by George Moore
Will you be kind enough to bring him upstairs, Mrs. Douglas, or would you prefer that I went down to see him in your parlour?
There are people in my parlour waiting to see me; I think I had better bring him up to you, sir.
Yes, yes, bring him up; or shall I go down and speak to him? Wilfrid answered, his lethargic nature quickening to an intenser life than he had ever known before. And while hesitating at the stairhead he heard Mrs. Douglas’s voice saying: — Will you come this way, sir?
As soon as the footsteps reached the drawing-room floor he hurried back to his room to receive his visitor, who, he doubted not, was bringing him good news; news he was bringing him for certain, and any news was good news.
The Editor of the Daily Courier has asked me to call and thank you for the little tune and the interesting letter that accompanied it. He would have written to you himself if he had not been suddenly called away, and the journalist began to tell of a Cabinet crisis, Wilfrid giving him an attentive ear, in the hope that his appreciation of his interlocutor’s narrative would influence the account of him the Editor would get from his colleague; and he held his soul in patience till the journalist came to a sudden break in his story. The rest, he said, is on the knees of the Gods — and he apologised for having been so long-winded. Wilfrid protested, and the journalist revealed the object of his visit, which was to ask Mr. Wilfrid Holmes if he knew the name of the composer of the waltz measure. If the waltz be a French one, as I believe yourself has suggested, the bird was most probably a French bird imported into England; probably, I say, not necessarily, for most waltzes, French and German, if a waltz can be said to have any nationality, are known to — I was writing, Wilfrid interrupted, a letter to the Editor of the Daily Courier dealing with that very question when you called. He picked up his half-finished letter from the table and continued: — My proposal to the Editor was to tell him the name of the waltz if in return for my doing so he engaged me on the staff of the paper. I can write English and French correctly, and know enough music to write criticisms, and my knowledge of light French music is as complete as anybody’s you’d be likely to find in London. For years I’ve collected the least-known scores; many of those you see are out of print, and to get a sight of them you would have to cross over to France and investigate the archives of most of the theatres in the boulevards. La Reine de Navarre is a very scarce score, Les Quenouilles de Verre still scarcer, and for the score Héloïse et Abélard you would have to go to the Bibliothèque Nationale. Your Editor may be able to procure the scores of Le Roi Va dit and La Boite de Pandore through Messrs. Chappell, but I doubt if Messrs. Chappell would be able to supply La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe, Pont des Soupirs, or La Belle Poule. I run through these on my flute when the house is empty (our lodgers are more tolerant to the piano than to the flute), and in every one of these operettes there are some pretty passages, better than any to be found in better-known works.
Nobody but you knows these forgotten scores? asked the journalist. I am sure that mine is the only copy in London of La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe. And if you did not run these scores over on your flute they would lie mute, replied the journalist. That thought has often come into my mind whilst standing by this window on a summer evening, and the journalist, beguiled by pity or curiosity, he knew not which, began to ask Wilfrid if the flute played an important part in the score of La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe.
A good writer never forgets the flute, Wilfrid replied, for without the flute the orchestra would be inhuman. The journalist raised his eyes. The flute represents the human voice in the orchestra, Wilfrid continued, his face suddenly changing from gay to grave. He would have dearly loved to show his beautiful-keyed flute, a present from his aunt, to the journalist. It was in pawn, alas! But, remembering his piccolo suddenly, he opened a drawer, and, taking from it a sheet of manuscript music, he pinned it to the wall by the window and said he was going to play the great air from his opera, The Mulberry Tree. And upon a diminutive instrument, hardly larger than a toothbrush, Wilfrid whistled out a simple air that the journalist began to perceive to be the summary of the author’s musical imagination, it never being far distant from all the subsequent pieces that were taken from the drawer.
