She was staying now (she spent the greater part of her life in staying) for a rather extensive weekend, that is to say from Friday till Monday, with Lord Flintshire, and the morning after her arrival came radiantly downstairs at a quarter-past one. Two irrepressible dachshunds barked excitedly round her, and as she stepped on to the terrace where her host was sitting, she was trying, without the least success, to put up a pale-blue sunshade with a handle of Saxe-china.
“Dear Flints,” she cried, “how sweet of you to wait for me! Where is everybody? Yes. Isn’t it a divine morning? Everything looks as if it had been washed during the night. Why is one such a fool as ever to leave the country and go to London? If one had a single spark of originality11 one would never go near it. Yes. Please put up my sunshade for me. I know I look hideous12 this morning; but it doesn’t matter how one looks in the country, which is another of its charms. But I didn’t sleep a wink,—I never close my eyes in the country; really, London is the place to live in. I have contradicted myself, have I not? Who cares? I’m sure I don’t. Where are the dogs? Please whistle on your fingers, if you can. So piercing, is it not? There they are! Ah, how naughty! Yes, who cares whether one contradicts one’s self? It shews, in fact, that one’s powers of sympathy and of seeing other points of view are defective13, unless one sees both sides of every question, and upholds both vehemently14. Yes, do let us walk down the terrace. I adore walking. Oh, Suez Canal, running over the flower-beds like that! How naughty!”
“Suez Canal?” interpolated Lord Flintshire, who,{32} walking by her side, looked like a small rowing-boat towed by a brig in full sail.
“Yes, don’t you see how dreadfully long he is? Now tell me all about your brother who dined here last night. I thought him too fascinating, and we had a great talk about somebody called Kennet, I think he said. Mr. Chancellor15 is very high-church, is he not? His mouth looked to me high-church. There is something perfectly beautiful about high-church mouths. Look at Lady Otterbourne’s: her mouth is exactly like your brother’s. So is the Bishop16 of Tavistock’s, whom I adore. He plays the flute17 divinely, looking funnier than anything I ever saw—so funny that I never want to laugh. Somehow a bishop playing on a flute—or do I mean low-church? I think I must mean low-church. And so your brother is Martin’s father. I sent a message by him last night to tell Martin to come and see me this afternoon. I completely lost my heart to Martin last winter. It is terrible to lose one’s heart when one is fifty, because one has already lost one’s looks, so that it leaves one really denuded18. Besides it seems so careless. That is a chestnut19, I think. But everything worth saying has been said years before even I was born. Where is Suez? Naughty!”
Lady Sunningdale’s conversation flowed in the manner of a river in flood; it flowed over everything, it foamed21 and spouted22, and there was always the sense—never left unjustified—that there was plenty more to come. It flowed, in fact, over so many different subjects that her interlocutor had a practically limitless range of topics from which to select the matter of his reply; on the other hand, he could fly off on any tangent of his own without initiating23 incongruity24, or,{33} again, he could be silent, completely confident that Lady Sunningdale would go on. But the last topic suited Lord Flintshire very well.
“Do tell me what you think of Martin,” he said.
“But too fascinating and a genius. That combination is so rare; geniuses are usually quite unpresentable. He was staying with us at Easter, and I used to borrow him, as one borrows a book and tries to forget to return it. Where is Sahara? Will you whistle again, please. And his playing—well, merely sublime26. He can even play Wagner on the piano. Orchestral music on the piano is generally detestable, but Martin—I used to tell him I believed he had instruments concealed27 about his person. He is quite clever enough to. My dear, you can hear the strings28. Then he used to draw me caricatures of all the extremely tiresome29 people who were in the house. And his mimicry30! Sunningdale finding fault with the soup, and me telling him he was a gross feeder. My dear Flint, I could have sworn it was us. You know the charming way we behave at dinner. Frank Yorkshire, too,—you would have thought that nobody could have imitated Frank. But Martin—‘Beauty is probably evil in its origin, which accounts for the extreme plainness of good people!’ Simply too killing31. I suppose your low-church brother doesn’t approve of him, or appreciate him. A slight frigidity32 occurred when I mentioned Martin!”
“He certainly doesn’t appreciate all the excellencies you have mentioned. I doubt if he really knows they exist.”
“That is always the way,” said Lady Sunningdale, with a florid gesture of despair. “That very rare{34} product, a natural artistic33 genius, always makes its wayward appearance in utterly34 uncongenial places. I am bound to say it usually leaves them before long; but what a waste of time! Dear Flints, don’t walk quite so fast. I had no idea this terrace was so interminable. We shall be miles from the house when we reach the end. Where are my angels? But it really is a pity. And I suppose his father will make a curate or a Greek scholar of him.”
“That is just what he is afraid he will not do. He was talking to me about it last night.”
Lady Sunningdale’s attention suddenly and completely wandered.
