Perhaps for the first time the longing that she had often expressed in her singing, obedient to poet and composer, invaded her own soul. Without music she was what with music she had often seemed to be—a creature of wayward and romantic desires, a yearning spirit, a soaring flame.
At that moment she could have sung better than she had ever sung.
On the programme the names of her songs did not appear. They were represented by the letters A and B. She had not decided yet what she would sing. But now, moved by feeling to the longing for some action in which she might express it, she resolved to sing something in which she could at least flutter the wings she longed to free, something in which the angel could lift its voice, something that would delight the believers in the angel and be as far removed from Miss Schley’s imitations as possible.
After a time she chose two songs. One was English, by a young composer, and was called “Away.” It breathed something of the spirit of the East. The man who had written it had travelled much in the East, had drawn into his lungs the air, into his nostrils the perfume, into his soul the meaning of desert places. There was distance in his music. There was mystery. There was the call of the God of Gold who lives in the sun. There was the sound of feet that travel. The second song she chose was French. The poem was derived from a writing of Jalalu’d dinu’r Rumi, and told this story.
One day a man came to knock upon the door of the being he loved. A voice cried from within the house, “Qui est la?” “C’est moi!” replied the man. There was a pause. Then the voice answered, “This house cannot shelter us both together.” Sadly the lover went away, went into the great solitude, fasted and prayed. When a long year had passed he came once more to the house of the one he loved, and struck again upon the door. The voice from within cried, “Qui est la?” “C’est toi!” whispered the lover. Then the door was opened swiftly and he passed in with outstretched arms.
Having decided that she would sing these two songs, Lady Holme sat down to go through them at the piano. Just as she struck the first chord of the desert song a footman came in to know whether she was at home to Lady Cardington. She answered “Yes.” In her present mood she longed to give out her feeling to an audience, and Lady Cardington was very sympathetic.
In a minute she came in, looking as usual blanched and tired, dressed in black with some pale yellow roses in the front of her gown. Seeing Lady Holme at the piano she said, in her low voice with a thrill in it:
“You are singing? Let me listen, let me listen.”
She did not come up to shake hands, but at once sat down at a short distance from the piano, leaned back, and gazed at Lady Holme with a strange expression of weary, yet almost passionate, expectation.
Lady Holme looked at her and at the desert song. Suddenly she thought she would not sing it to Lady Cardington. There was too wild a spell in it for this auditor. She played a little prelude and sang an Italian song, full, as a warm flower of sweetness, of the sweetness of love. The refrain was soft as golden honey, soft and languorous, strangely sweet and sad. There was an exquisite music in the words of the refrain, and the music they were set to made their appeal more clinging, like the appeal of white arms, of red, parting lips.