1

Phanuel Tuke switched off Monica’s radio-gramophone.

“Well,” said he, “if fate is unkind to my verse, I shall at least be known to posterity as the man who provided Giles Revelstoke with the words for his first work of undoubted genius.”

Revelstoke’s menagerie was assembled in Monica’s living-room because she had the best wireless set among, them. They had been listening to a broadcast on the Third Programme of his cantata da camera, called The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Tuke had not written the words, but had selected them; the libretto was made up of recitative passages chosen from Reginald Scot’s Discoverie, verses from Ben Jonson’s Masque of Queens, and a witch-trial or “process” adapted from Malleus Malleficarum. Monica knew the words well; she had typed them many times, for the singers to study, and for the seemingly endless needs of the broadcasting people.

“I still think Brum Benny should have let Giles conduct,” said Persis Kinwellmarshe. She was not sufficiently musical to venture any opinion on the composition itself, but she had found plenty of matter for vehement partisanship in the politics surrounding the broadcast.

“Now Perse, give that a rest,” said Bun Eccles. “Giles himself admits he’s no hand at conducting. Why risk a good chance like this just to wave the stick? He can’t manage an orchestra and even you know it.”

“He’d be perfectly all right if Benny didn’t hang over him all the time and offer advice and fuss him.”

“Benny’s responsible to the BBC, you know that. He got them to do Discoverie; he has to deliver the goods. Giles said so himself.”

“Giles may have said so to you, Bun dear, but I know damn well what he thinks. It’s the old story: young man of genius under the wing of old man of talent—and the old man will bloody well see that he stays under his wing. Tonight will settle all that, though. It ought to put Giles right on the top of the heap.”

“Does anyone know what he will get for this broadcast?” said Odo Odingsels. He had tucked his lean length into a corner and all through the music had been eating the food which Monica provided.

“There won’t be much left of his fee when all the costs are paid,” said Bridget Tooley. “The expense of copying the scores will eat up most of it. But of course he’ll have them for subsequent performances, and over the years the rentals might amount to a good deal.”

“Can’t count on that,” said Odingsels. “This isn’t going to be a popular work. No use pretending.”

Odingsels was the only one of the group who knew much about music. Giles had friends, but no intimates, among musicians. Odingsels knew what he was talking about, and ordinarily the others deferred to him. But Persis would not do so now.

“Why not?” said she. “You’ve heard it. Isn’t it the most exciting thing in this contemporary music series?”

“I don’t know,” said Odingsels; “I haven’t listened to any of the others. Have you?”

Miss Kinwellmarsh had not.

“It’s good, mind you,” said Odingsels. “In parts it’s wonderfully good. I didn’t mean that it wasn’t. But it’s hard to perform. The music is difficult; it sounds simple, quite a lot of the time, but just you look at the score. It’s an inconvenient size. It isn’t a song cycle, that any singer and his accompanist can carry round the world in a music-case. And it isn’t a big work that an amateur choral society can chew on for two or three months. It calls for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, a double quartet of better than average choral singers, and an orchestra consisting of string quartet and double-bass, with piano, oboe and French horn. Just the size to be neglected.”

“I suppose a good deal will depend on what the critics say,” said Tuke.

“A little. Not much.” Odingsels seemed determined to be discouraging. “Critics of any importance aren’t likely to commit themselves heavily on a new score that they haven’t examined by a composer they don’t know. Giles won’t find himself made over-night. It’s only in the more trivial arts like literature, and theatre and ballet that critics wield that sort of power.” He grinned irritatingly.

“Giles will be ready for them,” said Persis. “He’s been walloping them in Lantern for three good years. I don’t suppose that will make them like him, but it will let them know that he will have a reply for anything they want to say. I don’t expect for a minute that he’ll get his due from them, but they’ll have to be civil.”

“Why?” said Odingsels.

“I’ve told you. Because of Lantern.”

“How many critics do you think read Lantern? Who do you suppose takes it very seriously except ourselves? How many well-known or influential names are on the subscription list? Sometimes I think we are deceiving ourselves about Lantern. In my really sane moments I know it. How lucky that none of us has to live by it.”

“Odo, why are you being so bloody-minded tonight? Is it because Giles has had a wonderful work performed? I know you hate anybody else’s success, but is it necessary for you to be so completely poisonous?”

