"But Alice -- the Trust money isn't for private expenses. Mr Snelgrove would never allow it. I had no idea you were thinking like this!"

"If you don't know how to get money without saying what it's for by this time, you'd better learn. Chuck'll tell you, if you want; he's a banker and he knows how these things are done. Now get this through your head; you're not going to bury Ma on the cheap. You're the rich one; well, you can just spend some of it on Ma. It'll be the last thing you can do for her and you'd better just make up your mind to do it right. It'll be sure to get around if you don't: you can depend on that."

Monica protested, but she could not do so with much vigour. If she could rob the Trust for Revelstoke, why not for Ma? There was no answer to that question -- not even such an answer as the uncomfortable inner voice could give. But it was a bitter blow to her to discover, as she did very soon, that not only Alice, but Dad and Aunt Ellen, were looking to her to pay all the heavier costs of this occasion. It was not wholly that they wanted money; it was that her supposed possession of money made her, in their eyes, the head of the family. Not moral authority, or age, but hard cash was what decided the matter. She could never again be a child in her father's house, because she had more money than he.

The funeral came, and passed. Eleven relatives from out of town arrived, and were fed; seven of them were given overnight lodging at the Gall house and at Aunt Ellen's. They were all Gunleys, relatives of Mrs Gall, and like her they tended to be fat and sardonic. The night before the funeral they assembled for a family pow-pow, and Mr Gall and Alice, between them, gave a dramatic account of Mrs Gall's last illness. Alice tried to weight the story a little by emphasizing the doctor's assertion that Mrs Gall need not have died, and that Monica's decision that she should not go to the hospital was the deciding factor. But she got nowhere with the Gunleys.

"Ada always liked her own way," said Aunt Bessie Gunley; "stubborn as they come."

"Yep; independent as a hog on ice," agreed Noble Gunley, a second cousin in the hardware business.

They appeared to glory in Mrs Gall's defiance of the entrenched powers of the medical world; she had died as she lived, a Gunley through and through.

Pastor Beamis did not extend himself at the funeral as much as he could have wished, but he respected the desire, put to him strongly by Alice and Monica in their different ways, for conservatism. He was conservative, by his lights. He prayed for the family, in turn and by name, and managed to give Almighty God an excellent capsule account of Monica's high associations abroad. He spoke eloquently of the late Mrs Gall, informing a somewhat surprised group of listeners that she had been open-handed, devout, courageous, a lifelong lover of all that was beautiful (this tied in neatly with his prayerful reference to Monica) and a constant source of inspiration to himself in his pastoral work. Accompanied by Mrs Beamis on the piano, and his son Wesley on the vibraphone, he sang Swinging Through the Gates of the New Jerusalem. But by comparison with some of his more unbuttoned efforts, it was conservative.

Chuck Proby's boss did not come, after all. He sent the head accountant, as the most suitable person to represent the august entity of The Bank at the funeral of the mother-in-law of a promising, but still junior, employee. The Bridgetower Trust was represented by Dean Knapp, who declined Pastor Beamis' pressing invitation to sit on the platform, but who behaved himself beautifully, even when his sensibilities were most outraged, and spoke with real Christian kindness to the Gall family afterward.

Not that Alfred Gall noticed who spoke to him. The light which, however it may have appeared to the outside world, had been sufficient to fill his life, had gone out, and he was in darkness. All through the funeral he sat like a man carved in wood.

Alice wept copiously. She had a valuable talent for allowing her grief free play when it was most wanted, and suppressing it at need. But, certainly in her own estimation, at least, she wept in the same spirit as Dean Knapp prayed at her mother's funeral -- sincerely, but not as a Thirteener.

Monica lacked Alice's ability to present her feelings suitably. She had wept for her mother at the time of her death. At the funeral she found herself lifted up by a wave of emotion which she knew to be optimistic, and which at first she thought was relief that the long ordeal was over at last. But as Beamis prayed, she heard the inner voice, speaking this time not as her mother or as Giles, but in a voice which might have been her own, and it said: You are free. You did your best for her, and now you are free. You will never have to worry about what you can tell her, or what would hurt her, again.

[SEVEN].

