|YOUNG Mr. Barlowe started so violently that he spilt his tea over his
knees; for just before James had uttered his last sentence the music
stopped, but as it had been somewhat loud in the final bars, and James
had raised his voice in the same proportion, the inertia of his tone
defied any attempt to modulate it, so that it was almost with a shout
that he had declared that he had been sent to be educated in his
profession to a murderer.
Fanny was too much overcome by the ludicrous aspect of the contretemps
to be able to laugh. Her brother, who had had no intention of startling
anyone in the room except young Mr. Barlowe, hung his head and was
blushing under the South Sea tan of his skin; Sir Joshua Reynolds had
heard nothing after the crashing chords that concluded the duet; but
poor Miss Reynolds almost sprang from her chair in horror.
Mrs. Burney was very angry.
“You have been making a fool of yourself as usual, James,” she cried.
“Pray give Mr. Barlowe another cup of tea, Fanny. I vow that 'tis a
shame for you, James Burney, to treat such a company as though you were
on the deck of the _Adventure_ facing your South Sea savages.”
But Dr. Burney, with his customary tact, raised a hand half reprovingly
toward his wife.
“Give Mr. Barlowe his cup, and then pass one to me, Fanny,” he said,
rising from the piano. “You know that James has spoken no more than
the truth, my dear,” he added, smiling at his wife. “I can see that the
rascal has been fooling while our backs were turned to him; but we know
that he spoke no more than the truth--at least in that one sentence
which he bawled out for us. He was, indeed, sent to a school where he
was placed under an accomplished usher who was some time after hanged
as a murderer. You see, madam----” he had turned, still smiling, to Miss
Reynolds, thereby doing much to restore her confidence in the sanity of
the family--“You see that James was from the first so desperate a young
rascal that, just as a boy who is an adept at figures is educated for
the counting-house, and one who spends all the day before he is six
picking out tunes on the harpsichord should be apprenticed, as I was, to
a musician, so we thought our James should be sent whither he could
be properly grounded in the only profession at which he was likely to
excel. But, alas! the poor usher was carried off by the police, tried at
the next assizes and duly hanged before James had made much progress in
his studies; but I believe that a few years in the navy does as much
for a youth who has made up his mind to succeed, as a protracted course
under a fully qualified criminal.”
Miss Reynolds looked as if she were not quite certain that, in spite of
his smiles, Dr. Burney was jesting; but when Mrs. Burney, seeing how her
husband's mock seriousness was likely to produce a wrong impression upon
plain people, said:
“You must recall hearing about Mr. Eugene Aram some years back, Mrs.
Reynolds,” that lady showed that her mind was greatly relieved.
“I recall the matter without difficulty,” she said. “The man was usher
at the grammar school at Lynn.”
“And no school had a more learned teacher than that unfortunate man,”
said Sir Joshua. Young Mr. Barlowe had been divided in his amazement
at what Dr. Burney had said, and at the sight of Sir Joshua holding the
trumpet to his ear, though the instrument remained mute. He had never
found himself within the circle of so startling a society. He wished
himself safe at home in the Poultry, where people talked sense and made
no attempt to blow a trumpet with their ears.
“James had acquired quite a liking for poor Aram,” said Dr. Burney,
“and, indeed, I own to having had a high opinion of the man's ability
myself. It was to enable him to purchase books necessary for his studies
in philology that he killed his victim--a contemptible curmudgeon named
Johnstone. I fear that all our sympathy was on the side of the usher.”
“I was greatly interested in Mr. Aram, and read a full account of his
trial,” said Sir Joshua.
“I wonder that a man of so sensitive a mind as his did not so brood over
his crime as to cause suspicion to fall on him earlier than it did.”
“Only upon one occasion it seemed that he was affected by an incident
which might possibly have awakened some suspicion in the mind of a
person given to suspicion,” said Dr. Burney.