“You should build a pergola here, Flints,” she said. “There is a pergola at Frank Yorkshire’s villa35 in Capri, which is the most divine thing I ever saw, covered with roses. We used to dine there, and earwigs dropped into one’s hair, and from the dark one heard those extraordinary Italian melodies from the piazza36. That is where I should like to live, to leave the world utterly and entirely37 and just exist. So unworldly. Yes. My angels, they want their dinner, and so does their mamma.”
They had got to the end of the terrace, and Lady Sunningdale gazed about her with roving, abstracted eyes. She never did anything, even gaze, without her thoughts being occupied with something totally different, and now as she looked over the great swelling38 lines of downs which flowed and melted into each other like interlacing muscles away to the horizon, across the hollow where the roofs and grey spires39 of Winchester trembled in a haze40 of heat, her thoughts were further away than the horizon itself.{35}
“So affected41 of people to pretend not to like food,” she said, “or, if it is genuine, it shows they are partly imbecile, lacking the sense of taste. Yes, what Martin wants is to be chucked into an artistic milieu42 to see what he is really worth. And the artistic milieu is exactly what he hasn’t got. He is starving, he is living on himself. Now, no artist except the very greatest artist can do that, and even then he dies very quickly. He wants to be soaked and steeped in art. Paris, now! There is the artistic milieu there; but the music is generally atrocious,—nearly as bad as in London. He could lunch at the Café Champêtre then.”
“Why do you wish him to do that?” asked Lord Flintshire.
“Dear Flints, because the cooking is so good. The really artist is a gourmet43 in everything, including food. Think of the story of Beethoven and the soup. He threw it in the footman’s face because it was cold. He could not bear that it should not be hot. Cold soup in one’s face—how horrible!—and thrown by Beethoven! Even that would not make it pleasant. Certainly Martin has the instincts of a great artist. He has a sense of form in all he does, which, I expect, means nothing to your brother. Certainly also he has the sense of form in himself. My dear, he is an absolute Adonis, and as slim as asparagus, the English kind.”
Lord Flintshire laughed.
“And when do you expect this paragon44?” he asked.
“After lunch. To let Martin go on learning Greek and curacies is like looking on at somebody being slowly murdered. Pray do as I tell you and get him away from that terrible parsonage. Why, the word{36} is enough to upset an artist. It sounds so like parsnips.”
“I feel sure his father would never consent to let him run free in Paris,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because he has the insular45 distrust of Paris as a residence for the young.”
“My dear Flints,” she said, with some impatience46, “if a young man is going to get into messes and make mudpies, he will make them anywhere. Surely it is the least desirable thing in the world that he should make them in the parsonage. Yes. You see your brother has so much character himself that he doesn’t seriously think that anybody else has got any.”
“I wish you would say these things to him,” said Lord Flintshire.
“I will, if I get an opportunity. But if not Paris, London, Rome, anywhere. Take poor Martin’s collar off, and let him roll in the grass. Yes, let us turn. Surely it is lunch-time. But do put up a pergola here all down the terrace and leave out the earwigs. My angels, we are going to our dinners.”
She turned, her very high heels clicking on the hard gravel47 of the terrace, and paused a moment.
“The mistake in principle which your fascinating brother is making,” she said, “lies in thinking that every one is cast in the same mould, which is his own, and has to be educated in the same manner. Whereas one of the few things of which we can be absolutely certain is that everybody is cast in different moulds. What fools people are really! Fancy trying to make a scholar or a parson of poor Martin! Such a waste, too, as well as an impossibility. Sunningdale might as well{37} insist on my taking lessons in juggling48 or mathematics. Don’t you hate conjuring-tricks? What is the point of cutting open a loaf of bread and finding a globe of gold-fish inside it? Nobody in their senses could call me stupid, but I am morally incapable49 of adding up three figures correctly. Why? Simply because the process bores me, and I therefore do it wrong.”
“That is a fascinating theory of education for the young.”
“It may or may not be fascinating, but it is certainly true. The point of education is to develop any taste you may possess, not to bore you with the acquisition of knowledge. Ah, there is Stella Plympton coming to meet us. She has immense charm, and look at the way her head is set on her shoulders. Really, to have a neck is the only thing that matters. A girl with a neck has only to say ‘Good-morning’ for every one to exclaim, ‘How brilliant!’ Whereas people like me, with no neck, have to talk from morning till night at the tops of our voices, and wear ridiculous hats, or else every one says, ‘Poor dear, how much she has aged50, and how very dull and heavy she is.’ Flints, I have immense trials. I often wonder how I keep up as I do, and am so frequently the life and soul of the party. Yes. Every one made in the same mould indeed! Stella and me, for instance. Flints, your brother is an imbecile. I don’t propose to learn Greek, because he can talk it in his sleep. Helen, too! Is she to be kept in that dreadful parsonage all her life, and see nobody but district visitors? I think we ought to take your brother’s family in hand. He neglects them shamefully51; he ought to be prosecuted52 for criminal neglect. A man has a duty towards his children.”{38}
Lord Flintshire laughed.
