"I'm sorry," John replied stiffly, "I'd like to go with you, but I couldn't think of doing such a thing as you suggest to me!"

"I wonder how long you'll feel like that, Mac?" Hinde laughed.

"All my life, I hope!"

"Well, have it your own way, then. But you're wasting your time!"

"And another thing," John continued, "I want to hear the woman singing.

I've never heard anybody great at the music yet!"

III

He entered the great circular hall, and sat, very solemnly, in his seat on the ground floor. He felt nervous and uneasy and certain that he would not be able to write adequately of the concert. He tried to think of suitable words to great music, but it seemed to him that he could not think at all. He glanced about the Hall, hoping that perhaps he would find inspiration in the ceiling, but there was no inspiration there. He could see wires stretched across the roof from side to side, and there were great pieces of canvas radiating from the central cl.u.s.ter of lights in the dome. He wondered why the wires were there.

Blondin, he remembered, had walked across a wire, as thin-looking as those, which was stretched high up in the roof of the Exhibition at the Old Linen Hall in Belfast; but he could scarcely believe that these wires were intended for tight-rope performances. He turned to a man at his side. "Would you mind telling me what those things are for?" he asked, pointing to them.

"To break the echoes," the man replied, entering into an involved account of acoustics. "It's all humbug really," he added. "They don't break the echoes at all, but we all imagine that they do, and so we're quite happy!"

The warm, comfortable look of the red-curtained boxes in the softened electric light pleased him, and he liked the effect of the tiers rising up to the high roof, and the great spread of floor, and the gigantic magnificence of the organ.

"How many people does this place hold?" he demanded of his neighbour.

"About ten thousand," his neighbour answered, glancing at him quizzically. "Is this the first time you've been here?"

"Yes. I'm new to London. They must take a great deal of money in a night at a place like this. An immense amount!"

"They do. It's part of the Albert Memorial, this hall. The other part is in the Park across the road. Have you seen it?"

"No," said John. "Is it any good?"

"Well," said the stranger, "we've tried to overlook it ... but unfortunately it's too big. There are some excellent bits in it, but the whole effect!... Poor dear Queen Victoria ... she was a little woman, and so, of course, she believed in magnitude. She liked Bigness.

She's out of fashion, nowadays ... people t.i.tter behind their hands when they speak of her ... and there's a tendency to regard her as a somewhat foolish and sentimental old woman ... but really, she was a very capable old girl in her narrow way, and there was nothing soft about her. She was as hard as nails ... almost a cruel woman ... she'd compel her maids-of-honour to stand in her presence until the poor girls fainted with fatigue.... I'm sure she'd have made Queen Elizabeth feel uncomfortable in some ways. This hall is a memorial to her husband."

"Yes," said John. "There's a Memorial in Belfast to him. What did he do?"

"He was Queen Victoria's husband!"

"I suppose," said John, "it wasn't much fun being her man?"

"Fun!" exclaimed the stranger. "Well, of course, it depends on what you call fun!"

There was a bustling sound from the platform and some applause, and then a dark-looking man emerged from the sloping gangway underneath the organ and sat down at the piano. He played Mascagni's _Pavana delle Maschere_, and while he played it, John took some writing paper from his pocket and prepared to note down his opinions of the evening's entertainment.

"Hilloa," said the stranger in a whisper, "are you a critic?"

John, feeling extraordinarily important, nodded his head and continued to listen to the music. It sounded quite pleasant, but it conveyed nothing to him. All he could think of was the contortions of the pianist as he played his piece, and he wished that all pianists could be concealed behind screens so that their grimaces and gyrations should not be seen. He ought to say something about the man, but he had no idea of what was fitting!... The solo ended and was followed by another one, and then the pianist stood up to acknowledge the applause.

"What do you think of it?" the stranger respectfully asked, and John, aware of the respect in his voice and conscious that he did not know what to think of it, murmured, "Um-m-m! Not bad!"

"Coldish, I think," the stranger continued. "Technically skilful, but hardly any feeling!"

John considered for a moment or two, and then answered very judicially.

"Yes! Yes, I think that's a fair description of him!"

He waited until the stranger was engaged in reading the programme, and then he jotted down on his writing-paper, "Mr. Pietro Mancinelli played Mascagni's _Pavana delle Maschere_ with great technical ability, but with hardly any emotional quality!"

"I'm very glad I sat down beside this chap," he murmured to himself, as the accompanist played the opening bars of Handel's _Droop not, young lover_, and then he settled down to listen to the man who sang it.

