MUSIC IN THE TOWN SQUARE.
This window looked upon the Town Square, and across it to the
Mayoralty. The square had once been the Franciscans’ burial-ground,
and was really no square at all, but a semicircle. The townspeople
called it Mount Folly. The chord of the arc was formed by a large
Assize Hall, with a broad flight of granite steps, and a cannon
planted on either side of the steps. The children used to climb
about these cannons, and Taffy had picked out his first letters from
the words _Sevastopol_ and _Russian Trophy_, painted in white on
their lead-coloured carriages.
Below the Assize Hall an open gravelled space sloped gently down to a
line of iron railings and another flight of granite steps leading
into the main street. The street curved uphill around the base of
this open ground, and came level with it just in front of the
Mayoralty, a tall stuccoed building where the public balls were
given, and the judges had their lodgings in assize time, and the
Colonel his quarters during the militia training.
Fine shows passed under Taffy’s window. Twice a year came the
judges, with the sheriff in uniform and his chaplain, and his coach,
and his coachman and lackeys in powder and plush and silk stockings,
white or flesh-coloured; and the barristers with their wigs, and the
javelin men and silver trumpets. Every spring, too, the Royal
Rangers Militia came up for training. Suddenly one morning, in the
height of the bird-nesting season, the street would swarm with
countrymen tramping up to the barracks on the hill, and back, with
bundles of clothes and unblackened boots dangling. For the next six
weeks the town would be full of bugle calls, and brazen music, and
companies marching and parading in suits of invisible green, and
clanking officers in black, with little round forage caps, and silver
badges on their side-belts; and, towards evening, with men lounging
and smoking, or washing themselves in public before the doors of
their billets.
Usually too, Whitsun Fair fell at the height of the militia training;
and then for two days booths and caravans, sweet-standings and
shooting-galleries lined the main street, and Taffy went out with a
shilling in his pocket to enjoy himself. But the bigger shows--the
menagerie, the marionettes, and the travelling Theatre Royal--were
pitched on Mount Folly, just under his window. Sometimes the theatre
would stay a week or two after the fair was over, until even the boy
grew tired of the naphtha-lamps and the voices of the tragedians, and
the cornet wheezing under canvas, and began to long for the time when
they would leave the square open for the boys to come and play at
prisoners’ bars in the dusk.
One evening, a fortnight before Whitsun Fair, he had taken his book
to the open window, and sat there with it. Every night he had to
learn a text which he repeated next morning to his mother. Already,
across the square, the Mayoralty house was brightly lit, and the
bandsmen had begun to arrange their stands and music before it; for
the Colonel was receiving company. Every now and then a carriage
arrived, and set down its guests.
After a while Taffy looked up and saw two persons crossing the
square--an old man and a little girl. He recognised them, having
seen them together in church the day before, when his father had
preached the sermon. The old man wore a rusty silk hat, cocked a
little to one side, a high stock collar, black cutaway coat, breeches
and gaiters of grey cord. He stooped as he walked, with his hands
behind him and his walking-stick dangling like a tail--a very
positive old fellow, to look at. The girl’s face Taffy could not
see; it was hidden by the brim of her Leghorn hat.
The pair passed close under the window. Taffy heard a knock at the
door below, and ran to the head of the stairs. Down in the passage
his mother was talking to the old man, who turned to the girl and
told her to wait outside.
“But let her come in and sit down,” urged Humility.
“No, ma’am; I know my mind. I want one hour with your husband.”
Taffy heard the door shut, and went back to his window-seat.
The little girl had climbed the cannon opposite, and sat there
dangling her feet and eyeing the house.
“Boy,” said she, “what a funny window-seat you’ve got! I can see
your legs under it.”
“That’s because the window reaches down to the floor, and the bench
is fixed across by the transom here.”
“What’s your name?”
“Theophilus; but they call me Taffy.”
“Why?”
“Father says it’s an imperfect example of Grimm’s Law.”
