Read Ebook: Broken Music by Bottome Phyllis

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Ebook has 842 lines and 49604 words, and 17 pages

"Not unless you are paid to sing it," replied Margot, with admirable common sense. Common sense is a quality all women who desire to please should learn to avoid, or at least conceal; they may use it in their private judgments, but it should never be allowed to appear in their conversation. It annoyed Jean extremely.

Margot was disappointed, she did not wish to sing scales; her mind returned to the eggs. Did he, she wondered, like them lightly cooked?

"Mademoiselle," said Jean turning round on the music-stool. "What are you doing with these notes?"

Margot blushed guiltily.

Margot shut her eyes and drew frowning brows together to show how hard she was trying. Jean looked very cross this morning. He had not slept well and his conscience had worn his nerves to threads; having done the best he could, he felt terribly guilty and disheartened.

"That is better," said Jean; "but it is not good; one would say your voice was wool-gathering this morning! Now try these chords."

Bang! came Jean's hands down on the keys, a terrible discord!

"You are not singing at all!" he said in a fury. "You are piping! What are you thinking of, then? Are you in love?"

This was really very rude of Jean.

"Monsieur!" said Margot, at once upon her dignity. Jean felt extremely ashamed of himself, far too much ashamed to apologize.

"You must excuse me," he said sarcastically. "You see, I have supposed you wished to work."

"I do," said Margot, with a tremor in her voice. Jean heard the suspicious little break and hurriedly caught up one of the songs. He had not meant to be a brute! Well, not so much of a one as to make her cry, at any rate.

Margot pulled herself together for a final attempt, her knees shook under her and it seemed as if a knot came into her throat. A horrible fear assailed her that she might be going to lose her one talent; she forced her voice against her breath, and it came out a loud, wavering sound without form or music. She was so completely unnerved by the result that she covered her ears with her hands and gazed at Jean with wide-eyed despair.

"But you are not well," said Jean, as soon as she let her hands fall. "You are upset about something, and you are frightened! Come, tell me what is it?"

Margot, overwhelmed by this sudden return to sympathetic relations, burst into tears.

"Oh, Monsieur," she sobbed; "do not blame me, I am quite hopeless, I know. You will despise me utterly, but--but I have a question to decide, there is something I must ask you, Monsieur. Oh! Oh! I am afraid you will be very angry with me!"

"But, Mademoiselle Margot, sit down; tell me what is it?" said Jean, now thoroughly roused and touched by her evident distress. "As if I could be angry with you! There! there! dry your eyes. It is you who should be angry with me, then, for being such a bad-tempered brute of a master! If you cry any more, Margot, I shall think you hate me."

Margot stopped crying--it would be dreadful if Jean should think she hated him! So she dried her eyes in her handkerchief and smiled at him through her tears.

"Margot!" cried Jean, and for a moment he said nothing more.

"You're--you're not angry, Monsieur?" she pleaded.

Jean laughed.

"Simply horribly angry!" he said, smiling into her eyes. "How dare you think of eggs in the middle of your singing lesson? I'll eat them any way you like."

That was the end of the lesson. Jean was very kind to Margot about it; he ate an excellent lunch, but he could not help feeling that she was less of an artist than he had hoped.

Familiarity is a deadly touchstone to the imagination; only the best and noblest impulses can survive it. To continue to admire what we see daily and know thoroughly we must be either very humble or very loving, and Jean was for the moment neither. He had not yet begun to exact very much from himself, but he expected a good deal from others. The critical instinct is generally vicarious.

Unfortunately Margot belonged to that type of woman who loves to have demands made upon her. She liked Jean to use the best she had to give as a sofa cushion; she was only too glad that it could be used at all. Her mistake lay deeper than his, for she did not realize that she loved a man who did not care very much for sofa cushions, and who would therefore never use even her best for long.

IT was a cold, damp day in the middle of February. Paris had for the moment borrowed a fog from her neighbour across the Channel; and habituated as she is to sunlight and clear air, she looked dirtier and far less comfortable than consistently and imperturbably grimy London.

"It is the kind of day," said Romain D'Ucelles, looking out of the window, "in which one might as well do one's duty; anything else would be equally unpleasant. My angel," he added to his wife over his shoulder, "do you require the motor this morning?"

"Yes," said Madame D'Ucelles, without looking up from her correspondence.

