_Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum_. It is not everybody's
good fortune to go to Corinth. It is also not everybody's good fortune
to go to Peckham--still less to live there. But if you were one of the
favoured few, and were wont to haunt the Peckham Road and High Street,
the bent figure of Angelo Fardetti would have been as familiar to you
as the vast frontage of the great Emporium which, in the drapery world,
makes Peckham illustrious among London suburbs. You would have seen
him humbly threading his way through the female swarms that clustered
at the plate-glass windows--the mere drones of the hive were fooling
their frivolous lives away over ledgers in the City--the inquiry of a
lost dog in his patient eyes, and an unconscious challenge to Philistia
in the wiry bush of white hair that protruded beneath his perky soft
felt hat. If he had been short, he might have passed unregarded; but
he was very tall--in his heyday he had been six foot two--and very
thin. You smile as you recall to mind the black frock-coat, somewhat
white at the seams, which, tightly buttoned, had the fit of a garment
of corrugated iron. Although he was so tall one never noticed the
inconsiderable stretch of trouser below the long skirt. He always
appeared to be wearing a truncated cassock. You were inclined to laugh
at this queer exotic of the Peckham Road until you looked more keenly
at the man himself. Then you saw an old, old face, very swarthy, very
lined, very beautiful still in its regularity of feature, maintaining
in a little white moustache with waxed ends a pathetic braggadocio of
youth; a face in which the sorrows of the world seemed to have their
dwelling, but sorrows that on their way thither had passed through the
crucible of a simple soul.
Twice a day it was his habit to walk there; shops and faces a
meaningless confusion to his eyes, but his ears alert to the many
harmonies of the orchestra of the great thoroughfare. For Angelo
Fardetti was a musician. Such had he been born; such had he lived.
Those aspects of life which could not be interpreted in terms of music
were to him unintelligible. During his seventy years empires had
crumbled, mighty kingdoms had arisen, bloody wars had been fought,
magic conquests been made by man over nature. But none of these
convulsive facts had ever stirred Angelo Fardetti's imagination. Even
his country he had well-nigh forgotten; it was so many years since he
had left it, so much music had passed since then through his being.
Yet he had never learned to speak English correctly; and, not having an
adequate language (save music) in which to clothe his thoughts, he
spoke very little. When addressed he smiled at you sweetly like a
pleasant, inarticulate old child.
Though his figure was so familiar to the inhabitants of Peckham, few
knew how and where he lived. As a matter of fact, he lived a few
hundred yards away from the busy High Street, in Formosa Terrace, at
the house of one Anton Kirilov, a musician. He had lodged with the
Kirilovs for over twenty years--but not always in the roomy splendour
of Formosa Terrace. Once Angelo was first violin in an important
orchestra, a man of mark, while Anton fiddled away in the obscurity of
a fifth-rate music-hall. Then the famous violinist rented the
drawing-room floor of the Kirilovs' little house in Clapham, while the
Kirilovs, humble folk, got on as best they could. Now things had
changed. Anton Kirilov was musical director of a London theatre, but
Angelo, through age and rheumatism and other infirmities, could fiddle
in public no more; and so it came to pass that Anton Kirilov and Olga,
his wife, and Sonia, their daughter (to whom Angelo had stood godfather
twenty years ago), rioted in spaciousness, while the old man lodged in
tiny rooms at the top of the house, paying an infinitesimal rent and
otherwise living on his scanty savings and such few shillings as he
could earn by copying out parts and giving lessons to here and there a
snub-nosed little girl in a tradesman's back parlour. Often he might
have gone without sufficient nourishment had not Mrs. Kirilov seen to
it; and whenever an extra good dish, succulent and strong, appeared at
her table, either Sonia or the servant carried a plateful upstairs with
homely compliments.
"You are making of me a spoiled child, Olga," he would say sometimes,
"and I ought not to eat of the food for which Anton works so hard."
And she would reply with a laugh:
"If we did not keep you alive, Signor Fardetti, how should we have our
quatuors on Sunday afternoons?"
You see, Mrs. Kirilov, like the good Anton, had lived all her life in
music too--she was a pianist; and Sonia also was a musician--she played
the 'cello in a ladies' orchestra. So they had famous Sunday quatuors
at Formosa Terrace, in which Fardetti was well content to play second
fiddle to Anton's first.
