“You are a little mad, but you are a good girl, and I want to be friends with you. You have in you the spirit of a dozen Frank Lavenders.”
“You will never make friends with me by speaking ill of my husband,” said Sheila, with the same proud and indignant look.
“Not when he ill-uses you?”
“He does not ill-use me. What has Mr. Ingram been saying to you?”
The sudden question would certainly have brought about a disclosure if any were to have been made; but Mrs. Lavender assured Sheila that Mr. Ingram had told her nothing, that she had been forming her own conclusions, and that she still doubted that they were right.
“Now sit down and read to me. You will find Marcus Antoninus on the top of those books.”
“Frank is in the drawing-room,” observed Sheila, mildly.
“He can wait,” said the old woman, sharply.
“Yes, but you cannot expect me to keep him waiting,” with a smile which did not conceal her very definite purpose.
“Then ring, and bid him come up. You will soon get rid of those absurd sentiments.”
Sheila rang the bell, and sent Mrs. Paterson down for Lavender, but she did not betake herself to Marcus Antoninus. She waited a few minutes, and then her husband made his appearance, whereupon she sat down and left to him the agreeable duty of talking with this toothless old heathen about funerals and lingering death.
“Well, Aunt Lavender, I am sorry to hear you have been ill, but I suppose you are getting all right again, to judge by your looks.”
“I am not nearly as ill as you expected.”
“I wonder you did not say ‘hoped,’ ” remarked Lavender, carelessly. “You are always attributing the most charitable feelings to your fellow-creatures.”
“Frank Lavender,” said the old lady, who was a little pleased by this bit of flattery, “if you come here to make yourself impertinent and disagreeable, you can go down-stairs again. Your wife and I get on very well without you.”
“I am glad to hear it,” he said: “I suppose you have been telling her what is the matter with you.”
“I have not. I don’t know. I have had a pain in the head and two fits, and I dare say the next will carry me off. The doctors won’t tell me anything about it, so I suppose it is serious.”
“Nonsense!” cried Lavender. “Serious! To look at you one would say you never had been ill in your life.”
“Don’t tell stories, Frank Lavender. I know I look like a corpse, but I don’t mind it, for I avoid the looking-glass, and keep the spectacle for my friends. I expect the next fit will kill me.”
“I’ll tell you what it is, Aunt Lavender, if you would only get up and come with us for a drive in the Park, you would find there was nothing of an invalid about you; and we should take you home to a quiet dinner at Notting Hill, and Sheila would sing to you all the evening, and to-morrow you would receive the doctors in state in your drawing-rooms, and tell them you were going for a month to Malvern.”
“Your husband has a fine imagination, my dear,” said Mrs. Lavender to Sheila. “It is a pity he puts it to no use. Now I shall let both of you go. Three breathing in this room are too many for the cubic feet of air it contains. Frank, bring over those scales and put them on the table, and send Paterson to me as you go out.”
And so they went down stairs and out of the house. Just as they stood on the steps, looking for a hansom, a young lad came forward and shook hands with Lavender, glancing nervously at Sheila.
“Well, Mosenberg,” said Lavender, “you’ve come back from Leipsic at last? We got your card when we came home this morning from Brighton. Let me introduce you to my wife.”
The boy looked at the beautiful face before him with something of a distant wonder and reverence in his regard. Sheila had heard of the lad before – of the Mendelssohn that was to be – and liked his appearance at first sight. He was a rather handsome boy of fourteen or fifteen, of the fair Jew type, with large, dark, expressive eyes, and long, wavy, light-brown hair. He spoke English fluently and well; his slight German accent was, indeed, scarcely so distinct as Sheila’s Highland one, the chief peculiarity of his speaking being a preference for short sentences, as if he were afraid to venture upon elaborate English. He had not addressed a dozen sentences to Sheila before she had begun to have a liking for the lad, perhaps on account of his soft and musical voice, perhaps on account of the respectful and almost wondering admiration that dwelt in his eyes. He spoke to her as if she were some saint, who had but to smile to charm and bewilder the humble worshipper at her shrine.
“I was intending to call upon Mrs. Lavender, madame,” he said. “I heard that she was ill. Perhaps you can tell me if she is better.”
“She seems to be very well to-day, and in very good spirits,” Sheila answered.
“Then I will not go in. Did you propose to take a walk in the Park, madame?”
Lavender inwardly laughed at the audacity of the lad, and, seeing that Sheila hesitated, humored him by saying, “Well, we were thinking of calling on one or two people before going home to dinner. But I haven’t seen you for a long time, Mosenberg, and I want you to tell me how you succeeded at the Conservatoire. If you like to walk with us for a bit, we can give you something to eat at seven.”
“That would be very pleasant for me,” said the boy, blushing somewhat, “if it does not incommode you, madame?”
