The Fountain Overflows

by Rebecca West

  There came the wonderful day when the cheque was paid; and very soon afterwards there was an even more wonderful day. Mamma went to town early in the morning, and came back when we were at tea. It was plain that the day had gone well from her point of view, for she looked quite young for her, and held her head high, and had brought us a box of marrons glacés. She said, “Mary, Rose, you must listen. You are to go to the Panmure Hall on Tuesday at three. I will tell them at school that you are to be excused.”

  “Who is playing?” we demanded.

  “This is not a concert,” said Mamma, bringing the rabbit out of the hat with immense gusto, “and it is you who are going to play. You are to show Maurus Kisch what you can do and if you are good enough he will give you lessons till you go up for your scholarships.”

  We could not speak. Kisch was the best piano-teacher in London who would trouble with quite young players. It was marvellous. Glory was about to begin: after this we were going to live a heavenly life of playing and doing nothing else, playing the best music with superb orchestras in halls big enough to give the music its due amount of room, to give the tone we got from the keyboard a chance to spread and show its quality. But it was also terrible. We might be no good after all. Mamma might just think we could play because she loved us. But Mary and I nodded at each other across the table, and said again what we had been saying throughout our childhood, “It will be all right,” and we kissed and hugged Mamma.

  “Now, for you, Cordelia,” Mamma went on happily. We drew back, disconcerted. Was Cordelia to have lessons too? That would be a terrible waste of money. But after a shocked instant we quite saw that Mamma had to do this.

  “And you, Cordelia,” Mamma went on happily, “you are to go to the Regent Studios, in the Marylebone Road, on Wednesday at half-past two, to play to Miss Irene Meyer.”

  Cordelia said nothing, and we knew why.

  “She is an excellent teacher,” Mamma continued, pushing up her voice into cheerful curves. “I have asked several people, and they all recommended her.”

  “Did they?” said Cordelia coldly. “I have never heard of her.” Then she burst out with the question which was, from her point of view, quite logical. “If Mary and Rose are to be given the chance of being taught by Maurus Kisch, why am I not to be taught by Hans Fechter?”

  We all saw her point. The two names were on the same level. But Mamma was more sharply pricked by that point than the rest of us. She cried, “Oh, child, never think of Hans Fechter.”

  “And why not?” asked Cordelia.

  “He is a very cruel man,” answered Mamma. “Never think of playing to him. I knew him when he was young, and he was terrible then, and now that he is older they say that he is worse, he has a tongue like a whip.”

  “I wonder why you are so sure that he would want to use that whip on me,” said Cordelia, and soon after rose from the table and left the room, though we had not finished tea.

  Mamma shook her head. “Hans Fechter. God forbid.”

  “Oh, poor Mamma,” we said.

  “No, poor Cordelia,” she corrected us.

  “She is like somebody in Shakespeare when they get an idea in their heads and go on and on,” said Richard Quin. “You know, like Macbeth over the crown of Scotland.”

  “Why do people make such a fuss about Hamlet, as if it was the greatest of all the plays?” Mary asked. “Nothing in Hamlet ever strikes one as very like anything in real life, but people are always behaving like Macbeth and Othello and King Lear. Our headmistress is just like King Lear when she goes on and on about how we all lack esprit de corps, though really we behave reasonably well, and she should be contented.”

  “I wish there was some more of Hamlet in all of you,” said Mamma. “I would treasure a little indecision amongst you. He carried the thing too far, but I would like to see Cordelia unable to make up her mind about going in for a scholarship and the rest of you showing some hesitation in commenting on her. What a delight it is to have Richard Quin and Rosamund, who do not seem to want anything very much.”

  “Oh, we do,” said Richard Quin. “I want to be liked. And so does Rosamund.”

