“Madame Michot told me, just now in the house, that you had a mighty pretty voice, and would go to Paris some time before long, to study for the King’s Opera,” he began, by way of making acquaintance.
“Yes,” replied Bess, her face lighting up with pleasure at the mere mention of her becoming a singer. “I think I must be the fortunatest poor girl that ever lived. A kind gentleman here, Mr. Mazet, heard me singing, and offered to teach me at Paris, and Mr. Roger thinks it all right that I should go. They all tell me ’twill be hard work, but I can’t think singing hard work; ’twould be hard work for me to keep from singing.”
“Yes,” said Dicky, gravely, “’Tis monstrous hard work for me to keep from fiddling. At the seminary where I am studying to be a priest, I am not allowed to fiddle all I want; and my superiors are right. For the hours fly when I have the bow in my hand, and my fingers dancing upon the strings; and often, when I think I have been playing but a few minutes, ’tis a whole hour.”
For the first time Bess found some one who could talk and feel as she did about music, and she replied eagerly,—
“So ’tis with me! So ’tis with me!”
“Only those who love music can understand it,” continued Dicky, as eager as Bess. “’Tis life and light and joy and hope and solace—”
“And meat and drink and coals,” responded the practical Bess.
And then their talk drifted to Roger. Every moment Bess felt more and more drawn to this frank, boyish Dicky, and insensibly she adopted Roger’s attitude of superior age. Dicky was really only a little younger than Bess, but she felt as if he were born yesterday, and she were as old as the Pharaohs by comparison. As for his monkish religion, she looked on it as she did on Roger’s—as a departure from the ordinary, like children who are born with six toes—singular, but harmless. And then something inspired Bess to give Dicky her confidence about that black spectre of her past—her life in Newgate.
“Mr. Di—I mean, Mr. Egremont, I don’t believe you are the man to do an ill turn to a poor girl, or a child, or a dog, or anything that’s not very strong,” she burst out presently, “and I want you to do me a kindness. I hate worse than pi’sen the notion that people should know that—that—I am the niece of a gaoler and turnkey. ’Twas that which chiefly made me seek my fortune in France; and will you please to promise to keep it to yourself?—for I know that Master Roger must have told it you.”
“Truly, I will keep your secret, Mistress Bess. No one shall ever hear anything of you from me, except that you befriended Roger in prison, and nobody knows how you did it.”