“We are in Pretoria now, and I think the war will soon be over. But of course there’s a lot to be done yet. I’m feeling seedy to-night, and I’m rather sighing for England. I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I have a presentiment that things are going wrong with me—at least not wrong, because in a way I would be glad. No, I wouldn’t, that reads as if I were afraid to keep going.“I keep thinking of Michael and Stella. Michael must be told soon. He must forgive me for leaving him no name. I keep thinking of those Siamese stamps he asked for when I last saw him. I wish I’d seen him again before I went. But I dare say you were right. He would have guessed who I was, and he might have gone away resentful.”
“We are in Pretoria now, and I think the war will soon be over. But of course there’s a lot to be done yet. I’m feeling seedy to-night, and I’m rather sighing for England. I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I have a presentiment that things are going wrong with me—at least not wrong, because in a way I would be glad. No, I wouldn’t, that reads as if I were afraid to keep going.
“I keep thinking of Michael and Stella. Michael must be told soon. He must forgive me for leaving him no name. I keep thinking of those Siamese stamps he asked for when I last saw him. I wish I’d seen him again before I went. But I dare say you were right. He would have guessed who I was, and he might have gone away resentful.”
Michael looked at his mother, and thanked her implicitly for excusing him. He was glad that his father had not known he had declined to see him.
“I don’t worry so much over Stella. If she really has the stuff in her to make the name you think she will, she does not need any name but her own. But it maddens me to think that Michael is cut out of everything. I can scarcely bear to realize that I am the last. I’m glad he’s going to Oxford, and I’m very glad that he chose St. Mary’s. I was only up at Christ Church a year, and St. Mary’s was a much smaller college in those days. Now of course it’s absolutely one of the best. Whatever Michael wants to do he will be able to do, thank God. I don’t expect, from what you tell me of him, he’ll choose theService. However, he’ll do what he likes. When I come back, I must see him and I shall be able to explain what will perhaps strike him at first as the injustice of his position. I dare say he’ll think less hardly of me when I’ve told him all the circumstances. Poor old chap! I feel that I’ve been selfish, and yet....“I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I feel rotten. But don’t worry. Only, if by any chance I can’t write again, will you give my love to the children, and say I hope they’ll not hate the thought of me? That piano was the best Prescott could get. I hope Stella is pleased with it.”
“I don’t worry so much over Stella. If she really has the stuff in her to make the name you think she will, she does not need any name but her own. But it maddens me to think that Michael is cut out of everything. I can scarcely bear to realize that I am the last. I’m glad he’s going to Oxford, and I’m very glad that he chose St. Mary’s. I was only up at Christ Church a year, and St. Mary’s was a much smaller college in those days. Now of course it’s absolutely one of the best. Whatever Michael wants to do he will be able to do, thank God. I don’t expect, from what you tell me of him, he’ll choose theService. However, he’ll do what he likes. When I come back, I must see him and I shall be able to explain what will perhaps strike him at first as the injustice of his position. I dare say he’ll think less hardly of me when I’ve told him all the circumstances. Poor old chap! I feel that I’ve been selfish, and yet....
“I wonder if I’m going to be ill. I feel rotten. But don’t worry. Only, if by any chance I can’t write again, will you give my love to the children, and say I hope they’ll not hate the thought of me? That piano was the best Prescott could get. I hope Stella is pleased with it.”
“Thanks awfully for reading us that,” said Michael.
MRS. FANE, having momentarily lifted the veil that all these years had hidden her personality from Michael and Stella, dropped it very swiftly again. Only the greatest emotion could have given her the courage to make that avowal of her life. During the days that elapsed between the revelation and the reading of Lord Saxby’s last letter, she had lived very much apart from her children, so that the spectacle of her solitary grief had been deeply impressed upon their sensibility.
Michael was reminded by her attitude of those long vigils formerly sustained by ladies of noble birth before they departed into a convent to pray, eternally remote from the world. He himself became endowed with a strange courage by the contemplation of his mother’s tragical immobility. He found in her the expression of those most voiceless ideals of austere conduct that until this vision of resignation had always seemed doomed to sink broken-winged to earth. The thought of Lily in this mood became an intrusion, and he told himself that, even if it were possible to seek the sweet unrest of her presence, beneath the sombre spell of this more classic sorrow he would have shunned that lovely and romantic girl. Michael’s own realization of the circumstances of his birth occupied a very small part of his thoughts. His mind was fixed upon the aspect of his mother mute and heavy-lidded from the remembrance of that soldier dead in Africa. Michael felt no outrage of fate in these events. He was glad that death should have brought to his father the contentmentof his country’s honour, that in the grace of reconciliation he should be healed of his thwarted life. Nor could Michael resent that news of death which could ennoble his mother with this placidity of comprehension, this staid and haughty mien of sorrow. And he was grateful, too, that death should upon his own brow dry the fever dew of passion.