  She threw back her head and exclaimed, “Oh, yes, I must be liked,” with an earnestness that surprised us and made us laugh. But really she was very alarming. The firelight played over her face and made the barley-sugar curls lying on her shoulders a brighter gold, and there was a fullness about her like the Muscatel grapes we sometimes saw in shops, and all these things put together meant that she was more grown up than any of us. It was tame to be a grown-up, and she engaged in none of our mental adventures; she was certainly stupid, nobody ever had claimed she was not. Also she was quiet, she was neat-handed and slow in movement, she looked forward to earning a staid livelihood as a nurse, she always told us what was the prudent thing to do. Yet it might be that she was going to be the least tamed of us all. Everything about her was very contradictory.

  “How I wish Hans Fechter wanted to be liked,” said Mamma. “Oh, children, I hope Cordelia will get Fechter out of her mind. But I will go and see Miss Beevor tomorrow evening, though it is very tiresome to have to argy-bargy about my own child with a stranger. I resent it that she is a stranger, I think of her as the strange woman that King Solomon wrote about, though he could not have had a more different type of woman in mind.”

  But the next evening Kate ushered Miss Beevor into the room. Of course Mamma groaned aloud, as she was apt to do at the appearance of this harbinger of evil; and indeed the passage of time had made Miss Beevor’s appearance even less pleasing to us. It was not that her taste in dress had worsened, she was still faithful to Pre-Raphaelite costume, and had abandoned her favourite violet and sage-green only for a dull rusty red, and as usual she carried a white hide bag inscribed in pokerwork with the name of a foreign town. This time it was Venezia. We missed the mosaic brooch representing doves drinking from a fountain, but instead she wore an even less attractive trinket, a large heart-shaped gold locket, with a lute in repousse work on it. But the alteration we really did not like was in her expression and bearing. She looked roguish and younger and plumper, and we knew that it was Cordelia’s career that was nourishing her.

  After the first groan Mamma regained her self-control and greeted Miss Beevor civilly, and said, “Yes, indeed,” when Miss Beevor said, “It is time we talked of Cordelia’s future. Twenty-seven concerts last year.” It was apparent she thought of those idiotic occasions as a score over Mamma. “I think we must all realize, mustn’t we, that Cordelia’s technique has improved immensely.” When my mother did not answer Miss Beevor touched the large heart-shaped locket on her bosom as if it were a cross and she were drawing strength from it. “It had occurred to me that perhaps, as I understand you have a very lucky windfall, on which I congratulate you, we might hope for some lessons for Cordelia from someone worthier than myself. I’ve always known I’m not worthy, you know.”

  My mother could still find nothing to say.

  “We had thought,” said Miss Beevor humbly, “of Hans Fechter.”

  My mother shook her head.

  “But why not?” asked Miss Beevor. She flushed suddenly, she trembled, her voice broke when she repeated, “But why not?”

  Mamma at last found her voice. “Miss Beevor, I beg of you, never let poor Cordelia go near him. He is a terrible man.”

  “Well, if it comes to that,” said Miss Beevor wildly, “lots of people are terrible. Terrible in their refusal to see what’s under their nose, terrible in their lack of natural affection. But what is terrible about Hans Fechter? Surely he has the highest reputation as a teacher?” But suddenly she clasped the locket. “Or—can you mean—is he a Bohemian character? Do you feel that a beautiful girl like Cordelia would not be safe with him?”

  “Fechter a Bohemian!” exclaimed Mamma. “I should think not, Mrs. Fechter beats him. No, no, Miss Beevor, I do not mean that literally. And the case against Fechter is that he is a first-rate teacher who is bitter because
he tried to be a concert violinist himself and could not succeed because he is not an attractive performer, and of course that is not fair, though fairness has nothing to do with the case, and he is too just to be harsh to his good pupils, but on the ones who are untalented he avenges himself cruelly.”

  Miss Beevor said shakily, tugging at the locket, “Cordelia is not untalented. I wish you would not call her ‘poor Cordelia’! ‘Poor Cordelia’ indeed!”