You see, also, that but for these honest souls to whom a musician like
Fardetti was a sort of blood-brother, the evening of the old man's days
might have been one of tragic sadness. But even their affection and
his glad pride in the brilliant success of his old pupil, Geoffrey
Chase, could not mitigate the one great sorrow of his life. The
violin, yes; he had played it well; he had not aimed at a great
soloist's fame, for want of early training, and he had never dreamed
such unrealisable dreams; but other dreams had he dreamed with
passionate intensity. He had dreamed of being a great composer, and he
had beaten his heart out against the bars that shut him from the great
mystery. A waltz or two, a few songs, a catchy march, had been
published and performed, and had brought him unprized money and a
little hateful repute; but the compositions into which he had poured
his soul remained in dusty manuscript, despised and rejected of musical
men.
For many years the artist's imperious craving to create and hope and
will kept him serene. Then, in the prime of his days, a tremendous
inspiration shook him. He had a divine message to proclaim to the
world, a song of life itself, a revelation. It was life,
indestructible, eternal. It was the seed that grew into the tree; the
tree that flourished lustily, and then grew bare and stark and
perished; the seed, again, of the tree that rose unconquerable into the
laughing leaf of spring. It was the kiss of lovers that, when they
were dead and gone, lived immortal on the lips of grandchildren. It
was the endless roll of the seasons, the majestic, triumphant rhythm of
existence. It was a cosmic chant, telling of things as only music
could tell of them, and as no musician had ever told of them before.
He attempted the impossible, you will say. He did. That was the pity
of it. He spent the last drop of his heart's blood over his sonata.
He wrote it and rewrote it, wasting years, but never could he imprison
within those remorseless ruled lines the elusive sounds that shook his
being. An approximation to his dream reached the stage of a completed
score. But he knew that it was thin and lifeless. The themes that
were to be developed into magic harmonies tinkled into commonplace.
The shell of this vast conception was there, but the shell alone. The
thing could not live without the unseizable, and that he had not
seized. Angelo Fardetti, broken down by toil and misery, fell very
sick. Doctors recommended Brighton. Docile as a child, he went to
Brighton, and there a pretty lady who admired his playing at the Monday
Popular Concerts at St. James's Hall, got hold of him and married him.
When she ran away, a year later, with a dashing young stockbroker, he
took the score of the sonata that was to be the whole interpretation of
life from its half-forgotten hiding-place, played it through on the
piano, burst into a passion of tears, in the uncontrollable Italian
way, sold up his house, and went to lodge with Anton Kirilov. To no
son or daughter of man did he ever show a note or play a bar of the
sonata. And never again did he write a line of music. Bravely and
humbly he faced life, though the tragedy of failure made him
prematurely old. And all through the years the sublime message
reverberated in his soul and haunted his dreams; and his was the bitter
sorrow of knowing that never should that message be delivered for the
comforting of the world.
The loss of his position as first violin forced him, at sixty, to take
more obscure engagements. That was when he followed the Kirilovs to
Peckham. And then he met the joy of his old age--his one pupil of
genius, Geoffrey Chase, an untrained lad of fourteen, the son of a
well-to-do seed merchant in the High Street.
"His father thinks it waste of time," said Mrs. Chase, a gentle,
mild-eyed woman, when she brought the boy to him, "but Geoffrey is so
set on it--and so I've persuaded his father to let him have lessons."
"Do you, too, love music?" he asked.
Her eyes grew moist, and she nodded.
"Poor lady! He should not let you starve. Never mind," he said,
patting her shoulder. "Take comfort. I will teach your boy to play
for you."
And he did. He taught him for three years. He taught him passionately
all he knew, for Geoffrey, with music in his blood, had the great gift
of the composer. He poured upon the boy all the love of his lonely old
heart, and dreamed glorious dreams of his future. The Kirilovs, too,
regarded Geoffrey as a prodigy, and welcomed him into their circle, and
made much of him. And little Sonia fell in love with him, and he, in
his boyish way, fell in love with the dark-haired maiden who played on
a 'cello so much bigger than herself. At last the time came when
Angelo said:
"My son, I can teach you no more. You must go to Milan."
"My father will never consent," said Geoffrey.
"We will try to arrange that," said Angelo.
So, in their simple ways, Angelo and Mrs. Chase intrigued together
until they prevailed upon Mr. Chase to attend one of the Kirilovs'
Sunday concerts. He came in church-going clothes, and sat with
irreconcilable stiffness on a straight-backed chair. His wife sat
close by, much agitated. The others played a concerto arranged as a
quintette; Geoffrey first violin, Angelo second, Sonia 'cello, Anton
bass, and Mrs. Kirilov at the piano. It was a piece of exquisite
tenderness and beauty.
