CHAPTER XVLADY JANE FINDS A MUSIC-TEACHER
Onthe occasion of Lady Jane’s first visit to the d’Hautreve ladies, she had been so interested in Mam’selle Diane’s works of art that she had paid no attention whatever to the piano and the flowers.
But on the second visit, while Tony was posing as a model (for suddenly he had developed great perfection in that capacity), she critically examined the ancient instrument.
Presently she asked a little timidly, “Is that what you make music on when you sing, Mam’selle Diane?”
Mam’selle Diane nodded an affirmative. She was very busy modeling Tony’s leg in sealing-wax.
“Is it a piano?”
“Yes, my dear, it’s a piano. Did you never see one before?”
“Oh yes, and I’ve played on one. Mama used to let me play on hers; but it was large, very large, and not like this.”
“Where was that?” asked Mam’selle Diane, while a swift glance passed between her and her mother.
“Oh, that was on the ranch, before we came away.”
“Then you lived on a ranch. Where was it, my dear?”
“I don’t know,” and Lady Jane looked puzzled. “It was just the ranch. It was in the country, and there were fields and fields, and a great many horses, and sheep, and lambs—dear little lambs!”
“Then the lady you live with is not your mama,” said Mam’selle Diane casually, while she twisted the sealing-wax into the shape of the foot.
“Oh, no, she’s my Tante Pauline. My mama has gone away, but Pepsie says she’s sure to come back before Christmas; and it’s not very long now till Christmas.” The little face grew radiant with expectation.
“And you like music?” said Mam’selle Diane, with a sigh; she saw how it was, and she pitied the motherless darling from the bottom of her tender heart.
“Didn’t you ever hear me sing when I used to stand close to the window?” Lady Jane leanedacross Mam’selle Diane’s table, and looked at her with a winsome smile. “I sang as loud as I could, so you’d hear me; I thought, perhaps, you’d let me in.”
“Dear little thing!” returned Mam’selle Diane, caressingly. Then she turned and spoke in French to her mother: “You know, mama, I wanted to ask her in before, but you thought she might meddle with my wools and annoy me; but she’s not troublesome at all. I wish I could teach her music when I have time.”
Lady Jane glanced from one to the other gravely and anxiously. “I’m learning French,” she said; “Pepsie’s teaching me, and when I learn it you can always talk to me in French. I know some words now.”
Mam’selle Diane smiled. “I was telling mama that I should like to teach you music. Would you like to learn?”
“What, to play on the piano?” and the child’s eyes glistened with delight.
“Yes, to play and sing, both.”
“I can sing now,” with a little, shy, wistful smile.
“Well then, sing for us while I finish Tony’s leg, and afterward I will sing for you.”
“Shall I sing, ‘Sleep, baby, sleep’?”
“Yes, anything you like.”
Lady Jane lifted her little face, flushed like a flower, but still serious and anxious, and broke into a ripple of melody so clear, so sweet, and so delicately modulated, that Mam’selle Diane clasped her hands in ecstasy. She forgot her bunch of wool, the difficulty of Tony’s breast-feathers, the impossible sealing-wax leg, and sat listening enchanted; while the old lady closed her eyes and swayed back and forth, keeping time with the dreamy rhythm of the lullaby.
“Why, my dear, you have the voice of an angel!” exclaimed Mam’selle Diane, when the child finished. “I must teach you. Youmustbe taught. Mama, shemustbe taught. It would be wicked to allow such a voice to go uncultivated!”
“And what can cultivation do that nature hasn’t done?” asked the old lady querulously. “Sometimes, I think too much cultivation ruins a voice. Think of yours, Diane; think of what it was before all that drilling and training; think of what it was that night you sang at Madame La Baronne’s, when your cousin from France, the Marquis d’Hautreve, said he had never listened to such a voice!”
“It was the youth in it, mama, the youth; I was only sixteen,” and Mam’selle Diane sighed over the memory of those days.
“It was before all the freshness was cultivated out of it. You never sang so well afterward.”
“I never was as young, mama, and I never had such an audience again. You know I went back to the convent; and when I came out things had changed, and I was older, and—I had changed. I think the change was in me.”
Here a tear stole from the faded eyes that had looked on such triumphs.
“It is true, my dear, you never had such an opportunity again. Your cousin went back to France—and—and—there were no morefêtesafter those days, and there was no one left to recognize your talent. Perhaps it was as much the lack of recognition as anything else. Yes, I say, as I always have said, that it’s recognition you need to make you famous. It’s the same with your birds as with your singing. It’s recognition you need.”
“And perhaps it’s wealth too, mama,” said Mam’selle Diane gently. “One is forgotten when one is poor. Why, we have been as good as deadand buried these twenty years. I believe there’s no one left who remembers us.”
“No, no, my child; it’s not that,” cried the old lady sharply. “We are always d’Hautreves. It was our own choice to give up society; and we live so far away, it is inconvenient,—so few of our old friends keep carriages now; and besides, we have no day to receive. It was a mistake giving up our reception-day; since then people haven’t visited us.”
“I was thinking, mama,” said Mam’selle Diane timidly, “that if I did as well with my ducks next year as I have this, we might have a ‘day’ again. We might send cards, and let our old friends know that we are still alive.”
“We might, we might,” said the old lady, brightening visibly. “We are always d’Hautreves”; then her face fell suddenly. “But, Diane, my dear, we haven’t either of us a silk dress, and it would never do for us to receive in anything but silk.”
“That’s true, mama. I never thought of that. We may not be able to have a ‘day,’ after all,” and Mam’selle Diane bent her head dejectedly over her sealing-wax and wool.
While these reminiscences were exchanged by the mother and daughter, Lady Jane, whose singing hadcalled them forth, slipped out into the small garden, where, amid a profusion of bloom and fragrance, she was now listening to the warbling of a canary whose cage hung among the branches of a Maréchal Niel rose. It was the bird whose melody had enraptured her, while she was yet without the paradise, and it was the effigy of that same bird that she had seen on Mam’selle Diane’s green woolen trees. He was a bright, jolly little fellow, and he sang as if he were wound up and never would run down.
Lady Jane listened to him delightedly while she inspected the beds of flowers. It was a little place, but contained a great variety of plants, and each was carefully trained and trimmed; and under all the seedlings were laid little sheets of white paper on which some seeds had already fallen.
Lady Jane eyed the papers curiously. She did not know that these tiny black seeds added yearly a few dollars to the d’Hautreve revenues, and, at the same time, furnished the thrifty gardener with all she needed for her own use. But whose hands pruned and trained, dug and watered? Were they the hands of the myth of a servant who came so early before madame was out of her bed—for the old aristocrat loved to sleep late—to clean the galleryandbanquetteand do other odd jobs unbecoming a d’Hautreve?
Yes, the very same; and Mam’selle Diane was not an early riser because of sleeplessness, nor was it age that made her slender hands so hard and brown.