“Oh, no; I hope you will come,” said Sheila, most heartily; and so they set out for a walk through Kensington Gardens, northward.
Precious little did Lavender learn about Leipsic during that walk. The boy devoted himself wholly to Sheila. He had heard frequently of her, and he knew of her coming from the wild and romantic Hebrides; and he began to tell her of all the experiments that composers had made in representing the sound of seas and storms, and winds howling through caverns washed by the waves. Lavender liked music well enough, and could himself play and sing a little, but this enthusiasm rather bored him. He wanted to know if the yellow wine was still as cool and clear as ever down in the twilight of Auerbach’s cellar, what burlesques had lately been played at the theatre, and whether such and such a beer-garden was still to the fore; whereas, he heard only analyses of overtures, and descriptions of the uses of particular musical instruments, and a wild rhapsody about moonlit seas, the sweetness of French horns, the King of Thule, and a dozen other matters.
“Mosenberg,” he said, “before you go calling on people you ought to visit an English tailor. People will think you belong to a German band.”
“I have been to a tailor,” said the lad, with a frank laugh. “My parents, madame, wish me to be quite English; that is why I am sent to live in London, while they are in Frankfort. I stay with some very good friends of mine, who are very musical, and they are not annoyed by my practising, as other people would be.”
“I hope you will sing something to us this evening,” said Sheila.
“I will sing and play for you all the evening,” he said, lightly, “until you are tired. But you must tell me when you are tired, for who can tell how much music will be enough? Sometimes two or three songs are more than enough to make people wish you away.”
“You need have no fear of tiring me,” said Sheila. “But when you are tired I will sing for you.”
“Yes, of course you sing, madame,” he said, casting down his eyes: “I knew that when I saw you.”
Sheila had got a sweetheart, and Lavender saw it and smiled good-naturedly. The awe and reverence with which this lad regarded the beautiful woman beside him, was something new and odd in Kensington Gardens. Yet it was the way of those boys. He had himself had his imaginative fits of worship, in which some very ordinary young woman, who ate a good breakfast and spent an hour and a half in arranging her hair before going out, was regarded as some beautiful goddess fresh risen from the sea, or descended from the clouds. Young Mosenberg was just at the proper age for these foolish dreams. He could sing songs to Sheila, and reveal to her in that way a passion of which he dared not otherwise speak. He would compose pieces of music for her, and dedicate them to her, and spend half his quarterly allowance in having them printed. He would grow to consider him, Lavender, a heartless brute, and cherish dark notions of poisoning him, but for the pain it might cause to her.
“I don’t remember whether you smoke, Mosenberg,” Lavender said, after dinner.
“Yes – a cigarette sometimes,” said the lad; “but if Mrs. Lavender is going away perhaps she will let me go into the drawing-room with her. There is that sonata of Muzio Clementi, madame, which I will try to remember for you if you please.”
“All right,” said Lavender; “you’ll find me in the next room on the left when you will get tired of your music and want a cigar. I think you used to beat me at chess, didn’t you?”
“I do not know. We will try once more to-night.”
Then Sheila and he went into the drawing-room by themselves, and while she took a seat near the brightly-lit fire-place, he opened the piano at once and sat down. He turned up his cuffs, he took a look at the pedals, he threw back his head, shaking his long brown hair; and then, with a crash like thunder, his two hands struck the keys. He had forgotten all about that sonata; it was a fantasia of his own, based on the airs in Der Freischutz, that he played; and as he played Sheila’s poor little piano suffered somewhat. Never before had it been so battered about, and she wished the small chamber were a great hall to temper the voluminous noise of this opening passage. But presently the music softened. The white, lithe fingers ran lightly over the keys, so that the notes seemed to ripple out like the prattling of a stream, and then again some stately and majestic air or some joyous burst of song would break upon this light accompaniment, and lead up to another roar and rumble of noise. It was a very fine performance, doubtless, but what Sheila remarked most was the enthusiasm of the lad. She was to see more of that.
“Now,” he said, “that is nothing. It is to get one’s fingers accustomed to the keys you play anything that is loud and rapid. But if you please, madame, shall I sing you something?”
“Yes, do,” said Sheila.
“I will sing for you a little German song which, I believe, Jenny Lind used to sing; but I never heard her sing. You know German?”
“Very little, indeed.”
“This is only the cry of some one who is far away about his sweetheart. It is very simple, both in the words and the music.”
And he began to sing, in a voice so rich, so tender and expressive that Sheila sat amazed and bewildered to hear him. Where had this boy caught such a trick of passion, or was it really a trick that threw into his voice all the pathos of a strong man’s love and grief? He had a powerful baritone, of unusual compass and rare sweetness; but it was not the finely-trained art of his singing, but the passionate abandonment of it, that thrilled Sheila, and, indeed, brought tears to her eyes. How had this mere lad learned all the yearning and despair of love that he sang?