But when she had read that last letter, Mrs. Fane strangely resumed her ordinary self. She was always so finely invested with dignity, so exquisitely sheathed, in her repose, Michael scarcely realized that now, after she had read the letter, the vision of her grief was once more veiled against him by that faintly discouraging, tenderly deliberate withdrawal of her personality, and that she was still as seclusive as when from his childhood she had concealed the sight of her love, living in her own rose-misted and impenetrable privacy.
It was Stella who by a sudden request first roused Michael to the realization that his mother was herself again.
“Mother,” she said, “what about my first concert? The season is getting late.”
“Dearest Stella,” Mrs. Fane replied, “I think you can scarcely make your appearance so soon after your father’s death.”
“But, mother, I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded. And after all very few people would know,” Stella persisted.
“But I should prefer that you waited for a while,” said Mrs. Fane, gently reproachful. “You forget that we are in mourning.”
For Michael somehow the conventional expression seemed to disturb the divinity of his mother’s carven woe. The world suddenly intervened.
“Well, I don’t think I ought to wait for ever,” said Stella.
“Darling child, I wonder why you should think it necessary to exaggerate so foolishly,” said Mrs. Fane.
“But I’m so longing to begin,” Stella went on.
“I don’t know that anybody has ever suggested you shouldn’t begin,” Mrs. Fane observed. “But there is a difference between your recklessness and my more carefully considered plans.”
“Mother, will you agree to a definite date?” Stella demanded.
“By all means, dear child, if you will try to be a little less boisterous and impetuous. For one thing, I never knew you were ready to begin at once like this.”
“Oh, mother, after all these years and years of practising!” Stella protested.
“But are you ready?” Mrs. Fane enquired in soft surprize. “Really ready? Then why not this autumn? Why not October?”
“Before I go up to Oxford,” said Michael quickly.
Stella was immediately and vividly alert with plans for her concert.
“I don’t think any of the smaller halls. Couldn’t I appear first at one of the big orchestral concerts at King’s Hall? I would like to play a Concerto ... Chopin, I think, and nothing else. Then later on I could have a concert all to myself, and play Schumann, and perhaps some Brahms.”
So in the end it was settled after numberless interviews, letters, fixtures, cancellations, and all the fuming impediments of art’s first presentation at the court of the world.
The affairs and arrangements connected with Stella’s career seemed to Michael the proper distraction for his mother and sister during his last two or three weeks of school, before they could leave London. Mrs. Fane had suggested they should go to Switzerland in August, staying at Lucerne, so that Stella would not be hindered in her steady practice.
Michael’s last week at school was a curiously unreal experience. As fast as he marshalled the correct sentimentswith which to approach the last hours of a routine that had continued for ten years, so fast did they break up in futile disorder. He had really passed beyond the domain of school some time ago when he was always with Lily. It was impossible after that gradual secession, all the more final because it had been so gradual, to gather together now a crowd of associations for the sole purpose of effecting a violent and summary wrench. Indeed, the one action that gave him the expected pang of sentiment was when he went to surrender across the counter of the book-room the key of his locker. The number was seventy-five. In very early days Michael had been proud of possessing, through a happy accident, a locker on the ground-floor very close to the entrance-hall. His junior contemporaries were usually banished to remote corridors in the six-hundreds, waiting eagerly to inherit from departed seniors the more convenient lockers downstairs. But Michael from the day he first heard by the cast of the Laocoön the shuffle of quick feet along the corridor had owned the most convenient locker in all the school. At the last moment Michael thought he would forfeit the half-crown long ago deposited and keep the key, but in the end he, with the rest of his departing contemporaries, callously accepted the more useful half-crown.
School broke up in a sudden heartless confusion, and Michael for the last time stood gossiping outside the school-doors at five o’clock. For a minute he felt an absurd desire to pick up a stone and fling it through the window of the nearest class-room, not from any spirit of indignation, but merely to assure himself of a physical freedom that he had not yet realized.
“Where are you going for the holidays, Bangs?” someone asked.
“Switzerland.”
“Hope you’ll have a good time. See you next—oh, byJove, I shan’t though. Good-bye, hope you’ll have good luck.”
“Thanks,” said Michael, and he had a fleeting view of himself relegated to the past, one of that scattered host—
Old Jacobeans, ghostly, innumerable, whose desks like tombstones would bear for a little while the perishable ink of their own idle epitaphs.
