"Yes, that's right. You see that you can still sing at sight. I don't
suppose you find many prima donnas who can."
With her arm on his shoulder they sat together, playing and singing the
music with which Ulick had interpreted the tale of "Connla and the Fairy
Maiden."
"You see," he said, "he has invented a new system of orchestration; as a
matter of fact, we worked it out together, but that's neither here nor
there. In some respects it is not unlike Wagner; the vocal music is
mostly recitative, but now and then there is nearly an air, and yet it
isn't new, for it is how it would have been written about 1500. You
see," he said, turning over the pages of the full score, "each character
is allotted a different set of instruments as accompaniment; in this way
you get astonishing colour contrasts. For instance, the priest is
accompanied by a chest of six viols; _i.e._, two trebles, two tenors,
two basses. King Cond is accompanied by a set of six cromornes, like the
viols of various sizes. The Fairy Maiden has a set of six flutes or
recorders, the smallest of which is eight inches long, the biggest quite
six feet. Connla is accompanied by a group of oboes; and another
character is allotted three lutes with an arch lute, another a pair of
virginals, another a regal, another a set of six sackbuts and trumpets.
See how all the instruments are used in the overture and in the dances,
of which there are plenty, Pavans, Galliards, Allemaines. But look here,
this is most important: even in the instrumental pieces the instruments
are not to be mixed, as in modern orchestra, but used in groups, always
distinct, like patches of colour in impressionist pictures."
"I like this," and she hummed through the fairy's luring of Connla to
embark with her. "But I could not give an opinion of the orchestration
without hearing it, it is all so new."
"We haven't succeeded yet in getting together sufficient old instruments
to provide an orchestra."
"But, father, do you think such orchestration realisable in modern
music? I see very little Wagner in it; it is more like Caccini or
Monteverde. There can be very little real life in a parody."
"No, but it isn't parody, that's just what it isn't, for it is natural
to him to write in this style. What he writes in the modern style is as
common as anyone else. This is his natural language." In support of the
validity of his argument that a return to the original sources of an art
is possible without loss of originality, he instanced the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood. The most beautiful pictures, and the most original pictures
Millais had ever painted were those that he painted while he was
attempting to revive the methods of Van Eyck, and the language of
Shakespeare was much more archaic than that of any of his
contemporaries. "But explanations are useless. I tried to explain to
Father Gordon that Palestrina was one of the greatest of musicians, but
he never understood. Monsignor Mostyn and I understood each other at
once. I said Palestrina, he said Vittoria--I don't know which suggested
the immense advantage that a revival of the true music of the Catholic
would be in making converts to Rome. You don't like Ulick's music;
there's nothing more to be said."
"But I do like it, father. How impatient you are! And because I don't
understand an entire æstheticism in five minutes, which you and Ulick
Dean have been cooking for the last three years, I am a fool, quite as
stupid as Father Gordon."
Mr. Innes laughed, and when he put his arm round her and kissed her she
was happy again. The hours went lightly by as if enchanted, and it was
midnight when he closed the harpsichord and they went upstairs. Neither
spoke; they were thinking of the old times which apparently had come
back to them. On the landing she said--
"We've had a nice evening after all. Good-night, father. I know my
room."
"Good-night," he said. "You'll find all your things; nothing has been
changed."
Agnes had laid one of her old nightgowns on the bed, and there was her
_prie-dieu_, and on the chest of drawers the score of Tristan which Owen
had given her six years ago. She had come back to sing it. How
extraordinary it all was! She seemed to have drifted like a piece of
seaweed; she lived in the present though it sank beneath her like a
wave. The past she saw dimly, the future not at all; and sitting by her
window she was moved by vague impulses towards infinity. She grew aware
of her own littleness and the vastness overhead--that great unending
enigma represented to her understanding by a tint of blue washed over by
a milky tint. Owen had told her that there were twenty million suns in
the milky way, and that around every one numerous planets revolved. This
earth was but a small planet, and its sun a third-rate sun. On this
speck of earth a being had awakened to a consciousness of the glittering
riddle above his head, but he would die in the same ignorance of its
meaning as a rabbit. The secret of the celestial plan she would never
know. One day she would slip out of consciousness of it; life would
never beckon her again; but the vast plan which she now perceived would
continue to revolve, progressing towards an end which no man, though the
world were to continue for a hundred million years, would ever know.
Her brain seemed to melt in the moonlight, and from the enigma of the
skies her thoughts turned to the enigma of her own individuality. She
was aware that she lived. She was aware that some things were right,
that some things were wrong. She was aware of the strange fortune that
had lured her, that had chosen her out of millions. What did it mean? It
must mean something, just as those stars must mean something--but what?
Opposite to her window there was an open space; it was full of mist and
moonlight; the lights of a distant street looked across it. She too had
said, "'Tis hard upon me, I love my folk above all things, but a great
longing seizes me." That story is the story of human life. What is human
life but a longing for something beyond us, for something we shall not
attain? Again she wondered what her end must be. She must end somehow,
and was it not strange that she could no more answer that simple
question than she could the sublime question which the moon and stars
propounded.... That breathless, glittering peace, was it not wonderful?
It seemed to beckon and allure, and her soul yearned for that peace as
Connla's had for the maiden. Death only could give that peace. Did the
Fairy Maiden mean death? Did the plains of the Ever Living, which the
Fairy Maiden had promised Connla on the condition of his following her,
lie behind those specks of light?
But what end should she choose for herself if the choice were left to
her--to come back to Dulwich and live with her father? She might do
that--but when her father died? Then she hoped that she might die. But
she might outlive him for thirty years--Evelyn Innes, an old woman,
talking to the few friends who came to see her, of the days when Wagner
was triumphant, of her reading of "Isolde." Some such end as that would
be hers. Or she might end as Lady Asher. She might, but she did not
think she would. Owen seemed to think more of marriage now than he used
to. He had always said they would be married when she retired from the
stage. But why should she retire from the stage? If he had wanted to
marry her he should have asked her at first. She did not know what she
was going to do. No one knew what they were going to do. They simply
went on living. That moonlight was melting her brain away. She drew down
the blinds, and she fell asleep thinking of her father's choir and the
beautiful "Missa Brevis" which she was going to hear to-morrow.