A LITTLE MUSIC.
After lunch, Herbert Le Breton went off for his afternoon ride--a
grave social misdemeanour, Ernest thought it--and Arthur Berkeley
took Edie round to show her about the college and the shady gardens.
Ernest would have liked to walk with her himself, for there was
something in her that began to interest him somewhat; and besides,
she was so pretty, and so graceful, and so sympathetic: but he
felt he must not take her away from her host for the time being,
who had a sort of proprietary right in the pleasing duty of acting
as showman to her over his own college. So he dropped behind with
Harry Oswald and old Mrs. Martindale, and endeavoured to simulate
a polite interest in the old lady's scraps of conversation upon
the heads of houses, their wives and families.
'This is Addison's Walk, Miss Oswald,' said Berkeley, taking her
through the gate into the wooded path beside the Cherwell; 'so
called because the ingenious Mr. Addison is said to have specially
patronised it. As he was an undergraduate of this college, and a
singularly lazy person, it's very probable that he really did so;
every other undergraduate certainly does, for it's the nearest walk
an idle man can get without ever taking the trouble to go outside
the grounds of Magdalen.'
'The ingenious Mr. Addison was quite right then,' Edie answered,
smiling; 'for he couldn't have chosen a lovelier place on earth to
stroll in. How exquisite it looks just now, with the mellow light
falling down upon the path through this beautiful autumnal foliage!
It's just a natural cathedral aisle, with a lot of pale straw-coloured
glass in the painted windows, like that splendid one we went to
see the other day at Merton Chapel.'
'Yes, there are certainly tones in that window I never saw in any
other,' Berkeley said, 'and the walk to-day is very much the same
in its delicate colouring. You're fond of colour, I should think,
Miss Oswald, from what you say.'
'Oh, nobody could help being struck by the autumn colouring of the
Thames valley, I should fancy,' said Edie, blushing. 'We noticed
it all the way up as we came in the train from Reading, a perfect
glow of crimson and orange at Pangbourne, Goring, Mapledurham, and
Nuneham. I always thought the Dart in October the loveliest blaze
of warm reds and yellows I had ever seen anywhere in nature, but
the Thames valley beats it hollow, as Harry says. This walk to-day
is just one's ideal picture of Milton's Vallombrosa.'
'Ah, yes, I always look forward to the first days of October term,'
said Berkeley, slowly, 'as one of the greatest and purest treats
in the whole round workaday twelvemonth. When the creeper on the
Founder's Tower first begins to redden and crimson in the autumn,
I could sit all day long by my open window, and just look at that
glorious sight alone instead of having my dinner. But I'm very fond
of these walks in full summer time too. I often stop up alone all
through the long (being tied to my curacy here permanently, you
know), and then I have the run of the place entirely to myself.
Sometimes I take my flute out, and sit under the shade here and
compose some of my little pieces.'
'I can easily understand that they were composed here,' said Edie
quickly. 'They've caught exactly the flavour of the place--especially
your exquisite little Penseroso.'
'Ah, you know my music, then, Miss Oswald?'
'Oh yes, Harry always brings me home all your pieces whenever he
comes back at the end of term. I can play every one of them without
the notes. But the Penseroso is my special favourite.'
'It's mine, too. I'm so glad you like it. But I'm working away at
a little thing now which you shall hear as soon as I've finished
it; something lighter and daintier than anything else I've ever
attempted. I shall call it the Butterfly Canzonet.'
'Why don't you publish your music under your own name, Mr. Berkeley?'
'Oh, because it would never do. I'm a parson now, and I must
keep up the dignity of the cloth by fighting shy of any aesthetic
heterodoxies. It would be professional suicide for me to be suspected
of artistic leanings. All very well in an archdeacon, you know,
to cultivate his tastes for chants and anthems, but for a simple
curate!--and secular songs too!--why, it would be sheer contumacy.
His chances of a living would shrink at once to what your brother
would call a vanishing quantity.'