The day after the funeral Monica found herself in a disordered and neglected house which she was apparently expected to put in order, and keep indefinitely for her widowed father. It was plain that Alice meant to do nothing, and Aunt Ellen had her job. She made a beginning, and quickly tired of it. Doing domestic work for Revelstoke was one thing; this was a very different matter. Should she call in a cleaning-woman? No, that would be unwise on several counts. It would encourage the family to think that she had cash in hand, and in reality she was very short; she had left all she could spare with Revelstoke. It would also defer the time when some permanent arrangement was made for Mr Gall, and that was pressing; she wanted to get back to London as soon as she could. She must be diplomatic.

Her new position in the family, that of the moneyed daughter, made diplomacy easier than she had foreseen. It was so easy, indeed, to persuade her father to fall in with her suggestions that she was a little ashamed of herself, and of him. At a family council she made it clear that she must return to London; much depended on it, she said. She meant The Golden Asse, but did not say so. The family, assuming as people without money are wont to do, that all the affairs of moneyed people concern money, agreed. How was Dad going to manage? To everyone's surprise, Dad himself had a plan; Alice and Chuck and little Donald should move in with him. Alice was quick to quash that proposal.

"Three generations in one house never works," said she. "You see it everywhere. I think it'll be far better if every tub stands on its own bottom."

After much beating about the bush it was finally agreed that Miss Gall should give up her pretty little house, and move in with her brother. That was what Monica wanted; that was, indeed, what she had decided to arrange. But it hurt her, nevertheless, that Miss Gall had to be the sacrifice. Aunt Ellen was the only one of them who was not toadying to her because of her supposed riches; that good woman was simply and extravagantly proud of Monica because she was gaining a place in the world as a singer, and she would have laid her head on the executioner's block without complaint, if thereby she could have advanced her niece's career.

Still, now that Ma was dead, it was possible to confide more fully in Aunt Ellen, and Monica spent many nights in the pretty, crowded sitting-room of her aunt's house, where she had learned her first lessons in music. She sang for Miss Gall; she sang Revelstoke's songs to her, which Aunt Ellen did not really like, but which filled her with pride none the less. She sang the folk-songs and the songs in an older musical idiom which she had learned from Molloy, and these delighted the little woman. She said, quite truly, that she had never heard anything so fine before. And when Monica asked Aunt Ellen's advice about her programme for the Bridgetower Recital, her cup was full and brimming over. This, at last, was the real musical life!

For there was to be a Bridgetower Recital. The members of the Trust had advanced the idea very delicately, fearing that Monica might be too prostrated with grief at the death of her mother to sing for some months. They were surprised, but gratified, by the resilience of her spirits. Yes, she said, she would be happy to sing for any audience they chose to assemble. Yes, she thought that Fallen Hall, at Waverley University, would be an excellent place for a recital. No, she was not in the least dubious about filling it with her voice; she had sung in the Sheldonian Theatre, and at Wigmore Hall, and size did not alarm her. Certainly, she would plan a programme in the course of a few days. The question of mourning? Well, would it not be possible to include in her programme a short group of songs of a devotional nature? She would like to do so, as a form of memorial to her mother. The Trust thought this most suitable and proper, and were delighted with her for thinking of it.

Miss Puss was particularly pleased by the whole notion of the recital. Indeed, she revealed a romantic strain in her character which the others had not suspected, but which came out clearly at a meeting held, with Monica present, to discuss all the details of the great affair.

"There is a point which I wish to raise," said Miss Puss, positively blushing, "which may seem -- I hardly know how to phrase it -- fanciful to you gentlemen, and which may at first seem strange to our protegee, Miss Gall. It has long been the custom of singers, when embarking upon their careers, to choose a name for professional use -- a nom de guerre. The instances of Melba and Nordica arise at once to mind; Melba was Helen Mitchell -- an honourable but scarcely inspiring title -- and Nordica was Lillian Norton. Nor must we forget our own dear Marie Lajeunesse, which we shall certainly not do if we think of her as Madame Albani. They chose names, you see, which were remarkable for euphony, and ease of recollection. Mind you, I do not say that a name with a certain, well, asperity about it is a barrier to success. Who has forgotten Minnie Hauk? Well -- I put it to you, Minnie Hauk! But the exception in this case strengthens the rule. Consider the great Yendik -- born Kidney! Well, you will have gathered by now what I am driving at. Our dear Monica -- (Monica's eyes opened to their uttermost to learn that she was dear to Miss Puss, but she was becoming inured to surprises) - has a lovely Christian name. But Gall? A name honoured in Ireland, certainly, but is it quite the thing for the concert platform? Can one imagine it on posters, programmes? Can we be of assistance in finding something more suitable -- more euphonious and easily memorable? I confess that I have pondered over this matter a good deal during the past few days, and what I want to suggest" -- and here Miss Puss positively glowed --"is that the forthcoming recital would be a most suitable place for the assumption of a new name. And the name I propose -- a name compounded of parts of Monica and Gall, a sort of anagram -- is Gallica."