But the top line, said the journalist, is but a small part of the music contained in a modern opera. Modern music can hardly be said to exist apart from the harmonies that sustain it. A modern air rises out of the harmony for a moment only, like a flag from the flagstaff. And then there’s the orchestration. The orchestration, Wilfrid answered, is mere colouring matter; the harmony, I admit, is essential. And what you or the Editor of the Daily Courier might do for me is to give me a letter to — . Wilfrid mentioned a name famous in modern music, saying: — A great musician, no doubt, but one who cannot write melody. Now I can, but in harmony I am deficient. What do you think? But, said the journalist, taking a piece of music from the heap, I see that you have not only composed the airs sung by the soprano, the tenor, and the bass, you have also written some concerted pieces — here is a quintet. And without some knowledge of harmony, at least of counterpoint, I don’t understand how you could have written it. I will play it to you, Wilfrid replied; and when he had played the quintet to the journalist on his piccolo he explained that he had followed the form of the quintet in La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe, writing other tunes, of course. And now, if you will allow me, I will play the air that the prima donna sings out of the branches of the mulberry tree in the second act. From a safe hiding-place among the leaves she has heard all the plotting of her enemies, who have discovered that she is an heiress to an uninhabited island in which is hidden immense treasure. After listening to the air, the journalist sat looking into Wilfrid’s large face, striving to read his history out of his little eyes. Of course, said Wilfrid, the air will sound much richer, completer, when it gets its accompaniment, for, as you say, in modern music the air rises out of the accompaniment; it is dependent upon it, too dependent to my taste, but still it cannot be denied that harmony is more important to-day than it was when Bellini and Donizetti were writing operas. All the same, melody is what the public follows. Don’t you think that the Editor would give me a letter of introduction? Or perhaps you think that Mr. X. can write melody?
Your question, Mr. Holmes, can best be answered by another, the journalist replied. Before entering into a discussion as to whether Mr. X. can or cannot write melody, I would like to ask you if you think that Mr. X. is aware of his melodic deficiencies. Well, said Wilfrid, they should have become apparent to him by this time — at which the journalist laughed. But he stopped laughing suddenly, for Wilfrid’s courage gave way before this last rebuke. I am afraid, he said, drawing his hand across his eyes, dashing aside some tears, that there is very little hope for me. And, walking up and down the room, he related the story of the delayed cheque, saying that for twenty years his aunt had never failed to send him his cheque. Only once before did it arrive late, and then only a day late. But now fifteen days have passed without my getting any tidings of her; she may be dead. It was three days before I noticed the delay, so absorbed was I in the legend of Tristan and Isolde, a work on which I have been engaged for the last twenty years.
At work on the legend of Tristan and Isolde for twenty years! said the journalist.
Yes, quite that, Wilfrid replied; and the journalist, anxious to help him, began to ask him what discoveries he had made. And Wilfrid, taking courage, tried to relate his conjectures, till overcome by a sudden weakness he said: I cannot go on talking. I have lived for the last ten days on bread-and-margarine. Yesterday I had to buy a packet of cocoa and some milk; the success of my letter in the Daily Courier tempted me to risk the extravagance, and I hoped for a post on the paper. I hoped that something would happen, but nothing has. The journalist asked Wilfrid why he did not write to his relations for the loan of enough money to carry him over till he received his allowance, and learnt that Wilfrid had broken with all his brothers and sisters. They are always quarrelling a
mong themselves, he said, and I try to keep outside of the family strife, and the only way to do it is to avoid seeing them.
This little confession, so sincere and so artless, awakened the journalist’s pity still further, and then, his pity quickening to a sort of literary interest, he began to speak of the family as the worst enemy of the individual, with a view to leading Wilfrid into confidences. The journalist had some literary pretensions, and, foreseeing literary material in Wilfrid, he listened, saying to himself: — He is typical of many; in every boarding house in London there is the lag-end of a family, playing the piano in the evenings. We accuse these waifs of idleness, but they were born idle and cannot be else than idle, for they are without the needful instinct to pick up a living, or have lost it, as wild birds do after being kept in cages. This man’s mother kept him in a cage long after he should have been put out to work. And then, the journalist’s thoughts turning from the general to the particular, he began to consider if he might advise one of his editors to take on Wilfrid as a musical critic — For with all his shortcomings he knows a little music, the keys, doubtless, whereas the ordinary musical critic cannot tell one key from another. But his copy would be unprintable. And certain that there was nothing to be done for Wilfrid in journalism, he began to think how he might take his leave. A knock came to the door. A letter has just come for you, Mr. Holmes. And from my aunt! he cried, forgetful of the journalist and Mrs. Douglas. She has been very unwell lately but is better now, and she sends a cheque for two hundred pounds. Two hundred pounds! he said, and held the cheque out to the journalist in trembling fingers. I feel as if I could buy half London. So you do not care that I should recommend you for the post of musical critic, if perchance I should hear of a vacancy?