Dir debt die Brust,
Dir schlägt dies Herz.
Du meine Lust!
O du, mein Schmerz!
Nur an den Winden, den Sternen der Höh,
Muss ich verkünden mein süsses Weh! —
as though his heart were breaking? When he had finished he paused for a moment or two before leaving the piano, and then he came over to where Sheila sat. She fancied there was a strange look in his face, as of one who had been really experiencing the wild emotions of which he sang; but he said, in his ordinary, careful way of speaking, “Madame, I am sorry I cannot translate the words for you into English. They are too simple; and they have, what is common in most German songs, a mingling of the pleasure and the sadness of being in love, that would not read natural perhaps in English. When he says to her that she is his greatest delight and also his greatest grief, it is quite right in the German, but not in the English.”
“But where have you learned all these things?” she said to him, talking to him as if he were a mere child, and looking without fear into his handsome boyish face and fine eyes. “Sit down and tell me. That is the song of some one whose sweetheart is far away, you said. But you sang it as if you yourself had some sweetheart far away.”
“So I have, madame,” he said, seriously: “when I sing the song, I think of her then, so that I almost cry for her.”
“And who is she?” said Sheila, gently. “Is she very far away?”
“I do not know,” said the lad, absently. “I do not know who she is. Sometimes I think she is a beautiful woman away at St. Petersburg, singing in the opera house there. Or I think she has sailed away in a ship from me.”
“But you do not sing about any particular person?” said Sheila, with an innocent wonder appearing in her eyes.
“Oh, no, not at all,” said the boy; and then he added, with some suddenness, “Do you think, madame, any fine songs like that, or any fine words that go to the heart of people are written about any one person? Oh, no! The man has a great desire in him to say something beautiful or sad, and he says it – not to one person, but to all the world; and all the world takes it from him as a gift. Sometimes, yes, he will think of one woman, or he will dedicate the music to her, or he will compose it for her wedding, but the feeling in his heart is greater than any that he has for her. Can you believe, madame, that Mendelssohn wrote the Hochzeitm – the Wedding March – for any one wedding? No. It was all the marriage joy of the world he put into his music, and every one knows that. And you hear it at this wedding, at that wedding, but you know it belongs to something far away and more beautiful than the marriage of any one bride with her sweetheart. And if you will pardon me, madame, speaking about myself, it is about some one I never knew, who is far more beautiful and precious to me than any one I ever knew, that I try to think when I sing these sad songs, and then I think of her far away, and not likely ever to see me again.”
“But some day you will find that you have met her in real life,” Sheila said. “And you will find her far more beautiful and kind to you than anything you dreamed about; and you will try to write your best music to give to her. And then, if you should be unhappy, you will find how much worse is the real unhappiness about one you love than the sentiment of a song you can lay aside at any moment.”
The lad looked at her. “What can you know about unhappiness, madame?” he said, with a frank and gentle simplicity that she liked.
“I,” said Sheila. “When people get married and begin to experience the cares of the world, they must expect to be unhappy sometimes.”
“But not you,” he said, with some touch of protest in his voice, as if it were impossible the world should deal harshly with so young and beautiful and tender a creature. “You can have nothing but enjoyment around you. Every one must try to please you. You need only condescend to speak to people, and they are grateful to you for a great favor. Perhaps, madame, you think I am impertinent?”
He stopped and blushed, while Sheila, herself with a little touch of color, answered him that she hoped he would always speak to her quite frankly, and then suggested that he might sing once more for her.
“Very well,” he said, as he sat down to the piano: “this is not any more a sad song. It is about a young lady who will not let her sweetheart kiss her, except on conditions. You shall hear the conditions, and what he says.”
Sheila began to wonder whether this innocent-eyed lad had been imposing on her. The song was acted as well as sung. It consisted chiefly of a dialogue between the two lovers; and the boy, with a wonderful ease and grace and skill, mimicked the shy coquetries of the girl, her fits of petulance and dictation, and the pathetic remonstrances of her companion, his humble entreaties and his final sullenness, which is only conquered by her sudden and ample consent. “What a rare faculty of artistic representation this precocious boy must have,” she thought, “if he really exhibits all those moods and whims and tricks of manner without having himself been in the position of the despairing and imploring lover!”
“You were not thinking of the beautiful lady in St. Petersburg when you were singing just now,” Sheila said, on his coming back to her.
“Oh, no,” he said, carelessly; “that is nothing. You have not to imagine anything. These people, you see them on every stage in the comedies and farces.”
“But that might happen in actual life,” said Sheila, still not quite sure about him. “Do you know that many people would think you must have yourself been teased in that way, or you could not imitate it so naturally?”