“And only last night I was telling Sidney that his sense of duty towards them was too strong.”
Again Lady Sunningdale’s attention rushed headlong away with the bit in its teeth; it was so rapid that one could not say it wandered.
“The last act of the ‘G?tterd?mmerung’!” she exclaimed. “My dear, they gave it superbly the other night; at Covent Garden, too, of all places,—though the ravens53 did come in ten bars too soon, and Siegfried had to throw them away. I never slept for a week afterwards.”
The performance in question, therefore, must have taken place at least a week ago, for there was no manner of doubt that when Martin arrived, an hour or so after lunch, Lady Sunningdale was snatching a brief interval54 of much-needed repose55 after her sen’night vigil under the cedar56 on the lawn. The rest of the party, with the exception of Stella Plympton, had dispersed57 to spend the afternoon in what she considered the violent English fashion; that is to say, Frank Yorkshire and her brother had gone to play golf. Lord Flintshire had taken Lady Sunningdale’s daughter for a ride, and Lord Sunningdale himself, who had an insatiable mania58 for losing large sums of money in what he euphemistically called farming, had gone to feel horses’ legs and poke59 pigs in the back with the Scotch60 bailiff. Martin, in consequence, who had walked over the fields from the terrible parsonage and approached his uncle’s house from the garden side, found an idyll of placidity61 occupying the stage below the cedar, for a young woman of about his own age was sitting with an air of extreme content doing{39} nothing whatever, and in a basket-chair close by was Lady Sunningdale, recuperating62 after the “G?tterd?mmerung.” Martin had formed a somewhat copious63 subject of conversation during lunch, and it required no particular exercise of ingenuity64 on Stella’s part to guess who the tall, straw-hatted figure was. From him again she looked at Lady Sunningdale’s slumbers65, and glancing back to Martin raised her eyebrows67, as if to ask what had better be done. Then she rose noiselessly from her chair, and beckoning68 to him with a little amused, friendly gesture, walked quietly away from the immediate69 neighbourhood.
“You must be Mr. Challoner,” she said, holding out her hand; “and Lady Sunningdale, apparently70 exhausted71 by the prospect72 of your arrival, is snatching a few moments of repose. What are we to do, then? Shall we wake her and risk her immediate displeasure, or let her sleep and risk her ultimate displeasure? We are quite certain to decide wrong.”
Much as Martin liked Lady Sunningdale, his instant and instinctive73 decision was not to wake her, for an enforced tête-à-tête with Stella had its obvious attractions. She was nearly as tall as he, and her dark-grey eyes almost on a level with his. Her face was a short oval, slightly and charmingly irregular in feature, the nose a little tip-tilted, the mouth a little full. This, set on the neck, which, according to Lady Sunningdale, could supply the place of intellectual brilliance74, made a very good reason for risking the ultimate, not the immediate displeasure.
“My name is Stella Plympton, by the way,” the girl went on. “Pray excuse my introducing so stupid a topic. A person’s name matters so very little, does{40} it not? But sometimes it is inconvenient75 not to know uninteresting things, like names, and the hours at which trains leave stations. Aren’t you thirsty after your walk? Will you not go and forage76 for fluids? And what are we to do?”
Martin looked at her with his direct lucid77 gaze.
“No fluid for me, thanks,” he said. “What do you advise? One can’t go and say ‘Hi, Lady Sunningdale.’”
Stella laughed.
“I couldn’t,” she said; “but I think you might, if you felt disposed. She adores you, you know.”
Martin laughed also, flushing slightly.
“I adore her,” he said. “She makes me laugh all the time. And I love laughing.”
“So do I,” she said. “So please go and say ‘Hi, Lady Sunningdale.’ I’m sure it would make me laugh. You won’t? Then a false and conventional code of politeness dictates78 that I should inflict79 my company on you, though you would probably rather be left alone. Anyhow, do not let us grill80 here in the sun like beefsteaks. There appears to be chairs in the shade over there. From there, too, we shall occupy a strategic position in which to observe Lady Sunningdale’s slumbers.”
There was a slightly sub-acid flavour about this of which Martin was just conscious. Stella, it seemed, was conscious of it too, for she explained:
“I feel rather a failure this afternoon,” she said, “for Lady Sunningdale asked me to stop and amuse her till you came. The result of my efforts to be entertaining, you can see!”
“Please amuse me instead,” said Martin.{41}
“I daren’t try, for fear you should fall asleep too. How is your sister? I remember meeting her once. But, though I have never seen you before, I feel as if I knew you much better. Really at lunch we talked solidly and exclusively about you. You can do everything, they said, except pass examinations. That seemed to me very admirable, for it is notorious, as Lady Sunningdale said, that any fool can pass examinations. She deduced from that that you can’t be a fool.”