'Well, you can't imagine how much I admire your songs and airs,
Mr. Berkeley. I was so pleased when you invited us, to think I was
going to lunch with a real composer. There's no music I love so
much as yours.'
'I'm very glad to hear it, Miss Oswald, I assure you. But I'm only
a beginner and a trifler yet. Some day I mean to produce something
that will be worth listening to. Only, do you remember what some
French novelist once said?--"A poet's sweetest poem is always
the one he has never been able to compose." I often think that's
true of music, too. Away up in the higher stories of one's brain
somewhere, there's a tune floating about, or rather a whole oratorio
full of them, that one can never catch and fix upon ruled paper.
The idea's there, such a beautiful and vague idea, so familiar to
one, but so utterly unrealisable on any known instrument--a sort
of musical Ariel, flitting before one and tantalising one for
ever, but never allowing one to come up with it and see its real
features. I'm always dissatisfied with what I've actually written,
and longing to crystallise into a score the imaginary airs I can
never catch. Except in this last piece of mine; that's the only
thing I've ever done that thoroughly and completely pleases me.
Come and see me next week, and I'll play it over to you.'
They walked all round the meadows, and back again beside the arches
of the beautiful bridge, and then returned to Berkeley's rooms once
more for a cup of afternoon tea, and an air or two of Berkeley's
own composing. Edie enjoyed the walk and the talk immensely; she
enjoyed the music even more. In a way, it was all so new to her.
For though she had always seen much of Harry, and though Harry, who
was the kindest and proudest of brothers, had always instinctively
kept her up to his own level of thought and conversation, still,
she wasn't used to seeing so many intelligent and educated young
men together, and the novelty of their society was delightfully
exhilarating to her eager little mind. To a bright girl of nineteen,
wherever she may come from, the atmosphere of Oxford has a wonderfully
cheering and stimulating effect; to a country tradesman's daughter
from a tiny west-country village it is like a little paradise on
earth with a ceaseless round of intensely enjoyable breakfasts,
luncheons, dinners, and water-parties.
Ernest, for his part, was not so well pleased. He wanted to have a
little conversation with Oswald's sister; and he was compelled by
politeness to give her up in favour of Arthur Berkeley. However, he
made up for it when he returned, and monopolised the pretty little
visitor himself for almost the entire tea-hour.
As soon as they had gone, Arthur Berkeley sported his oak, and sat
down by himself in his comfortable crimson-covered basket chair.
'I won't let anybody come and disturb me this evening,' he said to
himself moodily. 'I won't let any of these noisy Magdalen men come
with their racket and riot to cut off the memory of that bright little
dream. No desecration after she has gone. Little Miss Butterfly!
What a pretty, airy, dainty, delicate little morsel it is! How she
flits, and sips, and natters about every possible subject, just
touching the tip of it so gracefully with her tiny white fingers,
and blushing so unfeignedly when she thinks she's paid you a
compliment, or you've paid her one. How she blushed when she said
she liked my music! How she blushed when I said she had a splendid
ear for minute discrimination! Somehow, if I were a falling-in-love
sort of fellow, I half fancy I could manage to fall in love with her
on the spot. Or rather, if I were a good analytical psychologist,
perhaps I ought more correctly to say I AM in love with her already.'
He sat down idly at the piano and played a few bars softly
to himself--a beautiful, airy sort of melody, as it shaped itself
vaguely in his head at the moment, with a little of the new wine of
first love running like a trill through the midst of its fast-flowing
quavers and dainty undulations. 'That will do,' he said to himself
approvingly. 'That will do very well; that's little Miss Butterfly.