Lucerne was airless; the avenue of pollarded limes sheltered a depressed bulk of dusty tourists; the atmosphere was impregnated with bourgeois exclamations; the very surface of the lake was swarming with humanity, noisy with the click of rowlocks, and with the gutturals that seemed to praise fitly such a theatrical setting.
Mrs. Fane wondered why they had come to Switzerland, but still she asked Michael and Stella whether they would like to venture higher. Michael, perceiving the hordes of Teutonic nomads who were sweeping up into the heart of the mountains, thought that Switzerland in August would be impossible whatever lonely height they gained. They moved to Geneva, whose silverpointed beauty for a while deceived them, but soon both he and Stella became restless and irritable.
“Switzerland is like sitting in a train and travelling through glorious country,” said Michael. “It’s all right for a journey, but it becomes frightfully tiring. And, mother, I do hate the sensation that all these people round are feeling compelled to enjoy themselves. It’s like a hearty choral service.”
“It’s like an oratorio,” said Stella. “I can’t play a note here. The very existence of these mobs is deafening.”
“Well, I don’t mind where we go,” said Mrs. Fane. “I’m not enjoying these peculiar tourists myself. Shall we go to the Italian lakes? I used to like them very much. I’ve spent many happy days there.”
“I’d rather go to France,” said Michael. “Only don’t let’s go far. Let’s go to Lyons and find out some small place in the country. I was talking to a decent chap—not a tourist—who said there were delightful little red-roofed towns in the Lyonnais.”
So they left Switzerland and went to Lyons where, sitting under the shade of trees by the tumbling blue Rhône, they settled with a polite agent to take a small house near Châtillon.
Hither a piano followed them, and here for seven weeks they lived, each one lost in sun-dyed dreams.
“I knew we should like this,” Michael said to Stella, as they leaned against tubs of rosy oleanders on a lizard-streaked wall, and watched some great white oxen go smoothly by. “I like this heart of France better than Brittany or Normandy. But I hope mother won’t be bored here.”
“There are plenty of books,” said Stella. “And anyway she wants to lie back and think, and it’s impossible to think except in the sun.”
The oxen were still in sight along the road that wound upwards to where Châtillon clustered red upon its rounded hill.
“It doesn’t look like a real town,” said Michael. “It’s really not different from the red sunbaked earth all about here. I feel it would be almost a pity ever to walk up that road and find it is a town. I vote we never go quite close, but just sit here and watch it changing colour all through the day. I never want to move out of this garden.”
“I can’t walk about much,” said Stella. “Because I simply must practise and practise and practise and practise.”
They always woke up early in the morning, and Michael used to watch Châtillon purple-bloomed with the shadow of the fled night, then hazy crimson for a few minutes until the sun came high enough to give it back the rich burnt reds of the day. All through the morning Michael used to sit among the peach trees of the garden, while Stella played. All through the morning he used to read novel after novel of ephemeral fame that here on the undisturbed shelves had acquired a certain permanence. In the afternoon Stella and he used to wander through the vineyards down to a shallow brown stream bordered by poplars and acacias, or in sun-steeped oak woods idly chase the long lizards splendid with their black and yellow lozenges and shimmering green mail.
Once in a village at harvest-time, when the market-place was a fathom deep in golden corn, they helped in the threshing, and once when the grain had been stored, they danced here with joyful country-folk under the moon.
During tea-time they would sit with their mother beneath an almond tree, while beyond in sunlit air vibrant with the glad cicadas butterflies wantoned with the oleanders, or upon the wall preened their slow fans. Later, they would pace a walk bordered by tawny tea-roses, and out of the globed melons they would scent the garnered warmth of the day floating forth to mingle with the sweet breath of eve. Now was the hour to climb the small hill behind the peach trees. Here across the mighty valley of the Saône they could see a hundred miles away the Alps riding across the horizon, light as clouds. And on the other side over their own little house lay Châtillon cherry-bright in the sunset, then damson-dark for a while, until it turned to a velvet gloom pricked with points of gold and slashed with orange stains.
Michael and Stella always went to bed when the landscape had faded out. But often Michael would sit for along time and pore upon the rustling, the dark, the moth-haunted night; or if the moon were up he would in fancies swim out upon her buoyant watery sheen.