Up from the depths of Monica's memory floated the name of Monique Gallo; how long ago that was -- more than two years! How she had changed.

"It is wonderfully kind of you, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness," said she, "but I think, all things considered, I had better keep my own name. You see, I have sung twice for the B B C as Monica Gall, and I have sung at Wigmore Hall in a recital of new work by Giles Revelstoke, which attracted a good deal of attention. I have sung for Sir Benedict under my own name, as well; so perhaps it would be a mistake to change it now, just when it is beginning to be known."

How oily I am getting, she thought. That sounded just like Giles imitating somebody he despised.

Aunt Puss was quick to swallow her words.

"I had no desire to seem arbitrary or intrusive," said she; "I only wished to draw attention to a recognized professional custom."

"I think it is a custom which is falling into disuse," said Solly.

"That may not be entirely a good thing," said the Dean. "A career in art must often mean great changes in personality -- much abandoned in the past, and much learned. I've sometimes thought we might all be the better for taking new names when we discover our vocations." He looked kindly at Miss Puss, who was flustered and cast down. One of the few flashes of romance in her life had been quenched.

Poor old chook, thought Monica. She wants to make something; she wants to create, and Gallica would be in some measure her creation. She would be particularly nice to Miss Puss when the meeting was over, to salve the wound.

It was at this meeting that Monica was told of the substantial sum of money which the Trust had on hand, and which was legally hers. It was Mr Snelgrove who explained it to her, and when he reached the point where he had to say that she could have it and do as she pleased with it he could hardly bring the words to his lips. As a lawyer he knew what the position was, and in that capacity he had been urging the Trust to get the money off its hands; but Mr Snelgrove was also a man -- a dry, conservative, stuffily prudent, snobbish old man -- and the thought of turning over so much money to a girl of very common background, who might commit the Lord only knew what follies with it, deeply shocked him. Nor was he without heart; the sight of young Solomon Bridgetower sitting in what ought to be his own house, looking as though he had bitten a lemon, while this strange girl was given money which might have been his, hurt Mr Snelgrove's sense of justice -- which a life devoted to the practice of the law had not wholly eroded away. But at last Mr Snelgrove was done with his humming and hawing, and his meaning was clear.

"Of course I am very much surprised," said Monica, "and more than ever grateful to the late Mrs Bridgetower. You need have no fear that the money will be wasted, or frittered away in trivial spending. Indeed, I can tell you now that I should not dream of using it for purely personal benefit. With your approval, I should like to use a small part of it -- a few hundred dollars -- to settle my mother's funeral expenses. I shall pay it back as soon as I am able, out of my own earnings. The remainder will be used exclusively for musical purposes of which I shall give you a full account when the time comes."

She spoke soberly, but her heart was singing. From the minute she understood the drift of Mr Snelgrove's harangue, she knew precisely what she was going to do with that money. It would be more than enough to close the gap between what the Association for English Opera could afford to spend in producing The Golden Asse, and what was necessary to do the job properly, and with a decent margin for unexpected needs. She would now be able to make it possible for Giles to take a giant step in his career, and she could do it decently, without robbery, padding of expenses, and selling second-hand clothes. Like many people when they suddenly get their own way, she saw the hand of God in it. But she was not so lost to discretion as to talk of her plan to the Trust, until she actually had the money.

The Trustees were somewhat surprised, and the Dean at least was relieved, that she did not take the news of her windfall in a frivolous or greedy spirit. They badly wanted to know what she was going to do, but pride forbade them to ask. So they passed on to a discussion of the invitations to the Bridgetower Recital. For of course it was to be an invitation affair, and they meant to get the utmost possible glory out of it for themselves. Glory was all that they stood to get from the Bridgetower Trust, and having parted, though vicariously, with $45,000 they badly felt the need of something in return.

[EIGHT].

