THE MINOR CANON.
Mr. Ashford had not said much to Miss Despard on the way home; it was
but crossing the road, a brief progress which left little room for
conversation, and the Signor was better acquainted with her than he was.
Besides, the Minor Canon was not a man who could carry on a conversation
with several people at a time, or open his heart to more listeners than
one. He could sometimes be eloquent with a single interlocutor, but he
was a silent man in society, with very little to say for himself, even
when his companions were of the most congenial kind. He was an
unsuccessful man, and carried in his soul, though without any
bitterness, the burden of his own unsuccess. He was a man of “good
connections,” but none of his connections had done anything for him--and
he had considerable talents, which had done nothing for him. He had got
a scholarship, but no other distinction, at the University. Nobody was
at all clear how this came about. He was not idle, he was not careless,
but he did not succeed; his talents were not those that win success. At
twenty he published a little volume of poetry, which was “full of
promise.” At thirty he brought out a learned treatise on some matter of
classical erudition, which, as it is too high for us to understand, we
will not venture to name. And nothing came of that; his poems were not
sold, neither was his treatise. His fellow-scholars (for he was a true
scholar, and a ripe and good one) occupied themselves with pulling holes
in his coat, writing whole pages to show that he had taken a wrong view
of a special passage. And there was something worse than this that he
had done. He had put a wrong accent upon a Greek word! We tremble to
mention such a crime, but it cannot be slurred over, for it was one of
the heaviest troubles in Mr. Ashford’s life. Whether it was his fault or
the printer’s fault will never be known till the day of judgment, and
perhaps not even then: for it seems more than likely that a mistake in
an accent, or even the absence of the accent altogether, will not affect
the reckoning at that decisive moment; but this was what had been done.
Not once--which might have been an accident, or carelessness in
correcting the press, such a misfortune as might occur to any man--but a
dozen times, if not more, had this crime been perpetrated. It disfigured
at least the half of his book. It was a mistake which no properly
conducted fourth-form boy would have been guilty of. So everybody
said;--and it crushed the unlucky man. Even now, five years after, that
incorrect accent coloured his life. He went in mourning for it all his
days. He could not forget it himself, even if other people might have
been willing to forget it. It seemed to justify and explain all the
failures in his career. Everybody had wondered why he did not get a
fellowship after he had taken his degree, but this explained everything.
A man capable of making such a mistake! The buzz that arose in the
University never died out of his ears. Robuster persons might laugh, but
Ernest Ashford never got over it. It weighed him down for the rest of
his days.
Nor was he a man to thrive much in his profession. He tried a curacy or
two, but he was neither High Church enough for the High, nor Low Church
enough for the Low. And he could not get on with the poor, his rectors
said. Their misery appalled his gentle soul. He emptied his poor pockets
in the first wretched house he went into, and retreated to his lodgings
after he had done so, with a heart all aching and bleeding, and crying
out against the pain he saw. He was not of the fibre which can take
other people’s sufferings placidly, though he had a fine nerve in
bearing his own. This, no doubt, was weakness in him; and in all
probability he got imposed upon on every side; but the fact was he could
not support the wretchedness of others, and when he had given them every
six-pence he had, and had entreated them to be comforted, he fled from
them with anguish in his heart. He could not eat or drink for weeks
after for thinking that there were people in the world near at hand who
had little or nothing on their board. He suffered more from this than
his fellow-curate did from neuralgia, or his rector from biliousness,
and he did what neither of these martyrs felt themselves compelled to
do--he fled from the trouble he could not cope with. They quoted
Scripture to him, and proved, from the text “The poor ye have always
with you,” that nothing better was to be expected. But he answered with
a passionate protestation that God could never mean that, and
fled--which, indeed, was not a brave thing to do, and proved the
weakness of his character. Thus the Church found him wanting, as well as
the University. And when at last he settled down into a corner where at
least he could get his living tranquilly, it was not by means of his
talents or education, but because of a quality which was really
accidental, the possession of a beautiful voice. This possession was so
entirely adventitious that he was not even a learned musician, nor had
he given much of his time to this study. But he had one of those voices,
rich and tender and sweet, which go beyond science, which are delicious