Sometimes, as he sat among the peach trees, a thought of Lily would come to him; and he would imagine her form swinging round the corner. The leaves and sunlight, while he dreamed of her, dappled the unread pages of his book. He would picture himself with Lily on these sunny uplands of the Lyonnais, and gradually she lost her urban actuality; gradually the disillusionment of her behaviour was forgotten. With the obliteration of Lily’s failure the anguish for her bodily form faded out, and Michael began to mould her to an incorporeal idea of first love. In this clear air she stood before him recreated, as if the purifying sun, which was burning him to the likeness of the earth around, had been able at the same time to burn that idea of young love to a slim Etruscan shape which could thrill him for ever with its beauty, but nevermore fret him with the urgency of desire. He was glad he had not spoken to her again after that garden interlude; and though his heart would have leapt to see her motionable and swaying to his glances as she came delicately towards him through the peach trees, Michael felt that somehow he would not kiss her, but that he would rather lead her gravely to the hill-top and set her near him to stay for ever still, for ever young, for ever fair.
So all through that summer the sun burned Michael, while day by day the white unhurried oxen moved, slow as clouds, up the hill towards the town. But Michael never followed their shambling steps, and therefore he never destroyed his dream of Châtillon.
As the time drew nearer and nearer for Stella’s concert, she practised more incessantly. Nor would she walk now with Michael through the vineyards down to the shallow poplar-shadowed stream. Michael was seized with a reverence for her tireless concentration, and he never triedto make her break this rule of work, but would always wander away by himself.
One day, when he was lying on a parched upland ridge, Michael had a vision of Alan in green England. Suddenly he realized that in a few weeks they would be setting out together for Oxford. The dazzling azure sky of France lightened to the blown softness of an English April. Cloistral he saw Oxford, and by the base of St. Mary’s Tower the people, small as emmets, hurrying. The roofs and spires were wet with rain, and bells were ringing. He saw the faces of all those who from various schools would encounter with him the greyness and the grace of Oxford, and among them was Alan.
How familiar Oxford seemed after all!
The principal fact that struck Michael about Stella in these days of practising for her concert was her capacity for renouncing all extravagance of speech and her steady withdrawal from everything that did not bear directly on her work. She no longer talked of her brilliance; she no longer tried to astonish Michael with predications of genius; she became curiously and impressively diligent, and, without conveying an idea of easy self-confidence, she managed to make Michael feel perfectly sure of her success.
During the latter half of September Michael went to stay with Alan at Richmond, partly because with the nearness of Stella’s appearance he began to feel nervous, and partly because he found speculation about Oxford in Alan’s company a very diverting pursuit. From Richmond he went up at the end of the month in order to pass Responsions without difficulty. On the sixth of October was the concert at King’s Hall.
Michael had spent a good deal of time in sending letters to all the friends he could think of, inviting their attendanceon this occasion of importance. He even wrote to Wilmot and many of the people he had met at Edwardes Square. Everyone must help in Stella’s triumph.
At the beginning of October Mrs. Ross arrived at the Merivales’ house, and for the first time since their conversation in the orchard she and Michael met. He was shy at first, but Mrs. Ross was so plainly anxious to show that she regarded him as affectionately as ever that Michael found himself able to resume his intimacy at once. However, since Stella was always uppermost in his thoughts, he did not test Mrs. Ross with any more surprizing admissions.
On the night before the concert Mr. and Mrs. Merivale, Mrs. Ross, Alan and Michael sat in the drawing-room, talking over the concert from every point of view.
“Of course she’ll be a success,” said Mr. Merivale, and managed to implicate himself as usual in a network of bad puns that demanded the heartiest reprobation from his listeners.
“Dear little girl,” said Mrs. Merivale placidly. “How nice it is to see children doing things.”
“Of course she’ll be a success,” Alan vowed. “You’ve only got to look at her to see that. By gad, what an off-drive she would have had, if she’d only been a boy.”
Michael looked at Alan quickly. This was the first time he had ever heard him praise a girl of his own accord. He made up his mind to ask Stella when her concert was over how Alan had impressed her.
“Dear Michael,” said Mrs. Ross earnestly, “you must not worry about Stella. Don’t you remember how years ago I said she would be a great pianist? And you were so amusing about it, because you would insist that you didn’t like her playing.”
“Nor I did,” said Michael in laughing defence of himself at eight years old. “I used to think it was the most melancholynoise on earth. Sometimes I think so now, when Stella wraps herself up in endless scales. By Jove,” he suddenly exclaimed, “what’s the time?”
“Half-past eight nearly. Why?” Alan asked.
“I forgot to write and tell Viner to come. It’s not very late. I think I’ll go over to Notting Hill now, and ask him. I haven’t been to see him much lately, and he was always awfully decent to me.”
Mr. Viner was reading in his smoke-hung room.
“Hullo,” he said. “You’ve not been near me for almost a year.”
“I know,” said Michael apologetically. “I feel rather a brute. Some time I’ll tell you why.”