"Very pretty," said Mr. Chase.
"It's beautiful," cried his wife, with tears in her eyes.
"I said so," remarked Mr. Chase.
"And what do you think of my pupil?" Angelo asked excitedly.
"I think he plays very nicely," Mr. Chase admitted.
"But, dear heavens!" cried Angelo. "It is not his playing! One could
pick up fifty better violinists in the street. It is the concerto--the
composition."
Mr. Chase rose slowly to his feet. "Do you mean to tell me that
Geoffrey made up all that himself?"
"Of course. Didn't you know?"
"Will you play it again?"
Gladly they assented. When it was over he took Angelo out into the
passage.
"I'm not one of those narrow-minded people who don't believe in art,
Mr. Fardetti," said he. "And Geoff has already shown me that he can't
sell seeds for toffee. But if he takes up music, will he be able to
earn his living at it?"
"Beyond doubt," replied Angelo, with a wide gesture.
"But a good living? You'll forgive me being personal, Mr. Fardetti,
but you yourself----"
"I," said the old man humbly, "am only a poor fiddler--but your son is
a great musical genius."
"I'll think over it," said Mr. Chase.
Mr. Chase thought over it, and Geoffrey went to Milan, and Angelo
Fardetti was once more left desolate. On the day of the lad's
departure he and Sonia wept a little in each other's arms, and late
that night he once more unearthed the completed score of his sonata,
and scanned it through in vain hope of comfort. But as the months
passed comfort came. His beloved swan was not a goose, but a wonder
among swans. He was a wonder at the Milan Conservatoire, and won prize
after prize and medal after medal, and every time he came home he bore
his blushing honours thicker upon him. And he remained the same frank,
simple youth, always filled with gratitude and reverence for his old
master, and though on familiar student terms with all conditions of
cosmopolitan damsels, never faithless to the little Anglo-Russian
maiden whom he had left at home.
In the course of time his studies were over, and he returned to
England. A professorship at the Royal School of Music very soon
rendered him financially independent. He began to create. Here and
there a piece of his was played at concerts. He wrote incidental music
for solemn productions at great London theatres. Critics discovered
him, and wrote much about him in the newspapers. Mr. Chase, the seed
merchant, though professing to his wife a man-of-the-world's
indifference to notoriety, used surreptitiously to cut out the notices
and carry them about in his fat pocket-book, and whenever he had a new
one he would lie in wait for the lean figure of Angelo Fardetti, and
hale him into the shop and make him drink Geoffrey's health in sloe
gin, which Angelo abhorred, but gulped down in honour of the prodigy.
One fine October morning Angelo Fardetti missed his walk. He sat
instead by his window, and looked unseeingly at the prim row of houses
on the opposite side of Formosa Terrace. He had not the heart to go
out--and, indeed, he had not the money; for these walks, twice daily,
along the High Street and the Peckham Road, took him to and from a
queer little Italian restaurant which, with him apparently as its only
client, had eked out for years a mysterious and precarious existence.
He felt very old--he was seventy-two, very useless, very poor. He had
lost his last pupil, a fat, unintelligent girl of thirteen, the
daughter of a local chemist, and no one had sent him any copying work
for a week. He had nothing to do. He could not even walk to his usual
sparrow's meal. It is sad when you are so old that you cannot earn the
right to live in a world which wants you no longer.
Looking at unseen bricks through a small window-pane was little
consolation. Mechanically he rose and went to a grand piano, his one
possession of price, which, with an old horsehair sofa, an oval table
covered with a maroon cloth, and a chair or two, congested the tiny
room, and, sitting down, began to play one of Stephen Heller's _Nuits
Blanches_. You see, Angelo Fardetti was an old-fashioned musician.
Suddenly a phrase arrested him. He stopped dead, and remained staring
out over the polished plane of the piano. For a few moments he was
lost in the chain of associated musical ideas. Then suddenly his
swarthy, lined face lit up, and he twirled his little white moustache
and began to improvise, striking great majestic chords. Presently he
rose, and from a pile of loose music in a corner drew a sheet of ruled
paper. He returned to the piano, and began feverishly to pencil down
his inspiration. His pulses throbbed. At last he had got the great
andante movement of his sonata. For an hour he worked intensely; then
came the inevitable check. Nothing more would come. He rose and
walked about the room, his head swimming. After a quarter of an hour
he played over what he had written, and then, with a groan of despair,
fell forward, his arms on the keys, his bushy white head on his arms.