Martin laughed.
“I ought to apologize, then,” said he; “though really it isn’t my fault that I monopolized81 the conversation at lunch or that I am left on your hands now. I hope it wasn’t a long lunch.”
“Ah, but isn’t it the fault of your character that you get talked about?”
“But not that Lady Sunningdale goes to sleep after lunch. At least I don’t see how!”
Stella laughed too.
“You put it down to mere25 lunch?” she said. “But if one were disagreeable one might suggest that it was the conversation at lunch, not lunch itself, that led to the desire for repose. How rude of me!”
Martin looked across to the cedar; he was quite willing that Lady Sunningdale’s need for repose should not yet be satisfied.
“But I thought you settled that it was your efforts to amuse her that produced that result,” he said.
The sound of Stella’s laughter perhaps roused Lady Sunningdale, for she moved in her chair and suddenly sat bolt upright.{42}
“Ah, she is awake,” said Stella. “We can peashoot each other no longer. What a pity!”
“But that at least is very polite of you,” said Martin, rising.
“And that is very modest,” she answered. “It might have been true.”
Shrill83, staccato cries came from the cedar as the two walked back across the hot velvet84 of the lawn.
“Stella dear, it is too bad of you,” shrieked85 Lady Sunningdale. “I send for my own particular young man and you monopolize82 him all the afternoon. Martin, you perfidious87 monster. What do you mean by flirting88 with Stella under my very eyes? Did I close them a moment? I think I must have. Is it not tea-time? Where is Sahara? There is a terrible black dog of Flints’s. My dear, it is too hot for words, and have you walked all the way from the terrible parsonage to see me? That is too sweet of you. What have you and Stella been talking about? Stella dearest, if you would whistle three or four times for Sahara. Martin, Frank Yorkshire is here. So odd, two counties in the same house in another county. Is not geography detestable? Yes. I sat next your father last night. I don’t think I ever saw anybody so unlike as you two. I don’t think that’s grammar. Stella, you went fast asleep, I thought, in that chair, and when I woke up, I found it was me in the other. Where are the dogs? Martin, the ‘G?tterd?mmerung,’ was too exquisite! Ternina! Floods, I assure you—I wept floods, and at the critical moment I tugged89 at my necklace, and it broke, and a large pearl fell into the trombone below. Why did you not come up to town, as I told you, for it? Not the pearl,—do not be so foolish.”{43}
Her slumber66 had slightly dishevelled Lady Sunningdale, and as she poured forth90 this surprising nonsense she effected various small repairs and generally made the crooked91 straight. Sahara, the delinquent92 dachshund, recalled by shrill whistling from Stella, waddled93 pathetically up to her, and a violent wagging of heliotrope94 in a flower-bed near probably indicated the locality of Suez Canal.
“And we are going to send you to London or Paris or Rome, Martin,” she continued. “And we don’t quite know which. Tell me, is your father naturally solemn, or is his solemnity beautifully assumed. I don’t think any one could really be as solemn as he appears to be. He sat next me at dinner last night and was quite fascinating. I shall have seven candlesticks on my dressing-table for the future, and he extremely reserved. Dear me, I suppose it would have been better not to have said that. But really his attitude about you is ridiculous. Do imitate him. I am sure you can.”
The corners of Martin’s mouth quivered slightly.
“I think I won’t,” he said.
“You mean you can.”
“I think, perhaps, I could,” said Martin, guardedly.
“Ah, do. Imitate our conversation last night about matters of high-and low-church. Wasn’t it dreadful? I mixed them up, and I don’t know which is which now. Why will Suez Canal always leap about in garden-beds when there is the whole lawn? Naughty! Martin, we have been talking a great deal about you. I am rather bored with you. I stop here over Sunday, and I shall go to church if your father preaches. I think that will give me more influence with him. He{44} said he would very likely come over to tea to-day. I shall never forgive him if he does not, because I want to talk to him about you. We are not going to let you blush unseen any more, and waste your sweetness on the parsonage air. You’ve got to go and work. Men must work, though I never saw the slightest need for women to weep. I haven’t wept for years, except the other night at the ‘G?tterd?mmerung.’ What a charming picture of domestic life, Martin reading Greek history at the table and Mrs. Martin sobbing95 violently in the corner! Yes. How I run on! I suppose you really ought to go to Germany and eat cherry jam with your chicken.”
“How horrible!” said Stella. “Must one take it?”
“If you want to enter into the essential Teutonic spirit you must. You might as well hope to feel like an Anglo-Saxon without being always in a rage or playing violent games as try to be German without jam. How I hate women who play games! They are nearly as odious96 as men who don’t. Let us go indoors, and Martin shall play to us till tea-time. Afterwards he shall play till dinner-time.”
