by George Moore
Good God, who would have thought it! cried Mrs. Plowden.
Mother, he’s not the one, Edith answered without hesitation.
Mrs. Plowden, I beg you to believe that I came here for an extra blanket, interjected Wilfrid, and knew nothing of your daughter’s return.
Mother, you are wronging an innocent man, Edith implored.
But their assurances did not deflect Mrs. Plowden from her purpose, and for many months Wilfrid heard in his thoughts the unfortunate voices still raging — Mrs. Plowden asking intermittently if it wasn’t he who was it, and Edith always refusing to give up the name of her betrayer. The last words that had passed between Wilfrid and Edith were: — Mother would have believed you if it had not been — Wilfrid had not heard the end of the sentence, Mrs. Plowden having hustled him off her doorstep. And now Wilfrid rose from his chair, asking himself what purpose might be served by recalling unpleasant memories. But memories are often very insistent and will not be repelled, and he sat terrified at the thought of his escape. If Edith had not been an honourable girl Mrs. Plowden might have taken him into court, and the magistrate might have made out a maintenance order against him — five shillings a week, which he could not have paid. And his aunt! He had stood on the brink of ruin, but had escaped the worst. All the same, he had lost his very comfortable lodging. For the house in Notting Hill was not nearly so well suited to his needs as the house in Shepherd’s Bush. He missed the hobs and the oven, Mrs. Plowden’s attendance, and the accompaniments, which threw light on his melodies, inspiring new versions. If Edith had only told the name of the blackguard who — But she hadn’t.
Such is life, he muttered, and continued to work at his opera, The Mulberry Tree, till the story he was illustrating began to seem disjointed, broken-backed. Any one of the professional librettists could put it right in a minute by a trick, he said, but I should like to have it undisfigured by artifices, and only time will be able to do that for me.
So he turned to the second interest of his life, the legend of Tristan and Isolde, which, in his opinion, had never yet been traced to its source. His researches brought him so often to the British Museum that he felt it would be a saving for him to live in Bloomsbury; and he went thither, hoping to find a grate with an oven like the one in Shepherd’s Bush. But the hob grate seemed to have disappeared from the neighbourhood, old though it was, and in his search he did not come upon one of those small mending tailors who can turn an old suit of clothes into what looks like a new one. These were grave disadvantages, but he was nearer his work and he had been much encouraged lately by the discovery that he could work out Isolde’s history by means of place names. Nothing is more lasting than the names of places; in the course of ages a letter or two may be omitted or transposed, but the name remains practically the same. And the art of the imaginative historian lies in the divination of missing letters; the moment they are restored light breaks, and very soon Wilfrid was in possession of the names of certain minor chiefs who had accepted Isolde’s father as Overlord. Another week, another month at most, he said, rising from his desk one day, and my case will be complete. And so absorbed was he in his conjectures that he did not hear one of the librarians ask him if he had succeeded in carrying Isolde’s family history further back than the fifth century. The librarian had to repeat his question, and, awaking from his reverie, Wilfrid answered: — I think the facts show that the family history can be traced back to Tara. One of her ancestors ruled there, I believe. In another month I shall be able to tell you for certain. Well, the reason I spoke, said the librarian, is that there is some talk now that the story came to the French chronicler, Chrétien de Troyes, from Brittany, and that the Bretons got it from the Celts of Cornwall, who in turn got it from the Welsh. It is being pointed out that the old Welsh pedigrees tell of an Arthur, a king of the district round Chester, who had a cousin, King March, a minor king, who married a lady called Eisylt. As you can see the Irish coast easily, Lleyn — The librarian did not finish his sentence, so busy was he gathering in the books that readers were thrusting upon him. A hurried time, not one for prolonged talk, and while Wilfrid stood among the jostling crowd, dumbfounded, the bell rang, and the last readers were roused from their books by weary attendants.
