I
Life aboard the Skipping Goone was much sobered by the death of the little baby. Lili, though her grief was genuine enough, found a vague refuge in knowing herself a center of sympathetic interest; but for a time Jerome was inconsolable.
However, though life was saddened, it must nevertheless go on. Some of the principal songbirds were preening themselves in anticipation of the furor they hoped to create in Africa. Fortunes had been made there. And you never could tell who might be listening. The excitement all round was naturally rendered much more pointed by the wonderful thing that had happened to Miss Valentine in Manila. It had come at last. She had received a cable message from America advising her that a private hearing was being arranged in Cape Town, and stating that a contract offer might depend on the verdict. The cable was signed by a name of such awful significance that the enraptured recipient trembled violently whenever she pronounced it, even to herself.
In her more confident moments Miss Valentine assured herself (and every one else, for that matter) that her reputation and fortune were already firmly established; but, being only human, and not so very far along, even yet, from the lowliness of her choir-singing days in Galesburg, the fortunate artist also experienced moments when she felt doomed to certain disaster. Something would be sure to go wrong. “I’ll be so nervous I can’t sing a note!” she confided to the contralto. But everybody told her of course she’d sing all right, and everybody was vociferous in congratulation exactly in proportion to the acuteness of his or her secret envy.
Mr. Curry smiled, then sighed. The bolt had fallen, though not, after all, quite from the blue. Bolts of this sort never did fall altogether from the blue any more. It only meant that in a little while another ornament would find its way on to his already crowded hands.
Naturally Miss Valentine spent nearly all of her time at the dinky piano in the cabin they called their “assembly saloon.” Early and late she worked, and swore a great deal under her breath, or sometimes proclaimingly, if the note happened to be very bad, and sometimes she would hurl her music on the floor and stamp on it, for she was a very temperamental artist indeed. But when things seemed to be going well, then she would be just lovely to every one, and say nice things like this: “I think you have one of the nicest contralto voices I’ve ever heard, dear,” or: “Now I’ve got those wretched Cs and D’s where I want them, I’m going to sit down and knit all day on a sweater for poor little Lili.”
One day she came running up on deck to Mr. Curry, crying miserably: “It’s gone! I can’t sing a single note any more that doesn’t sound like a tin whistle, and I feel just like drowning myself!”
“What’s all this?” asked the impresario cheerily.
“I tell you I can’t even get up to a B♭ without screeching,” she wailed, weeping copiously into a very small handkerchief. “And I think it’s just a shame, with the hearing so close!” Some of the songbirds began whispering a little.
Mr. Curry gave her one of his finest smiles. “You’ve just gotten yourself all tied up into about a hundred knots, that’s all. Don’t tell me it’s not so—can’t I see? Haven’t I got eyes? Now listen to me, my dear child. We’re going to walk up and down here on deck a few turns, and you’re going to take some very deep breaths of this sea air—oh, not little sniffs like that! What do you think you are, a rabbit? And now,” he ended confidently, “we’ll see what’s wrong in mighty short order!”
II
He sat at the piano and faced her, swinging idly back and forth, his hands loosely clasped. His lips were parted in a smile of quaint amusement.
“It will never do to try to sing with such a red nose,” he suggested.
She laughed, in spite of her plight, and struck out at him playfully in the air, then turned her back and spent an intensive moment before the tiny mirror of her vanity case.
Curry reached round to the keyboard with one bejewelled hand and struck a chord. “First your running scale—you know—with one over the octave.”
She started in bravely, though, just as she had expected, in no time he had stopped her, and was assuring her she was working too hard. “Didn’t I tell you you were all tied up?” Then he struck another chord. “Give me some soft work, please—some nice, quiet, smooth ‘ti-roos.’ No, no! Piano—piano! Wait a minute. You’re not on your breath.” He shook his head critically. “No, you’re not on your breath at all. Just relax—don’t be afraid—just feel restful. Let your shoulders down—there!”
“Relaxing won’t get the tin whistle out of my throat!” she lamented doggedly.
“We’ll see,” he soothed. “Try again—‘ti-roo.’” He listened carefully, his head on one side. “Put it more forward—right on your lips. Ti-roo-oo-oo. Let the breath carry it. Now once more.”
Half an hour passed, and still she was too “open.” The impresario, perspiring a little from concentrated exertion, scratched his head carefully, so as not to displace the shining toupee. Then, suddenly inspired, he jumped up from the piano stool.
“Look here,” he cried, “I want to see what your ribs are doing. Don’t you dare let them fall on the attack—if you do you’re lost! When you sing for those smug fellows in Cape Town I want you to think of your ribs every minute—you understand? Don’t think about who’s listening to you—think about your ribs!”
Placing one glistening hand intelligently against the singer’s ribs, Mr. Curry asked her to sigh for him. “Say: ‘Ooooooo.’” He waited breathlessly. “No—you let ’em fall! It’s just what I was afraid of!” He studied her a moment, very earnestly. Then his face lighted. “Try ‘Ahhhhh.’” And at last the effort succeeded. “You’ve got it!” he cried exultantly. “Didn’t I tell you they’d stay up if you went at ’em right? Now the same thing on your ‘ti-roo.’ Wait a minute and I’ll give you the key.”
The impresario, keeping one hand firmly on Miss Valentine’s ribs, reached far out to the piano with the other. “That’s it!” The next chord was triumphant, and the next chord after that was more triumphant still. His songbird was coming back into her own again.
“Feel as though you’re leaning on your face!” he cried. “Don’t be afraid of your face—it won’t fall out!”
Then he made her send air through her nose with her mouth open—which made her look a little ludicrous, but then, was there ever a genuine singer who cared how she looked when she sang? And he made her sing “La-la-la-la-la,” over and over again, and told her she ought to feel her tongue wag up from the bottom of her throat, and talked a great deal about a mysterious region in back of her teeth, and put her through the ordeal of the “silent attack.” And then—oh, well, there was nothing much left to do but sit back and enjoy the fruits of tireless patience. But they plunged into arpeggios, for good measure, and the impresario kept nodding, pleased and more pleased—though he had an eagle eye on her all the time, too.
She was really singing now—had got all untied—the tin whistle was cast out. After a little supplementary staccato work he turned to her with mild, appealing eyes, which glistened very suspiciously.
III
“This may be the last chance we’ll have together like this,” he said softly, “before the offer comes. While you’re still one of my songbirds, let me hear you sing some of the old pieces, like Annie Laurie and the Last Rose of Summer. I’ll play along and just dream.”
“Yes,” she replied warmly. “You’re an angel! I’ll sing anything you like.”
And so she sang him the old songs down in the stuffy little cabin; and his eyes kept right on glistening, though he smiled up at her from time to time quite happily. Yes, she sang as no one, surely, had ever heard her sing before. The impresario had tuned her up for big money; but now she was singing just for him.
When he had finished, stealthy forms might have been detected moving away from the passage outside—not only songbirds, but seamen too, the mate and the ship’s cook and the cabin boy; while up on deck Captain Bearman, who had been secretly listening himself at one of the ventilators, was roaring and cursing because his ship was lying all unmanned, at the mercy of the elements.
It was really a shocking state of affairs.