“Persis, my pretty darling, I am a realist. Giles has had a very good piece of music performed. Alot of people will have heard it. Some will have liked it, others will have hated it, and some others—perhaps the biggest number—will not have paid any particular attention. Of those who have liked it, perhaps half will remember Giles’ name. It is slow work, becoming known as a composer. What has Giles done? He’s written perhaps fifty songs and a couple of suites for small orchestra; he’s had a few things done publicly, and I believe four years ago he gave a small recital of his own stuff to which not one critic of the first rank turned up. This is his real beginning—tonight. In ten years, if he works hard, he may be quite well known as a rising young composer.”

“Oh, come; sooner than that, surely,” said Tuke.

“Giles is a slow worker. This piece has been on the stocks for a good eighteen months, to my knowledge. He spends so much time on other things.” Odingsels cast a leer at Persis.

“Too true,” said she. “He has far more than his share to do on Lantern and of course he has to waste his energies teaching, and doing musical odd jobs, to keep the pot boiling.”

“He isn’t the only one on Lantern who has personal work to attend to,” said Miss Tooley. “If you are insinuating that Fanny and I don’t pull our weight, I’d like to say that you should be the last person to criticize; you do nothing at all, except provide occasional cups of indifferent tea. And of course keep your eye peeled for cracks in the ceiling.”

“Now girls, stow that,” said Bun Eccles. “We all know what Odo meant; he meant Giles spends a lot of time playing bunny-in-the-hay with you, Perse, but maybe that’s why he writes good music. Why don’t you look at it that way, and be happy?” He raised his glass of beer toward Persis, and drank to her.

“If he doesn’t want to teach, I don’t suppose he has to,” said Monica. “And if I take up his time being taught, I certainly save it getting the Lantern accounts out of tangles.”

“Oh, we know you’re quite the little woman of business,” said Persis. “But unfortunately he can’t give up teaching; he has to have the money. If that tight-fisted old mother of his would give him whatever you pay him for lessons, he wouldn’t need to bother.”

“Doesn’t he have family money?” said Tuke.

“He’s got a tiny income from some money his father left him directly. Otherwise not a bean. His mother’s terribly rich; she could easily let him have a very good allowance. She lives someplace in Wales, in a tremendous house, with every luxury, and now and then she sends him a few quid, for birthdays, or something. It’s a shame people like that can’t die, and let their money do some good. But no, she thinks not having anything will make him get a steady job. I suppose she sees him leading the municipal orchestra at Torquay, or someplace. Mothers! I think the most disgusting and immoral relationship is between mothers and sons—no, on second thoughts, between fathers and daughters. The old ones just want to eat the young ones up.”

Persis knit her dark brows and looked very beautiful, brooding on the psychological horror of Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths and Admiral Sir Percy Kinwellmarshe.

“It is of course utterly unrealistic to suppose that reputations in literature are made overnight,” said Tuke, who had been brooding on Odingsels’ hard words. “One despises egotism, of course, but one instances oneself; one can give Giles a few years, and one is perhaps more engag'e,but one has certainly not been overwhelmed with recognition. As for music being, au fond, more serious than letters, well—one feels perhaps that those who are committed to an art are the best judges of its limits.”

“Better judges than technicians, however capable,” said Miss Tooley, bridling. Everybody knew that when Tuke began to refer to himself as “one” Bridget would do battle for him. “Particularly when their own stuff appears so seldom.”

“My best work is for connoisseurs of really imaginative photography,” said Odingsels, grinning. “I don’t have to publish to get recognition.”

The menagerie was working up for one of its periodical ugly fights, but at this point Monica brought in another plate of sandwiches, and Bun Eccles went the rounds with more beer. The greedy could say no more while this lasted, and Tuke, who had a gift for talking and earing without missing a chew or a syllable, gained a great advantage. He proceeded to contrast the powers of music and poetry, being scrupulously fair, but, as he knew very little about music, not especially enlightening, though extremely strong on sensibility.