“James had been presented with a copy of the translation of Gessner's
'Death of Abel'--everyone was going mad about the book that year--more
copies were sold of it than of any translation since Pope's 'Homer,' but
I fancy James found it dull enough reading. He had it on his knee trying
to get through a page or two in case the kind donor might question him
upon it, when the usher came up. He took the volume in his hand and
glanced at the title. Down the book fell from his grasp and he hurried
away without a word--'as if he had been stung,' James said, in telling
us about it, to excuse the broken cover. Of course, I never gave a
thought to the matter at the time; but when I heard of the arrest of
Eugene Aram the following year, I recalled the incident.”
“I should like to make a picture of the scene, and name it 'Remorse,'”
said Reynolds.
(_He never did make such a picture; many years had passed, and Lieutenant
Burney had become an Admiral before his narration of the incident
touched the imagination of a poet who dealt with it in verse that has
thrilled a good many readers._)
Thomas Barlowe was not greatly thrilled by the story as told by Dr.
Burney. He seemed rather shocked to find himself at the table with
someone who had been taught by a murderer. He glanced furtively at James
Burney, who had remained silent since the contretemps that had prevented
him from perfecting his fooling of Thomas; and the result of Thomas's
scrutiny at that moment was to cause Thomas a tremor; for who could say
what fearful knowledge Lieutenant Burney might have acquired during
his intercourse with the murderer--knowledge which might jeopardize the
safety of a simple visitor like himself? Thomas felt that no ordinary
person could be accounted absolutely safe in a company that included a
tall, able-bodied young naval man who had begun his education under a
murderer and had gone to complete it among the cannibals of the South
Seas; and, in addition, an elderly gentleman who fancied that he could
bring any sound out of a trumpet by pressing it to his ear instead of
his lips, and had shown himself ready to extol the scholarship of any
man who had been hanged.
But then Thomas looked at Fanny, and she pleased him more than ever. She
was so demure, so modest, so shy. She had a very pretty blush, and she
did not play on the piano. It was a thousand pities, he felt, that such
a girl should be compelled to remain in such uncongenial companionship.
All the time that Dr. Burney and his other daughter were playing a
second duet, and the silly gentleman holding the bell of his trumpet
to the case of the piano, still fondly believing that he was also a
performer with the mouth-piece in his ear, Thomas Barlowe was feeling
wave after wave of pity passing over him for the unhappy position of
the shy girl in the midst of so doubtful a household. Before long his
compassion for her so stimulated his imagination that he began to think
of the possibility of his rescuing her--he began to think of himself in
the character of a hero--he did not remember the name of any particular
hero who had carried off a young woman who was placed in a similar
situation to that occupied by Miss Burney; but he had no doubt that more
than one romance was founded upon the doings of such a man as he felt
himself fully qualified to be, if he made up his mind to assume such a
rôle.
As the music continued--it was an arrangement of Bach's _Orfèo_--Thomas
Barlowe became more and more resolute. He would be the heroic person who
should appear at the right moment and achieve the emancipation of that
sweet and shy girl, who by no fault of hers was forced to live in that
house and remain, if she could, on friendly terms with her father and
sisters, who kept strumming on the piano, and with her brother, who was
ready to boast of having received the rudiments of his education from
a murderer. All that he needed was the opportunity to show his heroism,
and he did not doubt that when he set his mind to work on the matter, he
would have such an opportunity.
If anyone had whispered in his ear that his inward consciousness of
being equal to the doing of great deeds was solely due to the music
which was being played, and to which he was unwillingly listening, he
would have been indignant. He would have thought it preposterous had it
been suggested to him that the effect of that strumming was to make him
feel more like a god than a man--to be ready to face hell for the love
of a woman, as Jean Sebastian Bach imagined Orpheus doing for Eurydice.
But Jean Sebastian Bach knew what he was about when he had composed his
_Orfèo_, and Dr. Burney was quite equal to the business of interpreting
his aims, and of urging his daughter Susan to join with him in
impressing them upon even so unimpressionable a nature as that of Thomas
Barlowe; so that while Thomas Barlowe believed that this music was one
of the most petty of all human interests, it was making him think
such thoughts as had never before entered his mind--it was giving him
aspirations from which in ordinary circumstances he would have shrunk.