Then suddenly Michael wondered if the priest knew about Lord Saxby, and he felt shy of him. He felt that he could not talk intimately to him until he had told him about the circumstances of his birth.
“Is that what’s been keeping you away?” asked the priest. “Because, let me tell you, I’ve known all about you for some years. And look here, Michael, don’t get into your head that you’ve got to make this sort of announcement every time you form a new friendship.”
“Oh, that wasn’t the reason I kept away,” said Michael. “But I don’t want to talk about myself. I want to talk about my sister. She’s going to play at the King’s Hall concert to-morrow night. You will come, won’t you?”
“Of course I will,” said the priest.
“Thanks, and—er—if you could think about her when you’re saying Mass to-morrow morning, why, I’d rather like to serve you, if I may. I must tear back now,” Michael added. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said the priest, and as Michael turned in the doorway his smile was like a benediction.
Very early on the next morning through the curdled October mists Michael went over to Notting Hill again.The Mission Church stood obscurely amid a press of mean houses, and as Michael hurried along the fetid narrow thoroughfare, the bell for Mass was clanging among the fog and smoke. Here and there women were belabouring their doorsteps with mangy mats or leaning with grimed elbows on their sills in depressed anticipation of a day’s drudgery. From bed-ridden rooms came the sound of children wailing and fighting over breakfast. Lean cats nosed in the garbage strewn along the gutters.
The Mission Church smelt strongly of soap and stale incense, and in the frore atmosphere the coloured pictures on the walls looked more than usually crude and violent. It was the Octave of St. Michael and All Angels, and the white chrysanthemums on the altar were beginning to turn brown. There was not a large congregation—two sisters of mercy, three or four pious and dowdy maiden ladies, and the sacristan. It was more than two years since Michael had served at Mass, and he was glad and grateful to find that every small ceremony still seemed sincere and fit and inevitable. There was an exquisite morning stillness in this small tawdry church, and Michael thought how strange it was that in this festering corner of the city it was possible to create so profound a sense of mystery. Whatever emotion he gained of peace and reconciliation and brooding holiness he vowed to Stella and to her fame and to her joy.
After Mass Michael went back to breakfast with Mr. Viner, and as they sat talking about Oxford, Michael thought how various Oxford was compared with school, how many different kinds of people would be appropriate to their surroundings, and he began with some of the ardour that he had given hitherto to envy of life to covet all varieties of intellectual experience. What a wonderfully suggestive word was University, and how exciting it was to see Viner tabulating introductions for his benefit.
Michael sat by himself at the concert. During the afternoon he had talked to Stella for a few minutes, but she had seemed more than ever immeasurably remote from conversation, and Michael had contented himself with offering stock phrases of encouragement and exhortation. He went early to King’s Hall and sat high up in the topmost corner looking down on the orchestra. Gradually through the bluish mist the indefinite audience thickened, and their accumulated voices echoed less and less. The members of the orchestra had not yet entered, but their music-stands stood about with a ridiculous likeness to human beings. In the middle was Stella’s piano black and lifeless, a little ominous in its naked and insistent and faintly shining ebon solemnity. One of the orchestra threaded his way through the chairs to where the drums stood in a bizarre group. From time to time this lonely human figure struck his instruments to test their pitch, and the low boom sounded hollowly above the murmurous audience.
A general accession of light took place, and now suddenly the empty platform was filled with nonchalant men who gossiped while they made discordant sounds upon their instruments. The conductor came in and bowed. The audience clapped. There was a momentary hush, followed by a sharp rat-tat of the baton, and the Third Leonora Overture began.
To Michael the music was a blur. It was soundless beside his own beating heart, his heart that thudded on and on, on and on, while the faces of the audience receded farther and farther through the increasing haze. The Overture was finished. From the hall that every moment seemed to grow darker came a sound of ghostly applause. Michael looked at his programme in a fever. What was this unpronounceable German composition, this Tonic Poem that must be played before Stella’s turn would arrive? It seemed to go on for ever in a most barbaric and amorphous din; withcorybantic crashings, with brazen fanfares and stinging cymbals it flung itself against the audience, while the woodwind howled and the violins were harsh as cats. Michael brooded unreceptive; he had a sense of monstrous loneliness; he could think of nothing. The noise overpowered his beating heart, and he began to count absurdly, while he bit his nails or shivered in alternations of fire and snow. Then his programme fluttered down on to the head of a bald violoncellist, and the ensuing shock of self-consciousness, that was mingled with a violent desire to laugh very loudly, restored him to his normal calm. The Tonic Poem shrieked and tore itself to death. The world became very quiet.
