The Rosary
Chapter IV
Jane Volunteers
The duchess plumped down her basket in the middle of the strawberry table.
"There, good people!" she said, rather breathlessly. "Help yourselves, and
let me see you all wearing roses to-night. And the concert-room is to be a bower
of roses. We will call it 'LA FETE DES ROSES.' . . . No, thank you, Ronnie. That
tea has been made half an hour at least, and you ought to love me too well to
press it upon me. Besides, I never take tea. I have a whiskey and soda when I
wake from my nap, and that sustains me until dinner. Oh yes, my dear Myra, I
know I came to your interesting meeting, and signed that excellent pledge 'POUR
ENCOURAGER LES AUTRES'; but I drove straight to my doctor when I left your
house, and he gave me a certificate to say I MUST take something when I needed
it; and I always need it when I wake from my nap. . . . Really, Dal, it is
positively wicked for any man, off the stage, to look as picturesque as you do,
in that pale violet shirt, and dark violet tie, and those white flannels. If I
were your grandmother I should send you in to take them off. If you turn the
heads of old dowagers such as I am, what chance have all these chickens? . . .
Hush, Tommy! That was a very naughty word! And you need not be jealous of Dal. I
admire you still more. Dal, will you paint my scarlet macaw?"
The young artist, whose portraits in that year's Academy had created much
interest in the artistic world, and whose violet shirt had just been so severely
censured, lay back in his lounge-chair, with his arms behind his head and a
gleam of amusement in his bright brown eyes.
"No, dear Duchess," he said. "I beg respectfully to decline the commission,
Tommy would require a Landseer to do full justice to his attitudes and
expression. Besides, it would be demoralising to an innocent and well-brought-up
youth, such as you know me to be, to spend long hours in Tommy's society,
listening to the remarks that sweet bird would make while I painted him. But I
will tell you what I will do. I will paint you, dear Duchess, only not in that
hat! Ever since I was quite a small boy, a straw hat with black ribbons tied
under the chin has made me feel ill. If I yielded to my natural impulses now, I
should hide my face in Miss Champion's lap, and kick and scream until you took
it off. I will paint you in the black velvet gown you wore last night, with the
Medici collar; and the jolly arrangement of lace and diamonds on your head. And
in your hand you shall hold an antique crystal mirror, mounted in silver."
The artist half closed his eyes, and as he described his picture in a voice
full of music and mystery, an attentive hush fell upon the gay group around him.
When Garth Dalmain described his pictures, people saw them. When they walked
into the Academy or the New Gallery the following year, they would say: "Ah,
there it is! just as we saw it that day, before a stroke of it was on the
canvas."
"In your left hand, you shall hold the mirror, but you shall not be looking
into it; because you never look into mirrors, dear Duchess, excepting to see
whether the scolding you are giving your maid, as she stands behind you, is
making her cry; and whether that is why she is being so clumsy in her
manipulation of pins and things. If it is, you promptly promise her a day off,
to go and see her old mother; and pay her journey there and back. If it isn't,
you scold her some more. Were I the maid, I should always cry, large tears
warranted to show in the glass; only I should not sniff, because sniffing is so
intensely aggravating; and I should be most frightfully careful that my tears
did not run down your neck."
"Dal, you ridiculous CHILD!" said the duchess. "Leave off talking about my
maids, and my neck, and your crocodile tears, and finish describing the
portrait. What do I do, with the mirror?"
"You do not look into it," continued Garth Dalmain, meditatively; "because we
KNOW that is a thing you never do. Even when you put on that hat, and tie those
ribbons — Miss Champion, I wish you would hold my hand — in a bow under your
chin, you don't consult the mirror. But you shall sit with it in your left hand,
your elbow resting on an Eastern table of black ebony inlaid with mother-of-
pearl. You will turn it from you, so that it reflects something exactly in front
of you in the imaginary foreground. You will be looking at this unseen object
with an expression of sublime affection. And in the mirror I will paint a vivid,
brilliant, complete reflection, minute, but perfect in every detail, of your
scarlet macaw on his perch. We will call it 'Reflections,' because one must
always give a silly up-to-date title to pictures, and just now one nondescript
word is the fashion, unless you feel it needful to attract to yourself the eye
of the public, in the catalogue, by calling your picture twenty lines of
Tennyson. But when the portrait goes down to posterity as a famous picture, it
will figure in the catalogue of the National Gallery as 'The Duchess, the
Mirror, and the Macaw.'"
"Bravo!" said the duchess, delighted. "You shall paint it, Dal, in time for
next year's Academy, and we will all go and see it."