The period during which Monica was preparing herself for the recital was enlivened for the whole British Commonwealth, and several millions of interested people in the USA, by what was known as the Odingsels Obscenity Scandal. Odo Odingsels, described to Monica's astonishment and private amusement as "a fashionable Mayfair photographer", was arrested on charges of selling, at very high prices and to a small but constant clientele, indecent photographs of men and women highly placed in society and politics. The nature of these photographs, the newspapers said, was of an obscenity to astonish the most hardened libertine, for not merely were they filthy in themselves but they brought into disrepute people for whom the whole world had the utmost respect and affection. The man Odingsels was plainly a criminal lunatic of horrifying depravity; employing models sufficiently like his subjects (though as a usual thing younger and more pleasingly formed) he put the heads of the victims on them by brilliant photographic trickery, employing photographs purchased from news agencies and portrait photographers. The newspapers dwelt with well-simulated horror on the lifelike and astonishing effects which this perverse combination of artistry and technique produced. The Old Bailey had been cleared while the jury examined the monster's work, and the Judge had admonished them to secrecy. Nevertheless, it was said on sufficient authority that European Royalty, British Royalty, the White House -- nay, the very Vatican itself -- were spattered.

Ransacking its recollection for some yardstick of enormity to apply, the press came up, not very appositely, with the Oscar Wilde case, and a bright young journalist, remembering that Wilde had once lived in Tite Street, made great play with the fact that Odingsels frequently "resorted" there, to the editorial offices of a publication called Lantern, run by a Chelsea group which was made out to be as unsavoury as the laws of libel would permit. Another point of similarity with the Wilde affair was that Odingsels showed no proper dismay in the dock, but grinned and sometimes laughed outright when evidence was given that he had received as much as one hundred guineas for a single exclusive print.

Odo's counsel, a celebrated silk, attempted to defend him on the ground that many of his ingenious photographs, representing celebrated figures in world affairs, were essentially political in subject, and satiric in intent. They were, he said, the modern counterparts of the vigorous, sometimes savage, and often suggestive political caricatures of Rowlandson and Gilray. He created a sensation in court when he produced a list of Odingsels' clients and began to read it; extraordinary as it seemed, some of the photographer's victims were themselves purchasers of obscene portraits of other eminent people. The Judge did not permit the reading of the list to go far, but read it himself, declared it to be, for the present, irrelevant, and no more was heard of it. But the eminent silk had read enough to set the newspapers buzzing; it was, Fleet Street agreed, the liveliest thing since the great hue and cry after homosexuals a few months before. Leaders appeared under such headings as "Curiosa In High Places". Much was made of the fact that the learned Judge, after looking through a portfolio of Odingsels' work, said, "These things would make a vulture gag." He also said that the models who lent themselves to the production of such filth should be discovered and dealt with appropriately.

"Thank God for Bun Eccles," said Monica, drinking this in with her breakfast coffee, "or I might have to stay here for a few months. I wonder if they'll get Perse? A girl with as many moles as she has oughtn't to be hard to identify -- but the slops can't strip every tart in London, matching up shapes." -- From which it may be seen that Monica did not phrase her private thoughts as elegantly as she did her speeches to the Bridgetower Trustees. -- "I wonder who I would have been the body of, if I'd gone to him? I always knew he was no good. I just hope Giles has enough sense not to try to go to his rescue by appearing as a character witness, or something." For five days the wonder raged, and at last a shuddering smudge appeared in the newspapers which was described as a radio-photograph of Odo Odingsels being escorted from the Central Criminal Court by twelve police, while a crowd of five hundred angry women tried to slaughter him with umbrellas and rotten vegetables. His offence was such a strange one, and the law relating to it so various and confused, that the best the Judge was able to do for him was to send him to prison for five years, three of which were to be spent in hard labour.

Much was made during the trial of the unsavouriness of Odingsels' appearance; the Judge and the newspapers were at one in agreeing that his outward form was the true mirror of his soul. Monica and everyone else learned that the type of mange from which he suffered was called alopecia areata, and everywhere harmless, afflicted citizens wrote to the papers protesting that this ailment was not a mark of turpitude. But the Odingsels Obscenity Scandal vanished as suddenly as it came.

