Scarlet as a result of this unexpected gesture, she had completely lost countenance.
I was immensely amused.
But the handsome baritone, highly flattered at the poor little thing’s distress (she was as fluttered as a linnet), made a point of insisting.
That gawk Anais had her cheeks puffed out with suppressed laughter.
‘Mademoiselle Anais, may I ask you to sing this exercise, to show Mademoiselle how it should be done?’
That one needed no pressing!
She cooed her little piece ‘with expression’, lingering on the high notes and being none too correct in her time.
Still, she knew it by heart and her rather absurd way of singing a sol-fa exercise as if it were a sentimental song pleased the southerner who congratulated her.
She tried to blush, couldn’t manage to, and was obliged to confine herself to lowering her eyes, biting her lips and drooping her head.
I said to Rabstens:
‘Sir, would you make us go through some of the two-part exercises?
I’ve done everything I could but they still don’t even begin to know them.’
I was in a serious mood that morning: firstly, because I didn’t feel much like laughing; secondly, because, if I played the fool too much during this first lesson, Mademoiselle Sergent would stop the others.
Moreover, I was thinking of Aimee.
Wasn’t she going to come downstairs this morning?
Only a week ago, she’d never have dared lie in bed so late!
With my mind on all this, I gave out the parts; the firsts to Anais, reinforced by Marie Belhomme; the seconds to the two new boarders.
As for myself, I would come to the rescue of whichever turned out to be the weaker.
Rabastens supported the seconds.
Then we executed the little duet, I standing by the handsome Antonin who trolled out ‘Ah! Ahs!’ full of expression in his baritone as he leant over in my direction.
We must have made an extraordinarily funny group.
That incorrigible southerner was so preoccupied in displaying his charms that he made mistake after mistake, without anyone noticing it, of course.
The stylish chrysanthemum he wore in his buttonhole fell out and dropped on the floor. When he had sung his piece, he picked it up and threw it on the table, saying, as if he were appealing for personal compliments: ‘Well, I think that didn’t go too badly, do you?’
Mademoiselle Sergent dampened his enthusiasm by replying:
‘Yes, but let them sing by themselves without you or Claudine. Then you’ll see.’
(I could have sworn, from his discomfited looks, that he had forgotten what he was here for.
He’s going to be a first-class teacher, that Rabastens!
So much the better!
When the Headmistress doesn’t come to the lessons, we’ll be able to do exactly what we like with him.)
‘Yes, I’m sure, Mademoiselle. But if these young ladies will take a little trouble, I’m sure they’ll soon come to know enough to satisfy the examiners.
The standard in music is very low indeed, as you must be the first to realize.’
Well, well, so he was getting his own back now, was he?
He couldn’t have found a better way of bringing home to the Redhead that she was incapable of singing a scale.
She understood the spite behind the remark and averted her sombre eyes.
Antonin went up a little in my esteem, but he had antagonized Mademoiselle Sergent who said sharply:
‘I wonder if you would be good enough to make these children practise some more?
I should rather like them to sing one by one so as to acquire a little self-possession and confidence.’
It was the turn of the twins who possessed non-existent, uncertain voices without much sense of rhythm, but those two plodders always get by, they work with such exemplary diligence!
I can’t stand those Jauberts, so virtuous and so modest.
And I could just see them working at home, going over each exercise fifty times, before coming to the Thursday lessons, the irreproachable sneaks.
To end up with, Rabastens ‘gave himself the pleasure’, as he said, of hearing me sing. He asked me to read the most boring things at sight, ghastly sentimental songs and airs adorned with gargling runs and trills whose out-of-date coloratura seemed to him the last word in art.
From vanity, because Mademoiselle Sergent was there, and Anais too, I sang my best.
And the unspeakable Antonin went into ecstasies; he got himself completely tied up in tortuous compliments, in labyrinthine sentences from which I deliberately did not try to extricate him. I was enjoying myself too much listening to him with my eyes riveted on his with earnest attention.
I don’t know how he would have got to the end of a sentence crammed full of parentheses if Mademoiselle Sergent had not come up to us and asked:
‘Have you given these girls some pieces to study for homework during the week?’
‘No,’ he had given them nothing at all.
He could not get it into his head that he had not been summoned here to sing duets with me!
But whatever had become of little Aimee?
I simply had to know.
So I deftly overturned an inkpot, taking care to get plenty of ink on my fingers.