“Oh! Then, I suppose you’re quite the gentleman? My name’s
Honoria.”
“Is that your father downstairs?”
“Bless the boy! What age do you take me for? He’s my grandfather.
He’s asking your father about his soul. He wants to be saved, and
says if he’s not saved before next Lady-day, he’ll know the reason
why. What are you doing up there?”
“Reading.”
“Reading what?”
“The Bible.”
“But, I say, can you really?”
“You listen.” Taffy rested the big Bible on the window-frame; it just
had room to lie open between the two mullions--“_Now when they had
gone throughout Phrygia and Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy
Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia they
assayed to go into Bithynia; but the Spirit suffered them not.
And they, passing by Mysia, came down to Troas. And a vision
appeared to Paul in the night_....”
“I don’t wonder at it. Did you ever have the whooping-cough?”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve had it all the winter. That’s why I’m not allowed in to play
with you. Listen!”
She coughed twice, and wound up with a terrific whoop.
“Now, if you’d only put on your nightshirt and preach, I’d be the
congregation and interrupt you with coughing.”
“Very well,” said Taffy, “let’s do it.”
“No; you didn’t suggest it. I hate boys who have to be told.”
Taffy was huffed, and pretended to return to his book. By-and-by she
called up to him:
“Tell me, what’s written on this gun of yours?”
“Sevastopol--that’s a Russian town. The English took it by storm.”
“What! the soldiers over there?”
“No, they’re only bandsmen; and they’re too young. But I expect the
Colonel was there. He’s upstairs in the Mayoralty, dining.
He’s quite an old man, but I’ve heard father say he was as brave as a
lion when the fighting happened.”
The girl climbed off the gun.
“I’m going to have a look at him,” she said; and turning her back on
Taffy, she sauntered off across the square, just as the band struck
up the first note of the overture from _Semiramide_. A waltz of
Strauss followed, and then came a cornet solo by the bandmaster, and
a medley of old English tunes. To all of these Taffy listened.
It had fallen too dark to read, and the boy was always sensitive to
music. Often when he played alone broken phrases and scraps of
remembered tunes came into his head and repeated themselves over and
over. Then he would drop his game and wander about restlessly,
trying to fix and complete the melody; and somehow in the process the
melody always became a story, or so like a story that he never knew
the difference. Sometimes his uneasiness lasted for days together.
But when the story came complete at last--and this always sprang on
him quite suddenly--he wanted to caper and fling his arms about and
sing aloud; and did so, if nobody happened to be looking.
The bandmaster, too, had music, and a reputation for imparting it.
Famous regimental bands contained pupils of his; and his old pupils,
when they met, usually told each other stories of his atrocious
temper. But he kept his temper to-night, for his youngsters were
playing well, and the small crowd standing quiet.
The English melodies had scarcely closed with “Come, lasses and
lads,” when across in Mayoralty a blind was drawn, and a window
thrown open, and Taffy saw the warm room within, and the officers and
ladies standing with glasses in their hands. The Colonel was giving
the one toast of the evening:
“Ladies and gentlemen--The Queen!”
The adjutant leaned out and lifted his hand for signal, and the band
crashed out with the National Anthem. Then there was silence for a
minute. The window remained open. Taffy still caught glimpses of
jewels and uniforms, and white necks bending, and men leaning back in
their chairs, with their mess-jackets open, and the candle-light
flashing on their shirt-fronts. Below, in the dark street, the
bandmaster trimmed the lamp by his music-stand. In the rays of it he
drew out a handkerchief and polished the keys of his cornet; then
passed the cornet over to his left hand, took up his baton, and
nodded.
What music was that, stealing, rippling, across the square?
The bandmaster knew nothing of the tale of Tannhauser, but was
wishing that he had violins at his beck, instead of stupid flutes and
reeds. And Taffy had never heard so much as the name of Tannhauser.
