"Well, I do. I know exactly. You came to take the alto in this quartette we are arranging. My girls were just assuring me that there was not an alto voice in our midst that could sustain the other parts. What do you say now, girls?"
There was a good deal of satisfaction in her tones. It amused her to think of Ruth's discontented grumble but a moment before:
"If Alice Ansted did not feel so much above us, she would be a glorious addition to this piece. Miss Benedict, her voice is splendid. I don't like her, but I would tolerate her presence if we could get her to take the alto in this."
Then Mary Burton:
"Well, she won't; and you needn't think of such a thing." It was at that moment that the door had opened, and she came.
Claire went at once to the organ, and the rehearsal of the quartette began.
I do not know but the girls themselves would have been almost frightened had they been sufficiently skilled in music to know what a rare teacher they had. Claire Benedict's voice was a special talent, God-given as surely as her soul. Time was when it had been one of her temptations, hard to resist. Such brilliant and flattering futures had opened before her, if she would but consent to give "private rehearsals." There is an intoxication about extravagant praise, and Claire had for weeks been intoxicated to the degree that she could not tell where the line was drawn, and when the world stepped in and claimed her as its special prize. It was then that the keen, clear-seeing wise and tender father had used his fatherly influence, and showed her the net which Satan had warily spread. She had supposed herself secure, after that. But when the great financial crash came upon them, and when the father was gone where he could advise and shield no more, there had come to her the temptation of her life. It would have been so easy to have supported her mother and sister in a style somewhat like that to which they had been accustomed; and to do this, she need not descend in any sense to that which was in itself wrong or unladylike. Those who would have bought her voice were willing that she should be as exclusive as she pleased. But for the clear-sightedness of the father, in those days when the other temptations had been met, she would surely have yielded to the pressure.
She came off victorious, but wounded. When she had with determined face turned from all these flattering offers, and entered the only door which opened to her conscience—this one at South Plains—she had told herself that three hundred dollars a year did not hire her voice. So much of herself she would keep to herself. She would do no singing, either in public or private; not a note. In order to teach even vocal music, it was not necessary to exhibit her powers of song. That sermon, however, had swept this theory away, along with many others. It is true, it had been almost exclusively about the church; but you will remember that it had dealt with the conscience; and the conscience awakened on one point, is far more likely to see plainly in other directions. When next the subject of song presented itself to her mind, Claire Benedict was somewhat astonished to discover that she had not given her voice when she gave herself. She had not known it at the time, but there had evidently been a mental reservation, else she would not shrink so from using her powers in this direction, in this her new sphere of life. Some earnest heart-searching had to be done. Was she vain of her voice? she wondered, that she was so unwilling to use it in the desolate little sanctuary at South Plains; that she could not even bring herself to do other than peep the praises of God in the school chapel. It was a revelation of self that brought much humiliation with it. It was even humiliating to discover that it took a long and almost fierce struggle to overcome the shrinking which possessed her. It was not all pride; there was a relief in remembering that. There was a sense in which her voice seemed to belong to her happy and buried past; something which her father had loved, even exulted in, and which had been largely kept for him. But this thought of her father helped her. There was never a thought connected with him that did not help and strengthen. He would not have approved—no, she did not put it that way, she hated those past tenses as connected with him—he did not approve of her hiding her talent in a napkin; her happiness should not be labeled "past;" was she not in God's world? was she not the child of a King? was not heaven before her, and an eternity there, with her father who had just preceded the family by a few days? Did she grudge him that? Was it well for her to sit down weeping, and dumb, because he had entered the palace a little in advance?
From this heart-searching, there had come another victory; and if Claire Benedict did not say in so many solemn words,
Take my voice, and let me sing
Always, only, for my King,