Karl Rusoff had experienced a good deal of inward anxiety, which he was very careful to keep entirely to himself, for several days before Martin’s concert, for the thought of it, as the day got near, had agitated and excited the latter to the point of making him lose his sleep and his appetite. Though Karl knew quite well that an artist does his best, as a rule, under the spell of excitement, more, that any notable achievement can hardly be compassed without it, yet in the present case Martin himself was naturally so highly strung and his excitement had become acute so many hours before he was to make his appearance that his master could not help silently wondering whether he could stand the strain of it till the day came. At other times again Karl, knowing Martin’s serene, splendid health, found consolation in telling himself that the tighter and more tense his nerves got the more wonderful would his playing be. Even during the last week or two he had made such an enormous advance in his general grasp that Karl knew that he himself would be bitterly disappointed if this extraordinary youth did not on his very first appearance legitimately and justifiably take musical London by storm. At the same time he knew that he himself would give a very deep sigh of relief when Martin had got through, say, the first three minutes of his recital. That safely past, he was sure that the mere feel of the{317} familiar notes would occupy him to the exclusion of all agitation.

Only a quarter of an hour before he was to come on to the platform Karl was with him in the artist’s room, trying to occupy his mind in talk, but watching him with ever-increasing nervousness, as he walked up and down like a caged animal between door and window. Once Martin took out a cigarette, bit the end off as if it were a cigar, and threw it away. Then he asked a question, paid not the slightest attention to the answer, and finally sat down on the edge of the table. His face was flushed, his eyes very bright; had not it been that Karl knew how excited he was, he would have thought he was ill.

“I shall break down,” he said. “Look at my hands; look how they tremble. I can’t keep them still. I could no more play a series of octaves than I could fly. It would be like the ‘Tremolo’ stop on Chartries organ.”

“My dear boy, I have told you that that does not matter in the slightest degree,” said Karl. “The moment you touch the notes that will cease absolutely. Why, even now my hands always tremble before I begin!”

Martin apparently was not listening.

“And I have not the remotest notion how the ‘études Symphoniques’ begin,” he said.

Karl tried to laugh, but he was not very successful. As a matter of fact he was quite as nervous as Martin.

“That’s a great pity,” he said, “as you open with it. I don’t know either.”

But Martin did not smile.{318}

“What will you do if I break down?” he said; “if I can’t begin? It is more than possible.”

“I shall hiss; I shall boo; I shall demand the return of my money,” said he.

But Martin still remained perfectly grave.

“Ah, don’t,” he said; “the others may boo if they like, and I shan’t mind—much. But I couldn’t stand it if you did.”

“Did you drink a good, stiff glass of whiskey-and-soda for lunch, as I told you to?” demanded Karl.

“I tried to, but I should have been dead drunk if I had gone on. So what will you do if I break down?” he asked again. “You told me, but I have forgotten.”

Karl rose from his chair.

“I shall break my heart, Martin,” he said.

Then he spoke to him quickly, peremptorily, seeing he was really on the verge of hysterics.

“We’ve had quite enough of this nonsense, my dear boy,” he said. “If you give me any more of it, I shall lose my temper with you. You are not going to break down, I forbid you, and you are to do as I tell you. You are going to play your very best,—better than you have ever played before. Now I must get to my place. Give them five minutes law before you appear, and as soon as I see the top of your black head coming up the stairs I shall have all the doors closed till the end of the études. We’ll have no interruptions; they are frightfully distracting. You know where I shall be sitting, don’t you? Bow twice, right and left, walk straight to the piano, and begin instantly, without playing any fluffy arpeggios. It is going to be a great day for you. And for me.”

Martin looked despairingly round.{319}

“Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” he said. “Can’t you sit by me?”

“And hold your hand? Ah, this is altogether childish!”

For the first time the shadow of a smile crossed Martin’s face.

“I know it is,” he said. “I can just, just see that. I think I had better try to be a little man for a change.”

 

The hall was crammed to overflowing, as if some pianist of world-wide fame was to make his appearance, and not a young man who had never performed in public before. Several causes had contributed to this, the first and most important being that Mr. Martin Challoner was actually a pupil of Karl Rusoff’s, who for years had never consented to teach. Furthermore, Karl Rusoff had the very highest opinion of him,—exaggeratedly high perhaps, since he was his pupil,—and had not only allowed, but wished him to give a concert. Surely, then, he would run no risks; Martin Challoner must have some merit. In addition, no English pianist of more than mediocre powers had appeared for years, and patriotism called. Finally, for the last fortnight Lady Sunningdale had worn her coachman to a shadow and her horses to skin and bones, so incessantly and unintermittently had she driven about, first of all to the houses of her intimates, then of her ordinary friends, and lastly of the merest acquaintances, practically insisting that they should all appear. Karl Rusoff had done what he could to discourage this, but his efforts were totally void of effect, for Lady Sunningdale had told him that it was her “duty” to do her best for Martin. She seldom used{320} the word “duty,” but when she did, it might be defined as anything she was irrevocably determined to do, from which no argument could move her.