even when they are wrong, and please the hearers when they perplex the
choir and drive the conductor out of his senses. Mr. Ashford did not do
this, having an ear almost as delicate as his voice, but both of these
were gifts of nature, and not improved by training to the degree which
the Signor could have wished. He had been persuaded to try for the Minor
Canonry of St. Michael’s almost against his will; for to be a singing
man, even in the highest grade, did not please his fancy. But no one had
been able to stand before him. The Signor had strongly supported another
competitor, a man with twice the science of Mr. Ashford; but even the
Signor had been obliged to confess that his friend’s voice was not to be
compared with that of the successful candidate. And after knocking about
the world for a dozen years without any real place or standing-ground,
Ernest Ashford found himself at thirty-five suited with a life that was
altogether harmonious to his nature, but which he felt half humiliated
to have gained, not by his talents or his learning, or anything that was
any credit to him, but by the mere natural accidental circumstance of
his beautiful voice. He was half-ashamed and humbled to think that all
his education, which had cost so much, went for nothing in comparison
with this chance talent which had cost him nothing, and that all his
hopes and ambitions, which had mounted high, had come to no loftier
result. But as, by fair means or foul, for a good or bad reason, life
had at last found a suitable career for him, where he could be
independent, and do some sort of work, such as it was, he soon became
content. The worst thing about it (he said) was that it could not be
called work at all. To go twice a day and sing beautiful music in one
of the most beautiful churches in the world, would have been the highest
pleasure, if it had not been the business of his life. He had never even
been troubled by religious doubts which might have introduced a
complication, but was of a nature simply devout, and born to go twice a
day to church. When, however, he found himself thus, as it were, exalted
over the common lot, he made an effort to bring himself down to the
level of common mortality by taking pupils, an experiment which
succeeded perfectly, and brought him into hot water so speedily that he
no longer felt himself elevated above the level of mankind.
This was the man whom Lottie had seized the opportunity of making
acquaintance with, and speaking to, that evening at the Deanery. Mr.
Ashford was not badly treated at the Deanery to be only a Minor Canon.
He was often enough asked to dinner when there was not anybody of much
consequence about: the Dean was very willing to have him, for he was a
gentleman, and talked very pleasantly, and could be silent (which he
always was when the company was large) in a very agreeable, gentlemanly
sort of way; not the silence of mere dulness and having nothing to say.
But when there was a large dinner-party, and people of consequence were
there, Lady Caroline would often ask Mr. Ashford to come in the evening,
and he had come to understand (without being offended) that on these
occasions he would probably be asked to sing. He was not offended, but
he was amused, and sometimes, with a little well-bred malice, such as he
had never shown in any other emergency of his life, would have a cold,
and be unable to sing. He had not strength of mind to carry out this
little stratagem when there seemed to be much need of his services, but
now and then he would wind himself up to do it, with much simple
satisfaction in his own cleverness. Mr. Ashford was well treated in the
Cloisters generally. The other Canons, those whom Mrs. O’Shaughnessy
called “the real Canons,” were all more or less attentive to him. He had
nothing to complain of in his lot. He had at this moment two pupils in
hand: one, the son of Canon Uxbridge, whom he was endeavouring to
prepare for the simple ordeal of an army examination; and another, who
was clever, the son of the clergyman in the town, and aspiring to a
university scholarship. In consequence of the unfortunate failure of
that Greek accent it was but few engagements of this more ambitious kind
that Mr. Ashford had; his work was usually confined to the simplicity of
the military tests of knowledge; but the rector of St. Michael’s was a
man who knew what he was about, and naturally, with a sharp young
scholar for ever on his traces, the gentle Minor Canon, conscious of
having once committed an inaccuracy, was kept very much upon his p’s and
q’s.
On the same day on which Rollo Ridsdale wrote for Lady Caroline that
invitation to Lottie, of the terms of which Lady Caroline was so little
aware, the Dean gave a verbal invitation to the same effect to Mr.
Ashford in the vestry. “Will you dine with us to-day, Ashford?” he said.
“My nephew Ridsdale, who is mad about music, and especially about this
girl’s voice who sang last night, has persuaded Lady Caroline to ask her
again. Yourself and the Signor; I believe nobody else is coming.
Ridsdale has got something to do with a new opera company, and he is
wild to find an English prima donna----”
“Is Miss Despard likely to become a professional singer?” said the Minor
Canon in some surprise.