“I! Oh, no, madame,” he said, seriously; “I should not act that way if I were in love with a woman. If I found her a comedy-actress, liking to make her amusement out of our relations, I should say to her: ‘Good-evening, mademoiselle; we have both made a little mistake.’ ”
“But you might be so much in love with her that you could not leave her without being very miserable.”
“I might be very much in love with her, yes; but I would rather go away and be miserable than be humiliated by such a girl. Why do you smile, madame? Do you think I am vain, or that I am too young to know anything about that? Perhaps both are true, but one cannot help thinking.”
“Well,” said Sheila, with a grandly maternal air of sympathy and interest, “you must always remember this – that you have something more important to attend to than merely looking out for a beautiful sweetheart. That is the fancy of a foolish girl. You have your profession, and you must become great and famous in that; and then some day, when you meet this beautiful woman and ask her to be your wife, she will be bound to do that, and you will confer honor on her as well as secure happiness to yourself. Now, if you were to fall in love with some coquettish girl like her you were singing about, you would have no more ambition to become famous, you would lose all interest in everything except her, and she would be able to make you miserable by a single word. When you have made a name for yourself, and got a good many more years, you will be better able to bear anything that happens to you in your love or in your marriage.”
“You are very kind to take so much trouble,” said young Mosenberg, looking up with big, grateful eyes.
“Perhaps, madame, if you are not very busy during the day, you will let me call in sometimes, and if there is no one here I will tell you about what I am doing, and play for you or sing for you, if you please.”
“In the afternoons I am always free,” she said.
“Do you never go out?” he asked.
“Not often. My husband is at his studio most of the day.”
The boy looked at her, hesitated for a moment, and then said, with a sudden rush of color to his face, “You should not stay so much in the house. Will you sometimes go for a little walk with me, madame, to Kensington Gardens, if you are not busy in the afternoon?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Sheila, without a moment’s embarrassment. “Do you live near them?”
“No; I live in Sloane Street, but the underground railways brings me here in a very short time.”
That mention of Sloane Street gave a twinge to Sheila’s heart. Ought she have been so ready to accept offers of new friendship just as her old friend had been banished from her?
“In Sloane Street? Do you know Mr. Ingram?”
“Oh yes, very well. Do you?”
“He is one of my oldest friends,” said Sheila, bravely; she would not acknowledge that their intimacy was a thing of the past.
“He is a very good friend to me – I know that,” said young Mosenberg, with a laugh. “He hired a piano merely because I used to go into his rooms at night; and now he makes me play over my most difficult music when I go in, and he sits and smokes a pipe and pretends to like it. I do not think he does, but I have got to do it all the same, and then afterward I sing for him songs that I know he likes. Madame, I think I can surprise you.”
He went to the piano and began to sing, in a very quiet way:
Oh soft be thy slumbers by Tigh-na-linne’s waters;
Thy late-wake was sung by MacDiarmid’s fair daughters;
But far in Lochaber the true heart was weeping,
Whose hopes are entombed in the grave where thou’rt sleeping.
It was the lament of the young girl whose lover had been separated from her by false reports, and who died before he could get back to Lochaber when the deception was discovered. And the wild, sad air the girl is supposed to sing seemed so strange with those new chords that this boy-musician gave it, that Sheila sat down and listened to it as though it were the sound of the seas about Borva coming to her with a new voice and finding her altered and a stranger.
“I know nearly all of those Highland songs that Mr. Ingram has got,” said the lad.
“I did not know that he had any,” Sheila said.
“Sometimes he tries to sing one himself,” said the boy, with a smile, “but he does not sing very well and he gets vexed with himself in fun, and flings things about the room. But you will sing some of these songs, madame, and let me hear how they are sung in the North?”
“Some time,” said Sheila, “I would rather listen just now to all you can tell me of Mr. Ingram – he is such a very old friend of mine, and I do not know how he lives.”
The lad speedily discovered that there was at least one way of keeping his new and beautiful friend profoundly interested; and, indeed, he went on talking until Lavender came into the room in evening dress. It was eleven o’clock, and young Mosenberg started up with a thousand apologies and hopes that he had not detained Mrs. Lavender. No, Mrs. Lavender was not going out; her husband was going around for an hour to a ball that Mrs. Kavanagh was giving, but she preferred to stay at home.
“May I call upon you to-morrow afternoon, madame?” said the boy, as he was leaving.
“I shall be very glad if you will,” Sheila answered.
And as he went along the pavement young Mosenberg observed to his companion that Mrs. Lavender did not seem to have gone out much, and that it was very good of her to have promised to go with him occasionally into Kensington Gardens.
“Oh, has she?” said Lavender.
“Yes,” said the lad, with some surprise.
“You are lucky to be able to get her to leave the house,” her husband said; “I can’t.”
Perhaps he had not tried so much as the words seemed to imply.