Of the meaning of the music he knew nothing--nothing beyond its
wonder and terror. But afterward he made a tale of it to himself.
In the tale it seemed that a vine shot up and climbed on the shadows
of the warm night; and the shadows climbed with it and made a trellis
for it right across the sky. The vine thrust through the trellis
faster and faster, dividing, throwing out little curls and tendrils;
then leaves and millions of leaves, each leaf unfolding about a drop
of dew, which trickled and fell and tinkled like a bird’s song.
The beauty and scent of the vine distressed him. He wanted to cry
out, for it was hiding the sky. Then he heard the tramp of feet in
the distance, and knew that they threatened the vine, and with that
he wanted to save it. But the feet came nearer and nearer, tramping
terribly.
He could not bear it. He ran to the stairs, stole down them, opened
the front door cautiously, and slipped outside. He was half-way
across the square before it occurred to him that the band had ceased
to play. Then he wondered why he had come, but he did not go back.
He found Honoria standing a little apart from the crowd, with her
hands clasped behind her, gazing up at the window of the
banqueting-room.
She did not see him at once.
“Stand on the steps, here,” he whispered, “then you can see him.
That’s the Colonel--the man at the end of the table, with the big,
grey moustache.”
He touched her arm. She sprang away and stamped her foot.
“Keep off with you! Who _told_ you?--Oh! you bad boy!”
“Nobody. I thought you hated boys who wait to be told.”
“And now you’ll get the whooping-cough, and goodness knows what will
happen to you, and you needn’t think I’ll be sorry!”
“Who wants you to be sorry! As for you,” Taffy went on sturdily, “I
think your grandfather might have more sense than to keep you waiting
out here in the cold, and giving your cough to the whole town!”
“Ha! you do, do you?”
It was not the girl who said this. Taffy swung round, and saw an old
man staring down on him. There was just light enough to reveal that
he had very formidable grey eyes. But Taffy’s blood was up.
“Yes, I do,” he said, and wondered at himself.
“Ha! Does your father whip you sometimes?”
“No, sir.”
“I should if you were my boy. I believe in it. Come, Honoria!”
The child threw a glance at Taffy as she was led away. He could not
be sure whether she took his side or her grandfather’s.
That night he had a very queer dream.
His grandmother had lost her lace-pillow, and after searching for
some time, he found it lying out in the square. But the pins and
bobbins were darting to and fro on their own account, at an
incredible rate, and the lace as they made it turned into a singing
beanstalk, and rose and threw out branches all over the sky.
Very soon he found himself climbing among those branches, up and up
until he came to a Palace, which was really the Assize Hall, with a
flight of steps before it and a cannon on either side of the steps.
Within sat a giant, asleep, with his head on the table and his face
hidden; but his neck bulged at the back just like the bandmaster’s
during a cornet solo. A harp stood on the table. Taffy caught this
up, and was stealing downstairs with it, but at the third stair the
harp--which had Honoria’s head and face--began to cough, and wound up
with a _whoop!_ This woke the giant--he turned out to be Honoria’s
grandfather--who came roaring after him. Glancing down below as he
ran, Taffy saw his mother and the bandmaster far below with axes,
hacking at the foot of the beanstalk. He tried to call out and
prevent them, but they kept smiting. And the worst of it was, that
down below, too, his father was climbing into a pulpit, quite as if
nothing was happening. The pulpit grew and became a tower, and his
father kept calling, “Be a tower! Be a tower, like me!”
But Taffy couldn’t for the life of him see how to manage it.
The beanstalk began to totter; he felt himself falling, and leapt for
the tower.... And awoke in his bed shuddering, and, for the first
time in his life, afraid of the dark. He would have called for his
mother, but just then down by the turret clock in Fore Street the
buglers began to sound the “Last Post,” and he hugged himself and
felt that the world he knew was still about him, companionable and
kind.
Twice the buglers repeated their call, in more distant streets, each
time more faintly; and the last flying notes carried him into sleep
again.