Chapter XIX: Herr Slavska

Mabel had discovered that a woman with a mission hasn't such a bad time of it. She set out on her journey to Jean without one of her usual misgivings. It was jolly to think that she might be able to be of some use in the world. The tediousness of a long journey of changes till she reached the main-line and thundered direct to London did not pall on her as it had done before. Throughout she thought, "I'm getting nearer to Jean, and I shall put her on her feet."

She prepared to hate the girls' club, but to be quite uninfluenced by it. She would take Jean out, till neither of them cared what the club was like at all. She forgot Robin and Isobel and everything except one thing which she would never forget, and Jean.

She drove up to the door of the club in the most energetic and independent mood she had ever experienced. She didn't care whether the secretary looked her up and down or not. She merely went straight to Jean's room. Jean didn't at all pretend that it was a downcome. She simply wept with delight at the sight of Mabel.

"And I never shed a tear, not one, till you came," said she. "I'm so glad you came just when I began to get better."

Mabel did not dare to tell her that she had only been home-sick.

"If I tell her that, she will lie in bed to convince me that she is really ill," she thought.

Girls' voices were heard screaming volubly.

"What's that?" asked Mabel, thinking that some accident had occurred.

"Oh nothing. They call out for each other from their different rooms. I thought it was a parrot house when I came, but I'm getting accustomed to it. They've been so decent, you can't think, Mabel. I never knew girls could be so comforting."

"Poor Jean," said Mabel.

"You'll stay, won't you," said Jean.

"Of course I shall. Just imagine, papa wanted to come and take you home. It would have been so stale for you after you got there, with those little presents people gave you and all that kind of thing, if you had gone right back home again, wouldn't it?"

"Imagine Aunt Katharine alone," said Jean solemnly.

"So, if you possibly can, Jean, get up as soon as you feel able to crawl. So that I can say you are all right. Papa says I may stay for a week or two if you are."

"Oh, Mabs, I wish you would stay right on!"

"Where's my room?" asked Mabel. "What rickety furniture!"

"The room is next door, isn't it nice? And the furniture's bought for girls. They think we like rickets."

"Wickets," corrected Mabel. "You could use that chair at a match."

"Oh, Mabs, how jolly it is to have you here to laugh at it. Mabs, I do feel better."

Mabel saw her up in three-quarters of an hour.

Jean had still to be treated seriously however.

"You know, Mabs, I had the most dreadful feeling. I could quite understand how poor girls without friends go and drown themselves."

"That's more like depression than appendicitis," Mabel ventured.

"I hadn't been sleeping," explained Jean with dignity.

Mabel thought of some sleepless nights.

"The best cure is always to believe that it can't last," said she. "Do you remember papa's telling us how Carlyle comforted Mrs. Carlyle when she had toothache? He said it wouldn't be permanent."

"What a brute," said Jean.

"Well, it sent me to sleep once or twice when I remembered that," said Mabel. "But you never were ill like this before. You couldn't believe in getting well, could you?"

"I was sure I was going to die," said Jean in a hushed voice.

Mabel's heart had ached. Could she tell Jean of that ache and how she had been obliged to cover it up by making herself believe that it could not possibly be permanent.

"Jean, do you know, I think it's so jolly being here, getting to know the best way of doing things, and all that sort of thing, I think I shall ask papa to let me stay longer. Do you think they would let me?"

"Well, they let me--and then I didn't want to," said Jean.

"And I didn't want to and now I do," said Mabel. "Let's try it for a week or two anyhow."

A great depression had been lifted from her shoulders. She found herself in the midst of girls who had all something to do in the world. They got up in the morning and came tearing down to breakfast and made off to various definite occupations, as though they had nineteen parties in one day to attend. Some were studying, others "arrived" and working, only a few playing. Yet even the last had some excuse in the way of a problematical career in front of them. Here one saw where the desire to be something has quite as hygienic an effect on one, as the faculty of attainment. Mabel had not been three days in the house till she was as feverish as any to be getting on. Going with Jean for her first lesson finished her. Jean was still of the opinion that she was an invalid, and she certainly was overwrought and nervous. She would have backed out of her lesson, except that Mabel accompanied her.

They found a magnificent man, well groomed and of fierce but courtly manners. He shook hands with the air of an arch-duke.

"And which is the fortunate mademoiselle?" he asked. "Not that I prefer 'fortunate' because that she happens to be about to be taught by myself, but she has a voice? Hn?" It was a sound that had only the effect of asking a question, but how efficiently!

He glared at Mabel, who produced Jean, as it were, by a motion of the hand.

"It is my sister who wants lessons," she said. This sounded like something out of a grammar book, and both girls saw the humour of it. But timidly, because Herr Slavska then invited them to sit, while he turned to the piano. He threw some music aside from the desk and cleared a place at the side for his elbow, as he sat down for a moment.

"They do not all have voices! No. But som, they have the soll. You have the soll? Hn?"

It did not seem necessary to inform Herr Slavska. He was walking up and down now, flinging out more sentences before they had time to answer the last.

"For myself. I had the voice and I had the soll. That is why I ask 'and who is the mademoiselle who is so fortunate?' I am a voice, and look at me! I am a drudge to the great public. I gif lessons to stupids who do not love music. For what! For money to keep the stomach alive! Yes, that is it. And yet I say--which is the mademoiselle which is fortunate? For vit a voice and vit the soll, and vit the art which I shall gif her, what does it matter about the stupid public? or the stomach?"

Herr Slavska waited for no answers.

"For years I was wrong. I had no art. None. I sang to the stupids and they applauded. At last I make great discovery, I find the art. Now I sing to the few."

Herr Slavska paused for a moment.

"My sister has had no training at all, except as a pianist," said Mabel.

