Part 3 (2/2)

Fancy expecting me to appear on the same platform with this--this person in petticoats!”

The secretary looked surprised, as well he micht!!

”I'll not do it!” said the ba.s.so, getting angrier each second. ”You can keep him or me--both you can't have!”

I was not much concerned. I was angry; I'll admit that. But I didna let him fash me. I just made up my mind that if I was no allowed to sing I'd have something to say to that ba.s.so before the evening was oot. And I looked at him, and listened to him bl.u.s.ter, and thought maybe I'd have a bit to do wi' him as well. I'm a wee man and a', but I'm awfu' strong from the work I did in the pit, and I'm never afraid of a bully.

I need ha' gie'n myself no concern as to the secretary. He smiled, and let the ba.s.so talk. And I'll swear he winked at me.

”I really can't decide such a matter, Mr. Roberts,” he said, at last.

”You're engaged to sing; so is Mr. Lauder. Mr. Lauder is ready to fulfill his engagement--if you are not I don't see how I can force you to do so. But you will do yourself no good if you leave us in the lurch--I'm afraid people who are arranging concerts will feel that you are a little unreliable.”

The other singers argued with him, too, but it was no use. He would no demean himself by singing with Harry Lauder. And so we went on without him, and the concert was a great success. I had to give a dozen encores, I mind. And puir Roberts! He got no more engagements, and a little later became a chorus man with a touring opera company. I'm minded of him the noo because, not so lang syne, he met me face to face in London, and greeted me like an old friend.

”I remember very well knowing you, years ago, before you were so famous, Mr. Lauder,” he said. ”I don't just recall the circ.u.mstances-- I think we appeared together at some concerts--that was before I unfortunately lost my voice----”

Aweel, I minded the circ.u.mstances, if he did not, but I had no the heart to remind him! And I ”lent” him the twa s.h.i.+llin' he asked. Frae such an auld friend as him I was lucky not to be touched for half a sovereign!

I've found some men are so. Let you succeed, let you mak' your bit siller, and they remember that they knew you well when you were no so well off and famous. And it's always the same way. If they've not succeeded, it's always someone else's fault, never their own. They dislike you because you've done well when they've done ill. But it's easy to forgie them--it's aye hard to bear a grudge in this world, and to be thinkin' always of punis.h.i.+n' those who use us despite-fully.

I've had my share of knocks from folk. And sometimes I've dreamed of being able to even an auld score. But always, when the time's come for me to do it, I've nae had the heart.

It was rare fun to sing in those concerts. And in the autumn of 1896 I made a new venture. I might have gone on another tour among the music halls in the north, but Donald Munro was getting up a concert tour, and I accepted his offer instead. It was a bit new for a singer like myself to sing at such concerts, but I had been doing well, and Mr.

Munro wanted me, and offered me good terms.

That tour brought me one of my best friends and one of my happiest a.s.sociations. It was on it that I met Mackenzie Murdoch. I'll always swear by Murdoch as the best violinist Scotland ever produced. Maybe Ysaye and some of the boys with the unp.r.o.nounceable Russian names can play better than he. I'll no be saying as to that. But I know that he could win the tears from your een when he played the old Scots melodies; I know that his bow was dipped in magic before he drew it across the strings, and that he played on the strings of your heart the while he sc.r.a.ped that old fiddle of his.

Weel, there was Murdoch, and me, and the third of our party on that tour was Miss Jessie MacLachlan, a bonnie la.s.sie with a glorious voice, the best of our Scottish prima donnas then. We wandered all over the north and the midlands of Scotland on that tour, and it was a grand success. Our audiences were large, and they were generous wi'

their applause, too, which Scottish audiences sometimes are not. Your Scot is a canny yin; he'll aye tak' his pleasures seriously. He'll let ye ken it, richt enough, and fast enough, if ye do not please him. But if ye do he's like to reckon that he paid you to do so, and so why should he applaud ye as weel?

But so well did we do on the tour that I began to do some thinkin'.

Here were we, Murdoch and I, especially, drawing the audiences. What was Munro doing for rakin' in the best part o' the siller folk paid to hear us? Why, nothin' at all that we could no do our twa selves--so I figured. And it hurt me sair to see Munro gettin' siller it seemed to me Murdoch and I micht just as weel be sharing between us. Not that I didna like Munro fine, ye'll ken; he was a gude manager, and a fair man. But it was just the way I was feeling, and I told Murdoch so.

”Ye hae richt, Harry,” he said. ”There's sense in your head, man, wee though you are. What'll we do?”

”Why, be our ain managers!” I said. ”We'll take out a concert party of our own next season.”

At the end of the tour of twelve weeks Mac and I were more determined than ever to do just that. For the time we'd spent we had a hundred pounds apiece to put in the bank, after we'd paid all our expenses-- more money than I'd dreamed of being able to save in many years. And so we made our plans.

But we were no sae sure, afterward, that we'd been richt. We planned our tour carefully. First we went all aboot, to the towns we planned to visit, distributing bills that announced our coming. Shopkeepers were glad to display them for us for a ticket or so, and it seemed that folk were interested, and looking forward to having us come. But if they were they did not show it in the only practical way--the only way that gladdens a manager's heart. They did not come to our concerts in great numbers; indeed, an' they scarcely came at a'. When it was all over and we came to cast up the reckoning we found we'd lost a hundred and fifty pounds sterling--no small loss for two young and ambitious artists to have to pocket.

”Aye, an' I can see where the manager has his uses,” I said to Mac.

”He takes the big profits--but he takes the big risks, too.”

”Are ye discouraged, man Harry!” Mac asked me.

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