第39章

"That was painted by my daughter ten years ago.Her teachers considered she had a wonderful talent,but misfortune came,and she was unable to follow it up,"she said.

Jonah's amazement increased.It was a mere daub,but to his untrained eye it was like the pictures in the Art Gallery,where he had spent a couple of dull afternoons.Over the piano a framed certificate announced that Clara Grimes had passed the junior grade of Trinity College in 1890.And Jonah,who had an eye for business like a Jew,who moved in an atmosphere of profit and loss,suddenly felt ill at ease.His shop,his money,and his success must seem small things to these women who lived in the world of art.His thoughts were brought back to earth by a sudden crash.Ray was sitting on a chair,impatient for the music to begin,and,as he never sat on a chair in the ordinary fashion,he had paralysed the Duchess with a series of gymnastic feats,twining his legs round the chair,sitting on his feet,kneeling on the seat with his feet on the back of the chair,until at last an unlucky move had tilted the chair backwards into a pot-stand.The jar fell with a crash,and Ray laughed.The Duchess uttered a cry of terror.

"Yer young devil,keep still,"cried Jonah,angrily."Yer can pay fer that out of yer pocket-money,"he added.

"It was of no value,"said the Duchess,with frigid dignity.

"Perhaps Miss Grimes will play something,"said Jonah."Ray's talked of nothing else since daylight this morning."Clara sat down at the piano and ran her fingers over the keys.She had selected her masterpiece,"The Wind Among the Pines",a tone-picture from a shilling album.Her fingers ran over the keys with amazing rapidity as she beat out the melody with the left hand on the groaning bass,while with the right she executed a series of scales to the top of the keyboard and back.Jonah listened spellbound to the clap-trap arrangement.He had the native ear for music,and he recognized that he was in the presence of a born musician.Ray crept near,and listened with open mouth to this display of musical fireworks.When she had finished,Clara turned to Jonah with a languid smile,the look of the artist conscious of divine gifts.

"My daughter was considered the best player at the convent where she was educated,"said the Duchess--"a great talent wasted in this dreadful place.""I niver 'eard anythin'like that in my natural,"said Jonah with enthusiasm."If yer can teach Ray ter play like that,I'm satisfied.""You may depend upon her doing her best with your son,but it is not everyone who has Clara's talent,"said the Duchess.

"Play some more,"said Ray.

This time she selected a grand march,striking the dilapidated piano a series of stunning blows with both hands,filling the air with the noise of battle.

"That must be terrible 'ard,"said Jonah.

"It takes it out of one,"replied Clara,with the simplicity of an artist.

Then she gave Ray his first lesson,showing him how to sit and place his hands,anxious to impress the parent that she was a good teacher.She declared that Ray was very apt,and would learn rapidly.An hour later,Jonah paid for Ray's first quarter.Clara's terms were a guinea,but Jonah insisted on two guineas on the understanding that Ray would receive special attention.

But in spite of her promises,Ray's progress was slow.As Jonah had no piano,the boy came half an hour early to his lesson to practise,but the twenty minutes'journey from the Silver Shoe occupied the best part of an hour,for Ray,who took to the streets as a duck takes to water,could spend a morning idling before shop windows,following fiddlers on their rounds,watching navvies dig a drain,with a frank,sensuous delight in the sights and sounds of the streets,an inheritance from Jonah's years of vagabondage.Then the street-arabs fell on him,annoyed by his new clothes and immense white collar,and at the end of the third week he reached home after dark with a cut on his forehead and spattered with mud.

The next day Jonah called on Clara to make some other arrangements.His tone was brusque,and Clara noticed with surprise that he was inclined to blame her for Ray's mishap.He seemed to forget everything when it was a question of his son.But all of the Duchess in Clara came to the surface in her annoyance,and she suggested that the lessons had better come to an end.Absorbed in his egotistic feelings,Jonah looked up in surprise,and his anger vanished.He saw that he had offended her,and apologized.

Then he remembered what had brought him.His overpowering desire to see this woman had surprised him like the first symptoms of an illness.

He had not seen her for three weeks,and in the increased flow of business at the Silver Shoe had half forgotten his amazing emotions as one forgets a powerful dream.Women,he repeated,were worse than drink for taking a man's mind off his work.

In his experience he had observed with some curiosity that drink and women were alike in throwing men off their balance.Drink,fortunately,had no power over him.Beer only fuddled his brain,and he looked on its effect with the curious dislike women look on smoking,blind to its fascinations.

As for women,Ada was the only one he had ever been on intimate terms with,and,judging by his sensations,people who talked about love were either fools or liars.True,he had heard Chook talking like a fool about Pinkey,swearing that he couldn't live without her,but thought naturally that he lied.And they had quarrelled so fiercely over the colour of her hair,that for years each looked the other way when they met in the street.But as he looked at Clara again,something vibrated within him,and he was conscious of nothing but a desire to look at her and hear her speak.

"My idea was to buy a piano,an'then yer could give Ray 'is lessons at 'ome,"he said.

"That is the only way out of the difficulty,"said Clara.

Jonah thought awhile,and made up his mind with a snap.