Margaret Pedler - The Splendid Folly

M >> Margaret Pedler >> The Splendid Folly

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

THE SPLENDID FOLLY

by

MARGARET PEDLER

Author of the Hermit of Far End, etc.

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

1921

TO MY HUSBAND

W. G. Q. PEDLER

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE VERDICT
II FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
III AN ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH
IV CRAILING RECTORY
V THE SECOND MEETING
VI THE AFTERMATH OF AN ADVENTURE
VII DIANA SINGS
VIII MRS. LAWRENCE'S HOSPITALITY
IX A CONTEST OF WILLS
X MISS LERMONTOF'S ADVICE
XI THE YEAR'S FRUIT
XII MAX ERRINGTON'S RETURN
XIII THE FRIEND WHO STOOD BY
XIV THE FLAME OF LOVE
XV DIANA'S DECISION
XVI BARONI'S OPINION OF MATRIMONY
XVII "WHOM GOD HATH JOINED TOGETHER"
XVIII THE APPROACHING SHADOW
XIX THE "FIRST NIGHT" PERFORMANCE
XX THE SHADOW FALLS
XXI THE OTHER WOMAN
XXII THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
XXIII PAIN
XXIV THE VISION OF LOVE
XXV BREAKING-POINT
XXVI THE REAPING
XXVII CARLO BARONI EXPLAINS
XXVIII THE AWAKENING
XXIX SACRIFICE

THE HAVEN OF MEMORY

Do you remember
Our great love's pure unfolding,
The troth you gave,
And prayed for God's upholding,
Long and long ago?

Out of the past
A dream--and then the waking--
Comes back to me,
Of love and love's forsaking,
Ere the summer waned.

Ah! Let me dream
That still a little kindness
Dwelt in the smile
That chid my foolish blindness,
When you said good-bye.

Let me remember,
When I am very lonely,
How once your love
But crowned and blessed me only,
Long and long ago!

MARGARET PEDLER.

NOTE:--Musical setting by Isador Epstein. Published by G. Ricordi &
Co.; 14 East 43rd Street, New York.

THE SPLENDID FOLLY

CHAPTER I

THE VERDICT

The March wind swirled boisterously down Grellingham Place, catching up
particles of grit and scraps of paper on his way and making them a
torment to the passers-by, just as though the latter were not already
amply occupied in trying to keep their hats on their heads.

But the blustering fellow cared nothing at all about that as he drove
rudely against them, slapping their faces and blinding their eyes with
eddies of dust; on the contrary, after he had swept forwards like a
tornado for a matter of fifty yards or so he paused, as if in search of
some fresh devilment, and espied a girl beating her way up the street and
carrying a roll of music rather loosely in the crook of her arm. In an
instant he had snatched the roll away and sent the sheets spread-eagling
up the street, looking like so many big white butterflies as they flapped
and whirled deliriously hither and thither.

The girl made an ineffectual grab at them and then dashed in pursuit,
while a small greengrocer's boy, whose time was his master's (ergo, his
own), joined in the chase with enthusiasm.

Given a high wind, and half-a-dozen loose sheets of music, the elusive
quality of the latter seems to be something almost supernatural, not to
say diabolical, and the pursuit would probably have been a lengthy one
but for the fact that a tall man, who was rapidly advancing from the
opposite direction, seeing the girl's predicament, came to her help and
headed off the truant sheets. Within a few moments the combined efforts
of the girl, the man, and the greengrocer's boy were successful in
gathering them together once more, and having tipped the boy, who had
entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing and who was grinning
broadly, she turned, laughing and rather breathless, to thank the man.

But the laughter died suddenly away from her lips as she encountered the
absolute lack of response in his face. It remained quite grave and
unsmiling, exactly as though its owner had not been engaged, only two
minutes before, in a wild and undignified chase after half-a-dozen sheets
of paper which persisted in pirouetting maddeningly just out of reach.

The face was that of a man of about thirty-five, clean-shaven and
fair-skinned, with arresting blue eyes of that peculiar piercing quality
which seems to read right into the secret places of one's mind. The
features were clear-cut--straight nose, square chin, the mouth rather
sternly set, yet with a delicate uplift at its corners that gave it a
singularly sweet expression.

The girl faltered.

"Thank you so much," she murmured at last.

The man's deep-set blue eyes swept her from head to foot in a single
comprehensive glance.

"I am very glad to have been of service," he said briefly.

With a slight bow he raised his hat and passed on, moving swiftly down
the street, leaving her staring surprisedly after him and vaguely feeling
that she had been snubbed.