“I am sure I can’t tell--why not? They are poor, I suppose, or they
would not be here; and I don’t see why she shouldn’t sing. Anyhow, Rollo
is most anxious to try. He thinks she has a wonderful voice. He is apt
to think anything wonderful which he himself has anything to do with,
you know.”
“She has a wonderful voice,” said Mr. Ashford, with more decision than
usual.
“But--pardon me if I interrupt,” cried the Signor, who had come in while
they were talking, “no method; no science. She wants training--the most
careful training. The more beautiful a voice is by nature, the more
evident is the want of education in it,” the musician added, with
meaning. He did not look at Mr. Ashford, but the reference was very
unmistakable. The Dean looked at them, and smiled as he took up his
shovel hat.
“I leave you to fight it out, Science against Nature,” he said; “as long
as you don’t forget that you are both expected this evening at the
Deanery--and to sit in judgment as well as to dine.”
“I know what my judgment will be beforehand,” said the Signor; “absolute
want of education--but plenty of material for a good teacher to work
upon.”
“And mine is all the other way,” Mr. Ashford said, with some of the
vehemence of intellectual opposition, besides a natural partisanship. “A
lovely voice, full of nature, and freshness, and expression--which you
will spoil, and render artificial, and like anybody else’s voice, if you
have your way.”
“All excellence is the production of Art,” said the Signor.
“Poeta nascitur,” said the Canon; and though the words are as well known
as any slang, they exercised a certain subduing influence upon the
musician, who was painfully aware that he himself was not educated,
except in a professional way. The two men went out together through the
door into the Great Cloister, from which they passed by an arched
passage to the Minor Cloister, where was Mr. Ashford’s house. Nothing
could be more unlike than the tall, stooping, short-sighted scholar, and
the dark keen Italianism of the Anglicised foreigner--the one man full
of perception, seeing everything within his range at a glance, the
other living in a glimmer of vague impressions, which took form but
slowly in his mind. On the subject of their present discussion, however,
Ashford had taken as distinct a view as the Signor. He had put himself
on Lottie’s side instinctively, with what we have called a natural
partisanship. She was like himself, she sang as the birds sing--and
though his own education, after a few years of St. Michael’s, had so far
progressed musically that he was as well aware of her deficiencies as
the Signor, still he felt himself bound to be her champion.
“I am not sure how far we have any right to discuss a young lady who has
never done anything to provoke animadversion,” he said, with an
old-fashioned scrupulousness, as they threaded the shady passages. “I
think it very unlikely that such a girl would ever consent to sing for
the public.”
“That is what she says,” said the Signor, “but she can’t understand what
she is saying. Sing for the public! I suppose that means to her to
appear before a crowd of people, to be stared at, criticised, brought
down to the level of professional singers. The delight of raising a
crowd to one’self, binding them into mutual sympathy, getting at the
heart underneath the cold English exterior, that is what the foolish
girl never thinks of and cannot understand.”
“Ah!” said the Minor Canon. He was struck by this unexpected poetry in
the Signor, who was not a poetical person. He said, “I don’t think I
thought of that either. I suppose, for my part, I am very old-fashioned.
I don’t like a woman to make an exhibition of herself.”
“Do you suppose a real artist ever makes an exhibition of herself?” said
the musician almost scornfully. “Do you suppose she thinks of herself?
Oh, yes, of course there are varieties. Men will be men and women women;
but anyone who has genius, who is above the common stock! However,” he
added, calming himself down, and giving a curious, alarmed glance at his
companion, to see whether, perhaps, he was being laughed at for his
enthusiasm, “there are other reasons, that you will allow to be solid
reasons, for which I want to get hold of this Miss Despard. You know
Purcell, my assistant, a young fellow of the greatest promise?”
“Purcell? oh, yes; you mean the son of----”
“I mean my pupil,” said the Signor, hurriedly, with a flush of offence.
“I beg your pardon. I did not mean anything unkind. It was only to make
sure whom you meant. I know he is a good musician and everything that is
good.”
“He is a very fine fellow,” said the Signor, still flushed and
self-assertive. “There is nobody of whom I have a higher opinion. He is
a better musician than I am, and full of promise. I expect him to reach
the very top of his profession.”