Monica went back to her bedroom, where she made the sandwiches, to be sure that the supply should not fail; she knew that when Revelstoke was not present, the menagerie could only be controlled by heavy sedation with food and alcohol. They quarrelled astonishingly, and about things which she rarely understood in detail, though she knew by her native good sense that jealousy lay at the root of it. Every time an issue of Lantern appeared there was one of these pow-wows, and the pattern was fixed; Tuke was offended by Odingsels, and Miss Tooley and Odingsels fought bitterly; Eccles, who was thoroughly a painter, and bored by men of words, lost patience with them all, and got drunk; Persis Kinwellmarshe asserted that there would be no Lantern without Revelstoke, and was called whore for her pains by Bridget; Revelstoke laughed and cursed at them all. At last Mrs Klein would appear and complain that her other lodgers were discommoded by the noise, and Odingsels would make her cry. On one occasion Monica could bear it no more, and took Mrs Klein’s part; to her astonishment her display of temper put them all in great good humour, and improved her position in the group. After one of these brawls, which she found tiresome and exhausting, but which they seemed to enjoy, Revelstoke would marshal the Lantern forces again and work would proceed once more in its ill-organized, imperfectly understood fashion.

But Revelstoke was not at hand now, to keep all their bad-tempered egotism in check. And Monica was afraid that Mrs Merry would not take the attitude of Mrs Klein, who always managed to say, at some point in her complaints—”I’m full of sympasy for ze artist; I am grateful to have ze artist under my roof”—a protestation invariably greeted by Odingsels with a shout of “Halt die Schnauze!” Mrs Merry was not full of sympathy for anyone, except perhaps herself, and would certainly complain of any noise to Mr Boykin on his monthly visit with the rent. Monica wished heartily that she had not asked them to listen to Giles’ broadcast on her receiving-set.

Yet it had seemed such a chance to get in with them, to strengthen her position. She was not so simple as to think that she had no place in the Lantern group; the finances of the magazine, such as they were, were understood by her alone, and Raikes Brothers had of late shown a tendency to call her when they wanted a decision about anything. She had been in the happy position of having two pounds ten to lend to Tuke on an occasion when he needed that sum very badly, and Revelstoke himself had been her champion a few weeks later, and had compelled the poet to pay back the ten shillings, which was all he could afford. She had a place, but it was the bottom place. And here it was six weeks after that encounter in the bathroom at Neuadd Goch, since when he had not so much as kissed her!

Why? Why could he not see that she loved him? She was not a ninny; she did not sigh and lallygag like Juliet; she put herself heart and soul into the business of Lantern, and although it could not be said that its position was any better than before, it was certainly clearer. She managed to get his attention for fifteen minutes one day and explained the whole financial situation to him. He had been bored, and had told her in a huff that if people hadn’t enough wit to appreciate Lantern, he could do nothing about it. He wrote for the bloody magazine, didn’t he? What more did she expect him to do? Hawk it on street-corners? But Monica would not believe that this expressed his true feeling; if he was really committed to the publication—and he was—he must desire its financial success; it was axiomatic. So she troubled him no more about it, and plunged into even more discouraging talks with Raikes Brothers, who were beginning to want something on account.

Not that she expected to win him by a flashing display of business method; she was not so foolish as that. But what better approach had she, what more effective way of showing that anything she had in the way of skills or talents was at his command? Her heart was full of love, but externally she remained neat, silent, and perhaps a little too quick at producing pencils and pieces of paper; once or twice she sensed that it is convenient, but perhaps not wholly romantic, to be the person to whom everyone turns for a clean bit of india-rubber. She could not hope to be useful to him musically; was she not his pupil? How, then, could she serve except with the typewriter and the account-book, in the use of which she was more expert than anyone else in the group? She wanted desperately to be one of the menagerie. She tried to swear, but it was a failure. She could not use filthy words, as Persis did; a Thirteener upbringing and, she felt, a native fastidiousness, prevented her; she had also a grudging recognition that what suited the opulent sluttishness of Persis did not appear so well in her. However, she sought to liven up her conversation with a few bloodies until one day she caught Odingsels’ ironic eye on her, felt deeply foolish, and tried no more.