There was a gradual flap of rising applause, and it was Stella who, tall and white, was being handed across the platform. It was Stella who was sitting white and rigid at the black piano that suddenly seemed to have shrunk into a puny insignificance. It was Stella whose fingers were causing those rills of melody to flow. She paused, while the orchestra took up their part, and then again the rills began to flow, gently, fiercely, madly, sadly, wildly. Now she seemed to contend against the mighty odds of innumerable rival instruments; now her own frail instrument seemed to flag; now she was gaining strength; her cool clear harmonies were subduing this welter of violins, this tempest of horns and clarionets, this menace of bass-viols and drums. The audience was extinguished like a candle. The orchestra seemed inspired by the angry forces of Nature herself. The bows of the violins whitened and flickered like willows in a storm, and yet amid this almost intolerable movement Stella sat still as a figure of eternal stone. A faint smile curved more sharply her lips; the black bows in her hair trembled against her white dress; her wonderful hands went galloping away to right and left of her straight back. Plangent as music itself, serene as sculpture, with smiling lips magically crimson, adorably human, she finishedher first concerto. And while she bowed to the audience and to the orchestra and the great shaggy conductor, Michael saw ridiculous teardrops bedewing his sleeve, not because he had been moved by the music, but because he was unable to shake by the hand every single person in King’s Hall who was now applauding his sister.
It was not until Beethoven’s somber knock at the opening of the Fifth Symphony that Michael began to dream upon the deeps of great music, that his thoughts liberated from anxiety went straying into time. Stella, when for a little while he had reveled in her success, was forgotten, and the people in this hall, listening, listening, began to move him with their unimaginable variety. Near him were lovers who in this symphony were fast imparadised; their hands were interlaced; visibly they swayed nearer to each other on the waves of melody. Old men were near him, solitary old men listening, listening ... old men who at the summons of these ringing notes were traversing their past that otherwise might have stayed forever unvoyageable.
Michael sometimes craved for Lily’s company, wished that he could clasp her to him and swoon away upon these blinding chords. But she was banished from this world of music, she who had betrayed the beauty of love. There was something more noble in this music than the memory of a slim and lovely girl and of her flower-soft kisses. The world itself surely seemed to travel the faster for this urgent symphony. Michael was spinning face to face with the spinning stars.
And then some thread of simple melody would bring him back to the green world and the little memories of his boyhood. Now more than ever did it seem worth while to live on earth. He recognized, as if suddenly he had come down from incredible heights, familiar faces in the audience. He saw his mother with Mrs. Ross beside her, two figures that amid all this intoxication of speeding life must forevermourn. Now while the flood of music was sounding in his ears, he wished that he could fly down through this dim hall, and tell them, as they sat there in black with memories beside them, how well he loved them, how much he honoured them, how eagerly he demanded from them pride in himself.
After the first emotions of the mighty music had worn themselves out, Michael’s imagination began to wander rapidly. At one point the bassoons became very active, and he was somehow reminded of Mr. Neech. He was puzzled for awhile to account for this association of an old form-master with the noise of bassoons. ‘For he heard the loud bassoon.’ Out of the past came the vision of old Neech wagging the tail of his gown as he strode backward and forwards over the floor of the Shell class-room. ‘The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon.’ Out of the past came the shrill sound of boys ruining The Ancient Mariner, and Michael heard again the outraged apostrophes of Mr. Neech. He began to create from his fancy of Mr. Neech a grotesque symbol of public-school education. Certainly he was the only master who had taught him anything. Yet he had probably tried less earnestly to teach than any other masters. Why did this image of Mr. Neech materialize whenever his thoughts went back to school? Years had passed since he had enjoyed the Shell. He had never talked intimately to Neech; indeed, he had scarcely held any communication with him since he left his form. The influence of Neech must have depended on a personality that demanded from his pupils a stoic bearing, a sense of humour, a capacity for inquisitiveness, an idea of continuity. He could not remember that any of these qualities had been appreciated by himself until he had entered the Shell. Michael regretted very deeply that on the day before he left school he had not thanked Neech for his existence. How nebulous alreadymost of his other masters seemed. Only Neech stood out clear-cut as the intagliation of a sardonyx.