So for the first time Martin found himself in that unspeakable position of being alone on the shore of a sea of faces, the owners of which had paid money in anticipation of the pleasure he had undertaken to provide for them. Opposite him, a few yards off only, but looking misty and unreal, was the Steinway Grand, and he found himself wondering what on earth it was for. When he remembered, he felt towards it as a condemned man may feel when he sees the execution shed, at a few minutes before eight. Then he bowed in answer to a very fair reception, and walked straight to the piano. He glanced at his programme, and saw he had to begin with Schumann’s “études Symphoniques.” He sat down, waited a moment for silence, and began.

He played one bar only and then stopped. He had not the very faintest idea of how it went on, and in a sort of mild despair—he felt as if his powers of feeling were packed in cotton wool—looked down to where Karl was sitting in the third row. Those great grey eyes were fixed on him with an expression of supreme appeal; he could see the master’s hands clutching convulsively at the back of the seat in front of him. And at that sight, at the sight of the agony Karl was in, Martin was able for one moment to forget himself and all the bewildering crowd of faces. So, fighting against the paralysis that was on him, no longer for his own sake, but for Karl’s, he again turned to the piano.

But still he could think of nothing, nothing; he{321} could not even remember the first bar that he had played just now, and he bit his lip with his teeth till the blood came, saying to himself, “It will break his heart; it will break his heart.” The numb, dulled sense was gone, in that half-minute he endured an agony of years.

Then, quite suddenly, like the passage of the sun from behind some black cloud, all came back to him, and he sat still a moment longer, in sheer happiness. At the concentrated thought of what Karl was suffering, his nervousness, his paralysis of mind went entirely from him, and with complete certainty, with the assured knowledge, too, that he was going to play his very best, he began again.

At the end of the slow Thema he paused, looked up at Karl and smiled nearly to laughing-point at him, pushed back the plume of hair that drooped over his forehead, and—played. And at that smile and at the gesture that was frequent with him, Karl gave one immense sigh of relief that Martin could hear. But now it meant nothing to him: he was busy.

Martin’s face, during those few horrible moments, had grown absolutely colourless, so that Karl had thought, and almost wished—for so the public shame would be lessened and people would be compassionate—that he was going to faint. For when for the second time Martin had turned to the piano and still could not begin, he believed for that moment that the boy could not pull himself together; that unless he fainted he would simply have to walk off the platform again. But now the colour came back, slowly at first, then, with sudden flushes, the dead apathy of his face changed, and began to live again. Soon his mouth{322} parted slightly, as if wondering at the magic of the music which blossomed like roses underneath his flying fingers. Once or twice between the variations he brushed back his hair again; once he looked up at Karl, with the brilliant glance his master knew and loved, asking with his eyes, “Will that do? Will that do for you?” before he went on interpreting to the breathless crowd the noble joy which must have filled the composer as he wrote. Full of artistic triumph as Karl’s life had been, never before had it mounted and soared so high as now, when not he, but his pupil, held the hall enchained.

And in that moment his own ambitions, which he had so splendidly realised for so long, dropped dead. He and Martin, he knew now, were master and pupil no longer; it was the master’s turn—and with what solemn joy he did it—to sit and learn, to hear—and he longed for a myriad ears—what was possible, for even Martin had never played like that before. Even admiration was dead; there was no room for anything except listening. Admiration, wonder, delight, laughter of joy might come when the last note had sounded, but at present to listen was enough.

Martin held the last chord long. Then he took both hands off, as if the keys were hot, and rose, facing the hall. For him, too, just then, personal ambition was dead; he had played, as David played before Saul, in order to drive from his master’s face the demon of agony that he had seen there. And he looked not at Stella, not at Lady Sunningdale, not at Frank and Helen, nor did his eyes wander over the crowded rows, but straight at Karl, while the hall grew louder and louder, till the air was thick with sound, still asking{323} him, “Did I play it well?” And when Karl nodded to him, he was content, and bowed in front of him and to right and left, thinking “How kind they all are!” He caught Stella’s eye and smiled, Frank’s, Helen’s, Lady Sunningdale’s. Then he sat down at the piano again.