Here she flits, flits, flits, flickers, sip, sip, sip, at her
honeyed flowers; twirl away, whirl away, off in the sunshine--there
you go, Miss Butterfly, eddying and circling with your painted
mate. Flirt, flirt, flirt, coquetting and curvetting, in your
pretty rhythmical aërial quadrille. Down again, down to the hare-bell
on the hill side; sip at it, sip at it, sip at it, sweet little
honey-drops, clear little honey-drops, bright little honey-drops;
oh, for a song to be set to the melody! Tra-la-la, tro-lo-lo, up
again, Butterfly. Little silk handkerchief, little lace neckerchief,
fluttering, fluttering! Feathery wings of her, bright little eyes
of her, flit, flit, flicker! Now, she blushes, blushes, blushes;
deep crimson; oh, what a colour! Paint it, painter! Now she speaks.
Oh, what laughter! Silvery, silvery, treble, treble, treble; trill
away, trill away, silvery treble. Musical, beautiful; beautiful,
musical; little Miss Butterfly--fly--fly--fly away!' And he brought
his fingers down upon the gamut at last, with a hasty, flickering
touch that seemed really as delicate as Edie's own.
'I can never get words for it in English,' he said again, half
speaking with his parted lips; 'it's too dactylic in rhythm for
English verse to go to it. Béranger might have written a lilt for
it, as far as mere syllables go, but Béranger to write about Miss
Butterfly!--pho, no Frenchman could possibly catch it. Swinburne
could fit the metres, I dare say, but he couldn't fit the feeling.
It shall be a song without words, unless I write some Italian lines
for it myself. Animula, blandula vagula--that's the sort of ring
for it, but Latin's mostly too heavy. Io, Hymen, Hymenae, Io; Io,
Hymen, Hymenae! What's that? A wedding song of Catullus--absit omen.
I must be in love with her indeed.' He got up from the piano, and
paced quickly and feverishly up and down the room.
'And yet,' he went on, 'if only I weren't bound down so by this
unprofitable trade of parson! A curate on eighty pounds a year,
and a few pupils! The presumptuousness of the man in venturing to
think of falling in love, as if he were actually one of the beneficed
clergy! What are deacons coming to, I wonder! And yet, hath not a
deacon eyes; hath not a deacon hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle
us, do we not laugh? And if you show us a little Miss Butterfly,
beautiful to the finger-ends, do we not fall in love with her at
least as unaffectedly as if we were canons residentiary or rural
deans? Fancy little Miss Butterfly a rural deaness! the notion's
too ridiculous. Fly away, little Miss Butterfly; fly away, sweet
little frolicsome, laughsome creature. I won't try to tie you down
to a man in a black clerical coat with a very distant hypothetical
reversionary prospect of a dull and dingy country parsonage. Flit
elsewhere, little Miss Butterfly, flit elsewhere, and find yourself
a gayer, gaudier-coloured mate!'
He sat down again, and strummed a few more bars of his half-composed,
half-extemporised melody. Then he leant back on the music-stool,
and said gently to himself once more: 'Still, if it were possible,
how happy I should try to make her! Bright little Miss Butterfly,
I would try never to let a cold cloud pass chillily over your
sunshiny head! I would live for you, and work for you, and write
songs for your sake, all full of you, you, you, and so all full of
life and grace and thrilling music. What's my life good for, to me
or to the world? "A clergyman's life is such a useful one," that
amiable old conventionality gurgled out this morning; what's the
good of mine, as it stands now, to its owner or to anybody else,
I should like to know, except the dear old Progenitor? A mere bit
of cracked blue china, a fanciful air from a comic opera, masquerading
in black and white as a piece of sacred music! What good am I to
anyone on earth but the Progenitor (God bless him!), and when he's
gone, dear old fellow, what on earth shall I have left to live
for. A selfish blank, that's all. But with HER, ah, how different!
With her to live for and to cherish, with an object to set before
oneself as worth one's consideration, what mightn't I do at last?