There were two days when the name of Lantern was prominent in the news, and when people who had never seen a copy were writing of it as a scabrous and scruffy publication, when she had to be very firm with herself, to keep from sending a cable of warning advice to Giles. But she knew how furiously he would resent such interference; three or four weeks in Canada, domineering over her relatives, had awakened her considerable talent for bossiness, but she must not use it on Giles. Of late his touchiness had reached new heights; hard work on The Golden Asse raised his spirits, but drove him to new excesses of freakishness. And so much of it was directed against Stanhope Aspinwall! The critic had been favourable but pernickety in his judgement of Kubla Khan when it was broadcast; Monica was inclined to think well of him because he had written of her singing in terms of warm praise. . . "an artist still somewhat tentative in her approach but plainly possessed of uncommon abilities. . . combines vocal qualities usually considered to be mutually exclusive. . . extreme agility and brilliance in the upper register with a warm and expressive tone. . . a purity of English pronunciation and delicate interpretation of poetic nuance which recalls the late Kathleen Ferrier". Monica had suggested to Giles that, as he had taught her all she knew, this praise was for him, but he would not hear of it. "All these old critics go ga-ga about a new girl if she isn't a positive gargoyle," he had said, and had raged on about Aspinwall's criticism of the piano part of the cantata as unduly elaborated. And when, a few weeks later, Giles had given a recital of his work at Wigmore Hall, and Aspinwall had once again praised her warmly, and found some faults in the music, Giles became quite impossible.

He had procured a picture of Aspinwall (through Odingsels, it was now unpleasant to remember), had framed it and hung it in the water-closet which was one flight downstairs from his own apartment. He made a point of using the paper for which Aspinwall wrote in order to wrap his garbage; he bought several copies every week, cut out Aspinwall's signed articles, and hung them in the water-closet, as a substitute for the toilet roll, though Mrs Klein and the other lodgers objected strongly. On one embarrassing occasion he took Monica to a concert and, finding that they were sitting behind Aspinwall (which he swore he had not arranged) he badgered the critic by tapping on the back of his seat, and making insulting remarks, just loud enough to be heard, in the intervals. He even began to write obscenely abusive letters to Aspinwall, but Monica and Bun Eccles intercepted them, and so far as they could judge, none had escaped their watch.

"Pay no attention," Bun had said when she confided her worry to him; "old Giles is a genius, and when he's working at full steam he gets ratty. Some of the things he does are a bit crook, Monny, but he's sound as the bank -- too right he is. Wait'll he gets the opera done, then you'll see."

Well, she thought, the first thing is to get the opera done, and hope Aspinwall likes it. So she cabled Giles that the money difficulty was settled, explained it in detail in a letter, and worked even harder for the Bridgetower Recital.

[NINE].

When the day came Monica's nervousness, as always, took the form of depression, a sense of unworthiness, and a fear not of failure but of a spiritless mediocrity. By now she had some experience of this state, and recent reflection had convinced her that it was part of her heritage from Ma; her imagination, and her ups and downs of feeling, were Ma's. Well, she must not let them dominate her life, as they had dominated the life of Mrs Gall.

But it is one thing to reason with depression, and another to lift it. All day she was gloomy. She had procured invitations for her own friends. Would Kevin and Alex draw attention to themselves in some unsuitable way? Would George Medwall, with whom she had had two or three brief, uneasy conversations, come at all, and would it bother her if she could not see him in the audience? The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had asked to make a tape-recording of part of the concert; was that going to mean a microphone to fix her with its disapproving, steely face, somewhere directly in her view? Why, she wondered, did anyone want to be a singer?

Did she indeed want to be a singer? What singer whom she knew did she admire? In her present mood she could think of none. Singers! The creatures of a physical talent, constantly fussing about draughts in spite of their horse-like health -- conscious that their voices might drop a tone if the room were too hot. Evelyn Burnaby, with whom she now had some acquaintance, and whom she admired as an artist -- did she really want to be like Evelyn? So dull, except when she sang.

And Ludwiga Kressel -- a genuine diva, that one, to whom Domdaniel had introduced her after a performance at Covent Garden. Ludwiga had dominated the party, a powerful, brass-haired woman, with a sense of humour as heavy as her own tread. She had compelled them all to silence while she told them of her experiences with the stage director at the Metropolitan. She had been unable to continue, convulsed by her own fun, yet protesting through her big-throated laughter, "However funny I am I cannot be so funny as Graf." She had got to the Metropolitan because she had previously secured an engagement in Vienna. "Byng is impressed by Vienna, but Vienna is nothing, nothing at all." Did she want to think like Ludwiga, who talked endlessly of "concertizing" and "recitalizing"? Did she want to live like Ludwiga, whose ferocious schedule of plane travel made it possible for her to cram the greatest possible number of appearances -- operatic and concert -- into a single season? No, no; not like Ludwiga.