Meditation upon Neech took Michael off to Thackeray. He had been reading Pendennis lately, and the book had given him much the same sensation of finality as his old form-master, and as Michael thought of Thackeray, he began to speculate upon the difference between Michael Fane and the fourteenth Earl of Saxby. Yet he was rather glad that after all he was not the fourteenth Earl of Saxby. It would be interesting to see how his theories of good-breeding were carried out by himself as a nobody with old blood in his veins. He would like to test the common talk that rank was an accident, that old families, old faiths, old education, old customs, old manners, old thoughts, old books were all so much moonshine. Michael wondered whether it were so; whether indeed all men if born with equal chances would not display equal qualities. He did not believe it: he hated the doctrine. Yet people in all their variety called to him still, and as he surveyed the audience he was aware from time to time of a great longing to involve himself in the web of humanity. He was glad that he had not removed himself from the world like Chator. Chator! He must go down to Clere and see how Chator was getting on as a monk. He had not even thought of Chator for a year. But after all Oxford had a monastic intention, and Michael believed that from Oxford he would gain as much austerity of attitude as Chator would acquire from the rule of St. Benedict. And when he left Oxford, he would explore humanity. He would travel through the world and through the underworld and apply always his standard of ... of what? What was his standard? A classic permanence, a classic simplicity and inevitableness?
The symphony stopped. He must hurry out and congratulate Stella. What a possession she was; what an excitement her career would be. How he would love tocontrol her extravagance, and even as he controlled it, how he would admire it. And his mother had talked of taking a house in Chelsea. What various interests were springing into existence. He must not forget to ask Alan what train he was going by to Oxford. They must arrive together. He had not yet bought his china. His china! His pictures! His books! His rooms in college! Life was really astonishing.
The concert was over, and as Michael came swirling down the stairs on the flood of people going home, he had a strange sensation of life beginning all over again.
THE END OF THEFIRST VOLUME
NOTE
The second and final volume ofSINISTERSTREET,containing Book III: Dreaming Spires and Book IV: Romantic Education, will be published early next year.
The second and final volume ofSINISTERSTREET,containing Book III: Dreaming Spires and Book IV: Romantic Education, will be published early next year.
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH
AUTUMNBOOKSMCMXIIIMARTIN SECKERNUMBER FIVE JOHN STREETADELPHILONDON
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MARTIN SECKERNUMBER FIVE JOHN STREETADELPHILONDON
The Books in this list should be obtainable from all Booksellers and Libraries, and if any difficulty is experienced the Publisher will be glad to be informed of the fact. He will also be glad if those interested in receiving from time to time Announcement Lists, Prospectuses, &c. of new and forthcoming books from Number Five John Street, will send their names and addresses to him for this purpose. Any book in this List may be obtained on approval through the booksellers, or direct from the Publisher, on remitting him the published price, plus the postage.Telephone 4779 CityTelegraphic Address:Psophidian London.
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Telephone 4779 CityTelegraphic Address:Psophidian London.
The Complete Dramatic Works ofGerhart HauptmannAUTHORISED EDITIONIT is generally conceded that Gerhart Hauptmann is the most notable dramatist of the present day. His work combines literary, psychological and dramatic interest in greater measure than that of any other contemporary writer, and the award of the Nobel prize in literature was a public recognition of his genius. An authorised translation of his dramas makes it possible at last for English people to study and enjoy Hauptmann. Excellent translations of a few plays had already been made, and these, by arrangement with the respective translators, will be adapted to the present edition; but new translations will be made whenever it seems necessary in order to maintain the highest standard. The editor of the edition is Professor Ludwig Lewisohn. He supplies a general introduction to Hauptmann’s works in Volume I, and a briefer introduction to each succeeding volume. The contents of the volumes are given on the next page.
The Complete Dramatic Works ofGerhart HauptmannAUTHORISED EDITION
IT is generally conceded that Gerhart Hauptmann is the most notable dramatist of the present day. His work combines literary, psychological and dramatic interest in greater measure than that of any other contemporary writer, and the award of the Nobel prize in literature was a public recognition of his genius. An authorised translation of his dramas makes it possible at last for English people to study and enjoy Hauptmann. Excellent translations of a few plays had already been made, and these, by arrangement with the respective translators, will be adapted to the present edition; but new translations will be made whenever it seems necessary in order to maintain the highest standard. The editor of the edition is Professor Ludwig Lewisohn. He supplies a general introduction to Hauptmann’s works in Volume I, and a briefer introduction to each succeeding volume. The contents of the volumes are given on the next page.
The Dramatic Works of Gerhart HauptmannCONTENTSVolume ISocial DramasVolume IISocial DramasBefore DawnThe WeaversThe Beaver CoatThe ConflagrationDrayman HenschelRose BerndThe RatsVolume IIIDomestic DramasVolume IVSymbolic and Legendary DramasThe ReconciliationLonely LivesColleague CramptonMichael KramerHanneleThe Sunken BellHenry of AueVolume VSymbolic and Historical DramasVolume VILater Dramas in ProseSchluck and JauAnd Pippa DancesCharlemagne’s HostageThe Maidens of the MountGriseldaGabriel Schilling’s FlightEach Volume Crown 8vo. (7½ in. by 5 in.)Price 5s. net.
