“I should like to hear you sing,” he said, going to a large square pile of something by the piano covered with an old cloth. “Do you know the ‘Elijah’?” He lifted the cloth as he spoke and disclosed a quantity of music; sheet music, loose and bound, and scores of many famous works—all old, all worn, but still his treasures. He picked out a vocal score of the “Elijah” and put it on the piano desk.
“Yes,” said Herbert. “Shall I try ‘If with all your hearts’?”
The old man nodded with a smile, and, sitting down on the crazy music stool, laid his aged hands upon the aged keys.
It needed but two bars to show Herbert that his old friend was a real artist. The piano’s tone was like a tone ghost; but it was in perfect tune. The Professor saw to that himself. And his touch seemed so to caress the yellow keys that they gave him the very best they still had in them.
As the song proceeded, the old gentleman smiled and nodded gently to himself, as if he, too, were pleased and satisfied with what he heard. He had good reason. Herbert’s voice was of that rare delicious quality given perhaps to one singer in a generation. Full, rich, intensely sympathetic, without a trace of that metallic hardness in the upper notes so often found in tenor voices. He sang the great solo with the utmost simplicity, but with a beauty of expression that would have gone straight to the heart of any audience, musical or unmusical.
“My boy, you have a gift—a great gift,” said the Professor solemnly at the end. “See that you use it well. You may, if you choose, be one of the singers of the world; but it will mean more than three years at the Academy, and then to sing at ballad concerts. Aim at the highest, and make up your mind that it must be your life work. You must let me help you put your foot on the lowest rung of the ladder. You can climb yourself afterwards.”
He went to the bed and drew from underneath it a small old-fashioned box covered with skin with the hair on and studded with brass nails. This he unlocked, and took from it a small yellow canvas bag.
“I have here,” he said, “a kind of nest egg which I have managed to put by from time to time out of my little income. It is the exact sum you need just now, and you must pay your first fees with it.”
“My dear Professor,” stammered Herbert, completely taken aback, “indeed, I cannot! I should never forgive myself for taking money that you might possibly want for all sorts of things before I had a chance of paying it back again!”
“Nonsense!” replied the old man, rather sternly. “You must take it! I will have it so. I should never forgive myself if I allowed your young life and precious talent to be wasted because you were in want of what I had lying idle! You can repay me some day when you can spare it.”