GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

Manlius bowed. When he straightened himself again, he found Jack standing at his elbow. “Allow me to present to you Monsieur Jack,” he said.

“It is for Monsieur Jacques to allow,” she replied. The poor artist is honored by the presence of the illustrious English composer.”

Jack nodded gravely as acknowledging that the young woman expressed herself becomingly. Manlius grinned covertly, and proposed that they should go up on the orchestra, as the band was apt to get out of humor when too much time was wasted. She rose at once, and ascended the steps on the arm of the conductor. She was received with an encouraging clapping of hands and tapping of fiddle backs. Jack followed with the elder lady, who sat down on the top stair, and began to knit.

“If you wish to conduct the rehearsal,” said Manlius politely to Jack, “you are, of course, quite welcome to do so.”

“Thank you,” said Jack. “I will.” Manlius, who had hardly expected him to accept the offer, retired to the pianoforte, and prepared to turn over the leaves for the player.

“I think I can play it from memory,” she said to him, “unless Monsieur Jacques puts it all out of my head. Judging by his face, it is certain that he is not very patien — Ah ! Did I not say so?”

Jack had rapped the desk sharply with his stick, and was looking balefully at the men, who did not seem in any hurry to attend to him. He put down the stick, stepped from the desk, and stooped to the conductor’s ear.

I mentioned,” he said, “that some of the parts ought to be given to the men to study before rehearsal. Has that been done?”

Manlius smiled. “My dear sir,” he said, “I need hardly tell you that players of such standing as the members of the Antient Orpheus orchestra do not care to have suggestions of that kind offered to them. You have no cause to be uneasy. They can play anything — absolutely anything, at sight.”

Jack looked black, and returned to his desk without a word. He gave one more rap with his stick, and began. The players were attentive, but many of them tried not to look so.

For a few bars, Jack conducted under some restraint, apparently striving to repress a tendency to extravagant gesticulation. Then, as certain combinations and progressions sounded strange and farfetched, slight bursts Of laughter were heard. Suddenly the first clarinetist, with an exclamation of impatience, put down his instrument.

“Well?” shouted Jack. The music ceased.

“I can’t play that.” said the clarinetist shortly.

“Can you play it?” said Jack, with suppressed rage, to the second clarinetist.

“No,” said he. “Nobody could play it.”

“That passage has been played; and it must be played. It has been played by a common soldier.”

“If a common soldier even attempted it, much less played it,” said the first clarinetist, with some contemptuous indignation at what he considered an evident falsehood, “he must have been drunk.” There was general titter at this.

Jack visibly wrestled with himself for a moment. Then, with a gleam of humor like a flash of sunshine through a black thundercloud, he said: “You are right. He was drunk.” The whole band roared with laughter.

“Well, I am not drunk,” said the clarinetist, folding his arms.

“But will you not just try wh—” Here Jack, choked by the effort to be persuasive and polite, burst out raging: “It can be done. It shall be done. It must be done. You are the best clarinet player in England. I know what you can do.” And Jack shook his fists wildly at the man as if he were accusing him of some infamous crime. But the compliment was loudly applauded, and the man reddened, not altogether displeased. A cornist who sat near him said soothingly in an Irish accent, “Aye, do, Joe. Try it.”

“You will: you can,” shouted Jack reassuringly, recovering his self-command. “Back to the double bar. Now!” The music recommenced; and the clarinetist, overborne, took up his instrument, and, when the passage was reached, played it easily, greatly to his own astonishment. The brilliancy of the effect, too, raised him for a time into a prominence which rivaled that of the pianist. The orchestra positively interrupted the movement to applaud it; and Jack joined in with high good humor.

“If you are uneasy about it,” said he, with an undisguised chuckle, “I can hand it over to the violins.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” said the clarinetist. “Now I’ve got it, I’ll keep it.”

Jack rubbed his nose until it glowed like a coal, and the movement proceeded without another stoppage, the men now seeing that Jack was in his right place. But when a theme marked andante cantabile, which formed the middle section of the fantasia, was commenced by the pianist, Jack turned to her, said quicker. Plus vite;” and began to mark his beat by striking the desk. She looked at him anxiously; played a few bars in the time indicated by him; and then threw up her hands and stopped.

“I cannot,” she exclaimed. “I must play it more slowly or not at all.”

“Certainly, it shall be slower if you desire it,” said the elder lady from the steps. Jack looked at her as he sometimes looked at Mrs Simpson. “Certainly it shall not be slower, if all the angels desired it,” he said, in well pronounced but barbarously ungrammatical French. Go on and take the time from my beat.