And he did. And they all went. And when they saw it they said: "Ah, of
course! There it is; just as we saw it under the cedar at Overdene."
"Here comes Simmons with something on a salver," exclaimed the duchess. "How
that man waddles! Why can't somebody teach him to step out? Jane! You march
across this lawn like a grenadier. Can't you explain to Simmons how it's done? .
. . Well? What is it? Ha! A telegram. Now what horrible thing can have happened?
Who would like to guess? I hope it is not merely some idiot who has missed a
train."
Amid a breathless and highly satisfactory silence, the duchess tore open the
orange envelope.
Apparently the shock was of a thorough, though not enjoyable, kind; for the
duchess, at all times highly coloured, became purple as she read, and absolutely
inarticulate with indignation. Jane rose quietly, looked over her aunt's
shoulder, read the long message, and returned to her seat.
"Creature!" exclaimed the duchess, at last. "Oh, creature! This comes of
asking them as friends. And I had a lovely string of pearls for her, worth far
more than she would have been offered, professionally, for one song. And to fail
at the last minute! Oh, CREATURE!"
"Dear aunt," said Jane, "if poor Madame Velma has a sudden attack of
laryngitis, she could not possibly sing a note, even had the Queen commanded
her. Her telegram is full of regrets."
"Don't argue, Jane!" exclaimed the duchess, crossly. "And don't drag in the
Queen, who has nothing to do with my concert or Velma's throat. I do abominate
irrelevance, and you know it! WHY must she have her what — do — you — call —
it, just when she was coming to sing here? In my young days people never had
these new-fangled complaints. I have no patience with all this appendicitis and
what not — cutting people open at every possible excuse. In my young days we
called it a good old-fashioned stomach-ache, and gave them Turkey rhubarb!"
Myra Ingleby hid her face behind her garden hat; and Garth Dalmain whispered
to Jane: "I do abominate irrelevance, and you know it!" But Jane shook her head
at him, and refused to smile.
"Tommy wants a gooseberry!" shouted the macaw, having apparently noticed the
mention of rhubarb.
"Oh, give it him, somebody!" said the worried duchess.
"Dear aunt," said Jane, "there are no gooseberries."
"Don't argue, girl!" cried the duchess, furiously; and Garth, delighted,
shook his head at Jane. "When he says 'gooseberry,' he means anything GREEN, as
you very well know!"
Half a dozen people hastened to Tommy with lettuce, water-cress, and cucumber
sandwiches; and Garth picked one blade of grass, and handed it to Jane; with an
air of anxious solicitude; but Jane ignored it.
"No answer, Simmons," said the duchess. "Why don't you go? . . . Oh, how that
man waddles! Teach him to walk, somebody! Now the question is, What is to be
done? Here is half the county coming to hear Velma, by my invitation; and Velma
in London pretending to have appendicitis — no, I mean the other thing. Oh,
'drat the woman!' as that clever bird would say."
"Hold your jaw!" shouted Tommy. The duchess smiled, and consented to sit
down.
"But, dear Duchess," suggested Garth in his most soothing voice, "the county
does not know Madame Velma was to be here. It was a profound secret. You were to
trot her out at the end. Lady Ingleby called her your 'surprise packet.'"
Myra came out from behind her garden hat, and the duchess nodded at her
approvingly.
"Quite true," she said. "That was the lovely part of it. Oh, creature!"
"But, dear Duchess," pursued Garth persuasively, "if the county did not know,
the county will not be disappointed. They are coming to listen to one another,
and to hear themselves, and to enjoy your claret-cup and ices. All this they
will do, and go away delighted, saying how cleverly the dear duchess, discovers
and exploits local talent."
"Ah, ha!" said the duchess, with a gleam in the hawk eye, and a raising of
the hooked nose-which Mrs. Parker Bangs of Chicago, who had met the duchess once
or twice, described as "genuine Plantagenet" — "but they will go away wise in
their own conceits, and satisfied with their own mediocre performances. My idea
is to let them do it, and then show them how it should be done."
"But Aunt 'Gina," said Jane, gently; "surely you forget that most of these
people have been to town and heard plenty of good music, Madame Velma herself
most likely, and all the great singers. They know they cannot sing like a prima
donna; but they do their anxious best, because you ask them. I cannot see that
they require an object lesson"
"Jane," said the duchess, "for the third time this afternoon I must request
you not to argue."
"Miss Champion," said Garth Dalmain, "if I were your grandmamma, I should
send you to bed."