Lady Sunningdale surged slowly to her feet and looked helplessly about.
“Where are the dogs?” she said. “It is too tiresome. They are sure to stray into the woods, and Flints’s horrid97 pheasants will peck them. My darlings! Ah, there they are amid what was once begonias. It looks more like a battlefield now. How naughty! Come at once, all of you!”
There was no doubt whatever that Martin’s piano-playing was of a very remarkable98 order, and before he was half-way through Chopin’s first ballade, Stella,{45} who had been accustomed to consider the piano as an instrument for the encouragement of conversation after dinner, or at the most as the introduction to the vocal99 part of a concert, found herself sitting bolt upright in her chair with a strange tingling100 excitement spreading through her and a heightened and quickened beating of the blood. She was essentially101 unmusical; but something in this was extraordinarily102 arresting; her nerves, if not her sense of melody, were at attention. As for Lady Sunningdale, she always gasped103 when Martin played, and did so now.
“Too heavenly,” she said at the end. “Now make me miserable104. Play the rain on the roof. Tum, tum, tum, tum, don’t you know. Yes, how clever of you to guess.”
It was rather clever, for Lady Sunningdale’s rendering105 did not really resemble any one tune106 in the world more than any other.
Martin paused a moment. Then the slow, sullen107 drip of hot, steady rain on the roof began, as it sounded to a man who was alone in an alien land. It fell with hopeless regular iteration from grey skies, then there was the gurgle of some choked gutter108, and the collected water overflowed109 and was spilt with a little chuckle110. Very distantly on the horizon remote lightning winked111 and flickered112, but there was as yet no sound of thunder in the dark sultriness of the afternoon, but only the endless, monotonous113 rhythm of the dropping rain. Then, faintly at first but with slow crescendo114, there was heard the distant drums of thunder, buffeting115 and rumbling116 among the hills. Then all at once the rain grew heavier; larger drops, as if of lead, fell beating with a resonant117 insistance on the roof,{46} and the voice of the storm grew angry and articulate. Suddenly with an appalling118 crash it burst immediately overhead, drowning for a moment the beat of the rain, and by the blaze of the simultaneous flash sea, sky, and the wave-beaten rocks of Majorca leapt into light. Then, as thunder will, it drew away, and for a time the rain was not so heavy, but again the storm swept up, and once more the chariots of God crashed on their way above them, and the wild lantern of the storm flared119 this way and that, and once more again after that stupendous riot in the skies the hot darkness was punctuated120 by the dreadful melancholy121 of the dripping rain. Then the storm growled122 itself away into the distance; a little light came back into the weeping skies; the pulse of the rain grew fainter, and again a choked gutter gurgled and overflowed. Suddenly, through some unconjectured rift124 in the clouds, one beam of the sun, divinely clear, shot down for a moment on them with excellent brightness. Yet it was only for a moment; again the clouds drifted up, and the rain, which for that minute had ceased, began again, dripping with hopeless regular iteration on to the roof as evening closed in, some evening far away in a land of exile beneath an alien sky.
Effusive125 as she usually was, and accustomed to fill any interval of silence that might conceivably occur with discursive126 volubility, even Lady Sunningdale was silent except for an “Oh, Martin,” which she no more than whispered. For there was that in the room which, in spite of her superficial frivolity127 and the dragon-fly dartings of her mind, she knew and recognized and adored, that the touch of art which makes even of things that are common and unclean gems128 and jewels.{47} Stella too said nothing, but sat still, much more upright than her lolling wont129, holding the arms of her chair. From where she sat she could see Martin’s profile cut with great clearness of outline against a brocaded screen of scarlet130 and gold that stood beyond the piano, and between the music and the musician she was dumb. Even in the desultory131 accidental conversation which she had had with him during the slumbers of Lady Sunningdale there had been something arresting to her in his brilliant boyish personality, and now from his finger-tips there flowed out, so it seemed to her, a personality just as brilliant, but either very mature or by the instinct of genius still boyish, but clad, as it were, in the purple of the artistic nature. There was nothing amateurish132 about it; and, unmusical as she was, she could not help recognising the certainty of the performance.
For a few moments after the last note had died into silence he sat silent also, with head bent133 over the keys. Then he looked up.
“Is that enough, Lady Sunningdale?” he asked.
“No, you angel from heaven, it is never enough!” she cried; “but play something different—something brilliant; I should expire with several hollow church-yard groans134 if you played that again. It makes me miserable. Play something virtuoso135, and let me come closer, where I can see your hands.”
She moved to a low chair to the right of the piano.
“Brahms’s ‘Paganini Variations,’” he suggested.
“Ah, yes, do. It makes me shriek86 with laughter.”
