MUSIC AND COUNSEL
"What is this strange new life, this finer sense,
Which lifts me out of self, and bids me
... rise to glorious thought
High hopes, and inarticulate fantasies?"
"Voices."--_Songs of Two Worlds_
After tea Fergus's mother turned to the two boys.
"Shall I play to you now?" she said, "or shall we first show Gratian the
pictures?"
"Play the last thing, please," said Fergus. "I like to keep it in my
mind when I go to bed--it makes me sleep better. We can go into the
gallery now and show Gratian the pictures; it would be too dark if we
waited."
"It is rather dark already," said the lady, "still Gratian can see some,
and the next time he comes he can look at them again."
She rang the bell, and when Andrew came, she told him to wheel Fergus's
couch into the picture-gallery, which opened into the library where they
were.
Andrew opened a double door at the other end of the room from that by
which they had come in, and then he gently wheeled forward the couch on
which Fergus was lying, and pushed it through the doorway. The gallery
was scarcely large enough to deserve the name, but to Gratian's eyes it
looked a very wonderful place. It was long and rather narrow, and the
light came from the top, and along the sides and ends were hung a good
many pictures. All down one side were portraits--gentlemen with wigs,
and ladies with powder, and some in queer, fancy dresses, mostly looking
stiff and unnatural, though among them were some beautiful faces, and
two or three portraits of children, which caught Gratian's eye.
"What do you think of them?" asked Fergus.
Gratian hesitated.
"I don't think people long ago could have been as pretty as they are
now," he said at last, "except that lady in the long black dress--oh,
she is very pretty, and so is the red little boy with the dog, and the
two girls blowing soap-bubbles. The big one has got eyes like--like the
lady's," he added half-timidly.
The lady looked pleased.
"You have a quick eye, Gratian," she said. "The pictures you admire are
the best here, and that little girl is my great-grandmother. Now, look
at the other side. These are pictures of all kinds--not family ones."
Gratian followed her in silence. The pictures were mostly
landscapes--some so very old and dark that one could scarcely
distinguish what they were. And some of which the colours were brighter,
the boy did not care for any better--they were not like any skies or
trees he had ever seen or even imagined, and he felt disappointed.
Suddenly he gave a little cry.
"Oh, I like that--I do like that," he said, and he glanced up at the
lady for approval.
She smiled again.
"Yes," she said, "it is a wonderful picture. Quite as much a picture of
the wind as of the sea."
Gratian gazed at it with delight. The scene was on the coast, on what
one might call a playfully stormy day. The waves came dancing in, their
crests flashing in the sunshine, pursued and tossed by the wind; and up
above, the little clouds were scudding along quite as busy and eager
about _their_ business, whatever it was, as the white-sailed
fishing-boats below.
"Do you like it so very much?" she asked.
"Yes," the boy replied, "that's like what I fancied pictures were. I've
never seen the sea, but I can feel it must be like that."
And after this he did not seem to care to see any others.
[Illustration: And when she sat down to play the light sparkled and
glowed on her fair hair, making it look like gold.]
Fergus too was getting a little tired of lying alone while his mother
and Gratian made the tour of the gallery. So Andrew was called to wheel
him back again to the other door of the library, from whence he could
best hear the organ. It stood at one side of the large hall, in a recess
which had probably been made on purpose. It was dark in the recess even
at mid-day, and now the dusk was fast increasing, so the lady lit the
candles fixed at each side of the music-desk, and when she sat down to
play the light sparkled and glowed on her fair hair, making it look like
gold.
Gratian touched Fergus.
"Doesn't it look pretty?" he said, pointing to the little island of
light in the gloomy hall.
Fergus nodded.
"I always think mother turns into an angel when she plays," he said.
"Now, let's listen, Gratian, and afterwards you can tell me what
pictures the music makes to you, and I'll tell you what it makes to me."
The organ was old and rather out of repair, and Andrew was not very well
used to blowing. That made it, I think, all the more wonderful that the
lady could bring such music out of it. It was not so fine and perfect,
doubtless, as what Gratian had heard from her in church on the Sunday
afternoon, but still it was beautiful enough for him to think of nothing
but his delight in listening. She played several pieces--some sad and
plaintive, some joyful and triumphant, and then Gratian begged her to
play the last he had heard at church.
"That is a good choice for our good-night one," she said. "It is a
favourite of Fergus's too. He calls it his good-night hymn."
Fergus did not speak--he was lying with his eyes shut, in quiet
happiness, and as the last notes died away, "Don't speak yet, Gratian,"
he said, "you don't know what I am seeing--flocks of birds are slowly
flying out of sight, the sun has set, and one hears a bell in the
distance ringing very faintly; one by one the lights are going out in
the cottages that I see at the foot of the hill, and the night is
creeping up. That is what _I_ see when mother plays the good-night.
