The Splendid Folly | Page 4

massive shoulders:--

"The voice--it is all right. But the girl--heavens, madame, she is of an
ugliness! And I cannot teach ugly people. She has the face of a
peeg--please take her away."
But there was little fear that a similar fate would befall Diana. Her
figure, though slight with the slenderness of immaturity, was built on
the right lines, and her young, eager face, in its frame of raven hair, was
as vivid as a flower--its clear pallor serving but to emphasise the beauty
of the straight, dark brows and of the scarlet mouth with its ridiculously
short upper-lip. Her eyes were of that peculiarly light grey which, when
accompanied, as hers were, by thick black lashes, gives an almost
startling impression each time the lids are lifted, an odd suggestion of
inner radiance that was vividly arresting.
An intense vitality, a curious shy charm, the sensitiveness inseparable
from the artist nature--all these, and more, Baroni's experienced eye
read in Diana's upturned face, but it yet remained for him to test the
quality of her vocal organs.
"Well, we shall see," he said non-committally. "I do not take many
pupils."
Diana's heart sank yet a little lower, and she felt almost tempted to seek
refuge in immediate flight rather than remain to face the inevitable
dismissal that she guessed would be her portion.
Baroni, however, put a summary stop to any such wild notions by
turning on her with the lightning-like change of mood which she came
afterwards to know as characteristic of him.
"You haf brought some songs?" He held out his hand. "Good. Let me
see them."
He glanced swiftly through the roll of music which she tendered.
"This one--we will try this. Now"--seating himself at the piano--"open
your mouth, little nightingale, and sing."

Softly he played the opening bars of the prelude to the song, and Diana
watched fascinatedly while he made the notes speak, and sing, and melt
into each other with his short stumpy fingers that looked as though they
and music would have little enough in common.
"Now then. Bee-gin."
And Diana began. But she was so nervous that she felt as though her
throat had suddenly closed up, and only a faint, quavering note issued
from her lips, breaking off abruptly in a hoarse croak.
Baroni stopped playing.
"Tchut! she is frightened," he said, and laid an encouraging hand on her
shoulder. "But do not be frightened, my dear. You haf a pree-ty face; if
your voice is as pree-ty as your face you need not haf fear."
Diana was furious with herself for failing at the critical moment, and
even more angry at Baroni's speech, in which she sensed a suggestion
of the tolerance extended to the average drawing-room singer of
mediocre powers.
"I don't want to have a pretty voice!" she broke out, passionately. "I
wouldn't say thank you for it."
And anger having swallowed up her nervousness, she opened her
mouth--and her throat with it this time?--and let out the full powers that
were hidden within her nice big larynx.
When she ceased, Baroni closed the open pages of the song, and
turning on his stool, regarded her for a moment in silence.
"No," he said at last, dispassionately. "It is certainly not a pree-ty
voice."
To Diana's ears there was such a tone of indifference, such an air of
utter finality about the brief speech, that she felt she would have been
eternally grateful now could she only have passed the low standard

demanded by the possession of even a merely "pretty" voice.
"So this is the voice you bring me to cultivate?" continued the maestro.
"This that sounds like the rumblings of a subterranean earthquake?
Boom! boo-o-om! Like that, _nicht wahr_?"
Diana crimsoned, and, feeling her knees giving way beneath her, sank
into the nearest chair, while Baroni continued to stare at her.
"Then--then you cannot take me as a pupil?" she said faintly.
Apparently he did not hear her, for he asked abruptly:--
"Are you prepared to give up everything--everything in the world for
art? She is no easy task-mistress, remember! She will want a great deal
of your time, and she will rob you of your pleasures, and for her sake
you will haf to take care of your body--to guard your physical
health--as though it were the most precious thing on earth. To become a
great singer, a great artiste, means a life of self-denial. Are you
prepared for this?"
"But--but--" stammered Diana in astonishment. "If my voice is not
even pretty--if it is no good--"
"_No good_?" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet with a rapidity of
movement little short of marvellous in a man of his size and bulk.
"Gran Dio! No good, did you say? But, my child, you haf a voice of
gold--pure gold.