I shall now be able, Wilfrid answered, to fill in the last links of the chain of evidence which shows that —
The moment seemed favourable to the journalist to take his leave, and it was not till he had left the house and was half-way down the street that he remembered he had not asked Wilfrid which illustrious composer was the author of the waltz tune that the blackbird had learnt in France, or from Wilfrid Holmes himself. Most likely the author of the tune is Holmes himself, he said stopping, for that moment the musical phrase that came from a top window seemed to represent, and completely, the man he had left — one of those weak, timid, harmless souls, come out of the mould that Nature reserves for some great purpose known only to herself, mayhap the preservation of pity and compassion in the world. And, humming the little tune over to himself as he went towards the railway-station, he said: — A humble aspiration, part of a chorus from The Mulberry Tree, no doubt.
PRISCILLA AND EMILY LOFFT
A BLACKBIRD WHISTLED in the garden when Emily flung the drawing-room door open and gazed into the emptiness of the old faded room, her eyes falling straightway upon a portrait painted in clear tones of two children sitting on a green bank overshadowed by trees, turning the leaves of a picture book, twins, seemingly, so like were they one to the other, light-hearted girls, with brown ringlets showering about their faces. Emily had just returned from Priscilla’s grave, and the portrait telling a sunny past so plainly, warned her that henceforth she would be alone — she knew not for how long; and too terrified for tears, she began to ask herself if she could continue her life in this old house that she and Priscilla had grown up in from childhood to womanhood, everything in it associated with her sister, every room, every table and chair, dinner services and tea services, the books on the shelves and on the tables. All these things had belonged to Priscilla as much as they had to herself, and now they belonged only to her.
The old Victorian paper was still on the walls, hardly more stained or faded than it was on the first day they saw it; and in spite of her desire to put all memories behind her, she remembered her delight and Priscilla’s delight at the tapestry screens in rich wools, the faint water-colours on the walls, mills and ruins and mountain streams, the school exercises of their aunts. Aunt Clara and Aunt Margaret and Aunt Jane were dead; but their handiwork remained to tell of them. Priscilla and she had often talked of repapering the room, of replacing the squab sofa by a comfortable Chesterfield. It was only last week they were considering these things, and that the red damask curtains needed cleaning. The carpets would have had to come up.... If Priscilla had lived another month, the house would have been in the hands of the workmen; had she lived another two months, all would have been changed; and Emily asked herself if it would be harder for her to live in a new house, a house repapered, repainted, and refurnished, a house that would bear no memory of Priscilla, or to live in this old house in which her sister’s presence lingered like a ghost. Every piece of furniture, every picture, reminded her of something she had said to Priscilla or Priscilla had said to her. If that bird would only cease, she muttered, and fell to thinking that she had hated to hear it sing on the day that Priscilla died. Yes, it had sung that day — she had heard it, and to-day it was singing, the day of the funeral, forgetful of Priscilla, who had never forgotten to scatter crumbs under the great apple tree in which it sang, or to bring a dish of water for it to drink from and to bathe in.