But it was quite impossible to begin, and for his own amusement (for now, it must be confessed, he was enjoying himself quite enormously), he struck an octave rather sharply and heard not the faintest vibration from the strings above the uproar. So he rose again, bowed again, and still bowed, and bowed still, till he felt like a Chinese mandarin, and knew everybody must think so, too. Then he sat down and waited till the phlegmatic English public had said “thank you” enough.

A ten minutes’ interval had been put down on the programme, and tea was waiting for him in the room below. But he forgot all about it, and went straight through. The recital was carefully chosen not to be too long, and in the ordinary course of events the audience would have been streaming out into the street again after an hour and a half. But they refused to stream; Martin gave one encore, and after a pause a second, but he was still wildly recalled. Once before in the summer he and Helen had sent “London” mad about them; this afternoon he did it alone. And, at last, in a despair that was wholly delightful, as the hush fell on the house again, when he sat down for the fourth time, he played “God save the King” solemnly through, and his audience laughed and departed.

Lady Sunningdale found that she had burst her left-hand{324} glove and lost her right-foot shoe when she came to take stock of what had happened, as Martin finally retired after “God save the King.” Karl was sitting next her.

“Don’t speak to me, anybody,” she said, “because there is nothing whatever to say. That is Martin. I knew it all along. Yes, a shoe, so tiresome, I don’t know how it happens. Thank you, Monsieur Rusoff. Stella dear, we start from Victoria to-morrow morning, not Charing Cross. What did I tell you when we talked last? Do you not see? That is Martin. If any one speaks to me, I shall slap him in the face and burst into floods of tears. I should like to see that darling for one moment, just to tell him that he has not been altogether a failure. Which is the way? I suppose he is drinking porter now, is he not? or is it only singers who do that? Eight o’clock, Stella. Quarter to eight, Frank, because you are always late. Dearest Helen, how is the Bear? Yet Martin has only got eight fingers and two thumbs like the rest of us. And was it not too thrilling at the beginning? I knew exactly how he felt. It was pure toss-up for just one moment whether he would be able to play at all or send us empty away like the “Magnificat.” Through this door, isn’t it?”

Karl Rusoff showed her the way through the short passage into the room where two hours ago he had sat with Martin on the verge of hysterics. But now a great shout of boyish laughter hailed them, and Martin went up to Karl, both hands outstretched.

“Ah, it was you who pulled me through,” he said. “I couldn’t have begun otherwise. But it hurt you so dreadfully. I—I felt it hurt you. And shall{325} I ever play like that again? I never played like it before!”

Karl looked at him a moment without speaking. Then he raised the boy’s hands to his lips and kissed them.

“I mean that,” he said. “Ah, Martin, how I mean that!”

Martin stood quite still. Had such a thing ever suggested itself as possible to him he would have felt ready to sink into the earth with sheer embarrassment. But now, when the unimagined, the impossible had happened, he felt no embarrassment at all.

“You did it all,” he said, simply. “Thank you a hundred thousand times.”

Then the pendulum swung back again, and he was a boy himself, and boyishly delighted with success.

“Oh, I enjoyed it all so,” he said. “After that first terrible minute, I just revelled in it. Can’t I give another concert this evening?”

Here Lady Sunningdale broke in,—

“You not only can, but you must, after dinner,” she said. “Martin, you played really nicely to-day. I am going to begin to practise to-morrow morning. Scales. No, not to-morrow morning, because I shall be otherwise engaged on the English Channel. Why can’t they run a large steam-roller over the sea between Dover and Calais? Nobody can tell me. However, I’m told it is rather healthy than otherwise. My dear, red velvet sofas, tin basins, Stella, and I. Also Suez Canal. Sahara is not yet in a fit state. It is too terrible. Eight o’clock to-night, Martin. And I shall never forgive you for this afternoon. You gave me the worst five minutes I ever had.”{326}

“I tried to make up for it,” said he.

Lady Sunningdale turned quickly back in the doorway.

“I adored you,” she said. “And next time I shall wear large eights. Perhaps they will not burst quite so soon.”

Martin turned a thirsty eye on Karl when she had gone.

“And can I have my whiskey-and-soda now?” he asked. “I want it frightfully.”

Then quite suddenly his face changed, as if a lamp had been put out. He looked tired, worn out.

“And I have such a headache,” he said. “I think I have had it two days, but was too excited to think about it. It went away altogether when I was playing. But it has come back in force!”

Karl rang the bell.
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