The door opened, and Sonia, comely and shapely, entered the room,
carrying a tray with food and drink set out on a white cloth. Seeing
him bowed over the piano, she put the tray on the table and advanced.
"Dear godfather," she said gently, her hand on his shoulder.
He raised his head and smiled.
"I did not hear you, my little Sonia."
"You have been composing?"
He sat upright, and tore the pencilled sheets into fragments, which he
dropped in a handful on the floor.
"Once, long ago, I had a dream. I lost it. To-day I thought that I
had found it. But do you know what I did really find?"
"No, godfather," replied Sonia, stooping, with housewifely tidiness, to
pick up the litter.
"That I am a poor old fool," said he.
Sonia threw the paper into the grate and again came up behind him.
"It is better to have lost a dream than never to have had one at all.
What was your dream?"
"I thought I could write the Song of Life as I heard it--as I hear it
still." He smote his forehead lightly. "But no! God has not
considered me worthy to sing it. I bow my head to His--to His"--he
sought for the word with thin fingers--"to His decree."
She said, with the indulgent wisdom of youth speaking to age:
"He has given you the power to love and to win love."
The old man swung round on the music-stool and put his arm round her
waist and smiled into her young face.
"Geoffrey is a very fortunate fellow."
"Because he's a successful composer?"
He looked at her and shook his head, and Sonia, knowing what he meant,
blushed very prettily. Then she laughed and broke away.
"Mother has had seventeen partridges sent her as presents this week,
and she wants you to help her eat them, and father's offered a bargain
in some good Beaujolais, and won't decide until you tell him what you
think of it."
Deftly she set out the meal, and drew a chair to the table. Angelo
Fardetti rose.
"That I should love you all," said he simply, "is only human, but that
you should so much love me is more than I can understand."
You see, he knew that watchful ears had missed his usual outgoing
footsteps, and that watchful hearts had divined the reason. To refuse,
to hesitate, would be to reject love. So there was no more to be said.
He sat down meekly, and Sonia ministered to his wants. As soon as she
saw that he was making headway with the partridge and the burgundy, she
too sat by the table.
"Godfather," she said, "I've had splendid news this morning."
"Geoffrey?"
"Of course. What other news could be splendid? His Symphony in E flat
is going to be given at the Queen's Hall."
"That is indeed beautiful news," said the old man, laying down knife
and fork, "but I did not know that he had written a Symphony in E flat."
"That was why he went and buried himself for months in Cornwall--to
finish it," she explained.
"I knew nothing about it. Aie! aie!" he sighed. "It is to you, and
no longer to me, that he tells things."
"You silly, jealous old dear!" she laughed. "He _had_ to account for
deserting me all the summer. But as to what it's all about, I'm as
ignorant as you are. I've not heard a note of it. Sometimes Geoff is
like that, you know. If he's dead certain sure of himself, he won't
have any criticism or opinions while the work's in progress. It's only
when he's doubtful that he brings one in. And the doubtful things are
never anything like the certain ones. You must have noticed it."
"That is true," said Angelo Fardetti, taking up knife and fork again.
"He was like that since he was a boy."
"It is going to be given on Saturday fortnight. He'll conduct himself.
They've got a splendid programme to send him off. Lembrich's going to
play, and Carli's going to sing--just for his sake. Isn't it gorgeous?"
"It is grand. But what does Geoffrey say about it? Come, come, after
all he is not the sphinx." He drummed his fingers impatiently on the
table.
"Would you really like to know?"
"I am waiting."
"He says it's going to knock 'em!" she laughed.
"Knock 'em?"
"Those were his words."
"But----"
She interpreted into purer English. Geoffrey was confident that his
symphony would achieve a sensational success.
"In the meanwhile," said she, "if you don't finish your partridge
you'll break mother's heart."
She poured out a glass of burgundy, which the old man drank; but he
refused the food.
"No, no," he said, "I cannot eat more. I have a lump there--in my
throat. I am too excited. I feel that he is marching to his great
triumph. My little Geoffrey." He rose, knocking his chair over, and
strode about the confined space. "_Sacramento_! But I am a wicked old
man. I was sorrowful because I was so dull, so stupid that I could not
write a sonata. I blamed the good God. _Mea maxima culpa_. And at
once he sends me a partridge in a halo of love, and the news of my dear
son's glory----"
Sonia stopped him, her plump hands on the front of his old corrugated
frock-coat.
"And your glory, too, dear godfather. If it hadn't been for you, where
would Geoffrey be? And who realises it more than Geoffrey? Would you
like to see a bit of his letter? Only a little bit--for there's a lot
of rubbish in it that I would be ashamed of anybody who thinks well of
him to read--but just a little bit."
