Love at Second Sight | Page 7

in children what they're going to make a success of in
life. Without boasting, I know you, Edith, are kind enough to believe
that I'm an extraordinary judge of character. Oh, I've always been like
that. I can't help it. I'll tell you now what you must make of your boy,'
she pursued. 'He is a born musician!'
'A musician!' exclaimed both his parents at once, in great astonishment.
Madame Frabelle nodded. 'That boy is a born composer! He has genius
for music. Look at his broad forehead! Those grey eyes, so wide apart!
I know, just at first one thinks too much from the worldly point of view
of the success of one's son in life. But why go against nature? The boy's
a genius!'
'But,' ventured Edith, 'Archie hasn't the slightest ear for music!'
'He dislikes music intensely,' said Bruce. 'Simply loathes it.'
'He cried so much over his piano lessons that we were obliged to let
him give them up. It used to make him quite ill--and his music mistress
too,' Edith said. 'I remember she left the last time in hysterics.'
'Yes, by Jove, I remember too. Pretty girl she was. She had a nervous
breakdown afterwards,' said Bruce rather proudly.
'No, dear; you're thinking of the other one--the woman who began to
teach him the violin.'
'Oh, am I?'
Madame Frabelle nodded her head with a smile.
'Nothing on earth to do with it, my dear! The boy's a born composer all
the same. With that face he must be a musician!'
'Really! Funny he hates it so,' said Bruce thoughtfully. 'But still, I have
no doubt--'

'Believe me, you can't go by his not liking his lessons,' assured
Madame Frabelle, as she ate a muffin. 'That has nothing to do with it at
all. The young Mozart--'
'Mozart? I thought he played the piano when he was only three?'
'Handel, I mean--or was it Meyerbeer? At any rate you'll see I'm right.'
'You really think we ought to force him against his will to study music
seriously, with the idea of his being a composer when he grows up,
though he detests it?' asked his mother.
Madame Frabelle turned to Edith.
'Won't you feel proud when you see your son conducting his own opera,
to the applause of thousands? Won't it be something to be the mother of
the greatest English composer of the twentieth century?'
'It would be rather fun.'
'We shan't hear quite so much about Strauss, Elgar, Debussy and all
those people when Archie Ottley grows up,' declared Madame Frabelle.
'I hear very little about them now,' said Bruce.
'Well, how should you at the Foreign Office, or the golf-links, or the
club?' asked Edith.
Bruce ignored Edith, and went on: 'Perhaps he'll turn out to be a Lionel
Monckton or a Paul Rubens. Perhaps he'll write comic opera revues or
musical comedies.'
'Oh dear, no,' said their guest, shaking her head decidedly. 'It will be the
very highest class, the top of the tree! The real thing!'
'Madame Frabelle may be right, you know,' said Bruce.
She leant back, smiling.

'I know I'm right! There's simply no question about it.'
'Well, what do you think we ought to do about it?' said Edith. 'He goes
to a preparatory school now where they don't have any music lessons at
all.'
'All the better,' she answered. 'The sort of lessons he would get at a
school would be no use to him.'
'So I should think,' murmured Edith.
'Leave it, say, for the moment, and when he comes back for his next
holidays put him under a good teacher--a really great man. And you'll
see!'
'I daresay we shall,' said Bruce, considerably relieved at the
postponement. 'Funny though, isn't it, his not knowing one tune from
another, when he's a born musician?'
It flashed across Edith what an immense bond of sympathy it was
between Bruce and Madame Frabelle that neither of them was
burdened with the slightest sense of humour.
When he presently went out (each of them preferred talking to Her
alone, and She also enjoyed a tête-à-tête most) Madame Frabelle drew
up her chair nearer to Edith and said:
'My dear, I'm going to tell you something. Don't be angry with me, or
think me impertinent, but you've been very kind to me, and I look upon
you as a real friend.'
'It's very sweet of you,' said Edith, feeling hypnotised, and as if she
would gladly devote her life to Madame Frabelle.
'Well, I can see something. You are not quite happy.'
'Not happy!' exclaimed Edith.
'No. You have a trouble, and I'd give anything to take it away.'

Madame Frabelle looked at her with sympathy, pressed her hand, then
looked away.
Edith knew she was looking away out of delicacy.