To Diana Quentin this sensation was something of a novelty. As a rule,
the men who were brought into contact with her quite obviously
acknowledged her distinctly charming personality, but this one had
marched away with uncompromising haste and as unconcernedly as though she
had been merely the greengrocer's boy, and he had been assisting him in
the recovery of some errant Brussels sprouts.

For a moment an amused smile hovered about her lips; then the
recollection of her business in Grellingham Place came back to her with a
suddenly sobering effect and she hastened on her way up the street,
pausing at last at No. 57. She mounted the steps reluctantly, and with a
nervous, spasmodic intake of the breath pressed the bell-button.

No one came to answer the door--for the good and sufficient reason that
Diana's timid pressure had failed to elicit even the faintest sound--and
its four blank brown panels seemed to stare at her forbiddingly. She
stared back at them, her heart sinking ever lower and lower the while,
for behind those repellent portals dwelt the great man whose "Yea" or
"Nay" meant so much to her--Carlo Baroni, the famous teacher of singing,
whose verdict upon any voice was one from which there could be no appeal.

Diana wondered how many other aspirants to fame had lingered like herself
upon that doorstep, their hearts beating high with hope, only to descend
the white-washed steps a brief hour later with the knowledge that from
the standpoint of the musical profession their voices were useless for
all practical purposes, and with their pockets lighter by two guineas,
the _maestro's_ fee for an opinion.

The wind swept up the street again and Diana shivered, her teeth
chattering partly with cold but even more with nervousness. This was a
bad preparation for the coming interview, and with an irritation born of
despair she pressed the bell-button to such good purpose that she could
hear footsteps approaching, almost before the trill of the bell had
vibrated into silence.

An irreproachable man-servant, with the face of a sphinx, opened the door.

Diana tried to speak, failed, then, moistening her lips, jerked out the
words:--

"Signor Baroni?"

"Have you an appointment?" came the relentless inquiry, and Diana could
well imagine how inexorably the greatly daring who had come on chance
would be turned away.

"Yes--oh, yes," she stammered. "For three o'clock--Miss Diana Quentin."

"Come this way, please." The man stood aside for her to enter, and a
minute later she found herself following him through a narrow hall to the
door of a room whence issued the sound of a softly-played pianoforte
accompaniment.

The sphinx-like one threw open the door and announced her name, and with
quaking knees she entered.

The room was a large one. At its further end stood a grand piano, so
placed that whoever was playing commanded a full view of the remainder of
the room, and at this moment the piano-stool was occupied by Signor
Baroni himself, evidently in the midst of giving a lesson to a young man
who was standing at his elbow. He was by no means typically Italian in
appearance; indeed, his big frame and finely-shaped head with its
massive, Beethoven brow reminded one forcibly of the fact that his mother
had been of German origin. But the heavy-lidded, prominent eyes, neither
brown nor hazel but a mixture of the two, and the sallow skin and long,
mobile lips--these were unmistakably Italian. The nose was slightly
Jewish in its dominating quality, and the hair that was tossed back over
his head and descended to the edge of his collar with true musicianly
luxuriance was grizzled by sixty years of strenuous life. It would seem
that God had taken an Italian, a German, and a Jew, and out of them
welded a surpassing genius.

Baroni nodded casually towards Diana, and, still continuing to play with
one hand, gestured towards an easy-chair with the other.

"How do you do? Will you sit down, please," he said, speaking with a
strong, foreign accent, and then apparently forgot all about her.

"Now"--he turned to the young man whose lesson her entry had
interrupted--"we will haf this through once more. Bee-gin, please: '_In
all humility I worship thee_.'"

Obediently the young man opened his mouth, and in a magnificent baritone
voice declaimed that reverently, and from a great way off, he ventured to
worship at his beloved's shrine, while Diana listened spell-bound.

If this were the only sort of voice Baroni condescended to train, what
chance had she? And the young man's singing seemed so finished, the
fervour of his passion was so vehemently rendered, that she humbly
wondered that there still remained anything for him to learn. It was
almost like listening to a professional.

Quite suddenly Baroni dropped his hands from the piano and surveyed the
singer with such an eloquent mixture of disgust and bitter contempt in
his extraordinarily expressive eyes that Diana positively jumped.