"What is to be done?" reiterated the duchess. "She was to sing THE ROSARY. I
had set my heart on it. The whole decoration of the room is planned to suit that
song — festoons of white roses; and a great red-cross at the back of the
platform, made entirely of crimson ramblers. Jane!"
"Yes, aunt."
"Oh, don't say 'Yes, aunt,' in that senseless way! Can't you make some
suggestion?"
"Drat the woman!" exclaimed Tommy, suddenly.
"Hark to that sweet bird!" cried the duchess, her good humour fully restored.
"Give him a strawberry, somebody. Now, Jane, what do you suggest?"
Jane Champion was seated with her broad back half turned to her aunt, one
knee crossed over the other, her large, capable hands clasped round it. She
loosed her hands, turned slowly round, and looked into the keen eyes peering at
her from under the mushroom hat. As she read the half-resentful, half-appealing
demand in them, a slow smile dawned in her own. She waited a moment to make sure
of the duchess's meaning, then said quietly: "I will sing THE ROSARY for you, in
Velma's place, to-night, if you really wish it, aunt."
Had the gathering under the tree been a party of "mere people," it would have
gasped. Had it been a "freak party," it would have been loud-voiced in its
expressions of surprise. Being a "best party," it gave no outward sign; but a
sense of blank astonishment, purely mental, was in the air. The duchess herself
was the only person present who had heard Jane Champion sing.
"Have you the song?" asked her Grace of Meldrum, rising, and picking up her
telegram and empty basket.
"I have," said Jane. "I spent a few hours with Madame Blanche when I was in
town last month; and she, who so rarely admires these modern songs, was
immensely taken with it. She sang it, and allowed me to accompany her. We spent
nearly an hour over it. I obtained a copy afterwards."
"Good," said the duchess. "Then I count on you. Now I must send a sympathetic
telegram to that poor dear Velma, who will be fretting at having to fail us. So
'au revoir,' good people. Remember, we dine punctually at eight o'clock. Music
is supposed to begin at nine. Ronnie, be a kind boy, and carry Tommy into the
hall for me. He will screech so fearfully if he sees me walk away without him.
He is so very loving, dear bird!"
Silence under the cedar.
Most people were watching young Ronald, holding the stand as much at arm's
length as possible; while Tommy, keeping his balance wonderfully, sidled up
close to him, evidently making confidential remarks into Ronnie's terrified ear.
The duchess walked on before, quite satisfied with the new turn events had
taken.
One or two people were watching Jane.
"It is very brave of you," said Myra Ingleby, at length. "I would offer to
play your accompaniment, dear; but I can only manage Au clair de la lune, and
Three Blind Mice, with one finger."
"And I would offer to play your accompaniment, dear," said Garth Dalmain, "if
you were going to sing Lassen's Allerseelen, for I play that quite beautifully
with ten fingers! It is an education only to hear the way I bring out the
tolling of the cemetery chapel bell right through the song. The poor thing with
the bunch of purple heather can never get away from it. Even in the grand
crescendo, appassionata, fortissimo, when they discover that 'in death's dark
valley this is Holy Day,' I give then no holiday from that bell. I don't know
what it did 'once in May.' It tolls all the time, with maddening persistence, in
my accompaniment. But I have seen The Rosary, and I dare not face those chords.
To begin with, you start in every known flat; and before you have gone far you
have gathered unto yourself handfuls of known and unknown sharps, to which you
cling, not daring to let them go, lest they should be wanted again the next
moment. Alas, no! When it is a question of accompanying The Rosary, I must say,
as the old farmer at the tenants' dinner the other day said to the duchess when
she pressed upon him a third helping of pudding: 'Madam, I CANNOT!'"
"Don't be silly, Dal," said Jane. "You could accompany The Rosary perfectly,
if I wanted it done. But, as it happens, I prefer accompanying myself."
"Ah," said Lady Ingleby, sympathetically, "I quite understand that. It would
be such a relief all the time to know that if things seemed going wrong, you
could stop the other part, and give yourself the note."
The only two real musicians present glanced at each other, and a gleam of
amusement passed between them.
"It certainly would be useful, if necessary," said Jane.
"I would 'stop the other part' and 'give you the note,'" said Garth,
demurely.
"I am sure you would," said Jane. "You are always so very kind. But I prefer
to keep the matter in my own hands."
"You realise the difficulty of making the voice carry in a place of that size
unless you can stand and face the audience?" Garth Dalmain spoke anxiously. Jane
was a special friend of his, and he had a man's dislike of the idea of his chum
failing in anything, publicly.
