Part 55 (2/2)
The warm-hearted Frenchwoman, who had lost a daughter, of whom Hadria reminded her, had been untiring in her kindness, from the first. Madame Vauchelet, in her young days, had cherished a similar musical ambition, and Jouffroy always a.s.serted that she might have done great things, as a performer, had not the cares of a family put an end to all hope of bringing her gifts to fruition.
The piano was opened. Jouffroy played. Madame Vauchelet, with her large veil thrown back, her black cashmere folds falling around her, sat in the large arm-chair, a dignified and graceful figure, listening gravely.
The kindly, refined face of M. Thillard beamed with enjoyment; an occasional cry of admiration escaping his lips, at some exquisite touch from the master.
The time slipped by, with bewildering rapidity.
Monsieur Thillard asked if they might be allowed to hear some of Madame's compositions--those which she had already been so amiable as to play to him.
Jouffroy settled himself to listen; his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows lowering over his eyes, not in severity but in fixity of attention. Hadria trembled for a moment, as her hands touched the keys. Jouffroy gave a nod of satisfaction. If there had been no such quiver of nerves he would have doubted. So he said afterwards to M. Thillard and Madame Vauchelet.
After listening, for a time, without moving a muscle, he suddenly sat bolt upright and looked round at the player. The character of the music, always individual, had grown more marked, and at this point an effect was produced which appeared to startle the musician. He withdrew his gaze, after a moment, muttering something to himself, and resumed his former att.i.tude, slowly and gravely nodding his head. There was a long silence after the last of the lingering, questioning notes had died away.
”Is Madame prepared for work, for hard, faithful work?”
The answer was affirmative. She was only too glad to have the chance to work.
”Has Madame inexhaustible patience?”
”In this cause--yes.”
”And can she bear to be misunderstood; to be derided for departure from old rules and conventions; to have her work despised and refused, and again refused, till at last the dull ears shall be opened and all the stupid world shall run shouting to her feet?”
The colour rushed into Hadria's cheeks. ”_Voila!_” exclaimed Madame Vauchelet. M. Thillard beamed with satisfaction. ”Did I not tell you?”
Jouffroy clapped his friend on the back with enthusiasm. ”_Il faut travailler_,” he said, ”_mais travailler!_” He questioned Hadria minutely as to her course of study, approved it on the whole, suggesting alterations and additions. He asked to look through some more of her work.
”_Mon Dieu_,” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as his quick eye ran over page after page.
”If Madame has a character as strong as her genius, her name will one day be on the lips of all the world.” He looked at her searchingly.
”I knew it!” exclaimed M. Thillard. ”_Madame, je vous felicite._”
”Ah!” cried Jouffroy, with a shake of his black s.h.a.ggy head, ”this is not a fate to be envied. _C'est dur!_”
”I am bewildered!” cried Hadria at last, in a voice that seemed to her to come from somewhere a long way off. The whole scene had acquired the character of a dream. The figures moved through miles of clear distance.
Her impressions were chaotic. While a strange, deep confirmation of the musician's words, seemed to stir within her as if they had long been familiar, her mind entirely refused credence.
He had gone too far. Had he said a remarkable talent, but----
Yet was it not, after all, possible? Nature scattered her gifts wildly and cruelly: cruelly, because she cared not into what cramped nooks and crannies she poured her maddening explosive: cruelly, because she hurled this fire from heaven with indiscriminate hand, to set alight one dared not guess how many chained martyrs at their stakes. Nature did not pick and choose the subjects of her wilful ministrations. She seemed to scatter at random, out of sheer _gaiete de coeur_, as Jouffroy had said, and if some golden grain chanced to be gleaming in this soul or that, what cause for astonishment? The rest might be the worst of dross. As well might the chance occur to one of Nature's children as to another.
She did not bestow even one golden grain for nothing, _bien sur_; she meant to be paid back with interest. Just one bright bead of the whole vast circlet of the truth: perhaps it was hers, but more likely that these kind friends had been misled by their sympathy.
M. Jouffroy came next day to have a long talk with Hadria about her work and her methods. He was absolutely confident of what he had said, but he was emphatic regarding the necessity for work; steady, uninterrupted work. Everything must be subservient to the one aim. If she contemplated anything short of complete dedication to her art--well (he shrugged his shoulders), it would be better to amuse herself. There could be no half-measures with art. True, there were thousands of people who practised a little of this and a little of that, but Art would endure no such disrespect. It was the affair of a lifetime. He had known many women with great talent, but, alas! they had not persistence. Only last year a charming, beautiful young woman, with--_mon Dieu!_--a talent that might have placed her on the topmost rank of singers, had married against the fervent entreaties of Jouffroy, and now--he shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of pitying contempt--”_elle est mere tout simplement_.” Her force had gone from herself into the plump infant, whose ”_cris dechirants_” were all that now remained to the world of his mother's once magnificent voice. _Helas!_ how many brilliant careers had he not seen ruined by this fatal instinct! Jouffroy's pa.s.sion for his art had overcome the usual sentiment of the Frenchman, and even the strain of Jewish blood. He did not think a woman of genius well lost for a child. He grudged her to the fetish _la famille_. He went so far as to say that, even without the claims of genius, a woman ought to be permitted to please herself in the matter. When he heard that Madame had two children, and yet had not abandoned her ambition, he nodded gravely and significantly.
”But Madame has courage,” he commented. ”She must have braved much censure.”
It was the first case of the kind that had come under his notice. He hoped much from it. His opinion of the s.e.x would depend on Hadria's power of persistence. In consequence of numberless pupils who had shewn great promise, and then had satisfied themselves with ”a stupid maternity,” Jouffroy was inclined to regard women with contempt, not as regards their talent, which he declared was often astonis.h.i.+ng, but as regards their persistency of character and purpose.
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