Her hand was at the broad belt joining blouse and skirt. Angelo,
towering above her, smiled with an old man's tenderness at the laughing
love in her dark eyes, and at the happiness in her young, comely face.
Her features were generous, and her mouth frankly large, but her lips
were fresh and her teeth white and even, and to the old fellow she
looked all that man could dream of the virginal mother-to-be of great
sons. She fished the letter from her belt, scanned and folded it
carefully.
"There! Read."
And Angelo Fardetti read:
"I've learned my theory and technique, and God knows what--things that
only they could teach me--from professors with world-famous names. But
for real inspiration, for the fount of music itself, I come back all
the time to our dear old _maestro_, Angelo Fardetti. I can't for the
life of me define what it is, but he opened for me a secret chamber
behind whose concealed door all these illustrious chaps have walked
unsuspectingly. It seems silly to say it because, beyond a few odds
and ends, the dear old man has composed nothing, but I am convinced
that I owe the essentials of everything I do in music to his teaching
and influence."
Angelo gave her back the folded letter without a word, and turned and
stood again by the window, staring unseeingly at the prim,
semi-detached villas opposite. Sonia, having re-hidden her treasure,
stole up to him. Feeling her near, he stretched out a hand and laid it
on her head.
"God is very wonderful," said he--"very mysterious. Oh, and so good!"
He fumbled, absently and foolishly, with her well-ordered hair, saying
nothing more. After a while she freed herself gently and led him back
to his partridge.
A day or two afterwards Geoffrey came to Peckham, and mounted with
Sonia to Fardetti's rooms, where the old man embraced him tenderly, and
expressed his joy in the exuberant foreign way. Geoffrey received the
welcome with an Englishman's laughing embarrassment. Perhaps the only
fault that Angelo Fardetti could find in the beloved pupil was his
uncompromising English manner and appearance. His well-set figure and
crisp, short fair hair and fair moustache did not sufficiently express
him as a great musician. Angelo had to content himself with the lad's
eyes--musician's eyes, as he said, very bright, arresting, dark blue,
with depths like sapphires, in which lay strange thoughts and human
laughter.
"I've only run in, dear old _maestro_, to pass the time of day with
you, and to give you a ticket for my Queen's Hall show. You'll come,
won't you?"
"He asks if I will come! I would get out of my coffin and walk through
the streets!"
"I think you'll be pleased," said Geoffrey. "I've been goodness knows
how long over it, and I've put into it all I know. If it doesn't come
off, I'll----"
He paused.
"You will commit no rashness," cried the old man in alarm.
"I will. I'll marry Sonia the very next day!"
There was laughing talk, and the three spent a happy little quarter of
an hour. But Geoffrey went away without giving either of the others an
inkling of the nature of his famous symphony. It was Geoffrey's way.
The fateful afternoon arrived. Angelo Fardetti, sitting in the stalls
of the Queen's Hall with Sonia and her parents, looked round the great
auditorium, and thrilled with pleasure at seeing it full. London had
thronged to hear the first performance of his beloved's symphony. As a
matter of fact, London had also come to hear the wonderful orchestra
give Tchaikowsky's Fourth Symphony, and to hear Lembrich play the
violin and Carli sing, which they did once in a blue moon at a symphony
concert. But in the old man's eyes these ineffectual fires paled
before Geoffrey's genius. So great was his suspense and agitation that
he could pay but scant attention to the first two items on the
programme. It seemed almost like unmeaning music, far away.
During the interval before the Symphony in E flat his thin hand found
Sonia's, and held it tight, and she returned the pressure. She, too,
was sick with anxiety. The great orchestra, tier upon tier, was
a-flutter with the performers scrambling into their places, and with
leaves of scores being turned over, and with a myriad moving bows.
Then all having settled into the order of a vast machine, Geoffrey
appeared at the conductor's stand. Comforting applause greeted him.
Was he not the rising hope of English music? Many others beside those
four to whom he was dear, and the mother and father who sat a little
way in front of them, felt the same nervous apprehension. The future
of English music was at stake. Would it be yet one more disappointment
and disillusion, or would it rank the young English composer with the
immortals? Geoffrey bowed smilingly at the audience, turned and with
his baton gave the signal to begin.