  Again Mamma fell into that silence which in fact proceeded from her love and pity for Cordelia, but which the other woman could not take except as a sign of craziness, or a deliberate and uncivil provocation, based on spite. “Well, anyway,” she said fiercely, “there is no use for you to worry. My old teacher, Signor Sala, has said he’ll take Cordelia. He retired some years ago and went back to live in Milan, but his wife has just died, and he is returning to London to be near his daughter, who is married here. He heard Cordelia play yesterday, and he has offered to teach her for nothing until she goes up and gets her scholarship at the Victoria School of Music this spring. So there is nothing for you to worry about.”

  “How hard you try to make things easy for Cordelia,” said Mamma, at last.

  “Most people would think it a privilege to make things easy for Cordelia,” said Miss Beevor grimly. She looked at my mother as if she were trying to puzzle something out; then lifted her arms and began to scrabble among the ends of her hair underneath her Pre-Raphaelite bun at the back of her neck, for the clasp of the golden chain from which her locket hung. “Look what I had made for me the other day,” she said. She held the locket out to us on the palm of her hand and pressed the spring. We looked down on a tiny coloured photograph of Cordelia playing the violin.

  “I took the photograph myself,” said Miss Beevor, “on the lawn one day, with my Brownie, and a friend of mine who is very artistic coloured it for me. He lives up in Scotland, and Cordelia cut off one of her curls for me, and I sent it up to him to copy. And I had the locket made for me by a cousin of mine who works for Liberty’s. Isn’t it lovely? Take it and look at it closely, I don’t mind.”

  Mamma took the locket in her own hand and murmured, “What a charming idea.” She went on staring at it until Miss Beevor gave a little laugh and said, “You know you’re really quite proud of her in your heart of hearts,” and took it from her, and joined the chain again about her neck. “If things go as well as I hope they will in the spring,” she announced, “we must give you a locket just like this in celebration.”

  “Thank you,” said Mamma.

  “And things will go well,” Miss Beevor promised defiantly. “Signor Sala is a wonderful teacher, and Cordelia will learn a great deal from him besides just music. He is a most cultured man. A great student of Dante. ‘Nel mezzo del camin’ di mia vita Mi troverai in una selva oscura.’ Well, well, I must be going now, and I am sure that in a short time everything will seem much, much clearer before our troubled eyes.”

  When I came back from letting her out of the house I found that Mamma was sitting on the floor by the fire, as we children did and grown-ups hardly ever did in those days. “Well,” she said, “I was wishing that your father was here. But even if he had been he could have been no help. Though would it not be wonderful, wonderful, Rose to have him back, just for ten minutes, five minutes, sitting here? But I know he could have done nothing here. Oh, poor Cordelia, poor Cordelia, how that silly woman degrades her with her love. How queer it was to see your sister’s lovely eyes painted the same blue as the sea in a coloured picture postcard. It is not fair, that you and Mary should be able to play, and that she should not. It is not fair that this fool should fall in love with her. Yes, I find myself in a dark wood.”

  17

  WHEN WE GOT to the Panmure Hall, Mr. Kisch, who was very old and had a grey pointed beard and wore a black velvet skullcap, kissed Mamma on both cheeks and told two young men who were just going away that this was the great Clara Keith, who had retired far too young and had played the Mozart Concerto in C Minor and Schumann’s Carnaval better than any other woman who had ever lived. Then he looked at us in a manner indicating that it had occurred to him also that perhaps Mamma thought we could play the piano only because she loved us. Then he took up the list of our repertoire which she had written out for him, and raised his eyebrows and asked, “Have they really got all this music off the notes?” Quite disagreeably he told first Mary and then me to play some Chopin Etudes. He asked Mary for the second Etude in F Minor, which puts you through the hoop of maintaining staccato and legato in the same hand, and he gave me the first of the Grandes Etudes, Opus 10, Number 1, because it is a fiend to play at the proper tempo, and you need wide oscillation of the wrist. And he gave her the “Revolutionary” one and me the “Black Key” one, and after that it turned out that it was all right.

