GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“You do not understand her, Mr Jack. She is only hasty. You will find that she wrote on the spur of the moment, fancying that I was annoyed. Pray think no more of it.”

“It does not matter, Miss Cairns. I will not meet her again; and I request you never to mention her name in my presence.”

“But she is going, I hope, to join the class on her return from Bonchurch.”

“The day she enters it, I leave it. I am in earnest. You may move heaven and earth more easily than me — on this point.”

“Really, Mr Jack, you are a little severe. Do not be offended if I say that you might find in your own impatience some excuse for hers.”

Jack recoiled. “My impatience!” he repeated slowly. “I, who have hardened myself into a stone statue of dogged patience, impatient!” He glared at her; ground his teeth; and continued vehemently, “Here am I, a master of my profession — no easy one to master — rotting, and likely to continue rotting unheard in the midst of a pack of shallow panders, who make a hotch-potch of what they can steal from better men, and share the spoil with the corrupt performers who thrust it upon the public for them. Either this or the accursed drudgery of teaching, or grinding an organ at the pleasure of some canting villain of a parson, or death by starvation, is the lot of a musician in this centuty. I have, in spite of this, never composed one page of music bad enough for publication or performance. I have drudged with pupils when I could get them, starved in a garret when I could not; endured to have my works returned to me unopened or declared inexecutable by shopkeepers and lazy conductors, written new ones without any hope of getting even a hearing for them; dragged myself by excess of this fruitless labor out of horrible fits of despair that come out my own nature; and throughout it all have neither complained nor prostituted myself to write shopware. I have listened to complacent assurances that publishers and concert-givers are only too anxious to get good, original work — that it is their own interest to do so. As if the dogs would know original work if they saw it: or rather as if they would not instinctively turn away from anything good and genuine! All this I have borne without suffering from it — without the humiliation of finding it able to give me one moment of disappointment or resentment; and now you tell me that I have no patience, because I have no disposition to humor the caprices of idle young ladies. I am accustomed to hear such things from fools — or I was when I had friends; but I expected more sense from you.”

Miss Cairns struggled with this speech in vain. All but the bare narrative in it seemed confused and inconsequent to her. “I did not know,” she said, looking perplexedly at him. “It never occurred to me that — at least—” She stopped, unable to arrange her ideas. Then she exclaimed, “And do you really love music, Mr. Jack?”

“What do you mean?” said he sternly.

“I thought you did not care for anything. I always felt that you knew your business; we all felt so; but we never thought you had any enthusiasm. Do not be angry with me for telling you so; for I am very glad to find that I was wrong.”

Jack’s features relaxed. He rose, and took another turn across the room, chuckling. “I am not fond of teaching,” he said; “but I must live. And so you all thought that an ugly man could not be a composer. Or was it because I don’t admire the drawling which you all flatter yourselves is singing, eh? I am not like the portraits of Mozart, Miss Cairns.”

“I am sure we never thought of that, only somehow we agreed that you were the very last person in the world to — to—”

“Ha! ha! Just so. I do not look like a writer of serenades. However, you were right about the enthusiasm. I am no enthusiast: I leave that to the ladies. Did you ever hear of an enthusiastically honest man, or an enthusiastic shoemaker? Never, and you are not likely to hear of an enthusiastic composer — at least not until after he is dead. No. He chuckled again, but seemed suddenly to recollect himself; for he added stiffly, “I beg your pardon. I am detaining you.”

“Not in the least,” said Miss Cairns, so earnestly that she blushed afterwards. “If you are not engaged, I wish you would stay for B few minutes and do me at favor.”

“Certainly. Most certainly,” he said. Then he added suspiciously, “What is it?”

“Only to play something for me before you go — if you don’t mind.” Her tone expressed that intense curiosity to witness a musical performance which is so common among unmusical people whose interest in the art has been roused by reading. Jack understood it quite well; but he seemed disposed to humor her.

“You want to see the figure work,” he said goodhumoredly. “Very well. What shall it be?”

Miss Cairns, ignorant of music, but unaccustomed to appear ignorant of anything, was at a loss. “Something classical then,” she ventured. “Do you know Thalberg’s piece called ‘Moses in Egypt’? I believe that is very fine; but it is also very difficult, is it not?”

He started, and looked at her with such an extraordinary grin that she almost began to mistrust him. Then he said, apparently to himself, “Candor, Jack, candor. You once thought so, perhaps, yourself.”

He twisted his fingers until their joints crackled; shook his shoulders and gnashed his teeth once or twice at the keyboard. Then he improvised a set of variations on the prayer fr<>m “Moses” which served Miss Cairns’s turn quite as well as if they had been note for note Thalberg’s. She listened, deeply impressed, and was rather jarred when he suddenly stopped and rose, saying, “Well, well: enough tomfoolery, Miss Cairns.”

“Not at all,” she said. “I have enjoyed it greatly. Thank you very much.”

“By the bye,” he said abruptly, “I am not to be asked to play for your acquaintances. Don’t go and talk about me: the mechanical toy will not perform for anyone else.”

“But is not that a pity, when you can give such pleasure?”

“Whenever I am in the humor to play, I play; sometimes without being asked. But I am not always in the humor, whereas people are always ready to pretend that they like listening to me, particularly those who are as deaf to music as they are to everything else that is good. And one word more, Miss Cairns. If your friends think me a mere schoolmaster, let them continue to think so. I live alone, and I sometimes talk more about myself than I intend. I did so today. Don’t repeat what I said.”

“Certainly not, since you do not wish me to.”

Jack looked into his hat; considered a moment; then made her a bow — a ceremony which he always performed with solemnity — and went away. Miss Cairns sat down by herself, and forgot all about her lecture. More accustomed to store her memory than to exercise her imagination she had a sensation of novelty in reflecting on the glimpse that she had got of Jack’s private life, and the possibilities which it suggested. Her mother came in presently, to inquire concerning the visitor; but Miss Cairns merely told who he was, and mentioned carelessly that the class was to go on as before. Mrs Cairns, who disapproved of Jack, said she was sorry to hear it. Her daughter, desiring to give utterance to her thoughts, and not caring to confide in her mother, recollected that she had to write to Mary. This second letter ran thus:

Newton Villa, Windsor.

6th September.

“Dearest Mary — I am going to give you a severe scolding for what you have done at Mr. Jack. He has just been here with your wicked letter, furious, and evidently not rembering a bit what he said last day. About the class, which he positively denies having given up; but he is very angry with you — not without reason, I think. Why will you be pugnacious? I tried to make your peace; but, for the present, at least, he is implacable. He is a very strange man. I think he is very clever; but I do not understamd him, though I have passed my life among professors and clever people of all sorts, and fancied I had exhausted the species. My logic and mathematics are no avail when I try to grapple with Mr Jack: he belongs, I think, to those regions of art which you have often urged me to explore, but of which, unhappily, I know hardly anything. I got him into good humor after a great deal of trouble, and actually asked him to play for me, which he did, most magnificently. You must never let him know that I told you this because he made me promise not to tell anyone and I am sure he is a terrible person to betray. His real character — so far as I can make it out — is quite different than what we all supposed — I must break off here to go to dinner. I have no doubt he will relent towards you after a time: his wrath does not endure forever. —