"Ach! So that is your idea of a humble suitor, is it?" he said, and
though he never raised his voice above the rather husky, whispering tones
that seemed habitual to him, it cut like a lash. Later, Diana was to
learn that Baroni's most scathing criticisms and most furious reproofs
were always delivered in a low, half-whispering tone that fairly seared
the victim. "That is your idea, then--to shout, and yell, and bellow
your love like a caged bull? When will you learn that music is not
noise, and that love--love"--and the odd, husky voice thrilled suddenly
to a note as soft and tender as the cooing of a wood-pigeon--"can be
expressed _piano_--ah, but _pianissimo_--as well as by blowing great
blasts of sound from those leathern bellows which you call your lungs?"

The too-forceful baritone stood abashed, shifting uneasily from one foot
to the other. With a swift motion Baroni swept up the music from the
piano and shovelled it pell-mell into the young man's arms.

"Oh, go away, go away!" he said impatiently. "You are a voice--just a
voice--and nothing more. You will _nevaire_ be an artist!" And he
turned his back on him.

Very dejectedly the young man made his way towards the door, whilst
Diana, overcome with sympathy and horror at his abrupt dismissal, could
hardly refrain from rushing forward to intercede for him.

And then, to her intense amazement, Baroni whisked suddenly round, and
following the young man to the door, laid his hand on his shoulder.

"_Au revoir, mon brave_," he said, with the utmost bonhomie. "Bring the
song next time and we will go through it again. But do not be
discouraged--no, for there is no need. It will come--it will come. But
remember, _piano--piano--pianissimo_!"

And with a reassuring pat on the shoulder he pushed the young man
affectionately through the doorway and closed the door behind him.

So he had not been dismissed in disgrace after all! Diana breathed a
sigh of relief, and, looking up, found Signor Baroni regarding her with a
large and benevolent smile.

"You theenk I was too severe with him?" he said placidly. "But no. He
is like iron, that young man; he wants hammer-blows."

"I think he got them," replied Diana crisply, and then stopped, aghast at
her own temerity. She glanced anxiously at Baroni to see if he had
resented her remark, only to find him surveying her with a radiant smile
and looking exactly like a large, pleased child.

"We shall get on, the one with the other," he observed contentedly.
"Yes, we shall get on. And now--who are you? I do not remember
names"--with a terrific roll of his R's--"but you haf a very pree-ty
face--and I never forget a pree-ty face."

"I'm--I'm Diana Quentin," she blurted out, nervousness once more
overpowering her as she realised that the moment of her ordeal was
approaching. "I've come to have my voice tried."

Baroni picked up a memorandum book from his table, turning over the pages
till he came to her name.

"Ach! I remember now. Miss Waghorne--my old pupil sent you. She has
been teaching you, isn't it so?"

Diana nodded.

"Yes, I've had a few lessons from her, and she hoped that possibly you
would take me as a pupil."

It was out at last--the proposal which now, in the actual presence of the
great man himself, seemed nothing less than a piece of stupendous
presumption.

Signor Baroni's eyes roamed inquiringly over the face and figure of the
girl before him--quite possibly querying as to whether or no she
possessed the requisite physique for a singer. Nevertheless, the great
master was by no means proof against the argument of a pretty face.
There was a story told of him that, on one occasion, a girl with an
exceptionally fine voice had been brought to him, some wealthy patroness
having promised to defray the expenses of her training if Baroni would
accept her as a pupil. Unfortunately, the girl was distinctly plain,
with a quite uninteresting plainness of the pasty, podgy description, and
after he had heard her sing, the _maestro_, first dismissing her from the
room, had turned to the lady who was prepared to stand sponsor for her,
and had said, with an inimitable shrug of his massive shoulders:--

"The voice--it is all right. But the girl--heavens, madame, she is of an
ugliness! And I cannot teach ugly people. She has the face of a
peeg--please take her away."

But there was little fear that a similar fate would befall Diana. Her
figure, though slight with the slenderness of immaturity, was built on
the right lines, and her young, eager face, in its frame of raven hair,
was as vivid as a flower--its clear pallor serving but to emphasise the
beauty of the straight, dark brows and of the scarlet mouth with its
ridiculously short upper-lip. Her eyes were of that peculiarly light
grey which, when accompanied, as hers were, by thick black lashes, gives
an almost startling impression each time the lids are lifted, an odd
suggestion of inner radiance that was vividly arresting.

An intense vitality, a curious shy charm, the sensitiveness inseparable
from the artist nature--all these, and more, Baroni's experienced eye
read in Diana's upturned face, but it yet remained for him to test the
quality of her vocal organs.

"Well, we shall see," he said non-committally. "I do not take many
pupils."