A small rain was falling; umbrellas were opened in the pillared portico; and this crowd, comprising a thousand different interests and intellects, always brought the same thought into his mind — that it was strange that so many people should have a small sum of money in their pockets; and he never failed to think that if these trickles of the world’s wealth stopped for a week the world would split and fall to pieces — a ship wrenched apart by waves, each carrying a spar, a mast, a part of the hull away. But to-day as he stood admiring the crowd he remembered suddenly that his aunt’s fifty pounds had failed to trickle into his pocket that morning. For the first time there had been a delay, and it seemed to him ominous that the delay should have coincided with the news that a new theory regarding the legend of Tristan and Isolde was being considered. He had looked forward to receiving his aunt’s cheque, but that morning his head was so full of his work at the British Museum that he had hardly given the matter a thought; and he might not have done so now if the librarian had not mentioned the possibly Welsh origin of the story. Two misfortunes on the same day seemed to predict trouble for him, mayhap a break in his life. His aunt had never failed before. But has she even failed to-day? he said, almost angry with himself. A letter is often delayed in the post, and on my return home I shall find hers. Has any letter come for me? he asked.
No letter has come this afternoon, sir. Were you expecting one?
Yes, he answered, and ran upstairs. Now what would happen to him, and what would happen to the Isolde legend, if his aunt failed to send her fifty pounds?
At that moment he heard a knock far away in the street, and as the postman approached the house that Wilfrid lived in each knock became louder, clearer. The knocking stopped at last, and Wilfrid asked himself what the cause of the delay might be. He had never known the postman loiter as he loitered this evening. Was there an undue number of registered letters to be signed for? Were they all out at 54? The knocking began again; once more it stopped, and this time the man was kept waiting on the opposite side of the street not many doors away. He knocked again and again, but nobody came to the door, and it was all Wilfrid could do to keep himself from running across to ask him if he had a letter for No. 45. As he was about to start the man moved away from the door to come over to deliver letters. He passed 45, and Wilfrid was driven to consider how it was that his aunt’s cheque had failed to arrive on the appointed day. He was on the last flight of stairs in his nightshirt and trousers in the morning when the landlady opened the door. No, Mr. Holmes, there’s nothing for you this morning.
The day passed in watching for the postman, and every time he went by without delivering a letter, or delivered letters for the other lodgers, Wilfrid pondered anew the fact that for the last twenty years his cheque had arrived to the very day. Was his aunt dead? The thought was a terrible one, and it was followed by a hardly less terrible thought — that her last cheque was the end of her bounty! But that could not be — she would have written to tell him. He began to count her years, and, giving up the count in despair, he remembered that in the case of her death (which must come sooner or later) he would have to apply to another relation, to his brother in India, who would give him his choice between Bushfield Park and the workhouse, and with hard words, saying: — You have never earned five shillings in your life. You shall go to Bushfield as caretaker at three pounds a week. What answer would he make? All the world would side with his brother. Nobody would understand why he could not live at Bushfield; nobody would understand that he could not earn his living. Nobody had ever understood this except his mother, and nobody ever would. He laid no blame on anybody; he did not understand it himself. He was healthy, strong, educated, and more intelligent than many of the men he met at the Museum. But he could not earn h
is living, and, worst of all, he could not tell why. There seemed to be no excuse for refusing to live at Bushfield. Nobody would understand — he did not understand. A frightened look came into his face, for he saw in that instant a lonely figure, a confessed failure, amid sad shrubberies and dismal woods. I have always lived in London, he said, and will die in London, come what may. But he could not live in London without some money, and only one sovereign remained to him. A sovereign between me and the streets, he said to himself, and fell to thinking how much life for him it represented if he restricted his diet to bread-and-margarine. Three weeks, quite that, a month, perhaps, he continued, with bread at its present rate. But his rent — six shillings a week! His landlady would give him a week’s credit, no doubt, but she might not. And in his dire necessity he wrote to one of his brothers for five pounds, a thing he had never done, it being his pride to live apart and to owe them nothing. He did not hate them, but —
His thoughts melted into memories of his youth, memories of slights received from them all. Some were kinder than others, but he knew he was looked upon as the family fool, and his pride had been to show them that he did not need their help. But this last barrier of self-respect was broken down. He had had to write to his brother for five pounds! The five pounds came by the next post, and now he would be able to live for quite a long while, with care. As he sat working out how much he might spend daily he stopped to think what his aunt’s death would mean to him when she died. He did not believe she was dead; but she would have to die sooner or later. He might die before her; life is good in this that it provides us with a way out of our difficulties, and he fell to thinking that he had not been feeling very well lately; his doctor had even spoken to him of the possible necessity of an operation, for which he would have to go into a hospital. If his aunt were to live, she might pay for the operation, but he would not like to ask her for any more money than she gave him; so it behoved him to strive for some employment that would bring him in two pounds a week. If he could find some editorial work that would bring him in two-pounds-ten a week!