A blackbird was whistling in the apple boughs the evening they had come up from Mayo to live with Aunt Clara at number four, Smith’s Buildings — two little children of ten, dressed in black, for their father was dead. But neither of them understood the meaning of death at that time, and Priscilla had cried out and she had cried out to their aunt to be allowed to go into the lovely garden. It wasn’t a lovely garden at all then, but a wilderness, though there were many hawthorns overtopping the railings, a great ash by the gate, and a little alley of lilac bushes; and tired though they were from the long railway journey, they would have liked to run round the garden, to play perhaps a game of hide-and-seek among the lilac bushes. So it was with much sorrow that they heard their aunt tell that nobody in Smith’s Buildings cared to go into the garden; it was taboo because everybody living in the five houses could go into it, a reason that their minds could not apprehend, for they did not know then that a benefit extended to all appeals to none in particular. And they had gone to bed asking themselves why nobody went into the garden just because the people from the other houses might go into it. And next day and the next they cast longing eyes upon the rood of ground, filled with apple trees and lilacs and hawthorns, and begged so hard to go and play in it that Aunt Clara had perforce to think of what arrangement might be come to with the agent for the property. Her nieces were little heiresses, each owning a property in the west of Ireland that produced about three hundred a year. Out of this six hundred a year we can easily afford to pay a gardener, Aunt Clara said, and the agent was invited to call, the proposal made to him being that Miss Lofft should have the exclusive possession of the garden on condition that she paid for its upkeep, a thing that the other tenants had refused to do. Why, they asked, should they pay for the upkeep of a garden that they never entered and did not wish to enter? But if I pay for the upkeep, and make a fine border of London Pride, and fill the beds with snapdragons, Canterbury bells, honesty, columbines, Madonna lilies, pansies, and put holly-hocks along the wall, all the other tenants will benefit by the scent and colour of the garden, Aunt Clara had said, an argument that the agent accepted, asking, however, for some rent; four pounds a year was the price of their playground, that was all, and they had enjoyed this rood of ground all their lives, since they were ten to the present day.
She dropped her head into the cushion and lay shaken with grief till she could weep no more, and when she raised her face, swollen with tears, the blackbird, that had been silent for long, broke into another rich lay, calling her thoughts again to the distant but clear past of her childhood, and the fine days under the apple tree with her sister, dressing dolls or learning the lessons that they took to the convent school at the corner of the Green. Priscilla was a little slow at her lessons, and though she looked so demure in that picture, almost dull, that was the fault of the artis
t; for she was not demure, at least she was not dull, and in the middle of learning French verbs would pick up her hoop and trundle it round the garden with so much joy that Emily had to pick up her hoop and trundle it after her, though she would have liked to master her lessons first. But Priscilla always had her way with her, and her thoughts dropped into consideration of her love for her sister; an almost mystical attachment it had often seemed to her, going back to the time when they had lain in the womb together. Priscilla had never seemed another being to her, but her second self, her shadow, her ghost, each akin to the other as the sound and its echo. In appearance they were the same, and she remembered how the Reverend Mother had once said: You are as like as two casts come out of the same mould. She had said something more than that to the nun standing by, but Emily had only heard half the sentence, something about the master-hand having been over one, whereas — the rest of the sentence she did not catch, but guessed it to be a disparagement of Priscilla, whom the convent did not appreciate, for Priscilla did not seem to them to be shaping into a prize pupil. Prize pupils were all the convent cared for, the superficial qualities with which educational grants are earned.
They were indeed as alike as two casts come out of the same mould, and this likeness was not a mere chance; it penetrated from the surface into the heart and brain. Aunt Clara had realised the importance of their likeness one to the other better than the Reverend Mother had, and dressed them alike so that others might see it, and of all, that Emily and Priscilla might be conscious of it always. So they had grown up to look upon themselves not as two but as one, and when it came for her to take Priscilla to the dressmaker, after their aunt’s death, she had never allowed any change to be made. If Mrs. Symond said: I think you might wear this ribbon with advantage, she always answered: I think, Mrs. Symond, that we both like the ribbon you speak of. One day Mrs. Symond had asked them when they were going to be presented at Court. Of course she did, for two debutantes meant many dresses for her to make. And to persuade them to do what she herself had always refrained from doing for Priscilla’s sake, Mrs. Symond called her assistant, and asked her to show off the dresses they were making that year. The prettiest fashions that have appeared for many a year, the dressmaker said. And they were shown berthas, flounces, plumes, stomachers, lappets, and veils. But we are not going to the Castle, are we? Priscilla had whispered, for you know, Emily, I never should have the courage to dance with a man I didn’t know. But if he didn’t know you, he wouldn’t ask you, Emily answered. I never could grasp that three-step, Emily. I should feel such a fool. And as Emily could not go alone to the Castle, she postponed their presentation at Court till next year.