They never thought of her as one of themselves. She thought of them as Bohemians, though they would have hooted at so romantic and unfashionable a word, taking it as further evidence that she was an outsider. But under their Bohemianism they were very English. No, ridiculous! Odingsels—nobody knew quite what he was, but he was certainly not English. Bridget Tooley’s father was a lawyer in Cork; she was Irish as—Ma Gall’s expression came pat to memory—as Paddy’s pig. Bun Eccles was an Australian, and abused the English as Pommies. Revelstoke himself was English, of the Eton and Oxford variety, and of course the hateful Persis—

Ah, Persis was the one! There was a creature who managed to have the best of two or three worlds! To be the draggle-tailed gypsy, with all the advantages of great and apparently indestructible beauty, and at the same time to be able to come the well-bred English lady—that was having it with jam and syrup at once. She was the one who created the atmosphere which excluded Monica. She was the one who did not have her speech corrected by Revelstoke. She was the one who did not have to know that “glory” was a trochee, instead of a spondee, which was what both Monica and Eccles made of it. She was the one who did not have to do anything about Lantern, though she was always in the way when the work was most pressing. And why? Because she was Revelstoke’s mistress, his recreation, his hobby, his—

Monica, who was cutting bread, sawed savagely at the loaf. Filthy abuse that was pure Ma Gall rushed up into her throat, her head hurt and her eyes seemed to fill with blood. She had to sit down on the bed to recover herself.

Oh, it was so unfair! Why couldn’t she be to him what Persis was, and at the same time a helper and a constructive influence in his life? She was better than Persis. She was; she was! Why couldn’t he see it? How could he stand that creature, who took baths now and then for fun, but not to get clean, and who kept tufts of long hair in her oxters because she said real men liked it? Monica was clean (though Amy had taught her not to talk about “personal daintiness”) and cleanliness ought to count. She would do anything for Revelstoke, be anything he wanted. And he had turned to her once. He must have some feeling for her. It could not be otherwise.

Meanwhile the noise from the other room was increasing. Two or three guests had made journeys to the watercloset down the stairs, shouting their contributions to the discussion as they went up and down. There had been some rapping on the ceiling by the lodger below, to which Eccles had replied with a few hearty stamps. Persis was developing the theme of parental stinginess in her extremely carrying voice. Monica knew that she would have to go in and shut them up. She held a cool bottle of beer to her forehead for a couple of minutes, and went back to the living-room.

She entered just as Mrs Merry came in from the hall. The landlady wore a look of aggrieved hauteur, and when she spoke her accent was more refined and wholly diphthongal than usual.

“Miss Gall, I am really compelled to ask your guests to leave,” she began, but got no further, for behind her appeared Revelstoke, and with him Sir Benedict Domdaniel. The menagerie greeted them with a roar.

The appearance of the great conductor created a difficult situation for everyone. Mrs Merry was in a particularly ticklish spot, for she had to reconcile her landlady’s indignation with her elation at having a celebrity (and a titled one, too) under her roof—and there were the promises she had made to the lodger downstairs to drive the rowdies out into the street. Persis, who had been making very free with Brum Benny’s name, was revealed as one who had never met him personally, and had not quite the brass to be insulting when she was introduced. Monica, who had been thinking passionately of Revelstoke as a lover, had now to greet him timidly as a guest, feeling the very least of his menagerie; she was uneasy, also, about Domdaniel, who had not encountered the menagerie before, to her knowledge and who, at this moment, contrasted strangely with them, like a royal personage photographed among the survivors of some disaster. But Domdaniel managed the whole thing very well.

“We seem to have come at the peak of the party,” said he, smiling affably at Mrs Merry, and bending so low over her hand that she thought, for one golden but panic-stricken moment, that he was about to kiss it. “A very great occasion, and I’m sure you’ll understand; our friend has been covering himself with glory.” It was this easy, glossily splendid manner, which had won him the name of Brummagen Benny among the envious; unable themselves to rise to such heights, they took revenge by recalling his plebian origin. And a severe critic might have said that his manner was not thoroughly well-bred; it was too accomplished, too much a work of art, for mere “good form”. He presented Revelstoke, who greeted Mrs Merry with proprietary charm, as though she were his guest. At the same moment Odingsels bowed his piebald poll toward Mrs Merry’s startled face, and put a glass of beer into her hand.

“The last thing of which I am desirous—” she began, with immense graciousness, but was unable to sustain this fine beginning, and went on—”It would ill become me to—it is certainly not my desire to intrude a note of solemnity into such an occasion as this, but you will understand my position vis-`a-vis Mrs Porteous who occupies the flatette below, and whose advanced years and habit of life—” She floundered.