The master musician and his interpreters were making sport of him,
leading him if not quite into the region of the heroic, at least to the
boundary of that region, and supplying him with a perspective glass, as
the Interpreter did to the Pilgrims, by the aid of which he might see
the wonderful things that had been beyond his natural scope.
And that was how it came about that he gazed into Miss Burney's eyes and
pressed her hand at parting with a tenderness he had never previously
associated with his leave-taking. He felt sure that Miss Burney would
understand what he meant, though he knew that he would have difficulty
in expressing it all to her in words; for the effect of the music was
to make him feel that he could put so much feeling into a look, into
a squeeze of the hand, as would touch the heart of any young woman and
cause her to be certain that she might trust him though all other help
might fail her.
That was the effect which the heroic music had upon him, though he did
not know it; it made him feel willing to face hell for her sake at that
moment, and even until he had walked through more than a mile of the
network of streets that lay between Leicester Fields and the Poultry.
But the effect of such an intoxicant as music upon such a nature as his
is not lasting. Before he had reached Cheapside his own individuality
was beginning to assert itself; and he wondered if he had not gone too
far for discretion--discretion being, according to his reckoning, the
power to withdraw from a position that might compromise him. And before
he reached his home he had got the length of wondering how he had so far
forgotten himself as to yield to that compromising impulse represented
by the gaze and the squeeze. He could not for the life of him understand
what had come over him at that moment; for he had by no means satisfied
himself that Miss Burney was the young woman who would make him
comfortable as his wife. He still thought highly of her on account of
her modesty and her dainty shyness, but marriage was a serious matter,
and he was not sure that he should take her for his wife.
On the whole, he felt that he had had a very trying evening--between the
Lieutenant who had so nearly qualified to practise as a murderer, and
the father and daughter who seemed ready to strum their duets until
midnight, to say nothing of the foolish gentleman who tried to play
the trumpet with his ear; and Thomas made up his mind that he would not
trust himself into the midst of so unusual a circle until he was certain
that he wanted to marry the young woman whose hand he had, for some
reason or other, pressed at parting.
But Mrs. Burney had noticed much more clearly than Fanny had done the
expression that the face of Thomas Barlowe had worn when he had looked
into the girl's eyes; she had measured to the fraction of a second the
duration of his holding of her hand beyond the time essential for
the discharge of the ordinary courtesy of a hand-shake; and she was
satisfied that Thomas was progressing in his wooing of the least
attractive and certainly the least accomplished member of the family.
The good woman thought, however, that it was rather a pity that her
husband and Susan had persisted in the practice of their duets; for by
doing so they had not given a chance to Thomas and Fanny of being alone
together.
But, looking back upon the incidents of the evening, she came to the
conclusion that, on the whole, she had no reason to complain of the
progress that was being made in the young man's wooing. She was no
believer in undue haste in this respect; and had not Thomas looked into
Fanny's eyes at the close of the evening? Yes, at the close; and that
proved to her satisfaction that he had not suffered discouragement by
the maladroit conversation about Mr. Eugene Aram. The unhappy episode
upon which her husband had dwelt with far too great attention to its
details, was one to which she herself had never alluded; for at Lynn,
where she had lived all her life previous to being married to Dr.
Burney, the Eugene Aram episode was regarded as a scandal to be ignored
by those of the inhabitants whose children had attended the school where
he had been usher. It was a distinctly favourable sign of the impression
made upon young Mr. Barlowe by Fanny, that he had gazed into her eyes in
spite of his having been made aware of the connection of the family with
the tragedy of that wretched schoolmaster. Mrs. Burney took no account
of the effect of Bach's marvellous music upon a young man who was a
lover in the rough. In this respect, as has been indicated, she did not
differ from the young man himself.