By six o'clock she was in the depths, and wanted a drink more than anything else. No -- obviously not more than anything else, for a drink was easily within her reach; Kevin and Alex had been discreetly keeping her modest needs supplied. But a drink before a concert might disturb her voice, so it was out of the question for her to have one. She knew very well, as she denied herself, that she was by that abnegation settling her shoulders to the singer's yoke.

The recital was to be at half-past eight, and well before eight she was entering the artist's door of Fallen Hall. The artist's door, in this case, simply meant the entrance to a poky little room, piled half-full with folded wooden chairs and ferociously over-heated by steam coils, at one side of the stage. But this was what an "artist's door" meant in her native land -- not the mysterious and somewhat furtive side-doors which led to stages in England, nor the glorious, lamplit courtyard which led to the stage entrance of the Paris Opera; she entered Fallen Hall itself by just the same door as the public used; for after all, what had an artist to conceal, or what marked him off from the general public? Nothing, of course; nothing but a world of dedication.

Having failed to open a window, or find a janitor to do it for her, Monica was fearful that she might take cold even before her concert. The air was hot and dry, so she went into the corridor, and at last found another room, dark and not so hot, where faculty meetings were held, and here she concealed herself until five minutes before the concert was to begin.

Her accompanist, Humphrey Cobbler, had not yet arrived, and Monica worried furiously. But with a minute to spare he appeared, much rumpled and utterly unpressed, but in evening clothes and plainly in very good spirits. During rehearsals she had learned to know and like Humphrey very much, and so now she was able to speak sharply to him about his lateness.

"But I'm not late," said he, smiling indulgently. "You don't suppose they'll get going before eight forty-five? My dear, the nobility and gentry, the beauty and chivalry, not to mention the money and the stretched credit, of Salterton are assembling to hear you. You can smell the moth-balls and the bunny coats away back here if you sniff. And it's all for you. Don't fuss; glory in it."

"I can't glory. I think I'm going to be sick. Oh, Humphrey, this scares me far worse than the BBC, or anything I've ever done."

"But why?"

"Because it's my home town, that's why. You couldn't understand. You're an Englishman; you haven't got Salterton in your bones; you didn't grow up with those people out there meaning the larger world to you. So far as they know me at all, they know me as a stenographer at the Glue Works. And right now that's exactly what I feel like."

"Listen, poppet, it's very charming of you to love your home town, but now is the time to put that love in its proper place -- which is right outside Fallen Hall, in a snowbank. Salterton can't be your measure of success or failure; what you think are its standards are just the standards of childhood and provincialism. You've been away long enough to recognize that your home town is not only the Rome and the Athens of your early life, but also in many important ways a remote, God-forsaken dump. Those people out there are just vincial professors, and bankers, and wholesale druggists who want to be proud of you if you give them half a chance, but who will just as readily take any opportunity you give them to keep you down. Now: don't try to dominate them; you're not a lion-tamer. Go out on the platform and do what your teachers have told you, and what you know to be right and best, and pay no heed to them at all, except when courtesy -- the high courtesy of the artist -- demands it. We'll walk up and down this corridor, you and I, taking deep but not hysterical breaths, until the head usher tells us that all the bunny coats are in their seats. Come on, Monica: head forward and up, back long and easy, and -- what does Molloy say? -- breathe the muhd."

[TEN].

The first part of the Recital was over, and Cobbler returned Monica to the Faculty Room, shut the door and guarded it from outside. It had gone well. That is, she knew that she had sung well, and the audience, after a rather watchful beginning, was prepared to like her.

It was true, as Cobbler had said when she first discussed her programme with him, that she was giving them something tough to chew. But -- "It's a fine programme," he had said, "and I'm delighted you're getting away from that fathead notion that music must always be performed in the chronological order of its composition. The audience here has had a thorough Community Concerts training; they'll be expecting you to start off with a Classical Group, putting your voice through its hardest paces while it's still cold and before you've really got the feel of the hall or the audience, and then a group of Lieder, to show that you know German, and a French group, to show that you know French, and then a Contemporary Group, consisting entirely of second-rank Americans, and topping off with a Popular Group, in which you really let your hair down and show how vulgar and folksy you can be. But this makes sense."