“Mind your manners,” said Revelstoke to the menagerie, and they obeyed, to the point of congratulating him in stagey whispers.

“Oh, please, please!” cried Mrs Merry, laughing throatily, and gesturing with her glass of beer, like some marchioness in an old-fashioned musical comedy, “don’t feel that you must whisper. That I could not bear! Please, Sir Benedict, beg them not to whisper.” She bent upon Sir Benedict a look of arch agony. With him at her side, looking so gallantly into her eyes, Mrs Merry would have incited the party to dance clog-dances upon the head of Mrs Porteous.

“I have a proposal which I think will settle everything,” said he. “Suppose we all go to my house, and continue the party there. I’ve lots to drink, but if you’ve any food, Monica, perhaps you’ll bring it along. And as we have inconvenienced you, dear lady, I hope that you will forgive us and make one of the party.”

Smiling his most winning smile, he gazed deep into Mrs Merry’s eyes, mentally signalling to her—Say no; say no; you can’t leave the lodgers; say no. But Mrs Merry was not susceptible to telepathy; she was borne aloft on a cloud of social glory; this was as it had been when that worthy solicitor, Maybrick Merry, was alive, and they had invited three couples to dinner every second Thursday, and once an MP had come. “Yes, yes,” she carrolled; “I’ll run and get my wrap.”

It was quite ten minutes before Mrs Merry had changed her clothes, put on all her rings, and run a darkening stick through the grey patches in her hair. Monica had plenty of time to line her rubbish pail with The Times and put the food in it, and Bun Eccles providently carried the beer downstairs, in case Sir Benedict should have overestimated his supplies. Sir Benedict had gone down to wait in his car, and Revelstoke admonished the others to come quietly. And, upon the whole, they did so, except that Odingsels insisted on carrying Persis downstairs pick-a-back, and tickled her legs as he did so, making her squeal. And it was unfortunate that Eccles, who insisted on carrying both the food and the drink, caught his heel in a worn bit of stair carpet, and—determined to save the drink—allowed the rubbish-pail to go crashing down to the landing.

A door opened and somebody—almost certainly Mrs Porteous—poked a parrot-like head, adorned with an obvious wig, into the hall. “Well,” she gobbled, “this is the first time that anything like this has ever happened here, and if it is what comes of giving shelter to Commonwealth students—”

Odingsels, with Persis on his back, lurched toward her.

“Shh!” said he. “We are taking this lady to a nursing-home for an abortion, and I must ask you please not to make so much noise.” Down the lower flight he went at a gallop, with Persis shrieking and fizzing like a soda-syphon on his back. Bun retrieved the food, and, acting on sudden inspiration, pushed a sandwich into Mrs Porteous’ hand, then crammed the remainder into the pail, and raced after him. It was Monica who heard the last of Mrs Porteous’ unflattering comments and prophecies.

On the pavement there was a slight resurgence of ill-feeling, for everyone wanted to crowd into Sir Benedict’s handsome car, which was manifestly impossible. Odingsels would not be parted from Persis, and Mrs Merry, with the superior cunning of middle age, got the front seat next to the great man for herself; at last Revelstoke and Tuke were crammed into the back seat, and Monica and Bun were left to follow in a taxi with a disgruntled Miss Tooley.

“Fanny can’t resist luxury,” she said, “and as soon as he smelled that real leather upholstery he was done for. Not a terribly nice characteristic, really.”

The house in Dean’s Yard was empty, for the servant did not sleep in, but Domdaniel quickly found glasses, and in five minutes the party had been resumed. Odingsels and Persis had changed from quarrelling to silent, intimate pawing, and they needed a sofa to themselves. Miss Tooley was being distant toward Phanuel Tuke, which involved standing quite close but with her back turned partly toward him. Sir Benedict moved about, making them at home, but he soon found how needless this was; the menagerie was at home wherever it was assembled. But Mrs Merry had a highly developed, indeed a swollen, social sense; unquestionably she thought of herself as “the senior married woman present” and she set to work to establish a high tone of behaviour. She pursued her host, she complimented him on the taste in which his house was furnished; she confided that she could judge people instantly by the glassware they used; she sincerely hoped that they were to be favoured with a little music later on, as it would be such a treat; she let it be known that when her husband was living they had several times met Madame Gertrude Belcher-Chalke, whose renditions of Scottish songs were such a delight, and who must certainly be known to Sir Benedict; and, well, yes, she would be glad of the teeniest drop of Scotch—no more than a drop, mind—and plain water.