He was happier here, for singing was more easy to judge than instrumental music. Either a song was well sung, he told himself, or it was not well sung, and the gentleman who was singing _Droop not, young lover_ certainly had a voice that sounded well in that great hall.... He wrote in his report that "Mr. Albert Luton's magnificent voice was heard to great advantage in Handel's charming aria..." and was exceedingly glad that he had lately read some musical notices in one of the newspapers, and could remember some of the phrases that had been used in them.

"Now for a treat," said the stranger, as a burst of hearty applause opened out from the platform and went all round the hall.

John glanced towards the pa.s.sage leading to the artist's room and saw a smiling, plump lady, with very bright, dark eyes and dark hair come on to the platform. She was clad in white that made her Italian looks more p.r.o.nounced.

"Tetrazzini!" the stranger whispered in John's ear.

The applause died down, and the singer stood rigidly in front of the platform while the pianist played the opening of Verdi's _Caro nome_. Then her voice sounded very clear and bell-like in the deep silence of the great hall. ... She sang _Solveig's Song_ by Greig and _A Pastoral_ by Veracini, and then the satiated audience allowed her to retire from the platform.

John sat back in his seat in a dazed fashion. All round him were applauding men and women ... and he could not applaud. There was a buzz of admiring talk, and he could hear the words "wonderful" and "magnificent" ... and he had not been moved at all. The great voice had not caused him to feel any thrill or emotion whatever. It was wonderful, indeed, but that was all that it was. There was no generous glow in her music; she did not cause him to feel any emotion other than that of astonishment at the perfection of her vocal organs. He had imagined that the great singer's voice would compel him to jump out of his seat and wave his hands wildly and shout and cheer ... but instead he had sat still and wondered at the marvellous way in which her throat functioned.

"Well?" said his neighbour, in the tone of one who would say that only words of an extremely adulatory character were conceivable after such a performance.

"She's a very remarkable woman," John replied.

"Remarkable!" his neighbour indignantly exclaimed. "She's a miracle!..."

John disregarded his ecstatics. "I kept on thinking of a clever machine," he said. "The wheels went round without a hitch. She's a grand invention, that woman! She can sing her pieces without thinking about them. She hardly knows the notes are coming out of her mouth ...

she doesn't know where they come from or why they come at all, and I don't suppose it matters to her where they go. There's a grand machine in our place that prints the papers. You put a big roll of white paper on to it, and you turn a wee handle, and the machine sends the roll spinning round and round until it's done, and a lot of folded papers, nicely printed, come tumbling out in counted batches, all ready to be taken away and sold in the shops and streets. It's a wonderful machine ... but it can't read its own printing and it doesn't know what's in the papers after it's done with them. That's what she's like; a wonderful machine!..."

"My dear sir," the stranger exclaimed, but John prevented him from saying any more.

"That's my opinion anyway," he went on, "and I can only think the things I think. I can't think what other people think!"

"A limitation," said the stranger. "A distinct limitation!"

"Mebbe it is, but I don't see what that matters!"

After Tetrazzini had left the platform and the applause of her admirers had died away, there was a violin solo, and then came an interval of fifteen minutes. John determined to write part of his notice in the vestibule of the Hall, and he got up from his seat to do so. He mounted the stairs that led to the first tier of boxes, and as he approached them, he saw Eleanor Moore sitting in the box nearest the exit through which he was about to pa.s.s. There were other people in the box ...

girls, he thought ... but he hardly saw them. As he came nearer to her, she raised her eyes from her programme and looked straight at him, and for a few moments neither of them averted their eyes. Then she looked away, and he pa.s.sed through the curtained exit.

IV

He had found her again! She had not flown away from London ... she was not ill, as he had so alarmingly imagined, nor, as he had horribly imagined for one dreadful moment, was she dead. She lived ... she was well ... she was here in this very hall, separated from him only by a thin part.i.tion of wood ... and she had looked at him without fear in her eyes. He mounted the short flight of stairs leading to the corridor on to which the doors of the boxes opened, and read the name written on the card underneath the number painted on the door of the box in which Eleanor was sitting. "The Viscountess Walbrook." The name puzzled him, and he turned to an attendant, a lugubrious man in a dingy frock-coat looking extraordinarily like a dejected image of Albert the Good, and asked for an explanation.

"It means that she owns that box," he explained. "Lots of the seats and boxes 'ere belong to private people. That one belongs to the Viscountess Walbrook. She in'erited it from 'er father. Very kind-'earted woman ... always gives 'er box to orphans and widders and people like that!"