The programme was prepared on a principle which she had learned from Giles; not the chronology of composers, but a line of poetic meaning, was the cord on which the beads were strung. And so she had begun with Schubert's An die Musik, and after that noble apostrophe she plunged straight into Giles' own Kubla Khan which was certainly tough chewing for a Salterton audience, as it took fifteen minutes to perform and without being in the mode of what Cobbler called "wrong-note modernism" was written in an idiom both contemporary and individual to the composer. Then, as relief, she had sung a group of folksongs of the British Isles as she had learned them from Molloy. The folksongs had stirred the audience to its first real enthusiasm, for they all felt themselves competent judges of such seeming simplicity.

Now an interval, and then a group of three songs which the audience was asked, in a note on the programme, not to applaud. These were the songs which Monica intended as her memorial to her mother. The oak coffin, the five black Buicks at the funeral, and the red granite tombstone, like a chunk of petrified potted meat, which Dad and Alice wanted, were trash. But in these songs she would take her farewell of Ada Gall.

First would be Thomas Campion's Never weather-beaten Saile. She would follow it with Brahms' Auf dem Kirchhofe, and if anyone thought it gloomy -- well, let them think. And last, Purcell's Evening Hymn, noble and serene setting of William Fuller's words. Would any who had known Ma -- Dad, for instance, or Aunt Ellen -- find the reflection of her spirit which Monica believed to lie in these songs? During the night-watches at her bedside, Monica had thought much about Ma, and about herself. They were, as Ma had said in her last fully rational utterances, much alike. For in Ma, when she told tall stories, when she rasped her family with rough, sardonic jokes, when she rebelled against the circumstances of her life in coarse abuse, and when she cut through the fog of nonsense with the beam of her insight, was an artist -- a spoiled artist, one who had never made anything, who was unaware of the nature or genesis of her own discontent, but who nevertheless possessed the artist's temperament; in her that temperament, misunderstood, denied and gone sour, had become a poison which had turned against the very sources of life itself. Nevertheless, she was like Ma, and she must not go astray as Ma -- not wholly through her own fault -- had gone. In these songs she would sing of the spirit which might have been her mother's if circumstances had been otherwise. Alice had not hesitated to say that she had killed their mother by giving in to her wilfulness. Well, it was not true; what was best in her mother should live on, and find expression, in her.

Monica had often heard of singers losing awareness of themselves while facing an audience -- of losing the audience, and existing for that time only in their music. She had never quite believed it. But that was her own experience while she sang the three songs which she had, in her own mind, set aside as a memorial to her mother. She was back in the Faculty Room before she emerged from that inner calm. Humphrey Cobbler kissed her on the cheek and -- sure sign in him of strong feeling -- said not a word, but left her to herself.

Her tribute offered and her final peace made with the spirit, not departed but strongly present, Monica found the remainder of her recital pleasant and, all things considered, easy. She sang a group of settings of poems by John Clare, Thomas Lovell Beddoes and Walter de la Mare which Giles had written for her, and their sombre beauty led the hearers out of the memorial atmosphere which had been created, and left them ready for Berlioz' Nuits d'ete, and the final group of songs, which was four Shakespeare lyrics, in settings by Purcell and Thomas Augustine Arne, which Giles had arranged from the gnomic and scanty original accompaniments. The audience had made up its mind after the memorial songs that it liked Monica -- liked her very much and was proud of her -- and the applause as she left the stage was warm, and mounting. There were even a few greatly daring, un-Canadian cries of "Bravo!" which Monica attributed, rightly, to Kevin and Alex.

"Sticking to plan?" said Cobbler.

"Yes; go back on the crest of the applause, and one good encore," said Monica. This was a piece of practical wisdom from Domdaniel; Giles hated encores because they disturbed the shape of his programmes; Molloy believed in singing as long as one delighted listener remained in the hall; the balance lay with Sir Benedict.