"But I am desolated," said Romain, "because I shall have to deprive you. I am about to go out in it myself."

"In that case," said Madame, "you might have spared me your offer!"

"I don't think it was exactly an offer," said Romain, with a thoughtful smile. "I merely wished to show you a little graceful consideration. You should, of course, have said that you did not want the motor, and then you might always have believed in the consistency of my good intentions. But alas! you have acquired that fatal habit of saying the wrong thing! It is a habit that goes with economy and all the domestic virtues. It explains much, and you will forgive me I know, my dear Marie, if I say that I think it excuses more!"

"I don't know what you mean," said his wife coldly, "but the bills you have been running up lately are simply disgraceful. Here are three from the florist's. I don't ask where you send these flowers, but the account comes to more than a thousand francs!"

"Dear, dear!" said Romain, humming a tune. "Do you not remember, my life, that I bought you some on the anniversary of our wedding? That was an expensive affair, I grant you!"

Marie shot a glance of rage at her husband; she would have liked it to be hatred, and she often thought it was; but he had too charming a smile.

"The expense of that affair," she said bitterly, "was altogether my own!"

"Do not let us quarrel, my adorable one," murmured Romain, who by now had reached the door. "It sounds as if we were on our honeymoon. But there is, you know, after all, more than one way of being expensive!"

"There you speak truly," said Madame, "and you have shown me them all!"

Romain laughed out at this sally, and under cover of his laughter brought off his retreat. He enjoyed an occasional conversation with his wife; he said that it added so to the charm of the conversation of other women.

It was three weeks since he had received Miss Prenderghast's letter imploring him to do his duty about Jean. He had been extremely amused and a trifle annoyed by it; during the three weeks the annoyance had worn off, and now only the amusement was left. He rang for the motor and drove at once to Jean's new address.

Margot opened the door to him. She was quite overwhelmed by the gorgeous person in the fur-lined overcoat who asked for Jean. This was the first of Jean's friends who had called upon him, except his fellow artists, and Margot had not a high opinion of artists.

Romain looked at her with amused eyes under his heavy eyelids. "So this was the successor of Liane de Brances!" he thought. "Pretty, decidedly, but not worth six flights of stairs."

Aloud he said he was shocked at having given her so much trouble; he should suppose from the loud sounds over the way that his nephew was practising his new and rather noisy career?

"Yes, I think he is," said Margot flushing delicately.

Romain gave her a charming confidential smile. "My dear child," he said,--"you will allow me this familiarity, for I feel that we already know each other through Jean--do not, I beg of you, encourage this career! Oh, yes! You see I know your influence is great. It is delightful for my nephew to be here, and your room--well! one can see you have a taste. But you want to do what is best for him, do you not?"

"Oh, yes, yes!" said Margot, with a quick catch in her breath. "Only indeed you mistake; I have no influence, none at all!"

"Come, come!" said Romain, laughing. "Do you want me to believe my nephew a perfect fool? I grant you this piano-playing is an absurdity, but if that is his only attraction here, I must give him up altogether. I assure you, you under rate his judgment! I could prove to you very speedily, Mademoiselle, that such judgment as that does not run in our family, but I greatly fear I must leave pleasure for duty, and go in to my nephew. I can count on you, though, can I not, to support my plans for him? They don't exclude, I assure you, his having charming friendships!"

Margot blushed very deeply and her eyes fell before the laughter in Romain's. She felt as if a clear, hard light had fallen upon a little shining secret of her own, a secret that lived best in the dark, and which she herself had turned her eyes away from, lest they should see that which desired to escape.

Jean had given up expecting his uncle, and he was not particularly pleased to see him. There was something in the contrast between Romain's air of finished ease and prosperity and Jean's poor little room and inexpensive appearance which made Jean feel rather ridiculous. One might be superior to Romain and disagree fundamentally with his sense of the values of life, but there was something about his bright, amused incredulity in the presence of a higher standard which was apt to make the higher standard look a trifle flat.

Romain sat down carefully in Jean's only armchair, and regarded his nephew, who clung to his music-stool as if it was a banner, with tolerant amusement.

"My poor boy," he began, "all this is very sad, isn't it? Shall we smoke?"

Jean felt a renewed pang as his uncle drew out his gold monogrammed cigarette-case and passed it to him. He was determined to resist Romain to the death, but he wished he had not to resist him to the point of being laughed at!

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