Although only a few years have passed since that memorable first
performance, the modestly named Symphony in E flat is now famous and
Geoffrey Chase is a great man the wide world over. To every lover of
music the symphony is familiar. But only those who were present at the
Queen's Hall on that late October afternoon can realise the wild
rapture of enthusiasm with which the symphony was greeted. It answered
all longings, solved all mysteries. It interpreted, for all who had
ears to hear, the fairy dew of love, the burning depths of passion,
sorrow and death, and the eternal Triumph of Life. Intensely modern
and faultless in technique, it was new, unexpected, individual,
unrelated to any school.
The scene was one of raging tumult; but there was one human being who
did not applaud, and that was the old musician, forgotten of the world,
Angelo Fardetti. He had fainted.
All through the piece he had sat, bolt upright, his nerves strung to
breaking-point, his dark cheeks growing greyer and greyer, and the
stare in his eyes growing more and more strange, and the grip on the
girl's hand growing more and more vice-like, until she, for sheer
agony, had to free herself. And none concerned themselves about him;
not even Sonia, for she was enwrapped in the soul of her lover's music.
And even between the movements her heart was too full for speech or
thought, and when she looked at the old man, she saw him smile wanly
and nod his head as one who, like herself, was speechless with emotion.
At the end the storm burst. She rose with the shouting, clapping,
hand- and handkerchief-waving house, and suddenly, missing him from her
side, glanced round and saw him huddled up unconscious in his stall.
The noise and movement were so great that few noticed the long lean old
figure being carried out of the hall by one of the side doors
fortunately near. In the vestibule, attended by the good Anton and his
wife and Sonia, and a commissionaire, he recovered. When he could
speak, he looked round and said:
"I am a silly old fellow. I am sorry I have spoiled your happiness. I
think I must be too old for happiness, for this is how it has treated
me."
There was much discussion between his friends as to what should be
done, but good Mrs. Kirilov, once girlishly plump, when Angelo had
first known her, now florid and fat and motherly, had her way, and,
leaving Anton and Sonia to see the hero of the afternoon, if they
could, drove off in a cab to Peckham with the over-wrought old man and
put him to bed and gave him homely remedies, invalid food and drink,
and commanded him to sleep till morning.
But Angelo Fardetti disobeyed her. For Sonia, although she had found
him meekly between the sheets when she went up to see him that evening,
heard him later, as she was going to bed--his sitting-room was
immediately above her--playing over, on muted strings, various themes
of Geoffrey's symphony. At last she went up to his room and put her
head in at the door, and saw him, a lank, dilapidated figure in an old,
old dressing-gown, fiddle and bow in hand.
"Oh! oh!" she rated. "You are a naughty, naughty old dear. Go to bed
at once."
He smiled like a guilty but spoiled child. "I will go," said he.
In the morning she herself took up his simple breakfast and all the
newspapers folded at the page on which the notices of the concert were
printed. The Press was unanimous in acclamation of the great genius
that had raised English music to the spheres. She sat at the foot of
the bed and read to him while he sipped his coffee and munched his
roll, and, absorbed in her own tremendous happiness, was content to
feel the glow of the old man's sympathy. There was little to be said
save exclamatory pæans, so overwhelming was the triumph. Tears
streamed down his lined cheeks, and between the tears there shone the
light of a strange gladness in his eyes. Presently Sonia left him and
went about her household duties. An hour or so afterwards she caught
the sound of his piano; again he was recalling bits of the great
symphony, and she marvelled at his musical memory. Then about
half-past eleven she saw him leave the house and stride away, his head
in the air, his bent shoulders curiously erect.
Soon came the clatter of a cab stopping at the front door, and Geoffrey
Chase, for whom she had been watching from her window, leaped out upon
the pavement. She ran down and admitted him. He caught her in his
arms and they stood clinging in a long embrace.
"It's too wonderful to talk about," she whispered.
"Then don't let us talk about it," he laughed.
"As if we could help it! I can think of nothing else."
"I can--you," said he, and kissed her again.
Now, in spite of the spaciousness of the house in Formosa Terrace, it
had only two reception-rooms, as the house-agents grandiloquently term
them, and these, dining-room and drawing-room, were respectively
occupied by Anton and Mrs. Kirilov engaged in their morning lessons.
The passage where the young people stood was no fit place for lovers'
meetings.
"Let us go up to the _maestro's_. He's out," said Sonia.
They did as they had often done in like circumstances. Indeed, the old
man, before now, had given up his sitting-room to them, feigning an
unconquerable desire to walk abroad. Were they not his children,
dearer to him than anyone else in the world? So it was natural that
they should make themselves at home in his tiny den. They sat and
talked of the great victory, of the playing of the orchestra, of
passages that he might take slower or quicker next time, of the
ovation, of the mountain of congratulatory telegrams and letters that
blocked up his rooms. They talked of Angelo Fardetti and his deep
emotion and his pride. And they talked of the future, of their
marriage which was to take place very soon. She suggested postponement.