The same quiet smile dawned in Jane's eyes and passed to her lips as when she
had realised that her aunt meant her to volunteer in Velma's place. She glanced
around. Most of the party had wandered off in twos and threes, some to the
house, others back to the river. She and Dal and Myra were practically alone.
Her calm eyes were full of quiet amusement as she steadfastly met the anxious
look in Garth's, and answered his question.
"Yes, I know. But the acoustic properties of the room are very perfect, and I
have learned to throw my voice. Perhaps you may not know — in fact, how should
you know? — but I have had the immense privilege of studying with Madame
Marchesi in Paris, and of keeping up to the mark since by an occasional
delightful hour with her no less gifted daughter in London. So I ought to know
all there is to know about the management of a voice, if I have at all
adequately availed myself of such golden opportunities."
These quiet words were Greek to Myra, conveying no more to her mind than if
Jane had said: "I have been learning Tonic sol-fa." In fact, not quite so much,
seeing that Lady Ingleby had herself once tried to master the Tonic sol-fa
system in order to instruct her men and maids in part-singing. It was at a time
when she owned a distinctly musical household. The second footman possessed a
fine barytone. The butler could "do a little bass," which is to say that, while
the other parts soared to higher regions, he could stay on the bottom note if
carefully placed there, and told to remain. The head housemaid sang what she
called "seconds"; in other words, she followed along, slightly behind the
trebles as regarded time, and a major third below them as regarded pitch. The
housekeeper, a large, dark person with a fringe on her upper lip, unshaven and
unashamed, produced a really remarkable effect by singing the air an octave
below the trebles. Unfortunately Lady Ingleby was apt to confuse her with the
butler. Myra herself was the first to admit that she had not "much ear"; but it
was decidedly trying, at a moment when she dared not remove her eyes from the
accompaniment of Good King Wenceslas, to have called out: "Stay where you are,
Jenkins!" and then find it was Mrs. Jarvis who had been travelling upwards. But
when a new footman, engaged by Lord Ingleby with no reference to his musical
gifts, chanced to possess a fine throaty tenor, Myra felt she really had
material with which great things might be accomplished, and decided herself to
learn the Tonic sol-fa system. She easily mastered mi, re, do, and so, fa, fa,
mi, because these represented the opening lines of Three Blind Mice, always a
musical landmark to Myra. But when it came to the fugue-like intricacies in the
theme of "They all ran after the farmer's wife," Lady Ingleby was lost without
the words to cling to, and gave up the Tonic sol-fa system in despair.
So the name of the greatest teacher of singing of this age did not convey
much to Myra's mind. But Garth Dalmain sat up.
"I say! No wonder you take it coolly. Why, Velma herself was a pupil of the
great madame."
"That is how it happens that I know her rather well," said Jane. "I am here
to-day because I was to have played her accompaniment."
"I see," said Garth. "And now you have to do both. 'Land's sake!' as Mrs.
Parker Bangs says when you explain who's who at a Marlborough House garden
party. But you prefer playing other people's accompaniments, to singing
yourself, don't you?"
Jane's slow smile dawned again.
"I prefer singing," she said, "but accompanying is more useful."
"Of course it is," said Garth. "Heaps of people can sing a little, but very
few can accompany properly." "Jane," said Myra, her grey eyes looking out lazily
from under their long black lashes, "if you have had singing lessons, and know
some songs, why hasn't the duchess turned you on to sing to us before this?"
"For a sad reason," Jane replied. "You know her only son died eight years
ago? He was such a handsome, talented fellow. He and I inherited our love of
music from our grandfather. My cousin got into a musical set at college, studied
with enthusiasm, and wanted to take it up professionally. He had promised, one
Christmas vacation, to sing at a charity concert in town, and went out, when
only just recovering from influenza, to fulfil this engagement. He had a
relapse, double pneumonia set in, and he died in five days from heart failure.
My poor aunt was frantic with grief; and since then any mention of my love of
music makes her very bitter. I, too, wanted to take it up professionally, but
she put her foot down heavily. I scarcely ever venture to sing or play here."
"Why not elsewhere?" asked Garth Dalmain. "We have stayed about at the same
houses, and I had not the faintest idea you sang."
"I do not know," said Jane slowly. "But — music means so much to me. It is a
sort of holy of holies in the tabernacle of one's inner being. And it is not
easy to lift the veil."
"The veil will be lifted to-night," said Myra Ingleby.
"Yes," agreed Jane, smiling a little ruefully, "I suppose it will."
"And we shall pass in," said Garth Dalmain.