The Polish lady shook her head; folded her hands in her lap; and looked patiently at the music before her. There was a moment of silence, during which Jack, thus mutely defied, glared at her with distorted features. Manilius rose irresolutely. Jack stepped down from the desk; handed him the stick; and said in a smothered voice, “Be good enough to conduct this lady’s portion of the fantasia. When my music recommences, I will return.”

Manlius took the stick and mounted the desk, the orchestra receiving him with applause. In the midst of it Jack went out, giving the pianist a terrible look as he passed her, and transferring it to her companion, who raised her eyebrows and shoulders contemptuously.

Manlius was not the man to impose his own ideas of a composition on a refractory artist; and though he was privately disposed to agree with Jack that the Polish lady was misjudging the speed of the movement, he obediently followed her playing with his beat. But he soon lost his first impression, and began to be affected by a dread lest anyone should make a noise in the room. He moved his stick as quietly as possible, and raised his left hand as if to still the band, who were, however, either watching the pianist intently or playing without a trace of the expert offhandedness which they had affected at first. The pleasure of listening made Manlius forget to follow the score. When he roused himself and found his place, he perceived that the first horn player was altering a passage completely, though very happily. Looking questioningly in that direction, he saw Jack sitting beside the man with a pencil in his hand. Manlius observed for the first time that he had an expressive face and remarkable eyes, and was not, as he had previously seemed, unmitigatedly ugly. Meanwhile the knot of old gentlemen in the stalls, who had previously chattered subduedly, became quite silent; and a few of them closed their eyes rapturously. The lady on the steps alone did not seem to care about the music. At last the flow of melody waned and broke into snatches. The pianoforte seemed to appeal to the instruments to continue the song. A melancholy strain from the violas responded hopelessly; but the effect of this was marred by a stir in the orchestra. The trombone and trumpet players, hitherto silent, were taking up their instruments and pushing up their moustaches. The drummer, after some hasty screwing round his third drum, poised his sticks; and a supernumerary near him rose, cymbals in hand; fixed his eye on Manlius, and apparently stood ready to clap the head of the trumpet player in front of him as a lady claps a moth flying from a woolen curtain. Manlius looked at the score as if he did not quite understand the sequel. Suddenly, as the violas ceased,Jack shouted in a startling voice, “Let it be an avalanche from the top to the bottom of the Himalayas;” and rushed to the conductor’s desk. Manlius made way for him precipitately; and a tremendous sound followed. “Louder,” roared Jack. Less noise and more tone. Out with it like fifty million devils.” As he led the movement at a merciless speed. The pianist looked bewildered, like the band, most of whom lost their places after the first fifty bars; but when the turn of a player came, he found the conductor glaring at him, and was swept into his part without clearly knowing how. It was an insensate orgies of sound. Gay melodies, daintily given out by the pianoforte, or by the string instruments, were derisively brayed out immediately afterwards by cornets, harmonized in thirds with the most ingenious vulgarity. Cadenzas, agilely executed by the Poish lady, were uncouthly imitated by the double basses. Themes constructed like ballads with choruses were introduced instead of orthodox “subjects.” The old gentlemen in the stalls groaned and protested. The Polish lady, incommoded by the capricious and often excessive speed required of her, held on gallantly, Jack all the time grinding his teeth, dancing, gesticulating, and by turns shshsh-shing at the orchestra, or shouting to them for more tone and less noise. Even the lady on the steps had begun to nod to the impetuous rhythm, when the movement ended as suddenly as it had begun; and all the players rose to their feet, laughing and applauding heartily. Manlius, from whose mind the fantasia had banished all prejudice as to Jack’s rank as a musician, shook his hand warmly. The Polish lady, her face transfigured by musical excitement, offered her hand too. Jack took it and held it, saying abruptly, “Listen to me. You were quite right; and I am a fool. I did not know what there was in my own music, and would have spoiled it if you had not prevented me. You are a great player, because you get the most beautiful tone possible from every note you touch, and you make every phrase say all that it was meant to say, and more. You are an angel. I would rather hear you play scales than hear myself play sonatas. And—” here he lowered his voice and drew her aside— “I rely on you to make my work succeed at the concert. Manlius will conduct the band; but you must conduct Manlius. It is not enough to be a gentleman and a contrapuntist in order to conduct. You comprehend?”