"I want you to be quite sure. This must make a difference."
"Difference!" he cried indignantly.
She waved him off and sat on the music-stool by the piano.
"I must speak sensibly. You are one of the great ones of the musical
world, one of the great ones of the world itself. You will go on and
on. You will have all sorts of honours heaped on you. You will go
about among lords and ladies, what is called Society--oh, I know,
you'll not be able to help it. And all the time I remain what I am,
just a poor little common girl, a member of a twopenny-halfpenny
ladies' band. I'd rather you regretted having taken up with me before
than after. So we ought to put it off."
He answered her as a good man who loves deeply can only answer. Her
heart was convinced; but she turned her head aside and thought of
further argument. Her eye fell on some music open on the rest, and
mechanically, with a musician's instinct, she fingered a few bars. The
strange familiarity of the theme startled her out of preoccupation.
She continued the treble, and suddenly with a cold shiver of wonder,
crashed down both hands and played on.
Geoffrey strode up to her.
"What's that you're playing?"
She pointed hastily to the score. He bent over and stared at the faded
manuscript.
"Why, good God!" he cried, "it's my symphony."
She stopped, swung round and faced him with fear in her eyes.
"Yes. It's your symphony."
He took the thick manuscript from the rest and looked at the
brown-paper cover. On it was written:
"The Song of Life. A Sonata by Angelo Fardetti. September, 1878."
There was an amazed silence. Then, in a queer accusing voice, Sonia
cried out:
"Geoffrey, what have you done?"
"Heaven knows; but I've never known of this before. My God! Open the
thing somewhere else and see."
So Sonia opened the manuscript at random and played, and again it was
an echo of Geoffrey's symphony. He sank on a chair like a man crushed
by an overwhelming fatality, and held his head in his hands.
"I oughtn't to have done it," he groaned. "But it was more than me.
The thing overmastered me, it haunted me so that I couldn't sleep, and
the more it haunted me the more it became my own, my very own. It was
too big to lose."
Sonia held him with scared eyes.
"What are you talking of?" she asked.
"The way I came to write the Symphony. It's like a nightmare." He
rose. "A couple of years ago," said he, "I bought a bundle of old
music at a second-hand shop. It contained a collection of
eighteenth-century stuff which I wanted. I took the whole lot, and on
going through it, found a clump of old, discoloured manuscript partly
in faded brown ink, partly in pencil. It was mostly rough notes. I
tried it out of curiosity. The composition was feeble and the
orchestration childish--I thought it the work of some dead and
forgotten amateur--but it was crammed full of ideas, crammed full of
beauty. I began tinkering it about, to amuse myself. The more I
worked on it the more it fascinated me. It became an obsession. Then
I pitched the old score away and started it on my own."
"The _maestro_ sold a lot of old music about that time," said Sonia.
The young man threw up his hands. "It's a fatality, an awful fatality.
My God," he cried, "to think that I of all men should have stolen
Angelo Fardetti's music!"
"No wonder he fainted yesterday," said Sonia.
It was catastrophe. Both regarded it in remorseful silence. Sonia
said at last:
"You'll have to explain."
"Of course, of course. But what must the dear old fellow be thinking
of me? What else but that I've got hold of this surreptitiously, while
he was out of the room? What else but that I'm a mean thief?"
"He loves you, dear, enough to forgive you anything."
"It's the Unforgivable Sin. I'm wiped out. I cease to exist as an
honest man. But I had no idea," he cried, with the instinct of
self-defence, "that I had come so near him. I thought I had just got a
theme here and there. I thought I had recast all the odds and ends
according to my own scheme." He ran his eye over a page or two of the
score. "Yes, this is practically the same as the old rough notes. But
there was a lot, of course, I couldn't use. Look at that, for
instance." He indicated a passage.
"I can't read it like you," said Sonia. "I must play it."
She turned again to the piano, and played the thin, uninspired music
that had no relation to the Symphony in E flat, and her eyes filled
with tears as she remembered poignantly what the old man had told her
of his Song of Life. She went on and on until the music quickened into
one of the familiar themes; and the tears fell, for she knew how poorly
it was treated.
And then the door burst open. Sonia stopped dead in the middle of a
bar, and they both turned round to find Angelo Fardetti standing on the
threshold.