Mr. Ashford bowed. He had no objection to young Purcell’s success: why
should he be supposed to have any objection to it? but the conversation
had wandered widely away from Miss Despard, in whom he was really
interested, and his attention relaxed in a way which he could not
disguise. This seemed to disturb the Signor still more. He faltered; he
hesitated. At last he said with a sudden burst, “You think this has
nothing to do with the subject we were discussing; but it has. Purcell,
poor fellow! has a--romantic devotion; a passion which I can’t as yet
call anything but unhappy--for Miss Despard.”
“For Miss Despard?”
The Minor Canon turned round at his own door with his key in his hand,
lifting his eyes in wonder. “That is surely rather misplaced,” he said
the next moment, with much more sharpness than was usual to him, opening
the door with a little extra energy and animation. He had no reason
whatever for being annoyed, but he was annoyed, though he could not have
told why.
“How misplaced?” said the Signor, following him up the little oak
staircase, narrow and broken into short flights, which led to the rooms
in which the Minor Canon lived. The landing at the top of the staircase
was as large as any of the rooms to which it led, with that curious
misappropriation of space, but admirable success in picturesque effect,
peculiar to old houses. There was a window in it, with a window-seat,
and such a view as was not to be had out of St. Michael’s, and the walls
were of dark wainscot, with bits of rich old carving here and there. The
Canon’s little library led off from this and had the same view. It was
lighted by three small, deep-set windows set in the outer wall of the
Abbey, and consequently half as thick as the room was large. They were
more like three pictures hung on the dark wall than mere openings for
light, which indeed they supplied but sparingly, the thickness of the
wall casting deep shadows between. And the walls, wherever they were
visible, were dark oak, here and there shining with gleams of
reflection, but making a sombre background, broken only by the russet
colour of old books and the chance ornaments of gilding which
embellished them. Mr. Ashford’s writing-table, covered with books and
papers, stood in front of the centre window. There was room for a
visitor on the inner side, between him and the bookcases on the further
wall, and there was room for somebody in the deep recess of the window
at his left hand; but that was all.
“How misplaced?” the Signor repeated, coming in and taking possession of
the window-seat. “He is not perhaps what you call a gentleman by birth,
but he is a great deal better. You and I know gentlemen by birth
who--but don’t let us talk blasphemy within the Precincts. I am a Tory.
I take my stand upon birth and blood and primogeniture.”
“And laugh at them?”
“Oh, not at all; on the contrary, I think they are very good for the
country; but you and I have known gentlemen by birth--Well! my young
Purcell is not one of these, but sprung from the soil. He is a capital
musician; he is a rising young man. In what is he worse than the
daughter of a commonplace old soldier, a needy, faded gentleman of a
Chevalier?”
“Gently! gently! I cannot permit you to say anything against the
Chevaliers. They are brave men, and men who have served their
country----”
“Better than a good musician serves his?” cried the Signor. “You will
not assert as much. Better than we serve the country, who put a little
tune and time into her, an idea of some thing better than fifes and
drums?”
“My dear Rossinetti,” said Mr. Ashford, with some heat, “England had
music in her before a single maestro had ever come from the South, and
will have after----”
“No tragedy,” said the Signor, with a low laugh, putting up his hand. “I
am not a maestro, nor do I come from the South. I serve my country when
I teach these knavish boys, that would rather be playing in the streets,
to lengthen their snipped vowels. But suppose they do better who
fight--I say nothing against that. I am not speaking of all the
Chevaliers, but of one, and one who is very unlike the rest--the only
person who has anything to do with the argument--a wretched frequenter
of taverns, admirer of milliners’ girls, who is said to be going to
marry some young woman of that class. Why should not Purcell, the best
fellow in the world, be as good as he?”
“I don’t know the father--and it is not the father Purcell has a
romantic devotion for. But don’t you see, Rossinetti, we are allowing
ourselves to discuss the affairs of people we know nothing of, people we
have no right to talk about. In short, we are _gossiping_, which is not
a very appropriate occupation.”
“Oh, there is a great deal of it done by other persons quite as
dignified as we are,” said the Signor, with a smile; but he accepted the
reproof and changed the subject. They sat together and talked, looking
over the great width of the silent country, the trees and the winding
river, the scattered villages, and the illuminated sky. How beautiful it
was! fair enough of itself to make life sweeter to those who had it
before their eyes. But the two men talked and took no notice. They might
have been in a street in London for any difference it made.