Then, with the same absolute facility and certainty, with the same cleanness and perfection, suggesting, indeed, a slim poised136 figure, he took a header into that{48} ridiculous theme. But out of the foam20 and bubble beneath his hands flowers grew, stars were scattered137, and all nature went mad with dancing. But when the riot of jubilance was at its height, a tall, severe figure suddenly appeared at the French window of the drawing-room, advanced very audibly on the bare boards, and spoke138 sufficiently139 loud to be heard.
“Ah, Lady Sunningdale,” said Mr. Challoner, “how are you? And Martin wasting his time at the piano, as usual. How kind of you to let him play to you!”
Martin wasted no more time there; at the noise of interruption, before his brain had conjectured123 who it was, his hands stopped, the eager, active vitality140 died out of his face, as when a candle is blown out, and he banged a random141 chord in sheer rage. Then, instantaneously, he recognized the voice, and he rose quickly from the music-stool, trembling.
“Yes, wasting my time, as usual,” he said, excitedly, the artist in him suddenly struck dead, leaving just an angry, startled boy. “I must go home, Lady Sunningdale. Thank you so much for letting me play to you, and I hope I haven’t bored you. Good-bye. I have a lot of work to do.”
He closed the piano lid as he spoke, but it slipped from his fingers and shut with a bang that set all the strings jarring.
“Ah, how could you interrupt like that?” cried Lady Sunningdale to his father. “Yes, how are you, Mr. Challoner? Martin, pray begin it again. We will all sit quite quiet without stirring a finger or breathing. You are superb!”
His father sat down, distressed142 at Martin’s rudeness, but honestly desirous of being sympathetic.{49}
“Dear boy, I am so sorry,” he said. “Pray, play your piece.”
“I can’t,” said Martin. “I don’t know it.”
For a moment father and son looked at each other, the one with surprise and indignation, the other in impetuous rebellion and anger.
“Lady Sunningdale asks you to play again what you were playing,” said his father, the desire to be sympathetic vanishing, the sternness deserved by this deplorable lack of manners in Martin increasing every moment.
“It is quite impossible that I should play it,” said Martin. “I couldn’t play a note of it.”
“You seemed to me to know it,” said Mr. Challoner. “Surely you have played it a hundred times at home.”
Martin was really incapable in the shock of this transition from the world which he loved and in which he was at home to this other world of decent behaviour.
“More like a thousand times,” he said and simply, and directly left the room.
There was a somewhat awkward pause. Mr. Challoner was seriously angry with his ill-behaved son; Lady Sunningdale was disgusted at being deprived of her music, and Stella, with a natural eye for drama, was immensely interested. It seemed to her there might be a good deal of drama behind this little incident. Then, luckily perhaps, Lady Sunningdale remembered that she was, so to speak on a mission to the dark ignorance of Mr. Challoner, that savage143 in matters of art, on behalf of Martin, and she put her disgust in her pocket.
“It was charming of you to have come over to see me,” she said to him, with her easy-natured charm.{50} “Yes, I suppose Martin wastes a terrible lot of time at the piano when he should be doing Greek history. Demosthenes! How fascinating! Stella dearest, do see what Suez Canal is doing, and slap him. And will you tell us when tea is ready? Do you know, Mr. Challoner, Martin plays remarkably144,—really remarkably?”
Stella, as she was wont to do, strolled out through the window by which catastrophe145 had entered, leaving the two others alone.
“Yes, it is that incessant146 waste of time that distresses147 me,” said Mr. Challoner. “But the piano at the parsonage is so old that he hardly cares to play on it. But, first, I must apologise to you, Lady Sunningdale, for the extremely rude way in which Martin behaved to you. I promise you he shall make his apologies in person.”
For a moment her irritation148 mastered her.
“He apologise?” she cried. “It ought to be you. Dear Mr. Challoner, how rude I am! Pray forgive me. But you don’t know, you can’t know, what music is to Martin. You don’t know what divine, glorious mood in him you shattered. It was like throwing a brick at an iridescent149 soap-bubble. I suppose Brahms is a name to you like Smith or Jones.”
Then she recalled diplomacy150 again.
“So difficult to understand Brahms, is it not?” she said. “That is the fascination151 of it. But I assure you it is worth thinking over. Martin is wonderful. He has improved so enormously, too. He is not second-rate or third-rate, but first-rate. What have you been doing to him?”
“You mean at playing the piano?” asked Mr. Challoner, as if he had said “sweeping a crossing.”{51}
Lady Sunningdale longed for Sahara to bite him.
“Yes, at playing the piano,” she said, swallowing her irritation again. “He ought to study, you know. He is wasting his time, that is quite true, but not at the piano. I am dreadfully impertinent, am I not? But Flints is an old friend and Martin is his nephew, and music is music, so I feel it very strongly. Of course it is only natural that you, Mr. Challoner, with your earnest nature and your serious aims and all that,—you were too interesting last night, I lay awake for hours thinking over what you had said,—should consider poor Martin very frivolous152, but he is an artist to his finger-tips. It is his nature. Mon Dieu! what finger-tips, too! You know he was playing, and playing, I assure you, with consummate153 ease when you interrup—when you came in, a thing that really great pianists require to practice for months!”
