Philistia. Allen Grant
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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.