What do you see, Gratian?"
"The moor, I think," said the boy, "our own moor, up, far up, behind our
house. It must be looking just as I see it now, at this very minute;
only the music is coming from some place--a church, I think, _very_ far
away. The wind is bringing it--the south wind, not the one from the sea.
And you know that when the music is being played in the church there are
lots of people all kneeling so that you can't see their faces, and I
think some are crying softly."
"Yes," said Fergus, "that isn't so bad. I can see it too. You'll soon
get into the way, Gratian," he went on, with his funny little
patronising tone, "of making music-pictures if we practice it together.
That's the best of music, you see. It makes itself and pictures too. Now
pictures never make you music."
"But they give you feelings--like telling you stories--at least that one
I like so much does. And I suppose there are many pictures like that--as
beautiful as that?" he went on, as if asking the question from the lady,
who had left the organ now and was standing by Fergus, listening to what
they were saying.
"Yes," she said, "there are many pictures I should like you to see, and
many places too. Places which make one wish one could paint them the
moment one sees them. Perhaps it is pictures you are going to care most
for, little Gratian? If so, they will be music and poetry and everything
to you--they will be your voice."
"_Poetry_," repeated Fergus, "that's the other thing--the thing I
couldn't remember the name of, Gratian."
Gratian looked rather puzzled.
"I don't know much about poetry," he said. "But I don't know about
anything. I never saw pictures before. There are so many things to know
about," he added with a little sigh.
"Don't be discouraged," said the lady smiling. "Everybody has to find
out and to learn and to work hard."
"Has everybody a voice?" asked Gratian.
"No, a great many haven't, and some who have don't use it well, which is
worse than having none. But don't look so grave; we shall have plenty of
time for talking about all these things. I think you must be going home
now, otherwise your mother will be wondering what has become of you. And
thank her for letting us have you, and say I hope you may come again on
Saturday. You don't mind the long walk home--for it is almost dark, you
see?"
"Oh no, I don't mind the dark or anything like that," said Gratian with
a little smile, which the lady, even though her forget-me-not eyes were
so very clear, could not quite understand.
For he was thinking to himself, "How could I be afraid, with my four
godmothers to take care of me, wherever I were?"
Then he turned to say good-bye to Fergus, and the little fellow
stretched up his two thin arms and clasped them round the moorland
child's neck.
"I love you," he said; "kiss me and come again soon, and let us make
stories to tell each other."
The lady kissed him too.
"Thank you for being so good to Fergus," she said.
And Gratian, looking up in her face, wished he could tell her how much
he had liked all he had seen and heard, but somehow the words would not
come. All he could say was, "Thank you, and good-night."
Out-of-doors again, especially when he got as far as the well-known road
he passed along every day, it seemed all like a dream. All the way down
the avenue of pines he kept glancing back to see the lights in the
windows of the Big House--he liked to think of Fergus and his mother in
there by the fire, talking of the afternoon and making, perhaps, plans
for another.
"I hope his back won't hurt him to-night when they carry him up to bed,"
he said to himself. "It was very good of Golden-wings to come. But I'm
afraid she can't be here much more, now that the winter is so near.
Green-wings might perhaps come sometimes, but----"
A sudden puff of wind in his face, and a voice in his ear, interrupted
him. The wind felt sharp and cold, and he did not need the tingling of
his cheeks to tell him who was at hand.
"But what?" said the cutting tones of Gray-wings. "Ah, I know what you
were going to say, Master Gratian. White-wings and I are too sharp and
outspoken for your new friends! Much you know about it. On the contrary,
nothing would do the lame boy more good than a nice blast from the
north, once he is able to be up and about again. It was for the moorland
air the doctors, with some sense for once, sent him up here. And I am
sure you must know it isn't Golden-wings and Green-wings only who are to
be met with on the moors."
"I'm very sorry if I've offended you," said Gratian, "but you needn't be
quite so cross about it. I don't mind you being sharp when I deserve it,
but I've been quite good to-day, _quite_ good. I'm sure the lady
wouldn't like me if I wasn't good."
"Humph!" said Gray-wings. At least she meant it to be "humph," and
Gratian understood it so, but to any one else it would have sounded more
like "whri--i--zz," and you would have put up your hand to your head at
once to be sure that your cap or hat wasn't going to fly off. "Humph!
_I_ don't set up to be perfect, though I might boast a little more
experience, a few billions of years more, of this queer world of yours
than you. And I've been pretty well snubbed in my time and kept in my
proper place--to such an extent, indeed, that I don't now even quarrel
with having a _very_ much worse name than I deserve. It's good for one's
pride, so I make a wry face and swallow it, though of course, all the
same, it must be a very pleasant feeling to know that one has been
quite, _quite_ good. I wish you'd tell me what it's like."