The thought of an extra ten shillings a week and what it would buy for him awoke him from the dazed stupor into which he had fallen, the consequence of an empty stomach; for he had lived on bread-and-margarine and drunk only water for more than a week, and was beginning to feel that if this diet were to continue uninterrupted his strength to resist his ill might leave him. So with his stomach turned resolutely against his daily fare he went out to buy himself a couple of ounces of tea and an egg, and as he sat stirring his tea he bethought himself of his many attempts to earn a little money by journalism. He had once paid a provincial newspaper a part of his small inheritance for permission to write leading articles, and when he had written fifty-one he had cut his contributions from the different numbers of the papers in which they had appeared. After correction they were sent to a printer to be reset, and the proofs were forwarded to a London editor with a letter requesting the latter to read the articles, and, if he approved of them, to invite Mr. Holmes to join the staff of the London daily. He enclosed stamps for the return of these samples, and they came back to him with a printed form saying that owing to lack of space the Editor was unable to avail himself of the contributions, which he returned with thanks. But after a little while he forgot to enclose the postage-stamps, and his articles were not returned to him; and in answer to questions addressed to the Editor he received a printed form telling him that the Editor could not undertake to correspond with the authors of rejected manuscripts.
As an earnest of his will to work, several sets of proofs were sent to his brothers, who did not return them; others were lost in his transits from one lodging to another. One set remained, however, but Wilfrid was loath to send forth these articles again. If an Editor had written him a personal letter containing a word of encouragement he might have — A thought breaking into his memories of his past attempts to find employment brought him to his feet. He knew a little French, and there must be a newspaper whose staff was depleted by the war. And it was in this hope that he went forth every day to seek his fortune in the Strand and Fleet Street. Occasionally he was invited upstairs and allowed to plead with elderly men in armchairs, who gave him sometimes a few minutes of their attention, but before he arrived at the end of his patter he had begun to read in their eyes that he was not wanted. Some of the less important newspapers asked him if he had had any experience, and he answered them that he had edited the East Anglian Advertiser for some time, offering some of the articles that he contributed to that newspaper to be reprinted. Some, he said, I feel sure are as topical to-day as on the day they were written, and he offered to send these for the Editor’s consideration, but the Editor said he would prefer to read something that had not yet been published. Wilfrid promised to send an article, and returned to his lodgings trying to think of a subject that would appeal to the Editor, his thoughts reverting to the belief that Isolde must have been an Irish princess, for the French chronicler had so written it, and there was no other evidence, so —
His thoughts were interrupted by the postman’s knock, and, listening to receding footsteps and fainter knocks, he once again began to ask himself if his aunt’s death was the cause of the delay. Should he write for news of her? Of what use? If she were dead, her daughter would have written. His aunt, who knew of his necessities, had never failed before, nor would she fail this time; all the same — He pulled a sheet of paper towards him with the intention of writing to her, and in doing this he disturbed a heap of papers, bringing into view some numbers of the Daily Courier. It must have been the landlady who left these for me, he said, and began to read of a blackbird who could whistle a tune of six or eight notes. The publication of the tune had encouraged other readers to send examples of blackbird melody, and a correspondence was in progress regarding the origin of these tunes, some correspondents averring that the blackbirds had not invented but learnt them, other correspondents holding that, since the cuckoo produced two distinct notes, there was no reason to suppose that any other bird might not produce eight. It was not likely that all the blackbirds that whistled tunes had learnt them in a captivity from which the birds had escaped, and the point was made that the musical ear varied in different birds. At last a correspondent wrote that he had taught a blackbird who frequented his garden part of a well-known air. The bird whistled correctly till he came to a minor third, and then, conscious of his failure to catch the note, he broke into an angry Chuck, chuck, chuck, in the shrubbery. Wilfrid remembered a bullfinch that whistled a once popular song, Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green. The bird’s cage hung in the kitchen, and the best way to persuade him out of his silence was to rattle the plates on the dresser. The sound of the plates inspired him, and he whistled the song in fragments, breaking off suddenly. Why not write about the bullfinch? Wilfrid asked himself, and before he had made up his mind another thought came into his mind. It was to pick eight bars of tune from one of the many scores that met his eyes when he looked round his room, all of which were unknown.