Diana's heart sank yet a little lower, and she felt almost tempted to
seek refuge in immediate flight rather than remain to face the inevitable
dismissal that she guessed would be her portion.

Baroni, however, put a summary stop to any such wild notions by turning
on her with the lightning-like change of mood which she came afterwards
to know as characteristic of him.

"You haf brought some songs?" He held out his hand. "Good. Let me see
them."

He glanced swiftly through the roll of music which she tendered.

"This one--we will try this. Now"--seating himself at the piano--"open
your mouth, little nightingale, and sing."

Softly he played the opening bars of the prelude to the song, and Diana
watched fascinatedly while he made the notes speak, and sing, and melt
into each other with his short stumpy fingers that looked as though they
and music would have little enough in common.

"Now then. Bee-gin."

And Diana began. But she was so nervous that she felt as though her
throat had suddenly closed up, and only a faint, quavering note issued
from her lips, breaking off abruptly in a hoarse croak.

Baroni stopped playing.

"Tchut! she is frightened," he said, and laid an encouraging hand on her
shoulder. "But do not be frightened, my dear. You haf a pree-ty face;
if your voice is as pree-ty as your face you need not haf fear."

Diana was furious with herself for failing at the critical moment, and
even more angry at Baroni's speech, in which she sensed a suggestion of
the tolerance extended to the average drawing-room singer of mediocre
powers.

"I don't want to have a _pretty_ voice!" she broke out, passionately. "I
wouldn't say thank you for it."

And anger having swallowed up her nervousness, she opened her mouth--and
her throat with it this time?--and let out the full powers that were
hidden within her nice big larynx.

When she ceased, Baroni closed the open pages of the song, and turning on
his stool, regarded her for a moment in silence.

"No," he said at last, dispassionately. "It is certainly not a pree-ty
voice."

To Diana's ears there was such a tone of indifference, such an air of
utter finality about the brief speech, that she felt she would have been
eternally grateful now could she only have passed the low standard
demanded by the possession of even a merely "pretty" voice.

"So this is the voice you bring me to cultivate?" continued the
_maestro_. "This that sounds like the rumblings of a subterranean
earthquake? Boom! boo-o-om! Like that, _nicht wahr_?"

Diana crimsoned, and, feeling her knees giving way beneath her, sank into
the nearest chair, while Baroni continued to stare at her.

"Then--then you cannot take me as a pupil?" she said faintly.

Apparently he did not hear her, for he asked abruptly:--

"Are you prepared to give up everything--everything in the world for art?
She is no easy task-mistress, remember! She will want a great deal of
your time, and she will rob you of your pleasures, and for her sake you
will haf to take care of your body--to guard your physical health--as
though it were the most precious thing on earth. To become a great
singer, a great artiste, means a life of self-denial. Are you prepared
for this?"

"But--but--" stammered Diana in astonishment. "If my voice is not even
pretty--if it is no good--"

"_No good_?" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet with a rapidity of
movement little short of marvellous in a man of his size and bulk.
"_Gran Dio_! No good, did you say? But, my child, you haf a voice of
gold--pure gold. In three years of my training it will become the voice
of the century. Tchut! No good!"

He pranced nimbly to the door and flung it open.

"Giulia! Giulia!" he shouted, and a minute later a fat, amiable-looking
woman, whose likeness to Baroni proclaimed them brother and sister, came
hurrying downstairs in answer to his call. "Signora Evanci, my sister,"
he said, nodding to Diana. "This, Giulia, is a new pupil, and I would
haf you hear her voice. It is magnificent--_epatant_! Open your mouth,
little singing-bird, once more. This time we will haf some scales."

Bewildered and excited, Diana sang again, Baroni testing the full compass
of her voice until quite suddenly he shut down the lid of the piano.

"It is enough," he said solemnly, and then, turning to Signora Evanci,
began talking to her in an excited jumble of English and Italian. Diana
caught broken phrases here and there.

"Of a quality superb! . . . And a beeg compass which will grow beeger
yet. . . . The contralto of the century, Giulia."

And Signora Evanci smiled and nodded agreement, patting Diana's hand, and
reminded Baroni that it was time for his afternoon cup of consomme. She
was a comfortable feather-bed of a woman, whose mission in life it seemed
to be to fend off from her brother all sharp corners, and to see that he
took his food at the proper intervals and changed into the thick
underclothing necessitated by the horrible English climate.