Make her happy--after all, that's the great thing. Make her fond
of my music, that music that floats and evades me now, but would
harden into scores as if by magic with her to help one to spell it
out--I know it would, at last, I know it would. Ah, well, perhaps
some day I may be able; perhaps some day the dream will realise
itself; till then, work, work, work; let me try to work towards
making it possible, a living or a livelihood, no matter which. But
not a breath of it to you meanwhile, Miss Butterfly; flit about
freely and joyously while you may; I would not spoil your untrammelled
flight for worlds by trying to tether it too soon around the fixed
centre of my own poor doubtful diaconal destinies.'
At the same moment while Arthur Berkeley was thus garrulously conversing
with his heated fancy, Harry and Edie Oswald were strolling lazily
down the High, to Edie's lodgings.
'Well, what do you think now of Berkeley and Le Breton, Edie?'
asked her brother. 'Which of them do you like the best?'
'I like them both immensely, Harry; I really can't choose between
them. When Mr. Berkeley plays, he almost makes me fall in love with
him; and when Mr. Le Breton talks, he almost makes me transfer my
affections to him instead... But Mr. Berkeley plays divinely... And
Mr. Le Breton talks beautifully... You know, I've never seen such
clever men before--except you, of course, Harry dear, for you're
cleverer and nicer than anybody. Oh, do let me look at those lovely
silks over there?' And she danced across the road before he could
answer her, like a tripping sylph in a painter's dreamland.
'Mr. Le Breton's very nice,' she went on, after she had duly examined
and classified the silks, 'but I don't exactly understand what it
is he's got on his conscience.'
'Nothing whatsoever, except the fact of his own existence,' Harry
answered with a laugh. 'He has conscientious scruples against the
existence of idle people in the community--do-nothings and eat-alls--and
therefore he has conscientious scruples against himself for not
immediately committing suicide. I believe, if he did exactly what
he thought was abstractly right, he'd go away and cut his own throat
incontinently for an unprofitable, unproductive, useless citizen.'
'Oh, dear, I hope he'll do nothing of the sort,' cried Edie hastily.
'I think I shall really ask him not to for my sake, if not for
anybody else's.'
'He'd be very much flattered indeed by your interposition on his
behalf, no doubt, Popsy; but I'm afraid it wouldn't produce much
effect upon his ultimate decision.'
'Tell me, Harry, is Mr. Berkeley High Church?'
'Oh dear no, I shouldn't say so. I don't suppose he ever gave the
subject a single moment's consideration.'
'But St. Fredegond's is very High Church, I'm told.'
'Ah, yes; but Berkeley's curate of St. Fredegond's, not in virtue
of his theology--I never heard he'd got any to speak of--but in
virtue of his musical talents. He went into the Church, I suppose,
on purely aesthetic grounds. He liked a musical service, and it
seemed natural to him to take part in one, just as it seemed natural
to a mediaeval Italian with artistic tendencies to paint Madonnas
and St. Sebastians. There's nothing more in his clerical coat than
that, I fancy, Edie. He probably never thought twice about it on
theological grounds.'
'Oh, but that's very wrong of him, Harry. I don't mean having
no particular theological beliefs, of course; one expects that
nowadays; but going into the Church without them.'
'Well, you see, Edie, you mustn't judge Berkeley in quite the same
way as you'd judge other people. In his mind, the aesthetic side
is always uppermost; the logical side is comparatively in abeyance.
Questions of creed, questions of philosophical belief, questions
of science don't interest him at all; he looks at all of them from
the point of view of the impression alone. What he sees in the
Church is not a body of dogmas, like the High Churchmen, nor a set
of opinions, like the Low Churchmen, but a close corporation of
educated and cultivated gentlemen, charged with the duty of caring
for a number of beautiful mediaeval architectural monuments,
and of carrying on a set of grand and impressive musical or oral
services. To him, a cathedral is a magnificent historical heritage;
a sermon is a sort of ingenious literary exercise; and a hymn is
a capital vehicle for very solemn emotional music. That's all; and
we can hardly blame him for not seeing these things as we should
see them.'
'Well, Harry, I don't know. I like them both immensely. Mr.
Berkeley's very nice, but perhaps I like Mr. Le Breton the best
of the two.'