"You're very horrid and unkind, Gray-wings," said Gratian, feeling
almost ready to cry. "Just when I was so happy, to try and spoil it all.
Tell me what you think I've not been good about and I'll listen, but
you needn't go mocking at me for nothing."
There was no answer, and Gratian thought perhaps Gray-wings was feeling
ashamed of herself. But he was much mistaken. She was only reserving her
breath for a burst of laughter. Gratian of course knew it was laughter,
though I don't suppose either you or I would have known it for that.
"What is it that amuses you so?" asked the boy.
"It's Green-wings--you can't see her unfortunately--she's posting down
in such a hurry. She thinks I tease you, and she knows I'm in rather a
mischievous mood to-night. But they've caught her--she can't get past
the corner over there, where the Wildridge hills are--and she is in such
a fuss. The hills never like her to run past without paying them a visit
if they can help it, and she's too soft-hearted to go on her way
will-ye, nill-ye, as I do. So you'll have to trust to me to take you
home after all, my dear godchild."
"Dear Green-wings," said Gratian, "I don't like her to be anxious about
me."
"Bless you, she's always in a pathetic humour about some one or
something," said Gray-wings.
"I don't mind you taking me home if you won't mock at me," said Gratian.
"Are you really displeased with me? Have I done anything naughty without
knowing it?"
Gray-wings's tone suddenly changed. Never had her voice sounded so
gentle and yet earnest.
"No, my child. I only meant to warn you. It is my part both to correct
and to warn--of the two I would rather, by far, warn. Don't get your
little head turned--don't think there is nothing worth, nothing
beautiful, except in the new things you may see and hear and learn. And
never think yourself _quite_ anything. That is always a mistake. What
will seem new to you is only another way of putting the old--and the
path to any real good is always the same--never think to get on faster
from leaving it. You can't understand all this yet, but you will in
time. Now put your arms out, darling--I am here beside you. Clasp them
round my neck; never mind if it feels cold--there. I have you safe, and
here goes----"
A whirl, a rapid upbearing, a rush of cold, fresh air, and a pleasant,
dreamy feeling, as when one is rocked in a little boat at sea. Gratian
closed his eyes--he _was_ tired, poor little chap, for nothing is more
tiring than new sights and feelings--and knew no more till he found
himself lying on the heather, a few yards from the Farm gates.
He looked about him--it was quite night by now--he felt drowsy still,
but no longer tired, and not cold--just pleasantly warm and comfortable.
"Gray-wings must have wrapped me up somehow," he said to himself. "She's
very kind, really. But I must run in--what would mother think if she saw
me lying here?"
And he jumped up and ran home.
The gate was open, the door of the house was open too, and just within
the porch stood his mother.
"Is that you, Gratian?" she said, as she heard his step.
"Yes, mother," he replied; and as he came into the light he looked up at
her. She was much, much older-looking than Fergus's mother, for she had
not married young, and Gratian was the youngest of several, the others
of whom had died. But as he glanced at her sunburnt face, and saw the
love shining out of her eyes, tired and rather worn by daily work as she
was, she somehow reminded him of the graceful lady with the sweet blue
eyes.
"I understand some of what Gray-wings said," he thought. "It's the same
in mother's face and in hers when she looks at Fergus."
And he held up his mouth for a kiss.
"Have you been happy at the Big House?" Mrs. Conyfer asked. "Were they
kind to you? She seems a kind lady, if one can trust to pretty looks."
"Oh! she's very kind," answered Gratian eagerly; "and so's Fergus. He's
her boy, mother--he can't walk, nor scarcely stand. But he's getting
better--the air here will make him better."
"It's to be hoped so, I'm sure," said the farmer's wife, with great
sympathy in her tone. "It must be a terrible grief--the poor child--I
couldn't find it in my heart to refuse to let you go when Mr. Cornelius
told me of his affliction. But you were happy, and they were good to
you?"
"Oh, mother! yes--happier than ever I was in my life."
Mrs. Conyfer smiled and yet sighed a little. She knew her child was not
altogether like his compeers of the moor country--she was proud of it,
and yet sometimes afraid with a vague misgiving.
"Come in and warm yourself--it's a cold evening. There's some hot girdle
cakes and a cup of Fernflower's milk for your supper--though maybe you
had so many fine things to eat at the Big House that you won't be
hungry."
"Ah, but I am, though," he said brightly; and the big kitchen looked so
cheery, and the little supper so tempting, that Gratian smiled with
satisfaction.
"How good of you to make it so nice for me, mother!" he said. "I could
never like _anywhere_ better than my own home, however beautiful it
was."