Who, except myself, he asked, could whistle a single note from Le Canard a Trois Becs or from Les Quenouilles de Verre? Or if I were to send one of my own tunes the publication might bring me the harmonist I have been waiting for so long. A moment after he remembered the notes that a blackbird used to sing in one of the shrubberies that surround Bushfield Park, the notes that had inspired — His face lighted up for the first time since the day he left the Museum in the midst of a twofold misfortune, and, catching up a pen, he wrote the notes.
I shall point out in a second letter that the phrase as likely as not comes out of one of the many French operettes composed in the seventies and eighties. The wiseacres will sit surrounded with scores, reading, reading, and for ever reading, and then the question will come: — How did the blackbird learn a tune unknown in England? The Editor will send for me, and perhaps will give me a job.
DEAR SIR, — I have followed with interest the letters you are publishi
ng concerning the musical ear of the blackbird, a little surprised, however, to learn that the bird that picked up the well-known song mentioned by the correspondent signing himself X. could not manage the minor third. The bullfinch would catch the note, of a certainty, and I can but think that the blackbird I once heard sing the first bars of a waltz in the garden, or rather yard, enclosed by high walls shadowed by tall elms, would speedily have conquered and retained the minor third in his every subsequent rendering of the song. He alighted on the branch under which I and a friend were sitting at tea, and sang the tune twice over. To hear the first bars of a French waltz (part of a French operette I should guess it to be, but perhaps one of your correspondents will be able to identify it) was not a little bewildering. The friend with whom I was sitting at tea is no relation of Mrs. Harris; he exists in the flesh, and will testify that the bird’s song was noted by me on a scrap of paper which he handed to me, that no interval was changed, and that the time was waltz time. I am, Sincerely yours. WILFRID HOLMES.
The letter was published in the Daily Courier, and the conjecture that the little waltz was an extract from a French operette aroused many minds out of the daily torpor of existence, many deeming it to be a quatrain from one of Lecoq’s early and little-known works. Other writers detected a Germanic flavour, and Offenbach was spoken of, and then Suppé. Somebody thought that he remembered a waltz very like the blackbird’s in an opera by Serpett. An almost forgotten composer, Wilfrid said to himself as he sat eating his bread-and-margarine, who never caught the public ear with an air. I should have thought that his name was forgotten by everybody but myself; but there’s always somebody who remembers. Now what did he write? An opera for the Variétés; but the name?
He sat searching his memory for a long time, and, giving up the search for the moment, he said: Litoff’s name doesn’t seem to have occurred to anybody. And, drawing a sheet of paper towards him, he began a letter to the Editor of the Daily Courier asking to be allowed to write the musical criticisms for the paper. He had not written many lines when he was disturbed by his landlady coming to tell him that a gentleman from the Daily Courier had called to see him and was waiting in the passage.