Monica, who had had no opportunity to recover from her nerve-storm, soon found the kitchen, took the hacked loaf—fetish for the hateful Persis—from the rubbish-pail, and began once more to make sandwiches. The capacity of the menagerie for food was boundless and she, true daughter of Ma Gall, had bought in ample viands. It soothed her to make sandwiches, and it kept her away from the others.

But she had not been long alone before Sir Benedict slipped quickly through the door.

“I’ll have a quiet drink out here with you,” said he. “I can’t convince your landlady that I don’t play the piano at parties.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” said Monica; “it was wonderful of you to rescue us, and terribly kind to ask her. She’s having a marvellous time.”

“I told her to persuade Revelstoke to improvise something,” said he. “A dirty trick, but self-preservation, and so forth. Have a drink. You look as if you needed one. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. We heard the broadcast.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought it was wonderful. But you know what my opinion is worth.”

“Don’t hedge. Did you like the work?”

“I don’t know. It’s awfully strange. Not as strange as lots of modern music; not so sort of repellent. It doesn’t fight the listener. But mystifying. I wish you’d tell me about it.”

“I’ve done so; I conducted it. It’s quite a solid piece of work, though I wish he’d study with a really first-rate man on composition for a while. He can’t completely say what he means, yet, in orchestral terms. Most of the instrumental writing is brilliant, but there are a few passages of awful muddle that I couldn’t persuade him to change. What he does best, of course, is write for the voice, and that lifts him above all but a few today. This isn’t an age when many composers seem to care about the voice; they want to use it in all sorts of queer ways, and often they do marvellous things, but it’s not really singing, you know. It’s abuse of the voice. But his stuff is wonderfully grateful to sing and that, combined with a modern musical idiom, gives it great individuality.”

“I suppose a lot depends on what the critics say?”

“A bit. Not too much, really. Far more depends on what chaps like me say.”

“Anyhow, he’ll be able to deal with the critics in Lantern.”

“That’s precisely what I’m afraid of. He wastes too much time on that nonsense.”

“Nonsense?”

“Yes. What’s the good of fighting critics? Mind you, some of them are very able, particularly when judging performances. But only a few can form any opinion of a new work. Most of them are simply on the lookout for novelty. They hear too much, and they hear it the wrong way. They get like children who are peevish from having too many toys; they are always tugging at the skirts of music, whining ‘Amuse me; give me something new.’ Giles hasn’t shown them anything particularly new. He’s not an innovator. But he has an extraordinary melodic gift. Now you just watch the critics and see how many of them are able to spot that.”

“You don’t think much of Lantern?”

“My dear girl, these little reviews and magazines of protest and coterie criticism come and go, and they don’t amount to a damn. They’re all right for what’s-his-name—Tuke and that formidable female bodyguard of his—but Revelstoke is a serious man; he ought to be at work on music. You’ve rather involved yourself with this Lantern thing, haven’t you?”

“I help a bit with the accounts.”

“Good enough. You’re what—twenty-two? It’s all right for you. Gives you a taste of that sort of thing, and we’re all the better for a taste. But Revelstoke is thirty-three. Time he was over all that, and down to serious work.”

“Do you think teaching is a waste of his time?”

“Not if it brings in money he needs. But this Lantern is just an expense of spirit in a waste of shame.”

“Shakespeare. Sonnet something-or-other.”

“Bright child. He’s making you do some reading.”

“Yes. And Lantern’s not the only waste.”

“You mean that gang in there? They’re no more a waste than any other pack of friends, I should say. Many fine things are written about friendship, and there’s a general superstition that everybody is capable of friendship, and gets it, like love. But lots of people never know love, except quite mildly; and most of them never know friendship, except in quite a superficial way. Terribly demanding thing, friendship. Most of us have to put up with acquaintanceship.”

It was flattering to Monica to be enjoying, for the first time, a conversation with Sir Benedict which was not about music, and which was not crowded by the press of his engagements. She fell into a trap; she tried to be impressive; she tried to be his age.

