she had failed at her trial in September. The months which followed were crowded to the brim, and she tried to shut her heart and her ears to news from home, except that which concerned her father. The judge’s letters were purposely cheerful and optimistic, he said so little about financial difficulties that it seemed like a troubled dream to Rose; she never quite realized all it meant to her future.
At last, after many months, her instructor told her one morning that he should bring some competent judges to hear her again and, if she succeeded at this second test, he should try to give her a great opportunity to win her place in the world as a singer. Rose’s heart thrilled. The great man said little, but at last she perceived that he believed in her in spite of her failure, that her voice had finally won his confidence. A word from him was more than a volume from another; it meant success or failure. The girl, full of her dreams of singing and redeeming all with her voice, trembled all over and turned pale. There was a great excitement at the little pension that night; confident though she was, Miss Carter secretly wiped away a tear, and they both worked late to give some fresh touches to the girl’s white gown which brought it up to date; it was a year old, and not made in Paris! They began to see such differences, to recognize the enchanting creations in the show-windows and out walking on the fashionable women on the boulevards.
However, Cousin Emily had her opinion about its owner’s appearance in that same old white frock, and she stole out and bought a single rose for the young singer to wear the next afternoon. Aunt Hannah helped dress her; it was a great occasion; the little flat looked as though a whirlwind had struck it, and at last the two went out in great trepidation to keep the appointment. Secretly Miss Emily longed to give those Frenchmen a piece of her mind about criticizing the voice of a sweet young girl, but she only retired discreetly to a corner and looked on with a peculiar moisture on her spectacles which required the constant use of her handkerchief.
As Rose ceased singing and the last clear notes of her voice floated into the distances of the great empty concert-hall, the thrill of its sweetness, its purity, its young confident power, seemed to fill the very atmosphere of the place with exquisite music; it could not quite pass away into silence, it remained at last, if not in the ears, in the souls of the listeners, a little group to the right of the stage who had gathered there to hear the wonderful pupil, his youthful prima donna, the great gift which, he believed, the new world had for the old.
In the midst of her song she had forgotten herself, her audience, her first failure, even the world itself, while her young ardent soul poured out its joy and its grief in those splendid notes. Love, that great interpreter of the heart, had unlocked hers to sorrow, she sang with the heart of the sorrowful; she was, first of all, as Allestree felt, an impersonation of youth, and she sang with the soul of youth which hopes forever; she loved, purely, unselfishly, gently, and she sang with the love of the world on her lips, and singing thus was supremely lovely; what matter if the old white dress was a little out of fashion? She was a figure as symbolic of youth with its splendid hopes, its faith, its untried strength, as she was the very personification of beautiful womanhood.
No one spoke, no one applauded, but not an eye was dry.