So, as the applause mounted for fifty seconds, until there was actually some stamping -- stamping in Fallon Hall, and from a stiff-shirt audience at that! -- Monica remained out of sight, judging the sound. And when it seemed to her that it would go no higher, she returned to the stage, amid a really gratifying uproar. Ushers moved forward with flowers; a large and uncompromising bunch from the Bridgetower Trustees, a very handsome bunch from Kevin and Alex, a bouquet containing a card which read, "With Love and Pride from the Old Heart and Hope Quarter" (which made Monica blush momentarily, for she had havered a little about inviting the Beamises) and two or three others. Cobbler, greatly enjoying the fun, for such recitals did not often come his way, helped her to pile them all on top of the piano, and she sang her single encore.

"Never sing below your weight in an encore; try to do something you haven't done earlier in the evening; and try to sing something they'll like but probably haven't heard before." These were the words of Domdaniel, talking to her about public appearances several months before. So Monica had determined to sing Thomas Augustine Arne's Water Parted.

It was a song which she deeply loved, though Giles laughed at her for it. " 'May this be my poison if my bear ever dances but to the very genteelest of tunes -- Water Parted, or the minuet in Ariadne' ", he would say, to her mystification, until one night when he had taken her to the Old Vic to see She Stoops to Conquer, and had nudged her sharply when the line was spoken. But he had prepared an accompaniment for it, for her special use, and had set it in a key which made the best use of what he called her "chalumeau register", as well as the brilliance of her upper voice.

Water parted from the sea May increase the river's tide -- To the bubbling fount may flee, Or thro' fertile valleys glide.

Tho' in search of lost repose Thro' the land 'tis free to roam, Still it murmurs as it flows Panting for its native home.

She sang it very well, though this was the first time she had ever sung it in public. She sang it as well, perhaps, as she ever sang it in her life, though in later years her name was to be much associated with it, and audiences were to demand it in and out of season. She performed that feat, given to gifted singers, of making the song seem better than it was, of bringing to it a personal significance which was not inherent in it. But Monica always protested that the song was great in itself, and that she merely revealed in it what had gone unnoticed by others, too hasty to make a personal appraisal of a song by a composer usually dismissed as not really first-rate. She was already, under Revelstoke's guidance, developing a faculty of finding worth where others had missed it, and this was to give her repertoire a quality which was the despair of her rivals.

But there, in Fallon Hall, she sang Water Parted for the first time, and lifted her audience to an even greater pitch of enthusiasm.

"I think we may call it a triumph," whispered Humphrey Cobbler, as they bowed again and again.

[ELEVEN].

"An undoubted triumph!" cried Miss Puss Pottinger, as Monica was led by Cobbler into the Bridgetower home. The house was full of people -- more people than had been in it since Mrs Bridgetower's funeral -- and they all appeared to be in that state of excitement which follows a really satisfactory artistic achievement. Their excitement varied, of course. There were those who talked of the concert, and there were those who talked of politics and the stock market; but all their talk was a little more vivacious, or vehement, or pontifical because of what they had experienced; music had performed its ever-new magical trick of strengthening and displaying whatever happened to be the dominant trait in them.

But Cobbler knew his work too well to allow Monica to be snatched from him. With the technique of a professional bodyguard he guided her to the stairway, rushed her up it, and into the little second-floor sitting-room where Solly and Veronica were waiting with food and drink.

Singers must eat, and there have been those among them who have eaten too much. As amorousness is the pastime of players of stringed instruments, and horse-racing the relaxation of the brass section of the orchestra, so eating is the pleasure, and sometimes the vice, of singers. After a performance, a singer must be fed before he or she can be turned loose among their admirers, or else somebody may be insulted, or even bitten. Cobbler had told Veronica that Monica would need something substantial, and preferably hot. So, in the upstairs sitting-room, a dish of chops and green peas, a salad, a plate of fruit and a half-bottle of Beaune were in readiness.

As Monica devoured them gratefully -- for she had eaten nothing since mid-day, and had taken only a glass of milk at five o'clock -- a close observer might have thought that even more than a meal had been prepared. When Solly had given Cobbler a drink, he said that they really must go and talk to their guests, and led the accompanist away, leaving Monica and Veronica alone.

Veronica was a poor diplomat, and she had small relish for the task before her; but she had undertaken it on behalf of her husband, and she decided that the best thing was to jump in with both feet, and get it over.

"Monica -- I hope you don't mind me calling you Monica -- Solly and I want to ask a favour of you. A large favour, and it isn't easy to ask. But -- we're terribly hard up. And we wondered if you could possibly lend us some money."