The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann
CONTENTS
Each Volume Crown 8vo. (7½ in. by 5 in.)Price 5s. net.
Vie de Bohème:A Patch of Romantic ParisBy ORLO WILLIAMSTHE phrase “Vie de Bohème” is one in very frequent use, but few of its users recognize its implication. At the time when the term originated in French literature it had a very special meaning. That time was the Romantic period, one of the most brilliant in all the history of French artistic achievement, and the phrase denoted the life of an important section of Parisian Society between the years of 1830 and 1848. It was called into being by special circumstances and conditions in 1830; reached its golden age in 1835, and slowly declined till the revolution of 1848 reduced it to a mere excrescence on the life of art students, as it now is. “La Bohème” was strictly Parisian, as Henri Murger said it must be; it arose through the literary and social revolution of 1830; it flourished because of the universality of the Romantic spirit of which it was a flower; it declined because its second generation had neither the enthusiasm nor the talent of its first. Mr. Orlo Williams surveys the period very thoroughly, and his book is illustrated in colour and half-tone, from contemporary pictures and prints.Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)Fully Illustrated. Price 15s. net.
Vie de Bohème:
A Patch of Romantic ParisBy ORLO WILLIAMS
THE phrase “Vie de Bohème” is one in very frequent use, but few of its users recognize its implication. At the time when the term originated in French literature it had a very special meaning. That time was the Romantic period, one of the most brilliant in all the history of French artistic achievement, and the phrase denoted the life of an important section of Parisian Society between the years of 1830 and 1848. It was called into being by special circumstances and conditions in 1830; reached its golden age in 1835, and slowly declined till the revolution of 1848 reduced it to a mere excrescence on the life of art students, as it now is. “La Bohème” was strictly Parisian, as Henri Murger said it must be; it arose through the literary and social revolution of 1830; it flourished because of the universality of the Romantic spirit of which it was a flower; it declined because its second generation had neither the enthusiasm nor the talent of its first. Mr. Orlo Williams surveys the period very thoroughly, and his book is illustrated in colour and half-tone, from contemporary pictures and prints.
Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)Fully Illustrated. Price 15s. net.
TheArt of SilhouetteBy DESMOND COKEIN the popular belief a silhouette is something snipped from black paper on a pier for sixpence. Mr. Desmond Coke, as a fourteen-year collector of the fine eighteenth century profiles painted upon chalk, glass or paper, has set himself to correct this fallacy. The reproductions of miniature likenesses in silhouette by Miers, Charles, Rosenberg, Mrs. Beetham, and the other profilists who set Bath beaux and belles in black outline for ever, will probably surprise most readers by their delicate craftsmanship and life-like quality. The book is lightly planned: more an essay than a history or treatise. The joys of collecting—the charm of silhouette—the men who practised this short-lived art, including the tragi-comic Edouart, a man whom Dickens would have loved—the humours of their labels—the horrors of Victorian decadence—groups—some famous silhouette collections—fancy subjects cut in paper—Cupid and this set of shadows—a plea for austerity, addressed to modern artists—such are a few points covered by a book which (to quote the author’s foreword) is intended for “collectors, artists, lovers of the past, and all such as think nothing human or curious alien from themselves.”Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)Fully Illustrated. Price 10s. 6d. net.
TheArt of Silhouette
By DESMOND COKE
IN the popular belief a silhouette is something snipped from black paper on a pier for sixpence. Mr. Desmond Coke, as a fourteen-year collector of the fine eighteenth century profiles painted upon chalk, glass or paper, has set himself to correct this fallacy. The reproductions of miniature likenesses in silhouette by Miers, Charles, Rosenberg, Mrs. Beetham, and the other profilists who set Bath beaux and belles in black outline for ever, will probably surprise most readers by their delicate craftsmanship and life-like quality. The book is lightly planned: more an essay than a history or treatise. The joys of collecting—the charm of silhouette—the men who practised this short-lived art, including the tragi-comic Edouart, a man whom Dickens would have loved—the humours of their labels—the horrors of Victorian decadence—groups—some famous silhouette collections—fancy subjects cut in paper—Cupid and this set of shadows—a plea for austerity, addressed to modern artists—such are a few points covered by a book which (to quote the author’s foreword) is intended for “collectors, artists, lovers of the past, and all such as think nothing human or curious alien from themselves.”
Demy Octavo (9 in. by 5½ in.)Fully Illustrated. Price 10s. 6d. net.