When, however, the Signor was gone, Mr. Ashford, having closed the door
upon his visitor, came straying back to the window in which Rossinetti
had been seated, and stood there gazing out vaguely. In all likelihood
he saw nothing at all, for he was short-sighted, as has been said; but
yet it is natural to seek the relief of the window and look out when
there is something within of a confused and vaguely melancholy character
to occupy one’s thoughts. Twenty-four hours before, Mr. Ashford had not
known who Lottie Despard was. He had seen her in the Abbey, and perhaps
had found, without knowing it, that sympathy in her face which
establishes sometimes a kind of tacit friendship long before words. He
thought now that this must have been the case; but he knew very little
about her still--nothing except that she had a beautiful voice, a face
that interested him, and something she wanted to talk to him about. What
was it she wanted to talk to him about? He could not imagine what it
could be, but he recollected very well how pleasant a thing it was when
this beautiful young lady, lifting the long fringes which veiled them,
turned upon him those beautiful blue eyes which (he thought) were
capable of expressing more feeling than eyes of any other colour.
Probably had Lottie’s eyes been brown or grey, Mr. Ashford would have
been of exactly the same opinion. And to think of this creature as the
beloved of Purcell gave him a shock. Purcell! it was not possible. No
doubt he was a respectable fellow, very much to be applauded and
encouraged:--but Mr. Ashford himself had nothing to do with Miss
Despard; he was pleased to think that he should meet her again and hear
her sing again, and he must try, he said to himself, to find an
opportunity to ask her what it was about which she wanted to speak to
him. Otherwise he had no hand, and wanted to have no hand, in this
little conspiracy of which she seemed the unconscious object. On the
contrary, his whole sympathies were with Lottie against the men who
wanted to entrap her and make her a public singer whether she would or
not. He was glad she did not want it herself, and felt a warm sympathy
with her in those natural prejudices against “making an exhibition of
herself” which the Signor scorned so much. The Signor might scorn those
shrinkings and shyness; they were altogether out of his way; he might
not understand them. But Mr. Ashford understood them perfectly. He liked
Lottie for having them, comprehended her, and felt for her. Anything
rather than _that_, he thought, with a little tremulous warmth, as if
she had been his sister. If there should be any discussion on this
subject to-night at the Deanery, and she was in need of support, he
would stand by her. Having made this resolution he went back to his
writing-table and sat down in his usual place, and put this intrusive
business, which did not in the least concern him, out of his mind.
The most intrusive subject! What had he to do with it? And yet it was
not at all easy to get it out of his mind. He had not read three lines
when he felt himself beginning to wonder why Rollo Ridsdale had chosen
Miss Despard as his prima donna above everybody else, and why the Signor
concerned himself so much about it. She had certainly a beautiful voice,
but still voices as beautiful had been heard before. It could not be
supposed that there was no one else equal to her. Why should they make
so determined a set at this girl, who was a lady, and who had not
expressed any wish or intention of being a singer? To be sure, she was
very handsome as well, and her face was full of expression. And Rollo
was a kind of enthusiast when he took anything in his head. Then there
was the other imbroglio with the Signor and Purcell. What was Purcell to
the Signor that he should take up his cause so warmly? But, then, still
more mysterious, what was it all to him, Ernest Ashford, that it should
come between him and the book he was reading? Nothing could be more
absurd. He got up after awhile, and went to the window again, where he
finally settled himself with a volume of Shelley, to which he managed to
fix the thoughts which had been so absurdly disturbed by this stranger,
and this question with which he had nothing to do. It was a very idle
way of spending the afternoon, to recline in a deep window looking out
upon miles of air and distance and read Shelley; but it was better than
getting involved in the mere gossip of St. Michael’s and turning over in
his head against his will the private affairs of people whom he
scarcely knew. This was the disadvantage of living in a small circle
with so few interests, he said to himself. But he got delivered from the
gossip by means of the poetry, and so lay there while the brilliant
sunshine slanted from the west, now sending his thoughts abroad over the
leafy English plain, now feeding his fancy with the poet among the
Euganean hills.