"Ah, no!" he cried, waving his thin hands. "Put that away. I did not
know I had left it out. You must not play that. Ah, my son! my son!"
He rushed forward and clasped Geoffrey in his arms, and kissed him on
the cheeks, and murmured foolish, broken words.
"You have seen it. You have seen the miracle. The miracle of the good
God. Oh, I am happy! My son, my son! I am the happiest of old men.
Ah!" He shook him tremulously by both shoulders, and looked at him
with a magical light in his old eyes. "You are really what our dear
Anton calls a prodigy. I have thought and you have executed. Santa
Maria!" he cried, raising hands and eyes to heaven. "I thank you for
this miracle that has been done!"
He turned away. Geoffrey, in blank bewilderment, made a step forward.
"_Maestro_, I never knew----"
But Sonia, knowledge dawning in her face, clapped her hand over his
mouth--and he read her conjecture in her eyes, and drew a great breath.
The old man came again and laughed and cried and wrung his hand, and
poured out his joy and wonder into the amazed ears of the
conscience-stricken young musician. The floodgates of speech were
loosened.
"You see what you have done, _figlio mio_. You see the miracle.
This--this poor rubbish is of me, Angelo Fardetti. On it I spent my
life, my blood, my tears, and it is a thing of nothing, nothing. It is
wind and noise; but by the miracle of God I breathed it into your
spirit and it grew--and it grew into all that I dreamed--all that I
dreamed and could not express. It is my Song of Life sung as I could
have sung it if I had been a great genius like you. And you have taken
my song from my soul, from my heart, and all the sublime harmonies that
could get no farther than this dull head you have put down in immortal
music."
He went on exalted, and Sonia and Geoffrey stood pale and silent. To
undeceive him was impossible.
"You see it is a miracle?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Geoffrey in a low voice.
"You never saw this before. Ha! ha!" he laughed delightedly. "Not a
human soul has seen it or heard it. I kept it locked up there, in my
little strong-box. And it was there all the time I was teaching you.
And you never suspected."
"No, _maestro_, I did not," said the young man truthfully.
"Now, when did you begin to think of it? How did it come to you--my
Song of Life? Did it sing in your brain while you were here and my
brain was guiding yours, and then gather form and shape all through the
long years?"
"Yes," said Geoffrey. "That was how it came about."
Angelo took Sonia's plump cheeks between his hands and smiled. "Now
you understand, my little Sonia, why I was so foolish yesterday. It
was emotion, such emotion as a man has never felt before in the world.
And now you know why I could not speak this morning. I thought of the
letter you showed me. He confessed that old Angelo Fardetti had
inspired him, but he did not know how. I know. The little spark flew
from the soul of Angelo Fardetti into his soul, and it became a Divine
Fire. And my Song of Life is true. The symphony was born in me--it
died in me--it is re-born so gloriously in him. The seed is
imperishable. It is eternal."
He broke away, laughing through a little sob, and stood by the window,
once more gazing unseeingly at the opposite villas of Formosa Terrace.
Geoffrey went up to him and fell on his knees--it was a most un-English
thing to do--and took the old hand very reverently.
"_Padre mio_," said he.
"Yes, it is true. I am your father," said the old man in Italian, "and
we are bound together by more than human ties." He laid his hand on
the young man's head. "May all the blessings of God be upon you."
Geoffrey rose, the humblest man in England. Angelo passed his hand
across his forehead, but his face bore a beautiful smile.
"I feel so happy," said he. "So happy that it is terrible. And I feel
so strange. And my heart is full. If you will forgive me, I will lie
down for a little." He sank on the horse-hair sofa and smiled up in
the face of the young man. "And my head is full of the _andante_
movement that I could never write, and you have made it like the
harmonies before the Throne of God. Sit down at the piano and play it
for me, my son."
So Geoffrey took his seat at the piano, and played, and as he played,
he lost himself in his music. And Sonia crept near and stood by him in
a dream while the wonderful story of the passing of human things was
told. When the sound of the last chords had died away she put her arms
round Geoffrey's neck and laid her cheek against his. For a while time
stood still. Then they turned and saw the old man sleeping peacefully.
She whispered a word, he rose, and they began to tiptoe out of the
room. But suddenly instinct caused Sonia to turn her head again. She
stopped and gripped Geoffrey's hand. She caught a choking breath.
"Is he asleep?"
They went back and bent over him. He was dead.
Angelo Fardetti had died of a happiness too great for mortal man. For
to which one of us in a hundred million is it given to behold the utter
realisation of his life's dream?