“But don’t you think people like that, who live such irregular lives, are terribly exhausting? I mean, they must drain away a lot of his vitality, which should be saved for music. I don’t want to gossip, but it’s common knowledge that he’s terribly taken up with that girl in there—the dark one—and I don’t know when he finds time to do any work. Do you think he ought to get off into the country, somewhere, and really slave at his music?”

“No; I don’t. When I was your age I might have thought so, but I know better now; you can’t write music just by getting away from people. Slavery is for the technicians, like you and me; we thrive under the lash. But creators must simply do what seems best to them. Some like solitude; some like a crowd. As for the girl, why not? When I was a student in Vienna my teacher told me how often he had seen old Brahms, when he was all sorts of ages, strolling meditatively home from the house of a certain lady who lived in the Weiden. Couldn’t matter less. Nothing, nothing whatever really stands in the way of a creative artist except lack of talent.”

“You don’t think a disorderly life matters?”

“Wouldn’t suit me. I couldn’t answer for anyone else.”

“Then you don’t think that Shakespeare was right—about the expense of spirit in a waste of shame?”

“It’s only shame when you feel it so. And he obviously doesn’t feel it. You are the one who feels it, and there can be only two explanations of that: either you’re more of a missionary than a musician, or else you’re jealous of that girl with the black hair and blue eyes.”

Monica turned back to her bread-cutting. She had never been much of a blusher, but she knew that her appearance had changed in many tell-tale ways.

“Am I right?” said Sir Benedict, taking a pull at his drink. “Well, falling in love with one’s master is recognized practice in the musical world. Even in his eighties I can remember old Garcia having to fight ‘em off, to protect his afternoon nap. Well, go ahead by all means. Anything to broaden your range of feeling.”

Monica turned toward him, and her expression was so angry, her eyes so brilliant, and the bread-knife in her hand so menacing, that Sir Benedict skipped backward.

“I hate you damned superior Englishmen!” said she. “Murtagh Molloy tells me I have no emotion; Giles Revelstoke treats me like the village idiot because I haven’t read everything that’s ever been written, and you tell me to fall in love because it will extend my range of feeling! To hell with you all! If I haven’t got your easy, splattering feelings I’m proud of it. I’ll throw this all up and go home. I won’t stay here and be treated like a parrot, and learn to say ‘Polly wants a cracker’ in just the right accent and with just the right shade of feeling! I hate the whole pack of you, and I hate your rotten little Ye Olde Antique Shoppe of a country. I’d rather go home and be a typist in the Glue Works than take your dirt for another day.”

Sir Benedict looked thoughtfully at her for a full minute, then he said: “You’re perfectly right, my dear, and I apologize.” Monica made a dreadful face, snorted painfully, and burst into tears. She had never been a pretty weeper.

Sir Benedict had for many years made it a habit to carry two handkerchiefs, one for his own nose and one for other people’s; he produced the second now, shook out its folds and gave it to Monica just in time to hide a very messy face. Then he sat her down on the kitchen table and sat beside her, holding her tenderly.

“You mustn’t mind us,” said he; “it’s just a way of going on that we have carried over from the nineteenth century, when we really ruled the waves. Molloy would be terribly hurt if he knew you had called him an Englishman. As for me, I’m English, right enough, but not really out of the top drawer; there is a large grandpaternal pop-shop in Birmingham which it would be ungrateful of me to deny. Revelstoke is English, too, and I don’t mind telling you that I worked it that you should go to his mother for Christmas. Not that she, or Giles, knew, of course; I cooked it up with Miss Eigg, who is an old friend of mine; I thought it might be more friendly for you. Weren’t they nice people? Surely Giles must have relaxed a little, in his own home? Of course he plays the great man with these silly hangers-on of his, but it’s only mannerism.