  But neither then nor at any of the lessons did we get the sort of reassurance we desired. It had seemed to us certain that if Mr. Kisch thought that we were really good he would burst out about it and be pleased. But of course in the practice room we said good-bye forever to praise, which is the prerogative of the amateur. At every point of the professional’s life it vanishes when it is within sight. A teacher must dwell on the faults and not the merits of any pupil whom he recognizes as an artist, and once the pupil becomes a public performer he develops a double personality and becomes teacher and pupil. The favourable notice, the flowers in the artist’s room, the applause, the crowds, are evidences of success, but they are not praise. They cannot wipe out the self-censure for the lifeless cadenza, the smudged introduction of a theme. But there was some consolation as we found ourselves accepted members of a friendly tribe. There was a day when we stood with half a dozen of Mr. Kisch’s other pupils while he played us passages from the Beethoven sonatas as he had heard Liszt play them long ago in Budapest, and nobody seemed to think we had no right to be there. Another day we went to hear Saint-Saëns give a recital of his own piano-music, and by chance we sat next to the red-haired girl who came to Mr. Kisch the hour after we did, and we had tea together afterwards, and she did not seem to be waiting to ridicule what we said. This was innocent living after the long criminality of school. It was not, of course, that our schoolfellows and our teachers had belonged to an inferior breed of human being; it was that the horrid necessity of a general education must needs inflict on most children so many boring hours, when they are taught the subjects which do not interest them, that they must find refuge in spite, while their teachers grow irascible through teaching bored children. But here our studies were also gratifications of a passion. The young men and women standing round Mr. Kisch’s piano had no time to think of malicious comment on one another because they were absorbed in watching the flail-like movements of his arms by which he drew from his piano a Dionysiac brilliance such as Liszt and his contemporaries gave their audiences, not to be achieved by the singing and relaxed technique of our time. The red-haired girl and Mary and I were not so much aware of one another as we were of the astonishing crystalline purity of Saint-Saëns’ touch, which so denatured the instrument on which he played that the lush ornament of his own music vanished beneath his icy fingertips and became austere as frost patterns on a window-pane. We were to learn, of course, at a later date, that the world of music is not without its petty jealousies and resentment, since though musicians practise and contemplate a noble art, they are, like schoolchildren, confined within a competitive world. But it is never so bad as school, and when we entered the world of happy apprenticeship we thought ourselves in heaven.

  It was a pity, of course, that at home Cordelia was giving, with much more intensity, her performance in the character of a young genius preparing for a scholarship. Mamma was not alarmed by this. She had visited Signor Sala at his daughter’s home in Brixton and had returned full of a persuasion that he was part of a comic dream of the Creator, and that laughter was to be his only effect. She found his musical attainments no better than she had feared, and she did not believ
e his story of having been a professor of Milan Conservatoire, but she was ready to forgive much to the old humbug because he had received her sitting in a high-back gilt throne, obviously part of an opera set, with two panels of machine-made tapestry on the wall behind him, one representing Verdi and the other Mascagni, rather larger than life-size, each at his country-house. She was not frivolous in her amusement. Because she thought him a rogue, she could not believe Miss Beevor’s story that he was teaching Cordelia for nothing. She was sure that Miss Beevor was probably paying him substantial fees in secret, and while this set her the problem of how she was to sweep aside the pretence and repay her, it also made her certain that the bad old man would advise Cordelia not to try the scholarship that year, but to take lessons from him for another twelvemonth.

  “It will be all right,” she said, in the words we children had so often used. “And I do not know why you two, Mary and Rose, should get so angry with Cordelia. What harm does she do you, playing her violin with that old rogue? You are nowhere near her for the most of the day, when you should be working she is not even in the same house. When she is playing the violin in Brixton, how can it prevent you playing the piano in Lovegrove?”

  “As I play the piano here in Lovegrove, or even in Wigmore Street,” said Mary, holding her temples, “I can feel Cordelia playing the violin in Brixton.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” sighed Mamma. “It is like genius. Like the way that everybody all over Europe could feel Paganini playing or Rachel acting. Only it is the opposite of genius. But you should have pity on her.”

  “Rose and I have a right to pity too,” said Mary.

  “Do not be absurd,” said Mamma, she hesitated awkwardly. “Something will happen,” she said faintly.