“You are too kind to take such an interest in my lazy son,” said Mr. Challoner, still very stiffly,—so stiffly, in fact, that Lady Sunningdale looked hastily at the fireplace, thinking he must have swallowed the tongs154.
“I assure you it is not kindness that prompts me at all,” she said. “It is mere justice and mere economy. I am very economical. Ask Sunningdale. The world cannot afford to lose a talent like that. If he is like that when he is practically uneducated, to what may not he grow? Heaven knows, the world is so very stupid that we should hoard155 and save every grain of talent that exists. It is like what you so beautifully said to me last night about the ten talents in a napkin.”
“Surely not,” said Mr. Challoner, a faint smile breaking his gravity.{52}
“Well, the one talent, then. I have no head for numbers. And poor Martin’s talent seems to me to be put in a very damp napkin, except now and then when somebody like me lifts up a corner of it and lets the sparkle of gold appear.”
It happened very rarely that Lady Sunningdale was stirred into such coherence156 and earnestness. As a rule, her multifarious little interests were like children playing “King of the Castle,” rapidly pulling each other down from their momentary157 pre-eminence, first one and then another perching precariously158 on the summit. But certainly the most long-lived “King” there was music, and Martin’s future, with the rain-storm of Chopin and the mad frolic of Brahms still in her ears, was very securely throned.
“Think me impertinent, my dear Mr. Challoner,” she went on. “Think me what you will, only do give your most serious attention to what I say. Martin devoting his fingers, his brain, the power of his extraordinary artistic nature to ancient history is a thing to make Julius C?sar weep. The pity of it when he might be starting us all on a new chapter in music! Really I believe that to be possible. And really I am in earnest; and when, as I hope, you know me better, and see how completely scatter-brained I usually am, you will appreciate how deeply I feel this.”
“You mean that my son should devote the most useful, the most active years of his life to playing the piano?” he asked.
“Playing the piano?” she cried, feeling it was almost hopeless to try to make him understand. “That is, of course, a thread in the golden garment of music; but to take piano-playing as synonymous with music{53} would be the same as calling the baptism of those of riper years the same thing as Christianity. Music—music, that must be his life. Flints told me this morning that you found him slack, lazy. So would you be if you had to learn scales, just as he may be—I am sure he is—at classical studies.”
“What do you propose, then?” he asked, inwardly rather rebelling at the consideration he felt somehow forced to give to her eagerness. For, in spite of her discursiveness159, it was clearly impossible not to recognise the surprising quickness and intuition of her mental processes.
“Why, just what I have been telling you. First let him throw his dictionaries and histories into the fire.”
“I have an immense, a vital belief in the educating power of the classics,” said Mr. Challoner.
“For everybody? You cannot mean it! Can you tell from looking at a picture if the artist knew Latin? Or pick me a piece of Greek out of ‘Tristan und Isolde.’ In any case, Martin has spent some ten years at them, he tells me, and what is the result? He fails to pass his examinations. Whether they are a criterion of education, or whether they are an instrument, he or they have failed. He is second-rate at that, third-rate,—it is all one. There is first-rate, and—the rest of the world. What is the good of turning another second-rate person into the sheepfold of the second-rate, particularly when on other lines that person has all the appearance, anyhow, of being first-rate? Well, that is what I think. How kind of you to let me talk so. Where are my angels? Is it not tea-time?”
Lady Sunningdale’s unparalleled effort in concentration{54} of thought here broke completely down, and a whole tribe of clamouring competitors invaded the castle of her mind, dethroning the “King.”
“Yes, Martin really was playing too divinely,” was the “King’s” expiring cry. “So like a great artist, too, to bang down the piano lid when he was interrupted. Beethoven did it too, you know, and shouted, ‘I play no more to such swine.’ So delicious of him. And Helen, how is she? You must bring her over. Frank Yorkshire is dying, if not dead, to see her. He is one of those people, you know, who does nothing and appreciates so much. So infinitely160 better than doing a great deal rather badly, and not recognizing the first-rate when you see it. And are you going to preach on Sunday? I should have been so happy if I had been a man, to have lived in a country-place like this and just spend my days in doing a little good among these simple people. How beautiful it must be! I abhor161 London,—so shallow. Yes. You really must preach on Sunday, Mr. Challoner; otherwise I shall stay at home and read improper162 novels. You would not like to have that on your conscience, would you? People are growing terribly slack about Sunday, are they not? Yes, shall we try to find some tea? Talking makes one so hungry.”