"Hn? Then I haf her, a flower, a bud unplucked!"

Herr Slavska grew excited.

"No nasty finger mark, no petal fallen. Ah! it is luck, it is luck for mademoiselle. Come, mademoiselle."

He struck a note.

"Will you sing ze!"

Jean sang "ze." She sang "zo." Then he ran her voice into the top and bottom registers.

"You have the comprehension. It is the great matter," said Herr Slavska.

Then he blazed at her.

His "the," quite English when he remained polished and firm, degenerated into a "ze" at times such as these.

"You haf not ze breath, none," said he, as though Jean had committed an outrage.

Jean, however, had begun to glow with the ardour of future accomplishment.

"That's what I came to learn," she said promptly.

"Aha, she has charac*tere*."

Herr Slavska was delighted, but Jean found this constant dissection of herself trying.

Then the real work began. Herr Slavska breathed, made Jean breathe, hammered at her, expostulated, showed his own ribs rising and falling while his voice remained even, tender, beautiful.

Mabel sat clasping her hands over one another.

"Oh, Herr Slavska, what a beautiful voice you have," she burst out at last.

He looked at her with the greatest surprise.

"Ah! You are her sister? Hn? And you sit there listening to us?"

He had forgotten her existence.

"And you are not of the stupids, no! You say I haf a beautiful voice? Hn? It is ze art, mademoiselle, zat you hear now. Sixty-five, I am zat age! And I still fight for ze stomach wit my beautiful voice. But you are of ze few, is it not? I vil sing to you, mademoiselle, just once. Your sister goes. Ten minutes, mademoiselle--only ten minutes. Zen a rest. And every day to me for two weeks! Hn? Is it not so?"

Then he cast up his arms in despair.

"Helas! It is my accompaniste. He _is_ not!"

Jean the direct stepped in.

"Oh, Mabel will play," she said.

Herr Slavska took one of his deepest breaths.

"I say I shall sing to you--I Herr Slavska. Ant you say 'Mabel will play.' Hn? Mabel? Who is dis grand Mademoiselle Mabel?"

The humour of it suddenly appeared to come upper-most, and Herr Slavska became wickedly, cunningly suave.

"Ah yes, then if mademoiselle will," he said blandly.

He produced music.

Mabel was rooted with fear to the couch. Never in her life before had she been nervous.

"Jean, how could you," whispered she.

Oh, fortune and the best of luck! He turned to a song of Brahms'. How often had Mabel tried to drum that song into the willing but uncultured Robin! That Robin in his lame way should help her now seemed the funniest freak of fate. She played the first bars hopefully, joyfully. She _knew_ she couldn't do anything silly there.

"But what!"

Herr Slavska had caught her by the shoulders, and looked in her eyes.

"Mademoiselle Mabel! From ze country! Mademoiselle plays like zat! Hn?"

He bowed grandly.

"My apologies, Mees Mademoiselle Mabel. We vill haf a rehearsal."

He sang through part of his programme for a concert. Mabel energetically remarked afterwards to Jean that she had never really felt heavenly in her life before.

"Oh, Jean," she said, "_Jean._"

"What would you," said Herr Slavska. "You must also study a little Mees Mademoiselle Mabel. You have great talent. Ah, if you could study in ze Bohemian school, Mees Mademoiselle. Hav I not said for years to these stupids stupids public, there is no school like to that of Prague? Now all ze violinists tumble tumble over ze one another to Sevcik to go. See, it is ze fate. If you could go to Prague, mademoiselle. Prague would make a great artiste of you."

Here was living, wonderful life for Mabel! If Herr Slavska thought so much of her, why should she not have lessons in London?

Mr. Leighton never received such a letter as he had from her next day. If was full of thanks for his having made her play so much and go to concerts when she was young. "Now I really know the literature of music. It's the little slippy bits of technique that I'm not up in. I saw every one of them come out and hit me in the eye when I played for Herr Slavska. Do you think I could really stay and take lessons, dear papa? It would prime me for such a lot. I've often thought about Cuthbert for instance, that it must be so jolly for him to feel primed. And after knowing life here, I'd only be more contented at home. It isn't that one can't be bored in London. I think you can far far more than anywhere. If you saw that girl with the pink bow! She only dresses and dresses, one costume for the morning, another for the afternoon and so on. I suppose she has been taught to be a perfect lady. The girls in our house aren't the crowd that believe in being like men or anything of that sort. They want to get married if they meet a nice enough husband. But nobody wants to get left, and it's so nice to be primed for that. I've sometimes felt I might one day be 'left,' and it's awful. I shouldn't mind so much if I had a profession. Jean is like a new girl. She's full of breathings and 'my method' and all that kind of thing. And she has to have an egg flip every morning at eleven if you please. I'm longing to have a master who orders me egg flip, but they don't do that for piano, do they?

"Oh, please, papa, say you don't care for us for six months, and let us do you some credit at last. We were just little _potty_ players at Ridgetown...."

Mr. Leighton took a mild attack of influenza on the strength of this, but he was infinitely pleased at the enthusiasm of Mabel. Mrs. Leighton got into the Aunt Katharine mood, where such "goings on" seemed iniquitous.

"I don't see why you should pay so much money to keep them out of their own home," said she.

By next post, she sent a hamper of cakes to the girls.

Then came a letter from Mr. Leighton, which Mabel locked in a little morocco case along with some other treasures, "to keep for ever."

"I am to stay, and I'm to have lessons from any Vollendollenvallejowski I like to name," she cried to Jean. The two rocked on a bamboo chair in happy abandonment till some explosive crackling sounds warned them that joy had its limits.

Every girl in the house was invited into the tea "with cakes from home."

"What a love of a father and a duck of a mother we've got," said the convalescent homesick Jean.