"But it will want much training, your voice," continued Baroni, turning
once more to Diana. "It is so beeg that it is all over the place--it
sounds like a clap of thunder that has lost his way in a back garden."
And he smiled indulgently. "To bee-gin with, you will put away all your
songs--every one. There will be nothing but exercises for months yet.
And you will come for your first lesson on Thursday. Mondays and
Thursdays I will teach you, but you must come other days, also, and
listen at my lessons. There is much--very much--learned by listening, if
one listens with the brain as well as with the ear. Now, little
singing-bird, good-bye. I will go with you myself to the door."

The whole thing seemed too impossibly good to be true. Diana felt as if
she were in the middle of a beautiful dream from which she might at any
moment waken to the disappointing reality of things. Hardly able to
believe the evidence of her senses, she found herself once again in the
narrow hall, shepherded by the maestro's portly form. As he held the
door open for her to pass out into the street, some one ran quickly up
the steps, pausing on the topmost.

"Ha, Olga!" exclaimed Baroni, beaming. "You haf returned just too late
to hear Mees Quentin. But you will play for her--many times yet." Then,
turning to Diana, he added by way of introduction: "This is my
accompanist, Mees Lermontof."

Diana received the impression of a thin, satirical face, its unusual
pallor picked out by the black brows and hair, of a bitter-looking mouth
that hardly troubled itself to smile in salutation, and, above all, of a
pair of queer green eyes, which, as the heavy, opaque white lids above
them lifted, seemed slowly--and rather contemptuously--to take her in
from head to foot.

She bowed, and as Miss Lermontof inclined her head slightly in response,
there was a kind of cold aloofness in her bearing--a something defiantly
repellent--which filled Diana with a sudden sense of dislike, almost of
fear. It was as though the sun had all at once gone behind a cloud.

The Baroni's voice fell on her ears, and the disagreeable tension snapped.

"_A rivederci_, little singing-bird. On Thursday we will bee-gin."

The door closed on the _maestro's_ benevolently smiling face, and on that
other--the dark, satirical face of Olga Lermontof--and Diana found
herself once again breasting the March wind as it came roystering up
through Grellingham Place.

CHAPTER II

FELLOW-TRAVELLERS

"Look sharp, miss, jump in! Luggage in the rear van."

The porter hoisted her almost bodily up the steps of the railway
carriage, slamming the door behind her, the guard's whistle shrieked, and
an instant later the train started with a jerk that sent Diana staggering
against the seat of the compartment, upon which she finally subsided,
breathless but triumphant.

She had very nearly missed the train. An organised procession of some
kind had been passing through the streets just as she was driving to the
station, and her taxi had been held up for the full ten minutes' grace
which she had allowed herself, the metre fairly ticking its heart out in
impotent rage behind the policeman's uplifted hand.

So it was with a sigh of relief that she found herself at last
comfortably installed in a corner seat of a first-class carriage. She
glanced about her to make sure that she had not mislaid any of her hand
baggage in her frantic haste, and this point being settled to her
satisfaction, she proceeded to take stock of her fellow-traveller, for
there was one other person in the compartment besides herself.

He was sitting in the corner furthest away, his back to the engine,
apparently entirely oblivious of her presence. On his knee rested a
quarto writing-pad, and he appeared so much absorbed in what he was
writing that Diana doubted whether he had even heard the commotion,
occasioned by her sudden entry.

But she was mistaken. As the porter had bundled her into the carriage,
the man in the corner had raised a pair of deep-set blue eyes, looked at
her for a moment with a half-startled glance, and then, with the barest
flicker of a smile, had let his eyes drop once more upon his writing-pad.
Then he crossed out the word "Kismet," which he had inadvertently written.

Diana regarded him with interest. He was probably an author, she
decided, and since a year's training as a professional singer had brought
her into contact with all kinds of people who earned their livings by
their brains, as she herself hoped to do some day, she instantly felt a
friendly interest in him. She liked, too, the shape of the hand that
held the fountain-pen; it was a slender, sensitive-looking member with
well-kept nails, and Diana always appreciated nice hands. The man's head
was bent over his work, so that she could only obtain a foreshortened
glimpse of his face, but he possessed a supple length of limb that even
the heavy travelling-rug tucked around his knees failed to disguise, and
there was a certain _soigne_ air of rightness about the way he wore his
clothes which pleased her.

Suddenly becoming conscious that she was staring rather openly, she
turned her eyes away and looked out of the window, and immediately
encountered a big broad label, pasted on to the glass, with the word
"_Reserved_" printed on it in capital letters. The letters, of course,
appeared reversed to any one inside the carriage, but they were so big
and black and hectoring that they were quite easily deciphered.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19