“I didn’t realize you had any really strong feeling for him. But what I said was quite sincere, and not meant to be hurtful. A love-affair, if it is anything more than a tennis-club flirtation, does enlarge one’s range of feeling. Of course that isn’t why one does it, but you must understand that I was speaking as your teacher and adviser, looking at the thing from outside. And of course what looks unique and glorious to you, at your age—and is so, too, of course—has a rather more accustomed look from my age and my point of view. The terrible truth is that feeling really does have to be learned. It comes spontaneously when one is in love, or when somebody important dies; but people like you and me—interpretative artists—have to learn also to recapture those feelings, and transform them into something which we can offer to the world in our performances. You know what Heine says—and if you don’t I won’t scold you: ‘Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs.’ Well—we all do that. And what we make out of the feelings life brings us is something a little different, something not quite so shattering but very much more polished and perhaps also more poignant, than the feelings themselves. Your jealousy—it hurts now, but if you are as good an artist as I begin to think you are, you’ll never have to guess at what jealousy means again, when you meet with it in music. And love—don’t ask me what it is, because I can’t tell you anything more than that it is an intense and complex tangle of emotions—you’ll have to feel that, too. Everybody claims to have been in love, but to love so that you can afterward distill something from it which makes other people know what love is or reminds them forcibly—that takes an artist. Do you feel a little better now?”

“Gluh.”

“Good. And you won’t go back to the Glue Works tomorrow?”

A shake of the head.

“Then perhaps we should return to the others, or they will think that I am up to no good with you, and although that would be flattering to me, in a way, I don’t think it really desirable.”

But at this moment Mrs Merry came into the kitchen. She wore a splendid, elevated look, more like a martyr than Monica had ever seen her; her teeth were bared in a smile which suggested that the first flames of the pyre were licking at her toes.

“Sir Benedict, I must leave you now,” said she. “It is quite time—indeed it has been made obvious to me that it is far past time—that I quitted the gathering.” She gave a slight, refined hiccup, and burst into tears.

For the first time in his life Sir Benedict had no clean handkerchief to offer. But Mrs Merry, a lady even in grief and liquor, fished one out of her bosom, and held its lacy inadequacy to her lips.

“My dear lady, has anyone ill-used you?” said he. In perfect fairness he should have sat Mrs Merry on the table and held her, but he did not.

“My fault,” she quavered. “Intruded. Went too far. Artist—high strung. Should have remembered.”

Sir Benedict took the glass from Mrs Merry’s hand and hunted in a cupboard where the cooking things were. He found a bottle of cherry brandy, and poured a generous slug. “Drink this, and tell us all about it,” said he.

“Mr Revelstoke—a genius, of course. And fresh from a great success.—Well, if you insist. Oh dear, I shall never be able to drink such a lot!—Well, I ought to have known. Madame Gertrude Belcher-Chalke was just the same after a concert—'elev'ee, indeed one might say utterly ballonn'ee—and hardly civil for hours. I meant no harm. Asked him to play. Well, I mean—a musician? Surely he plays? He said no. I pressed. I mean, they expect to be pressed. Nono. Press again. Nonono. I entreat the others to support my request. That man with the nasty picked-looking head shouts something in German. Then Mr Revelstoke rushes to the piano and says—’For you, for you alone, you lovely creature!’ And plays.” Here Mrs Merry’s bosom heaved as no bosom has heaved since the heyday of the silent films. She drained the cherry brandy to the dregs. “He played Chopsticks!” she cried and hurled her glass dramatically into the sink.

Sir Benedict proved amply that a conductor of the first rank is not only a notable interpretative musician, but also a diplomat and an organizer of uncommon ability. He soothed Mrs Merry. He shooed Monica upstairs to his own bedroom to wash and restore her face. He enlisted Eccles to help him bring champagne up from the cellar. He brought the party to some semblance of unity and enjoyment. And, finally, he went to the piano.

“Giles and I want to play something for Mrs Merry,” said he. “It is called Paraphrases, and it is what all musicians play when they are happy.”

Drawing Revelstoke down at the piano by his side, Domdaniel compelled him to join in a duet; with great verve and gusto they played the twenty-four variations on Chopsticks which were written by Liszt, Borodin, Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov. Mrs Merry, very much at the mercy of her feelings and with her remaining self-possession disappearing beneath the champagne, managed to get to the piano, against which she posed, smiling soulfully at Sir Benedict until, suddenly, all meaning disappeared from her face and she fell heavily to the floor.

Eccles, expert in such affairs, lifted her head and fanned her. Mrs Merry opened her eyes, and she smiled blissfully. “Put me to bed and don’t bend me,” said she. And thus the party ended.