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1
adaptable
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| adj.能适应的，适应性强的，可改编的 | |
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luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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briskness
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| n.敏捷，活泼 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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aviary
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| n.大鸟笼，鸟舍 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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vehemently
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| adv. 热烈地 | |
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chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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17
flute
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| n.长笛；v.吹笛 | |
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18
denuded
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| adj.[医]变光的，裸露的v.使赤裸( denude的过去式和过去分词 )；剥光覆盖物 | |
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chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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foam
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| v./n.泡沫，起泡沫 | |
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foamed
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| 泡沫的 | |
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spouted
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| adj.装有嘴的v.（指液体）喷出( spout的过去式和过去分词 )；滔滔不绝地讲；喋喋不休地说；喷水 | |
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initiating
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| v.开始( initiate的现在分词 )；传授；发起；接纳新成员 | |
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incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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mimicry
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| n.（生物）拟态，模仿 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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32
frigidity
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| n.寒冷；冷淡；索然无味；（尤指妇女的）性感缺失 | |
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33
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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piazza
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| n.广场；走廊 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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38
swelling
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| n.肿胀 | |
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39
spires
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| n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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milieu
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| n.环境；出身背景；(个人所处的)社会环境 | |
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43
gourmet
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| n.食物品尝家；adj.出于美食家之手的 | |
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paragon
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| n.模范，典型 | |
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insular
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| adj.岛屿的，心胸狭窄的 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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48
juggling
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| n. 欺骗, 杂耍(=jugglery) adj. 欺骗的, 欺诈的 动词juggle的现在分词 | |
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49
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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50
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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51
shamefully
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| 可耻地； 丢脸地； 不体面地； 羞耻地 | |
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prosecuted
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| a.被起诉的 | |
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53
ravens
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| n.低质煤；渡鸦( raven的名词复数 ) | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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55
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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56
cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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57
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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58
mania
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| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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59
poke
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| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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60
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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61
placidity
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| n.平静，安静，温和 | |
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62
recuperating
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| v.恢复（健康、体力等），复原( recuperate的现在分词 ) | |
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63
copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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64
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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slumbers
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| 睡眠，安眠( slumber的名词复数 ) | |
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66
slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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67
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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68
beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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69
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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70
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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71
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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72
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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73
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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74
brilliance
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| n.光辉，辉煌，壮丽，（卓越的）才华，才智 | |
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75
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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76
forage
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| n.(牛马的)饲料，粮草；v.搜寻，翻寻 | |
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77
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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78
dictates
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| n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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79
inflict
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| vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担 | |
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80
grill
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| n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问 | |
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81
monopolized
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| v.垄断( monopolize的过去式和过去分词 )；独占；专卖；专营 | |
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82
monopolize
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| v.垄断，独占，专营 | |
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83
shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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84
velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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85
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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86
shriek
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| v./n.尖叫，叫喊 | |
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87
perfidious
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| adj.不忠的，背信弃义的 | |
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88
flirting
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的现在分词 ) | |
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89
tugged
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| v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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91
crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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92
delinquent
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| adj.犯法的，有过失的；n.违法者 | |
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93
waddled
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| v.（像鸭子一样）摇摇摆摆地走( waddle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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94
heliotrope
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| n.天芥菜；淡紫色 | |
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95
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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96
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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100
tingling
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| v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 ) | |
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101
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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102
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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103
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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104
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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105
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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106
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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107
sullen
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| adj.愠怒的，闷闷不乐的，(天气等)阴沉的 | |
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108
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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111
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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112
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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113
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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crescendo
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| n.(音乐)渐强，高潮 | |
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115
buffeting
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| 振动 | |
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rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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resonant
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| adj.(声音)洪亮的，共鸣的 | |
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118
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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119
Flared
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| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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120
punctuated
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| v.（在文字中）加标点符号，加标点( punctuate的过去式和过去分词 )；不时打断某事物 | |
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121
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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conjectured
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| 推测，猜测，猜想( conjecture的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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effusive
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| adj.热情洋溢的；感情(过多)流露的 | |
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discursive
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| adj.离题的，无层次的 | |
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127
frivolity
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| n.轻松的乐事，兴高采烈；轻浮的举止 | |
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gems
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| growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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129
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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130
scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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desultory
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| adj.散漫的，无方法的 | |
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amateurish
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| n.业余爱好的，不熟练的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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virtuoso
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| n.精于某种艺术或乐器的专家，行家里手 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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vitality
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| n.活力，生命力，效力 | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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distresses
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| n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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149
iridescent
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| adj.彩虹色的，闪色的 | |
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150
diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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152
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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153
consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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tongs
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| n.钳；夹子 | |
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155
hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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156
coherence
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| n.紧凑；连贯；一致性 | |
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157
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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158
precariously
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| adv.不安全地；危险地；碰机会地；不稳定地 | |
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discursiveness
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| n.漫谈离题，推论 | |
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160
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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161
abhor
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| v.憎恶；痛恨 | |
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162
improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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